Ukranian anti-censorship Web site LIEH3OP (censor.net.ua) is reporting that a third U.S. Carrier, the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise Strike Group, is currently en route to the Persian Gulf where it will join the USS Nimitz and USS Stennis already stationed there. The USS Enterprise CVN 65-Big E Strike Group is the largest aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy, and its addition to the Persian Gulf will mark the largest buildup of U.S. forces against Iran ever — including more aircraft carriers than during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In addition, LIEH3OP adds that during his Middle Eastern tour in May, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney made assurances to Gulf and other Middle Eastern nations that the U.S. would eventually have four carriers in the region to protect serve its interests:

Washington is considering deploying the fourth US carrier for the region in the Red Sea opposite Saudi Arabian western coast to secure the three US carriers in the Gulf from the rear as well as the Gulf of Aqaba and Suez Canal.

My question for all of this is, where on Earth is the Western media? When the U.S. sent in the second carrier a little while back it was all over the news for debate and discussion. Now they’re sending a THIRD carrier and it is floating along under the radar. This is just absurd to me. The censorship and secrecy with which this government operates is appalling to the point where it makes me ashamed to be an American. The Bush administration is ruining our country and everyone is just sitting around letting it happen. Why deploy one of the largest — if not THE largest — naval forces to the Persian Gulf if you’re not making preparations for a war. Actually, in my mind there is no doubt that Bush and Cheney will start a war with Iran. All that remains is for some Iranian “smoking-gun” to be created by the U.S. government and then the bombs will start falling around Tehran. My only prayer is that the madmen in Washington don’t drop anything nuclear, because the backlash against the U.S. will be harsh, violent, long lasting, and worldwide in scope.

War is not the answer to the world’s problems. Human beings have been fighting each other for thousands of years, and what has come of it as a result? More wars. Perhaps it’s time to give peace a whirl; I’m down for that. Anybody else?

Sharks are often thought of as some of the most dangerous creatures on Earth. While this may be true in an aquatic environment, the video below shows that sharks are no match for land animals:

And that’s just your domestic house dog, imagine a lion or tiger?

It has been reported that there are over one million registered users at Digg.com. Granted, the actual number of active users is probably much less, but still likely to be in the hundreds of thousands. When we think of a Digger what usually comes to mind is the teenage boy who never leaves his parents’ basement except to visit Game Stop for the latest Wii game, or the atheistic Ron Paul supporter. However, I’m here to report that Diggers are actually real, everyday people that you pass by on the street.

A few weeks ago some co-workers and I decided to adopt a ritual called “Geek T-shirt Wednesday.” I was immediately overcome with excitement, as long have I desired a Digg t-shirt to sport, and the perfect opportunity had finally presented itself. I went to the Digg Store and purchased a plain black t-shirt with gray lettering on the front that says “Digg.”

Before last Friday, I had worn the t-shirt twice without any recognition. Not to be discouraged, a week ago exactly I decided to wear it again. The day passed, and nothing. I figured it was going to be a normal day just like any other, when all of a sudden a man walked up to me while I was standing at the train station in Hoboken, NJ on my way home from New York City.

He approached and said “nice t-shirt, Digg.com.” I said “oh you know it?” He said yes and asked me if I had purchased it from the Digg Store. I said yes and then he mentioned that he was a big fan of the API. Then he proceeded to talk about how he wrote some Java code that uses the API to make it easier to Digg a story. I mentioned that I had seen stuff like that before. Then he mentioned Digg Swarm, and talked about how great he thought that was. I told him I liked the home page visualization site, which shows the top Digg stories as thumbnail images. Shortly after that the conversation ended with him saying “keep Digging,” and me replying with “you too.”

It was really cool to randomly run into a Digger in the real world. Sure, some of my friends use Digg. But most of them aren’t as big of a geek as I am, and they don’t truly understand the excitement that is Digg. I think this serves as a good example to illustrate just how mainstream the Internet has become. Five years ago how likely would it have been to run into a Slashdot user on the street? Probably not very likely. But in today’s society, where life and the Web are increasingly integrated, such an anomaly is no longer all that improbable.

To any other Diggers in the NYC area I welcome the opportunity to meet randomly in the street. Until then, keep Digging!

This is a horrible story that will make you think twice about going to your favorite amusement park. Kentucky Police have confirmed that a girl’s feet were cut off by a malfunctioning ride at the Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom amusement park.

