Nick Denton

Ultra Wide Band: is there anything it *can't* do?
· pretty much immune to eavesdropping
· immune to interference or jamming
· can be used easily in buildings and even underground
· virtually no limit to the number of UWB signals that can share the same airwaves.
· ultra-low power, often one ten thousandth as much as a cellphone
· undetectable by conventional radios
· A UWB phone uses so little power it can remain on for weeks
· impossibly cheap: the U.S. Navy, for example, plans to put a UWB location marker on almost everything it ships overseas
· for soldiers entering a strange building, UWB radar can show literally where all the bodies are, right through walls, ceilings and floors
· as an electronic measuring device, UWB is accurate to within 10 centimeters
· UWB computer networks being developed now will initially operate at 40 to 60 megabits-per-second
· since UWB radios don't interfere with each other, every home and business in the neighborhood can have its own gigabit.
How Ultra Wide Band May (or May Not) Change the World [Robert Cringely] #

Wednesday, January 30

You got a problem with my bedside manner?
The Guardian's Steve Bell, the UK's most acerbic cartoonist, with his take on the Kandahar hospital siege. Can't imagine this published in the US.
Guardian: Cartoons #

Tuesday, January 29

Jews for whom?!
I'd heard of Jews for Jesus, but this is really something. An organization touting Islam as "the divine completion of Judaism".
Jews for Allah #

Rumsfeld's Rules of Life
I am a sucker for bullet point prescriptions, and these - written by the Secretary of Defense 20 years ago - are timeless, and astute. They're written mainly for White House officials, but are relevant to managing any organization. Among the more resonant...
· Control your time. If you're working off your-inbox, you're working off the priorities of others.
· Look for what's missing. Many advisors can tell a president how to improve what's proposed or what's gone amiss. Few are able to see what isn't there.
· If you foul up, tell the president and correct it fast. Delay only compounds mistakes.
· Don't divide the world into "them" and "us." Avoid infatuation with or resentment of the press, the Congress, rivals, or opponents. Accept them as facts.
· If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.
· Don't "overcontrol" like a novice pilot. Stay loose enough from the flow that you can observe, calibrate, and refine.
· The most underestimated risk for a politician is overexposure.
· Include others. As Sen. Pat Moynihan said, "Stubborn opposition to proposals often has no other basis than the complaining question, 'Why wasn't I consulted?"
· Watch the growth of middle level management. Don't automatically fill vacant jobs. Leave some positions unfilled for 6-8 months to see what happens. You will find you won't need to fill some of them.
· Reduce the number of lawyers. They are like beavers -- they get in the middle of the stream and dam it up.
· Rule One: -"The cover-up is worse than the event." Rule Two: "No one ever remembers the first rule."
· "If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact, not to be solved, but to be coped with over time." (Shimon Peres)
Rumsfeld's Rules of Life
Lucy Kellaway: Tips for the top [Financial Times] #

Monday, January 28

Daddy's $14m speech
Matt Drudge is in full rant mode about Global Crossing, its bankruptcy, and the company's connection to Democratic party fundraisers. As Enron is to Republicans, so Global Crossing is to Democrats? I don't think so. Before Drudge, Andrew Sullivan et al get too worked up, they should remember that George W's daddy made $14m from Global Crossing for a single *speech*. Puts Paul Krugman's little Enron retainer into perspective.
Global Crossing paid George Bush in stock [Bloomberg]
Drudge Report #

A really bad party
I had an enjoyable Saturday evening. At least a couple of arguments, without which one might as well stay home. One of the other guests, a fellow combatant, mentioned a great line from "Tender is the Night", which I have now tracked down. "I want to give a really bad party. I mean it. I want to give a party where there's a brawl and seductions and people going home with their feelings hurt and women passing out in the cabinette de toilette."
The Party Going Writers #

Osama who?
I just remembered that neither Osama Bin-Laden nor Mullah Omar have been captured, nor their bodies identified, nor has Osama even been seen recently. And it's been two months since the Taliban regime collapsed. This is not a criticism, just an observation. We're forgetting. Osama Bin-Laden: wasn't he the guy that knocked Gary Condit out of the headlines? You know, the one before Ken Lay. Osama who? #

Exactly which bit of Western culture do you not understand?
Another passage in the review of Bernard Lewis that jumped out at me. "As Lewis shrewdly points out, the works of Mozart and Shakespeare and Voltaire have traveled around the globe, as for that matter have Stravinsky, jazz and George Orwell. But they all pretty much stop at the frontiers of the Arab world, which has shown little interest in how others think, write, compose; there are few translations of these writers and few performances of these musicians, nor are there great libraries and museums of Western art to match the impressive collections of Muslim culture in the West."
And yet people in the Arab world feel overwhelmed by the modern Western culture of pop music and Hollywood films. So what should one conclude? That the Arab world is finally coming to terms with the West? That cultural tastes fall to the lowest common cultural denominator? Or maybe just that the Arab world has gone from ignorance of the West, to misunderstanding. Arnold Schwarzenegger, rather than Thomas Jefferson, is the embodiment of Western culture. What do you expect?
Bernard Lewis Asks 'What Went Wrong?' Between Islam and the West [New York Times] #

