Background
The controversy starts (ok, the immediate controversy in this issue) when the Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper, published 12 cartoons depicting Muhammad about 2 and a half years ago. They were published when an artist writing about the life of Muhammad and the Qu'ran couldn't find an artist to draw the cover of his book (he would eventually find one who worked anonymously). I'll let the cultural editor for the newspaper explain why they were published in his own words (quote taken from wikipedia as the original article has disappeared from the paper's website):

The modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings. It is incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where you must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule. It is certainly not always attractive and nice to look at, and it does not mean that religious feelings should be made fun of at any price, but that is of minor importance in the present context. [...] we are on our way to a slippery slope where no-one can tell how the self-censorship will end. That is why Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten has invited members of the Danish editorial cartoonists union to draw Muhammad as they see him. [...]

The fallout of article was three Dutch embassies being torched, over 100 deaths during riots in Middle Eastern Countries, and many terrorist leaders calling for his death. More riots broke out a few months ago when the cartoons were republished to show what the controversy was. So the Dutch already have a stigma of "Islamaphobia" hanging over their heads.

Geert Wilders/PVV
Geert is the author of this film, and a politician in the Dutch House of Representatives, where he is the leader of the Party for Freedom party. Contrary to the name of the party, this political party doesn't stand for individual freedoms, they stand for freedom from government. Unfortunately that doesn't just mean freedom from such things as socialized health care, they also want to abolish such things as minimum wage.

Of course at the same time of not wanting the government to be involved in individual's lives, they want crackdowns on immigration. Specifically they want to slow down immigration from Middle Eastern Countries. As for Middle Easterners that come to the Netherlands, the PVV wants them to realize that Judeo-Christian culture is predominant, and that the immigrants should adapt. And this from a party with "Freedom" in its name.

Geert himself, is interesting in that he calls himself a "defender of free speech" and "critic of Islam" in almost the same breath. Sure, being a critic fits in nicely with free speech, but his "critique" includes banning the Qu'ran. How can any politician who wants freedom of speech for his own writings take away the freedom of religion for 5.5% of his country's population?

Fitna, the Movie
And so it was that Fitna was born, brainchild of Geert. He hoped (initial rumors indicated) to show the world what was wrong with Islam. No one knew exactly how that would happen (though as the release date got closer, it was previewed by people who leaked the content), and I for one was quite interested. I was hoping for some good research into Shari'a Law and how it was being applied in Europe, as well as studies about extremism and its causes, to name two ideas for good movies.

The movie was supposed to launch around the 22nd/23rd, but Network Solutions (web host for fitnathemovie.com) took the site down hours before Geert was able to post the video. What remained was a small note saying they were investigating the content of the site to make sure it fit into their Acceptable Use Policy. The applicable section (in the list of prohibited uses) is as follows, emphasis mine:

Transmission, distribution, uploading, posting or storage of any material in violation of any applicable law or regulation is prohibited. This includes, without limitation, material protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual property right used without proper authorization, and material that is obscene, defamatory, libelous, unlawful, harassing, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, constitutes an illegal threat, violates export control laws, hate propaganda, fraudulent material or fraudulent activity, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable material of any kind or nature. You may not transmit, distribute, or store material that contains a virus, "Trojan Horse," corrupted data, or any software or information to promote or utilize software or any of Network Solutions services to deliver unsolicited e-mail. You further agree not to transmit any material that encourages conduct that could constitute a criminal offense, gives rise to civil liability or otherwise violates any applicable local, state, national or international law or regulation.

Now, I'm not a lawyer for Network Solutions, nor have I talked to one, but the parts I highlighted are the reasons I assume they're looking into the content. I'm sure they got complaints from Muslims that the site was hosting offensive material, more likely to be 'hate propaganda' than 'harassment'. (The movie also contains copyright violations, see below). Many sites get complaints, and I was quite upset at the time to see Network Solutions cave (hey, if I was posting offensive content, I wouldn't have chosen a US host when ThePirateBay is doing so well overseas) to this pressure thinking that they should take a stand for Freedom of Speech.

That is, until I finally saw the video. LiveLeak decided to have a backbone (Internet pun not intended) and host the film, with a note on the front page that they weren't endorsing the content, merely Freedom of Speech. I thought this was a good avenue to go down, especially with a mandatory click through agreeing you want to see offensive materials. Anyone who wanted the see what Geert had to say could, and those that might be offended couldn't accidentally stumble across it. (LiveLeak has since taken the movie down after receiving death threats. They apologized for not standing up for Freedom of Speech, but cite their employees well-being as coming first. I wholeheartedly agree).

