Grounded

Posted on November 18, 2002

Over on her blog, Jen Klyse is telling an interesting story of her experiences with airline security blacklists — lists of people who, for reasons that aren’t disclosed, are automatically singled out for special scrutiny when they travel. Apparently she’s not on the “A list” of people who are actually denied boarding, since they do let her on eventually, but someone is apparently keeping an eye on her all the same.

This is what’s scary about the way we’re approaching transportation security — the sheer opacity of the system. Certainly if you fit a profile of a potential threat, or if you have a record of association with such people, you should expect some additional scrutiny; it only makes sense. But because what it takes to get on the list is a secret, ANYONE can be put on it; you can hardly argue that you don’t fit a profile if nobody will tell you what the profile is. And because the list is itself a secret, you can’t get yourself taken off it (“List? What list?”) even if you can prove your loyalty.

There’s a saying in computer science that the worst kind of security is “security through obscurity” — for example, putting sensitive corporate data on a “secret” Web page and expecting it to be safe because you haven’t given anyone the URL. All it takes is one run of Google’s Web indexing software to show you how foolish that is. In government, security through obscurity is even worse because it invites abuse by those who would like to augment their power or strike out against those they disagree with, or just plain dislike. If Klyse and Salon are right, and there is such a list, the government should cough it up and give her an opportunity to defend herself. It’s only fair.

Keith Knight Gets It Right

Posted on November 14, 2002

This entry from Keith Knight’s “The K Chronicles” comic strip is probably the best single explanation of how I feel about war in Iraq that I’ve seen yet. How sad is it that a comic strip is more perceptive than the editorial pages?

K-Meleon is Back

Posted on November 12, 2002

This is good news — after a long dormancy, the K-Meleon project is finally back up and running. K-Meleon takes the powerful Gecko rendering engine used in Mozilla and wraps it in a real, native Windows interface, instead of using Mozilla’s slower interpreted interface language. The result is a small, fast, snappy browser that you can put up against IE with pride.

If you’re a Windows user, you owe it to yourself to give K-Meleon a spin — especially if you’ve never tried Mozilla before. Trust me, you’ll love it.

Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution

Posted on November 11, 2002

Well, Tuesday’s election came and went and Tara Sue Grubb, the woman I wrote about awhile back who was running for Congress on a platform of Net freedom, picked up about 11% of the vote. Not bad for a third-party candidate running against an entrenched incumbent — especially one whose total campaign budget was $3500!

Anyway, it appears that her experience in the campaign has really energized Tara — she’s in the process of organizing an Online Bill of Rights Caucus to gather opinions on how her “Webolution” can keep rolling even after the campaign is over. I’m proud to say that I’m helping out, in a small way. As things develop I’ll keep you posted, but for now suffice it to say that I’m pretty excited — if anybody has what it takes to change American politics for the better, it’s Tara Sue!

On the Warpath

Posted on November 7, 2002

Are you an Angry Dem? Don’t worry, there’s lots of that going around these days 🙂

The Results Are In

Posted on November 6, 2002

So, about that election…

As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo so eloquently puts it, “Well, that really could have gone better.”

We (I’m a Dem, if you hadn’t guessed by now) lost big yesterday. The Senate races tell the tale of the tape: Ron Kirk in Texas; Jean Carnahan in Missouri; Ted Strickland in Colorado; Max Cleland in Georgia; Walter Mondale in Minnesota (!!!); Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire; Erskine Bowles in North Carolina; and Bob Clement in Tennessee all fell down before their Republican opponents. Some of these were pretty much expected (Kirk, Carnahan), while others were real shockers (Mondale, Cleland). About the only bright spots where Frank Lautenberg’s win in New Jersey, and Mark Pryor’s in Arkansas. And things may get even worse: Mary Landrieu’s headed for a runoff in Louisiana and Tim Johnson of South Dakota is currently leading challenger John Thune by five hundred votes out of 330,000+ cast. That’s right, five hundred votes.

In other words, there’s a lot of donkey carcasses to be swept up and disposed of this morning.

