Monday, February 16, 2004
The warrior's perspective.
Britt Blaser gives what may be the best put-down of punditry (yes, of the running op-editorial sort we do here in the 'sphere) that I've seen yet.
Brit engages. He did it when he won three distinguished flying crosses in Vietnam. He did it as a businessman (among his achievements was bringing forth the first Macintosh portable). And he's still doing it as one of the Dean Campaign's most committed and effective volunteers. (Here's one effect: If it weren't for Britt, Joe Trippi wouldn't have keynoted the Digital Democracy Teach-In last Monday.)
Live from Demo
Notes...
John Patrick: The reason I know blogging is real is that there are so many skeptics, and calls it the beginning of the Semantic Web. He remembers somebody saying ten years ago that "we will never connect our company to the Internet."
Mena: People do want to hear you had a cheeze sandwich for lunch. And you can't marginalize the personal weblog. Stats: 35% don't want to be crawled, and 5% are password protected. News to me. Interesting.
Buzz: Blogs are a great way for small companies can get the word out.
Scoble: I have no prior restraint on my weblog. I blogged at 3am this morning. My boss wasn't there. The PR department wasn't there. It's the story of trust. Well told, too. Our motto at Microsoft is "Hire smart and passionate people." ... Those people make great bloggers... I'm here because I have great relationships with great people, not just because I work at Microsoft.
Here's Mena's moblog just for Demo. She's on stage with Ben giving a demo. Here's proof of its success.
And here's Dave Sifry's explanation of the Demo blog aggregation page he put up at Technorati.
Oddpost: Newsdash does for the Web what TiVo does for television. They're showing it off with Scripting News. Newsdash has no links. Let's see how long before the word shows up in a Technorati keyword search.
Waveblog is on stage now. Location based blogging. Following bloggers to parties, live. More here and here. Russell Beattie works there.
Feedster: Does for blogs what Google does for Web pages, Chris Shipley just said. They're showing it off as a search for Scoble. New service: Feedster Builder. Demo's "feedpaper" page. Some connection with John Kerry's campaign.
Evermore Software. New Evermore Integrated Software. EIO. Pronounced "Yao" by Gus, who's making the presentation.
Allenport is up, previewing something that's what the PC would look like if the Internet came first.
Good stuff from Greg Reinacker's Newsgator, too. I just finished looking at it on a cell phone a few minutes ago. Nice.
Iraquiry
Adam Curry is now a high-profile Iraq blogger. Meanwhile Riverbend remembers the Amiryah Shelter bombing during the last Gulf War. A sample:
Iraqis don't go to shelters for safety reasons so much as for social reasons. It's a great place to be during a bombing. There's water, electricity and a feeling of serenity and safety that is provided as much by the solid structure as by the congregation of smiling friends and family. Being with a large group of people helps make things easier during war- it's like courage and stamina travel from one person to the next and increase exponentially with the number of people collected.
So the families in the Amiriyah area decided they'd join up in the shelter to have a nice Eid dinner and then the men and boys over the age of 15 would leave to give the women and children some privacy. Little did they know, leaving them behind, that it would be the last time they would see the wife/daughter/son/fiancé/sister/infant…
I can imagine the scene after the men left at around midnight- women sat around, pouring out steaming istikans of tea, passing out Eid kilaycha and chocolate. Kids would run around the shelter shrieking and laughing like they owned the huge playground under the earth. Teenage girls would sit around gossiping about guys or clothes or music or the latest rumor about Sara or Lina or Fatima. The smells would mingle- tea, baked goods, rice… comfortable smells that made one imagine, for a few seconds, that they were actually at home.
The sirens would begin shrieking- the women and children would pause in the midst of eating or scolding, say a brief prayer in their heart and worry about their loved ones above the ground- the men who refused to remain inside of the shelter in order to make room for their wives and kids.
The bombs fell hard and fast at around 4 a.m. The first smart bomb went through the ventilation, through the first floor of the shelter- leaving a gaping hole- and to the bottom 'basement' of the shelter where there were water tanks and propane tanks for heating water and food. The second missile came immediately after and finished off what the first missile missed. The doors of the advanced shelter immediately shut automatically- locking over 400 women and children inside.
It turned from a shelter into an inferno; explosions and fire rose from the lower level up to the level that held the women and children and the water rose with it, boiling and simmering. Those who did not burn to death immediately or die of the impact of the explosions, boiled to death or were steamed in the 900+ º F heat.
Here are some Washington Post photos.
She closes with this:
Important Side Note:For those of you with the audacity to write to me claiming it was a legitimate target because "American officials assumed it was for military purposes" just remember Protocol 1 of the 1977 Geneva Conventions, Part IV, Section 1, Chapter III, Article 52: ... 3. In case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used. (Like that would matter to you anyway)
On the contrarian side, there's this and this. For more from all sides, see this huge pile of links relating to Iraq. To help give the matter even more of the moral complexity it embodies, I'll let Shakespeare do the talking. From Henry V, Act 4:
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.
XMPP marks the spot
Last night at the opening cocktail party for Demo, several people independently observed that Jabber.org's XMPP has quietly established itself as the de facto as well as the de jure standard protocol for presence and messaging.
But the best commentary I've seen so far is from John at Stupid Simple Blog:
For a long time my resume included a brief description of my experience with Jabber. At least one interviewer laughed at me: "I just can't imagine why anyone would list Jabber on their resume." To him and many other people who have been perfectly happy using AIM, I just want to say one thing, and I mean it from the bottom of my heart: Kiss my ass. I've got a better job than the one you offered, and Jabber's open XMPP is now a proposed standard.
Disclaimer: I am on the open source advisory board of Jabber.com, which supports Jabber.org.
Away bombs
KnowProSE thinks Technorati-bombing is idiotic. In this case I think it's harmless at worst and helpful at best. Why not push good books that aren't bestsellers? There's also a difference between bombing Technorati and bombing Google, just due to the differing natures of what they search and how they search it.
More later, if I have time (which right now I don't).
Confblogging
Loïc turns his report on eTech into a long, instructive (and illustrated) essay on how to run a blogger-friendly conference.
Ross Mayfield also has a nice rundown of conference blogging options and archetypes. He gives my confblogging as an example of Running Commentary.
I'll be at Demo today, where I expect there will be a live Net connection. In the past I've done both live transcriptions (poorly) as well as running commentaries. But that was back when there weren't 20 other people in the room doing the same thing. Now I'd rather point to those folks and write something a bit more thoughtful at a later point.
But we'll see. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, dig what's being said about Demo 2004 right now.
(Thanks to Early Adopter Weblog) for the pointer.
Ralph nadir
Micah Sifry, who supported Ralph Nader four years ago and wrote Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics In America, predicts that Ralph will run again, and explains why he thinks this is a bad idea. He concludes,
I have no ill will toward Ralph. I think he is still one of the greatest living Americans and a civic philosopher of the first order. But I think he's just plain wrong this time.
And then there's this: I also think he's living in the past. Today, he's quoted in the New York Times as saying that he wasn't bothered by the fact that as of Saturday, he only had 375 people registered at Meetup.com, against 188,000 for Dean, 45,000 for Kerry, 23,000 for Kucinich and 9,000 for Edwards.
In response, he says, "I really don't deal with the Web. There isn't enough time in the day to go into virtual reality."
That quote should lead Nader's political obituary.
I noticed the same cluelessness in 2000, when I wrote this editorial explaining why Ralph rubbed me the wrong way.
Watch The Nation for Micah's report on last week's Digital Democracy Teach-In.