licentious radio

Friday, June 7, 2002
[9:43:21 PM]

I cracked up laughing today reading the newspaper. Ariel Sharon said "We cannot hurt Arafat -- we made an obligation not to touch him." Fine. But then, speaking of 'accidents': "Such a thing can happen, accidentally. But I hope it will not happen."

That's only funny, of course, because an Israeli tank shell accidentally just happened to blast through Arafat's bathroom window.

There's Sharon *hoping* that Arafat doesn't get whacked by the Israeli angriffstruppen. Imagine how horribly disappointed Sharon would have been if Arafat had been brushing his teeth when Sharon's tank accidentally happened to fire that shell through the bathroom window.

[5:05:48 PM]
My collection of jokes and faux press releases is at the link called Stories. The September 11 comment is serious, but the rest are (intended to be) funny. What did Mae West say to the energy executives? Bill Clinton and Little George's Teachers encouraged them. Don't miss: Rumsfeld keeps straight face.

[1:04:17 PM]
Is Andy Card an Idiot? [slate]

What I like is the White House bluster. "We're taking up a collection to buy the author a tape recorder." "I don't have a blue rug in my office."

But they don't quite get around to saying the quotes are wrong.

This is the "Bush Dodge". Famously depicted by Doonesbury, Krugman [nytimes.com], MWO, and anyone with any sense.

[12:41:57 PM]
Regarding "Trusted Travelers"....

Have you ever heard of blackmail? The terrorist says to the trusted traveler: "If you want your family to live, carry this onto the plane." The terrorist can assure the trusted traveler that they won't crash the plane into a building.

[12:30:20 PM]
September 11 was the *end* of hijacking.

The terrorists were forced to use very small cutting weapons, rather than guns. They could only control passengers while the passengers assumed they would survive. Five hijackers with box-cutters can't expect to control 50 to 200 passengers who don't want to crash into a building.

It's no wonder people were scared, of course. It's also no wonder that the Bush mafia used and promoted fear in order to seize even more powers -- and further enrich their cronies.

Meanwhile, numerous incidents have proved the obvious: passengers and crews have stopped many whackos who tried to take over airplanes. Our safety depends on ourselves. Even on September 11, passengers on the last flight stopped the takeover.

Yes, we should make air travel safer. We should match luggage to passengers and check luggage for bombs. We should have air marshalls on enough flights so would-be terrorists couldn't expect to succeed. Most of all, the Air National Guard shouldn't wait until *after* planes crash into buildings before taking off.

But all the strip searches are the state promoting fear -- terrorizing us into letting them steal our liberties and money.

[11:44:16 AM]
"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." FDR.

And *that* is the difference between a great man dealing with a great problem, and small-minded fascist thugs who allowed terrorists to strike, and now use unending war to attack our freedoms and democratic institutions and enrich their cronies.

Thanks to Dave Winer for the timely FDR quote.

[11:33:02 AM]
TheRegister has an article on Web native ASPs. This is a market segment that should do well in the long run. Security, backups, scalability, and round-the-clock reliability are expensive and difficult for individuals and small organizations. ASPs focused on quality rather than stock valuation will be a huge boon to the economy.

"Web native" is a pretty nasty label. They mean to distinguish between applications accessed by a web browser, and desktop applications where the software and data are on servers owned by the ASP instead of by your company. The latter situation has obvious show-stoppers.

But I'd say "web native" is too narrow a definition to understand the value of ASPs. Internet publishing and commerce are so complicated that there are large economies of scale. ASPs will do a booming business providing internet-based services (managed publishing and commerce, for instance) to small organizations.