Month: November 2002

refers us to Spinsanity’s fact checking of Michael Moore:
“Moore has apparently altered footage of an ad run by the Bush/Quayle campaign in 1988 to implicate Bush in the Willie Horton scandal. Making a point about the use of racial symbols to scare the American public, he shows the Bush/Quayle ad called “Revolving Doors,” which attacked Michael Dukakis for a Massachusetts prison furlough program by showing prisoners entering and exiting a prison (the original ad can be seen here [Real Player video]). Superimposed over the footage of the prisoners is the text “Willie Horton released. Then kills again.” This caption is displayed as if it is part of the original ad. However, existing footage, media reports and the recollections of several high-level people involved in the campaign indicate that the “Revolving Doors” ad did not explicitly mention Horton…”
Maybe I’m over-using my old Communications Law class knowledge, but couldn’t a legitimate case be made that this is, therefore, a libelous and actionable accusation on Moore’s part against Bush? I would think that demonstrating potential harm would be feasible; and doesn’t Moore altering the tape to make it appear Bush said something he didn’t constitute the kind of “false statement” to which libel law would apply?
Put more generally: does altering and re-broadcasting a statement made by another person in a way which might cause damage to them constitute libel?
Legal eagles of the Blogosphere: little help?
PS – Crap. It’s likely slander, not libel, isn’t it? Too late to change now; I’ll just sit here and wonder how I ever passed that Comm Law course…

Werbach argues in Slate that spam has “doomed” email as we know it:
Or at least it’s about to destroy the e-mail we’re used to: the tool that lets a stranger respond to something you posted on your Web site or that lets a potential client contact you after reading an article you wrote. E-mail is pervasive because it’s simple to use, remarkably flexible, and it reaches everyone. The trouble is that e-mail is too good at that third task. Because e-mail inboxes are open to anyone, longtime Internet users now receive hundreds of spams per day, making e-mail virtually unusable without countermeasures.
This is a problem dear to my heart, and Werbach illuminates the crux of it well. Tools exist to ensure that you are never bothered by spam — but only if you are prepared to abandon filters and opt instead for a “white list” system that requires you identify allowed senders in advance.
For some people, this works just fine; they don’t want anybody they don’t already know sending them email. But for others — those with, say, weblogs — it doesn’t work at all. An email address that requires prior permission to use is useless if what you want is feedback from an unknown reader.
But Werbach overreaches, I think, when he argues that the consequence of this dilemma will inevitably be an abandonment of ‘open’ e-mail. (“E-mail’s openness is doomed when faced with massive traffic and a few bad actors.”)
First, it is important to recognize that openness is not an attribute that all e-mail users require — and in fact, I’d argue that the vast majority care little about. While I can’t offer any hard evidence, my suspicion is that most e-mail addresses are used by people who only use them for communications with specific friends or business associates. They don’t have a need to place their address in a publicly available forum; the only people they need to communicate with can simply ask for it. For these users, then, a white-list solution for spam works just fine; the required sacrifice of openness is not truly a sacrifice at all to them.
An analysis of the future evolution of openness, therefore, should focus on those users who do require it, not the e-mail using population as a whole. And here I suggest that there is an advantage that Werbach overlooks: that the community of users who require openness in e-mail is, almost by definition, a community of individuals who are either technically savvy or have the resources to pay somebody else to be savvy for them.
And this is a key advantage in the fight against the spammers, because solutions do exist to allow the public display of an e-mail address in a form that cannot be read by spam-collecting robots. Dean Peters’ eMail Obfucscator is one example: it applies a simple technique to pack an e-mail address with extraneous characters that confuse a spambot — but are ignored by a browser. The e-mail link displays properly to a user, and can be clicked to automatically send mail as always, but spambots end up with garbage when they try to scan it.
Now, such a solution isn’t foolproof; surely someone will come up with a spambot that can get around Dean’s clever tool eventually (if they haven’t already). But the real battleground is a very narrow one: the question is whether technical solutions can be found to allow a user to click a link to e-mail, while still preventing automatic harvesting by spambots. That’s all. Because we know for certain that, in the worst case, an e-mail address displayed as, for example, a JPG image rather than text, will never be machine readable. (Well, perhaps not never, but no-time soon at a reasonable cost). And the only loss would be the requirement for a user to type in the address themselves (a variant of this approach, listing your address as “somebody – at – something – dot – com” is already in widespread use).
So: solutions exist to minimize the risk of publicly displaying your e-mail address, and it turns out that the community of users who need such solutions are also the very people who have the technical knowledge and/or resources to use them.
As a practical validation of the argument that openness will survive, take the weblog community itself. I performed a quick, admittedly pseudo-scientific survey of the top 25 personal weblogs (blogs that appear to be written by a single individual) on the Myelin Ecosystem. Of those, 21 had e-mail addresses listed. Two — John Robb and Jon Udell — utilize a HTML form to allow users to send feedback, leaving only two others — Adam Curry and Ev Williams — who don’t appear to provide any feedback mechanism or e-mail address.
So, in our community, even for the most heavily-trafficked sites, 84% of users still think e-mail openness is worth the risk of spam — or have found ways to deal with it.
And this should come as no surprise. Because the final, most damning argument against the prophecy of doom for open e-mail is the simplest: open e-mail will continue to exist because there’s just no real alternative. Web publishers and others have a burning need to allow people to contact them — and that means that one way or another, they’ll make their e-mail address available to those who want to find it.
Even if it does mean getting a few messages from relatives of dead Nigerian ministers now and then.