What went wrong?
A review of the latest book from the veteran Arabist. With this admirable succinct summary of the Middle East problem. "Sometime around 1760, Britain, then France and America took off to another world, one that was increasingly secular, democratic, industrial and tolerant in ways that left many of the other regions gasping at the combined implications of such changes. Certain societies in parts of Latin America or India or Russia felt they had little choice but to follow suit, although hoping to brake the impacts of Western man. The Middle East, powerful a half-millennium earlier, when Europe was a bundle of inchoate, backward states and unworthy of attention, did not."
· Bernard Lewis Asks 'What Went Wrong?' Between Islam and the West [NYT Books]
· What went wrong [Amazon] #

Clarity
Press coverage of the Enron collapse, a post-mortem by the LA Times. Some journalists picked up on the warning signs. Bethany McLean of the Wall Street Journal asked: "How exactly does Enron make its money?" And essentially concluded that no one--not Wall Street analysts, not investors, not journalists--really knew because the company's business practices were "largely impenetrable . . . mind-numbingly complex . . . deeply frustrating . . . mysterious." The moral of this story, and it goes wider than business. If it's not clear, there's probably something wrong.
Media Missed Clues to Enron's Troubles [LA Times]
Bethany McLean, lionized [New York Times] #

Andrew Grove aka Andras Grof
Andrew Grove, longtime head of Intel, grew up as Andras Grof, and Jewish, in Hungary, like my mother. His father, like hers, died in a labor camp on the Russian front during the war. He has been famously reluctant to talk about his family history, frustratingly reluctant. But his new book, Swimming Across, is a memoir. Refreshingly, it ends before Grove's business career begins.
· Intel Chairman Grove talks roots [CNET]
· Amazon.com: Swimming Across
· Excerpt #

Sunday, January 27

Blogger Pro?
Evan Williams has released the power version of Blogger. It's been in the works for a while: I remember an early version about a year ago. But Blogger Pro is a really useful advance. Best feature: the ability to edit a date, which means one can pre-populate a new weblog, and give readers the illusion that the site has been around, and busy, for months. And I like the headline feature too. Instead of handcoding the headline of each post, one can set up a standard template. On this weblog, for instance, every headline is automatically underlined. Still exploring.
Blogger Pro� - Power Push-Button Publishing
Blogland's reaction #

Bankruptcy of the buzz merchants
Andrew Sullivan, still kicking when the victim is down, turns his rhetoric on Tina Brown. I was rather impressed that Tina was still spinning as Talk closed. In every great career, she said, there's at least one flameout. But Sullivan connects the superficiality of Tina's magazines, the ephemeral nature of most internet startups, and the political and economic culture of the 1990s. And he has a point. "Like a dot-com startup, Ms. Brown disdained traditional economics, demanding small fortunes from her proprietors in return for . . . buzz. In the 1990s, the money was always there--and it was corrosive as well as productive."
Andrew Sullivan: Some like it hot #

Spotted
Aha, Meg and Jason - two bloggers whose relationship is often the subject of speculation - spotted on camera together. They're just hiking buddies.
Photos #

The San Francisco Chronicle, remixed

Matt Haughey recommends the Morning Fix, a daily email from the San Francisco Chronicle. The newspaper is famously awful, of course, and its reputation is justified. This email news roundup, stories selected and spun, just must be better.
SF Gate: Newsletters UPDATE: just as bad as the San Francisco Chronicle, but in its own special way. And your email inbox has quite enough junk already. Matt: what were you thinking? #

The Bloggies
Finalists for the Bloggies, the awards for the weblog world, have been announced. You can vote for weblog of the year, and a host of other categories.
Second Annual Weblog Awards #

USA Patriot registration
"As part of the Bush Administration's ongoing efforts to obliterate all traces of terrorism in the United States, the Department of Justice has commenced registration* of each and every American Patriot. By registering all non-terrorists within our borders, it is our intention to make use of the process of elimination to identify the evil ones who walk among us." And the petrifying realization: for a moment, just a moment, I thought this might be serious. #

10 Days in September
Bob Woodward, the investigative journalist, presents the most complete fly-on-the-wall story of September's attacks, and the reaction of the US administration. The account reads like the first draft of a book. It probably is one.
· You bet: Once airborne, Bush spoke again to Cheney, who said the combat air patrol needed rules of engagement if pilots encountered an aircraft that might be under the control of hijackers. Cheney recommended that Bush authorize the military to shoot down any such civilian airliners-as momentous a decision as the president was asked to make in those first hours. "I said, 'You bet,'" Bush recalled. "We had a little discussion, but not much."
· Did we shoot it down? In minutes, there was a report that a plane had crashed in southwestern Pennsylvania-what turned out to be United Flight 93, a Boeing 757 that had been hijacked after leaving Newark International Airport. Many of those in the PEOC feared that Cheney's order had brought down a civilian aircraft. Rice demanded that someone check with the Pentagon. On Air Force One, Bush inquired, "Did we shoot it down or did it crash?" It took the Pentagon almost two hours to confirm that the plane had not been shot down, an enormous relief. "I think an act of heroism occurred on board that plane," Cheney said.
America's Chaotic Road to War [Washington Post]
10 Days in September: photo gallery #

