excerpts.

Day 2, Cr-48: Wifi issues

Cognitive load and cognitive burden - having to learn new keyboard and touchpad behaviors; wanting to learn more existing shortcuts for Docs and Mail. I’m really getting used to the touch pad, the light touch to click, the two finger swipe to scroll, much quicker than the keyboard shortcuts for home/end of line pageup/pagedown.

I have both a Nexus One and a Verizon MiFi and, in a limited connection room, I have to switch between the two which puts a pause in my writing in Google Docs (it has to reconnect).

Selecting via dragging is hard. Moving tabs, grab and select is hard.

Day 1, Cr-48: Surprise

Surprise.
Heather calls me to tell me that, as she's backing out of the driveway, there's a package on the porch. Hello, Cr-48.

Hilarious written documentation for the battery and initial startup. Card stating, if you opened this up, Intel inside. Great intro/welcome webapp. Jealous of the javascript animations.

Getting used to the keyboard without a lot of the conventional keys. Carrying around and taking notes - perfect, once the page up, page down (alt up, alt down) shortcuts were found. Struggling with some of the keyboard shortcuts, though. ctrl-alt-up, ctrl-alt-down; home, end. The on-screen keyboard shortcut help is really handy. Fish vs. Pony (I have a Fish)

App A Weekend: My First Android App

Edit 11/08/2010 - I was inaccurate when I stated that the NRCS WAI has only a SOAP/RPC access - it has GET and POST as well. I'm currently revising my Android app to parse the WAI XML.

First things first: it’s aboot time. I’ve spent enough time dinking around with Android that this post should’ve occurred a long time ago. So, here it is, enjoy.

Recently, I developed an Android application to access the USDA NRCS’s public Where Am I? (WAI) service. The WAI service provides land-related information from a geospatial location within the United States. This took about the equivalent of a weekend (16 hours or so), but it was spread out over about a week, so I'm still calling this an "App a Weekend" entry. Deal with it. There are a few gotchas and points along the way that are worth noting as I developed this application.

The Where Am I? service provides information for a geospatial point on the map: Congressional District Code, ID, Name, Congressperson’s name, Hydrologic Unit Code, Major Land Resource Area, City, State, Zip, and Tribal Land ID/Name, among other information. The service drills through multiple layers of geospatial data and gives back an attribute list. Useful for some purposes when doing land-based assessment as a lot of NRCS applications may do, what with them being the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The idea for the WAI Android application came from my work inventorying potentially enterprise-ready existing shareable services at the NRCS, which ones are being shared, and which ones were intended to be shared. Additionally, some discussions with developers at the USDA about mobile access to NRCS data services needed some level of pragmatic understanding. Why not write an Android app and exercise the API just enough to make a semi-useful app and exercise the end-to-end Android dev process?

Semi-Useful Design

My intended design was to have an Android application that not only displayed a map from which the visible latitude and longitude could be obtained but also use the geolocation services of the Android device (GPS, network) to obtain the latitude and longitude. The geospatial coordinates could then be passed to WAI and the WAI attribute results would be displayed. Pretty straighforward.

The Where Am I? Service

The WAI service is written in .NET and exposed as ASMX which provides a WSDL as an API. A few issues with this right off the bat. Android has no native SOAP client to dynamically create a proxy. There is, of course the Apache Axis library, but those are huge, ~8mb, and the proxy client built by Axis is also pretty large. Size is an issue in any mobile app and including libraries not specifcally optimized for the platform's not recommended. There’s an Android implementation of ksoap2, but there were lots of comments of its usability and feasability, so I passed on that one. Additionally, XML parsing is reputed to be quite expensive in Android. Another issue is that the WAI service is hosted behind a port redirector and therefore WSDL for the service indicates its endpoint at port 42500, which is incorrect. This issue causes dynamically generated SOAP proxies to fail. The work around is to manually generate the proxy (using wsdl.exe in .NET for example) and then manually correcting the port. SOAP access to WAI seems less and less likely.

For a mobile device, it really seems like a REST/document style interface with json would be better than an RPC style interface, given the potential size of a proxy client and supporting libraries. Why not write one?

The REST Service for WAI

I wrote a very quick REST service using ASP.NET MVC2 and pushed this app to Azure, http://wai.cloudapp.net

It has a very basic human user interface and some documentation on the single existing REST method. Currently, there's one method on the controller that takes lat and lon value, calls the USDA NRCS SOAP webservice via a manual proxy class, and returns a full set of data attributes as a JsonResult object.

Creating an Azure app from an existing MVC2 app was cake - add a Windows Azure Cloud Service project to the existing solution. Publishing to Azure was surprizingly easy, with one hitch: our worktops are XPSP3 and the latest Azure SDK for VisualStudio 2010 will only work on Vista/7. I published to the cloud using my personal laptop (Windows 7).

It might’ve been slicker to use Google App Engine to host the REST proxy, but the nerd humor of a GOOG app calling MSFT service can't be beat.

Finally, the Android App

With the REST service in place, utilizing in an Android app was a snap. Obtaining a GPS/Network location from the device is well explained in the online SDK. Writing a REST client in Java within a thread is as you’d expect (although this is not the recommended pattern, see this very informative talk from I/O on Developing REST Client Applications; a talk I opted not to attend and am grateful they posted the talk and pdf slides online).

I made a main Activity class that contains the Maps MapView, one for the Aboot and WAI Results dialog boxes, and another for the Preferences (an upcoming enhancement). Two straight Java classes, a REST client to house static methods around issuing an HttpClient GET call, and an interface class for my RestRequestCallback that my main Activity implemented in order to get the info back from the threat that starts the REST call.

I obtained a Google Maps API key in order to utilize the Google Maps API, which is separate from the default Android API. It’s used in order to enable the tile service of the Maps API to function. Also, I had a development (“debug”) key per machine I was developing on (I used both my desktop and laptop to develop the app). This meant i had to keep changing the hash string that enabled the Maps API in the view layout, which wasn’t hard, just slightly inconvenient.

Testing on the emulator's really easy and I'm always impressed with the SDK's qemu running Android. Once started, it's snappy and responsive. The emulator has no GPS, so you've got to push a lat, lon to it via the DDMS emulator interface ui or via telnetting to the emulator and issuing a "geo fix lon, lat" command to simulate a location fix. Incidentally, there's a Galaxy Tab add-on for the SDK so you can skin the emulator to look like the upcoming 7" device, if you're so inclined.

Signing an application is actually really easy from within Eclipse - it’s a menu item added to the right-click context menu by the Android SDK plug-in. It’s not really that hard via the command line, either.

Publishing to the Android Market was also an interesting experience. You upload the apk (compiled Android app) and a few screenshots (optional). Once you do, there’s an entry in the developer listing. And it can’t be removed. Even if you unpublish your app, the app remains in your list (not on the Market, but in your developer dashboard for the Market). I initially compiled my app in a very generic namespace, net.bespokesystems, and then wanted to change it to net.bespokesystems.demo.RestLocation, a much better namespace. Seems like the namespace is the key for the developer dashboard, so no changing that - got to publish a new app. And wouldn’t you know, can’t remove the app from my dashboard. So, although unpublished, there’s an app entry that’s there. At the time, there were no users of the app (I’d installed the apk manually on my Nexus One), but after a few days, oddly, there were! It seems like there must be people who automate installation of apps as they’re published, maybe some feed that I’m unaware of plus a delay in reporting of installations. I’d literally had the poorly-namespaced app published in the Market for less than 20 min. I’ll have to follow up on either on the dev mailing lists or irc channel to determine some of the Market's logistics. One thing I didn't have to do was wait (I'm looking at you Apple App Store).

Using the Google Chart API for QR codes, I created the clever little QR image above that, when scanned with the Barcode Scanner app on your Android phone, directs you to the download for the app on the Market.

There are some interesting bits in the Android app lifecycle - rotating the screen pauses and restarts the app - and as a developer one has to accomodate for saving state. I got a bit into the Preferences API, alternate layouts and screen depths, and making a simple icon.

I hope to place both the Android app and the Azure MVC app in a public repository soon for anyone who wants to see some awesome slapdash code.

A few ideas on future updates:

... for the Android app

Use a better pattern for accessing REST services
Allow the user to change the map type, from satellite to road
Reduce REST query timeout to accomodate for NRCS WAI service response timeouts
General polish (release notes, proper liste provider for WAI results)
Better control over GPS/Network/Wifi location behavior

... for the WAI REST service include

REST methods to allow the request to specify which WAI attributes to return
Google map for the UI piece
Reduce timeout to NRCS WAI service and add a single retry to accomodate for the NRCS WAI service’s timeout issues

D'Souza on Obama - Selling Books

Jack - [3:59 PM]:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0927/politics-socialism-capitalism-private-enterprises-obama-business-problem.html

Hussain - [3:59 PM]:
I read that.

Jack - [3:59 PM]:
You like?

Hussain - [3:59 PM]:
D'Souza's projecting. The very definition of American is anti-colonialist. After WW2 we abandoned our protectionists ways and have accepted our anti-colonialist ways. Look at the name at his upcoming book. He's a hater. He's promoting his book and his flawed perspective. It's not a bad argument, it's just for his head, not Obama's.

Jack - [4:02 PM]:
I dunno, the label "anti-colonialist" might be bad, but I don't think he's far off in identifying Obama's motivations.

Hussain - [4:02 PM]:
I was going to write a blog post about it, but that's the essence. Anti-colonialist isn't bad, but D'Souza makes it out to be. That's the cleverness of his projection, it's not far off if you want to see it in a socialist-hater way.

Jack - [4:03 PM]:
But then why is it projection? He's not anitcolonialist, is he?

Hussain - [4:03 PM]:
The problem is he's a hater, so he casts what's good about America - being anti-colonialist - in some negative light. No he's an Indian of some sort, and has British colonialist baggage. He is an anti-colonialist, but a non-socialist, hero-like one. He clearly doesn't like Obama's dickrider, socialist reclaiming of "anti-colonialist." He's the arbiter of anti-colonialism.

Jack - [4:04 PM]:
Reclaiming? Didn't they always own it?

Hussain - [4:04 PM]:
Apart from my psychobabble, the root of the issue is whether anti-colonialism is American or not American. It's American.

Jack - [4:05 PM]:
I associate it with the modern left.

Hussain - [4:05 PM]:
Why?

Jack - [4:05 PM]:
At least as he defines it.

Hussain - [4:05 PM]:
America's very roots are anti-colonialist. The very.

Jack - [4:06 PM]:
Well, I don't feel like there was much of an idea of worrying about "the other guy" util maybe the 1960s. Hence "modern."

Hussain - [4:06 PM]:
Beleiving that people have the right to be soverign nations is how we were founded and then after WW2 we started asserting on it. More like 1930's

Jack - [4:07 PM]:
Ok, but I was thinking it was more a financial thing. Like, clearly they US has been "not about having colonies of its own" since day 1.

Hussain - [4:07 PM]:
That's a distraction/cleverbit by D'Souza.

Jack - [4:07 PM]:
So I see what you're saying.

Hussain - [4:07 PM]:
Tying it to that veers you in that way. A cornerstone of the argument is linking anti-colonialism to socialism. The problem is it's feeble. Not only not having their own, but also not being one.

Jack - [4:08 PM]:
Well, it's more like I was already over there, and then he said "by the way, where you are is called 'anti-colonialism'" and I said "fine, whatever."

Hussain - [4:08 PM]:
Well, sure That's why if you're a hater, it's a clever ruse. You're there, here's another term to call it. Make a sign next Tea Party.

Jack - [4:08 PM]:
Like, for me, Obama is part of a movement that's about a global socialist government.

Hussain - [4:08 PM]:
Make sure to spell it right lest you get youtubed writing "MORAN" Well, that's definitely an opinion, probably one D'Souza holds, and is now leveraging to sell "The Roots of Obama's Rage" Why doesn't he go about just talking about the logical ties from socialism to Obama? Why does he try to distract with core American-ness (aka anticolonialism) He literally shoots himself in the foot, causing Rage. But, selling books.

Jack - [4:10 PM]:
Well, I think the word is wrong, but I don't think he's wrong about the motivations.

Hussain - [4:10 PM]:
I'm sure his pseudointellectualism will do a lot to further confuse the debate. Like the Christian Right has done to the Tea Party. That's opinion, though, not backed by even the arguments in the article.

Jack - [4:11 PM]:
I think that Obama really thinks the world will be better if the wealth is spread around the WHOLE world.

Hussain - [4:11 PM]:
He keeps tying things to anti-colonialism as if that's socialism. Anti-colonialism is explicitly self-sustaining soverign nations. His definition of socialism is loose enough to snare you. Especially in this economy, it's enough to snare anyone. "Hell no, he's not spending my hard earned $1.05 on Brathillianz!" Like, really? No, not really. After WW2, we help people. Prior, we were very protectionist. We still have R-party members who are insistant on being retroactives, and that's fine, it's in our history. Pretending that we're excessively helpy is an edge argument. It'll sell a book, though.

Jack - [4:14 PM]:
Well, it's not really important to me that it be called "socialism." I think that's an accurate term for what Obama wants, but whatever.

Hussain - [4:14 PM]:
That's ok, too, but note, that farts on D'Souza's argument and we're off his deal. I happen to agree with you, but not with the rhetorical slight of hand D'Souza's pulling.

Jack - [4:15 PM]:
The only reason I'm sorta "meh" about what you're saying is that I responded to what he was saying by trying to understand it in terms that I like, as opposed to really worrying about how he was saying it. Like, I can see you point, but I just connected the dots so they made sense for me, rather than really listening to him.

Hussain - [4:16 PM]:
Sure, I understand. I get that and that's how D'Souza will sell books. Sure. It's how you win arguments, hearts, then minds. Much later minds, if they can even be counted on to pay attention.

Jack - [4:17 PM]:
Is there as much Obamabacklash as it seems like?

Hussain - [4:17 PM]:
Plunk down the $22 on the book first, then whaawhaa about the argument. I don't think so, but the media's all about it. They love a fire.

Jack - [4:17 PM]:
I dunno, the comments...

Hussain - [4:17 PM]:
You know my opinion on the media.

Jack - [4:17 PM]:
I always look at the comments. Obviously they're always "U NO HE A SOCALIS! NO FANK!"

Hussain - [4:18 PM]:
I do, too.

Jack - [4:18 PM]:
But lately they're all anti-Obama. And annoyingly so.

Hussain - [4:18 PM]:
I think the article's misleading, but cleverly so, so I don't trust the comments. In this case.

Jack - [4:19 PM]:
I was promised that he was magic. But he's not magic! I am losing hope for change.

Hussain - [4:19 PM]:
Lately, everyone's got some frustration to pin on Obama, the big target, too.

Jack - [4:20 PM]:
"WHY HIM NOT MAKE JOB FOR ME??"

Hussain - [4:20 PM]:
Well, what I thought after realizing D'Souza cleverness (which is quite clever) was that Geez, Obama's actually doing what he said he would, he's keeping hope alive. People just aren't in the mood for that shit right now, but he's holding true. It's not going to help him.

Jack - [4:20 PM]:
Is he a one termer?

Hussain - [4:20 PM]:
If you're right around here, for example, it's wholly irrelevant, you just have to be the one they like. Too early.

Jack - [4:21 PM]:
I dunno, you might be right, I'll ask Carl.

Hussain - [4:21 PM]:
The R's + the Tea Party might blow their wad this midterm.

Jack - [4:21 PM]:
Yeah.

Hussain - [4:21 PM]:
I wouldn't count the D's, or really Obama, out yet. The Tea Party is embarassing, though. If they really sway the R's, they'll fall off the wagon and go Gibson.

Wolfram|Alpha & AZ Crime Rates

This is a test of a very simple Wolfram|Alpha beta widget about Arizona Crime Rates:

Illumina to sequence genome for $19.5k

Your Genome Is Coming, June 3, 2010, Forbes
Illumina, maker of sequencing machines, announced a MD-requested full genome sequence price of $19,500.

A great chart from Gregory Lucifer of Life Technologies showing the cost of sequencing a human genome vs. Moore's Law, below.

H+ Summit Links

The H+ Summit was this weekend at Harvard and was live broadcast on the web. In a while, H+'ll have sessions on line. Until then, a few links:

Brian Bishop's transcripts for each session. Pretty awesome (follow @kansure)
Some of the speaker's slides

Of random interest:

Antarus's MyCube - a $1k Thermocycler (PCR) machine
The Adruino - for your next, well, anything project
Brain Paint and for biofeedback

And, of course, last but not least Backyard Brains

Ubuntu 10.4 Netbook Edition on the Lenovo S10-2

The Lenovo S10-2, with it's oversmall keyboard and smallish screen, has taken a permanent back seat to the iPad for livingroom and wandering around computing. The S10-2 has Windows 7 on it, a process which took a while, so I figured that I'd experiment and put the latest Ubuntu 10.4 Netbook Edition on it to see if it was snappy and responsive. UNE is supposed to have a new layout / launcher that's geared towards netbooks.

The download site has a link that describes how to create a bootable USB, which is great. Great because 1) the Lenovo S10-2 has no CD drive, 2) there weren't any good clear instructions on how to do this for the Windows 7 upgrade I'd performed and 3) the instructions were provided right there, on the download page, not some "go to this shady site" reference.

Creating a USB stick went fairly smoothly and I was able to get a stick that'd boot, granted I had to hit F12 in the startup process to choose the USB stick, and perusing the UNE interface in livecd mode gave me confidence. The wacky "application as tabs" sort of thing and the left tab-section for applications as "apps" seemed to work for the small screen.

There were multiple issues, though, when I wanted to pull the trigger and install the OS on to this machine.

First, Avira antivirus had to be disabled to use usb-creator. Pretty minor, really. The usb-creator.exe is provided on the iso of ubuntu, so mounting the iso, grabbing the exe, and then running it was no problem. Avira chirped at an unknown autorun.inf, which is a good thing for antiviruses to do.

Second, my USB stick was NTFS formatted and usb-creator likes FAT32, so I reformatted it.

Third, there's an option in usb-creator to store documents and settings on the USB when starting up from the USB. Don't choose it, choose instead the "discarded on shutdown, unless you save them elsewhere" option. Ubuntu won't boot in livecd mode or install mode with that option chosen. It'll drop to a command prompt with the error "can not mount /dev/loop1 on /cow". Really frustrating. I googled around until I found a few helpful hints and was able to get past that.

Fourth, and most importantly, the Lenovo partition scheme seems to be the blocker when installing. Ubuntu can't figure it out and "parted_server" crashes after the "choose your keyboard setup" screen in the wizard. I found a few references to that on the internets, but nothing was terribly helpful, so I ended up booting in livecd mode and using Ubuntu's disk management Disk Utility to wipe all the partitions. I wasn't going to be using Win7 and the Lenovo restore partition was only good for XP, so bye-bye Windows 7, helo Ubuntu.

Until ChromeOS comes around.

Islam in the News Roundup

My brother's a graduate student at University of Chicago who gets opportunities to speak at various events, including this one, "Sundays at Rockefeller." Being a graduate student, the news isn't always as prominent in his noise stream as for us civilians (lucky him), so when he asked me:

Abbas: have any policians or media figures said anything really nutso about islam lately? :)

I practically jumped out of my seat.

So, for you, dear readers, I present Islam in the News Roundup.

Belgium bans the Veil, France trying to follow, Christian Science Monitor 04/30/2010

"The burqa has no place in France" - French President Nicholas Sarkozy. Previously, Swiss voters barred Muslims from building minarets in a referrendum held in December.
"Once we solve the burqa problem, we'll still have the problem of polygamy, of praying in the streets of big cities, of banning pork from cafeterias, in short all the sectarian demands the French are confronted with daily" - French far right leader, Marine Le Pen
Belgian lawmakers vote to ban full-face veils in public, Washington Post, 04/30/2010

Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, booted from 05/06/2010 Pentagon prayer service for calling Islam a "very violent religion," and Sarah Palin defending him

Army Disinvites Franklin Graham from National Day of Prayer Event, ABC News, 04/22/2010
Army spokesman Col. Tom Collins said, “Army leadership became aware of the issue and immediately recognized it was problematic. ” He added, “This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue.

Not to be out done, the Congress invites Franklin Graham to speak at their 05/06 prayer service

Richard Cohen, some WaPo journalist, has this great wacky take in The Pentagon plays mind games with Muslims, 04/21/2010: "The Pentagon is trying to drive the Muslim world crazy."

Franklin Graham affirms concerns of critics, appears on Fox to proselytize against Muslims., Think Progress, 04/22/2010
This link has the YouTube of Franklin on Fox

"And so yes I speak out for women, I speak out for people who live under Islam, who are enslaved under Islam, and I want them to know they can be free by Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone."

Congress Urged to Drop Evangelist From Event, AOL News

Sarah Palin Defends Franklin Graham, Criticizes Pentagon For Disinviting Him From Prayer Day, Huffington Post, 04/23/2010
Sarah Palin's response, The Army's Loss in Dis-Inviting a Good Man, on Fasebook, 04/23/2010

Great contrast between the military, who's supposed to be apolitical and the Congress, who's nothing but pandering political simps. Apart from the WashPo story on how the military's move could be psyops, it's a good example as to how "political Islam" is more of a term applicable to how non-muslims handle Islam in America. Oh, and earlier in Apirl a federal court ruled that the National Day of Prayer, established by Congress in 1952, was unconstitutional on separation of church and state grounds.
Other super smooth comments by Franklin include:

"I don't believe this is a wonderful, peaceful religion."

"wicked, violent and not of the same God."

Last on this topic, I'm aware that most of the links are to "lefty" blogs/newspapers. Clearly, like tons of armed white men tea partying on Washington, anti-Islam rhetoric is ignorable by most white America and a given in the media.

The Pope, trying to get out from under pedophiles and his 2006 comments regarding Islam, states you have to work with Islam
Pope: African church must work with Islam, UPI, 04/30/2010

In an audience Thursday at the Vatican with bishops from Gambia, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the pope urged them to "continue to promote dialogue with other religions and above all with Islam," the Italian news agency ANSA reported.

Here, I'm not so clear whether he means the full Church or just those in Africa.

Tariq Ramadan, banned from taking a tenured position at Notre Dame during the Bush administration has his travel restrictions removed by the Obama administration.

Formerly Banned Muslim Scholar Tours U.S., 04/29/2010
Although he's touring in the US, he says he wouldn't now teach in the US (New York Mag, 04/08/2010) - exactly what he was going to do in 2004. He's now at Oxford. That's a step up, I'd say. Some decent commentary by Ramadan about the past administration and how Islam is viewed in America or Europe from someone on the outside, literally.

Last, but not least, Ayatollah Sedighi who said that indecent fashion causes earthquakes.

Do immodestly dressed women really cause earthquakes?, Fitsnews, 04/27/2010. This link has cleavage!
Iranian cleric: Promiscuous women cause quakes, AP, 04/19/2010
"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media.
A minor footnote is the media getting all excited about some girl who created a Fasebook page and called it Boobquake. Yawn.

If American politicians and talking heads can condescend and pander to special interest groups, what's wrong with a little red meat from an Ayatollah (or, I guess that'd be, a little less red meat)? This is a non-story, except that it's a hilarious cultural / rhetorical difference fault point that lots of people can stuff their personal peccadillos into (that's what she said!), such as feminism, supposed oppression of women, ignorance, blah blah, boring.

I guess anything that gets women to highlight their boobies can't be bad. Rock on Hujjat al-Islam Sedighi.

Genetics Roundup

Stanford bioengineer explores own genome, 04/30/2010, Silicon Valley Mercury News

Lucky bastard.

A decade ago, sequencing of the first-ever whole genome by the federal government took many years and cost $400 million to $500 million. Quake's machine, the size of a freezer, sequenced his human genome in only four weeks, for $50,000. The procedure is expected to cost $10,000 by the end of this year.

U. scientist links one gene to intelligence, 04/22/2010, Salt Lake Tribune

Interesting. STX1A has a variant on SNPedia, Rs3793243.

The gene in question plays a central role in neuro-transmission, particularly in the areas of the brain associated with learning, memory and fear.
"We're talking about a basic utility when we look at STX1A," [Julie] Korenberg said. "This study shows in part how nature's hand shapes intelligence at the synapse."
... She and colleagues at California institutions performed genetic testing on 65 patients with Williams Syndrome, an uncommon congenital developmental disorder that appears in only one in 20,000 births. People with the syndrome are genetically similar to other individuals except they are missing 27 genes.

SNPwatch: Genetic Variant May Impact Rate of Cognitive Decline in the Elderly, 04/26/2010, The Spittoon, 23andme's blog

Variants of Rs4680 have different effects over time.

New research, published recently in the journal Neurology, has found the surprising result that a genetic variant previously associated with better cognitive function in young people appears to have the opposite effect as people get older.

I'll be interested to see what my snps reveal, and also what sort of mitigation environmental effects might have.

DNA Day Chat Transcription Expresses Humor

DNA Day chat room transcribes humor:

Q: James Woods Elementary in MA (5th grade student): My mom says she can never fit her genes. Can you fix her DNA so she can fit them?
A: Sarah Harding, M.P.H: Unfortunately, no...your genes pretty much stay the same from the day you are born. It's your environment that can change...Tell her to buy bigger pants.

Q: Geoff Toyz in NJ (8th grade student): I saw someones DNA on chatroulette. Where else on the internet can i see this?
A: Kris Wetterstrand, M.S.: Sure. Check the National Center For Biotechnology Information's (NCBI's) human genome browser: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/mapview/maps.cgi?taxid=9606&chr=1

2010 National DNA Day Online Chatroom Transcript, genome.gov

Today's favorite iPad App: Epicurious

... and it's free!

From iPad Apps

iPad Thoughts

Watching a video on the iPad is really nice - great clear, colorful HD screen - with one exception: the glare. I watched a handbraked episode of Stargate Universe, as well as Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution and an episode of Modern Family via the ABC Player iPad application.

Overall, the apps for the iPad - ones designed to take advantage of the larger screen - are wonderfully useful.

Specific iPad applications

The Yahoo! Entertainment app is much more useful than the web version. It's too bad neither TiVo or MSN have iPad formatted apps like this. Customizing TV listings is very intuitive, poking at on/off choices with a finger is even more intuitive than pointing and clicking with a mouse.

The NPR app is fun, too, with streaming access to affiliates as well as a triple stacked stacked news story layout.

The Yahoo! Entertainment app crashed a few times, as did the NPR app, returning to the home screen.

The IMDB application was really fun. The wife and I sat around looking up movies and reading trivia and being silly running lines from The Karate Kid and Office Space. All on the couch, without a keyboard. That part truly shows off how the same data, different interface and in a movie-watching setting (couch) really can make the power of the internets click. I understand why Steve says it's a magical device.

ABC Player is fantastic, access to watch shows on demand is reminiscent of Hulu. I have to say that I was right on the edge of buying an iPad and the Modern Family episode featuring it had a little bit to contribute to pushing me over. ABC being owned by Disney with Steve Jobs as a 7% shareholder probably had a something to do with that.

Cool Hunting and Gilt's apps are also really great; easy browsing of the articles and items to buy are formatted to take advantage of the screen and input style. Here, also, Gilt's application has crashed once or twice on me.

With the larger storage space (I got the 32gb model), I think what might be an issue soon is more organization for certain applications. It sure is nice to have space for a lot of music, but music doesn't need screen size as the successful iPod line can attest - videos and pictures do. And both videos and pictures need some level of organization and categorization. On iTunes, on the desktop, I can only select a single level of folders for photos, whereas on the iPad, it has a more sophisticated level of organization: all thumbnails, or view by date or view by location. This is clever and pleasing. With videos, it's just by all thumbnails and once people gear up and buy tv shows and movies via iTunes, some better level of organization will be needed.

Some Technical Thoughts

Using the various applications on the iPad makes me think of the early days of the World Wide Web when various different browsers were coming out and HTML implementations were fragmenting and CSS was implemented spottily. The big angst and handwringing was about having to design a website multiple times just to cover all the browsers that were out there. It's clear that there's a divide between web browsers made for desktop and laptop devices (15"+ lcds, but more likely 19"+) and handheld/phone devices (3.7" screens or so) - things that fit in your pocket. The iPad is a new class of device - can't fit it in your pocket, but you don't want it to be a traditional computer - at about 9.5". This is the size of the "netbook" which hasn't really caused any inspiration at all, except maybe in the NGO sector as cheap laptops for the developing world (see XO, etc.)

The varying interfaces are also of concern. Right now, there're very few (free) iPad formatted apps. That, of course, will change. When Flash rose to prominence (and even now) the

Another thought comes to mind with Windows 7 Phone Series - Microsoft's touting that you can write Silverlight (browser-based) or XNA (XBox 360) applications and have them run on WinMo7 devices. This hearkens back to the horrible fail of Sun's tagline for Java "write once, deploy anywhere." No one will want to run the same silverlight browser-based application (19"+ screen) or XBox game in the same format as a mobile device (3.7" screen). They're two different types of media.

USB charging is an issue - it just doesn't work on (some) computers. On all the ones I have, the iPad won't charge - I have to use a wall outlet. There are apple support articles on this: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4060 and http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4049.

I took a peek at some of the crash logs and most of them appear to be Y! Entertainment out of memory ones and one Mobile Safari one.

Accessories

Seems like there're more accessories to shake a stick at yet, never the right ones. In particular, there needs to be an unobtrusive and heavy stand that can hold the 1.5 lb iPad in landscape and, most importantly, the angled, top heavy portrait mode. An ideal stand height would be about the height of the iPad's bezel, and black in color. I'm temporarily using the WD TV stand I have and it's too light (can't hold the iPad in portrait mode) and too high (about twice the height of the iPad bezel), but it's functional.

The Macally ViewStand looks quite clever, mimicing an iMac type appearance for a landscape view: http://www.macally.com/EN/Product/ArticleShow.asp?ArticleID=325

The M-Edge Trip Jacket appeals to the Molskine lover in me: http://www.medgestore.com/products/ipad-trip.psp

I'd also like to see more clamp-type accessories so I can have the iPad at various angles in various places.

Notes for Today

The Collatz Conjecture is a mathematical problem which states that given any number, and following a simple formula, converges to 1.

Take any number and do this:

If odd, multiply by 3 and add 1
If even, divide by 2

Repeat. You'll get to 1. Every time.

A comment about the latest xkcd comic's reference to the Collatz Conjecture, which I had never heard of before, lead me to create Hailstone sequence; my first Google AppEngine web app.

Notes for Today, March 6th

Notes for Today: March 6, 2010

Back when I started my blog, I would have entries that were simply lists of links that I'd come across and thought worth sharing or brief events during the day. Never mind "sharing with whom." The impetus to share, presuming some sort of tenuous permanence seems like a decent rationale for blogging.

Today, one of the tabs open was a Wolfram|Alpha preview search for Academy Award nominations for the recent Star Trek movie (makeup, sound editing, sound mixing, and visual effects). That lead me to the Star Trek wikipedia page where I read about some of the backstories on casting, etc. I spent a few hours rewatching that awesome movie.

Saturday's my day to work myself into a little frenzy about savings etc, so I listened to Marketplace Money and called TiVo to follow up on cancelling my subscription from a long while back and that an acceptable refund was issued. I still sort of want one of the new super cool HD TiVo Premiers because Comcast's DVR is just awful.

Later, I watch the latest episode of Caprica and lamented (privately) that the Facebook fan page for Caprica showed the closing climactic scene of Friday's episode as a preview last week, pretty much making episode 6 literally anticlimactic. I also looked up the word apotheosis that Sister Clarisse likes to say.

I read a recent first hand report of someone who attended Singularity U's executive conference and got to thinking about small-cap biotech ETFs as the next investment bubble. A bit of Googling came to a decent seekingalpha article that mentioned XBI, BBH, and FBT. Apparently, the Chinese government's bought $96m worth of Illumina genetic sequencing machines (@ $750k a pop) - the same machines used by personal genomics companies 23andme, decodeme, and counsyl. Will the new phrase be "cheap chinese genomes"?