I think this is symptomatic of a broader issue: the Democratic Party’s inability to define itself. They focused almost exclusively on “tactics” in this campaign — in other words, on local issues rather than national ones. Some Dems were for war in Iraq, some against; some for gun control, some against; some for stronger economic stimulus, some against; and so forth. What does it mean to be a Democrat? What connected all these candidates together besides money and a desire to hold office? The DNC never bothered to come up with an answer to that question, and it looks like they’re paying the price today.

This isn’t a new question; the Democratic Party has been unable to articulate what exactly it is for more than a decade. But having President Clinton in the White House let them finesse the issue; they could say “Democrats support the President” and leave it at that. In opposition, though, you usually don’t have a figurehead like that; you have to have a coherent set of beliefs to rally around, or else you stop being a party and start being a mess. We’ve lost two elections now because the DNC can’t be bothered to concern itself with what those issues are or how they connect with the challenges of the new world we’re all living in. And until they get off their duffs and start working on that — or until Dems start voting with their feet and switching to independents, or Greens, or some other affiliation — I have a sinking feeling we’re going to lose a lot more.

Harvey Pitt Takes a Hike

Posted on November 5, 2002

Well, it looks like we have the first big development of Election Day 2002: Harvey Pitt, the chairman of the SEC who has managed to thoroughly bungle every attempt to reform that agency, has finally gotten the hint and resigned. See the story at reuters.com for all the gory details.

Personally, I’m thrilled about this: Pitt was the wrong man for the job from the get-go. His background as a lobbyist for the very firms he was called to regulate made him suspect at the outset, and his actions since then have driven deep partisan rifts within the SEC, which generally acts by consensus. I don’t think anyone who cares about the markets will be sorry to see him go.

From Out of the Mists…

Posted on October 31, 2002

Over at the Open Source Application Foundation, Andy Hertzfeld (the brilliant designer behind the original Macintosh and the “Nautilus” GUI for Linux) has just pulled back the curtain on “Vista”, the first prototype of OSAF’s new personal information manager.

Hertzfeld goes to great lengths to point out that “Vista” is not in any way a version of the actual product OSAF hopes to build; instead, it’s a testbed for ideas, a proof-of-concept. But it’s fascinating to watch the design process of this new app take place right out in the open, with minds like Hertzfeld and Mitch Kapor driving it along.

More On The Snipers

Posted on October 31, 2002

Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo has an interesting perspective on the mounting evidence that the D.C. snipers weren’t just killing people in D.C., but had instead made a cross-country pilgramage, leaving a trail of bodies along the way.

“[I]t was only when they shot five people in a matter of hours on (I believe it was) October 3rd that anyone really realized there was a problem. Could that have been the reason why they hit so many people on that one day? You can almost see these guys sitting around the sniper den one evening, knocking back a beer, and saying: What does a guy gotta do in this country to get some cred as a serial killer?”

Call For Help

Posted on October 30, 2002

If anyone out there has any experience with the open-source Mambo Site Server, I’d love to hear from you — I’m working on a project with it now and I’m running into some significant challenges. If you know how to Mambo, drop me a line and let’s talk!

Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys (and Girls) Are Marching…

Posted on October 30, 2002

So over the weekend I got talked into attending the big rally in downtown DC against war in Iraq. It was certainly a huge enough event; the organizers estimated 200,000 attendees, which I think is a little optimistic, but even so the sheer scale of the thing was impressive.

I’ve written in this space before about my opposition to a war with Iraq. So why was it that, standing in the midst of a sea of people who all agreed with me, the strongest feeling I had was that I didn’t belong there?

(more…)

Irreplaceable

Posted on October 25, 2002

I can’t believe I’m writing this:

Today, Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN), maybe the last fire-breathing liberal in the Senate, died in a plane crash, along with his wife and children.

If you spend any time paying attention to politics, you know that the cardinal rule of the professional politician is a simple one: avoid controversy at all costs. Stay a few steps behind the crowd. Don’t tell people things they don’t want to hear.

