What Is Going On With Palm/Handspring?

Is anybody else as mystified as I am about the moves (or lack thereof) being made by Palm and Handspring? I am a very heavy user of my Palm IIIxe and it is one of the few high-tech gadgets I’ve ever purchased that I actually used on a daily basis. I don’t leave home without it. But when it’s time to buy a new PDA, I’m almost certainly going with a PocketPC model, probably an iPaq.

The problems with the Palm OS models are evident in a recent announcement by Handspring of a couple new models (Don Larson originally pointed this out to me).

Gee whiz — for $299 and $199 respectively I can buy yet another greyscale PDA that uses proprietary technology for expandability.

I’d prefer color and a compact flash slot. There are several Palm PDA models that include one or the other, but none to my knowledge that features both. Which is why I doubt I’ll ever buy another Palm PDA.

Someday there aren’t going to be any Palm PDAs and the usual suspects will claim that Microsoft killed Palm with underhanded tactics. In reality, at the moment Palm and Handspring seem intent on committing suicide.

Chickens Coming Home to Roost?

After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, Malcolm X created a controversy when he characterized the assassination as “chickens coming home to roost.” Malcolm X believed that the United States was a fundamentally violent society, and his point was that in the context of that violence it is hardly surprising that someone would direct violence at the nation’s political leaders.

Harry Browne, the recent Libertarian Party presidential candidate, wrote an article yesterday which bluntly blamed American foreign policy for Tuesday’s terrorist attack,

Our foreign policy has been insane for decades. It was only a matter of time until Americans would have to suffer personally for it. It is a terrible tragedy of life that the innocent so often have to suffer for the sins of the guilty.

When will we learn that we can’t allow our politicians to bully the world without someone bullying back eventually?

President Bush has authorized continued bombing of innocent people in Iraq. President Clinton bombed innocent people in the Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Serbia. President Bush Senior invaded Iraq and Panama. President Reagan bombed innocent people in Libya and invaded Grenada. And on and on it goes.

Did we think the people who lost their families and friends and property in all that destruction would love America for what happened?

Myles Kantor is outraged in response and claims that this is excusing or justifying the terrorist acts.

I think that is an untenable position. Browne’s point, at least as I read it, isn’t that somehow these terrorists were justified because of U.S. military intervention, but rather that if the United States is going to engage in the killing of innocent people abroad, we are foolish to think that those people won’t try to strike back in a similar fashion.

Kantor says that, “For a libertarian to soft-pedal it [mass murder] is obscene incoherence.” No, Myles, what is obscene is that our government has for far too long been an active participant in exactly the sorts of cowardly terrorist acts that were committed on Tuesday (though rarely on that scale).

George W. Bush says that countries that harbor or stand by and allow such acts to be planned and carried out are just as guilty as the terrorists. Well, where does that leave the United States given that the Central Intelligence Agency not only knew about but clearly provided aid and comfort to the Guatemalan military while it murdered tens of thousands of civilians? How can members of Congress go on television and talk about cowards who murder civilians when they just a few months ago approved a multi-billion dollar package to fight a war against Colombian civilians?

There is no excuse or justification for the 9/11 attacks, and the United States needs to respond appropriately by tracking down and bringing to justice, one way or another, those responsible for that heinous act. But we also need to have empathy and understanding for the civilian victims of the U.S. military and foreign policy and say enough is enough.

Where Did Osama bin Laden Get the Idea that Murdering Civilians was Acceptable?

The horror of it all is still difficult to comprehend. Thousands of civilians murdered in cold blood as part of a campaign of terror. These people were killed simply to make a point and to attempt to weaken the resolve of a nation. No, I’m not talking about the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, but rather a war crime perpetrated by Allied nations during the end of World War II.

Just a couple weeks before the bombing of the World Trade Center, the BBC aired a look at the bombing of German cities in the last months of World War II. Dresden, of course, has always stood out as a target that was mercilessly bombed apparently not out of any strategic military concerns but rather to terrorize its civilian population and thereby bring a quicker end to the war. And, it turns out, Dresden wasn’t the only city victimized this way.

The BBC program, Bombing Germany, looked at the Allied bombing of Wuerzburg, Germany — a small town of about 8,000 people. On March 16, 1945, Allied forces dropped almost 1,000 tons of bombs on the city, killing almost 5,000 people and destroying more than 80 percent of the town.

Documents turned up by the BBC confirm what was long suspected — Dresden, Wuerzburg, and other German towns were chosen not because of any military value but rather because for a number of reasons it would be easy to destroy these largely residential errors and terrorize the civilian population.

The BBC quotes from a memo by US Air Force general Frederick Anderson that maintained the goal of the operations was “not expected in itself to shorten the war … However, it is expected that the fact that Germany was struck all over will be passed on, from father to son, thence to grandson; that a deterrent for the initiation of future wars will definitely result.”

In other words, they were pure and simple acts of terrorism — a fact explicitly conceded by Winston Churchill who drafted a memorandum suggesting that it was time to curtail such raids since the war was quickly drawing to a close,

The moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land.

The Allied campaign of terrorism had to be stopped not because it was in violation of international law as well as an affront to morality, but rather it had to be stopped so that Allied forces would have something left to occupy when they inevitably defeated Nazi Germany. As long as it did not interfere with other objectives, terrorizing a civilian population was perfectly acceptable to Allied commanders and their political leaders.

