Indigo Jo Blogs

2006-11-12T18:35:00.000Z

Yet another Blogger test post

This is yet another attempt to test out Blogger posting.

And here's another paragraph for the same purpose.

2004-09-05T20:52:00.000Z

Back to Blogger ...

Well, it looks like I might be back on Blogger faster than I had thought. Somebody appears to have cracked my website.

I tried accessing my blog today, to see if anyone had commented. Got nothing but an "Internal Server Error".

Tried logging in, and found that my home "user" directory is not there. Nobody has logged in via the SSH route since I last did, this morning just before 11, when my Dad and I left for his parents' place. But someone could have logged in via FTP, having got my password for that using a "packet sniffer", because passwords on normal FTP are transmitted using plain text, unencrypted.

I'm currently writing a program, currently called Catkin, to assist bloggers manage blogs like mine. My blog was facilitated with "Blosxom" which uses the computer's filesystem, not a database like most blog servers. All I do is write a blog entry in a common text editor, and use a FTP program to upload it to a given directory. You call it up in your browser, and that "blog.cgi" bit at the end - that's Blosxom. It finds the last twenty entries, the format files I've supplied (an edited version of a "flavour" which I think were designed by Rael Dornfest, the author of Blosxom), runs them together to make a whole HTML file, and displays it in your browser.

With my blog manager, you write the entry, click a button that says "Blog this!", and up it goes. Just like that. But I wrote to various tech bloggers who I know to use Blosxom, and one of them wrote back to me saying his server doesn't use FTP, because the password is not encrypted.

The password is also not encrypted when I log into my hosting provider to change things about my account. It's really bizarre, because SourceForge, the system I use to manage and release Catkin, uses secure transfer for almost everything. And that's free.

The moral of the story is, if you are looking for a web hosting provider, make sure they use a secure upload system. Especially if you do a blog and expect to publish anything controversial. Because anyone with an axe to grind and a bit of technical knowledge can use what has been called "a trivial packet sniffer", that is, something which monitors material passing by it on the Internet, find your password, and crack your account - and sabotage it.

2004-03-25T15:13:00.000Z

My New Blog

Salaams to all the Muslims and hi to all the others :) Thanks to you all for reading my blog the last couple of months; I would like to welcome you all to my new blog, which is located here: http://www.blogistan.co.uk/cgi-bin/blog.cgi . (The name, incidentally, comes from a comment on FM's blog, and it seemed a nice title for my planned directory of Muslim blogs. Thanks Karl and FM.) The new blog is run on my own webspace, using a CGI Perl script called Blosxom. This blog will be left up, but not updated unless I am unable to renew my lease on my webspace at Fasthosts this time next year.

2004-03-24T23:48:00.000Z

Sons of Malkoviches

Press Action reports on the approval by the US House of Representatives for establishing a federal tribunal to monitor criticism of Israel on campus (?!).

http://www.pressaction.com/pablog/archives/001546.html#001546

2004-03-24T22:38:00.000Z

Richard Clarke's statement

Bohemian Mama has an interesting take on why Richard Clarke had to quit Bush's administration: "He's an adult" LOL! (11:12AM entry)

2004-03-24T17:15:00.000Z

Jack Kelley: Bloodthirsty Arabs, Vigilante Jews

A piece from Salon.com on the disgraced USA Today hack Jack Kelley (thanks Muhsin):

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/23/jack_kelley/

2004-03-23T22:58:00.000Z

The MMR debate

I just found this rather interesting article by George Monbiot about conflicts of interest in the debate over the safety of the MMR vaccine. Andrew Wakefield, who published a paper alleging links between the MMR vaccine and a number of diseases including autism, was revealed to have possible conflicts of interest. However, as Monbiot reveals, this is an extremely common problem in sections of the scientific community, with scientists putting their names to papers ghost-written by companies, sometimes never having seen the data on which the papers' conclusions are based. Here's the story.

2004-03-23T22:53:00.000Z

Muslim blog directory

I have made arrangements to move both my homepage and my blog to a new server, mainly to get away from the adverts but also to have more choice in blogging methods. I intend to start a directory of Muslim blogs, which could be personal blogs, or blogs about Islam, or blogs about Islamic activities - any blog with an Islamic connection except, of course, for anti-Islamic blogs. Please can anyone tell me if they are running a blog, and if you know someone who does, please tell them to contact me. The email address is: indigojo underscore UK at yahoo dot co dot UK.

2004-03-23T18:11:00.000Z

New version of SUSE Linux on the horizon

OSNews reports that version 9.1 of SUSE's version of Linux is shortly to be released, and the company's own website gives the date for release as 6th May. Although I recently acquired a Mac and really like OS X, I'm still quite fond of Linux and use it on my laptop. I've bought three successive versions of SUSE's distro and found it to be the most comprehensive and workable distro on the market despite a few minor problems. I intend insha Allah to buy this version also. I wonder, though, why they call it version 9.1 and not version 10, given that it has a new kernel (2.6 rather than 2.4), new KDE (3.2) and new (for SUSE) GNOME (2.4)?

2004-03-23T17:33:00.000Z

Gilad Atzmon on Sh. Yassin murder

This is an article by Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli dissident living in London. Here's his website. (Thanks to J. Muhsin Kilby for the info.)

Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was murdered at daybreak on
Monday. Israel Air Force helicopters fired missiles at the car carrying the
wheelchair-bound head of the Islamic group as he left a mosque near his
house in Gaza City. It also appears Ariel Sharon was in direct command of
the assassination operation, not entirely surprising considering his bloody
history.

For those who fail to realise, today's barbaric Israeli act is an open call
for a world war. It is the final wake up call for every Muslim around the
world. It is violent proof that Israel isn't only against the Palestinians
but rather against Islam. Israel killed a prime spiritual leader on his way
out of the mosque. I have no doubt that this Israeli act won't be forgiven.
I also have no doubt that many Israelis will pay with their life for
Sharon's act. Moreover I am sure that sooner rather than later many innocent
non-Israelis around the world will die just for being near by an Israeli
embassy, Israeli consulate, a synagogue or even an American bank... This is
the reality Sharon favours the most.

This is exactly what Israel wants: to turn the entire world into a victim
of terror. This might help us to realise the main difference between the
Israeli left and right. While both believe in the right of the Jews to live
in Zion on the expense of the Palestinian people, the Israeli right wing
rely on maintaining a bloody struggle, oppressing the Palestinian people
(in particular) and humiliating Arabs (in general). While the Israeli left
would attempt to come up with some unrealistic righteous suggestions to
appease the Palestinian people and the world community (Oslo accord for
instance), the right wing Israelis will suggest that the only method to
guarantee Israeli security is to maintain the conflict with the Palestinian
people and to let it escalate into an international battle.

On the surface it seems bizarre considering Sharon was just recently
pretending to suggest a plan of Israeli disengagement from the Gaza strip.
Today he gave us a real chance to peep into his mind. The 'disengagement
plan' was just another of Sharon's tricks. In fact, Sharon and the Israeli
right wing need the Palestinians, they need them oppressed and humiliated,
they need their terror. Israeli right wing hegemony is fed by terror. And
now there is a new need emerging. Israel is facing a demographic disaster.
Within five years there will be a Palestinian majority in the territories
controlled by Israel (between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River).
This is literally the end of the Zionist dream. Eventually Israel will have
to give away its Jewish identity. While the Israeli left remains confused
about this reality, the Israeli right wing is fully prepared. For years
Israeli warmongers have openly discussed 'transfer': the ethnic cleansing of
the Palestinian people. Considering the current world affairs and general
opposition to Israel it is hard to believe that large scale ethnic cleansing
would go ahead unless some colossal catastrophe was in place. Sharon is
preparing the ground for such a disaster. He needs a war, a big one,
something that will allow him to go wild, to go out of control, to initiate
a campaign in which Israeli soldiers will become murderous squads ready
massacre against the Palestinian civilians. Sharon wants to re-launch the
1948 Nakba. Sharon fully understands that this is what the Israeli public
want. He is very good at reading their innermost desires.

The killing of Sheikh Yassin pushed the violence far beyond any recognisable
measure. It is pushing the Palestinian masses towards martyrdom. According
to the Israeli military doctrine, Israel would never be defeated by terror.
But at the same time every Israeli realises that the Zionist adventure will
be categorically defeated by a demographic crisis. The assassination of
Sheikh Yassin is there to push the Palestinians towards acts that will allow
the Israelis to impose the most murderous measures against the Palestinian
civilians. Mr Sharon, a world acclaimed war criminal and serial murderer
proved again that at least when blood games are concerned, he is one step
ahead of the game.

2004-03-23T16:45:00.000Z

New Look for SunniPath

Saraji tells us that SunniPath - probably the no. 1 source for Hanafi and Shafi'i fiqh, has a great new look ma sha Allah. They offer a free email address.

2004-03-23T11:15:00.000Z

Crucifixion death toll rises to 2

Two people have now died while watching the crucifixion scene in Mel Gibson's new flick The Passion. The BBC reports that a Brazilian Presbyterian pastor, Jose Geraldo Soares, died of a heart attack while "calmly" watching the scene with his wife in Belo Horizonte.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3559753.stm

I have to say I have no plans to go and see this film and watch a prophet (peace be upon him) being represented by some actor. This is something which would never happen in the Muslim world and I expect the film to be banned in several Muslim countries. There was one film called The Message in which a number of supposedly minor Companions (may Allah be pleased with them) were played by non-Muslim actors, and although Muslims were consulted and the film is popular among Muslims in some places, several countries did ban it. Apart from the issue of play-acting the Companions which is forbidden in Islam, the film excludes a number of major Companions like Abu Bakr, Ali and others of that stature (radhi Allahu 'anhum), as if those they do portray are 'minor'. They were nothing of the sort. One, Hamza, was the uncle of the Prophet (sall' Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam) and known as "God's lion", and another, Bilal, was an early Companion who bore all the sufferings of the Muslims in Makkah. They portray Abu Sufyan (radhi Allahu 'anhu) as the 'villain' of the piece, and fail to mention that he became Muslim at the end!

