Friday May 31, 2002
Resounding Ignorance
Apparently there have been a few people who have discounted Der Spiegel's report on Bush's "Do you have blacks, too?" question to the Brazilian President Henrique Cardoso.
Well, here's the confirmation, from the Brazilian website estadao.com.br. Titled "Resounding ignorance", it details the same scene as described in Der Spiegel.
("Vocês têm pretos, também?") Diante da enormidade da dúvida, FHC ficou por um instante perplexo, mas, antes que pudesse responder, a secretária de Segurança Nacional, Condoleezza Rice, interveio: "Presidente, o Brasil talvez tenha mais pretos que os Estados Unidos; ele é em geral considerado como o país que tem mais negros no mundo, fora do continente africano"...
Another example of Wired proving that it's about as relevant to the Internet world as "Crochet!".
Wired's latest article on Mozilla interviews.... Guess who?... Jamie Zawinski! And Jeffrey Zeldman! Jamie has his hyperbole engine on full steam, comparing AOL to Union Carbide and Phillip Morris; Zeldman, still around and pontificating despite the thankful disappearance of the Web Standards Project, can only drum up "it's good, it'll provide a good experience."
Thursday May 30, 2002
I saw that bloated gasbag Willaim Bennett on CNN this morning, up against Noam Chomsky. Bennett is a living embodiment of the miserable Pseudeo-Christian philosophy that is at the heart of today's right wing in America. Intolerant, contemptuous, thin-skinned, authoritarian, and wrong.
Tuesday May 28, 2002
Anthony Elgindy apparently had a rather "flamboyant" life on the Internet and off, shorting stocks, "battling securities fraud", and, oh, getting imprisoned for felony mail fraud.
Monday May 27, 2002
From Eschaton: "If the last 5000 outrageously offensively stupid things that have tumbled out of Bush's mouth haven't pissed you off, shouldn't this one?
"Bush was with Condi Rice and the Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Bush asks the president, 'do you have Blacks too?'"
This story courtesy of the German press, not the American press, because our press is full of whores.
Sunday May 26, 2002
I found a hit on Anthony Elgindy (stock trader nabbed with two FBI agents for extortion and fraud) at Slashdot, of all places. Mr. Elgindy cashed out his children's $300,000 trust fund on September 10th, stating to his broker that the market would drop to 3,000.
Damning new poll results -- practically 50% believe that Bush himself is in some way responsible for not preventing September 11th attacks. This is a Time/CNN poll, but you won't find news of this on the Time or CNN websites. This is surprising, considering CNN played over-and-over the results of their non-scientific online poll which showed that 71% said that the pre-September 11th accusations were simply political posturing.
Sounds like someone was lying about Cuban bioterror capabilities.
Saturday May 25, 2002
You may have seen my link to the story of the two FBI agents accused of using police information and information from FBI databases to engage in stock fraud and extortion. There was a stock trader, Anthony Elgindy, arrested with the two FBI agents. Now it turns out that Mr. Elgindy liquidated his children's trust account on September 10th, predicting, to his broker, that "the market would drop to 3,000."
This leads to a few simple questions. Did Mr. Elgindy get information in advance about September 11th? If so, did he get the information from the same men in the FBI who were colluding with him? If not, what was his reason for liquidating $300,000 in assets on September 10th? And what was his reasoning behind the comment that the stock market would drop below 3,000?
Another interesting note on this topic. Newsweek is reporting that "On Sept. 10... a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns" (end of 18th paragraph).
Anita Roddick calls John Malkovich a "vomitous worm" for his threats of physical violence against two people.
Because of this, she is banned from Google's AdWords program.
Friday May 24, 2002
"'A sniff of politics,' Bush complains? Lord, let's hope so. All this genuflecting before the monarch's throne is making Americans stupid. "
Thursday May 23, 2002
The Washington Times can't escape it's Moonie underpinnings.
On the heels of talk about giving the FBI and CIA more power to spy on the American public comes this story from the AP about two FBI agents who used information in FBI databases to engage in stock fraud and extortion.
Wednesday May 22, 2002
White House Acknowledges More Contacts with Enron.
