Welcome to TiddlyWiki created by Jeremy Ruston, Copyright © 2007 UnaMesa Association
I'm too busy having flu this week to do much blogging, work, etc.
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I don't normally read the //[[Calgary Sun|http://calsun.canoe.ca/]]//, but followed [[this|http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MichaelGeistsBlog/~3/319621820/]] link from [[Michael Geist's blog|http://www.michaelgeist.ca/]] to an [[article|http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Alberta/2008/06/24/5968846-sun.html]] by Kevin Martin in Tuesday's //Sun//.
In summary: a man quits his job at a one bicycle shop to work at another buys a domain that differs from that of the first bicycle shop by only the TLD (i.e. it ends in .com instead of .ca), and directs this new domain to a porn site. At trial the judge found this act malicious and defamatory and ordered that he pay a total of $15,000 to the offended bike shop.
I think the seriousness with which the judge took the action says something about the generational disconnect, and points to a limited familiarity with the internet and www. I note, from the Sun article, that the angry guy did //not// hijack the shop's domain, did //not// deface the shop's real web site, did //not// say untrue things about the shop, nor direct potential customers to the competing shop. He merely typo-squatted on a similar domain. Even the Sun article describes the act as "sabotage", although the act, as described, fits no definition of "sabotage" that I'm familar with.
Actually, I'm kind of surprised that it wasn't a trademark case rather than malicious defamation. Personally I can't imagine myself thinking less of the bicycle shop because a typo-squatter set himself up in a nearby domain.
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I was reading an article in the N. Y. Times magazine from 2008/01/27 by Parag Khanna a few days ago. It's about the decline of the U.S. as a global economic and military power. The most encouraging thing about the piece wasn't the ideas expressed, which are hardly new to anyone watching the U.S., but to see them expressed openly in the NYTimes.
This triggered some thoughts. First was that America will have had a much shorter run than ancient Rome. Second was of Rome's grand engineering legacy-- Europe's road system, water delivery systems, innovations in building. I started wondering what would be the long-lasting legacy of America's time of empire? Mass production? Nuclear weapons? The personal car? Steve Jobs' black turtleneck?
Within the next 20 to 50 years Manhattan will likely be flooded out by global warming and the melting of the Greenland ice pack. In another century the US could well be reduced to a minor world player, consisting of bickering alliances of often theocratic state governments. Poverty and hardship may be rampant, with scattered rich, sophisticated centers. In a thousand years what will be remembered of America's brief time in the spotlight? What will be its coliseum?
Then it dawned on me-- you're looking at it. What started as a modest DARPA experiment in dynamically routed packet switched computer networks way back in the 1970's will permeate the entire planet, having replaced all other technological means of communication.
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!!!Welcome to America. Passport please.
When the Germans occupied the Netherlands during World War II, they began separating the Jewish population from the non-Jewish Dutch people. This was standard procedure for them, of course. They were fiendishly clever about it-- they ordered that non-Jews had to report themselves, and offer proof that they were //not// Jewish. And there were, naturally, benefits to not being Jewish.
The devilish cleverness of this scheme was that it didn't allow the average citizen to be neutral. You're either a rebel and traitor to the new regime, or a collaborator in which case you share the guilt. Getting people to share the guilt was a Nazi specialty.
Thus it became historically significant in the culture to say "I am not a Jew." Particularly when said to an authority figure, it carried a connotation of collaboration and betrayal of ones fellow citizens, ultimately to death.
In many items I've read and heard reported, the U.S. has been getting difficult to enter, and the experience has become, for many, frightening and humiliating. Even worse for Maher Arar, of Ottawa, who was deported to Syria for a year of solitary confinement, beatings and torture. For others it is merely inconvenient, expensive, and an invasion of privacy (see [["US Customs Seizing Laptops" |http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/02/us_customs_seiz.html]])
Now I was born in Canada, and while I've long been an atheist and a Buddhist, my ancestors were Jewish. When I express nervousness about entering the US, everybody reassures me that //I// won't have any trouble. And, indeed, I haven't had any thus far. All I have to do is step up to the uniformed, armed US official and say "I am not a Muslim."
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[[Dan Froomkin's |http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/03/12/BL2008031201898.html]] recent article (thanks [[Archerr|http://archerr.tumblr.com]] for the pointer) was interesting. His thesis is that Admiral Fallon's recent resignation was forced by the Bush administration because of his perceived interference/non-cooperation with plans to attack Iran, and that his forced resignation, and Cheney's visit to Israel presage a war on Iran in response to a, possibly faked, Iranian attack of some kind on Israel. (i.e. Israel responds to fake incident, Iran attacks Israel, U.S. defends Israel, voila-- another war.)
My favourite scenario has for several years been a twist on this idea. Perhaps I read too many Tom Clancy novels back in the '80s, but I've rather fancied they might carry out an attack on Iran in response to a real or faked incident using, for the first wave, American carrier-based planes carrying false Israeli markings. That way the first wave hitting air defenses doesn't have to over-fly a third country, thus reducing the chances of premature detection by somebody whose air defenses are __//not//__ to be destroyed..
Well, maybe not. Somehow it sounded more likely a couple of years ago.
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DECtape was a wonderful tape-based storage system produced by the Digital Equipment Corp. back in the '60s. The tapes were relatively inexpensive, were incredibly tough and reliable, and the format supported block-level access-- i.e. you could rewrite a block in the middle of a tape. It was very useful. If you've had a document stored on DECtape somehwhere in the back of a closet for 30 years, there is no way you can read it.
Science fiction novels I bought in the '70s and '80s are mostly yellowing and crumbling to dust. Handwritten notes of theorem proofs in ballpoint from my undergrad years (the '70s) are fading. The ones in pencil are fine, but the paper they're scrawled on isn't.
Meanwhile the Gutenberg bible, printed in the 15th century, is perfectly legible. The Rosetta Stone, made around 200 BCE is readable too. I can't understand the Greek or Heiroglyphics, but it's clear what they are, and I can see and recopy them fine.
Just don't ask me to recover what's on that Unix backup tape on my shelf from 1986, or that 5 1/2 inch diskette from 1991. Or even that stack of backups on 100 mb Zip disks from 1998.
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I've been thinking about the near future. Presuming that the current U.S. administration //doesn't// find an opportunity to declare an emergency and impose martial law, //somebody// will win the coming U.S. presidential election.
Could any of the three restore Europe's opinion about the U.S.? I suspect that's gone for good. The U.S. has long been doing nasty things in the world-- overthrowing democratic governments, supporting dictators, training death squads, strong-arming countries into adopting self destructive economic policies, and let's not discuss the original inhabitants of their country.
So where did the good feelings towards them come from? I think it was WWII. It was the untouchable American industrial capacity and access to resources that crushed two brutal, expansive empires simultaneously on opposite sides of the world. This was followed by a generous assistance in rebuilding not only previously occupied Europe, but even its defeated enemies. The fact that this was a good way to keep these countries in their own sphere instead of that of the Soviets' doesn't change the fact that this was broadly viewed as a Good Thing. Even a great thing.
So for three generations a significant part of Europe had this vague warm fuzzy feeling towards Americans, even as they became more annoyed with them. But as long as it did not flaunt its bad behaviour too brazenly, and remained predictable, the relationship was manageable.