Unfortunately what Geert had to say was, well, not much. It was somehow researched at a level below that of even a Michael Moore film, and was just as sensationalist, if not more so. The first 7 minutes is publicly available news footage (aka, no new insight) of various terrorist related activities, juxtaposed with 5 verses from the Qu'ran. Everything from Madrid, to September 11, 2001 in slow motion, to a video I originally mistook to be the Pearl beheading, instead it is Eugene Armstrong, another American in Iraq at the time. An extensive breakdown of the film's "plot" can be found here.

My reaction to this first section was two-fold. First off it, unfortunately, drudged up memories and feelings from those attacks which is clearly what it was designed to do. Second, it made me wonder just how dumb the supporters of this movie have to be to base this entire segment on 5 verses. No context is given for any of them, nor actual analysis other than how extremist Muslims have acted. I won't say that these verses are not used to justify terrorism, what I will say is that most Muslims do not view it as a call to terrorism. But to pull five verses, show these atrocities and leave the unspoken link that all Muslims will behave this way is just uncalled for. Its not journalism, and its not activism, its pure stupidity.

The next section is designed to show the 'threat' of Islam, with quotes of Islam taking over the world. Unfortunately for Geert, these quotes come from places we'd expect them, such as Iran's President and well-known anti-Semites. If he had clips of "domestic terror" defendants this section might have a lot more force.

Finally he had a section on Islam and the Netherlands. This was the "best researched" section, in that he pulled from a lot more news sources for his headlines. He attempts to show that if Shari'a Law is introduced into Europe, Gays and Women will lose a lot of rights, honor killings will start and basically all hell will break loose. He makes some decent points here, with the killer of Theo Van Gogh (another guy who made an anti-Islamic film, though his was a lot better) saying he'd kill him again if he could, and mentioning Ayaan Hrisi Ali. Unfortunately I can't speak for the situation of Islam in the Netherlands, so i have no idea if he's embellishing it, or finally presenting an accurate picture.

The closing seconds show a hand on a Qu'ran, then fade to black as you hear a ripping sound. This is controversial as (Muslim's believe) you shouldn't defile the Qu'ran by ripping pages out. Then a message floats up saying that it was actually a phone book, and that it was up to Muslims to rip out the hateful parts of the Qu'ran. This is the one part of the movie I agree with, and I'm not even in completel agreement here. It is on Muslims to get extremism under control, whether that be through the reforms Christianity did (remember, Islam is between the ages of the Crusades and Spanish Inquisition for Christian history) or through more rigorous policing of their imams and religions leaders I don't know. What I disagree with is that they must rewrite the Qu'ran to do so. To rewrite it would be to deny that the Qu'ran (as it is now) is the word of Allah, and introduce more "Satanic Verses". Instead, they should look at other meanings of jihad, meaning "To strive for", and listen to the moderates that have fled the Middle East.

Fallout
I actually had to stumble across a link to the movie the night it was released, because there was relatively no fallout. There was more news on Network Solutions taking down his other site than there was about Fitna coming out. I'll always remember a headline I saw the next day: "Dozens protest in Pakistan over Movie." Yes, you read that right, dozens, not hundreds, not thousands, dozens. And not a single death. In other words, Geert has failed to do what I think his goal was, incite more violence to convince the Netherlands Islam needs to be dealt with. If mobs had crowded the street, or if he'd been killed, his party could further its agenda and work towards banning the Qu'ran, but nothing happened. Muslims went to their prayers on Friday peacefully, realizing that to do anything violent would be playing into Geert's hands. Of course, there has been more protests since then in the Middle East and the Netherlands, and the Dutch Envoy in Iran has been summoned to speak for what happened, but even before the movie was release the Dutch government was smart and condemned the movie. While they weren't going to censor Free Speech, they were going to make sure that Muslims understand this is the work of one man, not a country, and not a nationality. Oh, if only Geert understood the same for extremists, that they don't speak for their religion or nationality as a whole.