Lots of crazy news over at MediaWhores today, including McCain's call for an independent probe into pre-September 11th doings in the Bush administration, and Dick Cheney's shady dealings at Halliburton, which "quite possibly violated securities accounting ethics and laws."
After the news regarding Cuba producing bio-terror weapons, it turns out that it must not have been that big a deal after all. The same department that put out that statement has just released a 177 page overview of global terrorism, in which Cuba gets only 47 lines, and no mention of a bio-terror threat.
''I do not know who publishes that particular document,'' Reich said moments later when asked about the report, which Dorgan held in his hand.
''It's your department that publishes it,'' Dorgan said. "This is a State Department publication, and we just received it on Capitol Hill.''
"I mean, I was trying to get out of harm's way," Bush told German television today.
"We were concerned about threats on the president. We were worried about future attacks, and there's a lot of belief that Flight 93 was headed to the White House," Bush added, referring to himself in the third person.
Get Your War On, Page 11.
And what's up with "#1 Instant Messenger"? It sounds like a bad foreign language translation.
Since Instant Messenger is the name of the app itself and not the actual generic name for apps of this sort, is "#1 Instant Messenger" to be compared to a "#2 Instant Messenger"?
Netscape 7. Rating: Craptastic
Netscape 7 PR1 proves that they still don't get it. Between Mozilla and Netscape 7, which would you choose? "Yes sir, I'd like that sandwich with an extra layer of shit please! The thicker the better!"
Between registration nonsense that really yields no benefits whatsoever, extra BS for crap like Net2Phone, and all the little crap-tastic extras in this Preview Release, I say "No thanks! I'll make mine Mozilla."
Some plans to make Netscape not suck:
1) Get rid of the the registration within the browser. Allow people to register on the website. Give them content that's useful. Make them pay for content that's *really* useful or compelling.
2) Get rid of all extras and garbage that isn't explicitly part of the browser. Allow people to add on after they've installed, if they want. You're probably making very little revenue from these tie-ins, if any. Why force them on the people?
3) Spend some time learning to critically evaluate your own ideas. Not everything that comes out of your head is valuable or useful. With MozillaZine, I had to be willing to send to the dustbin of history some of my more idiotic ideas. Integration of AIM in the Netscape browser is another idea worthy of a drag to the Recycle Bin.
4) Think first about what the people who would be first adopters of your browser would like. Things that would make them recommend your application to others. Netscape isn't in a position anymore where they can just put out anything and expect people to accept it. You need to try to nurture and invigorate a grassroots base of users - and you do that by listening to them and providing them with services that are useful to them. You don't do it by hiding or deleting features that would be useful. So, put the ability to disable pop-up ads back into the prefs.
5) Focus on the things that make your browser stand out from the rest. Tabbed browsing is a boon, and you have a jump on IE with this feature. Promote the hell out of it. IE will have it next release, I'm sure, so why not get some traction from it while you can?
This is only Preview Release 1 -- there's still time to fix your most egregious mistakes. And there's still time for a quick and honest re-evaluation of your goals. You can turn it around quickly if you have the will. You can fail just as fast if you follow your present course.
Tuesday May 21, 2002
Greg Palast, who is writing about the Florida election debacle in an upcoming book, shares a little story about Katherine Harris in Salon's Table Talk. Saw this at Eschaton
Laura Bush: "The hymen is a deeply private and shameful thing which should be saved until marriage -- and reconstructed after childbirth." Whitehouse.org
Hyatt makes mention of Neleh of Survivor saying "Oh my heck" quite often during the course of the series. Not often enough for me to realize that she was saying "Oh my heck" and not "Oh my hat".
How we almost killed Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.
Consortium News: The Training Wheel President
Will there ever be a time when the people hold this administration accountable for anything?
There are some things about this Guardian Unlimited article on weblogs that are completely wrong. I hope I get some time to write about this soon...