Law enforcement officials say that they received a call around 5 PM today stating that both of a young girl’s feet had been detached at the ankle.

Although there’s no information about the girl, meaning she was probably a minor, we do know that the malfunctioning ride was Superman Tower of Power, which stands 177 feet high and accelerates riders to 54 mph. Police dispatchers said the girl was taken to a local hospital.

This is a very tragic story that illustrates how one can never be too careful when it comes to operating big machinery. Clearly these amusement parks take all the necessary precautions when constructing and testing these rides, as to not do so would amount to closures from all of the legal issues that would arise, nevertheless it’s apparent that these rides need to be tested even further.

My thoughts and prayers go out to this girl and her family.

I generally don’t like to write administrative-like posts about this site, however I feel that it’s necessary given the circumstances recently. As you may or may not know, a post I wrote a little over a week ago got (luckily) picked up by Reddit and displayed on the front page. While this was very good for me in that it brought tens of thousands of new users here, it also exposed a flaw in my web hosting at the time that needed to be addressed. Notably, this server crashed three times in a matter of 90 minutes and I was forced to disable large chunks of code in order to keep it running.

The very next day (last Friday) I signed up for Media Temple, as the research I had conducted showed that their server grid has been tested and is able to accommodate large fluctuations in traffic like the one I received last week. As a result, I was unable to make a post during the time of the server changeover so that I didn’t lose any data. To my knowledge not so much as a single comment was lost during the move. The move was completed Sunday.

So that explains why there were no posts from the last one until last Sunday, but what about this week? The very next day, Monday, I started a new job at an amazing company, which I am refraining from listing for the time being. The drawback here being that in order for me to get to the training location by the appropriate time I must leave my house at 5:30 AM, so this week I’ve been going to bed at 10:30 PM and waking up at 4:30 AM. Now, the problem is that I don’t get home until 7:30 PM, so what remains is virtually no time for blogging; thus why you have seen no new posts this week.

But fret not my beloved jonholato.com fans, there remains always plenty of topics for me to write about, and I will be posting more frequently again very soon once I get a handle on my schedule and can manage my time more efficiently.

Let us not forget that the iPhone comes out one week from tomorrow!

Google may be slowly taking over the world, but that didn’t stop eBay from putting it in its place. When Google invited eBay sellers attending the eBay Live! party in Boston this week to the Google Checkout Freedom Party — which was designed to poke fun at eBay’s restrictive policies — eBay got a little upset.

So what do you do if you’re the world’s largest auction site and the world’s largest search engine tries to make fun of you? Simple, you hit ‘em where it hurts: the wallet. eBay took down all U.S. advertising on Google, which led Google to cancel the party in order to make eBay happy again.

Nothing like a good ole fashioned PWNing.

Google Analytics has become one of the most popular online analytics tools since opening its doors for anyone to make an account and track a multitude of sites. Yesterday Google announced that it had added a series of new features to the already stellar suite of offerings currently available. Here are some of the major upgrades:

Hourly reporting
Due to user complaints about the new interface it launched recently, Google Analytics has re-integrated a “View by: Daily/Hourly” switch that allows users to sort the data they’re viewing by day or hour.

Clickable URLs
Now you have the ability to click straight through to an external page from any link referenced in one of the reports. Simply click the icon next to any link listed in the “Referring Sites,” “Top Content,” “Top Landing Pages,” or “Top Exit Pages” report.

Cross Segmentation According to Network Location
Many users were upset with the fact that you couldn’t cross segment reports based on network location, but now that capability has been added.

More Rows of Data Per Page
The previous limit of viewable rows on a report page was 100, however now you have the option of upping the amount to 500.

Bounce Rate Color Changes
Previously increases in bounce rate (which is bad) were listed in green and decreases in bounce rate (which is good) were red. These colors have been switched.

Adwords Integration
Google has made it easier to integrate your Adwords account into your Google Analytics account.

Some other less notable additions include:
- recognition of aol.fr, club-internet.fr, voila.fr and mama.com search engines
- data from newly added reports to the dashboard is linked to more detailed versions
- help resources added to Email Reports interface
- more countries to choose from during the Account Activation process

All in all some nice upgrades. Keep up the good work Google!