Saturday, January 26

AlterSlash: the unofficial SlashDot digest
Jeff Jarvis has pigeonholed himself as a warblogger, and can't write about geeky stuff any more. So I'm passing on this tip about a Slashdot digest. Much needed. I'm embarrassed that I don't read Slashdot. But I find the raw product indigestible. #

The study of blogs
Spent the day at UC Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems, the place I would go to college if I was to do it all again. Some researchers are beginning to turn their attention to weblogs. Lots of other studies, on dynamic web navigation, among other things. But, of most interest, Rashmi Sinha's experiment in constructive discussion, a group weblog on the South Asian conflict. We'll see whether carefully moderated weblog writers are any more reasonable than discusssion board ranters, warmongering politicians on traditional media, or our very own warbloggers.
· Rashmi Sinha: Experiments in Online Communities
· DialogNow : Open forum for discussing India-Pakistan relations
· SIMS: School of Information Management and Systems, UC Berkeley #

My San Francisco afternoon, the first in an occasional series of postcards from America's favorite city

· young guy, disturbed, white, weaving across a street in the Financial District, emptying piles of the Bay Guardian onto the street, throwing the newspapers violently into a puddle as if they'd done something to annoy him, then moving on to rummage in the nearest trashcan
· weathered alcoholic, black, passed out in ticket hall of Powell Street BART station, one hand reaching down his pants
· young guy in yellow windcheater, white on the Muni, clutching at tripod, mouth gaping open, as if he was yelling, but no sound was coming out
· the usual crowd of drug addicts, drunkards and derelicts on the corner of Market and Church, just by the Safeway #

Thursday, January 24

San Francisco

I bitch about the bland conversation, the human freak show, the unthinking political correctness, but... I have palm trees at the bottom of my garden.

Was Jerry Levin forced out from AOL TimeWarner?
An interesting story in Fortune, speculating that the AOL TimeWarner CEO was pushed, or jumped only after being pushed. Fortune does not have confirmation, and relies more on AOL's non-denial. But the story does make sense. All that guff from Levin about getting the poetry back into his life. I don't buy it. My bet: Case wanted to get involved in the business again, the TimeWarner shareholders were sore about the terms of the deal with AOL, the TimeWarner directors (8 of 16) agreed to push Levin so long as the their guy, Parsons, got the job. And Parsons elegantly stabbed Levin in the back. Every career ends in tears.
Fortune.com: Jerry Levin's Early Departure #

Wednesday, January 23

Cyberwar
Cybercafes as dens of iniquity. First, they were revealed as the communication system for Al-Qaeda: its agents have been sending instructions and information out from internet cafes in Peshawar. In Garden Grove, near Los Angeles, cybercafes are the haunt of mainly Asian gamers who play networked shoot-em-up video games. Innocent enough, till a killing at one of the cafes and other gangland violence. By the way, what is it about Asians, and networked computer games? I tried to get into an internet cafe in Bangkok a couple of months ago only to find it was full of kids blowing eachother up. Virtually.
NY Times: Mayhem at Cybercafes Shakes a Town in California #

Tuesday, January 22

Revenge of the dotcoms
This could be the event that marks the rebound of the dotcoms. Amazon.com's first profit, only a year or so behind the schedule that Jeff Bezos laid out when he started the company. Okay, there are questions about the extent of Amazon's profitability, and even its creditworthiness. And I don't think the rest of the technology sector is going to bounce back so quickly.
But I've just spent $5,000 with Amazon.com, and the experience has been flawless. They even have a button that lets you track the status of the delivery without the hassle of entering a shipping number. Simple things, but beautifully executed. You could say that's fine for the customer, but doesn't mean the business model is a good one. My answer: I'm paying 5% more than I would with eCost and other discount electronic catalog sellers, but it's so much more convenient. Amazon already has my credit card details confirme; while eCost wanted me to fax over confirmation of the purchase. [Knock, knock: that was the last of my packages arriving by UPS, really.]
BBC: Amazon turns its first profit
Nick Denton: Revenge of the dotcoms [Management Today] #

Somebody give Ken Layne a proper job, please
   Now there must be some deadwood media guys, wandering through a maze of links, hoping some of that cool weblog magic rubs off, stumbling on this site. This post is for *you*. Would you please hire Ken Layne to write a column? He's a friend, and doesn't know I'm posting this, and would probably be mad if he found out. I'm betting on the fact that he's too busy writing to read.
   Ken's no longer writing for Online Journalism Review, which was his one steady gig. He, like many other webloggers, is reduced to begging for online donations. He's high maintenance, I don't doubt, having had a troubled journalistic upbringing in Kosovo and Macedonia. If you ever sack him, you can probably expect the same bitter treatment that OJR have received [see below]. But I'm not one to tell a sob story.
   Stock in Ken Layne is a great deal right now. He's cheap and, more importantly, he's funny. He writes with fluency, passion and wit. I get jealous when I read his weblog. Okay, he uses the adjective "filthy" rather too much. But just stack him up against the army of non-entities that occupies the columns of most second-tier US daily newspapers. It's no contest.
   You're a newspaper editor, and you want to do something smart? Sack some of your overpaid, overinflated windbags, and put Ken Layne in there. Hey, you, Jeff Jarvis: have a word with one of those Newhouse guys. If you like, pitch this as a cost-cutting measure. Put aside the fact that Ken would actually entertain your readers. He would write twice as much for half the money. Okay, so Blogland would lose a prolific weblogger, but America would gain a halfway decent newspaper columnist.
Blowback: Ken Layne blasts OJR
Ken Layne #