But along comes the Connecticut cowboy George W. Bush and his unilateralist new American century friends giving everybody the finger and showing itself willing to use force without much forethought. They not only pushed others around, which was not new, but they did it publicly. They became unpredictable. Then they committed the ultimate sin, the one sin that cannot be forgiven: they proved incompetent.
So the way I see it, the last remaining political capital from WWII is blown, the military is overstretched, they owe too much money, they've exported too much of their manufacturing capability, their human rights record was finally buried at Guantanamo and Abu Graib, and they've poked pretty much everybody in the eye.
Whoever wins, then, will not be able to wind the clock back. That doesn't make it a useless excercise. Whoever it is ought to do two things-- restore democracy and human rights internally, and refrain from doing more damage internationally. The downward slide has momentum now, and the longer they wait the harder it will be to stop.
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[img[calgary view|http://i27.tinypic.com/ekn57l.jpg]]
[img[calgary view|http://i27.tinypic.com/4rus6u.jpg]]
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Ok Annie, I'm impressed.
There has recently been a quite a little controversy over a [[photo|http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/06/miley200806?currentPage=2]] of Miley Cyrus taken by Annie Leibovitz (go look at it; I'll wait.)
Ok, now look at these:
| [img[Sick Bacchus|http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/Bacchino_malato_(Caravaggio).jpg/300px-Bacchino_malato_(Caravaggio).jpg]] | [img[Healthy Bacchus|http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Michelangelo_Caravaggio_007.jpg/300px-Michelangelo_Caravaggio_007.jpg]] |
The sickly, debauched Bacchus on the left was painted by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in 1593. He painted the healthy, young Bacchus on the right in 1595. It's pretty obvious isn't it? Take the pretty young face from 1595 together with the pose from 1593, add one fucking brilliant photographer with superb artistic control, and there's young Miley Cyrus in the middle wondering what's going on. (By the way, that's Caravaggio's own tired face on the 1593 work.)
I haven't yet come across any comment, written or otherwise, which acknowledges Annie Leibovitz's work as a tribute to one of Renaissance Italy's more colourful and wild artists, but that's what it is, and personally I consider it beautiful. It would not surprise me in the least if, long after Billy Ray and his daughter Miley are forgotten, to find (well, not personally by then) this picture in an art history textbook as an example of how artists influence and build on each other's work through history.
All I can say is that it's a good thing they didn't have DRM in the 16^^th^^ century.
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To start off the day just right on Wednesday, I'd arranged to be online with Madge Weinstein and some blogger dolt named Scoble. Jeez what a zoo. First Madge, deliberately or not, connects me in some screwed up way so that the only way I can hear both of their voices is by listening to the ustream broadcast. Which meant I heard my own voice back with a 2 or 3 second delay. It's impossible to speak coherently that way-- it's way too distracting.
Second the, as Madge calls him, the 'Blobert' starts screaming insults like a 6-year-old right from the get-go. Huh? Mostly they make no sense. In fact from some of the things he said I'd say even Cali Lewis has more technical insight than this tech. blogger. Only later did it strike me what was really going on.
Two more things: first, this guy was a "product evangelist" when he worked for Microsoft. I was a developer of system software. To a developer, his job title translates as "rumour monger", placing him somewhere down on the totem pole below sales weasel. Aha. While working for MS I would never have bothered to speak to this guy. But I was before his time anyway.
Second given his seemingly shallow technical knowledge, his current social status is essentially the Paris Hilton of tech bloggers. He'll show up at every party (which translates in this domain to conference, seminar, announcement, trade show, or whatever.) He's in the middle of his 15 minutes, and it's in his best interest to stretch it out as long as possible. Thus its worth his time to spend an hour once a week getting insulted by Madgy.
For Madge herself, she has said that her contract with Podshow expires __this__ month (Feb.) Which means that her income will now, or soon, depend on her numbers. So she's rather desparate-- any 'name' she can get on will bring up her numbers and she and Trotsky (her cute little dog) can eat for the month. So she'll have Bob Scoble, Paris Hilton, Chris Crocker, __anybody__ with a well-known name on her ustream & podcast as often as possible. She does have some more interesting guests as well, to give her credit (e.g. BicycleMark and Max Keiser.)
So basically there I am, playing the patsy between two desparate media sluts doing an act somewhere between professional wrestling and the three stooges.
The dumbest thing I did was to join in. Oh well. I'm not likely to repeat the mistake.
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I was attending a workshop at the university given by [[Michael Geist|http://www.michaelgeist.ca/]] of the University of Ottawa on copyright law. His presentation was interesting, although not surprising to anyone who's been reading his [[blog|http://www.michaelgeist.ca/]] (which I recommend.) While listening to him talk about copyright law in Canada, and the following discussion of the implications of copyright law in a university teaching environment, something came to mind from the day before.
Big drives. I was shopping in the computer department of a large chain drug store (and why a chain of drug stores would have a computer department is another discussion) where I was directed by the salesman on duty to the drive section. Shelves full of hard disk drives. IDE drives, SATA drives, usb drives, firewire drives, NAS drives, drives that can play videos on their own. And the sizes-- 300GB, 500GB, 1TB, 1.5TB. That's right, standing there on the shelf was a stock of outboard usb disk drives that can each hold 1.5e12 bytes. The lifetime work of any author who ever lived would fit many times over on the smallest drives available today. I keep a personal archive of the source code of hundreds of FOSS software packages, at least a dozen Linux distributions (sometimes more than one version of each, but not their source), and source for several versions of the Linux kernel on a modest sized archive partition (<100GB) on one of my old servers. 'df' reports 57% usage. If I could add every line of source code I've ever written since 1971, and every research report, paper, blog entry, letter, email, and grocery list it wouldn't increase that significantly.
Double or triple the size of that disk and I could probably add every photograph I've ever taken, or has been sent to me by a friend or family member, mp3's of every music recording I've ever bought or been given, and, conceivably, the ascii text of every book, magazine, thesis, research paper and newspaper article I've ever read, and all my favourite podcasts.
So while we're debating politely about copyright, and our politicians get taken to lunch by slick recording industry lobbyists, and threatened by the US ambassador in Ottawa, even a //drug store chain// is doing a booming business selling 500GB and //terabyte// drives.
I can think of only one thing that the average user might need that much space for. I exclude, of course such things as NASA's accumulated satellite telemetry, the video from all the 'security' cameras in London, and the MRI images from the radiology department of a major hospital. Video. Lots and lots of video. I'll grant them a few gigs for home movies. Everything else ...
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Last week there was an editorial column in the NY Times Sunday edition about the middle east. I know, I know, that's probably true every week-- so what? Well in this one what sticks most in my mind was the author's declaration (sorry, I forgot to write down his name) that Israel was built on the ruins of another nation.
First, I note in passing that had he said "another state" he might have been wrong, but seeing as how //nation// and //state// are not the same thing-- witness the Canadian province of Quebec-- he can say that.
Anyway, I can't really argue against his claim. Strain my memory much as I could, though, I was unable to come up with any nation at all that wasn't built on the ruins of another. In fact anybody from North America might well ask "Only one?", since every country in North America is essentially built on the ruins of many nations. The only thing unique about Israel is that it was the first to have done so only with the prior approval of a large multinational organization like the U.N.
