Monthly Archives: April 2002

Centralized vs. Decentralized Weblogging Tools

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Dave Winer raked Burning Bird over the coals today for falsely claiming that in order to set up a weblog with Radio, you have to use Userland as a host. This is of course, incorrect. In fact, if I wanted to I could use Radio to post to my web site which isn’t on a Userland Host and doesn’t uses a content management system produced by Userland (though the CMS does run on top of Frontier).

But both Movable Type (which Burning Bird uses), Conversant and a number of other CMSes are decentralized in a way that Radio is not — namely, they are not wedded to a desktop client.

I can post to my web site from anywhere in the world. I usually post on most days from both my home and work computers, and occasionally just about anywhere else I can find a web connection — because that’s all I need to post, is access to a web client (or e-mail client or news reader).

I was talking with someone today who is an educator and teaching an online class who was describing how important that is. This professor is teaching courses in-state and out-of-the-country. And regardless of where he is travelling, he can update his course, reply to student inquiries, etc. anywhere he has access to a web browser.

The promo. material for Radio says, “It’s an easy-to-use Weblog tool that runs on your desktop, so it’s fast, and ready to go when you are.” Except when I leave my desk — then I’m left out of the loop (or left trying to synchronize data among different desktops — ugh!)

Centralizing the client-side of web site creation by requiring a desktop client just doesn’t make any sense. Forget the websites on the desktop. I want my web site on my desktop, my laptop, the computer at the library, my 802.11b equipped PDA — if I can get a web browser or e-mail client running on it, I should be alb to post to and update my web site.

Is It Okay to Intentionally Kill Civilians?

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Fredrik Norman points to this rant by Andrew Dalton about whether or not it is ever appropriate during a war to intentionally target civilians. The short version is that most libertarians say that it is never appropriate, while some Objectivists assert that it is:

Dalton writes,

LIBERTARIAN WATCH: The one thing that seems to unite all libertarians—other than their nominal support of “liberty”—is their disdain for Objectivism. For instance, Charles Oliver writes,

Most people accept that some civilian casualties are inevitable in war, and the fact that civilians might die isnÂ’t necessarily a good reason to forego any particular military action. Does this mean that we can, as the Ayn Rand Institute folks urge, deliberately target civilians?

He continues on with usual “No, that would make us terrorists too” arguments. But he leaves out two important contexts. The first is that deliberately targeting civilians (as opposed to killing civilians incidentally during an attack on a military or industrial target) is an extreme act that would not be justified in most military actions. It was justified during World War II, when our enemies had both the will and the means to destroy us utterly. Oliver takes issue with the mass destruction of Dresden and Hiroshima, but would he even be alive today to complain if the Allies had not destroyed those cities?

Note that what we are not talking about here is collateral damage. Everyone who accepts some sort of just war theory acknowledges that civilians are going to be killed inadvertently in war. But the issue before us is whether or not there is any situation in which it would be okay to say, “There are some noncombatant civilians over there — lets bomb them to get this war over with.”

Dalton cites to examples where civilians were intentionally bombed by Allied forces during World War II — Dresden and Hiroshima — and implies that some of us might not even be alive if it weren’t for these two bombings. Dalton needs to check his premises.

Both Dresden and Hiroshima were bombed when the ultimate outcome of the war was clear.

Dresden was firebombed on Feb. 13-14, 1945 and estimates put the number of dead civilians at 35,000-150,000. Ironically, many of those killed in Dresden were refugees who were fleeing the advance of the Soviet Army into Germany.

There have been a number of efforts to offer military purposes behind the bombing of Dresden, but the decision to bomb the city seems to have been heavily influenced by Bomber Command head Arthur Harris who was an advocate of the use area bombing of civilian areas to demoralize the population and hasten a surrender.

Hiroshima, of course, was nuked on August 6, 1945. U.S. President Harry Truman made the decision to bomb Hiroshima and then Nagasaki based largely on estimates that an invasion of Japan by Allied forces would result in enormous Allied casualties.

The issue at Hiroshima was not the survival of the free, democratic West, but rather how the occupation of Japan could be accomplished with a minimum number of casualties to Allied military forces.

The problem is that in most just war theories, combatant nations are not allowed to slaughter civilians in order to spare combatants. The claim that combatants should be allowed to target civilians is at the heart of the argument for terrorism.