San Francisco: it's not tolerance, it's indifference
   I'm back in San Francisco. The sky is clear, there are palm trees at the back of my garden, the sushi five doors down is amazingly cheap and good, and there is still something going on here, even after the technology bust.
   But each day, at the Muddy Waters cafe, I count the lunatics. San Francisco's skid row - a stretch of hopelessness soaked in drugs and alcohol - is not tucked away in an outer borough; it's along a central stretch of Market Street. The fact of the matter is that San Francisco is a mess, performing way below its potential; it has embarrassingly bad government, and there's not the slightest sign yet of a bourgeois revolt.
   And the city is so insufferably politically correct that it can't accept that the mentally ill need to be on medication; and that homeless people do need to be moved on if they won't move into shelters. For their own sake, as well as for the fabric of a city. It's so stiflingly politically correct that you can't even have this discussion without people thinking: fascist.
   I've always thought that people get the government they deserve. They can always vote the bastards out, after all. By that principle, New Yorkers deserve the credit for Rudy Giuliani. And San Francisco inhabitants? Well, they got Willie Brown: lazy, corrupt, rich in gesture, empty of substance.
   You can blame geography. San Francisco city is a ghetto of gays, Chinese, beached hippies and dotcommers, separated from all those sensible law-abiding people in the suburbs. Or you can blame the transient population: the dotcommers who haven't even got around to registering to vote. And then there's the charitable explanation: San Francisco's tolerance, on which the city so prides itself. Get real. It's not tolerance; it's indifference.
The San Francisco Examiner: the Mess on Market #

DVD ripping
This is about the best guide I've found for ripping DVDs. And it's enough to make me give up. Here is a list of tasks, by no means
comprehensive:
· insert the DVD disk into the computer, and capture the video files, using a program such as CladDVD
· trim the edges to save space, and mess around with various other settings
· to fit the movie onto a CD, convert the uncompressed video files into a compressed video format such as DivX, using software such as DVD2AVI
· well, actually, you've still got separate video and audio files, which have to be spliced together - using VirtualDub - and god help you if they don't sync up
· oh, yes, you also need to have all the right codecs installed
· and the last-but-one version of Windows Media
When is a developer going to produce software that governs the entire process, as WinAmp does for audio? I don't suppose there's much money in it, probably just a load of grief from the movie industry. But that has never stopped an enterprising and troublemaking developer before. Until then, I'm just going to view movies ripped by other people with more patience than I have. #

Monday, January 21

Business 2.0: The Case Against Knowledge Management
Thomas Stewart, author of Intellectual Capital, argues that corporations have more effective ways to communicate knowledge than fancy software systems. Two devices he cites: eavesdropping; and email lists. #

Yahoo and Hotmail, terrorist communication tools
An article on Robert Reid, the shoe-bomber, delves into the communication system used by his minders in Pakistan: web-based email. "NBC�s Robert Windrem, citing U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, said intelligence services have long identified Yahoo and Hotmail as the al-Qaida terrorist network�s preferred means to send e-mail."
MSNBC: Expert: Reid�s bombs very explosive #

MSNBC: Up from the Ashes
Images from �A New World Trade Center: Design Proposals,� an exhibition at the Max Protetch Gallery in Manhattan. #

Saturday, January 19

On the third stroke, the time will be...
Scribbled, in realtime. Very slick. Click it, you'll see.
[Via onlineblog] #

Guardian: Why the Left should stop whining
Peter Hain, a British cabinet minister, writes badly, as do most left-wing politicians. But he's at least making the internationalist case, from the left. God knows someone needs to. "Between the balaclava rock-throwers with their nihilist ideology on the one hand and Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Drop the Debt on the other is the same split there has always been. Two centuries ago as industrialisation got underway, the former would have been Luddites, trashing factory machines; the latter the embryonic labour movement. The divide is also between failure and success. Like the Luddites, the balaclava boys are totally ineffectual and, in the long-term, irrelevant." #

Friday, January 18

Washington Post: It May Finally Be Showtime For DVRs
   I don't know why all the entertainment companies are getting so worked up about the new ReplayTV digital video recorder. Okay, so the device stores video digitally, and allows the user to email programs to other ReplayTV owners. But the recipients cannot forward the files further, and it's not as if there are all that many ReplayTV owners out there.
   A more appropriate target would be Sony. Take the VAIO PCV-MXS10. This desktop PC is designed specifically to capture TV signals to a hard disk and, conveniently, contains a DVD drive to produce copies. Connect the MXS10to the cable at one end, and a high-speed internet connection at the other, download Morpheus file-sharing software, and you have a piracy server.
   So why isn't ReplayTV's owner getting it in the neck, while Sony glides? Try power: Sony is one of the biggest media companies, as well as being a maker of consumer electronics. And, the MXS10 counts as a PC. Which feels different. Quite why, I don't know. #