Back to Singularity U, I watched Dr. Daniel Reda's talk on Biotechnology Fundamentals and wondered if I could memorize the RNA codes for all the amino acids. May be. It's got to be like learning hex or anything else computational.

Optimization efficacy of evolutionary techniques

Emergence

Natural selection

Slow!
Optimized for selecting the best replicators
Builds on previous adaptations (doesn't optimize best adaptations)
Optimization principle: Just good enough - ie selected for whatever's just good enough to pass on genes, not for any longer (healthy life, etc.)

Human Intelligence

Recombinant DNA technology - cut & paste via enzyme restriction endonuclease + ligase
DNA printer - writes DNA
http://www.bio-era.net/

Recursive AI

If you haven't seen Harvard's BioVisions animation of the cell, you should.

Disease Gene Networks http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8685.full

http://www.1000genomes.org/page.php

http://www.humanvariomeproject.org/

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/05/another-method-for-3-dimensional-dna.html

http://2010.igem.org/Main_Page

Protein folding
Game: http://fold.it/portal/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124207326903607931.html

"Killer Apps"

Drug metabolism
High-risk drugs

http://www.patientslikeme.com/

http://curetogether.com/

Edit, 04/25/2010 (DNA Day)

The new machine, the HiSeq2000, will begin shipping next month with a cost of $690,000 vs. $500,000 for Illumina's current model. It is being unveiled today at J.P. Morgan's investment conference in San Francisco. The Beijing Genomics Institute will be the first customer, purchasing 128 of the new machines.

Illumina's Cheap New Gene Machine Matthew Herper, 01.12.10, 03:00 PM EST

Kindle Development Kit (KDK) on its way

Kindle Development Kit for Active Content beta

Business Wire - Amazon Announces Kindle Development Kit - Software Developers Can Now Build Active Content for Kindle - January 21, 2010 12:00 AM Eastern Time

It's about time. First app I'd love to see: folders.

It seems like Amazon will be creating that one first. The revenue incentive and model for Kindle Apps is interesting - free, one time and subscription. The 100mb over the air limit as well as the "no voip" restrictions make for an interesting upcoming interaction between developer, reader and Amazon. A little bit of pruning by Amazon should ensure some standards a la Apple's App Store and be very different from the open Android Market.

Social apps for readers will be really interesting - recommendations, what your friends are reading now, with monetized buy now links? Nice.

"User revenue will be split 70% to the developer and 30% to Amazon net of delivery fees of $0.15 / MB." means that developers will have to eat the $0.15/MB transfer of the app, but can set pricing for the app however they want, including free (see below).

Revenue Share
User revenue will be split 70% to the developer and 30% to Amazon net of delivery fees of $0.15 / MB. Remember that unlike smart phones, the Kindle user does not pay a monthly wireless fee or enter into an annual wireless contract. Kindle active content must be priced to cover the costs of downloads and on-going usage.

Pricing Options
Active content will be available to customers in the Kindle Store later this year. Your active content can be priced three ways:

Free - Active content applications that are smaller than 1MB and use less than 100KB/user/month of wireless data may be offered at no charge to customers. Amazon will pay the wireless costs associated with delivery and maintenance.

One-time Purchase - Customers will be charged once when purchasing active content. Content must have nominal (less than 100KB/user/month) ongoing wireless usage.

Monthly Subscription - Customers will be charged once per month for active content.

Active content applications have an upper size limit of 100MB. Applications larger than 10MB will not be delivered wirelessly but can be downloaded from the Kindle Store to a computer and transferred to the user's Kindle via USB.

Developer Guidelines
Voice over IP functionality, advertising, offensive materials, collection of customer information without express customer knowledge and consent, or usage of the Amazon or Kindle brand in any way are not allowed. In addition, active content must meet all Amazon technical requirements, not be a generic reader, and not contain malicious code.

We will work to refine the above guidelines throughout the beta.

Multiple Issues with WCF Makes the Choice Easy

Here's the situation: I've a stateless web app that uses jQuery to hit another application that's just a set of services. I chose this model because I wanted to separate out the user interaction code from the information interface - the services simply give out data upon request and the UI allows the user to interact with it enough to make calls to the service interface. Seems rational, simple and clean.

I chose WCF for the service layer and began playing around. I'm a rather late adopter in learning WCF, primarily because it seemed so heavyweight. Wrapping all sorts of communications methodologies into one sounded fairly ambitious. To do a simple thing like return XML or JSON, there're a lot of pieces that need to be put in place: interfaces, somewhat arcane attributes - good practices, mind you with encapsulation of the attributes and the use of interfaces - but this could all be done and simpler with good old asmx's. Once ASP.NET MVC came along, most of the web-facing usage for WCF is pretty much trumped and made obsolete. Regardless, I persisted and made a nice front end UI with jQuery that posted json info to the WCF services and received json back. All's well and good.

The problem comes in putting WCF on IIS7 in what I call development and production modes or, as other people have envisoned using it, in internal and external modes. Another example scenario is URI aggregation and forwarding for a SOA scenario. I have external responses on 80, but I want internal service traffic to occur on a different port.

My IIS was configured to respond to dev:80 and dev:8080. Seems to respond ok when I hit localhost:80 or localhost:8080, but I receive a "This collection already contains an address with scheme http. There can be at most one address per scheme in this collection.Parameter name: item" error when trying to go to dev:8080.

Looking around, the post "Can't host WCF service in a website with multiple identities" at Microsoft Connect sums it up nicely: Microsoft's aware of this issue posted by a user and closes the issue without a fix, calling the behavior "by design." To be fair, they changed the bug's status to "Closed as Fixed" without providing a fix. (Like "hotfix" - neither hot nor a fix.) Eventually in the comments on this bug they state that this issue is fixed in .NET 4.0 beta 2. Great, that's what, WCF 3.0? (or 3.0, if .NET 3.5 was 2.0).

Internally, I can run my application quite well, but users outside my network can't access it. Either I put up two copies of the service (ugh) or I consolidate my service on one port.

I've come away thinking that I want that part of my brain back that is stuffed with knowing anything about WCF.

Here's my cynical opinion about it (aka hating). WCF comes out of Microsoft's "enlightenment, wave 2" attitude, after they'd finally adopted an OO methodology with .NET, where they appeared to be in such a tizzy that they slapped on some skis, got in a pool and proceeded to jump the shark, converting all their grand unification ideas into monolithic pieces (see their much delayed ORM, Entity Framework, and the poorly executed Workflow Foundation) and half-reworks (see SharePoint 2007, CRM 4.0, BizTalk 2006 - only the pieces that were easy to veneer with .NET were done, the rest was done incompletely, leaving them looking like Matt Dillon in There's Something About Mary trying to impress). Honestly, it works great, you just gotta know where to step. This is sort of a typical experience I've had with Microsoft products - early adopters evangelize and late ("late 1.0") adopters get bitten - except usually it's their packaged products that suffer this malaise, not libraries so close to the core framework. "Knowing where to step" is not expert-level services from a software framework, it's rote memorization without logic behind it

No wonder Microsoft has no native SOA offering, preferring to partner with other SOA vendors (HP/Systinet, webMethods/SAP, or SOA Software - all of whom use Java). The multiple offerings of BizTalk / WF / WCF (in some combination / competition) are these huge elephants in the room of that space.

Phew. Hating's hard work.

I've more or less resigned myself to consolidating services, but I intend to, immediately afterwards, rewrite the app into ASP.NET MVC which will allow me to consolidate the stateless UI project and the services project into one.

Google's Nexus One First Impressions

I ordered my Nexus One in the middle of the press conference, just as the http://google.com/phone site went live. It arrived quickly, as expected, overnight. From shipping information (01/05 4:11p) to arrival (01/06 1:12p), less than a day (FedEx 429951121750). The FedEx truck arrives around 1:30p at the local UPS store where I send my delicate goods and was leaving just as I arrived. I saw him put down two items, a flat and a box. That box was mine.

My Nexus One Unboxing pictures

The included apps are great - first the fact that there're included and second because some have additional features from my G1 Android 1.6 versions.

Google Voice, Maps, and Mail are all solid. Google Mail has the ability to handle multiple Google accounts, which is fantastic. Previously, one had to use IMAP on the generic EMail application to connect to Google accounts other than the primary that's needed for the phone. The Google Maps application shows accuracy on the location ("accurate to 5000 meters"). Google Voice can be set up to replace your cell service's voicemail.

The Contacts app is integrated with social media - Facebook, in particular. If you so choose, Contacts will match up Facebook profiles with your Google contacts. You can jump right to a connected contact's Facebook profile and even see an excerpt of their last post. I haven't used the Cliq interface, but this level of integration between different apps is subtle, just useful enough, and not intrusive. Well done.

The Gallery app That's been demoed in the release press conference is also great, what with its connection to Picasaweb and it's ease-of-navigation. There's another app called "Car Home" which has big icons sort of in the style of what you see on car GPS's these days - Voice Search, Navigation, View Map, Contacts, and Search - all geared towards being used while in a vehicle (not driving, of course).

Additionally, there's some haptic feedback when you choose an app - a short buzz before/as the app launches, and that's a nice touch, if you pardon the pun.

The lack of the keyboard was a major concern for me - I've been a keyboard partisan since my Nokia E70 with it's flip out keyboard. Texting, e-mail composition, web browsing, pretty much everything was better with a keyboard. I've used the virtual keyboard on the G1 and found it to be sluggish and slightly inaccurate (not as inaccurate as my iPod Touch's, but still). The virtual keyboard on the Nexus One's still a virtual keyboard, but I've been able to message and compose e-mails on it without too much trouble. My main issue with the virtual keyboard is accuracy and the fact that I have to watch the keyboard to see what I'm typing (and to verify that I pushed the right letter). With a physical keyboard, the layout's familiarity is enhanced by the tactile feedback of the keys themselves. I hear the Droid's keyboard is flat as a Judy Blume character and that'd be pretty disappointing. Of course, new phone means I give it a wide berth. We'll see how it does during the day to day use.

The two touted benefits - speed and graphics - are great and need no mention, really. They're great and it's fantastic to have a first-class device (tech specs). The speed is a huge improvement from the G1 and allows the device to more or less melt into the background. There's no longer a lot of waiting for things to start up. Other reviews state there's a slight but noticeable delay when flipping between home screens, but it's not really that annoying at all. The graphics, with the dynamic wallpaper flare and the zooming, scroll-wrapping app list, are wonderful and really gives me the comfort that I'm using a device that's been built with the user's pleasure in mind. Neither the Cliq or the Droid, with add-on UI interfaces from Motorola, or the initial G1, really had a feel of continuity to them. Google stepping up and making a set of core apps that work well and are consistent is a major boon. This set of comments is what people focus on when they talk about comparing the Nexus One to the iPhone - the consistency and premium device featureset. From that aspect, it's definitely a really good asset to the device market.

The G1, even with its keyboard, was underpowered and sometimes struggled to run Android and, a year and a half ago, there really weren't a core set of solid Android apps. The Android Market is a phenomenal cornucopia, without a doubt, but without a core set of apps out of the box, it's tough to navigate the wilds of free (and possibly poorly coded) apps when looking for common functions.

Google's added a bunch of videos on YouTube about the Nexus One features. Take a look.

A further nice touch was a set of mp3's that was included from a bunch of artists, all but one I'd never heard of: 17 Candle, Ali Spagnola, Amanda Blank, Brett Dennen, Jackie Tohn, Lissy Trullie, Marcus Miller, Miike Snow, Mos Def, Really Addictive Sound, White Denim, William Fitzsimmons, Zack Borer.

codeBeamer Timeline Builder

Background

Project dashboarding - viewing the progress of a software development project from different viewpoints - has been an interest of mine ever since I started developing software. After one particularly difficult project involving issues with requirements, development and operations deployment and environmental difficulties, with no shortage of fingerpointing going on, I thought it would be good to step back and see the project from a linear timeline perspective and gain some objectivity. Additionally and especially for long running projects, viewing time linearly helps us as humans see the scope of events.

Simile Timeline + Google Calendar

I'd already had a calendar that was a great repository of significant events, which meetings I'd scheduled, etc. in Google Calendar. The data originally came from the corporate Outlook, synced up to Google Calendar with the Google Calendar Sync application. Using the Simile Timeline Javascript widget, I wrote a quick export from Google Calendar using the Google Calendar Data API to format the calendar events into the Simile Timeline json format. Since the events were hand coded Client Requirements (grey), Impediment (red) and Success (green), viewing the events linearly helped clear up the discussion around where the issues were in deploying the application. This quick web application was very well received and project managers in both development and operations, as well as other non-project related developers and managers, were able to see the timeline of events that occurred for this particular project. I hadn't fully automated the import from Google Calendar to the Project Timeline page, and that's what led to the next step.

Dynamic Timeline Generation

The timeline view of the project was very useful and I thought it'd be a great perspective for other projects. Most of the projects at the organization use codeBeamer by Intland as an issue tracker and document repository. CodeBeamer has a much richer ability to code tasks / tracker items with statuses as well as start dates, end dates, and changed dates. Being able to dynamically pull project info via tracker lists and view them in a linear timeline looked to be a great start for a project dashboard.

The Timeline Builder was constructed with two picklists, one that displayed the lists of projects available and the second picklist that was contextual to the project's actual tracker lists. The codeBeamer repository is organized such that every project has multiple "tracker lists" such as Business Requirements, Change Requests, Production Releases, and Defects. Project administrators can also add tracker lists as needed. When a project is selected from the first picklist, an AJAX call is made to the codeBeamer services, returning the project-specific tracker lists. When a user selects a tracker list, the application issues an AJAX query and retrieves the list of tracker events and then displays them as a timeline. The timeline has three horizontally scrollable bands: a weekly view, a monthly view and a yearly view. Each of them can be dragged left or right and the display of events will be synchronized. The display is "coded" by status: tems with a status of "closed" are represented as a solid blue ribbon, individual events have a circle icon, "in progress" events are a slightly transparent blue ribbon, "open" items are represented by a slightly transparent red ribbon with a solid red circle icon. Selecting a timeline event yields a link to the original codeBeamer tracker item as well as a short description along with the open and closed/last updated information. Below the timeline is a tabular representation of all the event data.

Technology Decisions

The organization uses .NET predominantly so I decided on using WCF and the codeBeamer .NET SDK to serve up the Simile Timeline JSON and ASP.NET (without WebForms) and jQuery to make AJAX requests to the WCF codeBeamer services. Additionally, the organization is standardized on Windows 2003 and IIS6, so I passed on using ASP.NET MVC on IIS6. Each Codebeamer project can have multiple task trackers ("tracker lists"), so there were three total JSON services: GetAllProjects, GetTrackerListsForProject, and the last, GetTimelineForTrackerList, which retrieved all tracker items for a particular tracker list as Simile JSON events. Additionally, I used two jQuery plugins - jTemplates to populate portions of the page, and flexigrid to show the same events in a table below the timeline.

Findings and Stumblings

Looking at the variety of projects that we have in a linear format brought some interesting insights, the first of which is that almost no two projects use Tracker lists the same way. Not every project uses codeBeamer the same way, even though we have default tracker lists for Business Requirements, Change Requests, Production Releases, and Defects. Not every Task Lead uses the default statuses the same way - some close all tracker items only when a project has deployed, and create a separate status - "development complete" - for developers to use. Tracker items stay open throughout the iteration. For long-running, multi-year projects, cyclicality was shown quite well in a linear timeline - periods of project activity were clearly mapped to variety of business cycles.

With the differences in usage of codeBeamer trackers, the high level of ability to customize tracker item templates, and the variability in conforming to the SDLC in the organization, comparing project-to-project is difficult in general, not just with a linear timeline.

The decision to use .NET WCF and a jQuery-driven front-end separated the codeBeamer Tracker List JSON generation service from the UI application, creating two projects which may or may not have been a good idea - although service-oriented, it's two distinct codebases to maintain. Another interesting challenge was the codeBeamer API documentation for .NET - there isn't really any, for either Hessian C# or the codeBeamer Remote API. Using Reflector and referring to the codeBeamer Java SDK Javadocs did help, but a Sandcastle generated documentation set would've been useful. Thankfully, the Java and .NET API's are extremely similar, so it wasn't a problem interpreting what should've happened.

Project Next Steps / Directions

For the current iteration of this timeline builder I have a few minor technical issues I'd like to address. I'm planning on having better integration between the flexigrid table of events and the simile timeline so that when you select an item from the table, it scrolls the timeline to the relevant event. Another enhancement would be to allow stacking timelines of multiple projects for juxtaposition.

The organization also uses VersionOne's on-line agile project tracking application which has similar data to codeBeamer. A future rev to this application may include pulling from VersionOne project data dynamically in a similar manner (choose a project, see a timeline). Similar "coding" issues occur with VersionOne as with codeBeamer use, but since VersionOne is more focused on an agile project management lifecycle, I expect representing the variety of task types to be somewhat easier. A first version is pictured below (using jstree to visualize the project hierarchy, at the left). Coding (designating the display of open, closed, in progress, etc.) is a bigger issue, and relates more to the choice of software project management structure - agile, etc. - but is something that's greatly needed to get a consistent level of display. Other project tracking software, which I'm familiar with from a user standpoint, that may be usable include Redmine and Assembla/Trac.

From the technical framework, I may experiment with ASP.NET MVC next (which would remove the need for a separate WCF project) and then GWT (with the codeBeamer Java SDK) to see which one is more code-efficient.

Google Analytics - Account Deleted!

I had all my Google Analytics accounts deleted (not all, just my personal ones, not the ones for a client or two). Very devastating. There's no direct e-mail for analytics support (just if you've forgotten your login).

Google directs you to their forums, where there're a few reports of people suddenly losing their analytics accounts without reason. From what I can tell, either they've "drunk deleted" (they deleted, but can't remember they did), or there's an actual glitch. I don't drink, so who knows.

Their recommendation is to restart and rebuild. I've sent an e-mail to their "I can't remember my login" support (via a form) and have been promised a response within "usually one business day."

I had about 22 sites and subsites being tracked so that's a lot of data (for me, at least). The bigger thing is the difficulty about support around this. It may be an edge condition (possibly the only way to have something deleted is by an actual deletion), but a few posts on the support forum doesn't leave me satisfied as a recourse.

I'm reconstructing my tracking items by looking through my sites and determining which sites were tracked. This time, I'm segmenting out my tracked sites - personal, business, clients - into separate Analytics accounts (UA-*'s) to (hopefully) minimize the impact of whatever caused this issue. (A stab in the dark, I know.)

It does make me wonder, tangentially, about mission-critical cloud data, though. Is there a backup for marketing/ad companies using Analytics? Google, oddly, doesn't back up the accounts and once an account is deleted it can't be recovered - all data is lost. There is a Google Analytics Data Export API, so I guess that's an option. My experience with Google APIs tells me that this one'd be pretty easy to use, but I can't fathom wanting to back up the tracking data for the "unknown unknown" use case of accounts just disappearing.

To be fair, Microsoft SQL Azure doesn't offer backups, either. Their strategy is "resiliency" - with 3 copies of each database underneath their fabric. They expose almost everything in SQL Server 2008 with the addition of the Sync Framework. Backups, they claim, aren't needed but, if you desperately want backups, use the apis and make your own. (Why not also in the cloud, they suggest?) Maybe on Amazon?

On a different note, there's a new async tracking script so the code can be placed at different spots on the page rather than just the recommended bottom.

Other posts of mine referring to Analytics and tracking

Google Analytics to Google Earth, June 28, 2006
Tracking my visitors ... with Maps, November 14, 2005

A Timeline of Enterprise Architectures

In honor of my upcoming TOGAF 9 certification, I've put together a Timeline of Enterprise Architectures - Zachman FEA, TOGAF, Gartner EA, from 1987 to today.

My IIS7 503 errors

IIS7, right, the savior?

All I ever got, on my fresh new install, was "HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable." I did everything (firewalls, apppools, debugging).

Turns out it was this deal:

Reserved URL : http://+:80/ User: Frak\G. Hussain Chinoy Listen: Yes Delegate: No SDDL: D:(A;;GX;;;S-1-5-21-563782757-1295803840-1578193986-1001)

Yeah, netsh http show urlacl showed that something was blocking 80. At this point, I don't even care who was reserving it (me, apparently), I just wanted it gone.

netsh http delete urlacl url=http://+:80/
... cleared that right up.

Next, my WCF issues. Cleared up instantaneously (compared to the 503 issues) via http://iweb.adefwebserver.com/Default.aspx?tabid=57&EntryID=34.

Kindle for PC vs. Barnes and Noble eReader

B&N eReader has over the Kindle for PC...

Ability to read in a two page layout, as if it were a book

Kindle for the PC is missing...

Search
Text-to-Speech

Kindle for the PC has, over the regular Kindle

Ability to see Notes and Marks at the same time as the text
Color thumbnail view of book covers
Buttons to easily sort by Most Recent, Title and Author
Buttons to easily switch between Home and Archived Items

Add your own converted content to the Kindle for PC documents directory, "My Kindle Content"

Kindle for PC documents are located (Vista/W7): C:\Users\you\Documents\My Kindle Content

Kindle for PC syncs only the Amazon-downloaded content between PCs.

Free Kindle books on Amazon: sorted by price and more free books

B&N eReader

Kindle for PC

Here's how hard it is to write 2,000 words

The day was cold, brisk and windless. He'd just stepped outside his house, onto the unadorned concrete slab that passed for a porch in the subdivision to look out at the other houses. As he did every morning, he liked to look at the day, see what sort of hustle and bustle was going on, and use that to juxtapose the tenor of his sedentary stretch of office to come. In truth, the office was quite busy with being late to meetings, or conversing at cube thresholds with coworkers, but it wasn't looking out at an open space vista framed by a few houses in the cul-de-sac.

The neighborhood he lived in was quiet in the early am, busy around 8 or 9 as people left, unless it was the weekend when the elementary school aged kids and their parents would block off the cul-de-sac with kids-at-play flags and hover as children sped around on trikes, bikes, or just running with abandon. His cats would peer curiously out the front windows on weekends.

On the really nice weekends, he'd let the cats out in the back yard and sit on his pressed wood deck and listen to the weekend days open like a pop up book.

----

... And then I allowed myself to be distracted. Thanks to Google Doc's "Word Count" feature, 2,000 words is going to take 10x as long.

Counts	Selection	Document
Words:	-	216
Characters (no spaces):	-	932
Characters (with spaces):	-	1146
Paragraphs:	-	4
Sentences:	-	8
Pages (approximate):	-	2
Readability	Selection	Document
Average sentences per paragraph:	-	2.00
Average words per sentence:	-	27.00
Average characters per word:	-	4.31
Average words per page:	-	108.00
Flesch Reading Ease: [?]	-	67.41
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: [?]	-	11.00
Automated Readability Index: [?]	-	13.00

Google's Chrome OS - The Quickening

So, yesterday, someone released a beta of what was supposedly a Google Chrome OS build. The twittersphere was all twitterpated. I downloaded this .deb file and stood up an Ubuntu 9.04 vm (VirtualBox) to see what it really was.

The Google Chrome OS, as announced in July, is a lightweight linux-based OS with the Chrome browser as its centerpiece.

Turns out, it's a Chromium build (4.0.222.6) with a compact navigation bar and a Google-icon menu on the top, left side. Clicking said icon brings up Google's Short Links.

Here're some pictures:

Starting it up

It's chromium++: note compact top bar with Google menu icon on left, clock bar on right

From ChromeOS

Compact nav bar

Clicking the google icon maximizes the browser and directs you to Short Links, but underlying OS's top bar is still visible.

Short Links info, "?" icon button

There's also this anomalous download of a SUSE vm with Chrome+OpenOffice, etc. Which is not the Chrome OS.

Google's planning on a Chrome OS announcement tonight, so hopefully there'll be an official release and more info other than just these previews.

I, for one, welcome the singularity.

Edit (10/16/2009):
I built the latest Chromium version (4.0.223.1 29191) and the leaked version is pretty different, as the latest browser does not have the compact navigation or the Google icon.

"This is actually just a small recruiting event and we won't be talking about Chrome OS at all," the spokesperson told Betanews moments ago, "just one engineer talking about UI design for Google Chrome (the browser)." The implication that Chrome OS was the subject was chocked up as a "false alarm." - betanews

Mark Twain, still relevant

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
- Mark Twain

Letter to Mrs Foote, Dec. 2, 1887

Feel free to apply to coworkers, consultants, management, work, politicians, etc.

Work Haiku

10:09 AM Ed: How do you suggest I get this woman to shut up
me: Lol
Ed: She has interupted everyone for 2hrs straight
me: Where are you?
Ed: I'm gonna stab her in the neck with a pen
10:10 AM In meeting
me: Sounds like you need to write a meeting haiku involving a pen and her neck

[I couldn't help myself...]

10:11 AM
interrupting bitch
my pen would fit in your neck
let speech flow freely

Android Apps

I haven't announced my issues with the G1 hardware I've had, primarily because they've been due to my stupidity, but, of late, I've had to hard reset my Android phone a few times in the last year or so. It always takes me a while to figure out what I had on there and then go through the painful addition of those apps. So here's a list:

Amazon Mobile
Google Finance
CompareEverywhere
Shop savvy
Twidgit Lite
Google Sky Map
Astrid
Last.fm
Shazam
Layar
ConnectBot - ssh
Movies by Flixter
PicSay
Google Voice
Weather forecast widget v2, Francois DESLANDES
Digital Clock Widget, Maize
FBReaderJ - an epub reader

Amazon

Astrid

Compare Anywhere

Google Finance

Google Sky Map

Layar

More Vista strangeness

I received this error on the XP and other Vista clients I have who are mounting a drive from my Vista Business x64 server:

"Not enough storage is available to process this command."

It's a patently untrue statement as there're 1.5 free Tb hanging off the Vista Business server. Additionally, the event log shows error 2011. Googling yields a two potential solutions:

1. Increase a default not-present IRPStackSize registry setting, something that's been there since the NT days, KB 177078
2. Disable SMB2 and use SMB1 instead. KB937082 That seems like a fail solution, tossing an included protocol.

I opted for #1 and the problem seems solved, though I have no idea why that'd work. Not really a satisfactory solution.

Upgrading the IdeaPad S10-2 to Windows 7

Jack had such a hard time putting XP Pro on his Lenovo IdeaPad S10 via bootable USB that I was a bit concerned about trying to put W7 on my S10-2.

I followed the instructions on ditii.com using a 4 Gb Patriot USB removable stick that I'd been using on my Vista desktop as a readyboost helper. A few parts of the instructions were a bit odd - the referenced zip's .ini file had multiple lines for the %Microdrive_devdesc% part when only one was needed. I had to run through the diskpart bit to assign a drive letter to the newly recognized usb drive a few times.

I used Slyfox's VirtualClone drive to mount the W7 RTM iso and copied the files over to the G: drive (the usb drive's letter) with xcopy. When installing W7, the machine had the main hard drive partitioned into three parts, a primary for the os, a 2nd for drivers (xp home, the original os) and a recovery partition. I left the 2nd and 3rd partitions alone. The installation went smoothly and completed within 45 minutes.

Lenovo has a forum dedicated to W7 RTM and on it I came across this thread which states there're only a few drivers that the W7 dvd or Windows Update don't include.

I haven't added any other drivers just yet, but the machine is working fine. Of course, there're the Lenovo specific buttons that don't work - QuickStart for the IdeaPad and the Restore button, but the camera and the touchpad work fine.

Jack ended up borrowing a coworker's USB DVD player to install XP Pro.

Testing Wolfram|Alpha

Wolfram|Alpha has a preview program where you can sign up and view their latest version at a beta url before they push their build to their live site, www.wolframalpha.com. I have to admit, I'm a sucker for testing new things, early adopter syndrome and all, so I don't mind getting a sneak peek. Over the weekend I started looking into Mathematica, too, since Wolfram|Alpha's written in Mathematica.

During my Six Sigma course, the examples have been given in Matlab and I've really wanted to start using R. After watching an intro presentation on the newness in Mathematica 7, it looks like there's quite a bit more to it than just math. There're stat functions in there, too. And it looks like it's free "player" would be good to show off created workbooks to non-Mathematica havers.

Unfortunately, I don't know enough Mathematica to determine whether Wolfram|Alpha takes query inputs in the Mathematic syntax, but it bears investigation - especially since their yet-released SDK's signup page asks that very question: Describe your experience with Mathematica?

They have some preliminary dev documentation (pdf) available, but oddly their API doesn't drop json back. Curious, since I'd think that's what they'd be using in their ajax-y pods and incremental loading. Maybe prior to full reveal.

More as I play around.

SQL Azure First Impressions

I received my SQL Azure CTP1 code yesterday (which you can register for here) and finally got around to plugging it in. Upon entering your code and entering a admin username and password, MSFT creates a database server for you fixed to the USA_Northwest region with a randomly assigned name (such as "q57qq26s2c") and in the project "SDS-only CTP Project". The UI on sql.azure.com for managing the database server includes a method to reset your admin password, functions for creating and dropping databases and generation of ADO.NET, ODBC, and OLE DB connection strings. That last one's handy to get the full dns name of the database, in the form of servername.ctp.database.windows.net, which can be used later in sqlcmd or SQL Server Managment Studio. That's it, though, no other db management features. According to the welcome e-mail, this CTP will limit use to 1 SQL Azure server and 5 databases.

Full SQL Server Managment Studio (SSMS) support isn't all there - you can't view databases, but you can connect and execute queries. The "USE" statement doesn't work, so you can't flip your query to another existing database. Guidelines and Limitations (SQL Azure Database)

Microsoft has a workaround on the forums (just start a new query in SSMS, connect to your specific database via the Options and you're good, except for an 'ANSI_NULL' error message which can be ignored). SSMS does time out quite quickly, so don't leave that query window idle too long (A transport-level error has occurred when sending the request to the server. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - An established connection was aborted by the software in your host machine.)) Also there's sqlcmd, which, not being a "database person," I didn't know existed.

Ok, but, really, is it just a SQL database out there, in the cloud? Yes, it totally is.

I created a DB via their UI and then opened an existing Windows desktop app I had which uses Castle ActiveRecord, modified the config.xml connection.connection_string property and ran one of my test methods (you use TestDriven, right?) that creates a schema and then F5'd to fire up the UI. Add, Update, Delete, like a charm. I'll probably do a few more tests where I have a db schema created from scratch over the next few days.

Creating a database is easy (especially if you have Subsonic or Castle ActiveRecord do schema management for you), but what about existing databases? Can I restore a backup to the cloud?

After looking around, SSIS seems the only way to go. Use an existing db to generate the create scripts for the schema, then use SSIS to push over the data. I've never used SSIS so this should be fun.

Summaries from the forum postings, etc:

First off, please note that "SQL Azure" used to be called "SDS" - SQL Data Services - so some of the postings may not look like they apply, but it's the "SQL Azure - Getting Started" forums - they apply. The name changed on 07/09.

"Cursors will be IN, XML data type will be IN (but no schema collection support), Local temp tables are IN (#employee), Global temp tables are OUT (##employee), CLR integration is OUT This is also our current plan for v1. " - Stan Kitsis, Program Manager, SQL Data Services, 07/30/2009
"TSQL Support in SQL Data Services," 07/07/2009, Stan Kitsis, SQL Azure Team Blog

SQL Azure
SQL Azure MSDN Documentation (CTP1)
"The no spin details on the new SDS features," 03/10/2009, SQL Azure Team Blog
SQL Azure - Getting Started - MSDN Forums
SQL Azure - MSDN home
The Role of a DBA with SQL Data Services

Forums postings

"How to load data into SQL Azure?"
"Connecting to SQL Azure with SSMS"
"Question about SQL Azure editions considering ability to create multiple databases," Shan McArthur - Discussion around pricing model
"In or Out for CTP?" DevilDog75

VMWare Server, thanks!