I can't help but feel pessimistic about the whole region. I don't see how it can come to any good. Eventually others in the area (besides Israel) are bound to aquire nuclear weapons. Someone will use one or two, and before you know it the whole place will be a wasteland that glows in the dark. Who knows-- the initial exchange may not even involve Israel, but that won't change the end result. Once started, the process will suck in everybody like a ... gigantic chain reaction.
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In the Sunday New York Times for April 20, International Report section, entitled //[[Indignant Chinese Urge Anti-West Boycott Over Pro-Tibet Stance||http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/world/asia/20china.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ei=5087&em&en=bfb04eede2a90c5e&ex=1208750400]]// , Andrew Jacobs and Jimmy Wang report a growing movement among Chinese netizens to Boycott western, in this case particularly French, products in response to protests against Tibet repression. You know-- the protests that have been showing up at Olympic torch relay events. The Chinese are very angry.
OK, they've certainly been "educated" by the Chinese government about Tibet's proper place within China, so that they see the protests as unjust. So far, so good. But I have a theory.
In China protests are strictly controlled and limited, as is any form of public speech, including the internet. The government might tolerate a protest for a while, as long as its own purposes are being served, but will have absolutely no compunction at suppressing it ruthlessly the instant its usefullness ends. This is so normal, and has been true for so long, that people there probably don't realize it could be any other way. The default action is suppression. In the west things are just the opposite-- the default action of the western governments is to simply watch to make sure things don't get out of hand, but suppressing a protest entirely is considered by the populace to be extreme.
So in, say, Paris the police would certainly arrest anyone who tried to attack or interfere with the torch carrier, or extinguish the torch, but would hesitate to supress all protest. It might backfire, and perhaps, if taken too far, would even be illegal. But to Chinese eyes, failing to suppress a protest is a deliberate and considered policy decision on the part of the government, to express a position on the events in Tibet.
Just another misunderstanding about things that //"everybody knows"// ...
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The headline of an AP article on Google news: //[["Bush Says US Stands by Colombia."|http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jBedtt58NdoF1S4Nd8SS_4cCwUtQD8V6QL4O0 ]]// For years now Hugo Chavez, leftist president of Venezuela has been taunting George Bush, denouncing the US, nationalizing large oil companies. He even claims the Americans are ready to take him down by force. I'm quite sure the Bush administration would love to. They can't, really. They don't have //casus belli//, the money, and their forces are stretched way too thin already.
Of course if the evil Chavez were to, say, threaten a neighbouring state ... Maybe this state could be more right-wing. Maybe it could be beholden to the U.S., firmly in the U.S. sphere. Maybe it could already be receiving U.S. weapons and advisors. A state like, say, just theoretically you understand, Columbia. Yeah, that's the ticket. If evil Chavez were to threaten such a state, the U.S. could, perhaps, provide material aid. Support its stalwart ally in its valiant struggle. And, naturally, this means that passage of Bush's signed 'free trade' deal with Columbia, held up by congress's concerns about some pidling humans rights issues, is suddenly a matter of national security. You wouldn't want to be disloyal would you?
I've heard news reports of Venezuelan troops and armor gathering at the border. Maybe. Anybody seen the //USS Maddox// or //Turner Joy//?
For further insight into the implications of the Columbian free trade deal, see //[[U.S. 'Free Trade': Death, Drugs and Despair in Colombia, by Jonathan Tasini|http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-tasini/us-free-trade-death_b_41845.html]]//
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/***
|''Name:''|CryptoFunctionsPlugin|
|''Description:''|Support for cryptographic functions|
***/
//{{{
if(!version.extensions.CryptoFunctionsPlugin) {
version.extensions.CryptoFunctionsPlugin = {installed:true};
//--
//-- Crypto functions and associated conversion routines
//--
// Crypto "namespace"
function Crypto() {}
// Convert a string to an array of big-endian 32-bit words
Crypto.strToBe32s = function(str)
{
var be = Array();
var len = Math.floor(str.length/4);
var i, j;
for(i=0, j=0; i<len; i++, j+=4) {
be[i] = ((str.charCodeAt(j)&0xff) << 24)|((str.charCodeAt(j+1)&0xff) << 16)|((str.charCodeAt(j+2)&0xff) << 8)|(str.charCodeAt(j+3)&0xff);
}
while (j<str.length) {
be[j>>2] |= (str.charCodeAt(j)&0xff)<<(24-(j*8)%32);
j++;
}
return be;
};
// Convert an array of big-endian 32-bit words to a string
Crypto.be32sToStr = function(be)
{
var str = "";
for(var i=0;i<be.length*32;i+=8)
str += String.fromCharCode((be[i>>5]>>>(24-i%32)) & 0xff);
return str;
};
// Convert an array of big-endian 32-bit words to a hex string
Crypto.be32sToHex = function(be)
{
var hex = "0123456789ABCDEF";
var str = "";
for(var i=0;i<be.length*4;i++)
str += hex.charAt((be[i>>2]>>((3-i%4)*8+4))&0xF) + hex.charAt((be[i>>2]>>((3-i%4)*8))&0xF);
return str;
};
// Return, in hex, the SHA-1 hash of a string
Crypto.hexSha1Str = function(str)
{
return Crypto.be32sToHex(Crypto.sha1Str(str));
};
// Return the SHA-1 hash of a string
Crypto.sha1Str = function(str)
{
return Crypto.sha1(Crypto.strToBe32s(str),str.length);
};
// Calculate the SHA-1 hash of an array of blen bytes of big-endian 32-bit words
Crypto.sha1 = function(x,blen)
{
// Add 32-bit integers, wrapping at 32 bits
add32 = function(a,b)
{
var lsw = (a&0xFFFF)+(b&0xFFFF);
var msw = (a>>16)+(b>>16)+(lsw>>16);
return (msw<<16)|(lsw&0xFFFF);
};
// Add five 32-bit integers, wrapping at 32 bits
add32x5 = function(a,b,c,d,e)
{
var lsw = (a&0xFFFF)+(b&0xFFFF)+(c&0xFFFF)+(d&0xFFFF)+(e&0xFFFF);
var msw = (a>>16)+(b>>16)+(c>>16)+(d>>16)+(e>>16)+(lsw>>16);
return (msw<<16)|(lsw&0xFFFF);
};
// Bitwise rotate left a 32-bit integer by 1 bit
rol32 = function(n)
{
return (n>>>31)|(n<<1);
};
var len = blen*8;
// Append padding so length in bits is 448 mod 512
x[len>>5] |= 0x80 << (24-len%32);
// Append length
x[((len+64>>9)<<4)+15] = len;
var w = Array(80);
var k1 = 0x5A827999;
var k2 = 0x6ED9EBA1;
var k3 = 0x8F1BBCDC;
var k4 = 0xCA62C1D6;
var h0 = 0x67452301;
var h1 = 0xEFCDAB89;
var h2 = 0x98BADCFE;
var h3 = 0x10325476;
var h4 = 0xC3D2E1F0;
for(var i=0;i<x.length;i+=16) {
var j,t;
var a = h0;
var b = h1;
var c = h2;
var d = h3;
var e = h4;
for(j = 0;j<16;j++) {
w[j] = x[i+j];
t = add32x5(e,(a>>>27)|(a<<5),d^(b&(c^d)),w[j],k1);
e=d; d=c; c=(b>>>2)|(b<<30); b=a; a = t;
}
for(j=16;j<20;j++) {
w[j] = rol32(w[j-3]^w[j-8]^w[j-14]^w[j-16]);
t = add32x5(e,(a>>>27)|(a<<5),d^(b&(c^d)),w[j],k1);
e=d; d=c; c=(b>>>2)|(b<<30); b=a; a = t;
}
for(j=20;j<40;j++) {
w[j] = rol32(w[j-3]^w[j-8]^w[j-14]^w[j-16]);
t = add32x5(e,(a>>>27)|(a<<5),b^c^d,w[j],k2);
e=d; d=c; c=(b>>>2)|(b<<30); b=a; a = t;
}
for(j=40;j<60;j++) {
w[j] = rol32(w[j-3]^w[j-8]^w[j-14]^w[j-16]);
t = add32x5(e,(a>>>27)|(a<<5),(b&c)|(d&(b|c)),w[j],k3);
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|[img[Zephyr|http://i32.tinypic.com/mv2gw0.jpg]]|
| Zephyr <br> 1988/03/27 - 2008/03/29 |
|Zephy was a [[Korat|http://www.cfainc.org/breeds/profiles/korat.html]], which makes him special to start with. But even for a Korat he was intelligent, utterly fearless, loyal, affectionate, bonded to his chosen humans, and had eyes with a human regard. Grown men have been known to step back when confronted with his direct stare that seemed to see their very thoughts, combined with bulging muscles resembling a grizzly bear and sabertooth fangs. He is pictured here shortly before his 20^^th^^ birthday, long past his prime and well into George Burns territory. He is already missed.|
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[[More US warships head for middle east]]
[[Why amphibious assault ships?]]