As for additional fallout from the movie, Geert is being sued by Kurt Westergaard, the author of the cartoon depicting Muhammad in a turban with a bomb, for using the cartoon without his permission, a violation of copyright. He also might be sued by Salah Edin, an Arab rapper who Geert mistook for the killer of Van Gogh, Muhammad Bouyeri.

And, ironically, Omar Bakri, an Islamic extremist, actually liked the film, saying that if you removed the drawin of Muhammad with a bomb, it could be used as an Al-Qaida recruitment video. Geert's desire to show the horror of Islam might actually be used to recruit for Jihad, a fact which further supports my claim that he only released it to incite more attacks.

Conclusion
In the end, I support Geert's right to Free Speech. I applaud him for the bravery to stand up for what he believes in, even in the face of death threats, and I wish him well. However I think this movie is nothing more than sensationalist drivel, aimed at provoking more violence in the same way that Ann Coulter and Michael Moore throw barbs back and forth in our country. The only difference is that Moore targeted McDonald's and Geert singled out a religion with at least 1.1 billion followers (of which on 20% are in 'Arab' countries where most of the extremism is found). To release such a video that is entirely negative and clearly designed to provoke violence is reckless and wrong.

Some History
The domain was registered while taking one of my patented Long Thanksgiving Breaks. That was ThanksGaming 2005, and I grabbed the domain one night while talking to that coder I always mention, Malaprop of Cambrian House. Malaprop kindly put the domain on his site, installed WordPress, and away I went. My first actual post (I believe) was on the 20th of 2005, but it was accidentally deleted, so the first surviving post is from the 21st.

Some Stats
Over the past year, I've had (what I consider seeing as its just another random blog in the Internet where a new one opens every second) to be some pretty nice stats.

• Over 20,000 page hits
• Over 10,000 "users" you can figure out how Stattraq defines a user
• Two search engines that have over 100% of my website indexed! (Again, you can go figure out how they have more pages indexed than I have pages).
• Two pages selected by spambots for spam! They think I'm populart (I guess) and spam half-year old posts to sell viagra! An annoyance I took care of by using Akismet

Of course, the above ignores such fun ones as 100 posts means roughly one post every 3-4 days.

Big posts
I believe I created the blog to talk about the Sony BMG Fiasco. This was my first serious post, and it got some decent reads by a variety of people. Unfortunately for the world, this has pretty much blown over in a year. Heck, it had blown over within 6 months. What a shame a company got away with this when non-malicious citizens are thrown into court for downloading one song to the tune of $2,000. Had Sony gotten such treatment, it would be out of business (I refer to the fact that Sony included source code that was licensed. In addition they took it from a man whom the music industry tried to have thrown in jail.)

The next significant thing I talk about was my beliefs with regards to software, and the fact that I buy into a communist view of software. I tied this in with one of my favorite pieces of code, Linux.

I had a run in with the law last Spring that was kind of interesting. I'll leave it up to you to decide what to make of the encounter. The three ways I tried to write it here just... made Law Enforcement seem incompetent, and I don't want to say that.

While I may the only one laughing about it, I think I came up with a good argument in favor of single geeks on Inyragvarf Day.

Then we saw a public official fly off the handle when presented with a problem he didn't know. Great lesson to be learned about politicians and technical stuff. I rather dislike politicians so won't be going downt hat road, however.

One of my favorite posts was how to legally and ethically hack your GPA. This might also be the one I'm most torn about, as I get tons of hits from search engines with kids looking to actually hack their GPA. Meaning, maliciously break into a grade server, and screw with stuff they don't own. My idea is a lot more elegant, and completely legal. Which is why I enjoy it.

Wrap Up
It occurs to me this post is rambling and self serving... Plus I'm running out of time for posting right at midnight. So, I will end it now. You can browse back through my posts and see if there's anything decent. I'd like to wrap up b y reiterating my purpose of this blog. That is, simply put, to generate thoughtful discussion (or just thought on your own) and get people to thank more about the world around them. View everything from a different perspective, because that's how you find holes in a system. It may be that some of what I post is controversial. I may accidentally post something that's considered "illegal" by some form of law. Anything up here is not meant maliciously, and is purely for the sake of expanding the minds of my generation.

It's been a fun year for me, hopefully I've kept you (whomever my readers are... [Ok, i can see IPs... so I know who you are]) interested, and made you think a little more about some subject, I don't care what. See you next year.