For a long time I've used VMWare Workstation at home, even though I'd bought an x64 machine just for vms. Lame, right? C'est la vie. I'd originally though I should install a hypervisor OS (ESXi, Xen) instead of the VistaBusiness I did install, but then got bored, put on VBx64 and was done with it. Yesterday, I figured I'd look again at VMWare Server 2.01 (ESXi's free now, too, go figure).

Didn't take too long to uninstall VMWare workstation (via the console with the -c option) and install VMWare Server and now I have remote access to my newly headless x64 VMWare server. Looks and works great! The only thing I miss is being able to edit the virtual networks in the interface (which was done in Workstation's) - I have to login (remote desktop) into the box to do that. Ah, tradeoffs. I get much better info on the running vms themselves - cpu and ram usages.

I upgraded my Fedora Core 9 image to 10 (yes, I know 11's out in 12 days) and stuck irssi, screen, fah, and openldap on it and for a paltry 256mb (only using 128mb), I have a little unix testbed that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

I know summer's here already, but this is my spring cleaning, al Gore.

Amazon releases Swine Flu sequences

Amazon has released Swine Flu Influenza Virus genomic sequences on their Public Data Sets. Now anyone with an Amazon machine image in the cloud can attach to it and use it for research and sequencing. Time to dust off phrap and phred? (dating myself)

Impressive.

Truth, In Words

"Lepers are flaky people"

The answer is not 42

"I think this is an issue of integrity, regardless of which end of the political spectrum that I stand on. I've been raised in a family to know right from wrong,and politics, whether or not you fall in the middle or the left or the right, it's an issue of integrity whatever your opinion is and I say that with the utmost conviction."

- Miss Arizona Alicia-Monique Blanco, 2009 Miss USA pageant.

This is a huge step up in pat answer technology when said question hasn't been heard or understood. It's a veritable Moore's Law-esque increase! I think you could use it pretty much everywhere. Bravo!

I still don't know Linux - Kindle update 2.0.3 (327610024)

This morning I was alerted that there was a new rev of the Kindle firmware coming - 2.0.3. It was, of course, a post on the user community MobileRead that did it. It's a testament to the user community (and to the Kindle's popularity) that there're fans rabid enough to tell eachother when a new firmware is out. Amazon has typically been very cryptic about what's actually in the firmware - they don't post release notes - but also very forthcoming in what's in it by posting the sources used.

Now, these aren't the sources to the Kindle's proprietary software, just the underlying open source OS changes. Still, clues can be divined from this, even if it's tasseomancy-style.

Downloading the latest source code release from Amazon,

The gplresults.tar inside - this is the tarball for the release - was dated 4/14 for a drop downloaded this morning.

Initial cursory comparison shows the dates on 31 files changed from 03/06/2009 for the 2.0.2 (309510017) release vs the 04/14/2009 for the current. I'll get around to looking at the linux-2.6.22-lab126 changes in more depth, like I did last time in I don't know Linux - Kindle update 2.0.2 (309510017).

Other than the date, + indicates increase in filesize from 2.0.2, - decrease in filesize: + alsa-lib-1.0.13_patch.tar.gz, - alsa-utils-1.0.13_patch.tar.gz, - busybox-1.7.2.tar.bz2, - dosfstools-2.11.tar.bz2, - e2fsprogs-1.38_patch.tar.gz, - klibc-1.5.tar.bz2, - linux-2.6.22-lab126.tar.bz2, - procps-3.2.7_patch.tar.gz, - taglib-1.5.tar.bz2, + uboot-1.3.0-rc3.tar.bz2, - udev-112.tar.bz2,

202 - 203 Comparison Report

Twitter dates

Twitter's REST timelines (public, friends, users) return created_at dates in a way C# can't natively parse, so they have to be reformatted. Apparently, this format is whatever comes out of Ruby. Here's my solution, elegance not included.

public static string ReformatTwitterDate(string twitterDate) { // twitter date: "Sat Apr 11 05:22:54 +0000 2009" // DateTime.Parse()'able date: "Sat, Apr 11 2009 05:22:54 +0000" MatchCollection c = Regex.Matches(twitterDate, @"\w+"); return string.Format("{0}, {1} {2} {7} {3}:{4}:{5} +{6}", c[0], c[1], c[2], c[3], c[4], c[5], c[6], c[7]); }

... or (without regexp) ..

public string ReformatTwitterDate2(string twitterDate) { string[] c = twitterDate.Split(' '); return string.Format("{0}, {1} {2} {5} {3} {4}", c[0], c[1], c[2], c[3], c[4], c[5]); }

And yes, they know the Search API's date format is different.

A Savory Hack

Jesse Vincent over at Massively Parallel Procrastination has done something very impressive - conversion of pdfs and epubs directly on the Kindle2 via his program Savory

The modification uses igorsk's update maker modification and a modified version of Calibre to do the changes.

I can't wait to try it out and see how it goes!

Kindle, USGovt, Afghanistan

As I was getting ready for work today, I had the Kindle read to me the top article in today's WSJ, "U.S. Courts Former Warlords in Its Bid for Afghan Stability". I had also been contemplating also writing another "Six Degrees of Bin Laden" with the Haqqanni movement as that's making some news and it's a game I invented but then I heard Kindle robot TTS voice read this quote* and it struck me.

"Every politician in Afghanistan is a thief, but our governor doesn't take all the money for himself. He is building our city," says Shafeeq Azizi, a 37-year-old shop owner in Jalalabad. "Why does it trouble me if he gets rich?"

Mr. Azizi was lounging with friends in one of the Jalalabad parks restored by Mr. Shirzai's administration. Across the street is a park Mr. Shirzai built for women. A few miles away stands Shirzai Stadium. There's a new mall, new stoplights and refurbished mosques in many neighborhoods.

Critics say the governor's strengths and weaknesses are often one and the same. "He wants something and he says, 'Build it.' There is no plan," said Haji Wahid, who owns a construction company. He says he sees no long-term vision behind Mr. Shirzai's rebuilding efforts.

Parts of the US Government are tribal.

And not in any good connotation. Particularly our government's IT divisions. They're not just protected, entitled fiefdoms, an analogy whose European roots softens the devastation and criticism that it should bring, but actual tribal land grabs by people who have no idea what effective IT means but think they do because they can use a Blackberry like Obama or love their iPhone.

Here's how it should run. And by "it" I mean the Afghan situation and not our government IT's situation, since that's well in hand by people who think they know what they're doing, puls Web 2.0 ftw, data transparency and Vivek Kundra's back on the job. (Petty "warlords" watch out.)

When analysing situations like this a review of history's always helpful. Here's one slice of history that looks like it might be applicable: The aftermath of the British Raj and the subsequent upheaval in India and Pakistan eventually leading to an India where large wealthy families (Tata, etc) control multiple industries in a monopoly grip. The latter half of that statement resembles the US with our monopoly-families, too, which should give some indication where I'm going here. Granted, in both Iraq and Afghanistan (and most elsewhere), we - America - are not colonialists like the Brits, French, Germans, Dutch, etc and I'd argue our methods are less damaging, but that's another debate and another post.

The process at hand is this:

Tribal succession -> Tribally appointed, Elections -> Elections where Tribal relationships may still have sway -> "Free and Fair" Elections.

In the western world we may think we're so far advanced that we don't deal with fiefdoms anymore - we're beyond that process and that management style is retrograde or deprecated. It's not, we (westerners) just don't do it any more nor do we do it well. They (middleasternerners) do. There may be a value judgment in saying one style is better than another and I'll leave that up to someone's masters/phd thesis, but one fact is true: "Democracy" and "tribal consensus rule" don't interface well at an economic point. It's much better to have two democracies (or political structures loosely framed around democratic principles) interacting than disparate political systems (china-us, etc.). To this point, if we or for that matter Afghanistan, themselves, want to get to a more "democratic" style of political system, they'll have to go through the above transitional phases and we'll have to honor and recognize that those phases will happen. Whining (from western governments and western NGO "democracy watch dogs") does not and will not help phase transitioning, it'll just be annoying.

Currently tribal succession is in play. We'll have to let it happen. For example, the Jamal Baba Construction Co., part owned by Mr. Shirzai's son, Jaan Agh mentioned in the article will have to undergo economic pressure and engagement to become a company that has influence in the region. That'll allow external democratic organizations (whether external to Kandahar and Nangahar provinces or external to Afghanistan) exert some influence. The influence could be democratic-leaning or possibly Talib-leaning. That pressure, if properly exercised, will lead to another political round wherein the region'll be able to assess the benefits of a more open economic and political model and then continue down the tribal-democratic spectrum. Note India's example - Tata, Mittal, etc are all still in place, mostly unregulated from a monopoly stance - India's still not at "free and fair." One could also argue that Japan's kiretsus haven't reached the fullness of the "democratic" spectrum yet, either, after their rebuilding. Some countries don't want to go all the way and we should recognize and accept that. Will we, though?

* Here's the quote (wav format) using my Say This app.

Sony & Google Team up for Public Domain books

There're sources for public domain books out there - Project Gutenberg and Manybooks, the latter of which supplies them in many formats - but no one's as large as Google, period. Now, as many outlets have reported, Sony & Google have teamed up to release public domain e-books in the ePub format from http://books.google.com/ (Google Blog Post).

This is a huge win for all readers, including the Kindle, even though it might not seem so right away. Granted, the ePub format isn't supported directly by the Kindle. That can be corrected by a future software push if Amazon wishes, but until then there are free software alternatives to convert ePub to the Kindle's mobi format. Software like Calibre, a pretty full featured ebook manager/converter will do, although I prefer my own Kindle Converter which sits on top of the mobigen command-line converter.

http://books.google.com/books?q=subject:"+Science+Fiction+"&rview=1&as_brr=1
That as_brr=1 is "Full View Only" in a search and that indicates public domain books.

The big difference between Project Gutenberg and Google (apart from Google's ~500k scans vs. PG's ~100k) is that Project Gutenbergs's have been proofread. Google's docs have typos!

I don't know Linux - Kindle update 2.0.2 (309510017)

Although I'm still waiting to get pushed the 2.0.2 update, I thought I'd take a look at the linux sources.

Looking at the published gnu linux kernel sources provided by Amazon, only 4 files are different:

arch/arm/mach-mx3/dvfs_v2.c
arch/arm/plat-mxc/isp1504xc.c
arch/arm/plat-mxc/wdog.c
sound/arm/mxc-alsa-pmic.c

These are the kernel (2.6.22) mods from the last Kindle version, 2.0.1 (303870012).

Until Amazon posts release notes, we won't really know what was different in the functioning of the Kindle software, but the kernel changes look like adding in a counter to reboot (6 times) and setting the minimal soundchannels to 2.

Most of my software life I've tried to avoid linux or, rather, learning too much about it. So, when I say I don't know Linux, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

This is the contents of the Kindle src 2.0.2 309510017 release.

alsa - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
alsa lib 1.0.13
alsa lib 1.0.13 patch
alsa utils 1.0.13
alsa utils 1.0.13 patch
base files 3.0.14.ipk
base passwd 3.5.9
binutils 2.17.50.0.5
bonnie++ - benchmark uitility, storage
bonnie++ 1.03c
bootchart - a tool for performance analysis and visualization of the GNU/Linux boot process
bootchart 0.9
busybox - size optimized common unix utilities
busybox 1.7.2
dosfstools 2.11 - Utilities to create and check MS-DOS FAT filesystems
e2fsprogs - filesystem utilities for use with the ext2 filesystem. It also supports the ext3 filesystem with journaling support
e2fsprogs 1.38
e2fsprogs 1.38 patch
fuse 2.7.1
fuse 2.7.1 link.tar
gcc 4.1.2
glib 2.12.9
glibc 2.5
gst plugins base 0.10.17
gst plugins base 0.10.6
gstreamer 0.10.17
hotplug 2004 09 20
ifupdown 0.6.8
iptables 1.3.3
klibc 1.5
libol 0.3.18
linux 2.6.22 lab126
lrzsz - a unix communication package providing the XMODEM, YMODEM ZMODEM file transfer protocols
lrzsz 0.12.20
lzo 1.08
module init tools 3.2.2
module init tools 3.2.2 patch
monit 4.9
mtd utils 1.0.0
picocom - a minimal dumb-terminal emulation program
picocom 1.4
powertop - a Linux tool that helps you find those programs that are misbehaving while your computer is idle
powertop 1.10
procps 3.2.7
procps 3.2.7 patch
readline 4.3
syslog ng 1.6.11
sysvinit 2.86
taglib 1.5
uboot 1.3.0 rc3
udev 112
util linux 2.12r

"Fiona" is still around, albeit in legacy code. In include\linux\platform_lab126.h there's a comment stating that this rev is code named Mario (2.6.22), whereas Fiona was (2.6.10).

Amazon, DMCA, DRM and Mobileread

Mobileread, a user-driven site that assists e-book enthusiasts access to public-domain knowledge around existing ebooks and ebook reader community support, has a series of wiki pages that describe how to use all sorts of devices and user-supplied support programs.

There are many sources for e-books and many formats. One of the most popular, and the one relevant to this article, is the Mobipocket format. Mobipocket is a format of e-book produced by the Mobipocket company, now owned by Amazon. E-book providers, other than Amazon, use the Mobipocket format, notably OverDrive, a large technology supplier for public libraries around the country. Some public libraries that use the Mobipocket OverDrive DRM (OD) allow their users to "check out" e-books and read them, typically with Mobipocket desktop software.

One of the support utilities described on the Mobileread site was called kindlepid.py, a Python-language script that displayed an e-book reader's device Personal ID (PID) created by Igor Skochinsky in 2007 when the Kindle version 1 was released. This PID is used to encode DRM-secured e-books from other vendors, whether it's OverDrive-enabled libraries or other public sellers. Amazon Kindle users who want to view DRM-protected e-books from these vendors can use their Kindle's PID to "fix" e-books so that they're able to be read on the Kindle (or, for that matter, their iPhone/iPod Touch with the Amazon Kindle app).

Mobileread, the user-driven site, had step-by-step instructions on how to download, install and use kindlepid.py to obtain a device PID. This script does not break, hack, crack, or remove the DRM from an e-book in any way but obtains the PID that's on the device. It enables legally purchased e-books to be read these e-books on legally purchased e-book readers.

The "fixing" part is enabled by another, separate, software script that was also described on the Mobileread site which utilizes the PID, kindlefix.py. This shifts the location of the PID in the DRM'd e-book file so that the Kindle (or iPhone Kindle app) can find it.

Amazon seems to have an issue with the kindlepid.py script and sent the owners of Mobileread.com a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) "take-down" notice: asking Mobileread.com to remove references to kindlepid.py from their site, but not specifically with the kindlefix.py script.

Individuals posting on the Mobileread forms about this topic suggest that, since the kindlepid.py script has been around since 2007, Amazon is noticing this script now due to their release of the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch version of their Kindle reader. Additionaly, Amazon has removed "My Serial Number" which displayed a user's Kindle serial number from the "Manage My Kindle" page on their site around the same time that the iPhone/iPod Touch app was released. Posters also suggest that it's evidence that Amazon wants to control the origin of purchase and that this restriction of control may constitute a monopoly by preventing competition in the distribution channel. It was pointed out that Amazon's actions aren't restricting the publishing (that's already been covered by Amazon's assumed agreements with the publishers to DRM publisher's works and distribute them), but only where you obtain e-books from - only Amazon, not libraries or other vendors, such as BooksOnBoard and others.

Other posters take the angle that Amazon is attempting to preserve their relationship with publishers now that a Kindle app for the iPhone exists - preventing iPod owners who aren't entitled to buy from the Amazon store from using the app to read OverDrive or other vendor's DRM books. (#156, #158, #159) In light of the Author's Guild's issues with TTS and other e-book advocates' calls for support of formats other than Mobipocket, such as ePub, this line of thinking also seems logical.

And additional point that has been made by Kindle/Amazon watchers is that Amazon has been following an Apple-like trajectory for their product: from the exclusivity of distribution channel (iTunes store) to the DRM issue. Now that Apple's making a DRM-free iTunes store, some are wondering when Amazon's going to catch up. Catch up, at least with e-books, since Amazon already offers DRM-free mp3's for sale. Similar to the cycle of iTunes updates that "broke" hacked ("jailbroken") iPhones and iPod Touches, will Amazon look at the contents of a user's Kindle and remove any shifted DRM e-books? Amazon's Terms of Use for the Kindle states that Amazon can look into any Kindle and with their Whispernet connectivity possibly even update the firmware on the device to use a different DRM scheme and replace the DRM on DRM-protected e-books.

Is Amazon wielding the DMCA in "bad faith" in this situation? Is it even a proper use of the DMCA? Since neither the site or the scripts don't actually violate the DMCA, what's Amazon doing throwing it around?

Many long time Kindle advocates that frequent the forums are getting very discouraged at the "take down" notice that Amazon presented to Mobileread and are beginning to lose their enthusiasm for the product that made Kindle owners some of the most fervent supporters and source of free marketing. Some have even gone so far as to say they're no longer supporting Amazon, itself, which speaks to the wider issue of loss of customer loyalty. On the forums, disappointment ranges from expressing the feeling of loss of rights (feeling criminalized by reading library books), Sony e-reader owners breathing a sigh of relief feeling like they've chosen the correct device, to people considering dumping/returning their Kindles and purchasing an iLiad or waiting for another e-reader device such as the Wizpac Txtr.

From my personal experience as a Kindle 1 and Kindle 2 owner, I've loved them both, not just because I had portable reading device and not just because the screen is clear, but because I could put my own personal documents and personally converted documents onto the Kindle and the access to the Amazon Kindle store. The combination of personal freedom and access to a large existing market is what makes this device special to me and special enough to show off to anyone who's asked.

There are now several articles on this issue as well as a blog started by a Mobileread user, Dear Jeff Bezos.

App-a-Weekend: Kindle PID

In order to buy DRM'd ebooks from ebook retailers other than Amazon and load them onto your Kindle, the first thing you need to do is obtain your Kindle's Personal ID (PID).

Mobileread.com has a great wiki about all things Kindle including a walk-through of how to use Python and Igor Skochinsky's python scripts to obtain your Kindle PID, if you know you Kindle's serial number (obtained by looking at the side of the box). Here's their walkthrough wikipage (xp, vista).

This weekend, I made a quick Windows UI that executes Igor's python scripts:

The Kindle PID app, PID tab

The Kindle PID app, Fix tab

File > Preferences

Aboot dialog, showing that Python and scripts are available.

App example (dummy serial used)

Installation is as follows:

Install Python 2.61 msi
Download Igor's scripts, place them somewhere you can remember (I placed them in C:\Software\dev\igorsk)
Download and run Kindle PID

The app is very simple (a zipped exe), no installer. Feedback is welcome! hussain at chinoy dot com

Edit:
1.0.2.1 03/09/2009
- Updated for v0.2 of igorsk's py scripts
1.0.2.0 03/09/2009
- Added PID generation for iPhone/iPod Touch
1.0.1.0 03/08/2008
- Added Kindle Fix utility

App-A-Weekend: Say This

I'd previously read, on my Kindle, in the Wall Street Journal, about the Author's Guild's objections to the Kindle2's new text-to-speech feature which allows reading of books to the user.

"They don't have the right to read a book out loud," said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. "That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."

My immediate thought was that moms and dads all over the world are flagrant abusers of copyright and I couldn't imagine an author objecting to someone reading their book, out loud, in private.

Lots of good arguments have been made about this, from audio book production being well worth paying for, and generated voices - advancing as they have been - are nothing like real voices, to Windows and Macs having this ability for decades and, of course, the existing software for disabled readers, so I need not repeat them. Here's my argument: it took me a few minutes to write this app.

Aiken quote, as read by Microsoft Anna via SayThis: SayThis_Aiken.wav

This was an unintended application created after reading New Kindle Audio Feature Causes a Stir, WSJ, 02/10/2009 and E-Book Rights Alert: Amazon's Kindle 2 Adds "Text to Speech" Function, Author's Guild Blog, 02/12/2009.

SayThis.zip (12kb)

Bean Cycle Monday

A New Kindle?

Is it horrible that I want an 2nd Kindle now that they've announced a new, 2nd generation one?

Where's the replaceable battery and the SD expansion? I suspect with all the new features, those won't be missed:

Display: 6" diagonal E-Ink® electronic paper display, 600 x 800 pixel resolution at 167 ppi, 16-level gray scale.
Size (in inches): 8" x 5.3" x 0.36".
Weight: 10.2 ounces.
System requirements: None, because it doesn't require a computer.
Storage: 2GB internal (approximately 1.4GB available for user content).
Battery Life: Read on a single charge for up to 4 days with wireless on. Turn wireless off and read for up to two weeks. Battery life will vary based on wireless usage, such as shopping the Kindle Store and downloading content. In low coverage areas or in 1xRTT only coverage, wireless usage will consume battery power more quickly.
Charge Time: Fully charges in approximately 4 hours and supports charging from your computer via the included USB 2.0 cable.
Connectivity: EVDO modem with fallback to 1xRTT; utilizes Amazon Whispernet to provide U.S wireless coverage via Sprint's 3G high-speed data network (check wireless coverage). See Wireless Terms and Conditions.
USB Port: USB 2.0 (micro-B connector) for connection to the Kindle power adapter or optionally to connect to a PC or Macintosh computer.
Audio: 3.5mm stereo audio jack, rear-mounted stereo speakers.
Content Formats Supported: Kindle (AZW), TXT, Audible (formats 4, Audible Enhanced (AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; PDF, HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion.
Included Accessories: Power adapter, USB 2.0 cable, rechargeable battery. Book cover sold separately.

The Second Kindle Post

It's been slightly over a year since I got my Kindle and I've really had a great time with it - I pretty much carry it everywhere and I almost always have something to read. Almost. I do buy books from Amazon via their built-in whispernet service which downloads $10 ebooks in 20 or so seconds and I receive the Wall Street Journal daily (except Sundays).

I really like the fact that I can convert pdfs, html, txt, and even word docs to the Mobipocket format that the Amazon reader accepts via the Mobipocket Creator software. That takes time, though, to find and even format the documents into HTML (that's what the mobipocket "mobi" format is) that's readable and flows correctly. Sure, you can accept all the default settings and go, but PDFs tend to come out strangely. Lazy as I am, this leaves me with Amazon-sourced info.

Recently, I've wanted to have more than just the Amazon-offered publications. One of my favorites, Foreign Affairs, doesn't come in a digital format (I've asked), so I get my subscription bimonthly and carry it around for a while. Since most articles on the web (even this one) have a "print" format, I figured it's time to whip up a quick web page to prc (that's Amazon's synonym extension for "mobi") converter

It's a Windows UI ontop of Mobipocket's mobigen.exe (their command-line converter).

Once the mobigen.exe is downloaded and extracted, using KindleConverter is straightforward - set the mobigen.exe location in the preferences, point to a url, such as http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86401/barack-obama/renewing-american-leadership.html?mode=print, and convert.

KindleConverter.zip (Read Me)

As always, use with care and note the copyright usage of the sites whose articles you convert.

App-a-Weekend: What's in this build?

It's usually a nagging question at work or a random idea that gets me writing these app-a-weekends. This one's partially in response to the question I get from QA folks (and business people) - "What's in this build?"

Towards generating "Change Log" notes, here's yet another winforms app - this time to view svn logs. The interesting thing about this one is that I sort of used a scrum-of-one for it: I defined backlogs, defined tasks for those backlogs and have been executing on them.

First, the app's goal: to make a stand alone svn log viewer that could output comments nicely to produce the beginnings of a "Change Log" for various apps. It needs URL persistence and the ability to display svn's logs nicely. Apart from the "Change Log" generation, QA folks at work want to know what's in different builds.

To perform the actual svn log command, the app calls out to the command line svn.exe, which I downloaded from Collabnet.

List log differences btw svn revisions
1. call svn
2. toggle verbose
Manage list of svn repositories
1. add repository urls and nicknames
2. save
3. recall
4. view in grid
5. edit
Display nicely
1. raw text format
2. as grid view
Export nicely
1. save as text
2. save as Word 2007
3. save as Excel 2007
Tie up loose ends
1. warn if svn.exe is missing

Over the weekend I started the app, did all of 1 (1.1, 1.2), some of 2 (2.1, 2.2, 2.3), and 3.1.

Tonight I did 2.4.

My backlog is:
3. 2. Display : In Grid
4. 1. Save : As Text
5. 1. Loose: Check for Svn
2. 5. Svn List: Edit

If I really wanted to push the "app-a-weekend" thing, I could throw in an msi and a chm help file. Other things that would make this a more useful concept are if this was tied in to a particular projects tag-numbering scheme and if it was a webpage, so that the users didn't need to install an app. Refactoring the final product into libraries for use in a web app should do the trick.

App-a-Weekend: Picasa Web Album Browse and Downloader

I'm back. I went to Chicago and Florida a while and came back with a 15g platinum ring.

Yesterday, I had need to download a brother-in-law's Picasa photo album. He had a sizeable number of pictures and, although I could view each picture individually and use the Picasaweb's "Download Photo" function, I wanted them all.

I looked at the Picasa application and saw in the File menu there's an "Import from Web Albums..." function - but that's just for your albums. I wanted someone elses.

I looked through Picasa and Picasaweb's help for a while until I realized it's Google, it has an API. I've always wanted to play more with the Google APIs, having used their chart API.

My winapp browser took about an hour, includes a login, album lister, picture lister, picture preview, and album download functions. The real kicker was a subclassing of the PhotoQuery to create the proper REST URI to access "unlisted" albums (as long as one knows the correct authorization key).

There are a bunch of things that could be improived, but for an hour - which is slightly more than downloading 100 pictures by hand - I've got a reusable app to pull pictures!

Android

iPod Touch 16gb (original); T-Mobile G1 Android; Nokia E70 (my trusty old phone)

Still going into the same area, with robots

"Peshawar — Top Al-Qaeda Commander Abu Kash is among the 30 dead when suspected US drone fired two missiles at a house of a tribesman in Essory area, two kilometer short off tehsil Mir Ali in North Waziristan Agency Friday night."

Drones again strike NWA, 30 killed Senior Qaeda leader among dead - Pakistan Observer

People might note from reading this blog, Mir Ali is where Hamza Rabia - an AQ plotter who tried to kill Musharraf in 2003 - was killed via Predator drones on 12/03/2005, in Asorai/Asoray/Essory, a suburb of Mir Ali (33 1 16 N, 70 17 21 E). The military cantonment in Mir Ali (where Pakistani troops hide) is at 32 59 0 N, 70 15 37 E.

This blog's Terror category
Musharraf Confirms Rabia's Death, 12/03/2005

App-a-Weekend: CRM Environment Check

With Bonus: LINQ to SQL!

I deal with many Microsoft Dynamics CRM servers that are in many different states of configuration and I often want a quick view of those configuration settings. This version of CRM, 4.0, appears to be in a bit of a philosophical transition with regards many things, including as to where to store their configuration settings - in the registry or in the CRM configuration database - a quandary that provides a huge challenge to their internal code when it comes to precedence for SDK calls vs client calls, etc. It's very helpful to look at these two places at once when determining if plug-in or client javascript sdk calls are failing.

I came up with the "CRM Environment Check" app that displays both and also saves the output to XML. Nothing special - it took me about 10 minutes last night to think of it, 10 minutes to fire up the VM and get halfway done, and 10 minutes this morning to polish it to what you see here.

Works as promised, with XML output.

I like to add a few techniques to my toolbox so I figured I'd put in LINQ to SQL for the access to the MSCRM deployment properties table. I did, it was pretty easy and I was aglow.

At least, that's what I thought.

Crowing about my success - sorry blog, I couldn't wait - I told Chris who immediately and cruelly started mocking me about the death of LINQ to SQL and my poor choices in life.

I read this on my favorite tech website, InfoQ, Is LINQ to SQL Truly Dead?, dated yesterday.

Glad I didn't do much more with LINQ to SQL other than a "select" statement.

This experience has been a quick lesson in Microsoft technologies - the newest stuff looks easy to use, has lots of promise, and delivers (when I get around to using it), but inevitably, has some, shall we say, "scaling" issues.

// Define a data object class [Table(Name="DeploymentProperties")] public class DeploymentProperty { [Column(Name="NVarCharColumn")] public string Value; [Column(Name="ColumnName")] public string Property; } ... using System.Data.Linq; ... DataContext db = new DataContext(configDbConnect); Table DeploymentProperties = db.GetTable(); var query = from p in DeploymentProperties where p.Value!= null select new { p.Property, p.Value }; foreach (var row in query) deploymentPropertiesValues.Add(row.Property, row.Value);

Update: Version 1.1.0.4
Now includes ADSI to display Microsoft Dynamics CRM IIS website info and the hosts file, needed for determining the workaround for the hardcoded 'localhost' in RTM's services. (There is a hotfix for the hardcoded 'localhost' particular issue.)

App-a-Weekend: wget

That's right, I opened VisualStudio.NET and started in on an URL lister, got as far as testing a console app to list links on a webpage and then realized: wget.

That was easy.(tm)

App-a-Weekend: Quotes Manager

The Quotes Manager for the Dune Chronicles is nothing exciting from a content perspective, really. It's a simple table structure with books and quotes that belong to them. The semi-interesting part is the use of ActiveRecord, and with help from Chris, a bit of Linq, there's a winform I can use to manage quotes from the chapter headers of the Dune books.

Finally, tleilax'll have some content.

App-a-Weekend: CRM Helper

Every so often, I get it in my teeny little head that I can write code. This is probably due to the fact that I once, in ye olden times, wrote what then passed for as code. So, my wooly brane says: Write some code! These thoughts come to said head over the weekends and I figured I should at least write aboot what I've done this weekend so it doesn't, as so many others have, fall into disuse in a lonely directory of my harddrive. At least the embarrassment of having shown it to the 2 people who read my blog (hi mom!) will motivate me to continue messing with it.

This weekend is "CRM Helper" - a windows forms application to help CRM Developers restore, import, publish, build, deploy, and load data into an organization so that they can develop and test. A big fat caveat here is that this app draws heavily from the command-line only versions of these applications created by one Mr. Jack Hand. So, with that said, you can take whatever this is with a grain of salt.

This was my design process: Wake up at 8:30a on Caturday, think & draw until about 9:30a, go hang out with WSJ on Kindle, Rocky Patel and Abigail, then come back and program for a few hours. Sunday, repeat, with some variation. This is what I ended up with:

Goals of this weekend's project were to:

Create a one-stop-shop app that could do all steps involved in a full restore to deploy to create a test/dev-ready organization

Restore a CRM Organization from a database backup
Import & Publish CRM Customizations
Build the CRM project, deploy to the server, register plugins
Load in Sample data

Refine each step into a more wizard-like process so that the intricacies of the various steps aren't a knowledge prerequisite

Future goals are to:

Have one big red button that does it all (chains all steps) for a non-developer audience
Use the Crm Deployment API to restore orgs
Allow remote usage in addition to on-server usage
Create libraries out of the command-line code

Parts that are working (but I'm not happy with) are:

Preferences - this is actually fairly good, but it's missing organization (and a "Microsoft" style), and persistence
Restore Database - calls an osql command as expected, could use some threading
Import & Publish - calls crmimportpublish.exe, and needs to be turned into a library and threaded properly; too many windows, can shorten

I always learn a whole lot more about .NET and winforms programming along the way, so my major challenge is to keep on focus and not spin off into how to best thread a process or best persist settings. For me, once the core of the app is done (all features work, maybe not as expected, but work) the I can go back and refactor and optimize. Refactoring and optimizing before the first cut of the full scope of the app has been done has, in my experience, tended to slow me down and discourage me from completing something, feeling like I have to go back and add in the latest thing I've learned. Granted, that's not always completely true - if I find something compelling enough, I will refactor, it's just a risk to the first-cut scope being completed.