An editorial from the NYT: "The idea that the events of Sept. 11, and the actions that preceded and followed that terrible day, are off-limits to political debate is profoundly wrong. But the focus should not be on the simplistic and misleading accusation that President Bush was warned about the attacks early last August and did nothing in response. Nor should a serious discussion of the Bush administration's conduct be cut off every time a vague new warning is issued about another possible attack. These warnings, which have already lost much of their power to command public attention, will become meaningless if they are perceived merely to be a way of changing the subject."
The FBI "Phoenix memo", the "training at flight schools" memo, went to the top counter-terrorism agent at the NY office, John O'Neill, according to the NYTimes today.
Of course, what they don't say is that after numerous rebuffings, Mr. O'Neill retired in disgust over coddling of the Saudis and Taliban. (Top story today at MWO)
"In a stunning revelation, the New York Times has reported that among the two FBI office counterterrorism chiefs who received the now famously neglected Phoenix memorandum last July was none other than John O'Neill -- then the top counterterrorist officer in the FBI's New York City's office, and the FBI's leading expert on Osama bin Laden."
"The last straw came in July 2001, when (as he told the French authors Guillaume Dasquié and Jean-Charles Brisard in an interview), O'Neill became fully aware that the Bush administration, anxious over negotiations for a Caspian Sea oil pipe line, had decided to back off of tracking bin Laden and opposing the Taliban, lest it risk alienating powerful Saudi families."
Eric Alterman now has his own blog at MSNBC.
Monday May 20, 2002
Cracks in the visage? Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Business Week: Five Questions Bush Must Answer.
Sunday May 19, 2002
"...it does matter who is in charge, what they did to prevent it, and how they plan to prevent the next one.
And now can we finally start talking about that?
Now can we acknowledge that... Ashcroft is completely incompetent?
Now can we acknowledge that Louis Freeh left the FBI in shambles while remaining in power due to his obsession with the presidential member?
Now can we acknowledge that the USA Patriot Act, with its name that could not possibly be any more Orwellian, is a horribly frightening piece of legislation which has nothing to do with fighting Terra?
Now can we ask just what it is we're planning to do in Afghanistan?" - from Eschaton
What's important is finding the weak points and fixing them, and if that means firing a few incompetents, it should happen. And there are plenty. I think it's telling that no one has been fired due to the intelligence failures of September 11th. I think it points to a lack of acceptance of accountability all around, and I think that it proves that these agencies will not get the appropriate review that is required.
Howard Fineman, the President's lapdog from Newsweek, finally has some criticism of the President.
Apparently Bush is having a hard time keeping it all within the parameters. "But the Bush administration nevertheless found itself in a nightmarish if familiar Washington predicament, forced to issue statements without knowing what leaks might immediately undercut them." Meaning, they don't know which lies that they spread would get exposed immediately.
Again, the White House has a problem, so Tim Russert is going to give Cheney a full hour to bloviate.
Saturday May 18, 2002
Joshua Micah Marshall:
"This is a very, very, very bad situation. With last week's revelations about possible early hints of a terrorist attack, and the ferocious response from the White House to calls for an investigation, there's one thing that would be extremely convenient right now for the White House: some pointed reminder of how close we might be to another terrorist attack, and that it's no time to be second-guessing the President, or resorting to the conventional political expedient of a congressional investigation.
And, voila ... Here it is. "
"Are the Democrats 'playing politics'? Maybe. But political oppositions do that. Get used to it. The Republicans definitely did it in spades under Clinton. "
Try this again. Thomas Friedman: " No, I don't blame President Bush at all for his failure to imagine evil. I blame him for something much worse: his failure to imagine good."
Damn - blogger lost some posts.
Although they insisted they did, the Bush administration did not put out any warnings to the airlines of an imminent hijacking threat.
"American Airlines and United Airlines, which each lost two planes in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said Thursday they were never warned of a specific hijacking threat, though the White House was told in August that Osama bin Laden's terrorists might hijack U.S. planes."
This report, which was done with some contribution from the AP, seems to contradict this other report from the AP.
Bush is still running from 9/11. Joan Walsh, the author of that piece, rips apart Andrew Sullivan's "limp rebuttal".