An end to all the Talk
Matt Drudge reports Tina Brown's Talk magazine is to fold, immediately. The magazine, which launched with a spectacular party under the Statue of Liberty in 1999, had lost $50m. #

TIm Cavanaugh ribs the warblogs
"The weblog is not the most useless weapon in the War On Terrorism. That title is still held by the nuclear submarine. But it is precisely their unconventional methods that make the war bloggers enemies to be feared. Like Al-Qaeda, the war bloggers are a loosely structured network, a shadowy underground whose flexibility and compulsive log-rolling make them as cost-effective as they are deadly. Kill Glenn Reynolds and a thousand James Tarantos will rise in his place. Try to apply the Powell Doctrine and the war bloggers will elude our grasp. Ignore them and they'll use our own weapons against us."
OJR: Let Slip the Blogs of War #

Which countries have you visited in the last ten years, and when?
The war is touching me, finally. It used to be that the immigration officer would ask: what business are you in? I'd answer: internet. I'm not sure that's actually a business, but whatever. That would be it. And now. First, I get grilled at JFK coming into the US. The officer was clearly trying to catch me out in an inconsistency. Intellectually, one can accept that security needs to be tightened, but when a jumped-up official asks intrusive questions, it's harder to take. And the latest: form DS-157 for males between the ages of 16 and 45 applying for a nonimmigrant visa. It asks questions which, if I answer them completely, would take hours to fill out.
· all countries entered in the last ten years, with the year of the visit
· whether you have ever lost a passport, or had one stolen
· all professional, social, and charitable organizations to which you belong or contribute, or with which you work (presently and in the past)
· whether you have any specialized skills or training in firearms or explosives, or with nuclear, biological, or chemical agents
· whether you have ever been in an armed conflict, either as a participant or a victim #

Thursday, January 17

essay... Downward mobility
"Downward mobility: I finally understood the meaning when I advertised for a personal assistant on an online San Francisco bulletin board and received an application from the CEO of a new media startup who said he was experiencing cashflow issues."
[Management Today] #

Amazon.com: Segway Human Transporter (also known as "Ginger" or "IT")
No, not on sale yet. But you can ask Amazon to alert you when this scooter-wheelchair becomes available. Amazon. Those guys never miss a trick. #

Afghanistan: it's all Greek to me
Did you know that the Pushtun Afghans are, in part, descended from Greeks? Soldiers who came with Alexander the Great, and settled in the region then known as Bactria. So much coverage of Afghanistan, and I've only just found out. You can tell I'm a sucker for the ethnic view of history. The fractiousness of the Pushtuns. Now it all makes sense. #

essay... Foolhardy 2002 forecasts: please destroy after reading
"Revenge of the dotcoms: The real story in 2002 will be the resurgence of dot.coms. The survivors are still growing and internet usage is still increasing. And in 2002, the internet may actually have a revenue model. The spread of services like Paypal, which lets users email money, may allow internet companies to charge just as mobile phone firms do."
[Management Today] #

essay... Talent and managerial ability: a contradiction in terms
"I am coming round to the notion of a bifurcated promotion track, in which employees choose either a management or creative career path. Managers gain promotion as they take on more people and greater responsibility; but creatives gain in status and pay as they demonstrate brilliance, or gain in experience."
[Management Today] #

essay... Why I am a lousy sales manager
"I have discovered, painfully, that hardcore sales people are a breed apart, and I cannot easily related to them. 'You have to understand,' advised one of our investors, a lacrosse-playing Ivy League venture capitalist, 'that sales guys are not like you and me.'"
[Management Today] #

Saturday, January 12

The war, prolific Brits, and weblogs
Ron Rosenbaum, in the New York Observer, brings together some of my favorite things: weblogs, and prolific Brits, and the potent combination of the two. So most of the piece is about Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan, their status as expat Brits in the US, their support for the war from left and right respectively, and the powerful influence they have had. Rosenbaum wonders whether there is something British in being both clever and prolific. If anything I'd credit the furious competition between UK national newspapers, which puts a premium on speed and punchiness, and leaves accuracy to plodding US journalists.
But then there is an interesting digression on the subject of Andrew Sullivan's weblog, a perfect medium for rapid-fire Anglo-American polemic: "agree or disagree with Mr. [Andrew] Sullivan, it�s hard to deny that he is the surprising new media/political development of the post�Sept. 11 period. A media/political development because he�s gone beyond his influential print platforms, The Times of London and The Times of New York. What gives him an edge in impact and reach ... is the way he�s turned his political Web site (Web zine, Web log, online diary�whatever you want to call andrewsullivan.com) into a powerful weapon of nonstop, 24/7, omnipresent total-surveillance panoptican punditry. Using his political Web zine (a form pioneered by Mickey Kaus in his witty Kausfiles.com), he�s done more than just frame the debate; he�s dominated it, smothered it with an overwhelming energy and forcefulness that allows him to riddle his opponents with ceaseless real-time hectoring and invective and polemic."
The men who would be Orwell [New York Observer] #

