Microsoft Has Google “In Their Crosshairs”

Posted on June 18, 2003

Dave Winer has an anonymous source who says that the MSNBot that’s begun showing up in referer logs is the first step in an attempt by Microsoft to cut off Google’s air supply…

Type or Die!!!

Posted on June 18, 2003

Yoz Grahame has a hilarious review up of what may have been the strangest game to escape the sinking ship of Sega’s Dreamcast console: “Typing of the Dead“, which he aptly describes as “George Romero Teaches Typing.”

James says, “This is what happens if you can’t touch type,” followed by a zombie running up to him and whacking him repeatedly while he’s trying to find the right keys. “AAAAH! AAAAH! AAAAH! AAAAH! Get the picture?”

A must-read.

Handspring Unwraps Treo 600

Posted on June 18, 2003

PalmOS licensee Handspring has finally unveiled the long-awaited update to their line of smartphones. Dubbed Treo 600, the device abandons the clamshell form-factor of earlier Treos for a one-piece design incorporating a small QWERTY thumb keyboard. Of greater note is that this will be the first Handspring device to feature PalmOS 5, the newest version of PalmOS. It’s also got a snappy ARM processor and a built-in digital camera.

It’s good to finally see a PalmOS 5 device from Handspring. Competitors Palm Inc. and Sony have had several PalmOS 5 devices out now for months, though, which may explain why Handspring had to sell itself to Palm this month to stay afloat. (I know I held off from buying a Treo 300 precisely because I didn’t want to be stuck with a non-upgradable, dead-end PalmOS 4 device.)

In a bigger sense, though, Handspring dealt itself the mortal blow through its application of what might be called the Osborne Strategy to marketing a new high-tech device: announce it long before it’s ready, thus killing off sales of your existing products as everyone waits for the great new thing. Handspring did that with the Treo — back when the Treo was still in production and the vast majority of their revenue came from sales of their non-phone Visor devices, their CEO, Donna Dubinsky, made the mistake of saying publicly that she expected that Handspring would soon drop the Visor and move entirely to selling the Treo. Bad move — customers naturally decided not to waste any more money on Visors, but they couldn’t buy Treos yet, so they just held on to their cash and waited. The resulting sales plummet nearly killed the company, and it’s never really recovered since.

Handspring is hush-hush about what the price point of the Treo 600 will be, saying only that “Treo 600 smartphones will be priced at a premium compared to our current Treo line”. Considering that a Treo 300 costs $500 without service activation, one can only assume that a 600 will not be for the budget-minded buyer. Here’s hoping it’s at least somewhat affordable, though, since a combination phone/organizer/digicam does sound like something that would be worth having.

UPDATE: Whaddaya know, it looks like the 600 was the big reason why Palm wanted to buy Handspring in the first place. Maybe it’s as cool as it sounds!

Now That’s Determination

Posted on June 17, 2003

Well, we haven’t found any WMDs yet, but there’s one good thing we HAVE managed to find in Iraq:

Washington Post: Iraqi man hid 22 years in a wall

“Hitler’s Second Book”

Posted on June 17, 2003

Wow… the NY Times is reporting that an English translation of “Hitler’s Second Book“, his previously unpublished (and untitled) sequel to the infamous “Mein Kampf“, is about to see print. Apparently the book outlines in some detail Hitler’s belief that Nazi Germany would have to confront and defeat the United States in order to meet its needs for power and lebensraum (living space).

If that’s the case, this is a genuinely interesting new development in World War Two history, since Germany’s declaration of war on the U.S. has always been treated as a kind of puzzling mistake. After Pearl Harbor, you see, there was some sentiment in the U.S. Congress towards attempting to limit the scope of the coming war by only giving President Roosevelt authorization to declare war on Japan — and not its ally, Germany. However, before Congress could act, Hitler preemptively declared war on the United States, so Congress widened the scope of the declaration to include all the Axis powers (Japan, Germany, and Italy).

There’s been a lot of head-scratching about exactly why Hitler chose to make that preemptive declaration, when he was already embroiled in a war against both England and the Soviet Union. Most accounts have explained it as Hitler upholding his treaty obligations with Japan. However, Hitler was no stickler for legalisms and had shown no hesitation in the past to disregard treaties when they became inconvenient, so that’s not a completely compelling explanation. Now, though, we may finally have a better one.