"The White House needs to drop the script and put the president in front of the press corps. And it needs to cooperate with congressional leaders who have called for full and independent inquiries. Such investigations would not, as Ari Fleischer suggested this week, be a waste of taxpayers' money. In fact, this is a primary reason we pay the government our taxes -- to protect us, and when it does not, to find out why."
I'm sorry, but these "no criticism of the administration in a time of war" idiots like Pat Caddell and Dick Cheney need to explain how criticism of the Bush Administration is going to make some hard-scrabble Afghanis or Saudis determine that America has become so weakened by infighting that they can somehow take advantage of it. Al Qaeda took advantage of us when there was no "time of war" (nor real criticism for that matter). Our "state of alert" is already a joke -- it's not more so because someone questions the integrity or honesty of the Bush administration.
More dissembling from Ari Fleischer and Condoleeza Rice.
Friday May 17, 2002
Remarkable news about the Venezuelan coup attempt. And no, this hasn't been reported in the American newsmedia. It's amazing what's been uncovered over the past few years by this one intrepid reporter. See more of Greg Palast's investigative reporting here.
Today really set the stage for the rest of Bush's term. We found out from his remarks, and from the remarks of Ari Fleischer (and Dick Cheney the day before) just what kind of manipulative, vicious, egomaniacal, smug, self-righteous rat-bastards they are. Today was a turning point for America, not because of what Bush may or may not have known about September 11th, but because their horrifying display made sparkling clear the contempt that they hold for the American people and the truth, and the extent that they will go to avoid even the slightest amount of accountability.
Great questions to ask the administration, if the media only had a brain.
Apparently, CNN, in their effort to whitewash the Bush administration, has discussed the results of their online "non-scientific" poll an inordinate amount of times. Got this from one of my new favorite sites, Eschaton.
David Corn of the Nation on the latest Bush dust-up. An interesting insight, and one that will never get an ounce of play in the press:
"Later in the day, Rice, up against the White House reporters, repeatedly depicted the CIA briefing as an unexceptional act during which Bush was merely told that bin Laden could be interested in hijacking. It's common sense that a terrorist might be considering a hijacking, she added. But CIA daily briefings are supposed to include noteworthy material for the President, not obvious, generalized information. Let's hope the CIA is not wasting the President's time by reminding him terrorists sometimes hijack airplanes. "
Assessment of the daily papers' headlines, and their op-eds, which are essentially letting Bush off the hook. But according to the same article, the public isn't as forgiving (the poll on the right side of the page).
Also, there is word of more damaging news to be revealed (14th paragraph), according to the Washington Post.
And Cheney is out with the predictable threats. These people have no shame.
The mainstream press is turning the Bush "coverup" as a huge non-event, and are doing everything in their effort to spin it so Bush deserves no culpability.
If the administration was pulling Ashcroft off of commercial flights because of a threat-assessment, the information that they used in making that threat assessment should have been available to the public, or at least to the airlines and the pilots. But according to many airline workers, they had no indication of any potential threat. I think we need to see the Bush administration CIA briefings over the months leading up to September 11th if we're ever to know what they really knew.
Thursday May 16, 2002
C3PO = Mechanical Jar-Jar?
One positive aspect of blogging: coming across new sites through your referrer logs. Snowdeal.org > parallax has a link to my blog, but it also has an interesting link regarding another person that John Malkovich wants to shoot.
Bush was briefed of hijacking threat. That could explain his lack of surprise when he heard about the first plane crashing into the WTC.
Although we never heard about it in the mainstream American press, apparently Echelon was giving warning of kamikaze airplane attacks months before September 11th.
I heard mention of William Safire calling the ups and downs of energy prices "as natural as breathing". Wanting to find the exact quote, I did a Google search on "natural as breathing Safire stock market" ( i used "stock market" by accident instead of "energy prices" ) and came across Eschaton, a nicely partisan blog.
From that site, I read a little news about Pim Fortuyn, the assassinated politician from the Netherlands ( I recently wrote about Mr. Fortuyn's assassination as it relates to weblog information dissemination ). In addition to being a far right winger (or a radical leftist, depending on which blog you read), it appears that he was also an apologist for pedophiles. Lovely.