Monday, January 7

Is that it?
After weeks of mounting speculation, Jobs annouces... a flat-panel display. Oh, and a hemispherical computer body. Do people still buy this hype. I'll give you that Apple products are gorgeously designed. But to proclaim this launch represents the death of the CRT: that's just silly. And the hemisphere. That sounds like a triumph of design over function. Okay, all you Mac fanatics out there. Let me have it.
Jobs: Flat-panel iMacs on the way - CNET.com #

White House defends use of 'Pakis'
Can someone get the foot out of Bush's mouth. Paki is a term of abuse. Bush, who loves diminutives, no doubt meant the word affectionately. "I don't believe the situation is defused yet, but I do believe there is a way to do so, and we are working hard to convince both the Indians and the Pakis there's a way to deal with their problems without going to war," Bush said. #

Business 2.0 - Google Hires a Grown-Up
An unusual hire at Google: a 32-year-old former management consultant and chief of staff for Larry Summers. Supremely bright, no doubt. But one would have thought Google would hire an ad sales or knowledge management veteran to expand its existing businesses. Particularly as the first grown-up hire since Eric Schmidt took over. Probably me just being dumb. #

Business 2.0 - TV That Works Like the Web
An ambitious project. Matthew Karas and his colleagues at Dremedia, some of the most impressive people I know on the UK technology scene, are applying Autonomy's information retrieval technology to video. And you thought searching text was hard. This article in Business 2.0 sets up Dremedia as a more sophisticated version of TiVo, the digital video recorder, but the company's main market will be digital gadget makers and broadcasters. #

Sunday, January 6

Geek's guide to music downloading
I've always used Napster or Morpheus to download music, but my blogbuddy Olivier Travers tells me that old-fashioned internet relay chat (IRC) is the way to go. I defer to his obviously greater knowledge, though this all sounds a bit geeky. As Olivier says, "Irc is a little more "technical" to get into, so it effectively filters out all the clueless AOLers who can't spell their name (and won't share anything except a couple of broken Britney Spears tracks)." Ouch. Is that me?
· IRC clients such as mIRC are not the buggy resource hog most P2P programs are (I tried WinMX, eDonkey, BearShare, Kazaa, Morpheus, probably a couple others listed at www.zeropaid.com). Since IRC is client/server, it doesn't require so much resources and bandwidth just to know where the files are. Also, some IRC clients have been improved for years, whereas most P2P programs are a few months old.
· mIRC is scriptable, so you can automate hours of downloads very quickly and let it run as a background task. And you don't have to turn into an IRC developer, useful scripts have already be made for you. Beware of unknown scripts though, you can get hacked through IRC. Not that you can't get bothered through P2P software, since some come with ads, spyware and even trojans.
· Most people on IRC are a lot more careful about their collections so you'll get a lot less broken files or files with pops and beeps.
· It's easier to auto-resume on IRC, since you get file lists from other people that you can find again, while some P2P progs assign users a different ID each time they log on. So once you start an album, you should eventually get it whole (from the same user). People stick to IRC, use the same nick and roam the same channels for years, whereas P2P programs come and go as far as popularity is concerned. Once you find people with big lists and high bandwidth, you can grow your collection very quickly.
· You'll find more obscure stuff on IRC, and more genres outside the mainstream (big jazz collections for instance). There are channels specific to a given genre (say metal or jazz) where you can find people who like the music you're into.
· Trading has been taking place on IRC for years, but it's a public chat network so I don't even know how anyone could file a court injunction against "it"?
· There are IRC clients for all platforms whereas many P2P programs are Windows-only.
· There's also divx trading on IRC (more on Efnet I think, mp3 is big on Undernet), though I'm less familiar with that "scene" (but I'll probably investigate it further since WinMX 3.0 is still not out and eDonkey tends to crash on XP). #

Afghan City, Free of Taliban, Returns to Rule of the Thieves [NY Times]
Let's not congratulate ourselves too much on the change of regime in Afghanistan. It's hard to be worse than the Taliban, but some of these Pushtun warlords are really trying.
"The scene today as a CNN team left for Pakistan was particularly menacing. As the crew packed its gear, the hotel management summoned a group of about 50 armed soldiers, who gathered outside the door or took posts on the steps. Then the hotel manager began to list his demands before the team could exit: in addition to paying the hotel bill, plus one extra night for each guest, CNN would have to leave behind a color television, a refrigerator, a satellite dish and an encoder." #

Saturday, January 5

InfoWorld: Have monitor, will travel?
Bill Gates will demonstrate a web-pad at the Consumer Electronics Show. Okay, he's been demonstrating tablets for the last two years, but this device, from Viewsonic, will actually be going on sale. A large flat-panel screen, probably connected by Wi-Fi, allowing users to roam around the house, or wireless hotspots such as Starbucks. Roaming around Starbucks. Just imagine. #