Unlike Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, nobody even tried to bring those responsible for these despicable acts of terrorism to justice. But contemporary terrorists have done well by adopting that callous view of human life.

Source:

War papers reveal bombers’ terror tactics. Richard Norton-Taylor, SMH.Com.Au, August 24, 2001.

Animal Rights Group Donated 50,000 Pounds to Labour

In early August, Great Britain’s Labour Party filed a legally required report detailing donors to the party. Among the donors listed, was an anti-hunting group, the Political Animal Lobby, which donated almost 50,000 pounds to the Labour Party only a few weeks before Tony Blair had formally announced that his party would seek another vote in Parliament on a measure to ban hunting.

In April, while the Labour Party was in the middle of drafting its election manifesto, the Political Animal Lobby donated 30,000 pounds. In June it chipped in an additional 17,582 pounds.

In the previous election, various animal rights groups donated about 1 million pounds to the Labour Party to help its election efforts.

Labour did introduce a bill to ban hunting, but while it was approved overwhelmingly by the House of Commons, it was blocked by the House of Lords. Labour plans to reintroduce the bill, and animal rights groups are betting that with the election behind him, Blair will act to overrule the House of Lords if it again blocks the hunting ban.

Fifty thousand pounds, after all, is nothing to sneeze at.

Source:

Anti-hunting group donated pounds 50,000 to Labour. Marie Woolf, The Independent (London), August 8, 2001.

Crack Down on Prime Numbers!

ZDNet reports that some members of Congress want a worldwide ban on “uncrackable” computer encryption in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the United States.

First, no existing system of computer encryption is uncrackable. Very difficult to crack if implemented correctly, but not uncrackable. Even systems using what should be an uncrackable scheme — one time pads — usually end up being cracked given enough time due to human factors that for a number of reason are almost impossible to eliminate.

Second, we need “uncrackable” computer encryption. As computers have gotten faster and advances in mathematical theory and programming have occurred, we’ve seen one after another encryption scheme brought down to the ground by some creative folks. Look at SSH, for example, which is a widely deployed and extremely secure system, except it is possible in theory to crack it because of idiosyncracies about how people tend to type (i.e. in theory, you might be able to guess my password by seeing how long it takes me to go from one letter to the next and then inferring from that which keys I must be typing). The more uncrackable, the better.

Third, even if it were a good idea, the possibility of a global ban on something like public-key encryption is ludicrous. There is no way such a ban could ever work. Would they really want to go around and arrest anyone who posts a PGP key? It’s just a silly proposal, especially when it comes to terrorists. Afghanistan let Osama bin Laden set up terrorist training camps in that country — does Congress really think they would have demanded that he relinquish his copy of PGP?

My Horrible Evening

Today my Grandmother underwent her second (and hopefully final) angioplasty surgery. She’s getting up there in years (80+) and her doctors discovered she had exteremely poor circulation below the waist due to severely blocked arteries. The circulation was so bad that the choice was either have the angioplasty or almost certainly amputate her legs in a few years.

My brother is a military cop at an Air Force base here, and has been working 15 hour days ever since the 9/11 terrorist attack, so last night Lisa and I drove to Battle Creek, Michigan. She returned to our house with my daughter, and I slept on my Grandma’s couch.

This morning I drove my Grandmma to the hospital, she went through the surgery, and as the surgeon put it, she was back to her old ornery self within a couple hours. But then things really started to get weird.

Lisa was supposed to pick up Emma from her school, get her some food, and then drive to Battle Creek to pick me up (the drive takes about 20 minutes). I figured she’d be there around 6 p.m., but wasn’t concerned when she still wasn’t there at 6:30 p.m. When 7 p.m. rolled around, though, I was a little angry thinking she was dinking around rather than coming to Battle Creek right away.

By 7:30 p.m. I was past the anger and straight into being worried that something had happened to her. Her cell phone kept giving me “That caller is unavailable” and when I tried to call her family members, none of them were home either.

By 8:00 p.m. I was basically freaking out. I finally got her father on the phone who said that when he had talked to her around 5:30 p.m. that my daughter had a fever and had thrown up. So now, I’m calling all the hospitals, her pediatrician, the urgent care at the doctor’s office, and other places seeing if she had taken my daughter there.

Finally I decided to go back to my Grandma’s apartment and see if she was there, but on my way out I checked all of the parking lots and was very happy to see her car there. I ran into the hospital to hear my name being announced over the loudspeaker asking me to return to my Grandma’s room.

It turns out her evening had been just as frustrating as mine. She had shown up at the hospital at 6:30 pm. only to be told that my Grandmother had been discharged earlier in the evening. This was completely false, but she had no idea. Thinking my Grandmother had been discharged, she had spent two hours alternating between hanging around my Grandma’s apartment complex waiting for her to show up and taking my daughter to a nearby store to keep her occupied (the last thing in the world you want to do is sit around waiting with a four year old).

By the time 8 p.m. rolled around she figured something was up and returned to the hospital. Asking for more information about when my Grandma had been discharged, she was told that in fact she was in a critical care room for an overnight stay.

Whew! I was really stressing out there for a few minutes with all sorts of ugly scenarios and possibilities going through my mind.