Yahoo’s Hong Kong division declared yesterday that the Chinese government is likely blocking the country’s 140 million Web users from Flickr.com, the Yahoo-owned popular photo-sharing site. Flickr has not shown photos to users in mainland China since last week, amid speculation that Beijing censored the site after images of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre were posted. The communist government of China has banned all references to the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in state media, the Internet and books.

Officials from China’s Ministry of Information Industry were unable for comment yesterday. In China it is very much taboo to discuss the massacre that killed thousands when the government called in the army to cut the head off the democracy movement.

So here we have yet another bout in the fight against online censorship. Back in March I wrote about a Chinese university dean who was fired over a blog entry. And it seems the Chinese government has not come very far since then. What’s even worse with this scenario though is that this is offline as well. Given that the Chinese government has forbid all discussion of the massacre on any medium, one can assume a fair amount of the public — over a billion in China — doesn’t even know about it. And worse than not being able to talk about it is not even knowing about it at all. I await the day that the Chinese population gets sick of communism and attains a free, democratic society through revolution. It’s bound to happen one day…

Iran’s parliament voted today in favor of the death penalty for persons convicted of working in the production of pornographic material. In a 148-5 vote, Iranian lawmakers declared that “producers of pornographic works and main elements in their production are considered corruptors of the world and could be sentenced to punishment as corruptors of the world.”

The fact that the statement released by parliament declares offenders “corruptors of the world” is significant, because it is taken directly from the Quran and one of the highest individual offenses a Muslim can commit and is punishable by death. According to the bill, such corruptors would include producers, directors, cameramen and actors. In addition, Web site operators will be targeted as well if material appears on their sites.

In recent years pornography has been on the rise in Iran, one of the Middle East’s most conservative Islamic countries, as it is easily accessible via foreign satellite television and on the black market on street corners. However, any open discussion of sex or anything sexual is banned and considered taboo in the face of the country’s strict public morality laws.

First off, every country has the inherent right to sovereignty over its people and can enact whatever laws it wants. That being said, this is pretty ridiculous, even for Iran. It seems like this is just another move by the Iranian government to keep the population as under control as possible and free from Western influence, but this time with a very stiff penalty. It will be interesting to see if they actually carry this thing out.

Can you imagine if Washington enacted a law like this in the US? There would be an immediate mass exodus from Southern California or else half of the population would be targeted. So look out Jenna Jameson, while it’s not likely to happen, you certainly can’t put anything past the Bush administration these days.

There is continued international outrage about the genocide taking place in the Darfur area of Sudan, which borders on Libya, Chad and the Central African Republic. Over 400,000 Darfuris have lost their lives, and governments around the world have pledged support and aid, both economically and militarily, and government of Sudan has even been hit with sanctions.

One such government that has condemned the killings and placed sanctions on Sudan is the the US government. But while President Bush may give speeches in which he pledges to help the people of Darfur, in reality he turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the Sudanese government in return for help spying on the Iraq insurgency.

According to US intelligence officials this represents the complex realities of the post-9/11 world, where the US has relied heavily on countries that are at the bottom of the human rights barrel for intelligence and military cooperation.

“Intelligence cooperation takes place for a whole lot of reasons … It’s not always between people who love each other deeply.” said a U.S. intelligence official.

Sudan in particular has become very valuable to the US as the Sunni Arab nation serves as a crossroads for Islamic militants seeking to make the trek into Iraq or Pakistan. Officials claim that the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq has allowed Sudan’s Mukhabarat intelligence service to get spies into Iraq to spy on al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups.

The benefits for Sudan in return for a bit of intelligence are pretty significant. For one it maintains a close relationship with the CIA, so it doesn’t have to worry about “regime change” anytime soon. Secondly, despite international condemnation, the government of Sudan is getting praise from Bush and co.:

And at a time when Sudan is being condemned in the international community, its counterterrorism work has won precious praise. The U.S. State Department recently issued a report calling Sudan a “strong partner in the war on terror.”

I hope everyone reading this is as outraged as I am about this. We hear so much in the media of how China is to blame for the continuing genocide of the Darfuris, but in reality our own hypocritical government is reluctant to lift a finger for fear of losing Sudan’s help on Iraq. As I mentioned above, the genocide in Darfur has claimed over 400,000 Darfuris to date. While I don’t have any exact estimates, I’d venture a guess to say that the “War on Terror” hasn’t even claimed 1/10th of that amount (not including Iraq which was not the War on Terror but rather Neo-con agenda). So 400,000 vs. < 40,000, which one is the real war here?