Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/18/the-situation/
> How is the situation in the US today about the Iraqi issue? Are people
> upset or excited or…?
They’re rebroadcasting his speech on the radio. I don’t like George Bush, but I think it was a very good speech and that often times when he delivered it, his voice sounded like Reagan’s. I don’t like Reagan either, but he had charisma.
Americans are very conflicted. Some tempers are high, but I think that those who oppose the war are coming around to accept its inevitability. I think his speech should help rally those who support him, and soothe those who are on the fence. Those who oppose him can go on fighting, or turn their energies to other activities that should actually bear fruit.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/08/marc-andreessen-lacks-time-ego-need/
Marc Andreeson answers two questions in a recent interview:
Q Do you blog?
A No. I have a day job. I don’t have the time or ego need.
Q FCC Chairman Michael Powell calls TiVo “God’s machine.” What’s your equivalent?
A I have four Replay machines. Each has 360 hours of storage and they are plugged into my home LAN (local area network). I have 1,400 hours of video storage. What’s on it? All kinds of stuff, like the last 80 episodes of Charlie Rose.
So, he does not have the time or ego to put his thoughts on the web in a “blog” like what I’m doing here, but he does have the time to store 1,400 hours of television, including eighty hours of Charlie Rose, and the ego need to brag about it. This incredible visionary can at least offer that “four Replays” is his “equivalent” of “the TiVo”.
3 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/06/give-war-another-chance/
Well, Janet Dahl is pretty conflicted over the War. Thanks, Linky, for the heads up. Her concern boils down to, “Sure, it seems like a great thing to get rid of a horrible dictator” versus an understanding of the cost of war’s destruction.
I like to take things from here. First off, let’s admit that our President may not be the best leader we could ask for. He may in fact, even be a petty, vindictive asshole who does what the money and his own sense of reactionary moral outrage tells him to do. The timing on this war is questionable, what with Sharon in power, oil prices already really high, North Korea looking for trouble, and the ever-present whining about inspections. The fact, as many of us see it, is that America is led by a lunatic who would be little better than his enemies were he not hamstringed by the Constitution that he’s been trying to rewrite.
So, a lot of folks, understandably, get very upset when he wants to send our nation’s young men into battle in the sandy hot desert, dodging not only bullets, and anti-aircraft weapons, but exploding refineries and oil wells and petroleum falling from the sky. On the home front, we expect more desperate young men to find their ways into Terrorist training camps to perpetrate ingenious new ways of murdering us here at home.
Many of us doubt his sincere intentions to commit to rebuilding this destroyed nation, with a democratic government. We sense that the required military occupation, on top of the war itself, will incense the passions of the Arab world. We want no part of messing with this.
But what can we do? Shall we protest in the streets about how awful war is? Do we complain about the legal precedent of invading a sovereign nation? What would we do in the President’s place? Wait another four months and hope that either Saddam Hussein has a change of heart, after over a decade, and disarms, or that maybe he will go away, either into exile, or is perhaps deposed by another aspiring dictator in the Baath party? We could wait until, say, July, when it is hottest in the Persian Gulf, and then fight, in the sun, or we could just wait and ignore him until he proves that he has weapons of mass destruction by passing some stuff along to an intrepid band of Terrorists who show it off in an American city.
One of the things I’ve managed to do with my character is to get over the sense that the world would be a better place if only everyone agreed with me. This doesn’t mean I’ll stop arguing in favor of what I think is the best way to go about things: this is, after all, a favorite hobby of mine. I look at the situation now and I see a big old lemon. I could suck on the lemon and complain about how bitter it is, or I can sit back and watch George fumble with it and hope for lemonade. Given that the lemon is in George’s clenched fist, hovering over the Middle East, I’d just as soon let him try and run the show.