Among those justifying Palestinian suicide bombers who target Israeli civilians, for example, a common refrain is that given the might of the Israeli military, the Palestinians have no choice but to target Israeli civilians.

For Dalton, on the other hand, if anything the U.S. government does not target civilians enough:

Now, with the way that the war had been fought up to that point, there was no good reason to believe that the Taliban would fall so easily. In simple terms, we got lucky. We didn’t get lucky in Vietnam. The fact is, our government was too concerned with civilian casualties (and the worthless opinions of our Arab “allies”) to fight the war in a manner that would ensure a certain victory. And the jury is still out on what kind of victory we got.

Of course the Vietnam example shows the flip side of the argument against targeting casualties. Civilian casualties — especially those inflicted by the series of corrupt South Vietnamese governments supported by the United States — seriously undermined support for the U.S. within Vietnam. In fact, if anything intentionally targeting civilians does not seem to demoralize a civilian population and hasten an end to a war as much as it seems to stiffen the resolve and support of civilians for even the most wretched of governments.

It is difficult to argue that civilians should never be targeted — in fact nuclear deterrence relies on just such a targeting and I think that can be defended on grounds of efficacy and proportionality. But I’ve never seen a convincing argument that the attacks on Dresden, Hiroshima or Nagasaki were morally just.

Source:

Libertarian Watch. Andrew Dalton, April 21, 2002.

Matt Welch on the Difference Between Newspapers and Weblogs

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Matt Welch really caught the cultural difference between weblogs and traditional media when he told EPN World Reporter that with weblogs,

All readers are urged to create their own sites — think about that: this is a medium that by definition encourages readers to establish competing media. That’s awesome and wonderful, I think. Glenn Reynolds, about a month ago, asked people to e-mail him if they had started blogs partially because of his own example. More than 200 people mailed in. When’s the last time any publication or writer encouraged 200 people to start publications within six months?

That just really captures what is best about the weblog trend.

I was reading John Dvorak’s latest screed against weblogs in PC Magazine the other day. Dvorak was ridiculing weblogs with a guide to create a “perfect blog” which included using excessive jargon, bitching and whining when some other blogger doesn’t link to you, suck up to others in the weblog community, etc.

In the print version of PC Magazine, the reader turns the page after Dvorak’s piece and finds his “Inside Track” column, which of course is simply nothing more than Dvorak’s rumors and innuendos which he uses to alternately suck up to or bitch and moan about technology companies. The column features several goofy poses of Dvorak looking like a retarded John McLaughlin and phrases and words randomly appearing in bold.

What pisses off Dvorak is that weblogs make it possible for anyone to become a lousy hack if they so choose. The web rendered Dvorak’s schtick as a sort of technology pundit irrelevant, because plenty of people with weblogs fulfill that role much better than Dvorak does.

Not all traditional media folks react as negatively as Dvorak has, but enough of them do that it presents a fascinating look at what people in the media really think of their audience. Welch and others think one of the best things about weblogs is that almost anyone can start one and share their ideas and opinions with others.

To people like Dvorak, though, that’s a bug, not a feature.

Source:

The Welch Report – Go Publish Yourself EPN World Reporter, April 2002.

Saudi Troops Massing? Puhleeze.

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Via Instapundit comes the funniest headline of the week courtesy of Yahoo!, News,

Saudi troops mass on border with Jordan following reports of Israeli military buildup

Of course, this is not your father’s massing of troops. According to the report,

The eight brigades, compromising 8,000 soldiers equipped with armored personnel carriers and missile launchers, moved into the Tabuk region in northern Saudi Arabia, the officials said.

What are they going to do, committ mass suicide in protest if the Israelis provoke them? The last time I checked Israel has an army consisting of about 200,000 regular troops as well as 400,000 people who have had military training and can be called up very quickly. And, of course, equipped with all the latest military gear that the United States can sell them. If Israel wanted to it could once again route all of the Arab states in a shooting war. The Saudi buildup is simply that country’s version of a maneuver my cats love whereby they try to make themselves look bigger and meaner than they really are hoping it will deter potential threats. Of course Saudi Arabia’s biggest threat is Islamic extremism from within (which it actively promotes).

