Dream Lover - Posted by Dyne on 11:41 AM
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Every night I hope and pray
A dream lover will come my way
A girl to hold in my arms
And know the magic of her charms

Because I want
A girl
To call
My own
I want a dream lover
So I don't have to
Dream alone

Dream lover, where are you?
With a love, oh so true
And a hand that I can hold
To be near as I grow old

Because I want
A girl
To call
My own
I want a dream lover
So I don't have to
Dream alone

Someday, I don't know how
I hope she'll hear my plea
Someway, I don't know how
She'll bring her love to me

Dream lover, until then
I'll go to sleep and dream again
That's the only thing to do
'Til all my lover's dreams come true

Because I want
A girl
To call
My own
I want a dream lover
So I don't have to
Dream alone

Dream lover, until then
I'll go to sleep and dream again
That's the only thing to do
'Til all my lover's dreams come true

Because I want
A girl
To call
My own
I want a dream lover
So I don't have to
Dream alone

Please, don't make me dream
Alone

- Bobby Darin

Are the Jedi idiots? - Posted by Dyne on 10:45 PM
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After seeing the most recent Star Wars film, I posted to my local friends private email list a random assortment of things that I noticed.

One of the things that people have been critical of during the prequels (or so I percieve) is that the Jedi are apparently blind to the manipulations of a Sith Lord that many of them have actually met in person. One of the things I posted was my take on that situation:

The first thing to keep in mind is that Yoda and Mace explicitly talk about their ability to use the Force being diminished due to the growing inflience of the Dark Side. So, in general terms, the Force is less effective for seeing stuff.

The second thing is that the Jedi can't just look at Palpatine and realize he's a Sith Lord (otherwise the movies would've been much briefer). Apparently, it's somewhat like being jammed. People like Palpatine who use the Dark Side are mostly invisible to Jedi, unless they are actively using their powers in their presence. Maybe it's because actively looking for the Dark Side is a bit like exposing yourself to its temptations. More likely, unlike Anakin, who is actively angry and such, Palpatine is so cool and collected and puts forth such a sympathetic face that he simply doesn't register as angry, hateful, etc.

Yoda is a bit suspicious of Palpatine even as far back as the beginning of Episode II, but apparently no Jedi actually senses the Dark Side around Palpatine until Mace brings it up in Episode III … and even then, he isn't sure about it until Anakin tells him.

The Jedi have known about the machinations of the Sith for something like fifteen years by the time of Episode III. They aren't idiots. They just couldn't pin down who was behind it all exactly using the Force, so they were forced to rely on other sources of information. And that's what Palpatine can control. Look at the story of the Sith from the Jedi perspective:

• First the Sith are thought extinct.

• Maul shows up, proving they aren't. The Jedi know there are always two Sith, a master and an apprentice, but don't really know which Maul was. However, the fact that Maul was defeated (by a Padawan no less) suggests that Maul was the apprentice. So the Master is still out there, somewhere.

• Then, a former Jedi, Count Dooku turns up. Fine and dandy, the Jedi say he's not a murderer … until he demonstrates his grasp of Dark Side powers and tries to convince Obi-wan to join him. This suggests to the Jedi that Dooku was the Master that trained Maul, having fallen when he became convinced that he was the chosen one and started trying to use both sides of the Force. He even fends off Master Yoda long enough to escape. And here he is, trying to recruit Obi-wan as his new apprentice. The Sith would love the irony of corrupting the Jedi that took out Maul into Maul's successor.

• Then Ventriss shows up, wielding lightsabers very much like Dooku's and tries to take on Anakin (and fails). Clearly, Ventriss was Dooku's new apprentice. After all, Dooku is still known to be out there.