MP3 tools
Olivier Travers has been messing around with MP3 ripping, encoding, filing, playing. He's wasted countless hours, just so you don't have to. A bunch of recommendations on sites and software. Olivier doesn't mention Morpheus for downloads. Not sure why not. Now, please, someone do the same for DVD piracy. Oops, did I say piracy? #

How to Save the Arab World
"Wherever Muslim fundamentalists have been involved in day-to-day politics�Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran�their luster has worn off. People have realized that the streets still have to be cleaned, government finances have to be managed and education attended to. The mullahs can preach, but they cannot rule. For this reason, Iran might well hold out the greatest promise for liberal democracy and secular politics in the Middle East. Having lived under Islamic fundamentalist rule, Iranians are now inoculated against its appeal. It may take another decade or two, and risking that long�and bumpy�roller-coaster ride is dangerous for countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia."
Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek, again, with some of the most incisive thinking around about the Arab world. He makes the case for US intervention, not in forcing full democracy, but in encouraging the development of constitutional safeguards for individual rights and private property. And some acceptance of Muslim fundamentalists in politics, to take away their mystique. But not too much, in countries such as Saudi Arabia, because that would jeopardize the West's oil supplies. An awkward balancing act. #

Hatred of skyscrapers
   Have you ever had one of those conversations about the buildings that scarred cities such as London and New York after WW2? One in which you say: why can't the terrorists put a bomb under *that* building? That's one I wouldn't miss. Well, it turns out Mohammed Atta, the leader of the September 11th attacks, felt the same way. Except he actually did something about it.
   Atta hated tall buildings, ever since his family moved to the 10th floor of one of the featureless concrete towers of metastasizing Cairo. From Newsweek: "Atta hated the haphazard foreign influence on Egyptian society and the advent of skyscrapers in the Middle East: as a graduate student in Hamburg, he wrote his master�s thesis on a plan to restore the ancient Syrian city of Aleppo."
   Funny how often skyscrapers pop up in this story, and not simply because they were the main targets of the attack. From my friend who says: you know what I really miss, it's the skyscrapers, the skyline. Minoru Yamasaki, architect of the World Trade Center, introduced Islamic gracenotes into his functional modernism after working for Bin Laden's construction magnate father. Bin Laden himself said his family background in construction helped him understand how the towers might, at least partially, collapse. By the way, did you know some of the world's oldest tall buildings are in the Hadramaut, in eastern Yemen, where Bin Laden's family originated. Made out of clay.
   I'm not sure how all these things are connected, except that skyscrapers are cathedrals to capitalism, and hated by all those whom human progress has left behind: western conservationists, the stuffier part of the European intelligentsia, and, yes, Islamic religious fundamentalists.
· Newsweek: Atta's path to terror
· The Mosque to Commerce: Bin Laden's special complaint with the World Trade Center [Slate]
· The humor source: You like skyscrapers, huh bitch?
· Clay skyscrapers in Bin Laden's Yemen
· Skyscraper museum #

Simple Gifts - How Bush's shallowness makes him a good war president.
Jacob Weisberg, in Slate, makes the point that Bush doesn't have to be clever to prosecute the war. Unsaid: he is ill-equipped to deal with the complications of peace.
· nickdenton.org: A good war president, not a good peace president
· nickdenton.org: Is it still unpatriotic to criticize me?
· nickdenton.org: Rising to the occasion #

Friday, January 4

New York: a train to the plane
Finally, a train connection when flying into New York. Okay, it's Newark, not JFK. But 20 minutes to Penn Station: that can't be beat. Now how about that California project linking SFO, LAX and the major city centers?
· AirTrain Newark
· New Jersey Transit map
· Air-Rail Links Are Beginning to Look a Lot Like Europe's [NYT]
· California high-speed rail map #

Western values
   Bush and the warmongerlogs are too busy glorying in daisy-cutter bombs, and bashing the Saudis. I admit that's fun, and have been known to indulge myself. But, new year resolutions and all that: I'm going to get all worthy about global poverty for a few paragraphs. Boring, I know, and *much* too boring for most of my fellow war liberals like Ken Layne and Jeff Jarvis to blog about now. But someone has to do it. And I can't stand it when Chomskys, too intoxicated with they student lecture hall cleverness to care, appopriate global poverty as *their* issue.
   James Lileks and others in the meat-eating weblog community have had a fine time recently bashing multicultural sensibilities, and unashamedly proclaiming the superiority of Western culture over the Islamic. They're right, by any objective standard of cultural or scientific achievement, but they beg the question: how to spread the Western enlightenment to the dark and Islamic corners of the world? Conquest? Colonization? Propaganda? Hmmm. Try prosperity.
   Back in the introspective aftermath of September 11, there began a discussion about global poverty, and its contribution to instability. If you're a liberal, and you believe in the Western system of government and business, which I do, global poverty ought to be a central issue.
   There is a belief, particularly in the US, that prosperity is a simple function of the rule of law, safeguards against tyranny, and economic freedom. Put the system in place and all good things will follow. That's myopic. Political development requires a middle class, at least as much as a middle class depends on political development. The prosperity of the Middle East and South Asia is a strategic imperative for the US, and the rest of the West.
   The World Bank has just come out with a report showing that globalization - the centerpiece of Western policy - has lifted millions out of poverty. It's a start. At least the international organizations are beginning to make the case for globalization.
   But, as an NGO friend of mine points out, the World Bank's figures depend on the Chinese effort against rural poverty, which has nothing to do with globalization. The West has much more to do. And it can start by freeing exports of textiles and agricultural produce from the developing world. It's not as much fun as bashing the Arabs, or berating US multinationals (if you're a Genoa protestor). But it might do more good.
· World Bank Research: Globalization, Growth and Poverty: Building an Inclusive World Economy
· James Lileks rant on superiority of Western culture
· Reaction to James Lileks rant
· Berlusconi on Western cultural superiority
· Andrew Sullivan
· Mark Steyn mocks the poverty-breeds-resentment school
· Mainly leftish weblog postings on poverty #