But we’re invading a sovereign nation! What value is a sovereign nation run by a tyrant who murders his own people, who has no respect for other sovereign nations? The enemy in question would have no right to raise such an objection. Indeed, if you refer to the American Declaration of Independence, we understand that nations “[derive] their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” Our own sovereignty is founded upon the basis that sovereignty is derived from popular consent. What is Iraq’s claim to sovereignty: a lump of competing ethnic groups ruled by a bloodthirsty dictator within the lines drawn on a map by the British Empire?
What of the Iraqi people? Again, our founding document goes on: “all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” In the South and in the North of Iraq, the Iraqi people have risen time and again to throw off their Government, only to be crushed by their Despot, strengthened by our arms and our complicity in allowing him to crush his people. We are already guilty when it comes to Iraqi suffering. Bush’s insistence on “regime change” and the formulation of plans for a transitional government are evidence that America’s intentions, this time around, are purportedly to assist the Iraqi people in their duty to throw off Saddam Hussein.
What of all the terrorists that will be recruited in the wake of Iraq’s destruction? Iraq is already mostly destroyed, and a pretty miserable place to live. Young men leave the country to find their live’s glories elsewhere. Under a less-tyrannical US Military Administration, transitioning to some sort of more benevolent, representative government, there would be plenty of work to do in rebuilding a nation. There will also be less justification for US Military to protect the holy land, and troops will follow existing pressure by the Saudi Government to leave Islam’s heartland alone. Yes, there will be many vulnerable young men whose hearts will be wounded by their personal losses, inflicted by the United States. There are many such men already in Iraq, with nothing to distract them from this pain, and a dictator and Terrorist leaders offering them a chance at vengeance.
Whatever the President’s intentions, whatever his abilities, qualities, morality, or lack thereof, I see that our military has been assembled, ready to strike an avowed enemy, under the auspices of United Nations agreements going back over a decade. A lot of nations are opposed to letting Bush have his way with the UN’s blessing, because he is an unelected unilateralist idiot with undue influence on the world, who withdraws from those few International Treaties that his predecessors have signed. Nonetheless, the unilateralist idiot has picked his enemy well, if not his timing, and stopping what is already in action because we don’t like the guy behind it strikes me as so much futile resentment. The way I see it, the Iraqi people need a hand. If the vagaries of International politics have conspired in such a way as to give it to them, we shouldn’t stand in the way.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/23/incredible-products-that-change-the-world/
Microsoft maintains that its growth prospects are strong. The company will be coming out with “incredible products that change the world,” Microsoft Chief Financial Officer John Connors said at an analysts conference last month in New York.
Still, Connors acknowledged the question that has been hounding Microsoft lately — whether “those products translate into the kind of profitability we’ve had from some of the very incredible products we’ve done historically.”
seattlepi.com
Maturing Microsoft looks to new markets to keep growing
The reason I’m not a successful businessman is that I would be hard-pressed to promise my investors that I would be coming out with “incredible products that change the world” with a straight face. I’d then start laughing my ass off when I had to explain that even though I was about to release “incredible products that change the world” that they may not make us much money as the other incredible products I have released before.
The fact that I haven’t encountered a Microsoft product that I’d call “incredible” or that I expected “would change the world” probably doesn’t help. Historically, Microsoft hasn’t relied on releasing incredible products that would change the world, they take an existing product that looks set to make a lot of money, perhaps because it will change the world, and appropriate one of their own to make money off of.
You’d think the CFO would at least be honest. If I were an investor, I’d get excited by news that “We’ve found some excellent software products in the Open Source world that we can re-implement and bundle with Windows.” Even that, though, sounds like another Microsoft strategy employed to manipulate the market: vaporware.
Microsoft has a history of observing a new software product emerge from somewhere else that they can’t compete with, so they squelch it by announcing that they’re already developing an alternative that will destroy their competitor. They don’t actually have to ship anything, they just have to scare away the competing investors and potential customers who would be reluctant to purchase the new software before they knew what the more-likely-to-win-marketshare alternative would be. The promise of “incredible products that change the world” sounds like some sort of blanket statement to cover whatever the next innovation in the high-tech industry will be. “I can’t tell you what the next big thing will be, but you can rest assurred that we will 0WN it.”