How much does public personality have an effect on the stock market? Well, apparently Maria Bartiromo has a little more sway than maybe even she realized.
I'm not a player in stocks -- I personally find them amoral -- but I can definitely see why Joey Ramone had the hots for Maria. (Check out that last link in Moz, if only to watch the page reflow as it comes in!)
I caught this link off of Surfmind.com's Mozilla section, written by Andy Edmonds of MozGest ( mouse gesture navigation ) fame. It's just a comment about Mozilla's DHTML speed increases (thanks to Waterson, DBaron, RJessup, et al ). But in the comment, the writer mentions trying two links in an experimental build from ftp.mozilla.org. The improvements he mentions, however, have been checked into the main trunk, so don't bother with the experimental build. Give those links a whirl in one of the latest trunk dailies. You'll be pleasantly surprised!
Just saw the new Matrix Reloaded teaser trailer. If I had known that it was one of the trailers at the Attack of the Clones showing, I would have actually stood in line for 12 hours. But the hi-res Quicktime version is beautiful, and I could step through it frame by frame. The brothers Wachowski are sticking with the same visual style for the film, which is good; if it's not broke, don't fix it.
Wednesday May 15, 2002
Paul Krugman reads MediaWhoresOnline too. And he shoots down this "partisanship study" and its claims about his partisanship. His "hypothetical" scenario is hilarious.
Of course, Andrew Sullivan finds nothing wrong with using September 11 to raise cash for the Republicans. Oh, and then he takes the opportunity to try to insult Al Gore.
Maybe the Republicans should put out their own line of Sept. 11th trading cards. Or maybe September 11th handguns. $150 gets you a handgun with George Bush's face encrusted in mother-of-pearl on the handle.
Tuesday May 14, 2002
Why is it that conservatives are so willing [see Partisan Pundits] to latch onto pseudo-science whenever it suits them, but can so willingly dismiss real scientific research whenever it doesn't suit them?
MediaWhoresOnline rips the site of this "partisanship study".
Monday May 13, 2002
Outpourings of Internet hate. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. It's coming from every direction -- from left and right, north and south. Hate is welling in our population, behind closed doors, in the comfort of our homes. From a UCLA professor. The Wall Street Journal. John Malkovich.
Changing winds: Arafat agrees to Israel's right to exist, while the Likud party agrees to Palestinian's right to nothing. What's scary is that both these right-wing terrorists are being challenged by the further right. Sharon and Arafat are bad enough, but I think a Netanyahu/Hamas scene would be much much worse.
Explain why people get paid (or even asked) to write opinion like this.
Bush's horrifying "trifecta" joke that he's used to justify his deficit spending turns out to be a lie in addition to being utterly repugnant.
Sunday May 12, 2002
Here's an interesting take on the Internet's polarizing quality, from Thomas Friedman. He talks firsthand how peoples around the world are already starting to mistake the Internet for a mystic truth-telling machine.
Mr. Friedman writes, "What's frightening him, he added, is that there is an insidious digital divide in Jogjakarta: 'Internet users are only 5 percent of the population — but these 5 percent spread rumors to everyone else. They say, `He got it from the Internet.' They think it's the Bible.'"
And here, Mr. Friedman gets at something I discussed previously: "Worse, just when you might have thought you were all alone with your extreme views, the Internet puts you together with a community of people from around the world who hate all the things and people you do. And you can scrap the BBC and just get your news from those Web sites that reinforce your own stereotypes."
Mr. Friedman was talking about ideology trumping truth-searching, on an Internet-wide scale.
My specific complaint, about weblogs-as-truth-clarifiers, is that because they are fundamentally ideological tracts they are a hindrance to the dissemination or clarification of ideas. And their immediacy and their closeness to situations makes them even less reliable as mechanisms for information sharing.
Mr. Friedman ends with the dire warning, "Let's hope it's not too late." It's already waaaay too late. The Internet will be the main force for balkanization of the next century. I believe that the American electorate is already more polarized than any time in its recent history (in spite of September 11th). In countries like Indonesia, which Mr. Friedman describes in his article, the effects of the Internet on an uneducated populous are already taking their toll. Education surely could be a tonic for the spread of hate over the world. But education can't even save America from the effects of the Internet's powers for polarization. What makes us think that it will save anyone else?