Next steps here are to make sure all parts work and then persist settings. Major refactoring comes in right after that.

Minor blog changes

Added lightbox2 (finally). Since I'm still using a fairly old edition of CommunityServer, I keep forgetting where various settings are. I had to add css and js's for lightbox as well as modify the LayoutTemplate.ascx (in the Themes dir) and the communityserver.config (in the web root) to accommodate for the "rel" attribute in the anchor tag. Without the setting to allow "rel" attributes in "a" elements, CS was stripping the necessary annotations for lightbox to function.

Completely boring non informative post.

Caturday Lightbox

Bringing Water to Horses

The client where I work has a set of analysts, a majority subset of whom are used to looking at a software application as “database-driven,” meaning they need to see the database table schema in order to understand the flow of the application. They’re technical enough that they can use the “language” of a database’s table diagram, its glyphs, to understand the business logic that it represents. They’re familiar with a database’s Entity-Relationship Diagram (Database ERD). They consider themselves masters of creating a database ERD and using that to communicate to a DBA what sort of database to create and to give that to a .NET developer to tell what to build around.

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, as with other Enterprise-class software applications and many ORM-driven applications, the underlying database schema isn’t the “language” the business is written in – that underlying table schema is the representation of the CRM framework’s data store. The CRM Database ERD doesn’t contain only the business’s logic but also CRM’s. If CRM’s power is enabling business processes, then when these types of analysts look at a reverse-engineered database ERD of CRM’s organization database for insight, they come away bewildered, not understanding how such a different schema could even manage to encapsulate their business, or worse, irritated that it’s so difficult to read the database table ERD and can’t see how CRM would make application development any faster than if they just created a custom ASP.NET application.

One of the major issues they have is with a classic CRM Design Pattern – the Denormalized Attribute Pattern. This pattern provides one way of solving the need to display information on an entity from one or many related entities – copying them to the main entity in question. From a database ERD standpoint, it appears that there’s duplication of information, a major red flag from a database design perspective. Even when not using this design pattern, looking directly at a CRM database with its two tables per entity on custom entities and its attributes for related “foreign keys” for N:1 and N:N relationships tend to confuse analysts who aren’t familiar with the CRM framework.

What’s the solution to satisfy an analyst who feels like they’ve lost their primary means of communicating business data storage and logic via a db ERD? A better “language” or glyph system would be UML, a notational representation of an object model, or a more abstract (actual) Entity-Relationship Diagram.

In some following posts, I’ll describe communicating business and technical analysis via UML and a custom CRM ERD language and how it relates a traditional database ERD, particularly one reverse-engineered from a CRM organization.

The Quandary of Searching for Improvement

Claudio Ciborra's The Labyrinths of Information relates these problems with constant continuous process improvement in the IT field:

Excessive idealism - encouraging disillusion, frustration, and cynicism
Speed and oblivion - "new" endlessly supplants the "incompletely implemented"
Carbon copy projects - followed "disgruntingly" as bureaucratic procedure
Narcissism - "strong actors" become the main driving force, creating a double bind: is this systemic rigor or forceful leadership?
Technical bias - creativity is evicted by the "concern for the careful management of the means"
Totalitarian bias - drastic simplification of reality
Ideological drift - preaching encapsulates science

Claudio Ciborra claims that his research concludes that "Painful and slow alignment of people, methods, and systems is the stuff of which actual implementation processes are made."

One of the biggest gaps in knowledge and education out there with regards to agile methodologies, a process improvement framework, is the area of introducing agile methodologies successfully to an organization which is either mired in self-hate or has a culture of resistance to change. People claim successes with small teams, and that's not to be denied, but that's clearly the "happy path" where (smaller) companies realize they have to align with the improvement process and try something new or cease to exist or a pilot team of 5 or less can "show successes" and then evangelize to the larger organization. (I'd argue that if the larger organization is resistant, no matter how successful the smaller canary team is, they'll be ignored.)

Further, constantly looking for process improvements and grasping for leadership seem to have similar appearances of desperation.

In my experience with attempting to improve the processes at my work, I find these symptoms to be prevalent as well as the conclusion to be true: it's painful and slow and aligning people and methods is not easy.

What I've Learned from So You Think You Can Dance

Shut up. Be professional.

That's what I've learned from So You Think You Can Dance. I'm not a dancer, but the meltdowns of the dancers with potentials have lent some insight into my daily life. I'm a software architect and manager (albeit without authority, but that's for another post) and have opinions about a whole lot of things. I'm pretty confident about what I know and about what I don't know and where I can improve. And I have opinions about other people, processes, and systems as well. All that's well and good, but in the thick of it, I have definite opinions on what needs to be done and will express that. Sometimes, though, it's best to keep quiet and let other people have their say and let ideas have some space to air. Humility and silence can be your friends.

Here's Lizz Plott's audition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOZNsaXnLc8&feature=related
Once someone puts up her mouthing off and subsequent denial in the top 20, I'll put that up here.

Friday night with Dell

This is a sordid tale of my first bad technical experience with Dell.

I bought a refurbed XPS 420 Quad core for a VM server. It arrived on Thursday, heavy, packed with stuff I didn't expect (earphones, chamois, lcd status-y deal, media card reader); then again, it's an XPS, as Jack pointed out (who got one, too). We were Dell buddies, except I got shat upon. Here's how it went:

Jack opens his, plays around with it, has some trepidations about Vista x32. With the box able to handle 8gb of RAM and the general instability that I've had with Vista x32, he wanted x64.

I wait a day to open mine because So You Think You Can Dance becomes more important and pay the price. It only reboots itself on first turn on. I speak with Elizabeth (tech support, incident 19636455) who asks for my phone number then tells me to reseat the memory and then promptly gets cut off. The XPS's indicators are nice - apart from the LCD (which seems to be useless at this stage) there are 4 blue leds placed vertically next to the LCD and they light up as the boot process occurs, doing a diagnostic check. When I mentioned to Elizabeth that 1, 2, and 4 came on she knew it was a memory issue. That seems handy.

That gets the machine to boot, but then it shuts down during Vista install. She gets disconnected.

I speak with Davidson (tech support, incident 19636455) who asks for my phone number tells me to remove the memory and reseat it. It boots, but only into Windows Error Recovery. Trying to restore to factory Dell settings bombs and the computer doesn't even power on after a reboot. I mention this. Then he gets disconnected.

I speak with Amith (tech support, incident 19637936) who tells me to take out all the memory and the power cord hold the power button down for 10 seconds then restart. That apparently resets the motherboard or discharges any held charges on it, who knows. Promptly after asking how it's going, he gets disconnected.

I speak with Kiran (tech support, incident 19638312) who tells me that the diagnostics LEDs (1 2 3 ) indicate Hard cables not properly connected to System board. He thinks the motherboard is fine and wants to disconnect the drives, the cpu, and various other items to determine what's bad about it. By this time I'm really hating the whole process since my whole objective for buying a Dell was that I'd receive a machine that was well put together and quiet - having to reseat things, although trivial, is beyond my tolerances. No.

I'm on hold with customer support to return the thing. Luckily, Dell allows a return within 21 days of invoice.

Carter: Peanut Farmer, Oracle, Hero

President Carter is again saying things that no one wants to hear - Israel's a human rights abuser (the irony) and they have nuclear weapons. Never mind that he pointed out the first middle east oil crisis and people ignored that, more or less. They'll do the same with these two nuggets of obvious. All he has left to point out is that Israel's been destablizing the middle east since it got there, and he'll probably disappear from the press without even a *poof*.

Israel has '150 nuclear weapons', BBC

CSM - Congrats me!

I'm a Certified ScrumMaster! Yay for agile, yay for me! Comparing this with the PMI training I took from CSU last year, there's no question that Rally's CSM training was far more applicable and useful in my day-to-day.

Vista Start Menu - No Workie!

More Vista woes. For a while now, I've been unable to launch apps from the Start menu's shortcuts. I can go into the All Programs and then nav to the app and launch it, but from the dynamic shortcuts immediately available from the start menu, no go.

After Googling a bit, I found out that some third party shell extensions can interfere with launching from the Start menu. Way annoying. After downloading ShellExView, I went, one-by-one, through the non-MS extensions and eventually came to the shell extension for Hex Editor 3. Disabling that returned Vista's start menu to functionality. Whee!

What a start to Caturday!

Are you kidding me?

These people aren't kidding. It's cutting-edge use of a CRM engine, bleeding-edge, really.

SOA in the Government

Commentary by consultant Warren Suss questions whether SOA is ready for prime time.

Technical Interviews

Some people think a technical interview is for asking tricky pseudo mathematical questions ("can you fit your hand under a string tied tight around the circumference of the world if I increased it by 5 inches?") or making a person draw UML on the whiteboard ("diagram how you'd make a class model for a '3d rectangle'").

It's not. It's not for softballs either, but my preferred method is to see their level of professional committment to and excitement about their craft. I can figure out how you think just by talking to you about something you like. Ref. Malcom Gladwell's Blink.

I ran across this the other day and one other data point justifies my interview style as fact. From notgartner blog:

As with all discussion with technical interviewing it seems to come back to build lists of questions, but answering questions is not what a technical interview is about. I believe it is all about:

Finding out if the candidate is passionate about technology.

Finding out the depth of the candidate by asking questions.

For what it's worth, it's probably best to have an actual introverted ex-math team nerd (fie, scratch that, since that was me) in the room asking those other types of questions, since a 'get up on the board and write' scenario forces the candidate to expose their presentation and interaction skills. Yes, I know, I just undermined the 'technical' part by saying it was good for psychological assessments. Again.

Sue me.

The Broken Organization

Some things are just too surreal to not talk about - my 10 hour day yesterday broke down as follows:

2 hours - 2 interviews with extremely poor candidates
6 hours - 3 meetings (2, 1, and 3 hours, respectively) with almost the same people, about the same topic: how disfunctional the organization is and how we can attempt to align our actions
2 hours - This was at the beginning of the day where I actually got in a revision to a specification and deployed a latest code build, that might I add, no one looked at

Sure, Stephen Cohen's #1 thing for avoiding project failure is talking to each other and #2 thing is to have some sort of leadership, but we don't have any leadership, or that which we do have is inconsistent and more often than not, not empowered to Lead (with a capital "L"). If I were following his #3 thing, "Be honest with yourself and everyone else," I would quit.

There's a behavior pattern that's infectious in our organization - we've a core group of people that pay lip service to trusting other people, but continually undermine trust by blaming and and demanding that their irrelevant personal whims be met before they participate, simply to fall back into blaming mode.

Fiona Charles has an article about how to rescue "troubled projects," Pack Up Your Troubles , where she mentions some characteristics of a troubled project, such as

Team abuse, working mindless overtime
Lack of support of least empowered team members
Dropping bombs on colleagues during meetings

I ended the day thinking I was watching a looping video reel of the "best of" trainwrecks. I didn't have lunch, so I was probably a bit on edge. In every one of the 3 meetings about how to get everyone on the same page to make the project proceed in a positive direction, the same few people lashed out and threw random people on our team under the bus for their personal disengagement problems. In one of the meetings, we had our off-site consultants on the phone and they were briefly exposed to some of this, but they didn't see that progress wasn't being made. In fact, we appeared to agree with the consultant's facilitator that talking was helping the process. It appeared that, although disgruntled, our team was grudgingly willing to attempt to align forces and make a positive impact.

The instant the conference call was over, the same few people proceded to throw them under the bus, on their hours, on their progress, and their individuals. With that feeding frenzy over, they went back to our own team. In one horribly childish (but consistantly typical) moment, there was screeching about the lack of a "system architecture" from a person who doesn't understand either word let alone those two together.

We've already had two of our most senior people leave and I think we're beyond talking about how this project is a death march. The project is a death march. Even if we manage to turn the heel-draggers and nay-sayers around, their attitudes have permeated and poisoned our team dynamic.

In November, when I went through a horrible process almost all by myself (one never goes through any painful process alone, there's always a bunch of people holding you down), I wrote a "post mortem" and lessons learned document and passed that around to the people whom I saw as stakeholders in the project. I've been working my way through the pages on retrospectives.com, in particular trying to internalize the retrospective prime directive.

Regardless of what we discover, we must understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job he or she could, given what was known at the time, his or her skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.

It's a bit morbid of me to be reminiscing about a project before the time of death has been called, but watching this group flog, viciously, a gasping dying project-horse is close to the best I can do at the moment. It's the fantasy that the constant surrealism of my day forced me into. My initial reaction was that certain people, including myself, haven't done the best job they could've on this project, but then I realized that's not wholly true - while my heart may not have been completely in it all the time, it's more than clear that the best job that some people in particular could do was what they did, actually do - they sat back and sniped, bitched and looked smug continued to be resentful. For some people, that's their forte - those are their skills and abilities.

The Prime Directive and it's correllary the Second Directive seem like self-help for the software management set and, to some degree, it is. Circling back to the interviews during the day, the people we met with have a glaring lack of social skills which is par for the course in engineering-oriented people. It's worth repeating some basic interaction skillsets within the context of software management. I find the reading and the discussion around retrospectives with it's mediation-like angles to be a refreshing distraction from technical issues allowing people to focus on people-issues. (ie it is "pretend" to some degree, but it has purpose - to attempt to ignore the base hateful and spiteful nature of some people)

What's sad, though, is that most of the people in our "information technology" division are not software people, they're just people with poor social skills and the inability to cope with change except by considering it a threat. The common wisdom and foresight of the Prime Directive and Second Directive (and, for that matter, Dr. Phil and Oprah) are probably lost on these people made comfortable by years of patronage. Peter Principling someone is not the answer, either forced retirement or firing someone is. "Reupping" someone's "trust level" just to watch it be frittered away in a next meeting gets emotionally draining. At some point, someone has to realize the individuals that aren't engaged aren't because they're useless.

Sibilant S's

I'm taking a stand right here and right now - if you exhibit prominant thibilant "s"'s you are either:

13 years old
a girl
gay

.. or some combination of the above.

Schmap'd

I received this the other day regarding my picture of Cafe Landtmann when I visited Vienna in March, 2006.

Thanks Emma and Schmap!

Hi Hussain,
I am delighted to let you know that your submitted photo has been selected for inclusion in the newly released fourth edition of our Schmap Vienna Guide:
Cafe Landtmann http://www.schmap.com/vienna/restaurants_coffee/p=41650/i=41650.jpg

If you like the guide and have a website, blog or personal page, then please also check out the customizable widgetized versions of our Schmap Vienna Guide, complete with your published photo:

http://www.schmap.com/guidewidgets/p=93299377N00/c=SF16011635

Thanks so much for letting us include your photo - please enjoy the guide!

Best regards,

Emma Williams,
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides

The Top 1%

The other day, on the Democratic debates, again I heard Obama and Clinton railing against the "top 1%" with regards to tax cuts. I've heard this before and pretty much just ignored it, on the assumption that, being an information worker, I may not be the "top 1%" but I sure do like them, and it can't be that bad that they're getting tax cuts or even benefiting from them.

So who are these "top 1%" people? Looking around the web, I came across Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez's article "Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998" (updated to 2003). Here are some numbers (from 2005):

Category	Income Threshold	Average Income	Number of Families
Bottom 90%		$29,487	131 M
Top 10%	$99,234	$114,802	7.3 M
Top 5%	$140,125	$195,742	5.8 M
Top 1%	$350,501	$425,821	729 K
Top 0.5%	$545,933	$871,546	583 K
Top 0.1%	$1,722,926	$3,342,190	131 K
Top 0.01%	$9,585,704	$26,340,290	14.6 K

Full Population of people 145 million, average income $46,820
Bottom 90% 131 million, average income $28,947

We see them all the time - car cealers, the nightly news anchor in a decent sized metro (Denver, for example), your doctor. We all probably know someone that's in the top 1%, if it's not our parents, then it's our friends parents. Some of us even have college roommates who're now doctors or lawyers.

Piketty and Saez propose that progressive taxation, after the Great Depression and the two World Wars, kept the rebound of the top shares of income and wealth low to the point of not recovering to their pre WWI levels. Even though recent technology (the computer revolution) has been more favorable to the gains of the upper income shares than in other periods through their study (1913 - 2003), the effects of progressive taxation has managed to keep that low. They even mention that "any positive capital income tax rate above a given high threshold of wealth will eventually eliminate all large wealth holdings without affecting, however, the total capital stock in the economy" - in other words, if I'm reading this right, you can tax the very rich out of existance. One might say, looking at their charts, that we already have a massive discrepancy in wealth. They go on to say "[o]ur results suggest that the decline in income tax progressivity since the 1980s, the reduction in the tax rate for dividend income in 2003, and the projected repeal of the estate tax by 2011 might produce again in a few decates levels of wealth concentration similar to those of the beginning of the twentieth century."

Some factors that retarded the rebounding of wealth after WW1 and Great Depression

Corporate Taxation pre WW2
Increased enforcement of anti-trust law after 1930
WW2

The question for me is not "what causes income disparity?" or "what caused the income disparity?" but "how the heck do I get up that ladder?"

Implications regarding the Iraq/Afghanistan war, or any other "war rumblings" (Iran, etc.)

War hurts the economy and the wealthy in ways that are long term and disrupt predictive analysis

Implications regarding the upcoming election

Democrats, who look to eliminate the repeal of the estate tax and increase taxes, will enivitably hurt the wealthy and possibly the viability of this country

Implications regarding moving up the ladder

Have capital income - buy and hold stocks, and set a profit target to sell - even though wars and progressive taxation slow the potential
Have dividend income - buy and hold stocks that pay a dividend - even though wars and progressive taxation slow the potential
Keep working - modern times requires that even the wealthy keep working. For me, a corollary appeared: Since I don't like what I do, this is saying that there's no reality to my "escape dream" (I'll eventually have enough compounded interest or dividend income to just "stop working") and that aphorisms like "love your job" and "find a job you love to do" take on a bitter edge. Note to self: Change careers (after making a bunch of money).
Don't just be a worker - own your own business

Reading on the Kindle

Reading on the Kindle's a joy and easy - I read more with a techno treat.
Mobipocket PDF conversion messed up the paragraph and section spacing, running all the text together. Further, it placed the footnotes in-line with other text and breaks up the flow of the article. The net effect was annoying, but it kept me engaged, otherwise I'd have gotten bogged down in the econotechnical details and fallen asleep. (Ok, I did actually fall asleep once.)
I was able to look up words I was unfamiliar with using the Kindle's internal dictionary which was helpful. I'd already gone to my computer and Google by the time I remembered the feature, though. Next time.

References

Microsoft Virtual PC Optimization

At work, we've been using Microsoft's VirtualPC 2007 to do CRM 4.0 development for a few months now. This entails booting what's turned into a 16 gb VHD - Windows 2003 Server R2 SP2, SQL Server 2005 SP2 (w/ patches), SRS, CRM 4.0, and dev tools - VS.NET 2005, NAnt 0.86, etc. Not only is 16 gb huge, but the 1.5gb of RAM used pushes it to monsterous levels, rendering most of our developers unable to even fire up the image unless the shut everything else off. (Note to self: Shut down Firefox with the 50 tabs, 30 of which are AJAX refeshing.)

The most common optimization tricks for Microsoft's VPC involve the following:

Defrag your host and guest hard drives

PageDefrag, Microsoft SysInternals
defrag, blume tools

Place the client vhd on a seperate spindle, aka hard drive.
Even a USB external for the vhd makes a massive improvement in the VPC's i/o usage and external USB drives (Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital) are getting cheap. The ultimate, of course, would be a VHD on a USB stick.
Get as much RAM as you can.
If you're using Vista, don't, since Vista won't allow pegging to 4 gb of RAM (in 32-bit mode) - "upgrade" to XP.
Shut off all services you're not using on your host system
From the obvious SQL Server, IIS, to the semi-obvious, anything in your tray - IM clients, video card helpers - to the non-obvious, like iPod helpers, Picasa helpers, etc. Write a bat script to help you "net stop" and "net start" these. Every 100kb helps.
Turn on Hardware Virtualization in your BIOS
If your PC supports hardware virtualization, turn it on

Then there's this little goodie included in VPC 2007 (since 2004, btw) that's often overlooked (from the VPC2007 release notes):

Virtual Disk Precompactor Virtual PC 2007 includes Virtual Disk Precompactor, a utility that is designed to "zero out"—that is, overwrite with zeros—any available blank space on a virtual hard disk.
We recommend that you use Virtual Disk Precompactor before you compact a dynamically expanding virtual hard disk. Using Virtual Disk Precompactor should result in a smaller compacted virtual hard disk. After you install Virtual PC 2007, Virtual Disk Precompactor.iso is located in the folder: \Program Files\Microsoft Virtual PC\Virtual Machine Additions\.
To use Virtual Disk Precompactor, you must first capture the image file Virtual Disk Precompactor.iso. For instructions on capturing image files, see "To capture or release a CD or DVD" in the Virtual PC Help.
After you capture Virtual Disk Precompactor.iso, you can run Virtual Disk Precompactor by starting it from the CD drive of the virtual machine. To view Help for Virtual Disk Precompactor, type precompact -help. To run Virtual Disk Precompactor, type precompact.

Once you've precompacted, turn off your VPC and compact the VHD, itself.
This can be done by going to the VPC entry in the Console, pressing Settings, and using the Virtual Disk Wizard on the VHD file. There's an option to Edit an Existing VHD and Compacting it.

With all that said, I was able to get our 16gb VHD down to a svelte 13gb image. (Just in case you're keeping score here, that's not success.)

This is a post I wish I didn't have to write, because it explains how to make a perfectly fine, fast machine into something that runs slowly while also running another machine. Seems a bit silly, doesn't it?

By now, you're probably wondering why we don't use VMWare or some other solution, like, Xen? This is a good question, since VMWare's Player (not to mention images) are a few gb smaller in size when converted using VMWare Converter (takes machines and other vms and turns them into VMWare images) and also appears to have less I/O dependency (no need for a 2nd drive) and doesn't allocate RAM (no need for 3+gb for a 1.5gb image). The answer, at this time, is that we're looking into it, although I'm starting to wonder why I'm trying to optimize a machine inside a machine and when I'm going to get back to coding.

Other good tips:

Tips to Speed Up Virtual PC for Microsoft CRM, MS East Region

Baitullah Mehsud: Not Sitting Still

Here's a guy you can't accuse of an assassination and expect to rest on his laurels. This one was pretty much expected, given Mehsud's past.

Showing off his undisputed warlording skills, and further embarassing the Pakistani military's Frontier Corps, (FC) Baitullah Masood (or Meshud, the spelling of his tribal-origin name is still quite confusing in angrezi) has taken the Sararogha Fort in South Waziriztan, 80 kilometers from the town of Wana, with a 1,000 man strong force. Most of the Pakistani military is bunkered up in cantonments and forts and doesn't really get to exercise much control in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.

The last we heard of Sararogha Fort was in August 2007 when a convoy of 16 FC paramilitary troopers went missing (08/10) leaving the fort and then "[the] surrender of an estimated 280 soliders, including a colonel and nine other officesers, on 30 August in South Waziristan to just a few score Taleban fighters who blocked their supply convoy on the road to the main town of Wana." That's 280 highly trained paramilitary corps just giving up at the sight of Mehsud's troops.

The loss of the fort is a continuing blow to President Musharraf who's repeatedly attempted to assert some control over the region, both for his sake and also at the repeated urging of our military.

Washington Post, 47 Killed as Insurgents Take Key Fort in NW Pakistan, 01/17/2008
Pak Tribune, Taliban claims to have control of Sararogha Fort, 30 soldiers killed in attack, 01/17/2008
McClatchy, Islamic militants capture Pakistani fort, 01/16/2008
BBC, Pakistan crisis 'hits army morale', 09/17/2007

GSA Bomb Threat Notepad

Soon, we're having our annual security briefing.

Last year, we received the below very helpful and extremely useful "Bomb Threat" note pads, just in case there was a call-in of a threat and the bomber was helpful enough to stick around for questions. Personally, I believe the "Why" line is too short - it makes it look like we don't care enough to give a larger forum for grievances. Also, remember this crucial bit of information: "Is there crockery in the background?"

I want to see the FBI or GSA research that dictated the priorities of the items and the categories of the queries beyond the who, what, where, when, why, how?

I'm hoping there'll be more, because I've run out.

Vista: Totally Not Getting it

So, one of the consultants I interact with has a Dell's latest high-end laptop every time I see him, ostensibly for demonstration. I really can't see the need for a BluRay DVD drive and 2 SLI video cards, but hey, I'm not paying for him. He runs Vista Ultimate and his background is the new feature in that version of the bloated, slow, RAM hog OS called DreamScene which allows a .wmv or .mpg to be looped as your background. That's right, not a static background, but one in motion. It's actually pretty visually stunning which, might I add, is the hallmark of Vista.

Like ReadyBoost and Aero, it's technology developed to compensate and distract from the OS's underlying disappointments. Having only Vista Business, I decided to use the powers of Google to figure out whether or not I could get this exciting and productivity enhancing feature. It turns out, I can, via some hacked dll's. Yes, I know what you're thinking, putting hacked dll's over a suspect OS, what are you doing? Well, my public, I'm doing it for you. After a few tries (apparently, the guy who did the hack got a cease-and-desist from Microsoft almost immediately) I found and installed the dlls that allowed me to use a few pretty scenes in the background. Do not get me wrong, it's pretty and not at all distracting when I'm using other apps.

With that said, it constantly uses 10% - 40% of the CPU to keep the loop going. Way to go Vista, first, take my RAM, now my CPU. What's the point of this OS again?

Pakistan: Surprize!

Surprize! Musharraf has postponed the election until February and Nawaz Sharif, a longtime Bhutto rival, previously boycotting the election, is now running.

"The other, somewhat smaller, main opposition party, the faction of the Pakistan Muslim League led by Nawaz Sharif, said it was ready to participate in the vote on Jan. 8."

Clearly, an election, on schedule, so soon after Bhutto's assassination would garner a huge sympathy vote and, since a lot of PPP stalwarts can't see anything but red and blame Musharraf, well, that'd benefit Sharif. The article also states that the US is pushing for elections earlier:

"A February election date would probably be acceptable to the Bush administration, even though the Americans have been pushing for the elections to go ahead on schedule, the Musharraf party member said."

At this point, all we're doing is providing Musharraf's party someone to quote and therefore someone to indirectly blame for his actions. We should take our time and watch him flounder.

Granted, they can't really hold equitable elections after the post-assassination riots:

"In 11 districts of Sindh Province, offices of assistant election commissioners have been burned to the ground," [Elections Commission secretary] Dilshad said. "Nothing is left."

Well played, sirs, well played. Now if our politicians could only stop trying to make a media event out of it (that means you, John Edwards), maybe Pakistani politicians would take some responsibility for their actions.

Pakistan: Next Chance for Democracy 6+ years

I had thought that with Benazir Bhutto sorrowfully following in the family footsteps of martyrdom, there'd be a vacuum of "democratic" leadership in Pakistan not just because the rest of the parties have no-names or refusniks, but that her children - the logical choice for the nepotistic, er, dynastic political heirs - were teenagers. I was wrong.

This article from Reuters, Bhutto supporters pin homes on son and heir, have quotes from party faithful already abandoning any struggle for democracy in Pakistan and looking towards the recently renamed 19 year old Bilawal Bhutto Zardari (nee Bilawal Zardari), living and educated in Dubai, now to go to Oxford, as their new hope. He's not eligible to run for anything in Pakistan for another 6 years. Never mind that his father, Asif Ali Zardari, still chairman of the PPP (People's Party of Pakistan, the party Bhutto's father founded), and should be picking up the mantle, but won't, due to blackmail and corruption scandals and, honestly, isn't that well liked by Pakistanis.

I guess with 6 years to go, that should give Musharraf a bit of breathing room. Granted, he's like a weeble wobble reaching his flopping point - I don't know how much more vaccilation between Western appeasement and hometown bluster in the face of unwillingness and inability to crack down on the FATA provinces he can manage - 6 years will be too long for him. One might thing that'd give him enough time to clean house, but he hasn't started yet, what makes anyone (especially the USUK) think that he'll start now? In fact, if he were an American President, the campaign season against the Bhutto dauphin has just officially started - there won't be any time to legislate, not even mentioning execution of military missions, while he's trying to think up negative campaign ads.

On the other side of the tracks, what sort of trophies can the highly motivated "Talibs" achieve in 6 years? If we've looked back on Musharraf's record and seen a dearth of progress and are extrapolating to the future, looking back on the last few years of the Taliban's ascendency in Pakistan post "Operation Infinite Justice" (oops!) recovery, well, it's probably ungentlemanly of me to mock and juxtapose at the same time.

Lastly, what does it mean for us, the US (and ever so slightly for the UK, where, btw Zardari lives)? This, for me, puts Musharraf into even greater relief - he's not on our side and apparently not very much on Pakistan's side either. And, as everyone seems to remind me, he's got nukes. We, as far as our foreign policy towards Pakistan goes, have been wimps or naieve or both - it's not that they can't be trusted, they're just not fully willing to be seen as collaborating in the War on Islam, oh snap there I go again, I mean the War on Terror. Since we're unable to put on the perspecticles of the region and not at all of Pakistan's, we still don't have a clue as to how to engage Pakistan. I hesitate to suggest Afghanistan as a model, since blowing the crap out of Pakistan (remember: nukes!) isn't really going to help, right? Oh right, yes it will. We (used to) do it all the time with Afghanistan's and Pakistan's tacit approval and made a certain amount of headway in the 2002 - 2005 period. Unfortunately, we've gone soft, allowed Musharraf to vaccilate a lot more, and we've lost the advantage. Now, we're on the defensive in that region, politically - for at least another six years.

Oh, yeah - what's this kid supposed to do again?

Baitullah Masood

The Pakistani government is saying that 35 y/o Baitullah Masood (also Mehsud), a South Waziristan Taliban commander aligned with al Qaeda, is responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. [sify, jamestown 2006]

Baitullah calls himself a Talib and swears by Mullah Omar, despite signing a deal with the Pakistani army in February 2005, in which Baitullah and three other tribal leaders promised the government they would not support or shelter Al Qaeda terrorists.

Baitullah Masood was responsible for the first bombing at Bhutto's return to Pakistan, October 19, 2007 where 128 people were killed [Guardian, CSM]. This, one day after Bhutto was quoted in a BBC interview that Pakistan was "one of the most dangerous countries in the world."

A Taliban commander, Baitullah Masood, has threatened to deploy suicide bombers against her, but Bhutto told the newspaper that the real threat came from within the powerful military establishment.

"I'm not worried about Baitullah Masood, I'm worried about the threat within the government," she said. "People like Baitullah Masood are just pawns. It is those forces behind him that have presided over the rise of extremism and militancy in my country."

Ms Bhutto singled out as her most potent enemy retired military officers "who have fought the jihad".

"They have a lot of supporters and sympathisers within the echelons of administration and intelligence," she said.

From the Musharraf's address to FATA Jirga in Peshawar (26 Apr, 2006):

I say if you succeed we will withdraw our troops from here but I am telling you what you have to do. The foreign elements have to be expelled to curb extremism. This extremism has to be stopped, he added. He stated that previous Corps Commander Gen Safdar had signed a peace agreement with Baitullah Masood and Nek Muhammad and army halted its operations and then what did they do. They did not honour the agreement and they stabbed in the back. This was not in accordance with the Pukhtoon traditions. You also know they broke the agreement and again resorted to same activities, as a result Nek Muhammad was killed. You know what Baitullah Masood is doing now. He is telling lies. He is indulging in harmful activities, he will be dealt with. If you take action according to traditions then I will support you and the army would make a ceasefire. You should dissociate yourself from these elements.