Has anyone noticed the difference in approach to two alleged Middle-East “massacres” of civilians — one Jenin, and one this past weekend in Hebron?
Seven months have passed, and you still hear Palestinians and their supporters arguing civilians were slaughtered en masse at Jenin, despite a complete lack of evidence for this claim. (Even the U.N. couldn’t manage to find any).
Initial reports of the attack in Hebron also called it a “massacre”, implying that unarmed civlilans were the primary target. Within a few days, however, it became clear that those who were killed were mostly IDF soldiers — and the “massacre” language was dropped:
Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir said the Hebron “massacre” report came from accounts that the attack “happened as people were returning from synagogues, from prayers.
Militants spearheading an uprising that broke out after talks on Palestinian statehood broke down in mid-2000 have also killed scores of Israeli civilians in suicide attacks in Israel…
Asked if the ministry had erred on Hebron, Meir said, “That’s hindsight. We had information we trusted that later was found to be wrong.”
I eagerly await the day when we see a similarly honest statement from the Palestinian Authority correcting one of their earlier inflated claims.
Heck, I’d settle for one from Amnesty International.

So did anybody actually catch a good view of the meteor shower this morning?
I checked for a few minutes around 3:30am, but didn’t see anything. The near-full moon didn’t seem to help. (Neither did my short attention span, I’m sure, but it was chilly out on the old patio in my bathrobe).
I can sort-of see the sky from my office now, and its still dark, but the reflection of my monitor glare probably rules out me seeing anything that isn’t Armageddon-sized…

I’m baffled by those who refer to our recent actions in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and the coming action in Iraq, as “imperialism.”
Take, for instance, Keller in the Times today (as pointed to by Mr. Sullivan): he refers to those who favor an aggressive foreign policy as “the cheerleaders of the new imperialism”.
Most certainly a thing that makes me go “Hmmmmm.”
Iraq as a nation didn’t materialize out of the sand, you know. And America bears more than a little responsibility for establishing the conditions that left Afghanistan such a basket-case that the Taliban appeared to be an improvement (briefly).
Perhaps I’m being overly simplistic, but doesn’t the “new imperialism” look a hell of a lot like fixing the damage done by the old, actual imperialism of Britain and (to a lesser degree) the United States?
Why in the world are military actions designed to get rid of the lousy governments that resulted, in whole or in part, from pre- and post-WWII Anglo-American machinations and replace them with actual democracies regarded as a “new imperialism”?
It’s anti-imperialism, quite literally. Or, in less political terms: it’s called cleaning up your own mess.
You’d think those on the liberal side of the political chasm, who quite rightly condemned many of the actions that led to these governments coming into existence in the first place, would be cheering it on. But that would require accepting that America might actually be acting as a force for good in the world — and that is a concept that today’s Left can’t seem to accept, even for a moment.
Rather a pity, because here’s a news flash: if we aren’t the good guys, then there just plain aren’t any…
PS – See, that was almost actually interesting blogging, wasn’t it? Heck, I’m tryin’ here, throw me a bone…