Friday May 10, 2002
I just love how Carville & Begala have been repeatedly and forcefully plugging MediaWhoresOnline.com.
I think that the idea of weblogs as an democratizing extension of news gathering/reporting that has been espoused by some recently is fallacious and dangerous.
Inherent Bias of Weblogs
Weblogs are meme-replicating services that do their job very well. They take a select audience, feed them information that, to a matter of degree, fits within their spectrum of thinking, and narrow and solidify that spectrum over time, aiding in the replicating of further memes that fall within that same narrow ideological band. Weblogs also provide for strengthening of these memes by dint of easy replication and networking amongst like-minded individuals.
Take Adam Curry's recent weblog about Pim Fortuyn's assassination, which recently got a play on Scripting.com. It doesn't purport to be ideologically neutral in any way, and instead has the intent of forcing a meme conflicting with many of the newspaper accounts of Mr. Fortuyn's politics. But it turns out that there's another view to the story. The fact that Scripting.com has linked to both of these memes does not in any way reinforce the notion that, in Dave Winer's words, they "provide a framework for the truth." Quite the contrary. They're simply conflicting ideas competing for space. And the problem is that because neither story had any pretense of ideological neutrality, the truth cannot be easily plumbed from either of these sources.
Instead, what Dave, Lance, and Adam have done has set up a rather limited context for debate -- a debate that many people will not ponder in any way past these two articles that have been presented. Since each competing idea is polarized in some way, one (or both) of the memes will be discarded, and that will be that. Weblogs aren't peer-reviewed journals, posts aren't scientific treatises, and blog readers aren't scientists. We shouldn't presuppose that the intent of either writer or reader is to somehow clear a concept of bias.
Polarization
But the fact of the matter is that this particular example I've described above is actually not as commonplace as one supposes. Most weblogs don't link to two competing arguments. Instead, they provide links to the ideas that are most agreeable to the blogger himself. And if they do provide contrary opinions, because link-throughs are so rarely followed we're usually left at the mercy of the bloggers opinion. How much do we trust them as a supplier of memes? If we trust them completely, we might not even follow the links at all, but accede to the opinions of the blogger himself. If we believe the blogger untrustworthy (we're looking solely at his blog for his contrary opinion), we will probably not follow through his links, but instead look for deeper links on the same topic from other bloggers and websites that more fit out personal ideology. This behavior is not simply a matter of ideology trumping the search for truth. With the preponderance of information now assaulting us, clicking through and absorbing ideas that are contrary to our own is a road seldom taken (even by scientists). Contrary ideas find themselves within an even more inhospitable environment within the realm of weblogs.
The point I'm attempting to make is that there are so many natural impediments to finding the truth through blogging that any possible benefits are far outweighed by the polarizing characteristics that are at blogging's very foundation. To the extent that weblogs allow contrary memes to compete for mindspace, their levelling of the ideological playing field on which memes compete is still superceded by the fact that personal bias infuses most every iota of a weblog's text. There is no effort towards neutrality - in fact, that's contrary to the nature of a weblog. Even if the blogger takes a stab at neutrality, it's lost by the fact that there is no editorial board which is attempting to give balance to the ideas and links that appear on his weblog. They appear because they are interesting to that particular blogger, and he feels they may be of some interest to his readers. The natural selection process of meme replication has already taken hold before the reader has even visited the site.
One could make the argument that newspapers/TV/radio are also not free from this ideological bias. Over the past 20 years, the press has become more and more ideologically divided as journalists freed themselves of the need for attempted ideological neutrality in favor of fame/ego/money/advancement. But I don't believe that weblogs are a tonic that will free us of an ever-more-corrupt media. Instead, I think they're a more insidious and infectious means of polarization and meme replication.
I'm not in any way saying that weblogs by themselves are something to be shunned. I enjoy writing in my weblog, and I also enjoy using it for some of the very purposes that I described above. But I believe that we shouldn't hold weblogs up as icons of democratization or information clarification. Doing so will only have the effect of fooling us into believing that we're getting closer to the truth, when in fact the truth may be slipping further away.