Apart from this I don't think the film will be very good for community relations - there may well be consequences in countries like Russia where the Jew-as-Christ-killer idea still has currency, and it may also add weight to the claims made by some Jews that if you "scratch a Gentile, you find an anti-Semite" and that Jews are at the end of the day not safe anywhere except Israel.

2004-03-22T18:22:00.000Z

International reaction to Yasin killing

http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-03/22/article06.shtml

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3556753.stm

Half century of Israeli assassinations

2004-03-22T17:32:00.000Z

Reaction to my last post

Thanks to everyone who responded to my last post in reaction to the murder of Shaikh Ahmad Yasin. It at least disproves Flanstein's earlier jibe that "there's only the two of us here"! In fact, I actually thought I had deleted that post, which I made in anger in reaction to the murder and the gloating over it I saw on the BBC's website. You can read more of the same on the odious "Little Green Footballs" blog - http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/ - I'm not going to link it because they have a habit of redirecting links from hostile websites and blogs to the Israeli Defence Force's Hebrew website!

No doubt a few people have had their opinions of Islam and Muslims confirmed. These people haven't really broken any stereotypes either. Let's take their comments one by one:

Flanstein: Why am I not surprised? My theory about the joy muslims take over the deaths of Jews was that you don't see them as human beings.

Me: Well, they are human beings, and as Shaikh Hamza Yusuf once said, you can't blame a dog for being a dog, but you can blame a human being for acting like something less than an animal.

Avi W: I'm shaking in my shoes, Yusuf. Perhaps you should direct your prayers to Shaul Mofaz, since Allah doesn't seem to be to stop JDAMs. Your gnome got less than he deserved.

Me: What's a JDAM? What gnome? I don't have any gnomes. My garden's a gnome-free zone.

Allah Most High subjects many of those He loves to trials in this life. Our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was terribly persecuted and outlived all but one of his children. Paradise is surrounded by trials and Hell by temptations.

Robert: One down, several hundred thousand to go; care to strap on a bomb yourself, Yusuf? Naw, I didn't think so, since the average camel-buggering Arab hasn't even got that much courage.

Me: I wouldn't know about "camel-buggering Arabs" because I've never met one. And I'm not an Arab. My surname is Smith - if you'd read my website you'd know that. I have no personal plans to carry out a suicide bombing, but it is clear that Arabs in Palestine do have such courage.

Robert again: Just think, your old Sheik Yassin has gone to his reward, that special place in Hell reserved for impotent old men who send out children with bombs strapped to their chests.

If Shaikh Yassin is impotent, how did he manage to have children?!

http://www.islamonline.net/livedialogue/english/Browse.asp?hGuestID=XbQ5ap"

Who is the innocent? Is the Jew who took my home, land, and expelled me from it by force, killed my children, wife, and parents… is he innocent? The important thing is to determine who is the aggressor… Are we the ones that attack Israelis first or is it them? If you know that, the answer would be clear for you. (Shaikh Ahmad Yassin, 7th May 2003)

Haywood: If anyone still believes in the myth of a "moderate Muslim" here's your chance to repent.

Me: Of course, a "moderate Muslim" to you is someone who rejects part of the religion, or disavows the use of force to defend the religion or its people. The Jews did not disavow such force when trying to capture the land they currently occupy from the British. I don't see why Arab Muslims in Palestine (or any other locals, for that matter) should disavow it to defend their land.

SnickerGal: Who was the leader of the Palestinians before Arafat? Where can I read about the historic culture of the Palestinian people?

This is an irrelevance. Of course, the Arabs in Palestine were not called Palestinians before the British occupied the area under the "Mandate" scheme and called the region Palestine. Then, there was no need for a "leader" of the Palestinian people, because that particular group of Arabs had not been hived off and given another name. They were simply the local people, as they still are.

Crusader: As a proud kufr & Christian woman, I will surely die before I give birth to anything that follows Islam. Your comments are very revealing about the nature of this hostile, hateful religion, or at least this version of it.

Me: My own mother is not Muslim, and she never expected to give birth to someone who would later become Muslim, any more than you know such things about your children. May Allah guide your children. If you really feel that way, you will be pleased to know that the Muslims did execute some elderly Jews at their own request when they conquered one of the treacherous Jewish communities around al-Madinah. Should the need arise, just tell them and remind them of what I said, and ask them to chop off your head.

Crusader: Israel existed LONG before 1948 and has a right to exist now. The murderers of Palestine do not have the right to a state for a made up ethnic group!

Me: No country called Israel existed between before the time of Christ (peace be upon him) and 1948. That's a fact. They were displaced from the land God gave them when they rebelled against Him.

Crusader: BTW, why are kids always in the midst of violence in Israel? You never see Jewish kids at such scenes, unless they've been killed by some murdering bigot with a bomb.

Me: for more on this see LGF Watch - March 1st entry.

Crusdader: "Jesus answered: "Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Messiah,' and will deceive many. " It appears you have been deceived.

Me: no, you have been deceived by a long succession of lying priests and pseudo-theologians. We do not follow any false Messiah. Our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said he was the Messenger of Allah, which he was, not the Messiah. He (peace and blessings be upon him) affirmed Jesus Christ (peace be upon him) as the Messiah, and this is affirmed in the Holy Qur'an, chapter 9, verse 30.

Crusader: And may God bless and protect His people Israel. And Kudos to the IDF for a job well done.

Me: why would a Christian speak such nonsense? The disbelieving and rebellious among the children of Israel ceased to be "His people" centuries ago.

2004-03-21T22:47:00.000Z

Website update

Two new links have been added to the website:

Hanbali Text Society (see last article for sample of content) and Karimia Institute, both under Islamic links.

2004-03-21T22:04:00.000Z

An interesting article on the Kharijites

This is a highly interesting article on the Kharijites and their modern-day equivalents, the Wahhabis. This is on the website of the Hanbali Texts Society, an organisation dedicated to propagating orthodox Hanbalism and distinguishing it from the Wahhabi sect.

HTS on the Kharijites

2004-03-21T10:28:00.000Z

Me and my Mac

I've had my Mac nearly a week now (since Tuesday) and I have to say I'm generally pleased with it. We had it sitting on the dining table until Friday, but of course it couldn't stay there forever because people have to eat off that table (including me), so I ordered a computer table from Viking which arrived on Friday. So it's now next to the old computer in the upstairs office.

I haven't tried everything the Mac does yet - I've used it so far for a bit of programming and surfing the Internet (and blogging, of course). The performance is fine - 1GHz is a slower clock speed than many cheaper PC's (you can get an Athlon now for about £500) but I haven't noticed it. It's also very well-designed - the mouse, which sits next to the keyboard, plugs into a USB port on the keyboard rather than having to be connected to the system unit (there isn't one - the system is in the monitor) with a long cable.

The magazine I mentioned earlier made a big thing about the Mac's looks, but the user interface is what stands out. Apple have really done a good job on it. There is one thing I miss about Linux though - the multiple desktop thing, so you can keep your various windows separate and have your WP on one 'screen', your web browsing on another, your mail on a third and your chat on a fourth. The Mac's OS (on this version, 10.3) has a thing called Exposé, where you roll the mouse to a given point and it shrinks all the windows so they all appear at the same time. And you can use the keyboard to flick between applications, but not individual windows - you have to use the application's window menu to get to a particular window. I'd like to have that fixed somehow, although I'm not holding my breath - the mouse and menus are integral to using the Mac (unlike Windows where you can do most things without it).

Having come from Linux, I was looking forward to going back to some of my old X11 applications. X11 is supposed to come with the system, but I couldn't find it - the disk I read that it was on just contained translations of a "Readme" file about restoring the system. I had to download it from Apple, then get Fink and then learn how to use that. The apt-get program did not work for me - it connected to SourceForge where Fink is held, but trying to get the files only resulted in 404's. So I had to use the Fink command-line program itself to get the sources and compile them, which obviously takes much longer than just installing binaries although it's obviously safer.

Actually, many of the programs I used on X in Linux are actually available for the Mac's own GUI - this includes the Mozilla suite and even GNU Emacs. This is obviously preferable to running them on X11 because X11 has its own memory overheads. But it's still useful to have X11 around.

2004-03-21T10:05:00.000Z

The Rally Yesterday ...

Well I went on the rally yesterday, it was not as big as the huge anti-war rallies last year but it was big enough that people were still leaving the start (Hyde Park) as the rest of us were having our rally in Trafalgar Square. It rained a little bit and it was very windy - I heard that people in other parts of the country had been killed by flying debris, but no-one here (al-hamdu lillah) was injured, although I almost got one of the Marxists' flagpoles land on my head in Hyde Park.