First off, I changed my layout back to what it was when I started the blog. Mainly because that other one I used had some quirks to it I didn't like. I hope to come up with a new one somewhat soon as well as adding a domain (Note, domain is empty as of right now not even a server for it) that I've always wanted which *just* became available.

Really busy this semester with research. Have an indepent research class with a professor I absolutely love. The guy's pretty smart when it comes to security, systems, and computer science in general. I'm in another of his courses and have to do a project (thankfully related) for that class as well. On top of that there's some ideas I want to flesh out on my own that could lead to papers. Finally, ya'll know I program for fun as well, and I barely have time for that. Hence, this blog is gonna be sorely ignored for most of the semester.

My love for Arabic is finally starting to take a back seat to security issues, so I might be able to finally make a decision about where I want my life to head. However, as with all things in my life that decision's going to be quite complicated and will not end with a definitive one or the other answer.

I may have an awesome opportunity for an internship in the spring. Don't want to say any more than that for fear of jinxing it, as I'm fairly certain I won't get it, but it'd be amazing if I did.

I'm always looking forward to entertaining so anyone interested in seeing the research I'm working on, or just coming for a college visit that can find me in real-life, make sure to drop me a line, this school is gorgeous in the fall.

Finally I'm being hit hard by spam posts. Most for porn, the others for cheap sex pills. Sorry for the misspelling... s3x p1lls. Akismet catches most of it (about 200 a week) but about 4 have been getting through a week, annoying.

I just returned from 32 days in the lovely country of Tunisia. It was a great trip in a lot of respects, but especially because I was able to talk with old and new friends about some issues in many subjects that we were interested in. They involved politics (remember, I don't touch politics in terms of people/events, only systems and hypotheticals) and governments mainly, as I was the only computer lover in the group, but there was also a few conversations about computer security. On top of those, I had some other ideas that I wanted to post here, so hopefully I'll have a large number of posts coming out in the coming days. To that end, here's a table of contents about what I want to post on.

• Tunisia - Overview of my trip (Only whiney bloggy type of post I do, I promise).
• Tunisia - Their Law versus US Law (In terms of how much is required)
• Tunisia - Study of Transportation
• Tunisia - Study of
• Government - What is Ideal?
• Freedom - Freedom of Information
• Freedom - How the Middle East is More Free
• Security - Ensuring Secure Communications in a Police State

Now, as long as that list is, there's a few I'm forgetting because I'm still jet-lagged, and its 5 am. So to end, welcome our new member, you know who you are.

Some of you may know I have.... problems when I it comes to English. My spelling is atrocious, and grammar is worse. I can't learn the vocabulary because it amounts to route memorization, and most rules have more exceptions then there are rules! What a poor system! But wait... I have a soltuion.

It's called Arabic. Imagine this: A system where knowing the root of a word gurantees the meaning of the word. In English is a Pedophile someone who likes little kids, or feet? Ped is the root for both. Seeing as we have laws against one, and not the other, its kind of important to be clear.

Prereqs
I'll be referring to specific roots using capital letters of the English equivalent. Any old root is referred to as CCC (standing for consonant 1 consonant 2 consonant 3). Lowercase letters indicate vowels, with one letter being short, and two being long.

Roots
Arabic is structured around three letter (ok, there's also four and maybe five letter, but mainly three letter) roots. That's it. Memorize that KTB deals with writing, and you can accurately guess any derived form.

Forms
There are many derived forms for Arabic. Each of these takes one of the roots, and manipulates it in such a way as to get a set meaning. Always, no exceptions. If you know DRS deals with learning, and form 1 verbs (CaCaCa) are just the action, then DaRaSa would be to learn. Form 2 you know is to make someone do something(CaC-CaCa), then DaRRaSa would be to teach (make someone learn). Each form has a specific meaning that adds to the meaning of the form before it. Form 6 extends form 3 by adding a "ta" to the begininng of the word. Form 5 does the same for form 2, in both cases the "ta" makes it reflexive.

Derived Words
Just as there are forms for deriving verbs, there are forms for deriving all the nouns and adjectives. Forinstance, we already learned that CaCaCa means to do the verb, and I'll tell you that maCCaCa is the place of doing the verb. From this, and knowing the root DRS, you can guess that maDRaSa means "school" (the place of learning). To derive it, the thought process is "DRS->DaRaSa->maDRaSa". Taking first the root, plugging it into form 1, then the form for a noun meaning place. Simple, right? You can do this with any verb, and at least technically it is correct. KTB is to write, so maKTaB is a place of writing, an office.