Paul Wellstone made a career out of breaking that rule. He had convictions that ran deep, and he was never afraid to let them guide his votes, even when those convictions ran counter to the mainstream of public opinion. This year, he did it again — he was one of the few Senators to vote against the resolution giving the President authority to launch a war against Iraq. That wasn’t a popular position; 60% of Minnesotans polled at the time of the vote expressed support for Bush’s war. But Wellstone never voiced doubts about which way his vote should go; he knew what his heart was telling him, and he followed it. Men like that are rare in Washington’s circles of power, and now there is one fewer to stand up to the wheeler-dealer cynicism of our political culture.

Paul Wellstone occupied a unique place in American political life. He will truly be missed. He was irreplaceable.

This Is Just Embarrassing

Posted on October 25, 2002

As an Ohio native, I’ve spent a lot of time explaining to people here in DC that Ohio is more than “flyover country”. Ohioans are smart, sophisticated, and savvy when it comes to technology.

Except, apparently, for their governor:

“Tech savvy” US governor shuns email

Ugh. Thanks, Gov. Taft, really — you sure know how to convince people that Ohio is the place to be for tech.

(Thanks to Jen Klyse for the link.)

Ridiculously Easy Group Forming

Posted on October 25, 2002

Sebastien Paquet has launched an effort to work on a problem I find particularly interesting: how to turn Weblogs into a platform to allow discussions and communities to form organically, by joining together blogs based on topics of common interest. His Wiki on RidiculouslyEasyGroupForming is the center of the discussion on the subject. Check it out — if they work out the technical details, I think they’re really gonna have something.

Sniper Snagged?

Posted on October 24, 2002

The AP is reporting that the prime suspects in the sniper shootings that have been keeping all of us who live in Washington on our toes have been taken into custody!

“President Bush was told that federal authorities were reasonably sure the case had been solved, a senior administration official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity…

Several federal sources told The Seattle Times that Muhammad and Malvo may have been motivated by anti-American sentiments in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Both were known to speak sympathetically about the men who hijacked jetliners over Washington, New York and Pennsylvania, the sources told the newspaper. But neither man was believed to be associated with the al-Qaida terrorist network, the sources said.”

I’ve resisted writing about the sniper crisis here for the simple reason that anything I could say about it would just be speculation — I’m no criminologist, just another citizen who found himself looking over his shoulder every time he walked across a parking lot. But I can tell you that things have been very tense here the last few weeks. I’ve been pretty calm about the whole thing — I grew up in Egypt, where my elementary school had terrorism drills instead of fire drills, so having a whacko taking potshots at people isn’t the scariest idea I’ve ever had to deal with — but for a lot of people out here, this is the first time they’ve had to deal with the idea of random violence, and it naturally has them upset. Hopefully these arrests will put an end to this and let us all get back to our lives. That would be the best news we’ll have gotten in quite some time.

UPDATE: Now it looks like they’ve found a Bushmaster .223 rifle in the car of the suspects taken into custody. All the sniper shootings were carried out with a .223-caliber rifle. Curiouser and curiouser…

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeez, these guys (John Allen Muhammad and his stepson, John Lee Malvo) are screwed beyond belief. The Feds are now saying that the rifle they found in their car is a ballistic match for the one that fired the bullets that killed the sniper’s victims; and in the trunk of the car, they found a little platform that a person could (hypothetically speaking, of course) lie on to shoot a rifle from out of the trunk without having to open it more than a crack. Yeah, that’s the sort of thing the average citizen totes around in the back of his Cavalier! Not to mention that Muhammad is a Gulf War vet who earned recognition as an expert marksman. It oughta be pretty interesting to see what story his defense attorney comes up with to explain all this away, that’s for sure.

Mitch Kapor Returns

Posted on October 21, 2002

I can’t even begin to fully explain how exciting this is!

Back in the Olden Days of personal computing (i.e., the late 1980s), Mitch Kapor — the designer of the seminal spreadsheet program for the IBM PC, Lotus 1-2-3 — teamed up with Jerry Kaplan to produce one of the most innovative, forward-thinking, startling products in software history: Lotus Agenda.

Agenda was an odd duck for the software world of the 80s. Back then computers were limited in memory and power, so applications tended to be narrowly focused on one specific problem: type a document, keep a spreadsheet, and so on. Agenda was different, so much so that Lotus and Kapor had to invent a whole new term just to describe what it did. They called it a “personal information manager”, or PIM for short.