We had the usual speakers - obviously the groups who organised the rally (Stop the War, The Muslim Association of Britain and CND) and a few trade unionists and minor politicians, and four of the hundreds of Birmingham schoolkids who walked out of school last year to protest against the war. Nigel Kennedy gave two violin recitals (one by Bach and one piece he said was from Lebanon or Palestine) and after the rally the Asian Dub Foundation gave a gig. Respect were out, of course, but I had expected them to have a higher profile than the various Trot groups which come out of the woodwork on days like this. If these guys want to help organise anti-war rallies, fine, but don't they realise that they damage the credibility of these rallies by using them to advertise themselves? There can't be that many Communists in this country, surely?

I heard someone on the radio mention that a lot of the people who turned up on last year's big marches were notably absent - the married thirty-somethings and Twickenham brigade or something like that. As usual, they played down the number of people who turned out - the organisers said about 75,000, the police said it was a third of that number. Of course, the threat of wind and rain may well have deterred people from coming, but I don't see why it matters. The fact is that at least one group of people are still protesting at what is a ridiculous adventure in which we had no need to get involved and has not had the results the leaders promised. Yes, Saddam is gone, but what is going to take his place? Nobody knows, and I don't believe the coalition are in any place to decide.

2004-03-19T18:18:00.000Z

No More Lies, Mr Blair!

Saturday's Stop the War march is intended to reinforce calls for political accountability and a withdrawal from Iraq, writes Andrew Burgin

Friday March 19, 2004

On the anniversary of the Iraq war the anti-war movement is marching once more. Demonstrations will take place in more than 100 cities round the world. In London people will march under the banner "No more lies, Mr
Blair!" What is clear is that the Iraq war was based on deceit and lies. Blair now says that when he went to the House of Commons to make the case for war he did not know that the 45-minute claim related only to battlefield weapons. To paraphrase Aneurin Bevan: if he knew this not to be the case he is too dishonest to be prime minister and if he really believed it then he is too stupid to be prime minister.

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There were no links between al-Qaida and the Iraqi regime. But the biggest lie of all was that this war on terror would make the world a safer place. In Britain Sir John Stevens, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, now says that a terror attack in London is inevitable.

We also now know that the war was illegal in terms of international law. There was no second United Nations resolution and the military was concerned enough about the legality of military action to demand further assurances from the attorney-general. Lord Goldsmith had to search far and wide to find support for the position that the attack on Iraq would be lawful. We are marching this Saturday to demand a full account from our government. The Hutton report was a whitewash and the Butler inquiry is already discredited by its narrow terms of reference and by the decision to hold its deliberations behind closed doors. The full advice given by Goldsmith to Blair should be published and there must be a full public inquiry into the reasons for the war. Democracy demands that the lies that took us to war are accounted for.

Tony Blair, wrapping himself in Churchillian language, talks about being "at the end of the first phase of the war on terror". However, it looks as if we may be at the beginning of the end of Tony Blair.

In Spain the people came out onto the streets to protest against the terror attacks in Madrid which left more than 200 dead. The following day they voted out the Popular party of José María Aznar and voted in the Socialist party which promised to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq. The newly elected Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, said after his election victory that war cannot be based on lies. More than 90% of the population in Spain opposed the invasion of Iraq. Aznar, Bush and Blair were the troika who met just before the war began to finalise the invasion plans. Bush and Blair are now isolated on the war; events in Iraq itself, which has been devastated by the invasion, are making them ever more unpopular.

Saturday's demonstration calls for an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq. The people of Iraq have the right to determine their own future free from the interference of foreign troops. Bush and Blair now seek to use the United Nations to legitimise an unelected puppet government in which the convicted fraudster Ahmed Chalabi will play a prominent role. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress was the source for most of the disputed intelligence claims. Chalabi was financed over a long period by the US security services. There are no plans for democratic elections in Iraq and the farce of the supposed handover of power in June is nothing but a cover for the continuing military occupation of Iraq and the exploitation of its oil reserves.

Over the last two and half years the Stop the War Coalition, together with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Muslim Association of Britain, have built a powerful voice against the war on terror. We have organised the largest marches in British political history. Saturday's march will once again show the resilience of the anti-war movement. From Madrid to Bombay and San Francisco people will demonstrate their opposition to war. The Spanish people had the chance to vote against their pro-war government, Saturday is our chance to show the deep and widespread opposition to war and occupation.

· Andrew Burgin is a member of the Stop the War coalition

2004-03-19T13:18:00.000Z

Galloway wins damages

George Galloway has accepted substantial damages from the Christian Science Monitor after it admitted that documents on which it based accusations against Galloway were almost certainly fakes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3549679.stm

2004-03-19T11:20:00.000Z

Bush gang's 237 lies on Iraq

A US House of Representatives Committee report has found that the Bush administration made no less than 237 misleading statements on the thread posed by Iraq.

Read it here (PDF file)

2004-03-19T10:10:00.000Z

Respect - the Unity Coalition

George Galloway, the former Labour MP who was expelled from the party for supporting the right of Iraqis to defend their country, is standing as a Euro candidate for "Respect - the Unity Coalition". I think this could be an ideal opportunity to send a message to Tory Bliar and his gang because you don't have to worry about letting the Tories in by voting for them.

Here's a letter in yesterday's Guardian (you'll have to scroll down a bit) from Galloway and other R-UC candidates.

2004-03-19T02:19:00.000Z

'The Register' hits the wrong note

The Register (a UK-based tech news site) has a feature about a British-based rap group called the "419 Squad" after the notorious email-based advance fee scam. It uses the headline "419ers form phat rap crew", which kind-of suggests that the people in the rap group are themselves 419'ers. They're not. They're kids from London who've simply used the name as a tongue-in-cheek reference to their country's reputation. Most Nigerians that I know (Muslims and others) see the 419 scam as a huge shame on their country. Some of the people who disputed the result of last year's election in Nigeria referred to the date as "4/19" in order to symbolise what they saw it as - a fraud.

2004-03-19T01:55:00.000Z

Long way from home

Bangladesh, currently the largest contributor to UN peace-keeping missions, is to send troops to the Ivory Coast.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3524202.stm

2004-03-19T01:08:00.000Z

CAIR meets Spanish ambassador

A delegation of American Muslim leaders met today with the Spanish ambassador in Washington, D.C., to offer condolences for the more than 200 people killed in last week's terror attacks on the Madrid train system.

The delegation, organized by the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), expressed the American Islamic community's condemnation of the bombings and told Ambassador Javier Ruperez that Muslims grieve for all those who died.

Read the full story here

(I decided to blog this because there are certain people who say CAIR is some sort of middle-eastern terrorist front group - the fact is they are a civil rights organisation and without them, Muslims would have a far harder time in the US than they do.)

2004-03-18T13:52:00.000Z

By any means necessary

Zionism, and not just the Sharon government, is to blame for the subjugation of the Palestinians, reports Ghada Karmi, in the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1171705,00.html

2004-03-17T18:04:00.000Z

Ice Cream Murders pair freed

Two men who were jailed for murder after the "Ice Cream Wars" in Glasgow were freed today after their convictions for murder were quashed. This was their third appeal and their prosecution has been denounced as "malicious".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3519328.stm

My Miscarriages of Justice page

2004-03-17T16:55:00.000Z

A bizarre 419 invitation

I just got forwarded an exceptionally dumb 419 invitation through a mailing list I'm on, in which someone claiming to be Dr Mitchell Obi of some Nigerian financial organisation appeals for someone to do business with him as his "next of kin"?! Does this moron even know what a next of kin is?

419'ers being dumb is nothing new - there are at least a dozen websites dedicated to baiting these idiots, getting them to say stupid things or hold up banners with what they think are their new business partners' names on them (actually insults made to look like names). I wonder how people as stupid as these could get that amount of money together?

Article on 419'ers targeting Muslims

2004-03-17T16:53:00.000Z

Canadians say: we were right to stay out

Canadians overwhelmingly believe President George W. Bush lied to
justify the Iraq war and their own government was wise to stay out of
the conflict, a new poll suggests.

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040314.wiraq0315/BNStory/Front/

2004-03-17T12:42:00.000Z

Muslims police their own? How?

It's very common to hear, whenever a terrorist incident happens that bears the hallmarks of Al-Qa'ida, calls for the Muslims to control extremist elements in their own community. I read an article on a UK Usenet forum today, claiming that "the peace loving Muslims throughout the world really need to bring some real pressure to bear on their albeit small minority of fanatical zealots calling for Holy War against The West".

The fact is, the overwhelming majority of Muslims oppose actions like the Madrid bombings. Muslims were killed in that incident and in the Sept 11 attacks, and the people who carry them out clearly don't care if they kill Muslims. The problem is that the extremists get the most publicity, as when a couple of imams somewhere in Saudi tried to justify the 9/11 attacks. But all Islamic scholars of note condemned them. They were completely against the principles of Islam.

The truth is that Muslims have generally done an awful lot to distance themselves from these people. In some mosques (though not all) membership and meeting rights are restricted to certain sections of the community which works to keep these sorts of people out. Most of the 'Salafi' (Wahhabi) mosques in the UK are run by people who are against al-Qa'ida. You can read reams of denunciations of the terrorists on websites like Salafi Publications.

In the Muslim world, most of the governments are anti-Islamic. Islamic teaching and preaching is restricted and this affects both mainstream Muslims and extremists. In fact, the mainstream scholars are often caught in the security clampdowns; the Deoband university in India was reported to have been prohibited from taking on foreign students for 'security' reasons, and foreign students were banned from private religious schools in Syria after the Tel Aviv bombings last year. Such clampdowns actually cut off the routes to the genuine scholarship which keeps the youth away from extremists.