Which they have to say with a straight face, because they’ve run out of new products to force down our throats.
It seems like Google has a solid track-record of creating new services that rule. I wonder if the reason they haven’t gone public yet is because they’d prefer not to be bought out by Microsoft. I’m curious to see what they will do with blogging.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/21/war-articulated/
I was never too satisfied with my own attempt to articulate my position on the looming conflict but I am extremely satisfied with Azeem’s “War now is better than war later”.
The gist of the argument is that, yes, Bush is evil too, and his henchmen are making a mess of the process, but since we’ve put up the forces and the rhetoric to fight a war, it is best to get the thing over with and move forward in the world. I would add to this the obvious, that Saddam Hussein is unlikely to go away on his own, and the sooner we disarm him, however clumsily, and with whatever unknowable repurcussions, we’re still better off than with a wacko tin-pot dictator in the Middle East giving the shaft to his own people, and quite possibly giving nasty things to the enemies of his enemy to mess with us.
I also appreciate the reminder that just as American War is motivated by oil, French and Russian Peace is also tainted by crude. More than anything, though, it seems that Chirac is jealous not only of America’s power, but that a spoiled brat from Texas is willing to wield this power. It cheapens a French leader’s sense of self-importance, especially when small, emerging democracies on the same continent have the temerity to speak up and suggest that “maybe the moron has a point.”
It isn’t so simple as choosing between the lesser of two evils. It boils down to the fact that, rightly or wrongly, the issue has been brought to a head, and it must be resolved. The choice for the free world is to lose credibility by backing down, and allow a dictator to continue screwing his people, while contemptuously defying the will of the United Nations, or to let the United States go to war yet again, and deal with the consequences of the ensuing bungles of American foreign policy.
The best course to me seems for the nations of the world to let President Bush do what with his limited imagination he is capable of doing – let him have his war, let the bombs fall, and the people die, because however terrible war is, it is not definitively worse than the current “peace” – the smarter leaders of more progressively sober-minded, peace-loving countries should get together and hammer out the plan for what happens next in Iraq. Bush can be trusted with war, but Americans running a Muslim country is one of the things that seems to scare everyone; Those who want what’s best should accept what is likely to happen and best prepare for an aftermath.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/21/microsoft-and-commoditization-of-software/
Microsoft sells OFFICE (the suite) while people may only need a small part of Word or a bit of Access. Microsoft sells WINDOWS (the platform) but a small org might just need a website, or a fileserver. It no longer fits Microsoft’s business model to have many individual offerings and to innovate with new application software. Unfortunately, this is exactly where free software excels and is making inroads. One-size-fits-all, one-app-is-all-you-need, one-api-and-damn-the-torpedoes has turned out to be an imperfect strategy for the long haul.
David Stutz
_Advice to Microsoft regarding commodity software_
Amen to that, brother!
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/19/why-python-sucks/
Say, I want to know the semantics of a built-in function. In Perl, I type in perldoc -f <function-name>.
In Python, I have to go searching on the web, and the best thing I can come up with is a third-party HOWTO, which amounts to a tutorial on how the function works, rather than a quick, fifteen-second reference on calling semantics.
Dang.
57 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/14/operas-sense-of-humor/
Microsoft are at it again, feeding Opera bogus stylesheets so their MSN.com site will come out broken. I shall link you here, to a good technical explanation of what is going on and, perhaps more interesting, Opera’s novel response.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/14/standard-of-living/
Mr Gordon argues that GDP comparisons tend to overstate America’s living standards and understate Europe’s. For example, America’s climate is more extreme than western Europe’s, so more has to be spent on air conditioning and heating to attain a given indoor temperature. This extra spending boosts GDP, but does not enhance welfare. More of America’s GDP is also spent on home and business security, largely because of a higher crime rate. In most of Europe, such spending is less necessary. The huge cost of keeping 2m people in American prisons (a far bigger proportion of the population than in Europe) also bolsters America’s GDP relative to Europe’s, but not its welfare.