The Gates Comedy Show

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Bill Gates is, of course, testifying in person during this round of the penalty phase of the Microsoft antitrust trial. He probably should have stayed home. According to the Associated Press, Gates actually testified today that the penalties proposed by the states could limit Microsoft’s ability to fix security holes in its Windows.

Gates was referring to a proposal that would require Microsoft to continue selling the previous version of Windows after it releases a new version. Gates said Microsoft wouldn’t be allowed to recall or replace a version if a major security hole is found.

First, that last sentence shoudl read that “Gates said Microsoft wouldn’t be allowed to recall or replace a version when a major security hole is found.”

Second, it is difficult to believe that security in Microsoft products could get any worse. The implication of Gates’ comments are that security holes probably still exist in previous versions of Windows such that fixing the damn things would require major rewrites of parts of the OS.

That Gates sure knows how to inspire a sense of wellbeing and security in us Windows users.

George Lucas Just Learning that People Disliked Phantom Menace ?

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Yikes — it is easy to understand how celebrities get insulated from criticism and surround themselves with yes men, but this Time story
claims that George Lucas did not realize that people did not universally love The Phantom Menace (I feel asleep near the end of the movie).

Maybe George Lucas ought to get out more. For the past three years, as he ruled his multimedia empire from the palatial redoubt of Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, Calif., Lucas has dwelt in the lovely dream that his 1999 Star Wars movie, Episode I—The Phantom Menace, was universally loved. Lately, though, inquiring journalists have slapped him awake. “I’m getting my education now from the press,” he says. “They come in and say, ‘Wow. People hated your movie. What do you think about that?’”

That’s just a downright scary level of isolation.

Alexa Ratings Are Crap

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Today I received an e-mail from someone proposing a closer relationship between one of my web sites and a web site this person runs. The two sites cover the same topic and the other web site is far more popular than mine, so it’s not necessarily a bad idea.

But to show how popular his site was, this person included a long list of “Average traffic rankings” from Alexa.Com.

I have no idea what these are supposed to measure, but it ain’t average traffic. Compare the average traffic ranking Alexa.Com assigns to "href=http://info.alexa.com/data/details?url=instapundit.blogspot.com">Instapundit vs. what it it assigns to my AnimalRights.Net site.

Now, I’m pretty happy that traffic on AnimalRights.Net is approaching 3,000 page views per day, but come on — Instapundit gets 10 times that much traffic most weekdays.

And yet, according to Alexa.Com, AnimalRights.Net garners a 45,889 traffic rating vs. Instapundit’s 76,274.

Maybe in some alternate universe, but not this one.

Routing Around Monopoly Phone Companies in the Developing World

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Telephone service in most developing countries is horrible. Typically a single monopoly company provides all service, and often there is corruption involved with contracts and agreements for providing service. THe result is that phone service in the developing world is horribly expensive in countries where people’s income is relatively low.

In a country like Honduras, for example, only 44 out of every 1,000 people have a phone and telephone calls can cost up to $1.50 per minute in a country where the per capita income is only about $850.

The Washington Post reports, however, that some enterprising entrepreneurs in the developing world are routing around their country’s phone service by starting cafe’s that let people call long distance and internationally for as little as 5 to 10 cents per minute.

The Post describes one such cafe in Honduras called Multinet which is just “a tiny one-room air-conditioned space inside the city’s largest mall” where customers sit in front of one of a dozen computers. For about $1.25, customers can purchase 15 minutes of time to call anywhere in the world. There’s a phone attached to the computer that the customers talk through and the recipient gets the phone call on a traditional phone, but the call is carried entirely over the Internet, cutting the monopoly phone company out of the transaction altogether.

The cafes are so popular, that IDC Corp. analyst Elizabeth Farrand estimates that by 2006 as much of half of all international phone calls from Latin America will be carried over the Internet.

Of course, in some countries the phone companies have successfully pushed for laws outlawing such businesses, but those countries seem to be seeing the light. Both Brazil and India have laws banning Internet phone calls, but those laws expire this year and already there are entrepreneurs waiting to pounce on the new business opportunity.

In just a few years, entrepreneurs and the Internet have accomplished what state-approved phone companies could not do in several decades — bring cheap phone service to the masses. Ah what people in developing countries can accomplish when they can route around official government policies.

Source:

Internet Cafes’ Phone Service Fills a Void. Ariana Eunjung Cha, The Washington Post, April 18, 2002.