• Then General Grievous shows up and takes out a number of Jedi. Obviously he's had some sort of training, probably by Dooku. Certainly a non-traditional choice for an apprentice, but the Sith can hardly be expected to play by the rules…

• Once Dooku dies, Grievous apparently becomes the new de facto Sith Master … and not a very impressive one from the Jedi perspective. He's dangerous, but a coward, and not actually capable of using the Force, it would seem. Effectively, the Jedi probably think the real Sith died with Dooku, and all they have left is a cleanup action…

• … until they realize things are getting worse, not better, and grow suspicious of Palpatine. Mace can finally sense the Dark Side “around” Palpatine, but doesn't actually accuse him of being a Sith, so clearly this isn't quite the same thing as knowing what he's facing. Anakin's revelation to Mace finally confirmed who was behind it the whole time.

So, it's not that the Jedi were bad at seeing through deception … it's that Palpatine is VERY, VERY GOOD at misdirection.

The List of Useful Firefox Extensions - Posted by Dyne on 03:13 PM
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This is a list of the Extensions that I've found most useful for Firefox. Most of them can be accessed through the “Get more extensions” link on the Firefox Extension panel.

Adblock - Lets you easily block ads from certain sites

BBCode - Adds context menus for formatting stuff using BBcode, HTML, etc.

Bookmarks Synchronizer - Allows you to upload bookmarks to a web or ftp server and synchronize another machine with that file.

Copy Plain Text - Copies text without the formatting (for pasting into emails and such)

Downthemall - Download all the images on a page (or linked from a page) en masse. Could also be used for other file types, I suppose.

Flashblock - Replaces embedded Flash with a button that you can click to turn on the flash (I got tired of noisy Flash adds)

Forecastfox - Weather Forecasts embedded in the browser

IE View - Loads the current page in IE, for those odd cases where something won't work in Firefox.

Image Zoom - Allows you to zoom and fit images

Linkification - Surrounds plain text URLs with anchor tags.

MiniT - Allows you to drag-rearrange tabs.

Mozilla Archive Format - Allows you to save web pages as a single-file .mhtml archive, similar to internet explorer's. (Grab this from maf.mozdev.org instead of the regular extension page, as that one is out of date.)

MR Tech About - Puts some useful stuff in the Help menu.

MR Tech Local Install - Various things to help install themes and
Extensions. (Sorting of installed Extensions by name, install extensions from disk, turning off the time delay, etc.)

No Script - Lets you choose which sites are allowed to use Javascript.

Nuke Anything - Lets you temporarily remove a specific object from a web page.

Outfoxed - A useful Social Network thingy. Lets you rate pages as you browse, and lets you also see ratings of your informers (your friends, and others you trust, ideally). Check out the Nutshell overview on the site for details.

PDF Download - Lets you decide whether to save a PDF or display it in a new tab (as PDF or HTML). This is helpful if you accidentally click on one because large PDFs tend to freeze the browser while they download and render.

QuicktabPref Toggle - I use this to get access to certain options (like forcing other applications to open links in a tab), not for the toggle feature.

Sage - RSS aggregator, used to view updates to sites like mine.

Smiley Xtra - A database of emoticons, categorized, in case you dislike the ones on a particular forum.

Tabbrowser Prefs - Puts a new entry in the Preferences for Tabbed Browsing

Tab X - Adds a close button to tabs. I have the TabX-Ultra version that leaves the main toolbar's “close tab” button intact.

Text zoom - Allows you to enlarge or reduce the text on a site. This extension is not configured correctly for recent Firefox installs, but it can be made to work with some trivial editing.

Tinyurl Creator - Makes tinyurl much faster, since it makes one and copies it to the clipboard.

HTML Validator - Probably not useful to anyone but web page developers. It checks the HTML of the pages you browse to make sure it is valid. Beware … this tends to screw up form buttons on some sites (like Google)

MediaPlayerconnectivity - This does nifty things to videos and such embedded in web pages. Such as let you view them in a standalone browser of your choice. I find it useful to avoid being stuck with a certain player size on gamespot and such.

EditCSS - another one for people who write web pages. This lets you alter the CSS of the site on the fly, so you can see what effect certain changes will have.