McKinsey Quarterly: What�s right with the US economy
The secret behind the new economy isn't information technology but
old-fashioned competition and managerial innovation, according to the management consultants. Now, if only they'd told that to CIOs and CEOs before advising them to webify their businesses. #

Thursday, January 3

Thomas Friedman: Let's Roll
   Friedman is, as usual, just *so* right. Bush is a pretty effective war president. Clear in his goals, trusting of his advisers, and more patient than those who comment on his actions. But he probably won't make a good peace president. Friedman cites his partisanship and lack of imagination on the domestic front. And, in particular, his failure to recognize that many of the dilemmas of US foreign policy stem from dependence on Middle East oil. I'd add another failing.
   Remember how everyone asked after September 11th what the US had done to make itself so hated. Poverty breeds resentment, resentment breeds terrorism, etc. etc. Most of that was woolly liberal thinking. But one can't ignore the poisonous contribution of bad economics - protectionism in the developed and developing world - and social policy - subordination of women, absence of family planning, overpopulation.
   The successful prosecution of the war is necessary, but it is not sufficient. And Bush is not sufficient. He lacks the vision and the will to engage in development debates, to address repression and corruption in the Middle East and other troublespots. I'm not saying the US should rebuild nations across the world. But, at the very least, it could confront domestic lobbies and allow poor countries like Pakistan to compete their way out of discontent. Oh, and, by the way, this doesn't make me anti-American. #

Wednesday, January 2

John Simpson's hotel recommendations
I've just been reading the latest collection of stories from John Simpson, the veteran foreign correspondent for the BBC. I'm a sucker for tales of journalistic derring-do. Anyway, amidst the pen-portraits of dictators and revolutionaries, are some hotel recommendations of a credibility you just don't get in the guidebooks.
· Isfahan, Iran: Abbasi Hotel
· Santiago, Chile: Carrera
· Montevideo, Uruguay: Victoria Plaza
· Buenos Aires, Argentina: Plaza
· Istanbul, Turkey: Pera Palace
· Havana, Cuba: Santa Isabel
· Peshawar, Pakistan: Pearl Continental
· Jerusalem, Israel: American Colony Hotel
Amazon.co.uk: A Mad World, My Masters, by John Simpson #

Tuesday, January 1

nickdenton.org tech awards: Blogger
This web publishing service is now a one-man show, but it's still standing. And still the web service I use more than any other. And love more than any other. #

nickdenton.org tech awards: Sony PCG-SRX7
The ultimate travel notebook: Wi-Fi wireless internet aerial built-in, and weighing in at less than 3 pounds. All you need now is a Boingo wireless internet account. #

nickdenton.org tech awards: Olympus Camedia D-40 Digital Camera
I succumbed, and bought another digital camera. This one is just about perfect. Connected to my laptop with a USB cable, and the camera was recognized as if it were a hard drive. First time, no messing. Uses AA batteries as well as rechargeable power, so no need to despair if you've left the power cables at home, which always happens to me. 4 megapixels of resolution. And it's tiny. My only complaint: you can't angle the viewfinder. One of the best things about digital cameras is discretion: you can take a picture without holding the machine up to your eyes. My old Sony digital camera swivelled. The Olympus doesn't. But that is just a quibble. #

nickdenton.org tech awards: Terapin CD Video Recorder
If you're tired of waiting for DVD recorders to appear, and come down in price, there's this CD version. Okay, so only 74 minutes of video. But who can last through a full-length modern day movie, anyhow. Presumably, if this machine recorded in MPEG4, you'd get more minutes onto a disc. Oh well, next year. #

nickdenton.org tech awards: Personable.com
One step beyond Hotmail. Rent Outlook XP from Personable for $9.95 per month. Looks just like Outlook, but the software is remotely hosted. I don't really need a dedicated PC, except for Outlook. With email, contacts and calendar online, free, finally, to wander round the world tethered only to internet cafes and borrowed computers. Other Microsoft software is also available. #

nickdenton.org tech awards: PC Pitstop
Online virus-checking and other maintenance. Less hassle than McAfee. And it's still free, for the moment. #

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