On top of this, we have no control over the youths who preach about Khilaafa in the streets in London and elsewhere in the UK. Our imams can stop them preaching in the mosques, but they cannot stop them in the streets (although they can challenge them).

2004-03-16T23:38:00.000Z

Anti-War demo coming up in London

The Stop the War Coalition have organised another demonstration in London this weekend under the slogan "No More Lies, Mr Blair".

Saturday 20th March, assemble 12 noon, Hyde Park, London - nearest tube station: Marble Arch (Central Line - the red line).

Phone 020 7053 2153 (or 2154, 5 or 6)

The website doesn't mention that the Muslim Association of Britain are involved in this one.

2004-03-16T13:45:00.000Z

Got my Mac!

My Mac came just after 1pm this afternoon! I'm using it to type this.

It's heavy! I never realised eMacs were this heavy until I saw the delivery guy bringing it in. I supposedly got a free .Mac account but either I typed in the wrong password (a difficult thing to do twice!) or it's got lost en route or something. I'll get it sorted later insha Allah, I'm going out this afternoon.

2004-03-15T18:57:00.000Z

Muslim woman becomes President of Oxford Union

This article, from the Straits Times of Singapore, tells how a Muslim woman became President of the students' union at Oxford University, despite dirty tricks and an anti-Muslim hate campaign against her.

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/topstories/story/0,4386,240313,00.html?

2004-03-15T18:38:00.000Z

Population decline in Eastern Europe

An interesting article (linked from Ladies Against Feminism) in the Daily Telegraph (a right-of-centre pro-Israeli London quality paper) about the declining population growth in Eastern Europe. A useful rebuttal to the scaremongers who talk of an invasion of immigrants from Eastern Europe - before long those countries won't have enough people!

2004-03-14T22:19:00.000Z

Thank God some people saw sense

It seems the Spanish - who, it must be remembered, did not want to get involved in Iraq to begin with - have had their fears confirmed by last week's bombings in Madrid, and kicked out the government that got them into that mess. No doubt the morons at places like Little Green Footballs will start crying "surrender", but it gives hope to those of us in the UK who also never wanted to get involved in the Bush cabal's disastrous adventures.

A few weeks ago I read in the Spectator (a right-of-centre political weekly until recently owned by Conrad Black) someone going on about how "we need America". We need America a lot less now than we did in the 1960s during the Cold War, yet a Labour government (under Harold Wilson) kept us out of the Vietnam war, which was fought to prop up an American client dictatorship, went on for several bloody years, and failed miserably. Why get involved with this when we managed to stay out of Vietnam?

2004-03-14T22:07:00.000Z

Site of good RPMs for SuSE

http://guru.unixtech.be/rpm/packages/Themes/

2004-03-14T21:28:00.000Z

Mac vs PC comparison

I ordered a Mac on Friday - a G4 eMac which is all I could reasonably afford, but I did order some extra memory for it - and I also bought a copy of the Mac users' magazine MacFormat, which is published by the same people as Linux Format of which I have been a regular reader since late 2002. There's a feature in there comparing the Mac to the PC, and why should you buy a Mac rather than a PC.

Now, the reason I decided to buy a Mac was mainly due to the OS X operating system. OS X has the advantages of Linux (ie. security, stability and lack of viruses) with the various applications which come with a recognised platform. Linux, while a better OS than Windoze by a long, long way, suffers from a serious lack of applications. The Mac has one other important advantage: Macs are generally all the same, which means everything fits together and there are few compatibility problems like those which affect Linux. To me, it seems that at the moment it's the only computer which just works.

The problem with this feature is that the magazine dwells too much on the appearance of the Mac, and came back to that issue again and again. Sure, it looks lovely, which may attract first-time buyers and people who really want a computer that looks cool. PCs, they say, "look like sheds" (mostly), and "only look acceptable in a teenager's bedroom, where they blend in with the congealed Pot Noodles and dog-eared copies of Front. The thing about sheds, though, is that you can put lots of stuff in them, like storage devices, for example. The cheapest PC you can buy comes with a lot more expansion room than the eMac, the cheaper of which currently costs about £650, and comes with a 40 Gig hard drive, 128 Meg of memory and a built-in monitor. (At the moment, PC World is doing a bundled printer and scanner.) Admittedly, though, the cheap PCs don't come with anything like the big software bundle you get with the eMac.

I think the solution to the Mac's penetration problem is for Apple to release the components, and allow other manufacturers to make and sell Macs. That way, a geek like me can buy a Mac in a tower case with lots of expansion room and leave out all the multimedia stuff if they don't want it (I personally don't need a video DVD player on my computer) and the bundled software, and Apple can continue to sell their bundled eMacs in PC World as family computers. People will pay that amount of money for a good family computer, which the eMac certainly is.

Insha Allah my Mac should be delivered tomorrow, something to which I am very much looking forward! I'll keep you all posted insha Allah and I also intend to write to the magazine, but I can't do that until I've tested out my new Mac.

(I got mine from Computer Warehouse in Brentford, Middlesex, which gives a free email account for a year.)

2004-03-14T21:12:00.000Z

The Morons Have Landed (II)

Message to anyone who might want to leave insulting anti-Muslim comments on my comments board: I will delete them as soon as I find them. It is barely more effort for me to log into Haloscan and delete your garbage than it is for you to post it.

2004-03-12T15:09:00.000Z

Guantanamo: the truth is coming out

Jamal al-Harith, one of the five British detainees released from Guantanamo, has told (not to mention sold) his story to the Daily Mirror, a British tabloid. You can read the full story by clicking this link, it's pretty revolting.

Also, the latest in the squalid story of Amina Silmi (from the Vindicator, of Youngstown, Ohio) is that she is not even allowed to touch her own children during visits in prison. She is being held in prison because the Immigration Service want to kick her out of the US to Venezuela, despite the fact that she has three children who are US citizens, one of whom has special needs. Read the story here. What is the matter with these people?

2004-03-12T15:02:00.000Z

Shukr Clothing Australian launch

An Australian website for the Syrian-based Islamic clothing company Shukr has been launched. The company is run by an American convert and the clothing is all made by religious Muslims. (I'd call it special occasion clothing though, unless you're very wealthy.)

http://www.shukr.com.au/

2004-03-12T11:42:00.000Z

Mandrake Linux v10.0

A funny thing to put just above the post on the Madrid disaster, but this is a tech blog as well as a war blog - it's a general personal blog. So here goes.

Mandrake has just released the "Community version" of version 10 of its (GNU/) Linux distro and released ISOs to the Community. Many of the FTP mirrors were full as the Mandrake website warned, and those that weren't were painfully slow - ftp.sunsite.co.uk was as fast as my home broadband on a much wider connection. But I found a mirror in Ireland from which the download rate was 1.4 Mb per second, so I manage to download it pretty quickly.

The installation went pretty smoothly; it took rather a long time to repartition part of my hard drive and it prompted me to insert a non-existent disk 4 at the end. I'm not sure what I've not been able to install as a result. But apart from that it was uneventful, the look and feel is nice, and as a nice touch it installed KDevelop on the taskbar - something I've never seen before on any other distro.

I'm quite looking forward to the official release. I've not used it long enough to know whether the problems I had with 9.2 (such as going into never-ending swaps which I could only get out of by rebooting) have been fixed with this edition. The default font with Emacs is too small, and this will be a big problem for anyone who uses 1280x1024 resolution on a 17-inch monitor, as I used to do. On my laptop it's not such a problem.

Mandrake's homepage: http://www.mandrakesoft.com/

2004-03-12T11:05:00.000Z

About the Madrid bombings

At the moment it is not certain that the bombings in Madrid, which has killed nearly 200 people at the time of this writing, was the work of Al-Qa'ida. It has been said that it bears the hallmarks of both that group and ETA ('Basqueland' and Freedom), the Basque separatist group. Whichever group is responsible this is a terrible action which has killed hundreds of innocent people, deliberately.

If it is indeed the work of an Al-Qa'ida related group, both Muslims and others should be in no doubt that this action is absolutely condemned by Islam. The bombers attacked a country which has taken a peripheral role in recent events in Iraq against the wishes of their people. They have no proof that all, or indeed any, of the people they have killed have anything to do with the situation in Iraq, or have ever had any role in the oppression of Muslims, or indeed anyone, in their entire lives.

If they consider such non-Muslims as fair game (and Muslims who understand their religion do not), they might consider the tens of thousands of Muslims in Spain, many of them native converts with nowhere else to go except ... elsewhere in Europe. A few years ago there was an anti-Muslim riot in southern Spain which led to Muslim workers fleeing to the hills. Yet, two days ago on this blog, I was able to report that hostility to Muslims in southern Spain had decreased as a result of the efforts of the local Muslim community. Every attack in the west which is attributed to Al-Qa'ida makes life more difficult for Muslims here - to say nothing of the Muslims who may be among those killed in the bombings themselves. (It was reported that hundreds of Muslims were killed in the Twin Towers attack, for example.)

I am not saying that, were the media to conclude that Al-Qa'ida were responsible, I would believe them. Large areas of the western media are controlled by people with known anti-Muslim and Zionist sympathies, and I don't believe the official story on anything. I was certain that the Tel Aviv bombing last year was a set-up, until I saw the Hamas video. I am still not convinced that Al-Qa'ida were indeed responsible for 9/11. But the fact remains that the bulk of the Muslim community are innocent of these actions and often victims of them. May people remember this before they vent their anger on innocent people.