[[Georgia Invasion/the BTC Pipeline]]
[[Georgia/South Ossetia]]
[[Vesuvius, terrorism, global warming and other rare events]]
[[Freedom or Choice]]
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As I write this there is a G8 meeting in Japan. Kept a good, long way from the meeting are protesters demanding more help for the poor, and probably against globalization. I'm glad they're there. I sympathize with such goals, but they will have no effect. So what can those of us living in supposedly democratic countries do to affect the choices made in such a forum?
One of the items being discussed at the meeting is the ACTA (~Anti-Counterfitting Trade Agreement.) The ACTA is an example of the type of end-run around any remaining democratic input to public policy being tried seemingly everywhere nowadays. It is not a legislative item in any sitting parliamentary body (e.g. Canadian Parliament, the US House of Representatives) and thus need not be subject to any public scrutiny or criticism. It is not a law. But it will, if signed, obligate its signatories to enact all sorts of, possibly draconian, laws, and when the laws to enact those obligations are presented to the public at a later date, it will be as a fait-accompli-- an already existing international treaty commitment that cannot be escaped. It is neither necessary nor proper, they'll say when asked, for the public to be involved in the negotiation of trade agreements. Large corporate interests, on the other hand, will be accounted for in the (formerly smoky) back room discussions.
Then, once the agreement is in place, there is no way for the public to stop the government from imposing policies against public interests. Voila! Government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the coporations. It's taken just over a century to go from the error of giving corporations the rights of living people, to restricting the rights of living people exclusively to corporations.
So how is it that many of the people in many western, 'democratic' countries still believe they're free? Freedom seems now to be broadly confused with choice. We can choose from hundreds of television channels. Hundreds of millions of web sites. Thousands of novels, newspapers, magazines. Variations of car models. Which mp3 player to get. Which crappy, fattening food to eat. This substitution of choice for freedom was constructed quite deliberately by 60 years of increasingly sophisticated marketing-- advertising based on a deep understanding of the way people actually make decisions. Psychology is used to ensure that people //feel// empowered, while becoming increasingly powerless. (see Adam Curtis' //[[Century of the Self|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self]]//)
Who set up this all-enveloping storm of manipulation? The giant corporations, increasingly interchangeable with government as people constantly pass through the revolving door between them, with huge advertising budgets. And whose is the significant influence in ensuring the enactment of laws bypassing public needs to fulfill their own?
As far as I can see, just about the only remaining hole in the system, the hole that still allows public discussion and analysis of the shifts of power and money is the internet. Serious news reporting is a thing of the past. Our university systems are looking more and more like industrial research parks. Our entertainment is mostly pap. And the drive continues to further tighten corporate control of all communication media. The rallying cry for these people might be "intellectual property" (a vile, deliberately confusing term), but just try to leak another [[Pentagon Papers|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_papers]] in the strictly controlled and monitored technological environment these guys would impose if they get their way. ACTA is just part of the enabling legal framework.
So it's crucial for the internet to stay out of control. This means open-source and open-standards software that can't be artificially restricted. And it means a global internet infrastructure that functions independently of the content it carries. It you can't post even crazy or radical ideas on a website //that remains accessible and findable to whoever is interested// then we could find ourselves reduced to passing mimeographed samizdat newsletters under the tables in dark bars.
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Update: OK, having more-or-less guessed my way to the truth, I've found the relevant info. The ~Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan pipeline was completed recently (2006). It is a high capacity pipeline (2^^nd^^ largest in the world) from Baku on the Caspian, to Ceyhan (Turkey) on the Mediterranean. This allowed shipment of oil out of the Caspian to the west (Europe), bypassing Russia.
This weakened Russian influence on Georgia and Azerbaijan, and at least partially removed an oil choke-point Russia had over Europe. What has now turned into a full-scale invasion of Georgia gives Russia control of this pipeline.
This is fun to work out, even if I don't really know what I'm doing. Meanwhile real people are dying or losing their homes and fleeing in terror in Georgia.
Update: This gets even better: the Kurds blew up a section of the BTC pipeline in Turkey on Aug 9.
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Russia is invading Georgia. Both sides have taken official positions defining themselves to be the injured party, so it's hard to guess the actual sequence of events at this point. Maybe we'll eventually know, maybe not. It doesn't really matter. The U.N. can't act because the stronger of the belligerants has a veto.
Personally my money is on Russia being the instigator (I say instigator rather than aggressor, because it's quite possible they suckered Georgia into the first open shot.) I say this because little Georgia is no match for Russia militarily, and I see the conflict serving Russian needs more than Georgian.
I blogged a little about the Balkan oil pipeline in my posting on [[Kosovo independence|Independent Kosovo]] back in March. This invasion looks like a strategic economic move to block the potential flow of oil from the Caspian Sea region to the west via the Mediterranean, on a route that bypasses Russia. Georgia and Azerbaijan form the essential bridge from the Caspian to the Black Sea.
South Ossetia is essentially a mirror image of Kosovo. In Kosovo a breakaway region of a Russian satellite is supported in its independence by the west to advance the ~Caspian-Mediterranean oil project. South Ossetia is a breakaway region of a western satellite (Georgia, which has even been talking about joining NATO), the support of which on Russia's part can block the ~Caspian-Mediterranean oil project. Symmetry. It's even elegant. This has got to be the thinking of that old KGB officer, Mr. Putin.