It’s worth noting that the world has been hoaxed by the appearance of “new Hitler documents” before, most notably in the case of the so-called “Hitler diaries” back in the 1980s, so it’s always good to approach these claims with skepticism. However, this new book has been endorsed as authentic by many prominent historians — the translator is Dr. Gerhard Weinberg, author of the encyclopedic history “A World At Arms“, and Sir Ian Kershaw used the original German version of the manuscript as a source for his acclaimed biography “Hitler”), so it’s either a very, very clever hoax or the real deal indeed.

Flash for Programmers: Laszlo

Posted on June 17, 2003

This is interesting: Laszlo is a new tool that allows developers to build applications in Java that utilize Flash for the front end. Flash has always been held back as an application development platform by its use of the “timeline” as a central metaphor — organizing events by time makes sense for animation, but not so much sense for programming. Will Laszlo solve this problem? I haven’t tried it yet, so I don’t know for sure, but Don Park sure seems to think it’s the shiznit, so I’m inclined towards optimism.

Happy Days Are Here Again

Posted on June 16, 2003

Glad to see the economy’s getting better!

Thunderbirds Are Go

Posted on June 16, 2003

I’m making the big switch today, changing my primary e-mail client to Mozilla Thunderbird. It’s still quite rough around the edges, so I don’t recommend it quite yet for most folks, but it’s close enough that geeks like myself can probably live with it (or if not, I guess I’ll find out). Hopefully it won’t be long until Thunderbird shows the same level of polish and performance as Mozilla Firebird does; that’ll be a good day in open-source land.

Fumbling the War on Terror

Posted on June 16, 2003

The Washington Post has an absolutely amazing article today about a fellow named Rand Beers. Until a few months ago — right before the shooting started in Iraq — Beers was serving on the National Security Council as a special assistant to the President for combating terrorism. He’d been at NSC since the Reagan Administration; but what he saw in the run-up to the war made him so concerned that we were making the wrong choices that he decided not just to leave NSC, but to actually volunteer for John Kerry’s Presidential campaign as a national security advisor!

Reading the article, it’s not hard to see why Beers felt he had to do more than just resign:

“The administration wasn’t matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They’re making us less secure, not more secure,” said Beers, who until now has remained largely silent about leaving his National Security Council job as special assistant to the president for combating terrorism. “As an insider, I saw the things that weren’t being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more concerned I became, until I got up and walked out.”…

Much of what he knows is classified and cannot be discussed. Nevertheless, Beers will say that the administration is “underestimating the enemy.” It has failed to address the root causes of terror, he said. “The difficult, long-term issues both at home and abroad have been avoided, neglected or shortchanged and generally underfunded.”

The focus on Iraq has robbed domestic security of manpower, brainpower and money, he said. The Iraq war created fissures in the United States’ counterterrorism alliances, he said, and could breed a new generation of al Qaeda recruits…

“The first day, I came in fresh and eager,” he said. “On the last day, I came home tired and burned out. And it only took seven months.”

Part of that stemmed from his frustration with the culture of the White House. He was loath to discuss it. His wife, Bonnie, a school administrator, was not: “It’s a very closed, small, controlled group. This is an administration that determines what it thinks and then sets about to prove it. There’s almost a religious kind of certainty. There’s no curiosity about opposing points of view. It’s very scary. There’s kind of a ghost agenda.”

Much of what he knows, Beers can’t say publicly, which makes his dramatic move from NSC insider to opposition strategist even more interesting. Just how bad is the situation we face today regarding terrorism? Apparently, Rand Beers thinks it’s pretty bad, and getting worse; and from all accounts he’s someone worth listening to. [Thanks to Talking Points Memo for the pointer.]

Run, Jerry?

Posted on June 13, 2003

OK, now I’m sorry I moved back to DC… it looks like the Senate campaign in Ohio next year is going to be interesting.

Keeping the Skies Stupid

Posted on June 13, 2003

I think Seanbaby has said everything that needs to be said on the subject of post-September 11 airline security:

Airports are openly mocking us when they take away our combs, nail files or boomerangs. Here’s a good way to test the deadliness of an item: Imagine you’re holding it and a gorilla bursts into the room. Now decide whether to hold on to it or fight with your bare hands. If you have to think about it, it’s not deadly.

InfoWorld Runs Ads in RSS Feeds

Posted on June 13, 2003

I suppose it was only a matter of time… The Shifted Librarian is reporting that InfoWorld has begun running advertisements in their RSS feeds.