2004-03-11T15:18:00.000Z

Guantanamo Brits innocent after all

Al-Hamdu lillah, the five British detainees who were flown home from Guantanamo Bay yesterday have been released without charge. They have been held for two years and now it appears that not only have the Americans not a jot of evidence against them, neither have the British.

A few months ago I called a radio phone-in hosted by a loudmouth named Jon Gaunt. He has a morning show on the BBC's London station (94.9FM) and commonly greets controversial political and judicial decisions with "the world's gone mad!". He mentioned a report from Amnesty International criticising America's treatment of the detainees in Guantanamo, which alleged that this gave the message to dictators around the world that violating people's rights was acceptable because the US did it. Gaunt said that he wasn't losing any sleep over the treatment of the detainees in Guantanamo.

I argued that what AI were saying was important, because certain dictators use the excuse that someone is a "fundamentalist" to repress them, much as the excuse of "communism" was used for the same purpose during the Cold War (even for trade union organisers and the like). He brought up the issue of the "Tipton Taliban", and asked me whether I thought they should be brought back. I said yes, because they had gone to Afghanistan to fight the Northern Alliance - a group of various ex-mujahideen factions which had turned to fighting each other since the collapse of the Najibullah regime - and had fought back when they were attacked. After getting me to repeat this - "they were attacked, they fought back" - he said "you disgust me. Good morning" and put the phone down.

Now it appears, they are completely innocent and the British authorities have no evidence that they fired a shot at British troops. If they had, they would certainly have been tried for treason and would not have been released less than 24 hours after returning to the UK. Clearly Gaunt didn't know this, but then he should not shoot off his mouth about issues he does not know about. (He also allowed later callers to call me a plonker and question my 'loyalty'.) Should license fee payers' money be wasted on idiots like this man?

2004-03-10T21:12:00.000Z

Plug for Saraji's blog

Sara Umm Zaid, the author of the Modern Muslima website, has started blogging seriously - so it's about time I gave her blog a plug - it's an interesting read ma sha Allah. Lots of links to other Muslims' blogs.

http://www.modernmuslima.com/blog.htm

2004-03-10T10:08:00.000Z

QT Learning Blues (part II)

There's a report on OSNews about a review of a new book on programming with Qt. (I've got my copy on order, and I'm intending to pick it up tomorrow. More news when I get it insha Allah.)

http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=6300

2004-03-10T09:41:00.000Z

Good reports on new mosque in Spain

Here's a nice BBC report on the new mosque which was opened last year in Granada, Spain. The mosque had stirred up a lot of opposition and city authorities delayed its construction for 22 years. Now it seems the mosque's 'open door' policy has calmed the fear and hostility somewhat.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3544237.stm

2004-03-09T15:04:00.000Z

Vote Nazi, read the Mail

Searchlight Magazine, a British anti-fascist and anti-racist monthly, has picked up on the anti-immigrant vendetta in the tabloid press. It seems the BNP appreciate the support, as one of their goons held up a banner at a rally saying "Vote BNP, Read the Daily Mail"! Also a feature on the situation of the Roma ('gypsies') in Eastern Europe, particularly Slovakia, and why some countries accept Roma asylum seekers and others don't.

2004-03-09T14:44:00.000Z

Bush Buddy Watch (II)

Article from the Guardian (London / Manchester) on Karl Rove, George W Bush's campaign manager.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1165037,00.html

2004-03-09T14:42:00.000Z

Translation of Der Spiegel article on "freeping"

"Freeping" is online campaigns to flood web polls with votes. LGF is one of the biggest culprits.

http://lgfwatch.blogspot.com (see 8th March entry)

2004-03-06T23:34:00.000Z

LGF's latest horror story

Little Green Footballs, for reasons (ahem) best known to themselves as this has nothing to do with the Middle East or with anything political, have posted an article about a five-year-old girl who was murdered by her abusive parents in Toronto for their goonish fans to foam at the mouth about. It is not the first time a young girl has been murdered by cruel relatives. A couple of years ago a little girl from the Ivory Coast, Victoria Climbie, was killed by her aunt after suffering years of terrible cruelty. I also heard about a young girl here in England whose resentful stepmother abused her for years, before kicking her in the stomach, killing her. The difference, of course, is that neither of these families were from a Muslim background.

For the benefit of anyone who cares, Islam does not blame a child born out of wedlock for the misdeeds of their parents. It certainly does not allow people to kill a child or to be cruel to a child. If these people are found guilty they should certainly be punished; what they have done has nothing to do with Islam and is certainly no reflection Pakistanis, never mind other Muslims.

(For more info: http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/TorontoSun/News/2004/01/30/329618.html)

2004-03-06T09:18:00.000Z

LGF Watch

I've just discovered a blog which is dedicated to debunking the racist propaganda of LGF:

http://lgfwatch.blogspot.com/

2004-03-04T18:31:00.000Z

The Morons Have Landed

An individual calling himself "Flanstein", who has been pestering at least one other Muslim blogger by posting inhumanity-of-Islam ravings on her comments page, has started on my blog too. I think he found my blog through a post I made on http://niqaabi-4ever.blogspot.com/, suggesting that the author of that blog simply ban his ravings, as certain anti-Muslim bloggers I have mentioned here before have no problem censoring my attempts to speak the truth on their patch. He wrote in response to my earlier post about Abu Hamza (14th Feb), by quoting something Abu Hamza said.

I am sure he is not sincere in anything but his hatred of Islam, but please let nobody think I was defending Abu Hamza. I don't agree with him in virtually anything, but I was commenting on the hypocrisy of the Sun comic which is notorious for its lowest-common-denominator 'journalism'. And given that Abu Hamza's circulation is considerably lower than theirs, it is obvious who causes more damage.

2004-02-29T12:14:00.000Z

Daily Express puts its foot in it again

The flow of garbage from the Daily Express continues unabated. Last Thursday it published yet another multi-page feature on immigration, claiming that just as we are getting loads of immigrants coming in, Brits are moving to Spain! The thing is that a lot of Brits actually hate the British climate; they want to go to Spain where it's hot, or the Alps where you get proper snow (for the moment at least), anywhere but here where it rains. (As if it rains all the time). (Maybe we should run an exchange scheme, whereby a British family who hates our climate can exchange with (say) a Kurdish family, so that our whining Brits can sod off to sunny Kurdistan and leave this country to someone who appreciates it.) They interviewed this British family who'd emigrated to Spain and one of the stupid things they said was that the legal system was great and everyone's afraid of the Guardia Civil!

Oh yeah?! Tell that to the British ex-pats who tried to buy nice houses and found that the seller kept their deposit and sold the house to another family, who then had to wait months or years to challenge the sale in court, or the people who bought a house which had been built on top of another not-quite-demolished building (great building laws!) or the people in Valencia who are having bits of their land taken away and then being forced to contribute to what's being built on it?! Anyone who says the Spanish legal system is so much better than ours is talking out of their backside, or else they've been falsely quoted.

2004-02-29T12:05:00.000Z

QT Learning blues

A few weeks ago (with birthday money from my mum & dad) I bought Matthias Kalle Dalheimer's book, "Programming with Qt" (published by O'Reilly) - Qt is a graphical user interface toolkit mostly used on Linux but you can also get it for Windoze, Mac and embedded systems also. It presents an extremely steep learning curve, and in the first chapter of 'serious' programming basically expects you to go off and learn whole areas of Qt programming by yourself. I ended up just looking at the answers, although perhaps if I'd had more time I'd have been able to work it out by myself.

In chapter four, he tells you how to set the widget style for the whole application, giving you a whole chunk of code without telling you where to put it in your program. I tried putting this into my main() function:

QApplication::setStyle( new QMotifStyle );

And this gave me a "parse error" when I compiled it, which seemed odd because that's exactly what he said to type (OK, he said "QWindowsStyle", but QMotifStyle is valid if you want Motif style). He forgot to mention that you need a special header file for whatever new style you want to use. I ended up putting this into main():

myapp.setStyle( new QMotifStyle );

With the header file I mentioned, it worked.

2004-02-22T14:35:00.000Z

More bigotry from the LGF donkeys

The morons over at Little Green Footballs are getting hot under the collar over the decision in the state of Alabama to permit people to wear religiously-mandated head scarves and turbans in their driving license ID. This is a "victory for CAIR", which means that "a primary method of identification (hair type and color) has just been taken away from law enforcement, because of special interest group (read: Muslim) pressure."

What has escaped their attention (must be those blinkers) is that nowhere else in the US are women prevented from wearing their hijab in their driving license photo. On top of that, it kind of makes sense that women who are going to wear hijab when on the road wear it on their ID, don't you think? But that seems to have escaped the Zionist fanatics of LGF.

The first comment to be made on this issue was "Wait a minute....I thought letting Islamic women drive was a corruption. What gives?". In fact, it's only a minority opinion that insists women are forbidden from driving - the opinion of the establishment scholars of Saudi Arabia, and followed by virtually no-one outside Saudi Arabia. Women are not prevented from driving even in most of the Gulf states. We are not dictated to by any single mufti, whether the one in Saudi or the one in Egypt.

2004-02-19T16:52:00.000Z

More on College Linux

I'm really happy (so far) with College Linux. I spent two hours last night downloading Dropline GNOME, but it's really worth it. It's probably the best version of GNOME out there, even better than ULB on SUSE although that's pretty good (better than SuSE's supplied version and certainly better than Ximian's). The installation for CL leaves a lot to be desired, however; I can install Linux easily because I had installed SUSE's Linux first. I then replaced that with FreeBSD and then that with College Linux. The biggest problem for new Linux users is partitioning, and that's something SuSE is really good at. We need a good, easy-to-use open-source partitioner - fast.

