The cost of giving something away!
Wired. But instead of the few hundred downloads Fleishman expected, the book was downloaded about 10,000 times in just 36 hours. And because he’s charged incrementally for bandwidth, Fleishman estimates he could be billed $15,000 at the end of the month — possibly a lot more. “It’s a financial catastrophe,” said Fleishman. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
The Baghdad blogger
First noticed in the mainstream press by the Guardian, which concluded that he was not a hoaxer, now people are wondering if anything’s happened to him. Hmmm…
Meanwhile, media interest in War Blogs continues to grow. Dave Winer was interviewed about them and posted this list of what he regards as interesting ones. And the Warblogging site is compiling an Index of Evil, tracking the numbers of weblogs which refer to Ashcroft, Saddam, bin Laden or Poindexter. Inside VC is now running a war blog. And, best of all, BBC war reporters now have a rolling web log in which they post stuff which often seems better than their polished news reports. There’s a strange Blog called Strategic Armchair Command. And a useful Warblogs portal.
Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander…?
Presidential candidate Howard Dean gave a talk at Harvard last night. He asked an interesting question. Next year, how will we feel when China invades Taiwan because they think they have weapons of mass destruction? Has the new Bush Doctrine, pre-emptive wars, unleashed a philosophy of world power that we may not be so comfortable with? [Scripting News]
This war brought to you by…
From Scott Rosenberg…
The US is invading oil-rich Iraq, and much of the world thinks — rightly or wrongly — that it’s doing it because Bush & Co. want the country’s oil. The Bushies deny this vehemently (as do their British allies). Yet when US troops name their “forward operating bases,” they choose the names Exxon and Shell.
“I’m not making this up”, says Scott. “Those are the names of the 101st Airborne’s helicopter bases in Iraq, according to this New York Times report.
The Pentagon is apparently explaining that these camps are refueling bases, and that justifies the naming. I dunno. This may be true. But it doesn’t help us. The Bush administration has been given lots of points for its handling of this war’s PR, but this looks like a ludicrously stupid blunder.”
Wonderful New Yorker Editorial on the likely consequences of the Bush regime’s overweening arrogance
David Remnick has written a deeply perceptive editorial about the need for humility and its total absence in the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld camp. He opens with a quote from Dwight Eisenhower’s speech on receiving the Freedom of the City of London:
“Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in blood of his followers and sacrifices of his friends.
Conceivably a commander may have been professionally superior. He may have given everything of his heart and mind to meet the spiritual and physical needs of his comrades. He may have written a chapter that will glow forever in the pages of military history. Still, even such a man — if he existed — would sadly face the fact that his honors cannot hide in his memories the crosses marking the resting places of the dead. They cannot soothe the anguish of the widow or the orphan whose husband or father will not return….”.
I never realised that Ike could rise to such eloquence. But he was a thoughtful and wise man who had seen — and been responsible for — many of the horrors of warfare. Compare that speech with the strutting, sod-you, sod-the-world hubris of the Bush junta. And tremble for the future. The truth is, I suspect, that the Bush ‘conquest’ of Iraq will turn out to be just like the Israeli ‘conquest’ of the Lebanon — especially when it becomes clear, as an experienced ex-soldier, John Robb, points out, that there is no way to take Baghdad without killing thousands of Iraqi civilians.
More businesses sniff at Open Source software
Register story.
“A report on business attitudes to open source software published this week indicates steady progress in the UK, with a growing number of CIOs seeing OSS as a means to tackle Total Cost of Ownership, and indications that it is being used in more sophisticated roles. The study, conducted by Trend Consulting on behalf of OpenForum Europe and published this week in the IoD’s Director magazine, reveals growing confidence in open source, and notes that avoidance of lock-in is as much a driver as TCO…”
Common sense about digital photography
Top Ten Digital Photography Tips. I thought I’d sussed my digital camera, but found that I hadn’t. Thanks to [[ t e c h n o c u l t u r e ]] for the link.
Nationalism: the Iraqi backbone
More from Scott Rosenberg…
“The cakewalk that some seemed to expect before and immediately after the start of hostilities has now become what surely everyone should have expected it to be — a real war against an enemy that has at least some staying power.
The notion that the Iraqi forces would all just somehow roll over never made much sense. In fact, it seems that there haven’t been nearly the massive defections and surrenders that the U.S. command plainly hoped for and expected. Here’s a little nugget from the Monday Times that I didn’t see much covered elsewhere. Remember that triumphant report a few days ago that the commander of an entire Iraqi division near Basra had surrendered? Michael Gordon reports that, Sunday, “American officials … discovered that the ‘commander’ was actually a junior officer masquerading as a higher-up in an attempt to win better treatment.” It’s stuff like this puts us on warning that every piece of information we are now getting about this war, from any source, is subject to revision and reversal. Reader beware. (Viewer, beware even more.)
Comparisons to the 1991 Gulf War may have lulled Americans into thinking that all campaigns against Iraq can be wrapped up in four days — and Saddam’s army was stronger then. But there’s one absolutely crucial difference: in 1991 we were fighting to oust Saddam’s troops from Kuwait, where they probably understood they should never have been in the first place. This time the Iraqis are fighting for their homeland.
Yes, their homeland is ruled by a brutal dictator, and yes, I don’t doubt that many if not most Iraqis would be happy to see Saddam gone. But there’s a difference between wishing that your government had a better leader and welcoming the influx of hundreds of thousands of heavily armed soldiers from halfway around the world, backed by an air force that is bombing your cities round the clock. This sort of thing tends to bring out the nationalist streak.
I can’t know, from this distance, whether the Iraqis who are fighting back today are doing so solely because Saddam’s secret police have guns to their heads — or because they believe that, on some level, they are fighting for their homes as well as for their president’s hide. It’s certainly still possible that the entire Iraqi command structure could collapse. For the sake of everyone in the field, I hope that happens, the sooner the better. But the longer the Iraqis hold out and the stronger they fight back, the greater must grow our suspicion that U.S. decision-makers were operating from some highly dubious, overconfident assumptions.
You do sometimes have to shake your head and wonder what planet American intelligence is derived from. Gordon writes, “There was no disguising the fact that the attacks [in the south] by the fedayeen” — militia fighters in civilian clothes driving SUVs and toting machine guns and grenade launchers — “were a setback and a surprise.” Surprise? What sand does your head have to be buried in not to anticipate, in 2003, that your massive Western army invading a Muslim Arab country was likely to find itself under assault from such guerrilla forces?”
[Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comment]
An end to spam — again
John Markoff of the NYT gives a big puff to a new anti-spam company called Mailblocks. It sounds like an intriguing idea, until you read the small print, which the incomparable Dan Gillmor did. He discovered that if you sign up for the Mailblocks service you are also giving them the right to send you, er, spam! Here is the relevant bit of the “Terms of Service”:
“You acknowledge that such Third Party Content is an inseparable part of the Services, and that furnishing such Third Party Content to you cannot be terminated unless the Services are terminated. All such Third Party Content will be understood to be requested by you through your use of the Services….”.
Sigh. It looked like a good idea initially….
UPDATE:Following Dan’s piece, the company changed its policy. Well done Mailblocks. And well done Dan!.
The Bush-Cheney Principle
“The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer”.