Note my previous post mentioning Nek Mohammed, US incursions into Pakistan: Going where they won't (12/2005), where it was mentioned that the Pakistani army was continually embarrassed by the 27 y/o Taliban commander. Baitullah Masood came into prominance after Nek Mohammed was killed by a US Predator drone. As mentioned, Musharraf and the Pakistani army wasted no time in claiming that they killed him, contrary to the evidence.

Bhutto had said that if she died, Musharraf would be partially responsible. The responsibility she speaks of, to me, is Musharraf's consistent behavior of talking but not doing. His inability to enforce any sort of rule on the FATA area has been shown over and over again begging the question of complicity - is his attempt to navigate between internal independence and the yoke of US-UK foreign influence contributing to the instability of his country? My opinion is yes, and Pakistan is suffering for it.

Whether Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), a party formed by her father, can survive the death of its only charismatic leader and continue to pursue a transition to democracy is an almost irrelevant question. They're already blaming Musharraf [Forbes]. Will the elections, scheduled for 01/08/2008 occur as planned? One thing is for sure, they've earned the title of most dangerous country.

Other Taliban commanders have been gunning for both Musharraf and Bhutto, which is why the the government's snap accusation of al Qaeda-linked Taliban militants as the source of Bhutto's death is not far off. Note that with the Pakistani government, identifying the threat does not mean they're any closer to neutralizing the threat. In some cases with Pakistani's ISI, they themselves are the source of the threat, having propped up and encouraged Taliban elements.

The Taliban had threatened to kill Ms Bhutto after she suggested that she would help American troops hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida fugitives inside Pakistan. "She has an agreement with America. We will carry out attacks on Benazir Bhutto as we did on General Pervez Musharraf," Taliban commander Haji Omar said yesterday.
Intelligence reports suggested at least three groups with al-Qaida or Taliban links were plotting suicide attacks, according to a provincial official quoted by Reuters. [Guardian, 10/19/2007]

About 57 y/o Haji Omar:

Nevertheless, despite Haji Omar's influence, he has been overshadowed by Baitullah Mehsud, another prominent leader in South Waziristan (Terrorism Focus, July 5). This development occurred because of the ethnic fault line that affects South Waziristan. The two main tribes that populate the agency are the Wazir and the Mehsud. While the late Nek Mohammed and Haji Omar are Wazir, Baitullah is Mehsud. After the death of Nek Mohammed, the Wazirs were unable to maintain leadership and Baitullah took control of the Talibanization movement there. Currently, militants like Abdullah Mehsud are working under Baitullah's command. Therefore, under the present circumstances, Haji Omar has to work under the guidance of Baitullah. According to his close associates, in order to avoid this subordinate role, Omar has maintained a low profile and for the time being is not playing an active role in the insurgency. [Jamestown, 08/08/2006]

The Kindle Post

Yes, I bought an Amazon Kindle. It arrived Friday, just as Heather was going in for a tonsilectomy.

Amazon's Kindle is an ebook reader device, not unlike the Sony Reader. I decided on getting one after being intrigued with ebook readers ever since staying up all night reading Harry Potter 2 on my Handspring, but not feeling like there was any momentum behind the technology until Amazon's play. The e-Ink technology does give a crisp view of text along the large screen size (it's the same screen size as the Sony Reader) and the EVDO "WhisperNet" that Amazon throws in boosts the device into a different class than the other ebook readers out there. The Kindle's powered by a 400Mhz XScale-PXA255 [69052d06] revision 6 (ARMv5TE) and its backend and UI appear to be running Java ("booklets" anyone?).

I read the reviews on-line and took note of the extreme fanbois on the Amazon page as well as the haters - the device definitely attracts a lot of commentary. Despite all the controversy ("It's just another ebook reader") I figured I might as well try it out.

It's rather easy to navigate, with next page and previous page buttons along the side of the device and a scroll wheel for menu options, but with all the rage over the iPod Touch (and iPhone), not having a touch screen does seem less intuitive and a bit of a downer. I read that it had a SD card interface, and I immediately stuck my 2 GB SanDisk into it, giving it more room for whatever I'd want to put on there. The Kindle comes with 256mb in it (180mb avail). Then it struck me - I don't know what I'd put on it.

The device came with the Users Guide on it (as well as a letter from Jeff Bezos), but that was initially the only thing I could find to read on it until I found the "experimental" menu item. The Experimental menu has three items in it: a web browser (user agent Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+Windows+NT+4.0)+NetFront/3.3), "Ask Kindle NowNow" - ask a question and get three replies usually w/i 10 minutes (in theory, I asked a question and have yet to receive an answer - see Amazon's Mechanical Turk), and Play Music. I've played with the web browser and it's not bad, though the keyboard leaves something to be desired.

Neat things in the reader - as I was reading the User Guide:

* Bookmarks - you can bookmark a page
* Notes - you can make a note on a line of page
* Look up - the built in dictionary can look up words on a line

The "space" bar is on the left hand side of the split keyboard and in the opposite place, on the right, is the search bar. For me, at least, I had to consciously look and make sure I didn't accidentally hit "search" while I was making a note.

The screensavers are clever and remind me of old book etchings or Wall Street Journal pictures. I'm not sure where they come from, but I'm hoping they're downloaded from Amazon's servers over their WhisperNet, which'd be really cool. The full page black and white images recall some great "ex libris" art and are a pleasure to look at.

The lack of content was pretty evident, although Amazon's twist on the ebook reader is to offer free cellular connectivity to their store, a discounted price on ebook versions of best sellers and subscriptions to newspapers and blogs. Amazon's own Kindle content: Books, haven't bought any, but you can get a free preview of 10 pages or so for each offering; Newspapers/Magazines, haven't tried any; and Blogs, not gonna do it - seems silly, at best. The last bit, blogs, got me, since those are almost always free and the Kindle has a web browser in it.

As other people have found out, the Kindle's experimental browser's javascript is lacking, so Google's Reader is out. Bloglines works ok, sometimes. Ultimately, though, reading the web in text-only mode is a bit boring. For a while, when cellphones didn't have Opera or some similar browser internally, WML and the "text web" was making somewhat of a push, but I haven't seen a lot of that lately. Maybe the Kindle'll fire up people writing "text-only" sites, like the iPhone has launched "iPhone compatible" sites.

The next content was mine own - two categories: documents I have in digital form (technical documentation) and content I've written or friends have written. Jack is writing book. I make book go on Kindle.

I also used Amazon's @free.kindle.com e-mail to mail Word docs (Microsoft CRM docs) and received them via e-mail converted to Amazon's AZW DRM protected ebook format for free. (If I used the @kindle.com, Amazon would send the converted document directly to the Kindle for $0.10) I can then USB up Kindle to computer and move over file. Using Mobipocket's free content creator, I can convert pdf's, docs, and html to prc files and move those over (my preferred method) to the SD card.

Of course, the torrentsphere is rife with free ebooks and I've yet to look into converting those. Vast quantity, questionable quality.

As a writer, there seems to be a whole series of support that Amazon's attempting to provide, from their Digital Text Platform, to the promotion of ebook reading.

Format wise, it's about the right size. There're some quirks with the interaface (the major complaint - and I could see why within 5 minutes of using the device - is that the paging buttons are too easily accidentally pressed) but ultimately, it looks like it'll be pretty useful. All I need to do is get more content onto it. The allure of carrying all my technical books in one small form factor is very appealing.

It's just one more thing I'll have to carry around. And I'm still working on integrating my iPod Touch into my digital life.

Negatives:

* Laggy UI
* Keyboard has a sticky phone keypad feel to it
* Some parts of the UI are non-intuitive (web browsing selecting, looking up a definition of a word (you have to look up the whole line))
* The paging buttons make it impossible to grab the device w/o turning a page, unless in sleep mode
* Come on guys, I know it's not an iPod, but at least a stylus or touch screen

Some great Kindle links

Reversing Everything - great blog about hacking the Kindle, the dumps, the Java, the key combos, the easter eggs
Amazon's Digital Text Platform quickstart
Kindle blogs, more - My del.icio.us links
My Kindle Notes - tips for reading on the Kindle, keyboard shortcuts, etc., gathered from around the web and experience

What Hath Microsoft Wrought?

For the last few months, I've put aside my Java ways and have dove headfirst into the ever expanding vastness of the Microsoft pool. At first, it was dark and unfathomable, overly verbose documentation and what appeared to be poorly connected components, but now, I'm starting to understand the Way. In doing so, I'm sort of still amazed Microsoft can't get it together, what with all the things they have going for them.

I've been a long time fan of Google Docs and still use Google services on a regular basis, but Microsoft now has Office Live (hello web based SharePoint Services) and a whole slew of "live" offerings (not even mentioning CRM live):

Windows Live Messenger - a major upgraded version (8.5) of msn messenger that has aspects of Skype or GTalk (audio, video), plus shared synchronizable folders between contacts

It's configurable, via a third party tool called A-Patch, a great way to remove ads, etc.
A beta of 9.0 has been leaked, too, which has multi-location sign in, per contact sounds, SPIM filters and more

SkyDrive Live - a beta of a storage service (Amazon S3?)
SharedView - another beta that does person-to-person shared desktops or apps, like LiveMeeting or WebEx, but personal

What's strange to me is that I hadn't heard of these things before and that to me means a few things: they either aren't pushing the integration of all these things enough (and they all seem to have hooks into each other) and there's no vision for it or the net they've cast is woven so wide, they're not catching anything.

It's exciting that not only are web-based products getting mature, but the approach to using and developing for them is maturing as well.

I'm expecting great things from both Microsoft and Google over the next year.

Slogans for Islam

In the wake of the Mohammed the Teddy Bear incident, my good friend Jack came up with some hum dingers of slogans for Islam for the idiots in Sudan and elsewhere that steadfastly fail to get it:

Islam: No thanks, full up right now, maybe Jews for Jesus is hiring.
Islam: If it's not Islam, don't call it Islam. You fucking twat.
Islam: If you can't read, chances are you're not practicing us. You fucking savage.

A quote from Professor Elteyb Hag Ateya, director of Khartoum University's peace research institute.
"There is a sort of "who is the best Muslim?" competition to this whole thing which makes it difficult for the government to be seen to back down," he said.
Answer: None of you dillholes. The only thing that you're the best at is perverting Islam.

Here's one for the press:

The Press: Making sure to blow stuff out of proportion in the most sensational way possible, plus adding "shariah law" wherever we don't understand it. The Apprentice.

Not Amused Caturday

Musharraf: "Ally" or Unbearable Weight?

I've been watching Pakistan and the whole Subcontinent area for a while now and this latest bully move by Musharraf to retain some sort of control of his country by declaring martial law, or "emergency plus" powers as the locals are calling it, continues to be instructive. Here in America we have a choice, do we continue supporting a so-called-ally on the War on Terror, Musharraf, as in this assertion of power or do we support our overarching goal, the Rule of Law, which has been the ostensible underlying principle of our engagement with the rest of the world as well as the War on Terror?

Musharraf's been subverting what we'd consider an approved ROL path for years, starting with his coup and continuing through sacking judges and now this martial law declaration, all in hopes of bringing the country together. This latest move was in a small part to attempt to get his soldiers whom the NWFP rebels captured w/o a shot. Musharraf's been playing two ends against each other, in my opinion, which to be honest, is almost the only way he can do it - he's been turning a blind eye, sort of, to our cross-border interactions between Afghanistan and the NWFP, causing us to refer to him as an "ally" and causing his own countrymen to call him a hypocrite and a tyrant. This enrages his opposition - both the seemingly more democratic Buhtto-esque side as well as the more fundamentalist Taliban side. The foregone fact that Al Qaeda's in full force in the NWFP makes it even more of a joke that we call him an "ally."

So, this new step - does the War on Terror trump the Rule of Law? Defenders of the Constitution already have their answer, but for foreign policy nerds we'll have our answer burned bright in how we react - via hollow diplomatic rebukes (aka "disappointment") or actual pulling of monies and materiel support.

[Follow up edit]: CSM Article on this very topic.

Holy Land Mistrial

Wow. The US government, and dare I say Israel, got their a**es handed to them regarding their believability of evidence for convicting charity organization Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development of terrorism (technically, providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations, aka Hamas). No decision on the consipracy charges, no decisions on whether they helped terrorist organizations, etc.

The government argued that the money collected by Holy Land went to other charities which then went to Hamas, which they provided no evidence for, just saying that the money benefitted Hamas. Since 1995, it's been illegal for US organizations to provide money to Hamas. Israeli agents provided via pseudonyms evidence that these other organizations gave their money to Hamas, but not Holy Land. What a strange tactic.

I can't imagine why our government would drop the ball on this case at all. For them, the implications are disasterous - they/we look like we're secret-evidence toting, brown-person targetting, remorseless Muslimhating, double-standard charity platers. It's sad and rediculous. Break out the mouse suits, let the schadenfreude from the left begin.

Brown people jumping on themselves? Check
Babies holding sad signs? Check

To be fair and balanced:
Disaffected, unhappy "fact" reporting? Check
Pictures of Hamas? Check

For what it's worth, Holy Land Foundation Charities is the big fish the government's been trying to spear, knocking off suckerfish over the years:

Oct 2006 - Georgia Imam Shorbagi pled guilty to funding Hamas (via Holy Land Foundations) (nyt)
Feb 2007 - Salah & Ashqar acquitted of helping Hamas, where Holy Land was claimed as a defendant (nyt)

Fun quote #1: “The government has tried to turn the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into something criminal,” said William Moffitt, who is Dr. Ashqar’s lawyer. “Maybe the government will get it in their heads that the conflict won’t be settled in the criminal courts of the United States.”

Fun quote #2: The lone guilty finding against Salah related to a written response in which he denied being a Hamas member that was made in a civil suit won by the family of David Boim, a 17-year-old American killed in Israel in 1996. Piers [defense attorney] said he expected the $156 million judgment in that case to be overturned on appeal. [The parents accused Salah and Ashqar of conspiring to kill their son via donations to Hamas] The trial saw an unprecedented appearance by agents of Israel's Shin Bet intelligence service, who testified in disguise to a cleared courtroom. They reportedly said Salah was not tortured.

Hillarity #3: [Riotous shill, Judith] Miller testified that she saw no evidence of mistreatment when she witnessed an interrogation of Salah and -- in an unprecedented twist for a U.S. courtroom -- two Israeli interrogators testified under aliases that Salah was treated well. (wapo)

What's really interesting is the level of desire to point to Hamas as the issue. Places that are known for good research, like the 9/11 Finding Answers foundation, put the Ikhwan/Muslim Brotherhood and their ties to Hamas down (properly) as a source of violence, but to whom and in what context? In our governments specific fight against "funding sources of terrorist organizations," they've fallen down here, blowing legit chances at unraveling knots by refusing to show how threads are connected, regardless of the clear connections in that region. But here? Our own ties with Israel make our funding pursuit look more and more like a pro-Israel "witchhunt" rather than an exposure of how violent NGOs continue to get funded.

I can haz drm free mp3z?

Apple dropped it's price on DRM-free MP3's to $0.99 (some DRM tracks are $0.89, see ArsTechnica, WSJ) via iTunes Plus, just like all their other tracks; and Amazon (from $0.89 and up) and WalMart ($0.94/ea) are starting to offer DRM-free MP3 downloads - what is this world coming to!

http://icanhaz.com/mp3z?

Never mind that Apple embeds your name in their DRM-free tracks - they're 256 kbps instead of the normal +DRM 128 kbps iTunes tracks. Amazon's are 256 vbr, fyi.

Correction, MobileSafari - and Crashes

Sweet. My iPod Touch crashed while browsing the csis site yesterday and I barely knew it - I thought it just dropped me back to the main app launcher screen because I mistapped or accidentally did some combination. But, no, it actually crashed.

How did I know? Next time I hooked kitterpod up to synch, iTunes asked (something like), "Hey, there, I see you've had a crash, would you like to report it to Apple?" I clicked "totally" before I could get a screenshot, but Apple keeps all the crashlogs on the local computer:

The crash file contains an Incident Identifier - seems obvious, to track the incident, a CrashReporter Key - which merits more digging, since it looks like a SHA-1 hash or maybe an actual encryption key? (lunixnerts) - bytes free, bytes wired, the app that's about to jettison and a ps list. Woot! OS X, for one, and the crashy app is called MobileSafari. Who knows where else MobileSafari might be deployed?

Incident Identifier: 2F067E21-C4EF-42FA-B970-D3CB90754080
CrashReporter Key:   [redacted]
OS Version:          OS X 1.1.1 (3A110a)
Date:                2007-10-10 21:59:34 -0600

1449984 bytes free
34918400 bytes wired
About to jettison: MobileSafari

Processes
 PID  RPRVT  RSHRD  RSIZE Command
   1   148K   220K   236K launchd
  13   344K   176K   536K CommCenter
  15  6.44M  13.5M  8.31M SpringBoard
  16   664K   208K   836K configd
  17   192K   176K   352K crashreporterd
  18  1.54M   272K  2.07M iapd
  19   296K   292K   524K mDNSResponder
  20   404K   356K   676K lockdownd
  21   188K   224K   272K syslogd
  22  84.0K   180K   112K update
  23   292K   264K   484K ptpd
  26   188K   208K   252K notifyd
 419   840K   784K  1.31M mediaserverd
 430  11.4M  13.0M  19.3M MobileSafari
 434   312K   320K   896K crashdump

**End**

Dropping one back to the main screen seems like a fairly decent way of handling a crash or a bug on this platform. Not knowing immediately that I'd crashed, I went back to Safari, sorry MobileSafari, and it restarted with the same pages I had in place - at the time, csis, a csis pdf, and JiveTalk beta for iPhone - all of which reloaded. And crashed. But eventually, kept going.

iPod Caturday

Safari on iPod Touch doesn't do SVG

Safari on the iPod Touch doesn't do SVG. What you're not seeing there is the polygon layer north west of Manaus, Amazonia, Brazil. I wonder how much memory (and processor stress) the svg code would've been.

Safari on iPod Touch doesn't do Arabic

The iPod Touch's Safari browser shows Arabic characters as blocks.

I guess they couldn't afford the extra memory for the additional fonts for Safari "lite."

A Unicode sample page highlights the other character sets left off of the "Safari-light" that's on the iPhone and Touch - Devangari (Hindi) and varietals (Tamil, Bengali, Gujrati), Arabic, Tibetan, Tagalog, Thai, and Hebrew, among others.

wwj update

I've updated the wwc wwj project on JavaForge with the latest NASA wwj source, in trunk\worldwind.release and have added tags for previous releases (05/11, original; 08/17, latest; and 09/15). Don't ask me why the latest download of wwj points to 08/18/2007 or the sourceforge version is still 05/11/2007, but they are.

Government Contracting Transition Comment

The best commentary on government contracting agency transition can be summed up by the hypochonriac post-modern poet Thom York on his album Eraser, with the track, Black Swan. (preview)

Dumb and Dumberer

Which is stupider the Biden-Brownback Iraqi partition bill or the Leiberman-Kyl blind rage run-up to a war on Iran bill?

All the throngs of readers of this prolific blog will recognize, I find it the height of hubris for our domestic pandering Neanderthals, Congress, to start pretending they’re aware of or anything north of Minnesota or south of Galveston Island. For these people, the rest of the world is one big photo op and list topper for the last few years, the prize paparazzi joint, has been the horrifically dangerous Iraq, the one place these people can’t get into fast enough so they can decry how quickly our troops should be getting out.

Add to this the almost universal and unexplainable zeitgeist of hatred spewing out towards Iran this week coupled with the handjobbery and backpattery from all sides, from the president of Columbia University, to Fred Thompson, Newt Gingrich and Socialist radio personalities on Air America, all falling over to up the count of how many times they can say “evil” and “Ahmedinejad” with the same breath.

Literally everyone is trying to point the finger at someone else, preferably someone of the brownish persuasion, about who’s to blame for Iraq – it’s either the Iraqis themselves or their neighbors who are causing our boys and our country to fail – not in any way us. Introspecting or discussing what’s within our power to change is liable to be branded either “planning to fail” or not wanting to succeed. Try getting a radio talk show host to define what “success” looks like in Iraq without rehashing Bush’s vague “stable democracy that supports America.”

With General Petraus stating that Iran is waging a proxy war against us, it’s opened the door for a bipartisan photo op of unprecedented damage, garnering 73 votes in the Senate for the Leiberman-Kyl bill that states we should go ahead with a covert war against Iran. Let’s not bother questioning whether this is a consequence of short term policy decisions on either side or whether there’s any implications beyond this week’s Iran hating press cycle. First off, we should acknowledge that Iraq’s a mess of corruption and multiple attitudes towards all insurgents of all stripes and that there are any number of organizations that would fund combatants and supply arms to those combatants, from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Israel, yes, Iran, and geez, guess who, us (ref. all the dead Anbar leaders). It’s myopic and retarded to think that Iraq’s neighbors aren’t going to try to influence Iraq in a multitude of ways and, eventually, one of those ways will blow up or fly at supersonic speeds and kill one of our boys. Second, if intentionally killing one of our soldiers were a cause for war, we would’ve attacked Israel long, long ago.

With the popular outrage of the progress of the war in Iraq and the general apathy and ignorance towards the Middle East in this country, the desire for having our troops get out of Iraq is growing. One of the more stupid ideas has been peddled by Senator Biden for a few years now and it’s a “weak federal government, strong ethno-regional state government, and equal oil distribution” plan. In the historical categories of occupation, it falls somewhere in the annals of colonial strategies, something like divide-and-conquer but with a twist of ostrich – run away and hide your head from the consequences. It’s clear that the heyday of colonialism is long past, yet Biden thinks it’s World War 1 again, where the west has the power to divide a country via our perception, like a modern day Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, of their ethnic differences – whee, he figured out that there are 3 (never mind all the others) types of brown people! – and then expect things to work out. It’s also clear, historically, that if you want to do divide-and-conquer you have to have enforcement, like the British did during the Raj (twist your Google Earth centered on Baghdad a few longitudes to the left) with their governors and strict rule enforcement. Also never mind that we’ve already done our version of it, with the Coalition Provisional Authority and L. Paul Bremer. It takes a lot of gall to suggest a colonial model – something we as Americans have always shunned – and then follow it up with “it’ll all just work out.”

I can’t imagine anything stupider than our domestics thinking their beltway ideas have any effect beyond our borders.

how right you are

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/09/a-feeling-im-be.html

Thanks to Jared for pointing this to me.

I'd say the same thing, except it'd come out "angry" instead of Scott Adams' "parody."

jury selection and rhetorical one upsmanship

Two quick things:

Yesterday, jury selection started in the Florida Liberty City Seven "cell," the Seas of David (Orlando Sentinel) who were caught "plotting" to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower (none of them had ever been to Chicago) - jury selection's expected to last 3 months. It should be interesting to see what comes out of this trial - the details of the FBI agent(s) posing as Al Qaeda, the details of the martial-arts organization and their connections with the Moorish Science Temple, and how the public regards another terror trial.
We all know that after 9/11 other countries have been using the word "terrorist" willy-nilly to crack down on their unruly groups, but Israel's gone one better labeling the whole Gaza Strip as an "enemy entity" (Reuters) bringing in a pseudolegal justification of their apartheid. One wonders why they need to play rhetorical games when they've done so well without it?

Caturday

i can has kebart?

i can has monotral?

Caturday: War Games Edition

at NORAD	with Matthew Broderick
WOPR	WOPR

Firefox 2.0.0.6: add-ons not upgrading

I received this message after upgrading to Firefox 2.0.0.6: "this add-on will be upgraded when firefox is restarted" for almost all of my add-ons (ietab, bugmenot, firebug, delicious, tabmixplus, etc).

Solution? Delete this file and restart Firefox.

C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\{profile_salt}\extensions.cache

or, for Vista:

C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\ Firefox\Profiles\{profile_salt}\extensions.cache

Caturday: Travel Edition

In honor of traveling this weekend, here's a caturday from Istanbul, Turkey. Sreeping near a car wheel well to avoid the breeze, Taksim district.

Caturday

Yes, I know the internets thinks that Friday is Caturday, but it's not.

World Wind forum placeholders

Cache usage
http://forum.worldwindcentral.com/showthread.php?t=9507&page=2

The single-use cache is only one of the several places image/data files are cached or drawn from. It's not even the default preferred place. See config/DataFileCache.xml for the list of cache locations and the documentation. New locations can be added there, location priorities rearranged, or locations deleted. In practice, users want to draw cached imagery and data from several places simultaneously, both local, remote, and on removable media.

Currently the cache configuration file is drawn from worldind.jar. If you want to change the configuration, make your own cache config file. Then clone config/worldwind.properties, where the config file name is specified. Change the config file location/name in that new file to the name of your new cache configuration file, and specify the new worldwind.properties file as an argument to the JVM: -Dgov.nasa.worldwind.config.file=myworldw ind.properties. It can also be set by the application by setting the DATA_FILE_CACHE_CONFIGURATION_FILE_NAME property on Configuration immediately upon the start of the application.

GLPanel

http://forum.worldwindcentral.com/showthread.php?t=9627

GLJPanel doesn't work. Don't even try. There are still several issues with using JOGL in a JPanel cross-platform. We're working with Sun on them.

Vista: Cancel or Allow? Apple: Allow!

Omg, the day has finally come! Yay, yay, dance of joy!

Apple's iTunes 7.2 with QuickTime 7.1.6 has finally gotten Vista support! Well played, Apple. Waiting almost 6 months to release the killer app, iTunes, that doesn't force Windows Vista to barf out of Aero - the singular reason to even look at Vista - and into Vista Basic, a user experience not worth the experience.

For you, Apple, for finally allowing Vista to be usable on a daily basis, you get One Balki, the highest honor any company can ever expect to receive:

+ = (Crazy Delicious!)

Hypermiling...

After listening to a segment on NPR's Living on Earth and Jack sending me an MSNBC article on hypermiling, where people change their driving behavior to extract the most amount of milage per gallon, I decided to give it my own non-scientific try.

The article mentions these tips for trying to maximize mileage but I have a very small brain and am wholly non-committal about eating raw foods, etc, so I picked a few things that I thought I could do for the day; these are highlighted in bold:

Avoid jackrabbit starts.
Slightly overinflate tires.
Shift into neutral when going downhill.
Drive 5 mph below the speed limit, but stay in the right lane.
Coast to a stop at red lights.
Shut off the air conditioner.
Monitor your mileage on a real-time gauge and adjust as you go.
Draft sensibly behind tractor-trailers.
Know alternate routes to avoid stop-and-go traffic.
Park at the highest point in parking lot and let gravity get the car moving.

I think I already stay in a higher gear than is probably recommended (cutting down on engine use) and use engine braking enough, so getting to coasting to a stop wasn't a problem. It's a bit strange to hold in the clutch to put the engine in neutral at various times during driving, though. Instead of "avoiding jackrabbit starts" which, honestly, is a travesty and malfeasance of driving S4, I would go over the speed limit and then push in the clutch, "pulsing" my driving. It reminded me of how tentative grandmothers (or my mom, sorry mom!) drive. I could see there being a sort of art to figuring out when to overshoot so that the ups and downs in the road could be maximized. Doing that, alone, got me this picture:

That was taken in a 30 mph zone, so I'm just above the speed limit before I have to pulse again. Note my low RPMs, my 133.0 mpg, and that I'm listening to KGNU. My readout maxxes at 200 mpg and I saw that a few times, too, on my 15 minute drive to work. So, pretty cool. And it does have a net effect. My overall avg mpg for the day was just about 30, which is way above my normal 21-23 mpg. (I also put the A/C on "econ" instead of "auto," but it was a cool day today.) That 9 mpg difference is like (1.3 miles/day, 0.3 gallons/day...) about $230/year at $3.20/gallon here. If I kept it up it might be worth it, but after a day of experimentation I've sort of had enough.

This brings me to my conclusion: Hypermiling is dangerous and stupid. I took a picture while driving, I was in neutral a whole lot when I shouldn't've been (slaloming through parking lots, just gliding along), I was watching my dynamic mpg readout, I was trying not to apply the breaks and attempting to time when people in front of me would go fast enough, etc - I wasn't paying attention to driving, I was paying attention to maximizing my desire to save gas, or whatever hypermilers think they're doing. I was endangering myself and others. Encouraging mpg-thirsty drivers to draft along with trucks is just irresponsible, even if there're caveat-words like "sensibly" attached to recommendations. Since when've words stopped people from doing stupid things? Driving is ultimately a community experience - you look out for everyone else and hopefully they're trying not to hit you, too. It's ironic that people who're ostensibly trying to save the environment (and presumably the people that live in the environment) are selfishly endangering others.

One of my first thoughts was that people could put up a sign or a bumper sticker that said "Hypermiler on Board" and that way people would know that this car was going to be driving erratically like a new teenager or Mr. Magoo. We're already a society of people who drive like idiots, barely having to take any sort of formal driving classes beyond our sweet 16's. I don't think getting a few more mpg is justification enough for trying out or even practicing a new method of driving. Add this new way to eating while... , talking on the cell while..., and applying makeup while... and the net effect would probably be enough to get Ralph Nader in a twitter. The upside of self-identifying hypermilers would be that when a law is passed, we'd all be able to see who the irresponsible ones are.

The issue with me is obviously how people drive. We'd all be better off if we taught people how to drive, drive defensively, and maybe even to drive in an "hypermiling" manner (a "more efficient" manner might be less 'activist'). Sure, but this isn't IndoctrinationCampistan. People do what they want with an in their cars. The federal government gives us tips to drive more efficently and maintain our cars, but that's the extent of it. I don't think Colorado even requires any length of formalized driving education. In Illinois, it was just a bunch of 15 and 16 y/o's flirting with each other for a few hours a week while we watched movies from the 60's and 70's and some parallel parking. Years afterwards, with bad habits developed, an HBO special and some wapo and npr articles aren't going to make everyone straighten up.

Who knows, maybe there'll be a lane for the driving equivalent of the Ministry of Silly Walks.

Anbar Sheiks: No Cigar, but Other Huge News

Jack sent me an article from MSNBC that had this great picture of an Anbar province Iraqi shiek having a cigar with a US military commander. The article went on to describe how the US is making friends with the Sunnis of Anbar. I found it all ironic and just another rotation of the short-term US spotlight on various Iraqi ethnofactions in order to curry US domestic short term political gain. Then again, I'm opinionated and jaded. First, no-fly Kurds, then appeasing the Shia majority, now, pretending like minority Sunnis give a crap about the US just to appease surrounding Sunni states (Egypt, Saudi and the gulf emirates, and Jordan). At least they're getting closer to getting neighboring buy-in, only 4 years too late. They'll turn against us just like all of them do as our support wanes with our political tides.

Lucian Read / Atlas Press for Newsweek Smoking Buddies: Marine Lt. Col. Craig Kozeniesky shares a cigar with Sheik Shakir Saoud Aasi, one of his new tribal allies

The much bigger and historic news is the diplomatic meeting between us and Iran this weekend. I'm literally agape at the whole thing, given the rhetoric on both sides, but it's much more of a real path to stablizing the region than a cigar/hooka exchange. This story's already faded from the front pages, which is also telling as to how serious the US populace and media consider the breaking of a 25 year diplomatic freeze.

Two New World Wind Java Articles

I've begun two documents about integrating the NASA World Wind Java SDK into the Eclipse framework - Creating Plug-Ins out of World Wind and Hello, Globe! (basic integration). They're in process, so I wouldn't mind any feedback. They're a bit light on justifications of the Eclipse framework, so they're more suited to people familiar with Eclipse.

World Wind placeholders

From the forums regarding the future plans for the Java SDK

There is no feature roadmap written down.