There's only a few small problems; although speedtouchconf (to get my Alcatel DSL modem going) works, it doesn't appear to set it up to connect on boot, nor give any way of doing this. And the lousy Alcatel driver is the main reason I wanted to get off SuSE - it is so unreliable, it often needs to be re-started as root, sometimes you need to reboot the machine even after that, and other times the machine crashes while loading the driver during boot-up. The Papillault driver is much more reliable. I should tell CL about this issue I suppose.

2004-02-19T11:21:00.000Z

Bush Buddy Watch

Here's a piece from British IT site The Register about how a California judge has given the green light to Diebold - the company that's committed to delivering Ohio's votes to the President!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35664.html

More on the Diebold scandal from Greg Palast:

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=301&row=1

2004-02-19T00:05:00.000Z

BSD developments ...

I've decided to take BSD off my machine. The CD downloads are basically a demo, to get the full OS you're supposed to get the 4-CD pack from FreeBSD Mall or some other company. GNOME didn't work properly and the fonts were up the spout as well, at least as soon as you try to move beyond plain old Helvetica and Times. So I installed the College Linux CD-R I'd had sitting round on the shelf for weeks.

The installation was weird, very old fashioned. You use 'cfdisk' to partition the hard drive, which I wasn't used to although I've used 'fdisk' with BSD. With their installer all it takes is one wrong button and it goes wrong; CTRL-C during the installation sends you to the shell prompt! Also there's no package options - it seems to install everything on the CD. Even FreeBSD's installer allows you to choose what to install. But the OS works, at least - I'm using it to type this. It's based on Slackware which I've heard is a very stable system and good for development and for finding one's way around Linux.

I've had a pretty nasty cold the last few days which has meant that I haven't felt up to typing (and, by extension, blogging). Insha Allah I should feel better in a day or so.

2004-02-15T21:11:00.000Z

TV Programmes on Islam

16th Feb - Channel 4 - 7.55pm
"IdeasFactory - Real - That Thing On My Head": programme about hijab

22nd Feb - BBC2 - 7.10pm
"Message In A Bottle" - about Muslim rivals to Coke and Pepsi

2004-02-15T18:15:00.000Z

Religious education and "teaching atheism"

Today the Observer reveals that kids in schools are to be taught atheism, which, they say, should be welcomed, "for the move accepts a simple fact of modern life: that ours has become a secular society in which church-going is now a pastime for only a small minority". What they mean by "teaching atheism" is unclear. The beliefs generally associated with atheism - including Darwin's theory - have been taught in British schools, often as fact, for decades. Some of the established religions, like some branches of Hinduism and Buddhism, do not believe in God or else believe that the nature or existence of God is secondary to other matters, and children are already taught about other religions in many schools, even religious schools. Apparently we believers have more in common with atheists and agnostics than we like to believe, notably the rejection of idolatry. As Muslims we detest idolatry, but we hardly believe that agnostics and atheists have much more in common with us than Hindus and other idolators. We believe that Allah Most High is behind everything that happens; they believe in a multitude of forces, which is a type of polytheism in itself.

In the letters pages, we get a couple of basically anti-Muslim letters by Denis MacEoin of the Natural Medicines Society, and Marilyn Mason of the British Humanist Association. Mason complains that religious schooling risks "fragmentation of the school system along religious and racial lines and some children having very limited contact with the rest of society", and that the government's support for such schools does not square with their desire to "improve social cohesion". In fact, only a handful of such schools have been brought into the state system since Blair came to power. Muslims want Muslim schools specifically to give their children a decent moral education, with good Islamic role models. Children brought up in such schools would be more of an asset to British society than those forced through "sink schools".

MacEoin claims that the Muslim world has seen little "advance" in the field of human rights in the 150 years it has been in contact with Europe. The fact is that it has gone down in human rights terms, because in most of these countries people have neither their rights in the Shari'ah nor those people in the west take for granted. The lack of "freedom of religion" people talk about in the Muslim world affects Muslims as well as others, and there is probably no country where the government does not interfere in some way with Islamic education or where scholars and other intellectuals are not afraid of the government. At least two countries (Turkey and Tunisia) have seen open repression of Islam, with people liable to state harrassment for merely growing their beards, and any popularly-elected government wishing to remove some of the curbs on religious Muslims has to contend with the treacherous army.

MacEoin regularly gets his witterings aired in the Guardian's letters page (the Guardian and Observer are published by the same company, and feature many of the same writers). In the Guardian, 24th Dec 2003, he wrote: "The headscarf move is a sensible school uniform measure designed to stop the French school system from becoming the Northern Irish nightmare I was taught in. Multiculturalism gets you Northern Ireland: integration gives you tolerance and the rule of law for everyone". He knows full well that the situation in Northern Ireland had nothing to do with multiculturalism, but with centuries of British interference in Ireland, including the planting of the large Scottish Protestant population. How much of this dishonesty is behind the letters in the Guardian and other major newspapers I have no idea. Certainly they never mention his links to the Baha'is, for instance.

In any case, I do not see why Denis MacEoin thinks Muslims should rush to pick up the ideas put forward by their white colonial slavemasters and their "brown sahib" lackeys. We had our Englightenment 1,400 years ago. The movement referred to by this name in Europe is merely their attempt to throw off some of the superstitions and falsehoods their nations had clung to for centuries after we abandoned them.

2004-02-14T19:00:00.001Z

Abu Hamza makes the front pages again

The Scum, Britain's leading red-top gutter rag, put Abu Hamza on its front two pages again for what must be the third week running. The paper has made a date of it each week, turning up at Abu Hamza's street sermons outside the Finsbury Park mosque (which was closed specifically to keep him and his gang out). Today it claimed that he "sunk to a new low ... with a sickening attack on Jews and the Queen".

The actual views expressed - that the Holocaust is exaggerated - have been common currency in the Muslim community for decades. I personally don't share these opinions - there have been no serious scholarly critiques of the Holocaust, only pseudo-scholarship by Nazi apologists like David Irving, and the fact remains that before Hitler came to power there were millions of Jews in Europe, and after he fell, there were probably less than a million. In Poland - the main area of settlement - the community has been virtually wiped out, and the figures don't support the idea that all of this was due to a mass emigration to Israel. But the Holocaust is the main justification put forward for Zionism, and so it's natural that the enemies of Zionism (such as those dispossessed by Zionists, and their fellow Arabs and fellow Muslims) should seek to discredit it.

The Scum then claimed that Abu Hamza (not "Hamza" - the name means Hamza's dad) "repeated an insult he made against Sun readers last month and branded them 'retarded'". Well, a cursory read of the paper would tell you that it is not written for people given to seriously-considered views on any political topic, and the political stories are usually placed on page 2 (as was the Abu Hamza story!) right next to the topless bimbo on page 3. He had a go at the French for banning headscarves in schools - well, why shouldn't he?

The paper then printed the opinion of Tory party chairman Liam Fox, that "the freedom of speech that we so cherish was never designed to give vent to the vile rantings of men of hatred such as Abu Hamza". Freedom of speech (which was not really enshrined in law until the Human Rights Act) protects everything which is not explicitly against the law, and questioning the facts of history has never been against the law in the UK. I am sure it was never intended to facilitate the drip-drip anti-immigrant propaganda of papers like the Daily Express either.

Someone should really point out to Abu Hamza that someone threatened with the withdrawal of his citizenship - and with that, imprisonment or deportation - is really in no position to be giving the Friday sermon given that such treatment might well cause some degree of personal resentment and anger. On the other hand, perhaps it is preferable that he is allowed to continue preaching in the street, so that he does not move on to the nearby Muslim Welfare House, with all the disruption that might cause.

2004-02-13T21:45:00.000Z

Nothing much happened today :-)

Just writing to keep the blog active, really. Nothing happened which really got me going like the French headscarf thing. Went into Kingston, had a vegetarian breakfast at the Algerian cafe near the station, went to college, found that the girls I'm working with on my college project weren't there, dropped them a line, went back into town, went back into college, then back into town, then to my aunt Pauline's place, then home.

In between my college project, I'm currently writing a rebuttal of a really stupid article by Eric Raymond, who is thought of as some sort of guru by some sections in the tech community, but who produced a really stupid "Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto" after 9/11. "Idiotarianism" is something invented on the "Little Green Footballs" blog, a really dreadful conveyor belt of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate propaganda. If you try talking sense on that blog, people will say you are stupid or something. Some of their fans are even worse than the bloggers. So idiotarianism is whatever these goons disagree with. Oh, they have a contest for "Idiotarian of the Year" and John Pilger, Rachel Corrie (!) and Noam Chomsky were nominated.

I'm also using this to test out w.Bloggar, which is a free (as in beer) desktop blogging program for Windoze, which you can use to post to Blogger / Blogspot blogs. So that's what I'm trying to do. I haven't found any satisfactory blog-progs for Linux yet. Bloggar is pretty good so far.

Update five minutes (or less) later: it worked!

2004-02-12T14:25:00.000Z

Thirteen Reasons to Use Firefox over Internet Explorer

Sick of those pop-up ads? Time to get a decent browser:

http://www.flexbeta.net/main/articles.php?action=show&id=32

Mozilla home page
Firefox home page

2004-02-12T14:05:00.000Z

Afghanistan: Rule of the rapists

Just to prove that America intervenes on the side of the bandits when it suits them (see this blog, 4th Feb 2004):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1146134,00.html

Note: this story was written by a member of the communist "Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan". These were among the most vehement opponents of the Taliban.

