Friday, September 17, 2004

Get outa here

DIYDID and DIO are my two latest posts at IT Garage. They were occassioned by the latest from Andre, Kaliya and Phil. The DIYDID piece is a forum, rather than a blog post, so participation is invited.

Also elsewhere: Beyond Open, my latest SuitWatch for Linux Journal.

So give him money

Russell Beattie is on the beach and already making plans, with help from Tim, Mark, Joel and others.

Russell is my primary source of wisdom and what's-coolness about all things mobile. He has terrific energy, original ideas and other fine qualities. I expect he'll go far.

Watching the parade

On the Rather Matter, I'll defer to Ken Layne:

What I find weird is just how quick the "Big Media" caved to the Free Republic and Bush Bloggers' assault, even though last I heard there has been no earthshaking evidence to support any theory about these Bush Memos.

What I mean is, we're a long way off from the kind of clear "Yes These Are Forgeries" thing we got with, say, the faked Hitler Diaries. As I wrote the other day, when you're dealing with dead people and copies distributed online, it is unlikely you'll ever get a solid answer as far as document forensics. Ultimately, how people react to the Memo Story -- while ignoring the undisputed and independently proven story reinforced by those memos -- is the most telling thing about this mini-scandal.

Should CBS News decide the memos aren't real and then reveal its source, there could be a Der Stern-style mea culpa. Then the story will switch to who provided these documents, and why. I am truly curious about the source of these documents, whether they're real or forged. And if they're forged, I'm even more curious. My hunch is that it was a set-up, and a very successful one. But I don't know a damned thing about it, really, and have spent a total of about 23 minutes thinking about the whole thing.

I'm still wondering if any of us in the Greater Journosphere actually know enough to justify a final opinion about the facts of the matter. Or matters.

Meanwhile, amidst news that hasn't crawled out of the mud, Iraq only looks worse. So does Sudan.

Groovy

The latest Gillmor Gang features Groove (and before that, Notes) founder Ray Ozzie, who needs to get back to blogging (last entry was in March). But that's a quibble. Listening to Ray for most of that hour was fascinating.