The other day, I got an email from a well known company that is looking for certain skills for positions it wants to fill. Since the job required relocation to another the United States, I politely declined, despite the big name of that company.What interested me is how recruiters check out potential candidates on the internet using Google search. From the logs of my web server, I could see exactly what this person searched on, and the sequence of events. I am publishing this mini-research because it is really interesting for geeks like me.From the IP address of the sender, I could tell that he indeed was from that particular company, despite the fact that his email address said otherwise.

Those who have been with NCR during the AT&T merger days, remember Jerre Stead, the CEO of AT&T Global Information Solutions, as NCR was renamed at the time.

I would like to write a bit about Jerre, since he left a bit of a scar on the collective psyche of NCR during his tenure there.

A recurring question on the Drupal.org forums is by people new to Drupal wanting to setup their site for Google AdSense. This quick guide should help with this topic.

Updates:

• A few weeks after I wrote this article, I wrote a new Drupal Google AdSense module. You can use that for a pre-packaged solution that may be easier to configure in some cases.
• Some of the details here (e.g. making blocks hidden for certain URL paths) are specific to Drupal 4.5. Things are easier in Drupal 4.6 and more.

Introduction

Drupal is an Open Source Content Management System that is gaining popularity fast. It is used to run lots of sites on the internet, and more and more people are using it. For more information visit the Drupal section on this web site for a quick overview.

A comprehensive article on WikiNerds on Canada's Flag and its history. It also has some informative links on Canada's history.

Many who are not familiar with Egypt's history and culture wonder why Egypt does not speak Egyptian today and not Arabic. This article tries to answer this question for those who ask it.

The New Kingdom: The Last Empire

Egypt's last purely Egyptian great empire, known as the New Kingdom, lasted from 1567 B.C. to 1085 B.C. During this period Egypt dominated a lot of its neighbors, such as Nubia, and Syria. This was achieved by various means, such as Thutmosis military campaigns, Ramses II's peace treaties, and Amenhotep III's diplomacy via marriage. The riches of Tut-Ankh-Amen are from this period, as well as the religious revolution of Akhnaten, the heretic monotheistic pharaoh.

Here are some conclusions that one can make from the previous examples:

• It is not easy to judge people and movements from a black and white absolutist view.
• Onesociety may view a person as a hero, while another view the same personas a villain. This is specially true when the two societies come intoconflict (straight out military confrontation, or small guerillawarefare). Prejudices come into play most of the time.
• Historyis written by the victor, only from the victorious point of view.Moreover, history is continually being reevaluated and rewritten as newfacts come to light, and old prejudices fade only to reveal new ones.
  

Many issues that an individual or a society faces can be morally ambigious. Resistance and terrorism are often morally ambiguous.

A comic book that will soon become a movie is V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. The comic book explores how oppression causes liberation and resistance movement to develop, and often the latter commit atrocities and abhorrent acts in the name of good causes. This is a fault both sides may fall in, and hence there is no moral high ground for one side over the other.

It is sometimes ironic how one party in a conflict becomes exactly what they hate in the other side in the name of 'good', 'justice', 'freedom' or 'democracy'.

RobinHood's story is too well known to retell here. This semi-mythicalfigure has been romanticized and idealized by ballads told by bards. Itis quite possible that there is some grain of truth from which thismyth sprung up. In any case, Robin was viewed by the authorities at thetime as an outlaw. In the strict sense of the law, he was indeed was.The ballads concede that he was also a thief, a highway robber, and anoutlaw.However, the bards and the public seem to justify theseactions by various means: for example, portraying Robin as a man ofnoble character, that he shared his loot with the poor, that hisactions were in response to injustices committed by Prince John and theSherrif of Nottingham, and that his thefts were aimed at those who gotwealthy out of others' toils.

I sometimes saw people expressing the opinion that if the IRA are "terrorists", so were the French Resistance against the Nazis.

I also came across a post titled: My grandfather was an IRA terrorist (and comments after it).

Another pro Irish poster writes:"My grandparents were in Ulster during the Black and Tan war andsuffered Orange pogroms before that so this all is not such unexpectedbehavior from the English. They should stop whining about LordMountbatten and the Grand Hotel and Canary Wharf and mortars fired at10 Downing Street - if they want their problems with Ireland over withthey should just pack up and go back to their own god-damned country."

From America and Canada

On one side, we find Benedict Arnold,who initally joined the American Revolution against the crown ofBritian. He won several battles. Later, he conspired with Britishforces and arranged to hand to them the fort at West Point, New York.Arnold avoided arrest, and made his way to the British side, lateracheiving the rank of general. He later explained his action in letter to the inhabitants of America.