2004-02-12T14:03:00.000Z

Blair plays to the tabloid gallery again

http://www.guardian.co.uk/soham/story/0,14010,1146529,00.html

2004-02-12T13:58:00.000Z

Report submitted on rape of Muslim women in Gujarat (BBC)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3481745.stm

2004-02-11T23:47:00.000Z

The MS Desperation Tour

While it's still the 11th, I thought I should say something about the MS "100% Inspiration" tour which I mentioned earlier in the blog. They did a lecture followed by a lab session, but the lecture was basically a sales pitch rather than a recruitment session. I don't think I'd work for Microsoft anyway unless I was really desperate, but it was disappointing. I'm not convinced that all these new frameworks they are bringing in will be of benefit to the customer rather than the programmer, once he's paid through the nose for the programming tools. For one thing, they are compiled to "byte code", which may be a cut above interpreting a script, but it's still interpreted. And the guy had a very strong accent (Scottish or perhaps Northern Irish) and talked fast, which I could understand, but a lot of the audience probably couldn't. Something they should think about when they are choosing their salesmen.

2004-02-10T18:59:00.000Z

Just before I go ...

A rather amusing entry in the blog Web Pages that Suck which pretty much tallies with my attitude to drink (except for the fact that Islam forbids it, although I stopped drinking before I converted). It's entry 2-9-4 about the Law Office of Timothy J. Kucharski.

"I've tried alcohol; it tastes terrible. I have a low tolerance for stupidity and I think people are stupid when they force themselves to learn to like something that is initially disgusting. Then there's the issue of drinking to excess. Why? So you can be loud and obnoxious and act like a fool? Heck, that's easy to do when you're sober and it's cheaper and doesn't give you a hangover."

2004-02-10T18:48:00.000Z

Q-News

Alhamdu lillah, The new Q-News has been announced on their website. Special feature on the French hijab issue (see below) and on the issues arising out of this year's Hajj. I'm not sure if it's in the shops yet, but you should be able to order it directly from the company.

2004-02-10T14:58:00.000Z

KDE 3.2

SuSE has now got some RPMs for KDE 3.2 of its own. I installed the base packages on my system this morning, and discovered that the problem I had with the menu not displaying properly have not gone away. Anyone who has tried this without having installed a set of contrib RPMs from the KDE website, please let me know!

2004-02-10T14:28:00.000Z

Hypocrisy on show once again

It appears the French Parliament will soon be passing their law banning girls from wearing headscarves to school, and Belgium and Germany are preparing to introduce similar laws. The measures appear to be different in each country; in France and Belgium they are aimed at schoolgirls, and there is talk of extending them to female hospital patients, while in Germany the targets are civil servants, which include school teachers.

What can be said about a group of people which deals with its problems by attacking schoolgirls and sick women? It appears that these laws please two groups of people: the secular (ie. anti-religious) left, and the anti-Muslim right. Once again, the hypocrisy of western conservatives comes out, as it so often does in America. Muslims agree with the conservative position on most social and moral issues, but the pseudo-conservatives still hate us. "Never will they be satisfied with you until you follow their form of religion" as God tells us about them in the Qur'an. In the case of the French right, they still bear a grudge against the Arab population for (quite rightly) kicking them out of Algeria, which they insisted was part of France.

On the other hand, much of the left supports it because they claim girls wear it because they are being forced to by their families. This is also why they support extending the law to cover hospitals, refusing to allow women to insist on being treated by a female doctor (because, they say, "[some] women only do it because their husbands insist on it"). What gives these people the right to interfere between husbands and wives, or parents and children? These very same people would be angry if we, or some nosy neighbour, started dictating how things should work in their families. Let them mind their own business! Of course, everyone else knows that it is quite normal that, when young people live under their parents' roof, they obey them. It is not that onerous to wear a headscarf, especially for someone who has worn it since they were young, and they can be rather pretty. These people cannot stomach the idea of a family doing things any way other than their way, especially if this is a more "backward" or less free-and-easy way than their own. "Open marriages", adultery, promiscuity, teenage pregnancies - all this they can tolerate, but a woman obeying her husband, or a daughter her father, is intolerable to them. To this French type of "liberal", freedom is not negotiable: people have to be "forced to be free". Of course, most women would prefer not to have a man touching their bodies, and most men feel the same way about their wives, sisters and daughters. But these people cannot fathom this, of course.

These laws are disturbing for other reasons. Some of the people behind them know that the way to provoke Muslim men is to attack their womenfolk - and yes, this is an attack on Muslim women. If these laws lead to riots, or something bigger, it would be an excuse for the French (and other countries) to crack down on Muslims even further. Second, they are conveniently framed so that the majority of French people - and their religion - are completely unaffected. Nuns and monks may wear huge crosses, but school students don't - they wear a barely-visible silver or gold crucifix on a chain. Third, some of the proposed laws shut religious Muslims (especially women) out of the civil service, effectively making them second class citizens. Clearly Europe can't tolerate a large minority population without doing this to them, and we all know what happened to the last major minority which lived in Europe. It just goes to show that the leopard doesn't change its spots, and how easily people forget history.

2004-02-09T21:07:00.000Z

More on KDE 3.2

I've stopped using KDE 3.2. I found there were bugs in the build I had, and the GTK applications I was using (including Sylpheed) displayed horribly - it interfered with the font which no other window manager does with a GTK 1 application. Firebird was just as bad. I've downloaded Thunderbird and Firefox (ex Firebird) and they are working really well. I'm not sure if I'm going to replace Sylpheed with Thunderbird, however; GTK2 applications don't really display well outside of XFCE4 and GNOME.

As for KDE, it interfered with my KDM menu and I couldn't find any way of getting GNOME back into the login menu. In the end, I had to go into YaST2 and change my login manager from KDM to GDM! My advice to all the Susephiles (and other SUSE users!) out there is not to bother with the current builds of KDE 3.2, at least until SUSE produces some decent RPMs of their own (they were quite quick getting KDE 3.1 out - much faster than they were with GNOME 2.4).

2004-02-09T16:54:00.000Z

Caravansaray

Just thought I'd include a plug for this site which has a lot of fine Islamic books, clothes and gifts.

2004-02-09T13:13:00.000Z

More on KDE 3.2 and BSD

Got KDE 3.2 running last night, just before I went to bed (too late, as usual) just in time to hear "Westway" on the BBC World Service (this is during Radio 4's graveyard slot from 1am to 5.30am). Nice to see they've finally got round to building tabs into the Konqueror browser, but I still prefer Mozilla Firebird (or Firefox as they now call it) because the fonts are a thousand times better. Funnily enough Konq's fonts are fine on FreeBSD, but it's always a struggle getting them to work on SuSE. There are some bugs in it, such as that the K menu is cut off on the right hand side.

I completely reinstalled FreeBSD on my laptop as somehow using Windoze 2000 managed to mess up my boot manager on BSD. It's a pretty painless process although sysinstall has a few holes in it (like, you can add a user with it but not change their details or delete them). I am planning to install GRUB as I've never had any problems with that bootloader.

2004-02-09T00:58:00.000Z

KDE 3.2 update

Finally got KDE 3.2 up and running! I had to de-install the KDE SuSE desktop in order to get the 3.2 base RPM to install, and in order to keep the help system I then had to install the Apache web server! Luckily that only took up 2Mb of disk space though. Getting the RPMs to install was still a nightmare and I had to do it on a --force basis, but it got done. Haven't tested it fully yet as I'm just about to go to bed. Oh, my BSD broke down again. More later insha Allah.

2004-02-06T14:58:00.000Z

"Institutional Racism"

Yet another British institution is found to be institutionally racist - and this time it's the mental health system, which really shouldn't surprise anyone. See BBC report but it's all over the national British newspapers. On the same day, Rod Liddle in the Spectator (you'll need to subscribe) reports that the social services are no longer able to help children out of trouble because everything they could do would infringe their human rights.

I am lucky (alhamdu lillah) in never having been in "care" or in the mental health system. I have, however, been in the "special needs" system, and was sent to a supposedly special boarding school in Suffolk from the ages of 12 to 16 (1989-93). Rod Liddle complains that they can't stop a young girl from corresponding with a convicted sex offender in jail (!) and can't stop kids going out after 10pm. People should not be so dismissive of the concept of children's rights or quick to invade their privacy. There is a good reason not to allow loco-parentis carers to read (ie. censor) children's letters, which is to allow the children to communicate freely with outsiders about what might be going on in their school. Imagine if you wrote about something a care worker was doing, or that you had been bullied and the staff did nothing or made spurious excuses - something which happened a lot at my school. Things like these need to be reported and, if the school or care home can't sort it out, someone else has to. I remember an incident in which the headmaster walked into a lesson, dragged a boy out by his ear, yelling "Who's a nosy c**t then?".

I witnessed several incidents of racism both by pupils and staff, including the deputy head calling a boy a "fat Jewish slob" to his face. The best this man could come up with in response to a complaint about bullying from me was a racist jibe against that person. People should think more about the effects of racism, especially press racism, because it makes it more acceptable in society - and this is the result. People being victimised, and people dying. But also, stop your complaints about rights! Human rights is another way of saying you can't treat people like dirt.