Another factor is the greater dispersion of America’s population in vast, sprawling metropolitan areas with few transport options other than the car. This is partly the result not of private choice but of public policy, such as subsidies to suburban motorways and a starving of public transport, or local zoning laws that limit the minimum size of residential developments. It leads to higher spending on roads and energy, and hence higher GDP. In Europe the convenience of more compact cities and frequent train and bus transport does not count towards GDP figures.
From The Economist, “Chasing the Leader”
SUVs are good for the economy.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/12/whats-going-wrong/
Two paragraphs from the book I just finished: _What Went Wrong: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East_, by Bernard Lewis, that struck me as especially portentious:
If the peoples of the Middle East continue on their present path, the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the whole region, and there will be no escape from a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression, culminating sooner or later in yet another alien domination. […] If they can abandon their grievances and victimhood, settle their differences, and join their talents, energies, and resources in a common creative endeavor, then they can once again make the Middle East, in modern times as it was in antiquity and the Middle Ages, a major center of civilization. For the time being, the choice is their own.
Next:
For growing numbers, [of Muslims] the issue is not religion or nationality, nor this or that frontier or territory, but freedom–the right to live their own lives, in a free and open society under a representative and responsible government. For them the prime enemy is not the outsider, be he defined as foreigner, infidel, or as imperialist, but their own rulers, regimes that maintain themselves by tyranny at home and terrorism abroad and have failed by every measure of governmental achievment except survival. The numbers and the influence of these freedom seekers are difficult to assess, since the public expression of such views is forbidden and subject to the direst penalties. They receive little help from those who would be their natural allies in the free world, notably those who present themselves as friends and advocates, but who prefer to deal with corrupt tyrants, provided that they are amenable, rather than risk the hazards of regime change.
For those who oppose war in Iraq, which would bring about a “regime change” that would remove a horrible autocrat, what is proposed as the alternative? War is a terrible way to achieve progress, nor is progress our stated objective; Our President publicly seeks “security” from “terrorism” and privately seeks an oil supply. I suppose the ultimate frustration is that while few really trust Bush’s motivations and desired outcome, neither can anyone abide by the status quo in good conscience, it is really just a question of betting on the least tyrannical evil. Is it America’s unelected buffoon of a President, cynically sending our kids to risk their own lives by killing Iraqis, to shore up the riches of those who put him in office, or is it the scheming dictator who needs time to plot against us, who has his own history of invading foreign countries to improve oil profits, while ensuring stability by using non-conventional weapons to repress his subjects?
If you’re not with us, your only helping someone even less palatable. I’d credit George Bush with knowing how to pick his enemies, but it was really his dad who created the enemy by calling Saddam on his invasion of Kuwait, without actually eliminating him.
Well, I may be able to make some more chocolate chip cookies this evening. As the old lady in “The Matrix” explained the benefits of cookie consumption, it ought to help me “feel right as rain.”
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/11/war/
I’ve been wondering why I feel weird about all the anti-war sentiment now that I’m back here in the liberal land of California. One of my favorite days was the winter day before the 1991 air war started, when we walked out of my Chicago high-school, and walked downtown on Lake Shore Drive to protest the potential war. The march down LSD was extremely cool, because we were walking on a highway, hundreds of young people, taking up two lanes, with a third lane of police cars, and a fourth lane of cars that honked as they passed us, either because they were upset at us blocking traffic, or because a honk indicated solidarity with peace demonstrations in those days.