OK, I wouldn’t call this interesting blogging, but a question for the peanut gallery:
I’m rapidly reaching a point where I’m ready to buy a new PC. As I (and many others) predicted several years back, the traditional required PC-upgrade cycle has collapsed, or rather, expanded dramatically. My Gateway PIII runs at 800Mhz and is over two years old, but frankly, still works just fine.
But, it seems prices have dropped to a degree that I think I should be able to get a quite spiffy P4 running at least 2.4GHz for under $1000. (Note that I don’t need a monitor).
But the question is, what’s the most cost effective path? Historically, I’ve gone the big-boys route, with machines from Micron and Gateway. But I’m tired of that; methinks I can do much better elsewhere. eBay seems to have quite a few manufacturers who sell cutrate systems that seem reasonable, so that’s one option. And I am in Southern California, with a Frys just up the road, so I’m toying with the idea of getting a system from them (or a bare-bones one that might require a bit of assembly on my part).
Any recommendations? I’d love to find a small build-to-order shop with reasonable prices, so if you’ve bought from one, drop a comment here.
This time around, my primary driver is price; I’m definiately not going for the $2500-$3000 models. So any advice on the most economical options would be most welcome.
And also: Any advice on how to track/predict chip price drops? I know Intel is about to release their latest at 3GHz or so; how do I know whether the price drops that usually will cause in the lower-end processors and systems have happened yet?

Got most of the patio work done, including the majority of the (literal) heavy lifting. Hauled in twenty-five bags of patio stone; I’ve now covered about 80% of the patio garden area with weedcloth and the stone, so it looks pretty good. And the remainder is already weeded down from Amazon-level, so the rest should go quick.
Also spent some time printing & framing some of my photographs; long overdue to redecorate the nest. The nice one of the Golden Gate above is a digitally-stitched panorama that I’ve had for a while but was never quite satisfied I had stitched seamlessly enough; fiddled with it a bit more and got it to a state I was comfortable with. (It looks even better in color: I printed it banner sized at 35″ x 10″ and it looks splendid).
Didn’t get anywhere near the dusting-and-vacuuming part; patio took longer than I had hoped. Perhaps today.
Oh, and dinner was homemade pizza (pepperoni, fresh basil, chopped garlic, onions, tomato sauce & mozzarella on a Boboli). Yum.
Yeah, I know; Lileks I ain’t. Actually interesting blogging to follow…

Not likely to be much posting today; I am a house-bear with chores to do.
Ambition #1 for the day is to finally finish weeding my patio & laying down weedcloth and stone covering, so that the damned parasites don’t come back again. (The patio tends to start resembling a jungle within a few weeks if I take my eye off the weeds)
Ambition #2 is to dust & vacuum; the place needs it ’cause my allergies are killin’ me.
Hmmm… now do you see why I don’t blog about my daily life much?
Anyway, scroll down; I thought I had some good tidbits down there which didn’t get nearly the attention I had hoped (sniff, sob, nobody likes me, etc. etc. etc….)

Is it me, or do the ‘quality feedback agents’ associated with tools like Mozilla and Netscape which pop up to cheerily quiz you after a crash bear a distinct resemblence to Rugen?
[Mozilla crashes, taking with it my last few minutes work]
Feedback Agent: “The Netscape Quality Feedback Agent has captured information that Netscape needs to help improve Communicator’s quality. Describe what you were doing when Communicator failed.”
Count Rugen [To Wesley, as he is being tortured by The Machine]: I’m sure you’ve discovered my deep and abiding interest in pain. At present I’m writing the definitive work on the subject. So I want you to be totally honest with me on how The Machine makes you feel…Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest — how do you feel?