The danger is that if the U.S. really regards the pipeline project as a strategic interest, then it __can't__ let this go. The situation might eventually turn into yet another more-or-less stable simmering conflict, or it could escalate. Maybe Mr. Putin's thinking is that the U.S. is so broke and overextended already that it dare not do anything that would escalate this, thus forcing it into a humiliating acceptance, and resign itself to failure in a long-range strategic initiative. I wouldn't bet the farm on that, as they say. At the very least I'd think it quite possible that Georgia receive in the near future an anonymous shipment of shoulder launched anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles. And an opaquely worded earmark will be attached to some mundane bill in the senate covering the expenditure of a couple of hundred mil.
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Recently PBS played a 'documentary' called //"Illicit: The Dark Trade"// about black/grey market goods sold around the world. I noticed right at the beginning that a major sponsor was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The piece was made by the National Geographic Society. Well, even if I had had any doubt about the influence of sponsors on production choices by such icons of virtue as PBS and the National Geographic Society this would certainly have made things clear.
What this documentary (based on the book //"Illicit"// by Moisés Naím) does is calculatedly conflate several quite different economic, political, and social problems together in an attempt to paint fake Louis Vuitton handbags with the same outrage as fake car brakes, and poisonous fake medications, and the fear of terrorism.
The first type of crime is a trademark violation, the profit from which does not depend on deceiving the ultimate buyer. I mean, if you've bought a Philipe Patek watch that normally goes for $30,000 for $35 you are not being deceived or injured. If the watch keeps lousy time and falls apart in 4 months, you're not even going to be surprised.
If, as actually happened in Panama, you were to take a cough medicine in which the glycerine component had been replaced with falsely labelled dietheleneglycol (antifreeze-- deadly, but much cheaper than glycerine) you would consider this a more serious matter. And, of course, legally this is quite different from a trademark violation.
With the fake watch not only is the buyer not being deceived, but the $35 fake does not represent a lost sale. The resulting injury is to people who purchased the real thing and now see their watch as less exclusive, and to Phillipe Patek, whose brand value is diluted. With the antifreeze cough medicine the buyer is being deceived about something that will kill him if he uses it.
Personally I don't have much problem distinguishing between these cases. I can also just see a lobbyist-driven MP/Congressman using the heinous case to argue for draconian laws, which would then be applied to some dork selling counterfeit Harry Potter ~DVDs.
----
By the way, the title of this entry is a line from //"Casablanca"// in which Claude Rains' character, the chief of police, has been told by the head Nazi to shut down Rick's Cafe & cassino. He declares his shock and surprise at discoverign that gambling takes place in the establishment, for which he is shutting it down. As he finishes this announcement he is handed his winnings.
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An ethnic minority in Serbia were being persecuted. This is bad. Nato and the U.S. come to their defense in 1999. In 2008 Kosovo declares independence. The United States //immediately// recognizes the new state. Simple, right?
Why?
Other major players are pissed (e.g. Russia) The U.S. has already annoyed the Russians with its program to deploy anti-ballistic missiles in Poland. This makes it twice in a row that they've been willing to piss on Putin's boot. What's so important to the U.S. about Kosovo? It must be a strategic interest.
Oil. Kosovo doesn't have oil. But the Caspian Sea and central Asia do, and to get it all the way over to North America, you've first got to get it out of there. Let's look at the map. Oil in Azerbaijan and Georgia, bridging between the Caspian and Black seas. Northern Iraq through Turkey to the Black Sea.
Next step towards the Atlantic-- Bosphorus Straits. Narrow, very busy, right through the heart of Istanbul. Like trying to back a tanker truck across the 401 at rush hour. The oil needs to get through to the Adriatic & Mediterranean. A brief search for blogs & old news items-- we find the Balkan pipeline project, a pipeline from Burgas, Bulgaria on the Black Sea, through Macedonia, to Vlore on the Albanian Adriatic coast. A sheltered bay, a nice view, and large port. Bingo.
So Albania has to feel good about doing the Americans and Brits a favour. Who just declared independence in Kosovo? Ethnic Albanians.
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[[Alive in Baghdad|http://www.aliveinbaghdad.org/]]
[[Healing Iraq|http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/]]
[[The Real News Network|http://therealnews.com/web/index.php]]
[[Bruce Schneier|http://www.schneier.com/blog/]]
[[Xkcd|http://xkcd.com/]]
[[Michael Geist|http://www.michaelgeist.ca/]]
[[Cenk Uygur|http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/]]
[[Archerradio podcast|http://archerradio.com/]]
[[Adam Curry's Daily Source Code podcast|http://curry.podshow.com/]]
[[Andy Updegrove's Standards Blog|http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/]]
[[Groklaw|http://www.groklaw.net/]]
[[Jonathan Tasini|http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-tasini/]]
[[Democracy Now|http://www.democracynow.org/]]
@@[[Links]]@@
@@[[PrivacyAnimation|Privacy with that pizza?]]@@
----
[[More US warships head for middle east]]
[[Why amphibious assault ships?]]
----
[[Georgia Invasion/the BTC Pipeline]]
[[Georgia/South Ossetia]]
[[Vesuvius, terrorism, global warming and other rare events]]
[[Freedom or Choice]]
[[$15,000 damages for typo-squatting with malice]]
[[Sir, your cucumber is bent]]
[[The proposed new Canadian copyright law]]
[[Sword in the stone]]
[[Unwritten blogs earn interest]]
[[The CBC Doesn't Get It]]
[[Built on the ruins]]
[[Softdrink bombers-- the trial]]
[[OK, Hillary, let me get this straight]]
[[Bacchus Cyrus]]
[[Chinese counter-boycott]]
[[I am shocked, shocked to discover that gambling ...]]
[[Woo Hoo!]]
[[Attitudes toward the U.S.]]
[[Big drives]]
[[Selling an 'experience']]
[[Death in the Family]]
[[The edge of bigotry]]
[[Flu|"Flu" week]]
[[Admiral Fallon's Resignation]]
[[Media distortions]]
[[Spitzer's Romp]]
[[The Apple iPhone/iTouch SDK]]
[[Independent Kosovo]]
[[Columbia, Bush, and Cynicism]]
[[Archives]]
[[Our Girls]]
[[Obama, Hillary & NAFTA]]
[[Seymour Hersh Interview]]
[[Autumn view from Bowmont Park]]
[[Microsoft offers interoperability information-- yeah right]]
[[Bar Brawl]]
[[Marketing-- the new gospel]]
[[13 February 2008]]
[[12 February 2008]]
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At what point did marketing become the official American religion? PR has been important for decades, and political spin management is nothing new, but I've noticed in recent years (the last decade or so) the people doing the spinning, that is the deceivers, now seem to be themselves confusing their own spin with reality. So, for one example, a successful PR campaign to impugn the scientific evidence for global warming is apparently now equivalent to managing global warming. Or spinning the U.S. failures in Iraq and Afghanistan skillfully enough fixes the problems. Come to think of it, these are both examples of the Bush administration believing its own nonsense. Are they an exception, or the new norm?
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I don't regularly watch CNN, but I keep a tiny TV on the rasied part of the kitchen counter to watch while cooking or cleaning up, and while busy I'll often have on either BBC or CNN. On this occasion it was CNN. The program was one of those loud-mouth tv personalities complaining about the cost to the American economy of illegal immigrants. I'm sure some, at least, of his complaints were valid, but this is the one I heard.