Now, I feel ambivalent. I certainly doubt the President’s motivations. I’m inclined to believe that there is more immediate gain for him in securing oil supplies and domestic support in a time of international crisis, than any imminent threat to us from Iraq. On the other hand, while the resumption of war would cost a lot of death and destruction to the Iraqi people, if we actually remove Saddam Hussein, we will also be removing a long-standing source of death and oppression.
One way or another, the sanctions need to end; The Middle East needs stability that is not based on detent and decay. If we had to occupy and rebuild Iraq, there would be an excuse for resentment among Islamic Fanatics. On the other hand, perhaps it would mean that we could leave Saudi Arabia, the land of Mecca, to its own devices, which may give in to pressures to reform once we’re done propping up a redundant oil supply.
Maybe if we worry ourselves with occupying and building a strong and stable Iraq, we’ll feel more secure about Iran, and better able to sanely pursue relations with this formidable country.
Most of all, I feel most frustrated with European insistence on giving the inspections more time. More time for what? We’ve been trying “inspections” for more than a decade. Saddam Hussein has never been inclined to test clean, and the latest inspections are just a fancier version of the same old tired show. In America we fight wars in foreign lands, while Europeans have more direct experience with war, which encourages them to cherish peace all the more. While I think this is great for the cause of peace, it can lead to the “Peace at any Price” mentality which left Germany’s earliest WWII aggression un-checked. It is that sentiment in Europe today that causes the most direct emotional support, I believe, for the United States “proactively engaging” a problem overseas before it becomes a problem at home.
Of course, the most proactive policy would have been to remove Hussein in the first Gulf War. I believed at the time and I still believe that the cease-fire was a terrible decision. Whatever strategy you choose to solve a problem, you need to devote yourself to success. If you choose peace, you devote yourself to a peaceful solution. If you choose war, you devote yourself to victory. We chose war in 1991, which leads me to feel that the coming conflict is the attainment of victory, foolishly delayed, at the expense of a prolonged suffering on the part of the Iraqi people, who should have been liberated a decade ago.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/05/the-first-monty/
So, I asked myself, “Self, isn’t it about time we learned Python?”
Being as I am more open-minded these days, I replied “Yes, let us do this! Then we can learn Medusa and re-implement Gallery!”
So, I went over to the Python website and started reading the Python Tutorial, and among the technical arguments in favor of Python, on the first page, I read:
By the way, the language is named after the BBC show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and has nothing to do with nasty reptiles. Making references to Monty Python skits in documentation is not only allowed, it is encouraged!
That alone convinces me that Python IS the Ultimate Programming Language Ever!
Ni!
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/10/28/signs/
I visited the Fine Arts museum with Michiaki. That took about two hours. Not bad. Lunch, then we found the national bank where Michiaki was able to exchange some old Francs for Euros, then we walked down to Perrache, en route to the theater, where he was able to cash in some of his Franc traveler’s checks at the Thomas Cook exchange office. We bummed around the movie theater for an hour before show time, my companion still somewhat fatigued from jet-lag, having arrived just four days earlier. He joined me for “Signs” which was a very silly, but otherwise pretty good flick. Michiake explained that he understood about two thirds of the French subtitles, while I thought about how the movie represented the American sense of fear based in alienation, a strong theme from “Bowling for Columbine” the day before, and wondering quietly whether this particular fear from alienation was representative of Fear of the Unknown Terror(ists), or simple old-fashioned Fear of the Black Man.
I think too much.
It could just as well be Fear of Technology, but that would be too obvious, after the younger brother goes on this tirade about how this is all just an elaborate hoax perpetrated by thirty year old men who never got to have girlfriends, the Nerds, who are able to orchestrate hoaxes on a more massive scale now thanks to the Internet, simply because they never have anything better to do.
Fear of Microsoft.
And the little girls asks, concerned, “Why couldn’t they have girlfriends?”
Okay, perhaps Signs is a great movie.
