1) Ever been to someone's blogsite and they force you to login to Xanga to see their page?

2) Or you want to visit someone's blog and you know they have a Xanga tracker and you, for personal reasons, would rather stay under the radar?

I once wrote (actually rewrote and improved) scripts that implemented both #1 and #2.  Used them for awhile.  Shared them with others.  Then abandoned their use for myself.

The other side of the coin, which I now share with those of you not aware of it, is that you can avoid #1 and #2 quite easily.  One way: don't visit those sites.  Another way: use an "anonymizer" or "web proxy"" to avoid engaging the javascripts that bloggers load in their Look and Feel.  Doing the latter, you'll not only avoid #1s and 2#s, but all the other annoying, resource-hogging, time-consuming scripts that are rampant throughout Xanga.

I occasionally use an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) VPN (Virtual Private Network) anti-script access called Megaproxy.  It's $10 for 3 months, but you can try it free here.  There are others, too, such as Anonymizer, with both paid and free (upper right hand corner) versions.  Of course, the free versions are limited (usually to the amount of free surfing you can do).  But then again, this may be something you only want to engage occassionally and then the free versions are just fine.

And, in case your wondering, my Xanga tracker, which I hosted on my own domain and called the "cRacker-tracker", though not utterly sophisticated, had, and still has, a few distinct advantages over the many other trackers. 

First, it's not detectable by Got'em's xanga-tracker Sniffer. 

Secondly, the logs, in the latest version, are entirely non-public so that no one else can spy on you tracking on them.  For instance, the outsourced Xanga Anti-Stalker module which is in place on my blog but which I never look at, is viewable here.  If someone else has a Xanga Anti-Stalker module, you need only insert their username in the URL to see who they are tracking.  Even Got-Em's tracker, though seemingly password protected, can be circumvented by an unpublished alias URL.

Third, the final version of my  script was refined so that it was not liable to "tracker poisoning".  What's that?  That's when some miscreant copies your script and places it on any number of numerous other sites that get hits.  Your log then reflects not only your actual hits but all the other noise the script is collecting.  Matters can then get down to being like a whore trying to figure out who the baby's daddy is.

Though I work in Information Security, my best buddy has always said of me: "When it comes to information systens, he can break into things as well as he can guard them."

Hey baby, I'm your handyman.  But please, no request for codes.  I'm not "into them" anymore and find them abhorent.  And, in the end, if you can't trust, you won't be trusted.

"The best way to honor the sacrifice of our fallen troops is to complete the mission and win the war on terror," the President said, speaking of the war in Iraq, in his weekly radio address yesterday.

THE CONCEPT OF SUNK COST, well-established in the field of economics, means that the cost of past actions should not be considered in selecting the appropriate future path.  Specifically, sunk costs are irrelevant in decision making.  Again, the appropriate analysis requires a focus on the future, not past losses, and costs that differ among alternatives.  If you have poured $200 million into building a bridge and then suddenly realize the entire structure is sinking into previously undetected quicksand, you do not "honor" the bridge by spending additional resources to "complete" it.

Would withdrawing now be a mistake?  Well, clearly "staying the course" will not defeat the insurgency.  In fact, there is strong evidence from past conflicts that when a regular foreign army assumes a protracted occupational status in a country with a raging insurgency, the insurgency grows stronger and more nationalistic as the occupiers grow older and more entrenched.

Simply stated, the United States has no strategy for defeating the Iraqi insurgency.  Pres. Bush has said "Our strategy can be summed up this way: as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." 

Sorry, George.  Any even barely competent student of military matters recognizes that as a "withdrawal plan" and not a strategy.

We do not need a withdrawal plan or a timetable for withdrawal.  When you have sex, do you go at it with a withdrawal plan or timetable for such?  Of course not!  You'll know when it's time to decouple.  For sure.

What we really need is a solid strategy based on the principles of counterinsurgency and counterguerrilla warfare. 

Do not merely send regular troops out roaming in an attempt to hunt down and kill insurgents.  Sure, they will kill some.  But when the regular troops depart the countryside, the surviving insurgents return as heroes to the cause to kill, torture, and intimidate informants and suspected American sympathizers.  And they thus retain, even through bludgeoning tactics, the popular support they need.

In Vietnam, U.S. strategy seized upon the expediency of killing insurgents via "search and destroy" tactics at the ultimate expense of winning the hearts and minds of the people.  Seem familiar?

But why do we care about winning the hearts and minds of the people?  Because the people, in their houses and in the streets—and not the Iraqi politicians and police—know who and where the insurgents are.  If we win their hearts and minds, we gain their intelligence.  End of lovemaking.

But what, you might ask, does counterinsurgency warfare have to do with winning hearts and minds?  Without going into tactics, it's all about providing enduring security by staying with the people, among the people, almost as one of the people.  If people, long oppressed, finally come to feel genuinely secure and unthreatened by the possibility of insurgents returning after "search and destroy" forays move on, they will open their hearts, share intelligence, and the war will be won.  It will, however, provided even this strategy, likely take 10 years, hundreds of billions of more dollars, and thousands of more American lives to prevail.

There is one other option.  One that I have pondered and perhaps alone (until now in this blog) entertained.  

Make a strategy out of withdrawal.  Withdraw and allow civil war to ensue and take its course.  If the insurgent/terrorist forces gain the upper hand, they will transform themselves, as they must, into more easily targetable regular forces and established pockets of government.  Then reinvade, pound hard, and withdraw again.  Repeat and repeat until the insurgent/terrorist forces understand we will forever deny them legitimacy.

The initial "invasion' of Iraq (till the point where Pres. Bush declared an "end" to the conflict) took the lives of only about 240 American troops.  Any subsequent "reinvasions" would probably be much less costly in terms of lives and resources since we would be encountering an already self-battered enemy.  This strategy, too, might take 10 years, but only tens of billions of dollars and hundreds of American lives.  Of course, we would be writing off the supply of oil from Iraq for the duration.  But this, after all, isn't about (Exxon $9.9 billion quarterly profit) oil, is it?

Sunk costs, anyone?