What's troubling me today is not that NASA isn't elaborating on their goals for the WWJ SDK other than what they've already said ("The goal is 100s of World Winds, not one. That's why NASA created WWJ as a Java component. NASA has no plans to create a World Wind Java client similar to World Wind .Net. They plan only to continue to develop and expand the SDK." - WWJ FAQ) though that statement is a bit ominous (open source, vague/unstated patch & development process), but the minor technical discoveries I'm making as I use the SDK. There's a real overuse of static members and methods that is complicating the process of trying to douse how NASA intends the use of this SDK. For example, layer classes have a construtor that requires a LayerSet or PlacenameSet to have already been created. That means a static method. This makes it appear that almost all their AbstractLayer derived code isn't designed for extension or reuse but as an example of how to create a Layer - and that means a lot of redundancy. The options are to change the source and allow for a constructor that doesn't require LevelSet/PlaceNameSet (cons: changing the code means changing their SDK code) or copy wholesale and reproduce what appear to be core SDK classes, such as. TiledImageLayer and PlaceNameLayer.

The other thing that irks me and irks me bad is the variety of OGL implementations on various video cards. Though this appears to be a case of "it's the video card manufacturer's issue, not NASA's" it becomes a very large barrier to adoption when an example works perfectly on one machine (ATi X1500), partially on another (ATi FireGL 5200), and is an abysmal failure on a third (Intel Extreme). To me, this is a massive user acceptance issue. I see a lot of people (primarily through failed demos or inability to see their own houses with ease) discounting a WWJ-derived app due to driver issues.

The Disappearing NASA MMO

Unbeknownst to me, NASA had a proposal to develop a MMO (massively multiplayer online) environment a la SecondLife or World of Warcraft with a budget of $3M that was cancelled or tabled before it was reviewed. Word got out enough for John Carmack to propose assistance.

(from the Proposal)
Intramural Call for Proposal Ideas (ICPI)
Fiscal Year 2007
Internal Call for Proposal Ideas
NASA Learning Technologies
ICPI Schedule
Release of ICPI: March 20, 2007
Notices of Intent Due: April 20, 2007
Notices of Intent Decisions: April 30, 2007
Final Proposals Due: June 29, 2007
Selection: July 31, 2007
Announcement of Awards: September 1, 2007

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) have characteristics that set them apart from other games. They are shared spaces where hundreds, thousands and even millions of players can experience the same game. They are persistent and evolving online environments. For example, with a stand-alone game, the game environment turns on and off at the user's whim and is essentially loaded with all of its potential states when it is shipped from the factory. If there is a sequel, the new game comes with a brand new, though probably familiar, game environment. MMOGs, in contrast, run continuously. Actions by players can alter the game world and the game creators can change features of the world through expansions or patches. The persistent and evolving nature of MMOGs makes them more like the real world and less like the static, intermittent nature of stand-alone games. The game setting in MMOGs, is thus a synthetic world, while the game setting of a stand-alone game is not.

A massively multiplayer online NASA game can be built with the primary goal of engaging young people in NASA’s mission. The power of games as educational tools is rapidly gaining recognition (Gee, 2003). NASA is in a position to develop an online game that functions as a persistent, synthetic environment supporting education as a laboratory, a massive visualization tools and collaborative workspace while simultaneously drawing users into a challenging, game-play immersion. Innovative university faculty are already holding classes and taking fieldtrips to synthetic worlds like Star Wars Galaxies and Second Life (Thomas, 2005). A NASA game built on a game engine that includes full physics capabilities will support accurate in-game experimentation and research. It will present real NASA engineering and science missions in a medium that is comfortable and familiar to the overwhelming majority of students in the United States today. A NASA-inspired game will provide opportunities for students to investigate Science, Technology, Engineering and Technology (STEM) career paths. A NASA game can contribute to the development of the critical skills and capabilities needed to build a pipeline of qualified scientific and technical employees required to fulfill the Vision for Space Exploration. Recently, both Time and Fortune have recognized synthetic environments and robust and significant technology entering mainstream society. The MacArthur Foundation, the Federation of American Scientists and National Science Foundation have all identified computer games as significant educational tools. A Horizons of Technology report marked massively multiplayer online games as one of the technologies with the greatest potential to impact education in the next decade.

A game-quality synthetic environment will be a vital element of NASA's cyberstructure. The synthetic world will be a collaborative work and meeting space of a kind familiar to increasing numbers of Americans. Games and challenges in the synthetic environment will engage students in a way that is both familiar and comfortable for them. In turn, success in the games will build increased student awareness of STEM fields. The synthetic environment will allow immersive career exploration opportunities in a much deeper way than reading alone would permit and at a fraction of the time and cost of an internship.

World Wind placeholders

I'm following some threads on the World Wind forums and whenever an official NASA WWJ Developer (Tom Gaskins or Dave Collins) responds, it's worth noting. For me, that means here. Hopefully I'll use it later. Nothing to see here, move along.

On use of InterpolatorTimer.ViewProperties:

"What is it you're trying to do?

We decided that InterpolatorTimer was not the appropriate class for app control of viewing. It's really an internal class. We're modifying the View interface to handle many of the cases we saw people using InterpolaterTime for. Let us know what you're intent is so we can be sure to support it in the changes."

On Eclipse Public License compatability with NOSA:

"The intent is that World Wind can be distributed with RCP (or other) applications. We haven't studied the EPL, however, so I can't give you a legal answer. Clearly we'll have to come up with one, though. Consider it "on the list.""

On JOGL versions:

"The old JOGL libraries are almost certainly the problem. You must remove them from the classpath. Then please see the "Having Problems" section at http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/java and follow the instructions there."

On RPF and RPF Layers:

"That's right, the RPF converters are not yet in the release."

On flying to a Lat/Lon:

My apologies for this, it's a known issue with the current View implementation. We do have a workaround, but it's not intuitive.

(1) Set the View's latitude and longitude coordinates.
(2) Set the View's zoom to your desired altitude.

This workaround is appropriate only when the View's pitch is equal to zero (see like 4 in the code below).

Code:

1 gov.nasa.worldwind.geom.LatLon myLatLon = ...;
2 double myAltitude = ...;
3 View myView = ...;
4 myView.setPitch(gov.nasa.worldwind.geom.Angle.ZERO);
5 myView.goToLatLon(myLatLon);
6 myView.setZoom(myAltitude);

If this works for you, please let me know. I'd like to post this in the official WWJ space if it's useful for anyone.

software architect thought of the day

rearranging auto-generated reverse-engineered uml class diagrams is architect sudoku.

World Wind Eclipse RCP, Step 1: View

Here's an Eclipse View with NASA's World Wind from the Java SDK 0.2.

It's not terribly exciting at the moment, since it's just an SWT_AWT bridge with the JOGL component in it, but it's a start! Note the Swing->SWT status bar interaction. More to come.

Enemy Combatant to Cell Supporter

2002 - Jose Padilla picked up and accused of planning a "dirty bomb" plot, stuffed in a Navy brig not to be seen for 3.5 years.
2007 - Fast forward 5 years, he's in civilian court being accused of supporting/organizing a cell in Florida assisting resistance/jihad in BCA (Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan), along with Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, "providing material support to extremist groups."

Never one to be accused of repeating the obvious, I'll say it looks as if the legal system is being consistent, going for whatever they can make most easily stick, ie the low-hanging fruit. One could also state this in a way that faults the government - they're CYA'ing themselves by not revealing "national secrets" regarding the dirty bomb.

Another way to interpret this is that the lowering of the bar, ie going from terrorism to being a cheerleader as well as punting it to civilian court, is further widening the net to include anyone who's ever given money to support anyone in BCA. Yes, that's broad, but if that's the "scare" that then narrows to "evidence," (again, not to state the obvious) check your charitable records from pre-9/11 because if terrorism or the hint of terrorism is prosecutable in civilian instead of military court, I can't wait to watch the torts.

Btw, the government's evidence is a "job application."
ref: A first look at US case against Padilla, Christian Science Monitor

WorldWind goes Java

It's been in the works for over a year now, and NASA, today, is finally releasing a SDK of WorldWind for Java. Patrick Hogan, the Project Manager for NASA's WorldWind which, up until now, has been a Microsoft .NET application, explains in a JavaOne session yesterday: CNet Video.

NASA WorldWind Java SDK or sourceforge
WorldWind Community (open source community) Wiki page on WorldWind Java and Forums for WWJ

The .NET application, version 1.4, is still available as well as the source code. There's much speculation on the WorldWind open source community about the future of the .NET version. Hogan says that NASA will turn it's efforts back to the .NET codebase as interest in the Java version picks up, but that hasn't stopped the community's worries. On the Microsoft platform, ESRI has dominated the GIS space, while most of the innovation in open source GIS has been in the C++ and Java languages, geared to either cross-platform or linux use. That's a bit of a generalization, but it's useful to see why a successful open source globe viewer like WorldWind .NET could easily (and quickly) be overshadowed by a proliferation of WW Java SDK based apps.

I'm hoping to pop out an Eclipse RCP based one, but that's dependent on how good the AWT/JOGL wrangling goes into SWT.

Here are my first impressions.

Meanwhile, another, usually under the radar, government agency gets all paranoid: (I've blinded myself with bad puns!) Intel chief: Curbs on public satellite photos may be needed, Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, NGIA director, May 8, 2007

05/11/2007 Edit: NASA reupped their Sourceforge and their zip includes two demo jars (worldwind.jar 4.5mb, BasicDemo.jar 10k)which don't run. For all those people looking to download a SDK and double-click stuff, they'll be disappointed. Granted, it'd be nice if they did have working demos for simple people, but download it anyway and build it yourself, you'll be pleased.

Vista: Cancel or Allow? Dell: Allow Cancel

Dell is now offering WindowsXP as an option to purchasers of their home computers, something they'd previously stopped when Vista came out. Apparently, people figured out that Vista's kinda crap.

"We heard you loud and clear on bringing the Windows XP option back to our Dell consumer PC offerings," Dell responded in a Web posting Thursday.

From PC maker Dell again offers Windows XP, Seattle PI, today.

network traffic

Lots of network traffic lately and wireshark revealed that it's these guys Project Playlist, a "service" for myspace noobs and, what looks like, gang members, to stream mp3s. Well, our friend Cameron's blog playlist. somehow got on their site, causing my pipe to be filled. That's lame of them, but whatever. All fixed. Carry on.

Me, a documentarian?

The one non-automated reader of this blog might be astute enough to note that every so often I dink around with spinny globe apps and that the one I use for screenshots, etc. of locations is NASA WorldWind. It's an open source .NET (soon to be Java) application and that means I should be poking about in the code. I try to, honestly, but when work's a soul-sucking morass, it doesn't make me want to play with my hobby. Anyhow, back to the point you didn't see coming: I made some documentation. (Said cute, like a child who's done something wrong and knows it). At least I didn't say it like Michael Moore.

I used the vendor-neutral Doxygen and the vendor-specific (Microsoft) Sandcastle tools to create NASA WorldWind 1.4.0 API documentation on my WorldWind dev page. Yay for default settings (and slight tweakings)! Sandcastle took about 17 minutes to run through the svn source and produce the HTML, etc. Not too bad.

I'm sure the NASA WorldWind community will be adding in doc generation into (at least) the nightly builds and will hopefully host the docs off their wiki, so whether (and god forbid) this is the permanent location, I don't know. What I do know is that I'll be making tweaks to both the doxyfile and the shfb and changing the look & feel (and content) of what's placed in the API docs. I'm also going to try to automate (NAnt or MSBuild) the doc production, but no promises!

3.3M6 and Vista

While I figure out where (and if) to post feedback on Eclipse's latest build for Windows Presentation Framework, I'm making a note of them here, so I can remember and then forget and later look at it winsomely years later trolling through my own blog and being embarassed.

3.3M6 WPF leaves up an communication error dialog box artifact when the Update Manager fails to connect to a server. It remains in the way of using the app's editor window. (Indiana University was chosen as the mirror site automatically, then failed/timed out. To get it to update, I had to manually chose OSU or something else.)
It also attempts to check all subupdate sites of an update site - eg, when I go to the Europa Discovery Site, it tries to download everything as the default option instead of letting me check the checkboxes near the entries I want. This has the consequence of stopping me from using Eclipse while it downloads, well, everything.
The Update Manager, when it does get everything finally loaded, flickers on expanding the list as it checks plug-in/feature dependencies.
Clicking "Filter other Features on the list" causes the UM to cycle through and enable check marks on all lists of updates. Sigh.
"Run in Background" for the update presents the same artifact (a dialog that won't go away and isn't updated) as per the first comment.
Spacing of text between lines on menus and trees seems a little larger than necessary

Can you tell I haven't even gotten updated yet?

Vista and WorldWind

First off, I purchased 2Gb for my Vista box and let's just say Vista is quite happy with 3Gb. I'd go so far as to say it's definitely much more usable when it's not constantly redlining its mem usage (at 1 Gb).

Vista introduces a new easy evaluation rating for your hardware, the "Windows Experience Index." This number (and set of sub-ratings) gives you an idea of how your computer's performing. I haven't looked into it too much, but it's not out of 5 and I don't think it's out of 10. The overall number is the lowest score you get out of the categories of Processor, Memory (RAM), Graphics, Gaming graphics, and Primary hard disk. My numbers (prior to the +2Gb RAM) were, respectively, 5.4, 4.5, 4.7, 4.2, and 5.7 giving me a Windows Experience Index of 4.2. After the extra RAM, my RAM number, 4.5, went up to 5.5 giving me a Windows Experience Index of 4.2 (the lowest number hadn't changed).

The idea of one number you can look at and see if your computer's up to snuff is a pretty neat idea, really, since you can ask your mom or dad what their number is and go and help them up it. It seems like it'd be a good thing for game manufacturers to say "You need at least at 3.0 to play this game," too. What the number really means is wholly unclear, plus lame. So, for doofuses, good, for me, opaque (like the Vista borders).

With that said and done, I figured it was time to take another tentative step and install a non-MS program that I know was developed with DX9 on this Vista/DX10 system. WorldWind's wiki says to disable UAC to install & run WorldWind but, even though I may not like UAC personally, it's in Vista and circumventing it instead of trying to live with it also circumvents the whole Vista experiment I'm doing. Cancel or Allow UAC - "Cancel or Allow?" Unfortunately, Allow.

There are some issues with UAC (User Access Control) that can be gotten around by installing an app outside C:\Program Files. I tried it both ways and the result?

... and no launch of the app. Just that. Whee. Time to download the sources and install Visual C# Express and build WW myself. (Yes, I know, world of hurt, etc.)

Vista - Catch and Release

Vista doesn't "crash" so much as catch itself crashing and restart Explorer. At least once a day.

Also for you, an article: The Most Annoying Things About Windows Vista, PC World, 02/2007

The new iTunes + QuickTime (7.1.5) doesn't solve the previous issue, where any QT using app drops to Vista Basic UI. Uninstalling only QT makes iTunes unuseable. Thanks ~~Microsoft~~ ~~Apple~~ someone (probably me, for "trying out" Vista in the first place.

That brings me back to the whole wtf about Vista - If apps you want to use cause you to diddle with settings instead of using the app, it's the equivalent of a home-grown computer system, a less interesting networked uber executor, a "linux" if you will.

The Vista verdict still remains sliding slowly to Cancel. I have ordered 2 more GB of RAM (5300, not the 4200 that came with the system, and not the 11600 that in theory the motherboard can handle) and hopefully that'll allow me to have more than 5 tabs in IE and Firefox open at once without lag when switching between them. Yes, seriously. I've installed like 6 non-MS apps on this machine, Adobe Lightroom, Trillian, Mozilla Firefox, Eclipse 3.3M5, SecureCRT, and 7-zip. I haven't installed more for fear of being further disappointed.

Vista - Getting to Cancel

So far, the benefits to going Vista boils down to Aero, the new UI with the pretty eye candy. If there's anything that stops Aero from working, I'm liable to make frownie fase and tell everyone I know to stay away from it. So...

Do not install QuickTime if you like Aero.

I installed QuickTime (7.1.3) because some webpage wanted it and suddenly Trilian (3.1) became the reason that Windows Vista alerted me that Windows Vista Basic was now the profile I was going to use, until I quit Trillian. If apps I use start not working, the OS becomes a non-starter.

Searching the web gives you some horsemung explanation of how QT and GDI and Trilian's av.dll and blah blah, but it boils down to having Areo diabled. That means no transparent borders on windows, no window sizing effects, no "Windows Flip 3D," and no toolbar minimized menu previews.

I ended up uninstalling QT, rebooting, reinstalling QT, making sure Trillian had no camera and no camera source. QT in web pages seem to work. When it's a random combo of things that work, that's called "fragile." The alternative, of course, is to not watch the Black Snake Moan trailer until Apple releases a QT that works with Vista.

Thing #2 is the native unzipper. I downloaded and proceeded to unzip Eclipse, the Java-based IDE (size: 120Mb), and Vista thought about it, then told me it'd take 5 hours and 36 minutes to extract. Seriously? Yes, 5+ hours. That's unacceptable, Vista. Fix that.

Third party unzip programs work great and as expected. I prefer 7-zip. But that's not the point. Out of the box, don't expect a coffee break when unzipping something (unless it's under 120Kb, aka 11 minutes), just go to bed. That's what I did.

Vista - Cancel or Allow?

Today's the third day of my life with Microsoft's newest Windows operating system, Vista. I purchased a new computer from Dell in order to replace an ailing development machine and decided to also throw Vista into the mix of integrating a new desktop into the network.

There are a few things that are striking:

Aero, the new "look & feel" for Vista, is very pretty - so pretty that when I look at the old G3 with Mac OS X Panther (10.3, the latest is 10.5) on it sitting off to my left, I realize where Windows got their inspiration for their resizable icons, animated window expansions, and backgrounds. It's still impressive to look at. "Windows Flip 3D" is an overly clever implementation of a much needed way to see all the open applications. Makes me want to open lots of applications just to see them in half-profile.
Installing applications is aggravating. Who knows when User Access Control or, as my brother puts it, the Department of Desktop Secruity, will come knocking, forcing the beautifully coifed but otherwise helpless onto the vast expanse of the internet where mostly Vista haters reside to find an answer. The much maligned Secure Desktop of the "Cancel or Allow" fame (it's "continue or cancel" really) blinks the monitor and turns everything else but the dialog box dark. That's like having someone slap you in the face randomly while having a pleasant conversation. It can be hobbled, but as people will lament, it takes away the secure desktop.
The sounds are soft and in the background, "part of the wallpaper" as they intended. They spent a lot of time and money on it, and I can barely hear the audio alerts. When I do, I'm in a peaceful trance or attempting to be really quiet and still so I can hear the alerts. Peaceful trance or audio equivalent of a deer in headlights - I dunno, one of the two.
Things XP just does, like finding printers, seems missing. It took me two tries and another visit into the meat-smelling wilds of the internet to find Microsoft fanbois in order to have Vista recognize the HP LaserJet 1100 attached to another networked computer.
Unzipping folders takes hours, literally. It's either a Vista bug or the Norton anti-virus checking each bit as its extracted. I haven't been able to emperically isolate who's screwed up here. Unzipping Eclipse (120mb zip) took 6 hours. Yes, hours. I went to bed.
The Dell Dimension 9200 is, amazingly, "out of the picture" - it's quiet and just performs. The operating system is the star here. That's refreshing to not feel like a patchwork of hardware's a hurdle. With that said, Dell peppers and customizes the OEM OS with enough tchotchkes and unnecssary and useless trial apps that, if I didn't know it was Vista, I'd swear it was a sponsored NASCAR jacket. I'm seriously considering reinstalling the OS just to get rid of Dell's preinstalled mung.

This is day three of the rest of my life: Cancel or Allow?

rebirth of the ipod - fat guy in a little suit

After determining that corporal punishment wasn't going to be a long term solution, I started sourcing hard drives for my ailing 20Gb 4G iPod. Quickly, I realized I could probably put an even larger hard drive than the original 20Gb (MK2006GAL) Toshiba 1.8 if I got a larger backplate. Uncertain whether it'd work, I looked briefly on the internet and couldn't get a decent affirmative response.

Oddly, I hadn't thought of eBay when looking for backplates or drives, until I started thinking about batteries. eBay (duh) has everything and more. So, I asked one of the 40Gb backplate sellers whether it'd work. "Winterpoem" was very helpful, but unfortunately his auction ended before I could buy it. $167 later and I had a 40Gb 4G backplate and a MK6006GAH, a 60Gb hard drive. The replacement was straightforward and now I have a 60Gb 4th Generation iPod. A new 5G 80Gb iPod's about $350, so I "saved" $187 and a 50 mile trip to the Apple Store. I consider that a good deal.

I'll probably end up buying a 1200mAh battery and an eVo2 iSkin that fits well (the 20Gb sized iSkin fits, but looks like a fat guy in a little suit, which is also fitting) which'll set me back another whopping $25.

I also forgot that they made 4G color iPods in the same size, so for another $100 (which'd've blown my budget) I could've gotten a color LCD (~$50) and a color motherboard (~$50).

As a last note, if you're selling (or reselling) your old 60Gb 4th gen iPod photo's HD on eBay, delete all the info from it, otherwise someone'll find your pictures and keep your music (which, in this case, wasn't worth it).

word

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O i'm in ur cities panicking ur DHS

Edit: what boston thought... (video)

Wow, Boston is Dumb or How You Know the Terrorists Have Won

So, yeah, ATHF made a PR stunt and now Boston's just getting around to realizing it and they've gone way off the deep end.

It's literally fantastic.

In a news conference, Rich told reporters he had advised his clients not to discuss the incident. Stevens and Berdovsky took the podium and said they were taking questions only about haircuts in the 1970s.
When a reporter accused them of not taking the situation seriously, Stevens responded, "We're taking it very seriously." Asked another question about the case, Stevens reiterated they were answering questions only about hair and accused the reporter of not taking him and Berdovsky seriously.
Reporters did not relent and as they continued, Berdovsky disregarded their queries, saying, "That's not a hair question. I'm sorry."

I love it. Of course, they're already on eBay.

I really want one. They're the defining symbol of the Global War on Terror. Oh, and how Boston's full of queahs.

This + 50 or so of these = GWOT Mooninite

old code

A while back, I made some odd grumbles about Java vs. NET and, in doing some early spring cleaning of code, I realized I didn't really bother to explain.

I'd made a NASA WorldWind placename converter - it read in WorldWind placename files (which were generated by NET) and displayed them as text, as shown here:

Since then, the latest version of WorldWind, 1.4 (which is in beta right now) has switched to using WFS (streaming, from the network) for placename display instead of reading from local files, cutting down on 215 mb of installation size.

A year ago I was stabbing blindly at SWT and will probably update this code since I'm so smrater to JFace and/or an RCP editor, but if anyone wants to see the current code (and JUnit test case!), feel free to let me know.

50.92877, -1.423974

That's Southhampton, UK's Bellemoor School for Boys where two prankish Year Eleven youths poured weed killer in the shape of a dongule on their school lawns. Smart chaps killed the grass long enough for satellites to pick it up and propagate it. Cheerio, lads! That'll get you your A levels, indeed.

Microsoft's Virtual Earth has 2006 imagery which still shows it, Yahoo! maps with iCubed imagery doesn't get close enough, and Google Earth and maps has 2007 imagery, where the "dark mark" has been reseeded.

web 2.0 t-shirt

The t-shirt of snake oil's is overshadowed by the description of it:

Web 2.0 Shirt

Fresh out of gamma and filled with Ajaxy goodness, our buzzword-compliant Web 2.0 Tee tells the world you’re ready to be acquired by Google. Or if need be, by Yahoo. Or AOL, if it comes to that. Nothing says, “I might be a billionaire tomorrow (so come home with me tonight)” like this funky, twin-sleeved wonder. Did you lose your shirt during Web 1.0? Wear this one, and pretend you have a future!

That didn't take long

My expected temporary fix for my iPod has shown its limitations: iPod won't sync as of this weekend and is exhibiting the One Infinite Click again.

Aggressively reseating* the hard drive worked, again, but I've got plans to order a HD (and battery, just for fun). Still doing a bit of research on whether it's worth trying to "go big" with a larger hd in the iPod.

Also, attempting to use CDs in the car is a strange thing to do.

Yaay, blogging.

* Oh, ps, there was one "technique" I left off of the One Infinite Click post - smacking the iPod. Yes, actually physically assaulting the thing is something that the internets recommends due to the Toshiba single-platter 20gb hds having a tendancy to get "stuck." A "stuck" hd is not a good thing, clearly, but resuscitating the thing so that cost/benefit replacement ratios can be debated isn't terrible. Thwaping it means it's going down anyhow, might as well get some pleasure out of it. And, yes, I did hit the crap out of the hd to make it work.

Zamzola vs. Damadola

This is for all you Google searches hitting here: Zamzola, South Waziristan (32.6919444, 70.0863889) (where the Pakistani military strafed villagers using a helicopter, claiming it as an anti-Al Qaeda operation, while the villagers insist it was missiles from a US plane, causing the Pakistanis to have to deny that the US was in any way involved furthering the oft repeated dance by the Pakistani military to assert it's sovereignty looking tough for the US while oppressing its own people) is not Damadola, North Waziristan (34.8055556, 71.4666667) (where, last year around this time, we tossed a Hellfire missile at some buildings, hoping to smush Zawahiri, and missed).

Thank you.

screenshot of Damadola and Zamzola from NASA WorldWind 1.4rc4

Mullah Omar in Pakistan... or Afghanistan?

Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban that OBL once called "the Caliph," has eluded the NATO & US forces since the beginning of the operation in Afghanistan. His whereabouts are suspected to be in Afghanistan, but Afghani Secret Services' recent captures of Taliban spokesmen has put that in doubt, continuing the spat between the countries of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Al Jazeera reports that Nato-led troops and Afghan forces arrested Muhammad Hanif, a Taliban spokesman, in Nangarhar province in the east after he crossed through a border checkpoint from Pakistan.

Al Jazeera, 01/17/2005

On Monday, NATO caught a top spokesman for the Taliban and on Tuesday, another.

The captured militant, whom NATO did not identify, had fled another recent offensive by Afghan and NATO forces in the south of the country, the alliance said. He was captured in the Gereshk district of Helmand province late Tuesday
Sayed Ansari, the spokesman for Afghanistan's intelligence service, told reporters Wednesday that the Taliban spokesman's real name is Abdulhaq Haji Gulroz, a 26-year-old Afghan from Nangarhar's Chaparhar district.
Ansari said Hanif had lived in northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar and had told investigators that the Taliban's reclusive leader Mullah Omar was living in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, protected by that country's intelligence agency.

Afghan raid nets Taliban chief, 01/17/2007

"He lives in Quetta," Hanif says of Omar, as he sits in an oversized chair in a dimly lit room, as Afghan agents pepper him with questions. "He is protected by ISI," the 26-year old said in a quiet voice, referring to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Captured Taliban spokesman says militant leader lives in Pakistan, International Herald Tribune, 01/17/2007

This capture was confirmed by another Taliban spokesperson, Qari Yousef Ahmadi. This spokesperson, Ahmadi, contradicted a 12/13/2006 US report of having killed a top Taliban commander in Helmand province, Afganistan, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani. He did confirm the death of four Taliban commanders, including Mullah Abdul Zahir.

Quetta's the capital of Baluchistan province in Pakistan, a city of approx. 800k people and something like the 9th largest city.

A few days ago, on 01/05, Qatar's Gulf Times/Reuters published that Mullah Omar is in e-mail contact with the world and OBL and claims he's in Afghanistan.

So, who's to be believed? Pakistan's history of dissembling and mismanagement of their tribal areas vs. a Taliban PR guy who could very well be lying. Or, if he's not and there is protection from the Pakistani government, he's in no trouble revealing that fact, because no one in Pakistan'll scour Quetta.

Random

Once More Into the Security Breach, an op-ed by wirter Kathyrn Harrison on how flying's so secure.

World of Warcraft 'Code Monkey' song - m4a (iTunes/QuickTime) format. Humor.

programming on atari - an image of the glory days of programming when gravity didn't exist.

Bin Laden & Zawahiri's Excellent Adventures

Along with the Frontline report about the resurgence of the Taliban, a recent interview with Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, it's starting to feel a lot like deja vu around here. (Sure, there's some diplomatic dance off's going on with Iran, but that's just pretty-stepping.)

Three weeks ago, Pakistani satellite station Geo TV conducted an interview with the Afghan warlord that was just aired, confirming that OBL and Zawahiri were taken to an undisclosed location during the 2001 Tora Bora attacks.

Hekmatyar was a big Northern Alliance player and ally of ours against the Soviets during our clandestine guerrilla war in the 1970's which left Afghanistan in ruins, associating with OBL back when it was cool do to so. I still feel that this indicates OBL & Zawahiri are in Pakistan (and at the very least have enjoyed tacit cover by Pakistan) due to Hekmatyar's intimate association with the ISI. Since preferring to fight rather than participate in what he sees as an occupying force/government, he's been in hiding and is rarely heard from. In the 70's he formed a political party that's active in Pakistan, Hizb-i-Islami (Party of Islam) and was Prime Minister of Afghanistan from '93-'94. That's influence.

That he bailed when the Taliban took over in the mid '90s to live in Iran for a while makes some people think he's in with the Iranians and, therefore, an "undisclosed area" could possibly be in Iran. US pressure kicked Hekmatyar out of Iran. Get that? US pressure - that means us - on Iran - which further means we've got relations with Iran - made Hekmatyar a persona non grata there. So, more likely, the 2nd best place after Pakistan for hiding, would be Turkmenistan.

Al-Qaeda 'rebuilding' in Pakistan, BBC News, Friday, 12 January 2007, 04:49 GMT

Watch and Listen

Two things, one to watch, one to listen:

Frontline's excellent summary documentary on Pakistan and the Taliban, The Return of the Taliban. It's all on line. Watch it. Or, if you like, catch it on HD on PBS.
Soundprint's Feminism and the Veil. A great piece on the use of the veil in contemporary Egyptian society. Listen (when they put it up on line).
KGNU's Thursday Call In Show is on "Shi'ite and Sunni Islam," 01/11/2006 @ 6pm MST, a chat with Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni, an Iraqi Shia alim, and part of Denver's St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral's interfaith organization "Abrahamic Initiative" and head of the Islamic Center of Ahl Al-Beit in west Denver.

Solving my iPod's "One Infinite Click"

A few days ago, my 4th gen monochrome 20gb iPod refused to synch or be recognized by iTunes. It was making the oft mentioned and characteristic constant faint clicking sound typically called the "infinite click of death." I prefer to call it "One Infinite Click" after Apple's HQ address. After doing the Apple-recommended "5 R's" for what seemed like days (I did it in fits and spurts over two days, since it takes a long time for the iPod to be recognized as it's clicking and whirring), I eventually got it to half-resynch, but then fail, and back to the "One Infinite Click."

Macworld is on the 9th, so I figured I should wait to hear what the Steve's going to announce before making the drive all the way to Boulder or Denver to drool at those respective Apple Stores or buying something on line, just in case the prices drop. The next best thing would be getting my hands dirty and trying to figure out what causes this.

After a bit of Googling, there're three main solutions I found on-line for "One Infinite Click," in ascending invasiveness:

Reformat the iPod hard drive with Windows

AppleInsider

Reseat the HD cables

Mackgeekery's post

Replace the HD with a similar model Toshiba MK2006GAL 20gb drive

Josh Highland's blog post about replacing a 4th gen hd - very high del.icio.us and referred to elsewhere
CNet's article about replacing the hd

The iPod was already behaving badly, taking a long time for any of my computers to recognize it, so the first step to reformat the HD was to put it into disk mode. After a long time (over 10 minutes or so) Windows decided to recognize it and the iPod itself stopped clicking long enough to be recognized, I used the disk utility to reformat H:\ (quick, NTFS). Disconnected, reconnected and iTunes 7 fired up and wanted to restore the software on the iPod. Great so far. Disconnected and connected to an external power source, as requested, let it do its thing then reconnected to the machine. ITunes 7 wanted to restore again. Ok. One more cycle of that business and it's clear that reformatting isn't the solution. I've got to open the thing up.