Afterwards, I dropped anchor at the Internet cafe I’d found the day before, Caps Lock, just downhill from the hostel, and checked in on my own elaborate hoax, after which I enjoyed a chicken basmati at the Gandhi restaurant a few meters away, across from the Funicular station. Great service. Not horrible prices.
Back at the hostel, laundry took only two hours. I saw that the wash was available in an “eco” version, which, after Hamburg, I carefully avoided. Wash took an hour and a half, and a half hour more to dry. I napped for half-hour intervals, and during one of my “check-if-the-laundry-is-finished-yet” runs I found myself in conversation with a Taiwanese girl, drying her hair in the stairwell. She was considering the Contemporary Art Museum, the Lumiere Museum, and the Musée Urbain Tony Garnier. I discouraged her from the first of those, and was tempted by the latter two, not to mention the companionship, and the savings from another day at the €12 hostel. I decided to sleep on it.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/09/25/internationale/
On my way to the Metro this morning, I ran in to Naomi again. She was on her way back to Spain. We made good-bye with the Latin kiss on alternate cheeks, which Nagi had surprised me with when I saw her off at Amsterdam. This time I understood what was happening, and reciprocted. It was tricky, considering that vast difference in height, but in my opinion, this is one awesome way to say goodbye.
The evening wound down in conversation with my Algerian roommate, who introduced himself as “not a terrorist.” Among the questions of where one is coming and going, what one is studying, and whether one is engaged or happy to sample the lovely ladies met on the road, we drifted in to politics. I was treated to a new spin on a contemporary frustration: “Why does George Bush hate Arabs?”
While in America we see the occasional crazy Muslim trying to threaten random lives, Arabs see autocratic regimes propped up in nations like Saudi Arabia, and people starving as the indirect result of sanctions against Iraq, the frustrations of a dozen Arab nations with American foreign policy, which seeks to divide and conquer a downtrodden corner of the world, to ensure in this backwards “stability” a steady flow of oil.
I lamented the fact that we failed to finish the war in Iraq, leaving instead this ugly detente of a stalemate. Arabs see hungry Arab children on TV. Americans will not soon forget the desperation of people jumping from the higher floors of the World Trade Center. Detente. I described an emerging concept of America as the reluctant World Empire, that ought to outsource her burden by promoting the growth of regional powers, that can ensure a self-interested stability in remote parts of the world. But today we retain the bloody corpse of Iraq, to keep Iran at bay.
America has an abundance of everything it needs to enjoy its tendancy for isolationism. An abundance of everything except oil. I believe the practical course is to promote democracy in the Middle East. If Iran lets the people vote, let them have some influence in the region. It is in the self-interest of a stable regional power to ensure the steady flow of cash-producing exports.
Another problem is the rising abundance of young people who lack opportunity. The paradox is that as we make it harder for Arabs to pursue opportunities in America, we leave more frustrated young men amenable to the poison of fundamentalist reactionaries. It was heartening that here we were, two such young people, with the opportunity to travel, encounter, and better understand each other.
And all that was expressed somewhere between my limited French vocabulary, and his limited English vocabulary, with the occasional Spanish. Wow. Un jour de tranquiller.
After reading about Normandy, tomorrow I am off to Bayeaux.
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2002/09/25/corporeal-ecosystem/
Cite de la Science et l’Industre, Paris.
Our body is a complex ecosystem comprised of specialized organs that behave according to their own advantage, with no greater concern for the whole. White blood cells have no opinion about disease, except that it is good to eat.
Human organization, like ecosystems, is an amalgamation of seperate entities with differing agendae. Governments, corporations, and other organizations, like brains, attempt to organize the free agents towards a conscious goal.
It would be interesting, for modern fiction, to see a world in which at the levels of body, human world, and natural ecosystem, are played out at each level, as something for the protagonist to deal with. Douglas Adams’ work comes to mind, or perhaps William Gibson’s _Neuromancer_, where the protagonist must work against other consciousnesses, some of which have set up his own body against him.
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