There are many forms to derive nouns. There's specific ones for meaning a small version of the noun, for a habitual doer of the verb, for just about anything. This makes it simple to take any nun you see, derive the root, and hence the meaning.

Adjectives are formed the same way. You take the root, and add a certain ending (ii). So, if brown is BuN, then to say something is brown, you'd say it's "BuNii". This holds for all adjectives. In fact, it holds for all words, if you want to use it as an adjective, you can. Just add ii to the end, and its understood to be an adjective.

In Conclusion
Now, can you see why I like this language? Reading it is a matter of matching the word up with your hueristics of forms, and deriving the root. Then, once you know that meaning, you can derive the meaning of the word you wanted. It is a system that I think would kill English, or any romance language if more people knew Arabic.

• Monday/Wednesday/Friday classes:
  1. Arabic 350: 9:30am-10:45am. This looks to be a fun (if hard) class.
  2. Iraqi Part 2: 12:20pm-1:10pm. Again, fun, but I need to learn a bunch of vocab to catch up.
  3. Symbolic Logic 2:30pm-3:45pm: This is gonna be my boring class of the semester, and possibly the hardest, since I took Intro first semester of last year, a year and a half ago.
  4. Honors Seminar for CS: 7pm-9pm. This is a seminar where IU professors come in and talk about their research. Hey, free dinner...
• Tuesday/Thursday classes:
  1. Applied Cryptography 350: 9:30am-10:45am. This is gonna be great. lets just say the teacher has hands on experience... We're encouraged to Phish our classmates, and he might test us. Only problem, two 30-minute presentations of graduate level material...
  2. Arabic Linguistics: 1pm-2:15pm. Not a clue what this will be like yet, but the teacher seems nice.
  3. Multimedia Arabic 4pm-5:15pm: Same teacher of the above, this looks to be real fun, reading news papers and watching TV!.

I also decided monday to pick up another grad independant study on Virii and Malware, but dropped that earlier today so I'd be able to spend more time on Arabic. Mainly because I'm currently writing software for the NELC department, that will soon appear on the Three Planets Software webpage. Note, the previous link is heavily work in progress... in fact, at the time of writing it's just a placeholder.

1. Multimedia Arabic
   • This will be reading newspapers, watching TV broadcasts, etc. Anything dealing with Arabic in different medias.
2. Intro to Arabic Linguistics
• This will be an introduction to everything Arabic in linguistics. If you've taken a linguistics course, just pretend that instead of English words you work with, it's Arabic. How sounds are formed, to sentence syntax, if I'm correct.
3. Arabic, Third Level, Second Hald
• This will be the LAST pure Arabic course I have to take... I hope. It is the end of formal Arabic teaching at IU, and after that I will be studying course in dialects, and other fun stuff.
4. Iraqi Dialect, Second Half
• This will be a fun course taught by the professor (Iraqi) who taught my Individual Readings course last semester. I've already started teaching myself it, since I tested in, and Iraqi is actually quite fun. More on that as I do it.

Computer Science
This is my other major, and I spent last semester on a bunch of CS work, so this semester I take it easy.

1. Intermediate Symbolic Logic
• This will be my boring course of the semester, fulfilling the math requirement of my CS degree. I did happen to like Introdution to Symbolic Logic (what boolean mathematician doesn't?!) and hope to be pleasently surprised.

Informatics
This was by invitation and I'm not sure if the following course will apply towards my CS major, as it's in the School of Informatics, not CS.

1. Applied Cryptography
• This will be a graduate (!!) course dealing mainly with phishing and counter measures by a very smart guy in the Informatics department. I wrote a paper on him (here's a link, warning, it's a pdf file) and his work so far here. I expect this will be a very good course with hands on material and a chance to participate in phishng studies done here.

Other
Um... D, none of the above.

1. Whoops, dropped that class, nevermind

EDIT: I'd give more information, but the school's website is broken AGAIN! If you guys ever have a chance to work for/use software by PeopleSoft, turn it down!

While we were talkig, instead of working, I brought up a program I'd worked on over the summer. It'll conjugate Arabic verbs for practice. She wants me to clean it up, and perhaps the department will accept it as a learning tool! Of course, this'll be FOSS only, and I won't ask for any money.