Pricewatch's and Froogle's listings for the MK2006GAL are around $100, so I figure I'd better do step 2 before spending the money. Opening it up was easier than I thought: jeweler's screwdrivers and a bit of plastic stressing until I figured out which way to wedge and it popped open. The internals look like all the pictures on the net. I pushed the IDE HD connector on the HD. I think it felt a bit loose, but I don't know. Reseating complete.

I went through The Process: attached the iPod to the machine, let it restore, disconnected and attached to a power source, and back to the computer. I think I may have heard one click as iTunes started to copy over the 3000 mp3 items, but I can't really tell.

Lucky me, the whole library loaded and it seems to work great! No need to spend the $100 or so for a new hard drive (yet). I may, though, spend the $30 for a newer battery, as the one I have has been dying for a while.

The Steve announced the iPhone and iTV, but no change in prices to the 30 and 80gb iPods. I'm very happy with my 20gb 4th gen, especially now that it works!

Phrase for the Day "population protection"

Population protection = policing, and don't you forget that. Also, don't forget that the US military is not police, no matter how well we're trained, we're not trained for that. The job of being loose-wristed police falls to the UN and their gendarmerie trained non-participatory Frenchies. Oh, but wait, the UN refuses to go into Iraq. So, our long term plan to increase the army and marines means we're effectively creating a numerical base enough to sustain a police force. The UN and Europe should be very afraid that they're further being sidelined into permanently an oral role.

Taliban, Pakistan, Al Qaeda, oh my!

Yesterday, the International Crisis Group released a report that states what anyone who was/is paying any little bit of attention over there knows: The government of Pakistan is complicit in setting up a Taliban state in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan). That means our "buddy" Musharraf. I should say "continues to be complicit" when the word "Taliban" is mentioned, considering that the Pakistani "CIA," the ISI, fostered the Taliban. Also, with the Pakistani military being sporadically deployed over there, it further means that Pakistan has actively been supporting a resurgence of the Taliban. Pakistan has abdicated responsibility for that region of the country and won't bother bringing it in line. A tragedy for the real possibility of democracy in the region, Afghanistan. It's also a tragedy for you, dear reader, because I'm all pissed off and therefore will ramble.

For a country that thinks we had to do something after 9/11 and are action takers and "deciders," we sure don't really care to have our eyes on the ball. We let our "allies" shamelessly promote their autobiographies while fomenting insurgency against a neighboring country that we, ourselves, are propping up. We're funding both sides. How smart is that? So, where do you think OBL is hiding?

The only reason we're not all over Pakistan is because they have nukes. Nukes that, might I add, are controlled by the same parts of the military and ISI who're vehemently and unabashedly pro-Taliban. I wonder why American people are made to think getting nuclear power of any kind is scary? I'll answer that: we've got no clue how to designate "allies" or bothering to deal with them. Tossing a few accurate but broadly devastating 5ft long drone missiles at various apartment buildings is nothing. Boots on the ground is what's desperately needed in a place where diplomacy has only entrenched Taliban forces and attitudes.

Serious solutions to the Taliban resurgence in the Afghan-border area of Pakistan involves a long term shift of attitude in the Pakistani people, who're very anti-American government but broadly pro-Western. We can't rely on their desire to be more western (actually, just jealous of their older sister, India) to have any positive effect. We've got to be as aggressively diplomatic as we have been militarily, but this is much more difficult of a task than finding replacement soldiers to deploy or convincing Congress to fund the military (which, oddly, isn't very difficult at all). Supporting Afghanistan while not snubbing Pakistan is just as tough and long-term of a change proposal as the last one. We can attempt to use NATO as a proxy for some of the military actions and the UN as a proxy for the diplomatic, but they don't have the power, influence, and drama that comes with the word and force of the United States. Early in the response to 9/11, we pressured Pakistan to allow us to go into Afghanistan and to route their bastard stepchildren, the Taliban. Around that time, we assured Pakistan that we wouldn't break their sovereign territory and we've stuck to it. I think that was a mistake. We should've let them know that they're going to be our allies, but we'll "hot pursuit" up to and through hanging out for a while. The time for that has passed and we're now stuck with a very clear state-sponsored terrorist region. I'd go so far as to say FATA.pk's even clearer in it's state support than Hezbollah's origins with Iran, in order to emphasize how much of a mistake we made in not pressuring Pakistan to clean up their own house. So, with an overt military option off the table, we're left with milquetoast suggestions as in the ICG's report:

Press the Pakistan government to take action against pro-Taliban elements in FATA and publish monthly NATO figures of cross-border incursions into Afghanistan to encourage it to do more on its side of the border.
...
Press President Musharraf to allow free, fair and democratic elections in 2007 and give political and economic support for the process.

There're also the standard "give them economic reasons to not be so anti-"[American or anti-Afghani or pro-Taliban]" that are straight out of the large institutional state-building playbook (see IMF, WMF, etc.).

This isn't going to work. The Pakistanis won't enact a crackdown in FATA for fear of getting their asses beat like they've done in the past (only to be saved by US helicopters or drones) nor will they consider any outside pressure to reform their government as "beneficial," they'll simply consider all of it "meddling" and more reason to hate on the West. (See: Iran's attitude towards western influence calling for their reform, which manages to discount their internal reforms and give fuel to the conservative elements to repress any nascent reform movements.)

What it's going to do is what's been happening over these last 5 years: the west will continually forget that Afghanistan and Pakistan are having a low-level war and we'll focus on rebuilding things we can actually control (tsunamis and hurricanes and domestic health care, things w/o a "face") and they'll continue to be anti-Musharraf and anti-Afghanistan and anti-West. The ICG solutions look nice on paper, but aren't surgical or long term solutions.

The problem of the FATA is not a problem that can be dissociated from Pakistan, in general. It's not as if "Pakistan" is vexed as to what to do with this boil they have on their arm and they don't know how to lance it, it's that the FATA is simply a more conservative region in Pakistan. It's like some non-US person saying, "why don't you just nuke the red states?" (or blue states, however your preference).

Our major problem is that we don't care enough about that region to address it in ways that would be culturally and societally significant. We can press all our economic and military might to bear on them, but this modern era of American dominance has dulled people to the effects of the power of our money and war resources: it's not going away and it's just something the world has to live with and will. I don't know any place except maybe France where American goods, MTV, culture and language aren't regarded as totally and utterly "cool." We've won that bit and, in doing so, blunted that as a tool to use. At some point, offering more monetary incentives reaches a point of diminishing returns such that people don't need "cool American goods" directly, but can get "cool Western goods" passively, from Japan, say (since that's where we get ours). Similarly, with our military might, it's clear that all you have to do is run around a corner with slippers carrying an RPG and you'll frustrate the best teenagers our country can offer. See: Iraq. It's not that we don't have big scary weapons and can't kill all your base, it's that the threat of that isn't a deterrent. Apart from money and guns, we're out of viable options where we have any sort of influence.

Our minor problem is that we (and our actual allies) are persona-non-grata over there, so if we're seen doing something, even tangentially, it's effectiveness is diminished. We're not confident enough that enabling Russia or China (very distant "allies" if anything) to encourage Pakistan to stand down wouldn't backfire on us and give Russia and China more control in that region than we want them to have. Of course, we've got to enable Afghanistan to control their lands and should go to great lengths to make it look like Afghanis are controlling Afghanistan. Making diplomatic moves towards Iran would assist in securing Afghanistan's confidence. Some people in the State Department (and all of the Congress) seem to think that if we do similar parallel actions of "shoring up the neighbors" with regards to India (giving India nuclear materials, economic and military help) will be a shining carrot-like example to Pakistan - "look what being a nice ally gets you!" - and those people are willfully naive, willing to place their bets on the "future" rather than the unresolved and culturally and societally deep rivalry between India and Pakistan. It's encouraging Pakistan's ultra nationalists to "go it alone," without US help. Utilizing the UN is a similar situation to Russia and China, except our fear is not that they'd gain an upper hand, but that they'd be unable to follow through in putting diplomatic, economic and humanitarian pressure on Pakistan. Ideally, we should encourage an internal reform movement and not daemonize any startings of that, regardless of how it may come about. With Pakistan, this is much more opaque, since our official line is that Musharraf's our boy, when it's clear he's a skillful proxy that keeps us at bay while simultaneously shoring up his power base and making us look the fool. Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi and Afghanistan are all less opaque with regards to internal political reform movements, but we - as American people - can't get over not having some replacement for a "Cold War"-esque vague evil like the Russians.

We've got to commit to keeping the region in mind for a long term period and keep trying to solve it. That's not something that the domestically-focused American people (and domestically-focused Democrats) want to hear or even do. Further, we're just as reluctant to assume the mantle of world leader now as we were when we picked it up after WW2. It makes all the lesser western nations jealous and all the non-western nations switch pegging their economies from the Dollar to the Euro or the Pound (which, btw, they're doing).

What Now

This is what I'm reading, watching, thinking and obsessing about now:

The new season of Sleeper Cell and the debate about whether I should pay more for HD premium cable channels or rely on my uncle BT
Enterprise Service Buses and the old EDI VAN model, mule and spring
becoming less opaque about personal finances and how single-stock trades within an understood industry is more manageable than other random stocks outside a known sector and how that's still less useful to me (at this time) than just indexes and four-square mutual funds
getting my Actiontec GT701W to restart itself by making it monitoring for an active connection (I don't know how to do this and would really, really like to)
accumulating certificates to prove to myself that i care about software vs. reconciling how i think certificates are wholly worthless and have no tracking to actual ability
getting more memory for my ailing desktops (see next)
unearthing a reasonable budget vs. whether i should fix my very cool tree lights by spending more money and the diminishing returns for the season
when i'm going to get motivated to work on worldwind and uDig, if ever

Blogs are Stupid

I just realized that blogs are stupid. The straw that broke the camel's back was a story related to me about the head technical guy of a company who goes home after work and listens to podcasts of other technical nobodies who've just discovered or put into use some technique instead of reading a book. It's like reading (or listening) to amazon comments about cars and expecting to understand how to drive a car.

If that guy ever gets over the rat-race hump of keeping up with Constant Epiphany Guy's Blog of .NET Tricks Borrowed from Other Existing OO Systems he, himself, might warble into a bad microphone and podcast himself learning new technical abilities like marms passing around their favorite fruit-nut cake recipe. It's sad. It's also a hold over of the Big Bust - self-taught technurds trying their hardest to pretend relevance.

And, with that, I realized that there's really just no point to learning from the randomness. I thought that maybe, just maybe, nuggets of intelligence are to be gathered by sifting through the detritus and effluvia, but no, it's not to be. I actually don't want to hear someone else's path to technical nirvana or that some kid thinks they have the three-word-chant solution to peace in the middle east. That's the stuffing 'tween Pooh Bear's ears. To learn something, anything, there're books to read, courses to take, and (I can't believe I'm at this point) certificates to sit.

Sure, it's fun to look at a friends photoalbum or hear what they have to say, but Random Guy isn't going to be instructive at all for me. I might have some thoughts about politics, religion, or whatever, but it's just me making thinky into words for myself, ultimately, not for anyone's edification. I'm not a professional essayist or opiner of experiences beyond the average ken. Ok, maybe I have been to places that are uncommon and I have an interesting situation. Whatever, I'm, like, not good with explaining that. And, further, I'm no expert.

So, blogs, you're past being "on notice" (that's what all these absent days have been) and are now, officially "dead to me" ...

At least for getting information from. Unless, of course, it's meta-information and mockery about blogs themselves. And, yes, that means you, .NET "Informed" Comment and all you bleeding heart war profiteers.

This space for ~~rent~~ rant.

Muhammed's Sword - Uri Avnery

Muhammad's Sword, 09/23/2006

Excellent read. A criticism of the Pope's statements and quoting of the Orthodox Pope with history in tow by a "Jewish atheist."

At the end of the 14th century, the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had - or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt) - with an unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the Emperor (according to himself) flung the following words at his adversary:
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
These words give rise to three questions: (a) Why did the Emperor say them? (b) Are they true? (c) Why did the present Pope quote them?

Ohio, Pope

Pope's speech, To the Ambassadors of Countries with a muslim majority and to the representatives of muslim communities in Italy (Arabic) Picture, Chris Helgren/Reuters, in front of a tapestry of Jesus, at his summer residence at Castelgandolfo outside Rome September 24, 2006

Ohio's Dennis Mitsubishi conflates images of muslim people with extremists and defends it. Sales representatives "will be wearing burqas all weekend long," the ad says. One of the vehicles on sale "can comfortably seat up to 12 jihadists in the back." "Our prices are lower than the evildoers’ every day. Just ask the pope! " the ad says. "Friday is fatwa Friday, with free rubber swords for the kiddies." And Democrats think Ohio's a blue state?

Finally, going into Pakistan

Next week, Pervez Musharraf is coming to the White House to visit our President. They'll probably talk about this:

The United States would not hesitate to send troops into Pakistan to hunt for Osama Bin Laden if there was credible intelligence about his location, President George W Bush said in an interview.

Responding to a question if US forces would track down bin Laden if it meant hunting him down on Pakistani soil, Bush, in an interview to CNN yesterday, replied, "Absolutely".

"We would take action necessary to bring him (bin Laden) to justice," Bush said.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, however, made it clear that he would not allow the sovereignty of his country to be breached by the US.

"We wouldn't like to allow that at all," he told reporters in New York. "We will do it ourselves. We are able to do everything, wherever we locate anybody. There have been many such occasions where we have located al Qaeda or Taliban activity, and we have struck with full force very successfully," Musharraf told repoerters when asked about Bush's comment.

Go get 'em, boys.

U.S. Will Hunt Bin Laden in Pakistan If Necessary, Bush Says 09/21/2006, Bloomberg
Continuing Pakistan's Porous Political Border with the US, 01/23/2006
Bisy Backson - AZ, 01/14/2006
Damadola, Pakistan, 01/13/2006
US incursions into Pakistan: Going where they won't, 12/03/2005

The Media's Lapdog (du jour) Whinges

This post is about the fundamentalist atheist (who's a bit sweet on Buddhism - "I don’t call myself a Buddhist. and yet, if you asked me ... I’d point you in the direction of Buddhist techniques of meditation, and to the Buddhist literature") Sam Harris. Before I even start, let me say, this is the post Sam Harris, self-promoter and shill for his own self, wants to have written - He's all about getting his name out there. He just loves drawing the debate away from the rational conclusion that what's out there can't yet be explained by science, but might be, and that belief in the possibility of explanation is faith, itself. He'd rather have it faith vs. "science" or whatever he's masquerading his faith as. When people, such as the Pope (even with his appearingly intentional stumbles), call for a dialog between faiths, Sam Harris isn't having it. His faith in his extremist anti-faith beliefs are making him almost as popular as Keith Olbermann, firefly of the left's popularity.

In Harris's droolings on the Pope's speech (Truthdig: 'God's Rottwieler' Barks) he does his own trite old hat tricks and pulls out some abused and weary rabbits, banging on the drum at the back of the bandwagon of Islam hatred while also showing a disdain for religion that really calls into question :

“Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today....”
It is ironic that a man who has just disparaged Islam as “evil” and “inhuman” before 250,000 onlookers and the world press is now talking about a “genuine dialogue of cultures.” How much genuine dialogue can he hope for? The Koran says that anybody who believes that Jesus was divine—as all real Catholics must—will spend eternity in hell (Koran 5:71-75; 19:30-38). This appears to be a deal-breaker. The pope knows this. The Muslim world knows that he knows it. And he knows that the Muslim world knows that he knows it. This is not a good basis for interfaith dialogue.

The passages in the Quran he references in Sura Al Maedah (the Feast) say that idolaters will go to hell and that today's Christianity isn't the Christianity of Jesus. God isn't the Messiah, God isn't three, there's only one God. Christians have their own beliefs about the Trinity, but they won't say God is the Messiah or three or that there isn't just one God. Further, John 20:17 has Jesus saying to Mary Magdalen "I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." He's not going to himself. Sura 19, Mary, (that's right, haters, that chapter's called "Mary"), repeats a saying of Jesus similar to John 20:17 - "God is my Lord and your Lord; you shall worship Him alone. This is the right path." Regardless, Harris is baiting not only the Pope, but also Muslims, and further, his cheering ignorant followers. His persistence in a superficial reading and understanding of faith shows that he's got an inability to apply critical thinking skills to texts of faith. Or, he doesn't, and he's simply trying to be a dick.

He goes on and pops off some of his little buzzwords and tropes about Islam - "martyrdom" and "jihad" along with the herring "treatment of Muslim women throughout the world," how Muslims have an "inclination to breed themselves into a state of world domination" (a student of Eastern philosophies, doesn't he know about India or China?) and his favorite apostasy case which he blithely tosses around not bothering to define or explain, since we all of course know how evil Muslims are. Again, I'm sad at Stanford. This type of critical sloppiness in my philosophy classes at Washington University would've gotten me an 'F' whereas I'm sure he shaved an "S" into his chest hair, dyed it red, and beerbonged all night after receiving some hummer for a 'bold' paper on justifying facistic secular rationalism.

This one really got me, especially from a closet Buddhist like Harris, right after he criticises the Pope for thinking every natural process and every mystery can be reduced to God:

Nearly a billion Hindus place three gods—Brahma (the Creator), Vishnu (the Preserver) and Shiva (the Destroyer)—in the space provided. Just how intellectually illuminating should we find that?

I'm sure he knows, but for some reason think his readers don't know (that's intellectually illuminating): Hindus believe that their gods are manifestations and aspects of the (single) universe. Facets, just as the Buddah would have you believe, Samuel. If you think about it for a second, that's what you think science is - fragments and bits of the universe in little logical bites, just waiting to be put together, or not.

He says this, too, on the lead up to the Pope's unfortunate (un)intentional statement about Islam:

“The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur—this is the program with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. “Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God”, said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor....”
Please read that first sentence again. I hope it doesn’t seem peevish to point out that the West faces several dangers even greater than those posed by an incomplete epistemology. The West is endangered, primarily, by the religious fragmentation of the human community, by religious impediments to clear thinking, and by the religious willingness of millions to sacrifice the real possibility of happiness in this world for a fantasy of a world to come. We are living in a world where untold millions of grown men and women can rationalize the violent sacrifice of their own children by recourse to fairy tales.

I think that last sentence refers to Masada, the fort where Jewish Zealots killed themselves and their children in 73 CE instead of surrendering to the Romans, a highlight in Zionists belief in their righteousness. While not a "fairy tale," I think he's saying that religion kills children. He could've well said something about Waco. When I read that, I thought the guy had no balls. He hates Islam, and loves to piss on it by association, why annoy evangelicals and Jews?

So, there you go, Samuel. You've got your name in bits. Enjoy the profit from your intellectual dishonesty. When you've got your 501(3)c set up to embarass religions, give me a call.

As a last bit, Mohammed Khatami, a religious scholar and former president of Iran spoke a few weeks ago in Chicago. I was fortunate enough to hear him speak on the very same topic the Pope would take up and Harris wants to be a dickrider of: dialog between faiths. Here's a snippet (apologies for the awful translation):

... there is a great opportunity of dialog and cooperation of working among people of faith, people of religion, the religious community and the people of faith - truly people of faith and people of true religion, not the extremists or terrorists or people who exploit religion and they use the name of religion, those getting involved in the terrorist or extremist activities but the balanced view, the people who understand this, and then those on the other side - the people who have pain of humanity in their heart the secular people [haters], the leadership on the other part on who are not known as the leadership of the religious - these two communities can work together and can communicate to one another for the betterment and better understanding of the cause of humanity. Here is the time when dialog among civilizations can come in, the dialog among civilizations can help to bring these two communities or segments together – the people of true faith and the people who are truly concerned about humanity.

A Trinity of Perception

Ted Koppel
09/15: What's he doing in Iran? And why's he reporting for NPR? Didn't he retire already? (Could he, please?) Further, why's it take him, going to Iran to talk to Iranians to find out what millions of people in the US already know: Iran's elites think that Ahmedinjad's a kook, the poor people like his reforms but think he's flirting dangerously with radical religion, much like they see Bush doing with evangelicalism, and Iran doesn't have any intention of using nuclear power for military purposes. I don't get this, honestly. Ted Koppel, gravitas; me, when I say similar stuff: biased, without basis, and America hater. Wonderful.

The Pope
09/08: God knows guarding a BMW factory doesn't make one evil, just a Nazi who likes BMWs - I've got nothing against the man, but when he goes around saying things like this:

In his speech at the University of Regensburg, Benedict quoted criticism of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed by 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who wrote that everything Mohammed brought was evil and inhuman, "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".

He's asking for some sort of queer looks and shakes of the head. Why someone who's purportedly the foremost religous scholar in the Christian world would go around saying things that are ~~potentially~~ incendiary, I just don't get. I don't think it's a big deal, really, it's just a blip. I know some people will see it as a big setback, especially in contrast with JP2's outreach to other faiths, including Islam, but honestly, it's a great thing for the Pope to display this sort of view - it's an opening for dialogue. A dialog not only within the Catholic Church for the Crusades, but also a Catholic-Muslim dialogue and an interfaith dialogue. The best way to take it is that he's pushing for Catholics to engage Muslims in their struggle against extremism in Islam. A slightly less "best way" is that he's indirectly addressing the Church's role in spreading the faith via the sword during the Crusades. The worst way would be that he's purposefully condemning Islam as a violent religion. Strangely enough, statements like this can also be seen as the Pope trying to reassert the relevance of both himself and the Church in modern religious dialog.

I mention this today because, even though I cringed about it on Friday, there seem to be reports of people getting wound up about it as if the Pope were some Danish publisher pissing on freedom of speech and publishing intentionally goading cartoons. My second interpretation of Benedict's statement would be an indelicate attempt to have a Crusade catharsis. (My first was horror at the impending conflagration Benedict's going to cause, as evidenced by said cringe. I also cringe to think that he's bought into the new modern Crusade. Is he the next Urban? I thought that was Bush.) I think he's trying to goad Muslims into proving his ~~ignorance~~ face-saving statment wrong.

Benedict may be a "hard ass" but his past shows something else: If there's anything this Pope's life stands for, it's for correcting past mistakes. Time to man up, Benedict.

Contrast this with Khatami, admittedly not analogous the Pope, but a learned Islamic scholar in his own right, even if a politican, who said things like this last week during his US tour: 'It's about time people of all faiths get together and try not to allow extremist thinking to deny the morality of modern civilization' [I'll get an exact quote for you people]. Again, wonderful.

The Media and Islam
There's state senator in Minnesota running for a federal seat in congress. He's a Democrat and a peace activist who invokes Paul Wellstone and talks about immediate Iraq withdrawal. What he doesn't talk about is that he's a Muslim. What the media talks about is how a Muslim's running for congress, not that he's continuing to ride the wave of anti-Bush Democrats. Makes me throw up a bit in my mouth about the media's sensationalism (that means being a Leftist is less threatening than being a Muslim, wheee) and also how whatever his views are will be tagged as a "standard" Muslim view. It's not, nor is there anything to the implication that Muslims or Islam aren't compatible with democraciy. Wonderment.

I've got more on Islam and democracy that requires some polish, but I thought a little threesome sampler would tide dear readers over.

The Media's Plamegate

<jack> Later today, I think you should punch me in the cock, and then I'll sue John Kerry.
<jack> I'll be like 'who the hell did that? JOHN KERRY!!!'
<jack> And later, you'll admit it was you, and nothing will change.

What inspires such vicious violence to a man's vagina? Well, things like this, of course: End of an Affair, Washington Post editorial 09/01/2006 which (under)states things like this: 'It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.' and 'our oft-stated belief that far too much attention [was paid to this event]' and 'But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame's cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage.' It's like they're writing to themselves, but not.

They couldn't do this (from The Plame Blame Game's Real Culprits, David Brooks, Weekly Standard 09/02/2006) and call themselves out: 'The media — especially the Washington Post and New York Times — relied heavily on Wilson's reckless and unfounded charges to wage journalistic jihad against the White House and Bush political adviser Karl Rove. Reporters and columnists, based on little more than Joe Wilson's harrumphing, bought the line that the White House "leaked" Plame's name to discredit her husband.'

It's too bad the complicity'll be drowned out in calls for Rumsfeld's beheading and Bush's scaremongering about a "caliphate" - a word I bet he had to practice pronouncing and then practicing again looking all serious.

Sistani's bowing out of Iraqi politics

Bad news...

I no longer have power to save Iraq from civil war, warns Shia leader
By Gethin Chamberlain and Aqeel Hussein in Baghdad (Filed: 03/09/2006)

The most influential moderate Shia leader in Iraq has abandoned attempts to restrain his followers, admitting that there is nothing he can do to prevent the country sliding towards civil war.
Aides say Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is angry and disappointed that Shias are ignoring his calls for calm and are switching their allegiance in their thousands to more militant groups which promise protection from Sunni violence and revenge for attacks.

"I will not be a political leader any more," he told aides. "I am only happy to receive questions about religious matters."

brief about Tablighi Jamaat

In my post about the Tablighi Jamaat and its apparent ties to the recent British bombers & suspects, I failed to make a clear distinction between tabligh and the organization known as the Tablighi Jamaat. In doing so, I've caught myself in a bit of a trap.

I mentioned that I've known tablighis, ie Muslims who believe proselytization's a part of being a good Muslim (which it isn't as "spreading the good news" is in Christianity), but I didn't clarify - I don't know any tablighis, or "pilgrims," that belong to the Tablighi Jamaat. The distinction's important because, as I've mentioned, proselytizing Islam's a bit queer, if harmless, but the origins of the TJ aren't harmless. The Deobandi sect is basically an offshoot cult of Islam much more in line (not only politically but also doctrinally) with Wahhabi Salafists.

That's a bad thing, fyi. The vocabulary of Islam's foreign to the west and the distinction's not easy, since Salafists/Wahhabis and TJ Deobandi's consider themselves to be Sunnis - the only legitimate Muslims - and tend to shun the titles of "Wahhabi" (ie, followers of Ibn Wahhab - they don't think of themselves as followers of a person's doctrine, but of true Islam) and "Salafi" (see previous parenthetical). Mainstream Sunnis, themselves, have a difficult time separating Wahhabis from other Sunnis, particularly because of the large support that Wahhabis enjoy due to Saudi Arabia's support for them (see: CAIR, MSA, etc.). Further, it's tough for other Muslims (Shia, Sufis) to make the distinction due to the perception of Islamic infighting that this causes when non-Muslims hear or read criticisms of heretical cults.

If it's still not clear, Wahhabis/Salafists/Deobandis are cult and aren't Islam, imo.

Baghdad, Iraq: 13 dead, 33 wounded and more

Suicide car bomb outside the Interior Ministry building kills 13 civilians, wounds 33

Yesterday, in Khalis, a town 35 miles north of Baghdad, near Baqubah, armed men opened fire on civilians in a marketplace, killing at least 12 people. Gunmen stormed the house of a local judge, Hamdi al-Ubaidi, shot one of his brothers, and moved to abduct another, police said.

When men from a nearby cafe ran to the aid of the family, gunmen opened fire, killing 12 of the would-be rescuers and injuring 25, police Brigadier Safa al-Mandalawi said.

The mass killing occurred about 11 hours after a bomb planted in a marketplace at Khalis exploded at the height of morning shopping. Nine people were killed, and 15 were injured, police Lieutenant Ali Khayam said.

Elsewhere in Iraq, 23 people were also killed in violent episodes occurring in Baghdad (7 Iraqi civilians were killed last night in a street battle between American forces and insurgents), Bakuba and Basra (a bomb mounted on a motorcycle killed 7 people). 10 people were killed in Kirkuk after two car bombs exploded killed outside the house of a police colonel and outside a meeting hall of Sufis

In one roadside bombing north of Baghdad, four US soldiers were killed, the US military said. Another soldier was killed in a roadside bomb in western Baghdad and the sixth was shot to death in the eastern part of the capital.

Iraq: 12+ dead, 3 US, bodies found

13 Iraqis, civilians, soldiers, police killed in bombings and shootings.
4 in Ramadi, Iraq (2 via snipers, 1 in Gomhorria district, 1 Qattan district) - US N. Ramadi base attacked by RPGs
2 car bombs in separate areas of Baghdad: 4 civilians, wounded 9 incl. 2 policemen (concealed in trash); bomb in minivan killed 3 policemen, Baqouba, NE of Baghdad
3 Iraqi soldiers, roadside bomb, Outskirts of Baghdad
3 people dead, shootings, Baghdad, Mosul

1 US soldier, patrol attacked by small arms at around 12:15 pm (0815 GMT) Thursday (08/24)
1 US soldier, vehicle hit by IED, S. Baghdad (Release No. 20060824-02)
1 US soldier, during a raid in S. Baghdad (2 foreign terrorists killed during the raid)

Abdul Rahman Ali Abdul Rahman, also known as Abu Hajir, believed to be the local leader of the Mujahedeen Army (claimed responsibility for many attacks, incl. April 2005 downing of a helicopter carrying 11 civilians, including 6 Americans), arrested Mosul

Kut, 100 miles southeast of the capital, police on Thursday found 4 handcuffed bodies dumped separately in the streets. All had been shot.
Police in Mosul said they found the bodies of a five-member family - 2 women, 1 man and 2 young men - in a house in the east of the city. (Forbes/AP)

Violence across Iraq kills more than a dozen people despite word of progress, Canadian Press/AP

No Flying Horses, Assholes

So, the scaremongering, pro-Zionist anti-Iranian (and in my opinion, anti-American) commentators who thought that Ahmedinejad was going to declare war or rain fire from the heavens on Israel on this day of Miraj due to either their inability to parse "insane dictator"-speak(though, they can parse through Bush well enough) are being proven wrong with the Iranian response to the EU-lead incentives plan.

A one page faxed statement saying that the Iranians are willing to talk more is about as positive a response we're going to get amid all the negative fearmongering speculation the press and our "advisors" do for us. The key point for both the EU/US/UN and for Iran is the enrichment of uranium. People don't trust Iran to not weaponize, regardless of the NNPT and Atoms for Peace, and Iran can't do enough to make anyone trust that they don't want to weaponize. Also, it's instructive that Ali Larijani, Supreme Security Council head and Iran's top nuclear negotiator - not Ahmedinejad - is the one on point for this.

Honestly, it's a good thing. Keeping the EU & the UN true to their rhetoric is important - Iran's past IAEA cooperation should be a basis of trust for them. Also, Iran retaining some semblance of national pride is very important for lifting them up towards responsible diplomatic partners. It'll take a while and some concessions on each side, but I think that the US & Iran can work it out. I'm not sure if Ahmedinejad's the one to do it, nor am I sure that Rice et al. want to have Ahmedinejad's legacy be that of reconciliation with the US. I surely wouldn't want it to be.

The paradox of here

It happened again, this time, closer - in my cube. This morning, a coworker I'll call "Eric" and I were watching the groundskeeper on his riding mower callously cut down mushrooms as he executed orderly, patterned grooming manoevers. "Eric" likes mushrooms so there was some discussion of whether a rescue op should be mounted or a protest flash mobbed.

Neither happened and, after an appropriate amount of hobnobbery regarding the oppression of mycelium, we went to our workspaces and began what passes for "work" around here.

There's another coworker who starts his workday at noon and when he arrives, he provides an opportunity for everyone to rehash their morning conversations about the night before or the weekend, on Mondays. He'll be called "Frank." I was in the middle of something, so "Frank" walks over to "Eric"'s cube and begins the process of re-recounterment. (That's French and is pronounced with the same expression that one has on their face while saying "second breakfast.")

"Eric" starts off with: "Saddam and I were watching the mushrooms..." and they both get quiet immediately, realizing the error. Hearing the silence, I back process the what's-just-been-said buffer (thanks, evolution!) and decide that it's time for lunch.