2004-02-05T18:36:00.000Z

Daily Express - same old garbage

As might be expected from a newspaper owned by porn baron Richard Desmond, the Daily Express once again went for the lowest common denominator in its coverage of the EU expansion issue. It was reported yesterday that politicians want restrictions placed on immigration from the new EU members in Eastern Europe (from Estonia down to Hungary) for seven years, as was the case when Spain, Portugal and Greece joined. The UK was supposedly the only country which has not imposed such restrictions (actually, France has not imposed any either, and others are allowing a few thousand a year).

In fact, there are two major differences between the UK and Germany. One is that the UK does not face the reunification issue, and the other is that the UK has not actually lost territory to Poland within living memory (pre-war German territory extended all the way to Klaipeda in Lithuania, with only one break to allow Poland access to the sea). All this is lost on the Daily Express which peddles its usual crude scaremongering about a "Gypsy horde" which might flood into the UK if no restrictions are implemented. The continual anti-immigrant diatribe issued by the Daily Express over the last couple of years is sickening, but what is more so is that the government is seriously considering changing its policies to appease a shrill gutter rag like the Express. This country needs immigrants to do jobs the English despise, like wiping their grandmothers' backsides, cleaning the streets, and shifting food up and down the country (go and take a look at New Covent Garden Market in London at 4 in the morning if you don't believe me). When the Polish government gets the money to build decent roads, one would expect that most of their workers would go back and build them.

2004-02-05T16:14:00.000Z

These wretched viruses

I'm sure most of you reading this by now will have received at least one copy of this MyDoom virus. I get several of these files landing in my inbox every day, and I never know which is MyDoom and which isn't. A lot of them pretend to be from Microsoft technical support and promising upgrades, etc.

Today, in the Guardian's "Online" supplement, there's yet another feature on "MyDoom", which has spread like wildfire and forced SCO to shut its website down. Why this virus was written is not clear - most people think it was a Linux fan trying to get back at SCO, while Bruce Perens suspects that it is a plot by SCO, who he says has lied under oath in court, to discredit the open-source community as part of what he believes is a stock scam. I've heard Russia mentioned in all this, and I've got a sneaking suspicion that the author may be a speaker of an obscure language that Linux will deal with, but Windoze won't (Ukrainian for example). Also, Linux is much less expensive than Windoze and much more within the reach of the eastern European budget. But that's only a theory.

Two things stick out about this fiasco, however. One is that the practice of "opening" an attachment in an email has to change - at the moment, if you "open" a file, and that file is an executable (ie. a program), it runs it. This is, obviously, a bad idea. The other thing is that some of these viruses are just so big, and the reason has to be because of the huge executable files produced by Microsoft's compilers. A quite simple program written in Visual C++ can easily run to over 100K in a release version; GCC will put out something like 15K, which is another good reason for Microsoft to base its next OS on BSD (or even Linux) even if it uses a proprietary GUI as Apple did. A few 150K viruses will blow anyone's Hotmail or even Yahoo quota. It's these two factors alone which make these virus attacks so damaging.

2004-02-05T16:08:00.000Z

Microsoft's "Inspirational Tour"

At my University (Kingston, in Surrey) Microsoft is going to be stopping on its "Inspirational Tour" next week - 11th Feb 2004! That's next Wednesday! That means we can all go along and ask them some pertinent questions.

Like:

(1) When are they going to put out a decent operating system?
(2) Given that Windoze XP has been such a disaster, how can we trust Longhorn if and when it comes out?
(3) Why don't they move over to a Unix-type operating system, as Apple has done so successfully?

2004-02-05T14:44:00.000Z

Got my BSD working again ...

As it turns out it didn't mess up my whole laptop, and all I had to do was re-save my system settings and BSD works again (I haven't tried Windoze 2000 for some time). Restarting took a little longer - perhaps because of the unjournalled file-system - but it worked, ma sha Allah.

2004-02-04T22:16:00.000Z

Islam and American Family Values

An interesting little site called "Ladies Against Feminism" - a call from some rather quaint-sounding ladies apparently in Oregon to give up their trousers and become housewives, among other things - has published an article by one J. Grant Swank, Jr, a lying Bush propagandist, sorry, conservative journo, and pastor in the "New Hope Church", about the appalling situation of women in Afghanistan. There is no doubting that the situation is appalling, and in fact most of his article is the work of Amnesty International. You can read the full report here.

As might be expected from this duckspeaker - and what a doubleplusgood duckspeaker he is - he fails to realise how this situation came about. In case you weren't listening in 2001, as it seems Swank wasn't (and what sort of name is Swank anyway), the USA invaded Afghanistan, which was mostly run by the tyrannical but stable Taliban regime, installed a president who is now known as the Mayor of Kabul, and the various militia groups which the Taliban got rid of. As has happened in Iraq, tyranny was replaced by lawlessness and the situation for women, in particular, got worse rather than better. But everyone was happy because people could get their TVs out and play their music again.

We all know that family values are very dear to these conservatives, but when their commitments are put to the test we find them all to be as much hot air as the US constitution itself. The latest victim of America's post-9/11 vindictive racism is Amina Silmi, a mother of three US citizens whose husband was deported to the Middle East. Apparently the US's immigration laws make absolutely no allowance for parents of citizens, even if they are children with special needs, and this lady is to be deported to Venezuela where she was born, yet has no home, job nor relatives. You can find reams of garbage written by Swank (and others like him) about Islam and how, according to them, it supports murder, terrorism and abuse of women. Those of us who know Islam properly know that it does not condone banditry - unlike Bush, who intervenes in the bandits' favour, and we also know that it enjoins us over and over again to honour our parents and other elders, and treat women and children well. The unbelievers, on the other hand, think nothing of separating a mother from her children for petty political reasons. Shame on them.

(Update 5th February: CAIR has reported that officials put a brake on the deportation as Ms Silmi was in Atlanta en route to Venezuela. So there is still hope of keeping this family together, but it speaks volumes that powerful people care nothing about breaking up families.)

2004-02-04T20:03:00.000Z

Peter Bowditch and Roy Meadow

The "Millenium Project" has got to be one of the most odious little websites ever published, and this guy seems to think he's the most rational dude out there. This website (despite its occasional attacks on racism and Holocaust denial) is mostly about defending the medical establishment, or rather, defaming anyone who criticises it.

Millenium is not a spelling mistake - it's a pun on "millennium", and if you take one of the Ns out of annus (meaning year) you'll get what this guy thinks of anyone who disagrees with him. On his "anti-vaccination liars" page you'll find the anti-MMR mob, for instance. Most of these people are not against vaccinations per se, they just oppose giving little children a jab which has been linked (even if without certainty) to autism and bowel disease. People want to protect their children and who is Bowditch to call such a person an a***hole? The entirety of alternative medicine is quackery, according to him, and opposing flouridating the drinking water (which makes people ill) comes under "dentistry fraud".

Last Saturday, this moron posted an article to his front-page blog about Roy Meadow - the guy who put several women in jail in the UK and tore families apart up and down the country by standing up in court and giving false statistics about child murder. Bowditch does not mention this; he only says that he "acts as an expert witness for the prosecution in Shaken Baby Syndrome trials" and is thus a hate figure for anti-vaccination liars, who insist that the real culprit is vaccines. This is a complete load of nonsense. Roy Meadows is a hate figure because he gave false testimony which put innocent women in jail and splits apart families unnecessarily. Three women were cleared last year, two of them after spending years in jail on the grounds of Meadows' dodgy evidence (and none of them were anything to do with Shaken Baby Syndrome). Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy may well exist, but this doesn't mean that anyone accused of it is guilty, or that it can't be used for spurious and/or malicious prosecutions by arrogant doctors and lawyers and others who, like Bowditch, apparently have nothing better to do.

2004-02-04T19:36:00.000Z

KDE 3.2 got published yesterday. I stayed in late (I was meant to have a college lecture starting at 9.45am) in order to get the new SuSE RPMs downloaded. I set up a wget script, then left the computer while I went for my shower, then came back to find that it had timed out. So I revised the script, started it again, and it stalled again. Eventually I got them all downloaded. And then after I'd installed the new version of Qt, and got the RPMs I don't need out of the way (like the laptop and palm-pilot bits) I started on installing it ... and it failed, because the DSA sigs were wrong. Help!

Oh yeah, and two nights ago I installed FreeBSD (4.9) on my laptop (a Compaq Armada M700, Compaq P3, 600Mhz, 18 or so Gb hard drive), and installing it was pretty easy because I'd used YaST2 to partition the disk, so none of that messy fdisking (back up your data? What with?). I then had to use the CD burners at college to transfer the Alcatel Speedtouch drivers onto the system, but once done, it worked a treat after rebooting. KDE actually looks better on FreeBSD than on SuSE's version of Linux, because SuSE goes in for posh fonts which actually don't look all that nice. Whereas BSD keeps it simple. Got the modem connected, then left it on to get the Mozilla Firebird port, went away and had dinner, and came back to find the computer had switched itself off. This thing has two on/off switches, a blue push-button one and a black slidey one, and I've still not worked out which does which. I tried both, and neither did anything. Pressed lots of buttons and nothing happened. Then turned it on at the mains (so it had been working on battery power and not charging, perhaps that's why ...), turned the system back on, to find that ... it had messed up everything. It didn't even recognise the disk. "Non-system disk or disk error, press any key when ready". How can a crash mess up your boot record AS WELL AS your BSD system?! Linux has never done that to me. When I get the answer I'll post it here insha Allah.

2004-02-04T19:23:00.000Z

This is a test