I think I’m with Shifted on this one:

Here’s my take on this: if you are providing me with the full text of the article in my aggregator, then I’m willing to trade you my eyeballs for an ad. However, if you’re just sending me the headline with a one- or two-sentence description, then that’s the ad. Your intent is to get me to go to your site to read the full article, at which point I will see the ad (probably lots of ads), and the transaction is complete – I clicked onto your page and became a number you can sell to your advertisers and in exchange you let me view the content.

Makes sense to me — either give me the whole story in the feed and an ad to go along with it, or just a headline with no ad. Heck, maybe offer two feeds, one configured each way, and let people choose. Just don’t give me headlines with ads, which requires me to go to your page with more ads to get the whole story — in other words, don’t use this to advertise to me twice.

You Know That Band You Love? They SUCK!

Posted on June 12, 2003

I’m addicted to XM Radio. Specifically, I’m addicted to XMU, a station they provide which plays indie rock, underground hip-hop, jam-bands, and other experimental stuff. They play the coolest stuff I’ve ever heard. I even shelled out for a SECOND radio — the XM-PCR — so I could listen at work. (I told you I was addicted.)

There has, however, been a blemish on my XMU experience of late. That blemish is a little band called “Of Montreal“. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t stand these guys. Their stuff makes me want to throw my radio out the window, it’s so annoying. And, for some reason, XMU has been playing them veeeeery frequently.

Finally, I got fed up and sent an e-mail to the XMU staff, asking them to consider revising their playlist.

From my e-mail:

please please please play LESS of this band “Of Montreal” you guys have
had in heavy rotation lately. They drive me NUTS with their meandering,
tuneless whine-rock. Every time they come on it’s like fingernails on a
blackboard, and they come on a LOT these days.

So — I don’t know if you take anti-requests — but I suppose that’s
what this is 🙂

A couple of days later, I got a note back from Scott Struber, the programming honcho behind XMU, which read, in part:

LOL! Jason, thanks for the feedback. Always appreciated. They’re not actually in heavy rotation, but you must be having the misfortune of catching them every time they’re on. Anyway, your timing is great, as we’re planning on pulling them into a slower rotation this week.

Cool! Problem solved, right?

Wrong!

Flash forward to this afternoon. I’m listening to XMU again today, and I hear another of their DJs, Toby, recapping the stuff that had been played that hour. As she’s running down the list, she says something along the lines of:

“… and we heard the latest one from Of Montreal… that’s Struber’s favorite song!!!“

D’oh! It’s generally not polite to send someone an e-mail telling them their favorite band plays “meandering, tuneless whine-rock” — at least not where I come from.

Open mouth, glue e-mail to foot, insert foot in mouth…

So anyway, I sent Struber a note congratulating him on his professionalism in replying to my message dissing his fave, and I thought I’d take this space to issue a public mea culpa as well. If it had been me having MY favorite bands dissed like that I think I would have had no recourse but to hunt down the disser with a high-powered rifle.

Thankfully, it looks like Struber’s a better man than that… for which I should probably be rather thankful!

All RIGHT!

Posted on June 12, 2003

Yes… yes yes YES… YES!!!

This is way too cool for words. The original Sid Meier’s Pirates! absolutely rocked; an updated version that can take advantage of the huge leaps in power PCs have made since then — and that’s developed by The Master Himself — should be amazing.

When is this coming out? I don’t usually pre-order, but this seems like the time to make an exception!

Why Not Learn From the Best?

Posted on June 11, 2003

Are you in the Washington, DC metro area? Have you been wondering what all the buzz around blogging is about? Are you curious about how to start your own blog, or maybe take your existing blog to the next level? Would you like to spend an evening with Our Favorite Geek ™ finding out?

If you answered “yes” to these questions, you’re in luck. I’m partnering with First Class, Inc., an adult education center in D.C., to launch a new class on October 15 entitled “Blog With the Best“. It’s a 2.5-hour seminar designed to take the mystery out of blogging, starting with the basics and walking you through what blogs are, how to choose the right software for you, and tips and tricks used by the most popular bloggers to build an audience and communicate more effectively.

The people at First Class have been very supportive and enthusiastic about the idea, so it promises to be a lot of fun. This is the first time they’ve offered a class on the subject, though — in fact, it’s the first time anyone in D.C. has offered a class on the subject, as far as I know — so they’re waiting to see how many people sign up for this first session before scheduling any more. That means that, if you’re interested in the subject, you should sign up now! You wouldn’t want to miss out, right?