A guest was discussing the cost of educating the children of illegal immigrants. This is the good line: "The cost of educating these kids is 20 to 30 % more __//per child//__" (emphasis his) Boy that sounds like a lot, doesn't it? But wait a second-- multiplication distributes over addition, so 30% more //per child// is exactly the same as 30% more overall. And then wait another second-- not //all// of the kids in school will be the offspring of illegal immigrants, surely, and probably not all of even that subset will have enough difficulty with English to require major remedial help.
Ok let's do some figuring. Let's be generous and grant a 30% rate of illegals (sounds high to me, but it is a guess.) Then let's further grant that 2/3 of these require significant ESL help, and that the remediation costs 30% more //per child//, just as he claimed. That would mean that 20% of the school population cost 30% more, giving a total cost increase of (ta-da!) 6%. If the numbers are more favourable the cost increase could be lower still: e.g. 10% illegals at 20% extra cost per child, giving 2% overall cost increase. Suddenly his dramatic description of the huge cost increase looks like it might be less than the margin of error on the budget calculation.
Was he lying? No. Was the impression he conveyed a true one? No.
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So they publish a whole lot of APIs (by the way, when did RPCs become API's?) and binary format information. Whoop-de-do. I've seen an article estimating about 30,000 pages of technical documents. Joel-on-software [[explains|http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html]] why these are so complex, and his explanation sounds right to me. Then he points out, also correctly, that this is clearly not a hobbyist project. But of course Microsoft has promised not to sue only for completely non-commercial development. So if I've understood this correctly, they will allow use of their precious formats and APIs //only// by entities incapable of doing so.
Perfect. But according to [[groklaw|http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080221184924826]] the E.U. court gets it, and is having none of this nonsense. Why is the EU court so much smarter than than the US courts, regulators, and government agencies?
As long as Microsoft gets to define interoperability, there will be none. Why? There's an economic theory that the value of a software company is precisely the cost of its customers switching away from its products. Microsoft has always acted consistently with this. Genuine interoperability would drastically decrease the cost of switching away from Microsoft. Therefore it must never happen.
The E.U. commission can demand interoperability and explain interoperability until the cows come home and it will do no good. As Upton Sinclair said "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
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I've just looked up the types of the major US naval ships that are heading to join the USS Abraham Lincoln (a CVN, i.e. a nuclear powered carrier) already in the area. The ships that got my attention were, the USS Theodore Roosevelt (another CVN), the USS Ronald Reagan (yet another CVN), the USS Iwo Jima and USS Peleliu-- both amphibious assault ships. This is all reported to be making Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait nervous. Yeah. It makes me nervous too. And all this was already under way //before// Iran just recently demonstrated its ability to launch a satellite into orbit-- an event that could be seen as justifying an attack. I mean, what exactly are the Iranians thinking? It's almost as though someone in Teheran called up the White House and asked "How can we help?"
If Cheney is really determined to attack Iran (and make the ~Bush-Cheney disaster complete) he's running out of time to start it. Perhaps Bush's legacy to the world may yet be a war that dwarfs Iraq, leaves the middle east in flames, and pushes oil to $500 a barrel.
A possible but rather fanciful sequence of events: war with Iran, Iranian-backed terrorist attack(s) within the US, marshal law declared, election postponed, internment camps open for business. Hey, maybe I should start writing conspiracy thrillers-- sort of a dark version of Tom Clancy.
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The U.S. Democractic primary 'race' bewteen Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is beginning to bear a disturbing resemblance to the famous [[Black Knight scene|http://youtube.com/watch?v=1ZsxqmBDFJ8]] in Monty Python's //Holy Grail//. He's won, Hillary-- enough already.
Even more disturbing is that one of her recent arguments to vote for her is a racist one. Now, I don't actually believe that Hillary Clinton is racist. In fact I'm quite confident she's not. Which makes all the more despicable her recent transparently racist appeal, which boils down to that //you// out there should vote for //her//, the //white// candidate, because //other// people are racist, and she'll need their votes to win. An alternate phrasing I've heard her use is equivalent to: you should vote for her because uneducated white people with menial jobs will vote for her.
This suggests to me that either her intense focus on her goal of running for president has induced a temporary monomaniacal state in which she's lost touch with reality, or she's completely indifferent to any damage she may be doing to her party or country in pursuit of her personal ambition. Some choice. Lunacy or sociopathy. Neither one should be a qualification for president. Despite precedent.
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I'm not sure when it first appeared, but it must be at least a week ago in Canada that a news story appeared, saying that a representative of the Obama campaign had contacted the Canadian diplomatic service with a reassurance that the free-trade agreement wouldn't really be repudiated and that this was just campaign retoric. The source of the story was vague, of course. Our diplomats promply denied it, saying they had received no such communication from any of the presidential candidates' organizations. They are pretty much the only people mentioned in this blog post that I __do__ believe.
At the time there was no mention in the U.S. media of this story. But now that Ohio, a declining industrial state many of whose workers blame the NAFTA for their misfortunes, is being contested, lo and behold up pops the story on CNN. In fact I turned CNN on for 15 or 20 minutes at breakfast Monday morning, and in that short timespan the story popped up maybe 3 times. They said it appeared on AP, with a claim that it was a Canadian diplomatic memo. Interesting. I didn't know that the Canadian diplomatic service CC'ed AP with their memos.
So the Canadian report pointed at an Obama campaign worker. The American report pointed at a Canadian diplomatic worker. The attributions were not mutually inconsistent, but I'm sure they're both wrong. I'm equally sure the story was generated to attack Obama.
One suggestion is that this was a plot by the Canadian Conservative party, whose leader, [[Steven Harper|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Harper]], no doubt favours the Republicans. Another was that it came from the Hillary camp. And finally, it could have come from one of the Republican camps.
So let's just spin the big wheel of accusation and see where it stops ... tucka tucka tucka tucka tucka...tucka.........tucka.................tucka..............................................tuck. Hillary it is.
UPDATE: I've now seen the [[Newsday.com article| http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-democrats-nafta,0,7542882.story]], and while there clearly was a meeting, it also seems just as clearly not as it has been characterized by the Clinton camp. The consular official's job is not merely to report the exact words he/she heard, but to report what he thought was meant, and what the tone and intent of the conversation was, //in his opinion//. Goolsbee's remarks strike me as intended to add precision to Obama's rhetoric, rather than to contradict it (i.e. that labour and environmental provisions must be strengthened, not that the treaty should be abrogated or renegotiated from scratch. Many Canadians would support this notion.)
Can you tell that I don't like Hillary?
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[IMG[Our Girls|http://i30.tinypic.com/ddlwfk.jpg]]
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This brilliant animation says it all. From Adam Curry's [[website|http://curry.podshow.com]].
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<param name="movie" value="http://www.aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf">
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<param name="quality" value="best">
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</embed></param></object></p>
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Type the text for 'SaveBackups'
It used to be that you'd buy a computer. Now software companies (cough ~~Microsoft~~ cough) want to sell you a computing //experience//. You used to buy recorded movies, but now Hollywood wants to sell you a movie viewing //experience//. You used to buy recordings on vinyl, then CD, that you could listen to as often as you liked. But now record companies would like to sell you a listening //experience//. iTunes is closer to the latter because you will eventually lose the recordings you purchase-- after all iPods don't last forever, you keep upgrading your computer every couple of years, and you can only transer your licenses a fixed number of times.