The idea behind Agenda was disarmingly simple. People, Kapor noticed, had appallingly bad tools available to keep track of all the various bits of data — notes, appointments, contacts, and so on — that float around in their heads. In fact, even with all the technology they had sitting on their desks, they tended to fall back on the lowly Post-It note!

Agenda was designed to replace that Post-It. It let you type in “items” (individual data points) in plain English, and assign them to categories — phone messages, to-dos, proposed meeting dates, and so forth. As more and more entries got entered in each category, Agenda, behind the scenes, would build a little dictionary of words it noticed you using frequently in each category. It could then use this dictionary to connect together items automatically, without user direction — so “Call Jerry this afternoon” and “Jerry Atherton: 555-1212” would be tied together, making jumping from one thought to the other easy and seamless.

Agenda was brilliant. It was revolutionary. And it was a colossal flop. The world just wasn’t ready for it yet; the two things that would make PIMs an idea whose Time had Come — multitasking PCs that could run more than one program at once, and mobile data displays (PalmPilots) to let users carry their PIM data with them — just didn’t exist yet. So Agenda sank under the waters, never to be seen again, and years later, when those conditions were met, Microsoft Outlook took over the world by default.

Now, though, Mitch Kapor is back. He and some trusted associates have spent the last year thinking about Agenda, what made it great, what didn’t, and how something like it could work in today’s wired world. Last week, Kapor pulled back the curtain on this effort, unveiling his latest project: to build a new product in the spirit of Agenda, using the latest technology and targeted at the small and medium businesses for which Outlook (and its practically-required server component, Exchange) is just plain overkill.

Oh yeah, and he’s going to release it as open-source, too.

Will Kapor be able to pull it off? Who knows; but the fact that there are still people out there using Agenda — a crusty old DOS-based character-mode program — today testifies to the continuing relevance of the Agenda vision. (If you’d like to see what that vision looks like, take it for a test drive — you can download classic Agenda for free, thanks to Lotus’ generosity.) I’m glad he’s decided to take another stab at making that vision come true.

UPDATE (April 9, 2007): Here’s a great page with tons of links for Agenda-philes, including links to a Wiki and a Yahoo Group where you can turn for help with your favorite PIM.

The Homeless Guy

Posted on October 15, 2002

If there’s anything that indicates how widespread blogging has become, this is it — check out The Homeless Guy, a blog by Kevin Michael Barbieux, insightful writer and — yes — homeless person. He blogs from PCs in the local library, hoping to foster “a greater awareness about the whole-ness of homeless people.” It’s definitely interesting stuff, and it will probably challenge your stereotypes about homeless people.

Thanks to Salon for the pointer to this wonderful resource.

Switch… Back?

Posted on October 14, 2002

Looks like Apple’s Switch ads are hitting home… Microsoft has a new page up detailing the experiences of a “freelance writer” (whose picture comes from a stock photography library), who made the switch from a Mac to Windows XP and now is soooooooooooooooooooo happy she could just DIE.

I don’t buy it. Check out this choice quote from the page to find out why:

“I upgraded to Outlook when I installed Office XP. I chose Yes when Outlook asked whether I wanted to import messages from Outlook Express. Later, I had to uninstall and reinstall Outlook, but all was not lost.”

Yeah, you KNOW it’s friendly when you have to uninstall and reinstall your applications!

I can sympathize with poor Microsoft, what with Apple getting all the plaudits for their creative Switch ads. It’s gotta hurt. But this lame attempt sure isn’t going to make me love Janie Porche any less 🙂

FOLLOW-UP: Wow, that was fast! Microsoft has apparently pulled down the embarrassing page in question. No wonder: here’s the proof that the “woman” who they highlighted came straight from a stock photo house. Oops! And just to prove that I’m not making all this up, check out the thread on Slashdot where I first found the story. Talk about your PR goofs! Ah well, just another Monday in Redmond…

Ooh, Shiny

Posted on October 14, 2002

Creative Labs has just rolled out what looks like the first real competition for Apple’s iPod — the NOMAD Jukebox Zen. Same tiny form factor, same FireWire connectivity, same brushed-aluminum look, but $349 scores you 20GB of storage with the Nomad. (The same size iPod for Windows runs a hefty $499.)