DoJ Backpedals on Gay Pride Event

Posted on June 11, 2003

Looks like public pressure has forced the Justice Department to back away somewhat from their earlier stance forbidding a group of gay DoJ staff from holding a pride event on departmental property. They’re not completely surrendering, though, so I suppose there’s still some consciousness-raising to be done there.

Missing WMDs: Worse than Watergate?

Posted on June 11, 2003

This is pretty damning: John Dean says that, if evidence arises that President Bush misled the country about Iraq’s capability to produce weapons of mass destruction in order to increase support for war with Iraq, it could be an impeachable offense. And since Dean was White House counsel for Richard Nixon, one would think he’d know an impeachable offense when he sees one!

Screenreaders for Mac Drying Up?

Posted on June 11, 2003

Maccessibility has an interesting piece about the last vendor of screenreading software for the Mac giving up the ghost. This appears to be a legacy of the huge shift from OS 9 to OS X, which shook up the market for Mac software across the board. Hopefully someone will pick up the banner on this one — accessibility is too important to be left unserved (especially on a platform as theoretically user-focused as the Mac).

First Look at “The Incredibles”

Posted on June 11, 2003

Those folks at Pixar sure must work hard — their latest flick, “Finding Nemo“, has only been in theaters for a few days and they’ve already got a trailer out for their next flick, “The Incredibles“. It looks to be pretty good (not surprising, since it’s directed by the brilliant Brad Bird), though I suppose we’ll have to wait until November 2004 to find out…

Random Radio-Inspired Thought for the Day

Posted on June 10, 2003

I would give my life to find it,
I would give it all…

Catch me if I fall.

Playing to Win?

Posted on June 10, 2003

Surprise, Robert Scoble just looooves his new employer:

Microsoft treats me well. They let me weblog. They don’t push me around. They give me free soft drinks. The best health care I’ve ever had. The best gym membership I’ve ever had. The best team of people I’ve ever worked with. The best computers I’ve ever used. And many more benefits (they are all enumerated over at http://www.microsoft.com/careers ). Oh, and let’s be honest, there’s not much chance that I’ll be laid off for economic reasons in the next month or two…

Yeah, Gates and crew haven’t always played nice. They play to win.

So I guess if you give someone a nice PC and enough free soda pop, they’ll be willing to think of documented anti-competitive, monopolistic behavior as “playing to win”. Go figure.

So That’s Where the WMDs Are!

Posted on June 10, 2003

The ever-hilarious Neal Pollack puts the whole “where are the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction” debate into perspective in his latest missive:

My personal opinion is that the weapons were used during the war, but that they’re very slow-acting. Approximately six months from now, all Americans who were in the Middle East during Operation Iraqi Freedom will begin feeling a mild itching on their skin, which will grow more intense over a matter of days, until they are wracked with agony, and then they will begin vomiting up clear yellow liquid. Soon, their brains will cease to function, and they will become zombie-like and begin eating their children. That’s only in the first 28 days. If the infection spreads, all of civilization could be in danger.

How do I know this? From a special group of intellectuals housed in the basement of the Pentagon… [t]he President’s wimpy adversaries have no access to this intelligence.

Makes sense to me!

Reclaim the Public Domain

Posted on June 9, 2003

I sent this out by e-mail this morning to my Big List of Friends & Family — but on the off chance you’re not on that list, drop me a line so I can add you, and then read this — it’s something you should know about.

You may or may not be familiar with the sorry state of intellectual property law in the United States. One particularly bad element of the current state of affairs is the way that our system handles the “public domain” — the vast body of knowledge that is the property of all of us, to do with as we please.

The public domain is an incredibly important part of the world of information. It doesn’t stop creators from earning money from their work — it merely is there so that, once several decades have passed and the creator has had ample time to use that work to support him or herself, the work becomes available for others to pick up and build off of.

Think of it the same way you’d think of mulching a garden; once leaves have died and fallen from the trees, you turn them into mulch and they provide the nourishment that allows new life to spring up. Passing ideas into the public domain provides the same nourishment for creative works, allowing creators to use old works to create new, exciting interpretations. For example, many of Disney’s classic animated films — Cinderella, Pinocchio, Snow White, and so forth — are re-tellings of classic stories that Disney could re-use because they had passed into the public domain.