What's the difference between a physical product like a recording and an //experience//? The physical product can be kept for years, while an experience is over when the experience ends. It's also not controlled by you, nor is it entirely private, since you've got to request or purchase it each time, and it must be supplied or enabled by the real owner.
So whenever you hear a CEO or marketing executive begin talking about the //user experience// instead of a product to be sold, he's talking about taking something away from you. He means to charge you for something transient, under his company's control, instead of something you can keep and use under your own control.
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Truthout.org has a most interesting interview with Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker [[here|http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021408A.shtml]]. Mr. Hersh is always worth a listen, or a read. Now I have no idea whatsoever why Israel bombed a target in Syria a few months ago, and I have no doubt that the leaked rumours are spin. Maybe it //was// a warning to Iran. Maybe it //was// merely a test of the Russian designed air defense system which perhaps is of the same type used by Iran. If it was a U.S. inspired test of air defenses, perhaps George Bush will order an attack on Iran in his remaining time in office, as stupid as that would be. The facts are that I have neither reliable information on what's going on, nor any influence on the desicions taken by the principals involved. I am on the other side of the world and, whatever happens, I'll watch the result on the evening news reports with a beer in hand. And the next day I'll see the results on the stock markets, currency markets, gas pump, and supermarket.
What I noted from Mr. Hersh's comments, however, was that provocation seems to be in the eye of the beholder. Specifically, later in the interview he refers to Israel's stupid and ineffective bombing campaign and mini-invasion of Lebanon. He declares it to be unprovoked, but somehow regards it as a response to the kidnapping of a couple of soldiers by Hizbollah. I see. The Israeli's committed an unprovoked armed incursion into the sovereign territory of another country. 'Unprovoked' as in 'not in response to an armed incursion into their own territory'? How exactly did Hizbollah grab those soldiers? Did they report to the Hizbollah office in Beirut? They were apparently seized during an armed incursion into Israel's territory. You know-- the one that //wasn't// a provocation.
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On BBC World News this morning was an item reporting that the EU is considering relaxing its regulations governing the shape, size, and color of vegetables. Yes, that's right-- they regulate the shape and size of vegetables. But in a world of rapidly increasing fuel and food prices they're generously reconsidering how many millimeters of bend are allowed per 10 cm. of cuke.
I had a very Pythonesque moment considering the guy, or perhaps team, responsible for creating these regulations. Image the sense of satisfaction at the end of a long day debating, giving due consideration to all points of view, and ultimately elevating the human condition by deciding how thin a carrot is allowed to be, or how many millimeters of bend are permitted in a cucumber. "//Tomorrow we can begin working on the wording,//" he must have thought with satisfaction.
The original EU was built on the powerful pillars of France and Germany. The French have always loved bureaucracy, but have traditionally been flexible about enforcement, thus allowing life to continue. The Germans, on the other hand were strict about rules. So the EU took the worst of both-- French bureaucracy with German rigidity.
There's an old joke: In heaven you get British policemen, French cooks, German mechanics, Italian lovers, and the Swiss run the trains. In hell there are British cooks, German policemen, French mechanics, Swiss lovers, and the Italians run the trains.
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(Can I count the hackers trying to break in as readers?)
http://maupassant.yi.org/
I was listening to the BBC World news earlier this week when I caught a report on the trial in Britain of those guys accused of plotting to blow up multiple commercial airliners using liquid explosives made from components smuggled aboard in softdrink bottles. They showed a film clip prepared by a govenment lab. of a test detonation of just such a bomb. Very dramatic and impressive, of course. No doubt it impressed the jury, which was the point.
Now I haven't been able to reconfirm by online searches what she (the newsreader) said next, but I'm sure I heard it. She said that the explosion was the 40^^th^^ attempt. Yes, that's right, 40. So a fully equipped government laboratory with all the chemists, lab technicians, glassware, fume hoods, capable of conducting reactions with precise temperature control and timing, took __forty__ tries to get it right and produce a functional bomb? And the contention is that an untrained, or poorly trained, fanatic was planning to do this right in an airplane lavatory at 35,000 feet with stuff he smuggled through airport security? Really?
The plot was, and should be a crime, even if it might have failed, so these guys are no doubt going to be put away. I'll be glad of that. But it does make me wonder what all the panic was about that resulted in suspicion of even baby formula carried by someone travelling with a baby. It's all rather over the top if you ask me.
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So in his first term George Bush violated the constitution he'd sworn to uphold, lied to Congress and the American people (and everybody else) in order to start an illegal, unnecessary and stupid war. Hundreds of thousand (total on both sides) have been killed, and the U.S. is going broke to pay for it. For doing these things he was re-elected to a second term. But now we learn that Eliot Spitzer, Governor of New York, and former prosecutor who attacked fraud, environmental violators, and curruption in the financial heart of capitalism, has been discovered to have made an appointment with a hooker. The horror. Oh the humanity. Now we hear grave speculation on CNN that his career might be over. One disingenuous CNN announcer described this phoned-in appointment as //"being involved with a prostitution ring."// I almost choked.Did I tune in FOX by mistake? ... no it really was CNN.
Bill Clinton was impeached. For getting a blow job from an intern. Was he wrong? Sure, but outside of Hillary, who had a right to be royally pissed off, who cares. (Ok, for lying about a blow job. Picky, picky picky.)
I figure many Americans must be like 13 year olds, and view their politicians as parents (I shudder at the thought.) 13-year-olds know, in the abstract, that their parents have sex. At the first actual evidence that this is taking place, however, they thrill with horror and revulsion. They know, but somehow need to be able to pretend not to know.
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/***
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I was watching a program on the History channel talking about possible connections between the King Arthur legend and historical events of the 6^^th^^ century. A neat idea struck me about some features of the famous legend.
Now, the bronze age ended somewhere around 1200 or 1000 BCE, which makes it at least 1600 years before the Arthurian legends, but mystical tales and powerful metaphoric images can last a long time (viz: we are talking about mystical tales from the 6^^th^^ century, aren't we?) The image of a young man pulling a mighty, magical sword from a special stone-- not because he's stronger, but because he's cleverer or purer or something-- could be interpreted as the story of the extraction of iron from ore. The collective memory could have been preserved over a millennium in legends and tales of magic.
An iron sword surely would have seemed magical to people accustomed to the performance of bronze blades. A beaten iron sword will cut through a bronze one. But there's another element of the Arthur legend that fits-- the throwing of the sword into a lake. After repeatedly heating and working an iron sword the blade must be heated to a high temperature (which could be identified by the color) and plunged into water. The process is called quenching. So the story elements surrounding Excalibur could be symbolic echoes of the technology involved in producing an iron sword.