I will say this, though, in their defense: The longer I've been here in Colorado the more I'm treated like an insane dictator who appears to think that everything he says is right and denies the truth of reality.

When I was young, my father told me that people's names mattered. In particular, their names mattered to them. It's what they call themselves and that I should strive to get remember and get it right. It's a sign of respect. I'm not sure, but I think he got that from Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. I'm horrible at remembering names, but I'm great at recognizing when people make mistakes in remembering someone's name, are outright getting it wrong because they don't care, or are making fun, harmlessly. This incident, and the previous example, wasn't malicious, but it's another example of how powerful a name and it's association really is. The realization I struggle with is that when people associate a thing with a name, the attributes of that thing are sublimated into that name. I wonder if I'm trying harder because of my nature or the passive background of distrust? And so on. Lunch was fun.

Baghdad, Iraq: 22 dead, 200 wounded

I keep meaning to keep a running total of the dead in Iraq and elsewhere, but it's a morbid and depressing thing to do. Anyhow, here's my start (you can see my past post on this, here: powerlessness)

Last year, on the same day - around Aug 19, 2005 or Rajab 24 Earth: Strategic Petroleum Reserves and the Imam Musa al Kasim Stampede - a stampede caused by rumors of a suicide bomber during the procession of the 7th Shia Imam, Musa al Kazim, killed 700 people. This year, snipers shot dead 20 people and 200 people were injured in the ensuing confusion. Snipers Target Shiite March, LA Times

That there's constant retaliation against the Shia majority by Sunni insurgents continues to show that there're segments of the Sunni population who are not only well armed and prepared, but also committed to inciting sectarian violence. See the overt destruction of the Askariya mosque in February 2006 Pushing for Civil War that caused a step-up in the tempo of Shia on Sunni violence as an example.

Tabligihi Jamaat linked to British airline bombing suspects

Today we found out that some of the British Muslims who were detained on suspicion of plotting to blow up airliners bound for the US were members of or linked to Tablighi Jamaat, an orthodox Islamic proselytizing movement (the name means "proselytizing group"). Assad Sarwar (26) and Waheed Zaman (22) are part of this movement and share that distinction with at least one of the 7/7 suicide bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and possibly another, Shehzad Tanweer.

For me, this is sort of a fortuitous event, but for you (at least most of you who don't know much about Islam), it's a new threat from within Islam. The reason it's neat for me is that I'd planned on writing a bit about the link between charity and terrorism and about why Islam is more succeptible to that angle. With Pakistan allowing Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant wing of the Dawa wal Irshad charity group, help with rebuilding the earthquake damage in Kashmir to both Hamas and Hezbullah's charity wings (look who's rebuilding the Lebanon, now), Americans should be aware that not only do the most virulent Islamic organizations have a political agenda, but they also do significant charity work. Only recently with this administration's restriction on money for AIDS and impoverished countries do we get the opportunity to feel the confusion of how religious mores affect good works.

Anyone can wikipedia either Tablighi Jamaat and LeT (hopefully, people are more aware of LeT and their influence over Pakistan) and get some information about them. TJ, in particular, is a bit of an oddity - Islam is a non-proselytizing religion, regardless of what sort of tripe the Church fostered about a "violent religion of the sword." So having a retroactively conservative organization that's managed to incorporate the heresy of "spreading the good news" starts out at being at odds with itself. Their targets are mainly the Muslim community itself, and not external conversions, and because of this, they're not considered a "cult" or anything more than really passionate by the Muslim community at large. Most Muslims, if they're aware of TJ at all, see the adherants as very pious and serious Muslims with no political agenda. Some people might want to know how I know that TJ's mostly an apolitical, peaceful, if strange, group, considering I'm not a TJ follower: I've known tablighi missionaries that've been involved with them for a very long time. The majority of them are definiately kooky, but harmless, focusing on encouraging Muslims to be better Muslims.

This isn't to say that TJ is a harmless organization. After it's origins around New Delhi, India in 1927 as a Sunni Deobandi sect organized to convert Indian Muslims whom they thought were too "indianified," a section of this loosely organized group moved - like a lot of aggressive retroactive Islamic movements - to Pakistan where they have a pattern of recruiting "believers" not just into proslyetizing missions, but in a lot of cases, towards a radicalized view of Islam. In a derrogatory way, Pakistani and Bangledeshi TJ's a "gateway drug" religion for hard-core politics. There are definitely Indian, Bangledeshi, and Pakistanki TJ groups that remain apolitical and peaceful, but I don't think those are of any interest to the media nor are they relevant to figuring out how to excise a lunatic strain from Islam.

Giving alms to the poor, a tithe, and caring for the poor are central tenets in Islam and, in this way, a lot of money's available to charity organizations. Also, since a lot of the giving is not through traditional banks, it's a great way for organizations who either lose their way or are malicious in the first place to get money under the radar. Islam is a religion of what can be explained as "works" combined with "belief" (for the Christians) - no separation of politics and religion - and those people that want to take advantage of a political agenda in the name of Islam have a bit of a leg up.

So, what's to be done about it? When people ask that question, they usually mean "So, what's Islam going to do about it?" The answer is that most Muslims have a good grasp about what's right and what's wrong with the variety of offshoots in the religion and in society. There're a few lines and when crossed, it's not for "polite company." Really, making sure that Muslims understand their own religion is a big part of all of this. Realizing that there are people who're willing sub/pervert the faith for their own ideas means that we have to be more vigilant about what the religion really means. So, next time some Deobandis or Salafists come knocking at your door or bug you on campus on one of their proselytizing missions, do what most Americans do with cults - be ready to engage them or turn them away.

Recognizing that they're not mainstream Islam and being able to discriminate between the types of these heretical bida cults is also really important for both the fight against lunatics who not only seem to be a major threat to us and our allies but who also prey on the religious for their fodder.

The British have picked up on the TJ connections and are now watching the European headquarters (called markaz) which is located in Dewsbury, England. (53.681206°, -1.628523°) There are even some reports that the British police are starting to keep track of TJ adherents as they go about some of their itinerant travels.

Iraq's Civil War

Jack asked me the other day whether Iraq was in a civil war. I said no, because from what I’ve read, the insurgent groups don't have a coherent idea of a ruling government after they “won.” The Sunni-allied political factions have come around and are participating in the existing government and even Moktada Sadr’s puerile acting up is being poorly integrated into the existing government structure. To me, this continues to place the anti-Iraqi government insurgents outside a “civil” structure and that was my reason for saying that it wasn’t a “civil war.” Additionally, I believe that not only can an American presence be still properly utilized to stabilize the country but that Iraqis want to be our allies.

No matter how much I’ve read or do read about Iraq, I’m not there, so I don’t know. When I read about a debate on Iraqi television between two prominent theologians, a Sunni and a Shia, in Iraq, where there was never a question or disagreement between the two on the very same question about a civil war, I knew I my answer to Jack was wrong and the situation on the ground predominated: Iraq is in the middle of a civil war and it’s because Sunnis are killing Shia and vice versa. That was their answer. It's not (just) a government thing, it's a sectarian thing.

The only question that the audience really had was what to do about the civil war now and what will come out of it?

Considering I have no experience at all with what's going on with Iraq, I can only speculate. I suspect there'll be pound-of-flesh taking until someone decides to stop it. Since the Iraqis call it a civil war, it seems like it must be a fight for the future civil structure of the nation. The Sunni and secular insurgents have always wanted to destabilize a government they see as pro-American or, at the very least, heavily influenced and reliant upon America. Sadr's group and SCIRI would rather have that dependance somewhere else - and they'll take help where they can get it for their objective, and that means Iran.

There's apparently a huge internal refugee crisis in Iraq - people moving around, out of where they used to live in response to death squads -the Mahdi Army, Sadr's goons, and the Mujahideen Shura - an umbrella Sunni insurgent group.

Since we don't have a nuanced view of Iran, Iraq'll start to look too pro-Iran for our liking and I suspect we'll start encouraging the Sunni insurgents, relabeled "resistance" at that point. The place isn't going to be calm for a long time, probably not for 50 years or so. The Iraqis will divide themselves up among sectarian lines. Like the "three states within a state" tail-tween-legs "solution" that Biden tried to appropriate a while back, this de facto split will allow us to sulk away and the residents will have just have to adjust to this new reality - just like all the other Arab states have.

I used to think Biden's advocation of a "three-in-one state" solution for Iraq was and is a defeatist and overly negative - not pragmatic - look at the future of Iraq. Preparing the American public to accept a different outcome than "victory" with regards to the Iraq situation is noble and a proper direction, but I don't think that was Biden's intention. Now, I think advocating a pragmatic view of what's happening isn't so much a self-fulfilling prophecy and abandoning our ideals as just what is. America's never been one to follow through on an imposition of an ideal regardless of rhetoric and, whether Biden understands that his proposition tacitly reinforces that, I think that's how it is. Even the Iraqis themselves seem to be realizing they're going to have to split in order to create a fireline between the factions ~~spurring and retaliating~~ fighting the civil war.

If it is a civil war, what do we do about it? We leave and let them deal with it. We take a cue from the UN - if it's a civil conflict, ignore it until it's genocidal, then be embarrassed and refuse that you could've done anything about it. Preferrably, we can try a limp-wristed solution to seperate the combatants and bury our heads and hope that they'll work it out sooner, rather than later. We can then leave Iraq so that we can deny we had anything to do with it. Granted, we won't do that excatly, but will put a unique American spin on it and wait until we can say that the ungrateful Iraqis can't be shown the path towards democracy. Then we can hate on their neighbors and the region and pump more money into our proxies. The Iraqi civil war means it's their problem now, not ours. Literally. If they think they're in a civil war, all our wishful thinking's not going to change that. Auger in on entrenched partisan positions. We can follow other news stories now, it's official: the Iraq war is over. It's legacy will be with us throughout our lifetimes.

Two (and a half) Things

Israel has found out what we've known, but won't acknowledge, about fighting a stateless enemy - "resolve" in defeating an enemy is incomplete and ultimately detrimental when the engagement's only military. It's not just that our people aren't willing to "win," we don't know what winning looks like, nor can we fathom winning with anything more than physical weaponry. This has been clear since before America awoke on 9/11/2001. We've been in denial because Americans like action and our politicians invested themselves in trashing diplomacy and reviling anything that didn't look like a bullet, gun, and explosions as "hugging." In this race, I hope the Israelis take a clue from us, even though we haven't been the paragons of a syncretic guns & butter solution, instead of the embarassment of policy that we've had by taking Israeli advice. Israel's policies of dealing with "terrorists" have simply brought them what they have right now - the constant fear and tension of maintaining and enforcing a prison. Maybe we can get a clue from Israel's "failure to win" and not repeat their mistakes. Also, it's ironic how America thinks we can play some sort of mediator in any Israel-* peace when we've got our own issues. It's a long time coming, but our benevolent neutrality's starting to wear really thin.

British Muslims and Muslim leaders are very worked up about British foreign policy. We're lucky, as Americans, that our Muslim communities aren't as disenfranchised as theirs are, yet unlucky since, in a way, we're cowed by assimilation. Our only established outlet of disapproval slips directly into the American socialist Left, which is not what Muslims are. It's a voiceless outrage, another thing Americans outsource to other countries.

The Pakistan connection to Laskhar-e-Taiba's dawa (charity) parent organization's being made in the press, both our press and Pakistan's press. I think the Rashid Rauf connection (British Pakistani, brother of an arrested alleged bomber, Tayib) - arrested in Lahore, from the eastern Bahawalpur region - to Al Qaeda is being made through the charity work that the Jamaat ud-Dawa's been doing in the wake of the Kashmiri earthquakes. I think it's resonable, but a noticeable amount of stretch. More on this later.

Bank of London publishes names

The Bank of England freezes the accounts of 19 of the 24 caught suspects of the air bombiing plot and publishes their names.

Name	DOB	Age
PATEL, Abdul Muneem	4/17/1989	17
KHATIB, Osman Adam	12/7/1986	20
HUSSAIN, Nabeel	3/10/1984	22
KHAN, Assan Abdullah	10/24/1984	22
RAUF, Tayib	4/26/1984	22
ZAMAN, Waheed	5/27/1984	22
TARIQ, Amin Asmin	6/7/1983	23
ALI, Cossor	12/4/1982	24
SADDIQUE, Muhammed Usman	4/23/1982	24
HUSSAIN, Tanvir	2/21/1981	25
HUSSAIN, Umair	10/9/1981	25
KHAN, Waheed Arafat	5/18/1981	25
ALI, Abdula Ahmed	10/10/1980	26
SARWAR, Assad	5/24/1980	26
SAVANT, Ibrahim	12/19/1980	26
ALI, Shazad Khuram	6/11/1979	27
ISLAM, Umar	4/23/1978	28
KAYANI, Waseem	4/28/1977	29
UDDIN, Shamin Mohammed	11/22/1970	36

Here're their locations in Google Earth:

On Qana, Lebanon

Statement coming from his Eminence al-Sayyid al-Sistani (May Allah perserve him) regarding Massacre Ghana

In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful , the Most Compassionate,

In a series of persistent assaults on noble Lebanon, the military forces of the Israeli enemy have commited today a fresh massacre in the wounded town of Qana Its victims were tens of innocents in such a spectacle, how disgusting and horrible it was !

verily words are insufficient to denounce this loathsome crime, a sin which was brought on by those who have totally stripped themselves of any humanitarian principles and morals so even women and children in refuge shelters are not safe from them.

Verily the size of the disasters that have occurred in Lebanon , as the result of the continuance of Israeli aggression, has reached a limit which , any further patience is not imaginable nor is standing by with hands withheld , in front of it. So the international community must undertake compelling an immediate cease-fire and putting an end to this horrific tragedy. The Muslim world and the rest of the nations, who love peace will not pardon those sides who are trying to inhibit such an undertaking. Such inhibtion will lead to disastrous consequences in the region, in its entirety.

The Office of al-Sayyid al-Sistani

Rajab 4, 1427

That's July 30, 2006. As we all know, since we've studied our Bibles, Qana, Lebanon (33.2080556, 35.3002778) is where Jesus turned water to wine, 2006 years ago. Israeli's updated that by turning more than 60 civilians into blood.

Sistani's our great hope in Iraq. With Iraqi PM Maliki being shunned by our congress due to his statements on Israel and Lebanon, we're rapidly running out of allies on the ground.

Liquid Explosives

Hazard definitions, particularly "Pyrophoric" means a chemical that will ignite spontaneously in air at a temperature of 130 deg. F (54.4 deg. C) or below and Organic peroxides, which undergo autoaccelerating thermal decomposition, are excluded from any of the flashpoint determination methods specified above. Oh, and of course, triacetone triperoxide (TATP). It's really too bad I didn't pay enough attention in orgo or pchem.

Precedent includes the 1994 bombing of a Manila - Tokyo flight planned by Ramzi Yousef (in custody here in Florence's supermax) that used nitroglycerine hidden in a contact lens solution bottle, stabilized with cotton balls, and set off with a Casio wrist watch - it ripped through a Boeing 747, killing a Japanese passenger and forcing the plane to make an emergency landing. It was a "dry run" for a plan to be executed on to be repeated on 11 American commercial jetliners, with the timing devices synchronized to go off as the planes reached mid-ocean and would have killed an estimated that 4,000 passengers had the plot been successful. [source, Patterns of Global Terrorism, 2000, Bust and Boom, Washington Post, Dec 30, 2001] The image on the right is a snap from Ramzi Yousef's Manila apartment (cnn)

Detecting explosive liquids requires bombarding the target with neutrons and looking for a nitrogen presence. Neutrons means nuculars and particularly "gamma rays." Let the Hulk jokes begin. Poop, someone's already on it: Patent for Multi-sensor explosive detection system.

Al Qaeda? I don't think so. It's more likely that it's copy-cat or ex-AQ-influenced British of Pakistani extraction taking off on OBL's declaration of war on the US that occured this month, 1996.

More, as it develops.

I'm a big pus

So, I'm at the new Edwards Cigar Shoppe, buying cigars for Jack's new child, Sloopers, and there're three guys sitting in their leather loungy chairs chatting. One of them gets up to help me and shows me around the 3rd largest humidor in Colorado (they've expanded since they moved). Nice guy, helpful, informative, gets me "It's a Boy!" stickers for the sticks.

While I'm being rung up, I'm talking with him about my car, his car, the new shoppe, etc, I overhear the other two guys talking - one guy, really. He's explaining to the other guy how Muslims are all about streaming into Europe to take advantage of their social welfare all the while setting up mosques to enforce how the locals should behave and that this behavior's been going on since the Ottoman Empire. Who're they to say what anyone should do? Additionally, how's a superior culture supposed to treat these Muslims? It's not really our fault if we have better weapons and whatnot - if they can't defend themselves in Lebanon or Iraq, they lose, just like the American Indians.

Further, with something he read in the NRO that said that Israel or the US doesn't really have "winning" as a goal in mind, he posited: What'd be wrong with that anyway? We should want to "win" and these oppressive, ignorant Muslims, such as the Palestinians, who just want to impose their rules and take advantage of our wealth should eat it.

I took my cigars and left. Yeah, a few times I wanted to engage and did turn around once or twice at places where counterpoints would've made him think (such as his truncated history - the Crusades; historicity being a much more present thing in middle eastern minds; the situation of the Palestinians not nearly being "won" or "winning," Israel's deliberate apartheid culture), but I stopped myself.

I had a transaction to complete, and it just isn't polite to interrupt a guy's ramblings. I figured, I'm brown enough - my body language should be sufficient for the guy to get a clue, lower his voice, or whatever. Or not. I thought, briefly, maybe I could engage, sit down, smoke one of the hour-longs I bought and have some sort of conversation with them. I wanted to know how many Muslims he knew, how many Republican-voting Muslims he knew - I'm guessing a whopping 0 & 0. But what'd've done? My transaction was over.

The more things change...

Israel's invasion of Lebanon to "wind the clock back 20 years" on the people there and crush Hezbollah is a neat thing we're doing - it's a combo of the classic proxy war throughout the Cold War era (plus the whole Zionist victim-complex) plus War on Terrorism. Mmmm, language. What's most neat about our proxy war with Iran is that they're not fighting back. I can't tell if they've recognized this yet.

The moonbats who thought the US was going to invade Syria after Iraq should take note: We've heard you and we're distracting you with an flea-flicker from an old playbook and still getting our broken PNAC ideations done.

Analysts are saying that in five years the people of Lebanon will look back and revile Hezbollah for the pain they've brought Lebanon and I think they just might, but not because they're cowed. I'm still thinking on this, but what I think it's going to do is make Israel less stable as the pall of empire becomes even more deep-seated in the hearts and minds of the people of that region. We're throwing good money after bad, with regards to Israel and our poor attempts to effect change via military dominance.

Interoperability and Standards in a Post Google Earth World

Matt Nolan posed a question to the panel that'd been hanging in the air since the first day of the Virtual Globes conference : What do data exchange formats look like for 3d globes? Hard core open source GIS users and standards advocates would immediately say OGC's GML. The popular wave, on the other hand, which has really enlightened people to the usefulness of geospatial data would back KML as a de facto universal standard.

My answer went something like this (although this entry's probably clearer): The analogy and history of HTML is probably quite instructive. Before HTML, prior to 1993/1994, there was this beautiful trainwreck called SGML that was used for document "exchange." HTML was widely adopted as a document markup language to the chagrin and much gnashing of teeth from the SGML crowd, but without HTML, there would've been no web or internet as the masses know it. Sorry, but gopher and wais do not Al Gore's internet make. Then, mutations happened. Netscape came along and introduced blasphemy: the IMG tag. Where would the web be without images? That didn't come from TBL. Microsoft, not to be outdone, introduced their "innovation:" the blink tag. Some mutations are good for evolution, some lead down a null path. C'est la innovation.

By 1998, the SGML crowd had not gone quietly into that good night and fought back with XML. Back then, I recall the years 1993 - 1998 to be eons. Crazy things were happening then that started with the word "Dot" and eventually ended with the word "Boom." Looking at it, that's a scant 5 years. Five years later, SGML had gone more or less by the wayside and we had a robust HTML 4 standard and XML, daddy of WebServices, SOA, and AJAX.

Geospatial interop? My prediction is by 2007, KML will be even more different than the neatness that's in KML 2.0 and probably a GML profile, while GML, itself, will also be something different.

So, if you're new to GML 3.1.1, take my advice from my experience with SGML & HTML - Learning EBNF might be fun for parties, but ya' ain't gonna use it - learn KML inside and out and why it needs to grow.

The advent of leaderless terror is winning the war on terror

It's my opinion that Zarqawi's legacy is legitimizing the concept of terror 'cells' that aren't necessarily generated from a single source, as classic terror cells are. A biological analogy might be cancer.

Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, said the PATH plot appears to part of that new trend of "leaderless" terror.

The trend would include, he goes on to say, the May 2003 Morocco bombings, the March 2004 Spain bombings, and the July 2005 London bombings. Also included would be the Seas of David group.

I don't believe leaderless terror is a new thing at all, nor do I find it disturbing, from the point of view of Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda's core leadership had significant and public issues with bringing Zarqawi's Tawhid wa Jihad group into the AQ fold. It's to AQ's credit that new terror groups want to be associated with it's brand, but that desire also makes glaringly evident that Al Qaeda, itself, is marginalized and without the ability to generate operations of its own. This is a good thing, because it proves Al Qaeda's effectiveness is neutered and has moved on to a purely ideological mode. Combatting an ideological mode of a movement requires a different methodology than breaking up isolated pseudo-cells.

Zarqawi-esque "Al Qaeda copycats" tend to have their own twist on the Al Qaeda's demands - Zarqawi's was vehemently militant Salafist, anti-Shi'a, and anti-Jordanian, rather than the more anti-global, anti-Western first, pro-caliphate that AQ professes. These 'regionality' wrinkles are grippy handles for intelligence and enforcement operatives to grab onto and exploit. At the logical end of this spectrum, we come back to locally disgruntled terrorists - basque/eta, ira, timothy mcveigh.

There's a question of motive for these new cells which is a good and bad thing for the intelligence community. It's possible they're trying to gain AQ's attention to receive some sort of legitimacy from AQ, but it's just as possible that AQ's message has gone "mainstream" as it were and is causing spontaneous cells. Of the ones that have emerged, regardless of their "success," their tradecraft has been weaker than previous missions attributed to core Al Qaeda. For the enforcement community, that's also a good thing - bungling cells are easier to catch.

The real question is what a real "sleeper cell" looks like. Well trained and prepared cells would not look like the Seas of David or Assem Hammoud, the Lebanese man caught in April 2006, and being compared to the Lebanese 9/11 hijacker Ziyad Jarrah.

The tangential question is why are we hearing about "Kramer Jihadists" (a phrase used by Stratfor to describe opsec-poor terrorist wannabes) at this point in time. If this sort of hero emulation's constantly going on why is this being played up in the press? Is there actually a significant upsurge or is it for domestic political consumption? Anniversaries of Madrid, London, and NYC are also always good times to focus more on foiled plots, too.

Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

I believe the US government has the right and ability to detail the categorization of the extra-judicial designation of "enemy combatant." I also do believe that most people at Guantanmo are "innocent" but that the tragedies of their individual situations, which threatens to overshadow our pursuit of justice, are orthogonal to the legal issue of their designation.

It may not have been consistent with the precedent established by the Bush administration in further detailing the “enemy combatant” designation when it was decided to apply military tribunals as a method of trial to said designees as a rapid and easily implementable method by the President (ie, no need to confer with the other branches of government, Legislative or Judicial, due to the inherent extra-judicial nature of the EC designation). It would seem that a more consistent, albeit further inflammatory, path would've been to create an extra-judicial executive sponsored body of justice possibly based upon, but not exactly, existing military tribunal process.

The judicial branch is definitely concerned over matters judicial and especially concerned when their purview is sidestepped by something like the enemy combatant designation. It's also bit unsettling when legalities place areas beyond the actual, direct reach of the judicial branch. Lawyers on both sides of the issue seem to be doing the right thing by approaching the issue via one of our cornerstones of justice, habeas corpus. Whether habeas was respected by the tribunal process in place is in effect what this ruling narrowly addresses.

Their ruling today answered the question as to whether the administration's executive branch utilization of the military's tribunal system was constitutional, legal, and sufficient to adhere with their previous ruling that enemy combatants must be given a trial. They said that the President is not allowed to use the established and formal legal system of military tribunals as a means of justice. That's not what they're designed for. Enemy combatants are outside established precedent so, in essence, an existing form of adjudication cannot be used. I have to carefully read the ruling, but it may imply that even they themselves, the judicial branch, aren't the appropriate venue. This would further confirm the extra-judicial nature of the enemy combatant designation.

The question still remains as to what to do with these detainees. I'm comping up a punnet square of options for reference.

Google Analytics to Google Earth

A while back I created a map mashup & backend to track visitors to my blog (all 3 of you) (Tracking my visitors ... with Maps, Nov 14, 2005). It just so happened it was the same day that Google put out their Analytics (nee urchin) product publicly. I’ve been quite happy using Analytics, since Google’s ability to track and resolve city locations is much better than mine, but the Analytics maps aren’t easily shareable.

Ian pointed me to this blog post and I just had to reproduce. Here’s a java jar that you can run at the command line to convert Google Analytics data to KML for use in Google Earth.


USAGE: java -jar UrchindataToKml input_report.xml [output.kml]

I used a different export method, their XML export method:

Logging into Google Analytics, go to All Reports and expand Marketing Optimization. From there, expand Visitor Segment Performance and then click on "Geo Map Overlay."

Then, select the little document-looking icon from the upper right hand corner. An xml document should open up. Save that somewhere on your filesystem.

Here’s the XSLT for urchindata xml to KML: UrchindataToKml.xsl ... and here're my latest results:

Some further thoughts:

Manually exporting and running a command-line program is, well, manual and annoying.
In order to automate retrieving urchindata map xml and converting it to KML, it’d need: a way of logging in a way of choosing a date range (would be nice) an api!

I’m sure Google’ll get around to making some sort of API for it. Knowing Google, I’m sure there’s already some unpublished API that just has to be ferreted out.

Seas of David

Their leader, Narseal Batiste, was known in his native Chicago for his large, wooden walking stick, flowing robes and matching headdress - either white or purple.

"He used to stand on the corner for a long time talking up at the sky and holding a big stick," said Sarah Villasensor, 53, who owns the Latina Jewelry store a few doors down from where Batiste used to live. "He would stay for hours right there."

Batiste, at 32 the oldest of the group, imposed an ascetic regime: no women, no booze, no drugs, no meat and lots of martial arts. They affected a military bearing and wore black uniforms with homemade shoulder patches that some described as a Star of David.

"We study and we train through the Bible, not only physical but mentally," a member calling himself Brother Corey told CNN. "We are not no terrorists."

A close friend of one of the defendants said Batiste's teachings came from the Moorish Science Temple of America, an early 19th century religion that blends Christianity, Judaism and Islam with a heavy influence on self-discipline through martial arts.

Oddballs tried mix of creeds & religions, New York Daily News, 06/24/2006
Emphases mine.

Moorish Science Temple of America, Inc. (wikipedia) states that it "is a religion founded in the early 20th century claiming to be a sect of Islam, but having equal influences in Buddhism, Christianity, Freemasonry, Gnosticism and Taoism. Its main tenet was that African Americans were descended from the Moors and thus were originally Islamic. Its founder was Noble Drew Ali, the Prophet né Timothy Drew (1886-1929), whose disciples included Wallace Fard Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam, and Elijah Muhammad, who was Fard's successor and who later employed Malcolm X as the mouthpiece of the Nation."

So here we have a group, MST, which is also related to the Nation of Islam (NOI), a group whose offshoots joined an American version of Jamat al Fuqura (JF) (Here's Something Interesting) which is related to the 1993 WTC bombing (Clement Rodney Hampton-el), to members DC shooter ex-NOI John Allen Muhammad and shoebomber Richard Reid, and to the Daniel Pearl murder.

It's interesting that America's latest domestic "Islamic" terrorists aren't Muslims or Islamic at all, except superficially. Recall, when the Oklahoma City bombing happened even Geraldo thought it was Muslims.

Related post: Sleeper Cell? Seas of David, Liberty City, 06/23/2006

On a related note, this isn't in the Islam category because this doesn't belong there.

On a secondary related note, the SoD's wanted to blow up the Sears Tower, right? The Sears Tower was designed by a Muslim, Fazlur Rahman Khan (wikipedia), so in my eyes, that makes them doubly dumb.

AQI/Insurgent retaliation for fingering Zarqawi?

Seems like the insurgents are ticked off at Zarqawi's killing and are taking it out on the residents of Hibhib, the town where Zarqawi was killed. The Iraqi government should've anticipated revenge attacks at the scene of the crime. Other "revenge" incidents are taking place, such as the checkpoint attack that lead to beheading of our boys and the Shi'a factory workers that were abducted en masse.

A bomb struck a Sunni mosque in a town north-east of Baghdad, killing 10 worshippers and wounding 15 in the same town where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in Iraq earlier this month.
The explosion occurred in front of the Grand Hibhib mosque in the volatile Diyala province, according to the provincial joint co-ordination centre.
Al-Zarqawi, the leader of Iraq’s most feared terror group al Qaida in Iraq, was killed on June 7 in a US airstrike in Hibhib, which is near Baqouba, about 35 miles north-east of Baghdad.
10 killed in bomb attack on Sunni mosque, Ireland OnLine, 06/23/2006

Sleeper Cell? Seas of David, Liberty City

Edit: Here's the indictment, U.S. v. Batiste, et al.

Seven people arrested during an FBI raid in the US city of Miami have been charged with conspiring to work with al-Qaeda and under its control.

Ok. The press thinks them to be American Muslims, possibly an offshoot of black muslims. (five US citizens and two foreigners, including a Haitian) They're most likely not even muslims.

Reports say they were infiltrated by a US agent posing as an al-Qaeda member.

Wow. Showtime's Sleeper Cell, anyone? I wonder what the JTTF/FBI thinks a profile of an AQ plant in Miami looks like?

Batiste met several times in December 2005 with a person purporting to be an al-Qaeda member and asked for boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios, vehicles and $50,000 US in cash to help him build an “`Islamic army’ to wage jihad’,” the indictment said. It said that Batiste said he would use his “soldiers” to destroy the Sears Tower.
In February 2006, it said, Batiste told the “al-Qaeda representative” that he and his five soldiers wanted to attend al-Qaeda training and planned a “full ground war” against the United States in order to “kill all the devils we can.” His mission would “be just as good or greater than 9/11,” the indictment accused Batiste of boasting.

Here're some names. I'm looking for the indictment document. Seems juicy.

Narseal Batiste
Patrick Abraham
Stanley Grant Phanor
Naudimar Herrera
Burson Augustin
Lyglenson Lemorin
Rotschild Augustine

They were arrested on Thursday after heavily armed FBI agents and other law enforcement agencies swooped on a warehouse in one of Miami's poorest neighborhoods, Liberty City, [isn't this a GTA city?] a predominantly black area that has witnessed some of Miami's worst race riots.
A man identified as a member of the "Seas of David" religious group told CNN on Thursday that five of his fellow members were among those arrested and that they had no connection to terrorists.
"We are not terrorists. We are members of David, Seas of David," said the man, identified as Brother Corey. He said the group had "soldiers" in Chicago, but reiterated it was peaceful movement.
...
He refused to provide the names of those arrested, insisting his group was a religious organisation: "We study Allah and the worship of the regular Bible."
Cory also said his group had connections in Chicago. "We have soldiers in Chicago," he said, clarifying that by soldier he meant: "We train through the Bible ... not only physical but mentally."

Echoes of the Branch Davidians, or a David-derivative cult? Seas of David is apparently a religious group that blends the teachings of Christianity and Islam.

Seven charged over 'Chicago plot' , BBC
7 charged in alleged U.S. terror plot, Toronto Star
Arrested Miami men planned "war" against US