Today, however, the public domain is under siege. Copyright holders like Disney have decided that their works should never fall into the public domain — and, with mega-buck lobbying campaigns, have convinced Congress to see things their way. The result is that nothing has passed into the public domain in the United States since the late 1920s.

No great loss? Well, think of what we’d have lost if the works of Shakespeare were not in the public domain — “Romeo and Juliet” alone has seen at least two major retellings in the last 50 years (“West Side Story” and Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo and Juliet”) that creatively re-interpreted the basic story, and the play itself is a staple of youth theatre. If Shakespeare’s estate were charging $1 million for the rights to perform “Romeo and Juliet” — if it were not in the public
domain — would anyone be performing it today? Would we have the two re-interpretations? Would children be able to learn about life and love from the story, the way they do today?

The answer is no — and we’d all be immeasurably poorer for it. But that’s the world the copyright cartels want us to live in — a world where creative works never become the property of all of us, even after their creators are dead and gone. And so far, they’ve been very successful in pushing that agenda.

Now, here’s what I’d like to urge you to do to help turn this situation around. Stanford University law professor Larry Lessig has been fighting to preserve the public domain for years now. He is currently working to promote legislation that would simply require copyright holders to pay a $1 fee — that’s right, one dollar — to renew their copyright after fifty years have passed. If they don’t pay, the work goes into the public domain.

Why a $1 fee? Well, in many cases, after fifty years have passed, works are essentially abandoned — books go out of print, films get stuck in dusty warehouses, and so forth. The $1 fee would provide a simple test for whoever technically “owns” that work — do they care enough about it to shell out a buck to keep owning it? If not — if nobody wants that work — it’s only fair that it fall into the public domain, so that other people who might find it useful can have access to it. And if it is something the owner wants to keep, $1 is a pittance in order to hold onto it.

Lessig’s proposal would keep giant corporations from being able to lock up every bit of creative expression behind waves of lawyers in perpetuity. It wouldn’t solve the entire problem — but it would be a big step forward. It strikes a good balance, allowing copyright holders 50 years to make money off their work, and then allowing them to keep earning off it if they care enough to put up a dollar.

I think this is a great idea, and something worthy of your support. That’s why I’m writing — to urge you to take a moment and help Lessig out in his fight.

To demonstrate public support for the proposal, Lessig has organized an online petition you can sign to show you care about reclaiming the public domain:

http://www.petitiononline.com/eldred/petition.html

I strongly encourage you to read the petition, and, if you think it’s a sensible way to help start nourishing the public domain again, add your signature to the list. 11,000 people have signed since it went public last week, and every new signature sends a message to the folks in charge that we care about making sure that we leave our children a world where they can express themselves freely and build new ideas off the ideas of their forebears.

Anyway, I’ll stop there. I appreciate your taking the time to listen to my message, and think about this issue, even if you disagree with my conclusion — I’d rather have a world where everyone had thought about this issue and decided I was dead wrong than a world where nobody had thought about it at all.

New BF1942 Mod Brings the Battlefield to Vietnam

Posted on June 7, 2003

The first public beta of the new Battlefield 1942 mod “Eve of Destruction“, which moves the action to the jungles of Vietnam, is finally available. It’s a little laggy, but very atmospheric and a lot of fun to play. Give it a spin if you need a break from Desert Combat 🙂

Ashcroft Forbids Gay DoJ Staff to Meet

Posted on June 6, 2003

Jen Klyse is calling out John Ashcroft for what looks like Yet Another egregiously closed-minded act by our fearless Attorney General. This time, he’s refused to allow gay and lesbian Justice Department staff to hold their annual Gay Pride Month celebration at the Department’s headquarters — the first time that such an event has apparently ever been prohibited by a federal agency. He’s apparently doing this after being lobbied by “pro-family” groups (God, I hate when advocacy groups couch their purpose in doublespeak like that).

So why should the hundreds of gay & lesbian employees effected by this care? Wouldn’t you care? After all, it’s not a blanket ban on all of these types of events. Black DoJ employees can still meet for their heritage month. But they’re singled out for prohibition — and their employer knows who each and every one of them is.

If it was you, wouldn’t you be worried about how an official decision to single out gays might affect your next performance review? Or, for that matter, your holding the position at all?

Ashcroft is an embarrassment to the United States and the biggest stain on Federal law enforcement since J. Edgar Hoover. This country will be better when we’ve finally seen the back of him.