I’ve been a fan of the Archos Jukebox line of MP3 players forever — they were the first ones to roll out affordable hard-drive based MP3 jukeboxes, and they’ve led the price-performance equation ever since — but this thing might lure me away; the equivalent Archos Jukebox is cheaper, but also bigger and boxier. Although for a little more than the Nomad, you can get an Archos Jukebox Multimedia, and that one plays back video too… aagh, too many choices, not enough money!

Finally!!!

Posted on October 10, 2002

According to the latest mozilla.org status update, support for synchronizing the Mozilla address book with PalmPilots and other PalmOS devices has just been checked into the code base for the upcoming Mozilla 1.2 release.

Let me just take one moment to say…

WOO-HOO!!!

🙂

This is great news. This has been one of the big things that’s prevented people from switching over from Outlook. Maybe now those folks will give Moz a shot and see what they’ve been missing!

“Personal Knowledge Publishing”

Posted on October 10, 2002

If you’ve ever wondered what the Big Deal about blogging is, check out this excellent overview of the subject by Sebastien Paquet. It’s a good read that makes some interesting points (such as citing Tim Berners-Lee’s, and then NCSA’s, What’s New on the Web pages as the first blogs — a connection I’d never made, even though I remember with fondness hitting that What’s New page every day and getting excited as more and more servers popped up around the world).

Thanks to Jennifer Klyse for pointing me to this great resource!

The “X” Stands for “Xplain, Please”

Posted on October 9, 2002

Microsoft has just announced their new Office file format, XDocs . That noise you hear is the sound of millions of people scratching their head at once, trying to figure out what the heck XDocs is.

The MS Web site describes XDocs like this:

“XDocs,” a code name for the newest member of the Microsoft Office family, streamlines the process of gathering information by enabling teams and organizations to easily create and work with rich, dynamic forms. The information collected can be integrated with a broad range of business processes because XDocs supports any customer-defined XML schema and integrates with XML Web services. As a result, XDocs helps to connect information workers directly to organizational information and gives them the ability to act on it, which leads to greater business impact.

All together now: “Huh?!?” That sounds like something from Dilbert’s consultant-speak generator. All they need to do now is leverage their core competencies to provide best-of-breed e-commerce solutions, and they’re set.

Seriously, can anyone explain to me what this does? ‘Cuz I have no idea. Of course, I had no idea what the big deal behind .NET was when they announced it, either, and it’s since been executed on pretty impressively. So maybe XDocs is something to keep an eye on.

Or maybe it’s just FUD. You make the call 🙂

(P.S. If this is a new format for MS Office documents — does anybody else find it unsurprising that Microsoft would change the Office file formats right when the OpenOffice.org project is demonstrating near-perfect compatibility with Office 2000/XP files? Hmmm…)

What is Up With Content Management Systems?

Posted on October 9, 2002

So I’ve recently been asked to evaluate various content management systems (CMSes, for short), and after exhaustive analysis, I can sum up the marketplace in two words:

They suck.

No, seriously. All of them. They ALL SUCK. What is the matter here? Why can’t the collective intelligence of thousands of bright engineers come up with a CMS that DOESN’T SUCK?

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Blogging Art on the Avenue

Posted on October 5, 2002

So I’m sitting out right now on Mount Vernon Avenue in Alexandria, volunteering for Art on the Avenue, a neighborhood festival. Our company is sponsoring a few events, including a photo gallery of local people’s dogs, and art by local kids. It’s pretty funny — you should see these dogs mug for the camera! (I’ll post a link to the gallery as soon as I have one.)

Anyway, it’s fun and kind of neat to see so many people come out for a neighborhood event — it’s the kind of community life you don’t see much of these days. Plus, the weather is beautiful, so who can complain? 🙂

Lucky Fella

Posted on October 2, 2002

Look’s like RageBoy’s got quite the fan club!