So the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has a statement which takes a dim view of miilitary action against Iraq:
“With the Holy See and bishops from the Middle East and around the world, we fear that resort to war, under present circumstances and in light of current public information, would not meet the strict conditions in Catholic teaching for overriding the strong presumption against the use of military force.”
Their statement invokes Just War theory, a philosophical framework which I do not claim to be expert in. I’ll confine myself to observing, therefore, that if Just War theory does indeed argue that liberating a people from what the Bishops themselves call Iraq’s “internal repression” is insufficient moral cause for war — well, then I simply don’t have much use for it.
But given the Bishops’ current position, is seems worthwhile to look back in time and examine what their past ideas on Iraq have been.
Here’s what they said in their November 1999 statement:
“It is time for a new approach to Iraq. We cannot turn a deaf ear to the suffering of the Iraqi people or a blind eye to the moral consequences of current U.S. policy. It is time to end comprehensive sanctions against Iraq, halt the ongoing air strikes, and find morally acceptable alternatives to contain the aggressive actions of the Iraqi government.”
One can safely assume that military action of any kind was not a valid option to the Bishops, so it’s not at all clear what “morally acceptable alternatives” they had in mind.
So, anyone care to take a guess where Saddam’s weapons program would be if sanctions had been lifted three years ago? Yeah, me neither.
My advice to the Bishop’s Council: Stick to tending thy own flock; you’ve got plenty of work to do there.

The Yale Daily News reports that an alumni / student group at Yale is on the divest-from-Israel bandwagon:
A group of Yale faculty and alumni announced Tuesday that it has initiated a petition to campaign for University divestment from Israel.
With a paid advertisement in the Yale Daily News Tuesday, the Yale Divest from Israel Campaign, or YDIC, publicized its petition and Web site — www.yaledivestnow.org — and suggested that the group might eventually bring legal action against Yale.

An announcement from MommaBear’s Den:

A Farewell From Dodgeblogium……..
Due to circumstances beyond her scope and domain, MommaBear is compelled, with all the dignity she can muster, to remove her Den from Dodgeblogium.
Farewell, dear readers, ’til she finds new digs!

This bear, for one, waits eagerly to learn where she shall being moving the Den to…
Update: It now appears Dodgeblogium itself shall be no more. from Andrew:
As you might have noticed, things are changing round Dodgeblogium. MommaBear has resigned from her position as editor and contributor to the blog. I, on the other hand, am heading off to the new and more popular pastures of Sasha Castel’s blog. Frank and Ian have been invited by the lovely Sasha to follow me to La Blogatrice’s domain.
Update 2: MommaBear has come to rest at Kathy’s fine lair.

Glenn a rather odd thing this morning about the downside of minimizing civilian casualties:
I wonder, though. After reading a piece in The New Yorker (not on line) about German civilian casualties in World War Two, and then this post by Jim Henley on not going far enough in the Afghan war, it occurs to me that trying so hard to prevent civilian casualties might be a mistake. I’m all for minimizing civilian casualties to the extent possible, consistent with winning the war. But if people are beaten so bloodlessly that they don’t feel beaten, and have no real reason to dread a confrontation with the United States, is this really a good thing?
Yes, yes, and yes again — at least with regards to Iraq.
The Iraqi people have been beaten — by Saddam, for many decades. The conflict we face is not a “War with Iraq”, but a “War with Saddam”, as Christopher Hitchens continues to point out in his pedantic fashion wherever possible.
We don’t need to scare the Iraqi people; we need to free them and, by shepherding them through the inevitable rough years to come, ensure that they emerge with a stable democracy of their own. That will go quite far enough to ensuring that the Iraqi people never threaten us.
On the other hand, I would not go so far as to say that fear is a tool we should never use. In the fight against Al Qaeda itself, I do indeed want any potential recruits to that organization to fear that should they choose Osama’s path, nothing but a nasty, pointless end at American hands awaits them.
But one must be terribly cautious talking about fear-as-a-weapon, particularly when the source of the fear is civilian casualties. Because at its heart, that starts to resemble the very thing we’re fighting against —- terrorism.
The fear must match the crime — essentially, if the fear can be reduced to the phrase “we will make them fear justice at our hands,” I believe it is legitimate and moral. But the idea of civilian casualties being the source of fear leaves me queasy — as by definition, a “civilian” is one who did not commit any action against us and therefore has no “justice” waiting to be brought to them.
The strategy should be clear: minimal civilian casualties is always the right course. But maximal damage to those who truly stand with our enemies.

Scott Koenig has the comment you need regarding Saddam’s “unconditional” acceptance of the U.N. resolution.