Smoking Fat Boy. Why exactly is Secretary of the Army Tom White still in office?
Thursday May 09, 2002
Usability article at Washington Post.com. A scientist is quoted as saying, "Hollywood and the image of HAL gave us this dream, this hope, this vision, but the reality is quite different."
Unfortunately, I think he is exactly wrong about this. The vision that Kubrick set up in 2001 is probably a very sensible way to interface with computers in a setting where available space is micro-managed down to the millimeter, and redundant systems are a necessity. Keyboard and mouse interfaces are fine, but they're mechanical and very susceptible to hardware errors. They also take up valuable real estate. Redundant microphones planted throughout a ship would be much less susceptible to hardware error and would also take up very little real-estate, saving space for either more redundancy on the back-end, or for other systems which may have been crowded out by bulky interfaces.
Of course, he has a point in regards to speech in a normal desktop setting. Our speech is a unique communication form developed between humans over thousands of years. Our brains have been highly tuned and nuanced to support and understand the many shortcuts and short-circuits that a grammar and culture imposes on vocal communications. In this regard, even though speech is a very natural tool for conveying ideas, its naturalness works against it when trying to shoehorn it into a method of interfacing with computers. That's why I think that keyboards/mice are actually a much more appropriate method of computer input in general -- the mouse the more powerful of the two, because it was specifically designed to help us interface in a specific way with the computer. The keyboard, however, has a past legacy which makes it difficult to adapt it radically to create new and more efficient interfaces to a computer system. And that is why most radical attempts to alter the keyboard are marginal successes at best (why even slightly modified designs, like ergo keyboards, are not as popular as they should be, even though they provide a much more relaxed hand posture and a great increase in efficiency).
Interesting video discussing new user-interface ideas, interesting if only for the last line. "Show me the study".
Wednesday May 08, 2002
Tying together a few posts from yesterday (here), it turns out that Secretary of the Army Thomas White was head of the Enron Energy Services division of Enron while it was sucking California dry by manipulating the energy market.
Smirking Chimp. More news you can use.
A Post-Mozilla 1.0 Manifesto regarding Mozilla process and development by Christopher Hoess and others, and a counter-manifesto by Zach Lipton.
What's so funny about Kalamazoo? According to Noam Chomsky:
"Three short steps in [a] led in by three alphabetically consecutive consonants [k,l,m], occlusive, liquid, labial, respectively (that is, progressing from posterior to anterior buccal cavity), act as a ladder, rising to the highest note in the English register [u], which slides in on us over the glistening parquet of the soft sibilant [z], puckering up the mouth in gentle mockery of itself."
Another reason to not turn on the radio.
I've noticed that I've had no trouble reaching mz hosted weblogs, but many of the other sites I hit (on dedicated blog servers) are rather hit and miss. I hope the blogging phenomenon evolves to the point where more effort can be devoted to stability and accessability both on the admin side ( reaching the blogging tool ) and on the client side (being able to reach blogs themselves).
Tuesday May 07, 2002
Is the Bush administration trying to get rid of Army Secretary Tom White before any investigations of him announce their findings? The last two paragraphs are telling. Clear out embarrassments before they become scandals...
And here's more , with Pentagon officials talking of creating "pretext for pushing Army Secretary Thomas E. White out of his job." Oh, and Tom White used to work for Enron.
All you Californians might like to know that Enron was, in fact, manipulating the energy market in your state. Here's more, which also seems to indicate that the Enron folks were Star Wars fetishists (in addition to being crooks), with project names like Death Star, JEDI, and Chewco.
Monday May 06, 2002
Peruvian congressman kicks Microsoft's ass.
Benito Berlusconi? Here are some videos. With Corrado Guzzanti! :-)
US to abandon court treaty.
The Republicans are starting to look more like Publishers Clearinghouse. In more ways than one.
Friday May 03, 2002
With great expectation comes great disappointment. 'Nuff said.