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So, some people, at least, are singing the praises of the new SDK (software development kit) which allows independent developers to produce new iPhone applications. Apparently it's pretty and easy to use, with drag-and-drop controls, an emulator for testing & debugging etc. Two things, however, stopped me in my tracks. From [[Apple's press release|http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/03/06iphone.html]] and noted in [[Andy Updegrove's blog|http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080307054430261]], first all applications must be approved by Apple. That's a problem. If Apple (read Steve Jobs) doesn't like what you've done or how you've done it they can veto distribution. So they can effectively tell you exactly what to write, how, and what it must look like. Not only is this a stopper as a developer, but it essentially means they get to edit your business plan if you're making a for-profit application. What this means to me is that you, as a developer, get to take on the risk and expense of developing an application that Apple thinks is a good idea, and then takes 30% of. Zero risk to Apple. Zero cost to Apple (other than running the website.) If it wins, Apple wins. If it loses you lose. Gee that's too bad. Better luck next time, guy. Call us when you've got more money to spend.
The second stopper for me was the statement that applications //"will be available exclusively through the App Store."// Now on my first reading of this I took this to mean that other versions would not be allowed, which would forbid porting applications from other platforms (e.g. stripped down versions of, say, Firefox or Opera), but on second reading perhaps this is not what is meant. It could also be read to mean that the iPhone __//version//__ of an application could only be distributed via the Apple application store. If my first reading were correct anybody would be crazy to begin a development project, but even with the second reading Apple (Jobs) clearly intends to keep total control in its (his) own hands. However, since exclusive distribution of the iPhone version essentially flows already from the veto power, this provision is either redundant, or must support my first extreme reading of it. So either way this is not an open ecosystem of the kind that spawns radical innovations.
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This has been bothering me. There I am, driving home from an errand, when I turn the radio on. I listen to the CBC. Wow, somebody over 50 listens to the CBC, stop the presses. But not quite. I //__never__// turn on the radio any more-- neither in the kitchen or the office, which were the places I used to listen. Never. But in the car it's a different story; I want something to listen to without bad music and constant advertising.
Yes, so driving home I turn on the CBC, and wonder of wonders there's an interview going on with somebody interesting. It takes me a couple of minutes to decide it's Germaine Greer flogging a new book. But I've joined in mid-interview, and have to leave it in a few minutes. On return to my home office I //immediately// google for the show. Oh goody, there's a podcast. <click> ... the podcast postings only go up to last week. Then it dawns on me that the CBC really doesn't understand that the radio show is just __promotion for the podcast__. There are only two ways you'll ever listen to the whole interview on radio: (1) you have the radio on in the background all day-- please, no '50s housewives here, or (2) you check the web site well in advance and plan your week around the CBC radio schedule-- come on, get real. So if I __ever__ listen to a whole CBC radio show it will only be as a podcast. That makes the brief incidental radio exposures merely promotional teasers.
If I have to wait a week for the podcast to appear online, we're back to impossible option (2). I'll never do it because by next week //I'll have forgotten all about it//. I heard the teaser, went to look for the podcast; it's not there-- game over.
I'm sure somebody at the CBC has had the thought, some time in the last 7 years or so, that //"... at least we'll never lose our loyal listeners over 50-- they'll never feel comfortable enough on the internet to abandon the radio"// Bzzzzzzzzt-- wrong, next contestant.
PS. Ok, they do have RSS feeds. I'm already spending too much time keeping up with my RSS feeds. I've taken to pruning feeds whenever my list starts to require scrolling because it no longer fits onto a full screen. Hmm, now that I think about it, I'm ragging on the CBC, but. perhaps if I were 30 years younger I would no longer think to turn on the radio. I would probably have only subscribed to the podcast, and not even have known of the existence of the show until it came up on the RSS feed and downloaded into my mp3 player next week. It remains true that I used to listen to the CBC on the radio at home and now I don't. If only [[Peter Gzowski|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Gzowski]] was still there ...
Later (2008/06/03): The program I was frustrated not to find yesterday showed up in my feed this morning. This is turning into an [[Emily Litella|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Litella]] moment.
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The difference in treatment by the media between loony right religious supporters of McCain, and those of Obama has been noted by [[Glenn Greenwald|http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/28/hagee/index.html]] and [[Cenk Uygur|http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/]], and no doubt others I haven't read.
The point is that McCain was not asked to apologize reject, condemn and villify John Hagee. [[Here's Hagee|http://youtube.com/watch?v=mOsYSwNrlBo]] on CNN. Rev. Hagee toned it down for his mini-interview in the New York Times magazine. He probably toned it down a bit for the CNN/Beck interview too. If so it must be impressive indeed to see him at uninhibited full-bore at his own church. This guy is not only loony, but clearly a bigot.
Meanwhile Barack Obama has been asked to explain and denounce comments not just from Jeremiah Wright, but also from Harry Belafonte, who referred to Homeland Security as the new Gestapo. Funny, they didn't ask him to also explain the comments of [[Naomi Wolf|http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc]], which were in the same vein. As far as I know Mr. Obama has no more relationship to Harry Belafonte than to Naomi Wolf.
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Rev. Hagee says some extreme things about Muslims. Rev. Wright about Americans and Israelis. When exactly does legitimate commentary edge into racism? If I call racism on Rev. Hagee with respect to Muslims, and Rev. Wright with respect to Israelis, where is the boundary between recognizing racism, and using accusations of racism to silence legitimate criticism?
I like the 3D test of Natan Sharansky, the writer and former Israeli cabinet minister. His 3 'D's are demonization, double-standards, and delegitimation. That is, if the critical comments in question demonize their target, apply harsher standards to them than to others behaving similarly or worse, and deny the legitimacy of the target entity, then they have crossed the line into bigotry and hatred. The test is, perhaps, not perfect, but it is nice to have a handy set of criteria at hand to test one's intuition against.
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Yesterday (i.e. Thursday, 2008/06/13) the Canadian minister of industry Jim Prentice (ptui, I spit on the ground) introduced his new copyright bill. That doesn't mean it's law yet-- it has to pass two more readings in parliament, then get through the senate before it can be proclaimed. It's been described as the //Canadian DMCA//, but lemme tell ya, it's even worse than the American DMCA. (For detail on this, see [[Cory Doctorow's comments|http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/12/canadian-dmca-is-wor.html]] and those of [[Michael Geist|http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3027/135/]].)
Here's one of the weird consequences of this bill. Suppose you're a teenager who wants to get the latest (copy-protected) CD from his favourite group. Assuming you can't get it via iTunes, these are your options, in order of __increasing risk__:
|(1) shoplift the CD from a local record store, if there are any left|
|(2) download the CD from an illegal download site|
|(3) buy the actual CD, and rip it to your mp3 player|
Yup, you heard me right:, __buying the CD and ripping it to your mp3 player would have the highest penalty of the three options.__
Canadian law-- written by Hollywood lobbyists, the US Trade Representative, and possibly Lewis Carroll.
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I've noticed that, if I don't write a blog entry, my expectations of how much I think I have to do on the next blog entry grows with time. So the longer I wait, the more onerous the task becomes, and so I don't do it //now//, but put it off until later. This thinking can be applied to any now.
I figure the solution is to lower effort to produce a new blog entry. To accomplish this I plan to try two things: First I'm going to stop manually editing the automatically produced RSS feed to eliminate update items for uninteresting things like the main menu and //Default Tiddlers//. I hope that any subscribed readers don't mind to much getting (and ignoring) feed items fo