Wednesday May 01, 2002
Republican gerrymandering in Ohio, caught on tape.
Hyatt writes, "What AOL TW needs to focus on is finding ways to really use their content to provide real tangible benefits to the end user... Well, the optimal situation would be if they could find a way to put the end user first by producing features that also generate revenue. Let's see some marketing vision, some innovation, some creativity. Polluting the chrome with cheap Web site tie-ins is taking the easy way out."
I agree completely with this. But I'm starting to believe that AOL/TW doesn't have it in them to innovate in that way. And unfortunately I don't think they're in a similar position to Microsoft, where they can fund a development project indefinitely without hope of ever generating revenue.
If I were AOL, I would give away a free version of the browser, free of all the extraneous crap. At the same time offer a browser with a yearly subscription, bundled with access to many of the the huge resources of TW content. They are content providers for pity's sake. Screw giving revenues to Real with their premium service. And keep it distinct from the AOL brand. Instead, create a Netscape or TimeWarner premium service, with specials like access to live CNN/CNNfn feeds, and access to live concerts from the TW roster of musicians, free MP3 downloads, etc. Have special alerts come up with links to the live video/audio as events happen. Christ, let IE users sign up for it too - you'd have a small but non-trivial revenue stream from them too. But you could have special features like alerts available only to Netscape browser users. Make it a bonus to have downloaded their product.
The only other company that I can think of that could do something with a commercial browser product is Macromedia, and they'd do it by giving away the browser for free, tying the Gecko engine into Dreamweaver, and hyping the shit out of the fact that what-you-see-is-exactly-what-you-get in the dev tool and the browser. With FlashMX they're trying to essentially do an end-run around the HTML-based Internet. If they could have a piece of the HTML scene with Mozilla, they would be in a better position to control the direction of development and standards progress. I think that Macromedia, if they have any sense, will start playing a role in Mozilla development. They have so much user attention from Flash that they could try to convert that name recognition into a stronger more fundamental role in Internet development. And they're duplicating a lot of what Mozilla does in Dreamweaver, with HTML-based UI elements, etc...
Interesting comparison of digital and analog cameras (35mm and medium format). Surprising results, too. There are lots of good tutorial links at the bottom of that page.
Hyatt has some interesting opinions on Netscape marketshare, and what Netscape's doing wrong.
But considering that there's so little revenue to be gained in browser software due to Microsoft's dumping of the browser on the marketplace, I'm curious to know how AOL/TW/Netscape could actually create a revenue-generating product by ripping out all the ads and product placements. Sure, Mozilla might overtake it in seats by dint of having a browser without all the annoying product tie ins, but unfortunately Mozilla's not gonna be generating revenue ever for anyone.
Hyatt also states, "The makers of IE can simply concentrate on making the best browser for their platform without the interference of their parent company." Maybe he's not calling IE "best browser" for Windows, but it seems painfully obvious to me that the IE group has (for years now) been uninterested in creating the best browser for Windows. They have dumped money in supporting IE-only kludge tie-ins to the Operating System and other Microsoft products, which weaken the security structure of both the Operating System and the browser instead of beefing up security and standards support. And at the same time they have neglected some of the more painfully dumbass aspects of their own UI. In essence, MS, through their incessant cross-use/cross-marketing of IE code throughout the OS, have been engaged in exactly the same kind of UI-neglect of which Netscape is accused. The IE team has been sitting on their laurels for years now, because they have no competition. And I'm sorry, but no one will ever be competition until they can get rights to sit on the desktop of newly purchased machines without even a hint of IE lurking under the hood. Sure, they might gain a few points here and there. They might gain the respect of people who know their way around a computer. AOL's moving to Gecko might get a few upticks in marketshare if AOL doesn't crash and burn first. But who's going to be able to contest IE? I don't think even the best wishes of the Mozilla community can change the sheer overwhelming nature of a monopoly market. I think we'll find out more in the coming months. If the judge in the MS trial doesn't do something to address Microsoft's egregious behavior, we might see the AOL higher-ups doing a cut-and-run with Netscape and Mozilla. And no amount of UI tweaking will save it.
Solutions, anyone?
