Cracking the Da Eliza code

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Peter Preston, writing about last week’s blood-curdling speech by the Director-General of MI5…

Does Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller truly believe that the cult of Osama is some passing, youthful fad that will one day be gone, like David Cassidy’s fan club? Will it somehow be swept away by new boy bands or iPods? Not exactly, it seems. We must all stand up for our core values, “equality, freedom, justice and tolerance”, she says. We must therefore confront “the powerful narrative that weaves together conflicts from across the globe, presenting the west’s response to varied and complex issues, from longstanding disputes such as Israel/Palestine and Kashmir to more recent events, as evidence of an across-the-board determination to undermine and humiliate Islam worldwide”.

Code-crackers will note that she lists those issues and disputes alphabetically. “Afghanistan, the Balkans, Chechnya, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Kashmir and Lebanon are regularly cited by those who advocate terrorist violence as illustrating what they allege is western hostility to Islam.” They should also note that she goes way back before 9/11, which means before Baghdad and Kabul, too – to the 1990s, when al-Qaida was blowing up Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and killing hundreds of innocent Africans. So these “roots” go very deep.

And where, in any meaningful sense, can they be reckoned to start? Not in Kashmir, against a Hindu enemy; nor in Chechnya, unless Putin has become an honorary pillar of “the west”. Did Washington dismember Yugoslavia? Is Tony Blair about to sabotage the birth of a Muslim Kosovo? No, the loose threads of this tapestry lead inescapably back to what she calls “Israel and Palestine”. Maybe bringing peace to the Middle East after over half a century of vicious strife wouldn’t bring total generation shift, the lessening of a fury, the erasure of hatred. But it would be a beginning, a symbol, a chance to start afresh…

Hostages to fortune

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Jim Allchin, Microsoft VP, quoted on Good Morning Silicon Valley, talking about Vista.

In my opinion, it is the most secure system that’s available, and it’s certainly the most secure system that we’ve shipped. So I feel very confident that customers are far better off by using Windows Vista than they are with anything that we’ve released before.”

Earlier, he had said that he was so confident in the operating system’s security measures that he believes there’s no need for Vista users to run any third-party antivirus software.

Stay tuned.

LATER… Bill Thompson has written an insightful column about this. Excerpt:

Vista will ship with Kernel Patch Protection – also called PatchGuard – which checks to see if the core has been altered in any way. This should make it a lot harder for viruses, trojans, rootkits and other types of malicious software, or malware, to install.

PatchGuard will be backed up by support for the Trusted Platform Module, a hardware component built into many new computers that gives the operating system a way to store and use secured information.

The new approach should make life more difficult for malware writers, but it is also going to get in the way of legitimate security software vendors such as Symantec, which has already pointed out that its anti-virus programs rely on being able to modify the Windows kernel, something which will no longer be allowed.

Microsoft’s response is to argue that “kernel patching”, as the process is called, is not needed and that the standard security tools are all that are required.

It may be right, but it’s hard to tell because we don’t actually know much about what is going on inside the Vista kernel. Microsoft, like many other commercial software developers, prefers to keep such details secret.

“If severe flaws are discovered in Vista”, Bill concludes, “and there already signs that the lockdown is far from perfect, then users may well wonder why they have put their faith in the ‘benign dictator’ approach to security.”

The Great Revulsion

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In the run-up to the mid-term elections I was puzzled by why UK media outlets were regularly consulting an odious, right-wing fanatic called Grover Norquist.

Just reading Paul Krugman’s reaction to the electoral results makes me even more puzzled. He mentions our friend Norquist:

I’m not calling for or predicting the end of conservatism. There always have been and always will be conservatives on the American political scene. And that’s as it should be: a diversity of views is part of what makes democracy vital.

But we may be seeing the downfall of movement conservatism — the potent alliance of wealthy individuals, corporate interests and the religious right that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. This alliance may once have had something to do with ideas, but it has become mainly a corrupt political machine, and America will be a better place if that machine breaks down.

Why do I want to see movement conservatism crushed? Partly because the movement is fundamentally undemocratic; its leaders don’t accept the legitimacy of opposition. Democrats will only become acceptable, declared Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, once they “are comfortable in their minority status.” He added, “Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they’ve been fixed, then they are happy and sedate.”

Norquist is famous for his desire to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” According to his Wikipedia entry, “his close business and political ties to recently indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff are the subject of a current federal investigation.”

Welcome to Googlewood

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Interesting — if inconclusive piece by Richard Siklos about whether Google is a friend or a foe for traditional media companies.

Is Google a media company? The last time I checked, a media company was generally defined as a business that accumulates audiences and sells access to them to marketers.

And Mr. Schmidt said recently: “Ultimately, our goal at Google is to have the strongest advertising network and all the world’s information. That’s part of our mission.” And if it is a media company, it is the world’s biggest, with a market capitalization of $144 billion.

But when I spoke to David Eun, Google’s vice president for content partnerships, he took umbrage with the media designation. He noted that Google did not create or own content — in his mind, part of the definition of a media company. Rather, he said, Google is a technology company: “I would say we’re a conduit connecting our users with content and advertisers.”

The point may be semantic, but it reminded me of the longstanding friction between cable companies and TV broadcasters over whether cable should pay for distributing the free over-the-air signals — or whether cable was doing the broadcasters a favor by putting their signals onto the system through which most people watch television.

Again, Mr. Eun disagreed, noting that Google is not a distributor: it tries to push people to other Web sites and takes immense geek pride in how quickly it does so.

Indeed, a search for “Google” and “friend or foe” took me 0.10 seconds and elicited 271,000 results. It took Mr. Eun not much longer to try to explain to me that Google (a) respects copyrights, (b) gives any content owner a choice of opting in or out of its search results and (c) focuses on ways to help its media partners achieve their goals. “I say firmly: we are friend because we are trying to build your business objectives,” Mr. Eun said.

The future’s already here

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The Observer has an edited version of my rant to the Society of Editors Conference in Glasgow…

In any other industry, the discovery that your potential future customers weren’t interested in buying your product would prompt an investigation into whether there was something wrong with the product. But what one hears – still – from the newspaper industry is that there’s something wrong with the customers. And what one finds, on closer examination, is that the industry seems determined either to insult or to ignore them…

The Wikipedia cycle

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Fastinating post by LeeAnn Prescott based on Hitwise data about how people access Wikipedia. The chart shows

the steadily increasing market share of visits to Wikipedia. What you’ll notice upon closer examination is that Wikipedia’s traffic is tied to the academic school year. That bump in December 2005? Finals and term paper time. The subsequent dip? Christmas vacation. The larger bump in May 06? Finals again. Another dip in traffic during the summer months, and another surge in September as school starts.

Who’s Rumsfeld?

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… The sergeant went upstairs to tell his marines, just as he had informed them the day before that the Republican Party had lost control of the House of Representatives and that Congress was in the midst of sweeping change. Mr. Menti had told them that, too.

“Rumsfeld’s out,” he said to five marines sprawled with rifles on the cold floor.

Lance Cpl. James L. Davis Jr. looked up from his cigarette. “Who’s Rumsfeld?” he asked.

If history is any guide, many of the young men who endure the severest hardships and assume the greatest risks in the war in Iraq will become interested in politics and politicians later, when they are older and look back on their combat tours.

But not yet. Marine infantry units have traditionally been nonpolitical, to the point of stubbornly embracing a peculiar detachment from policy currents at home. It is a pillar of the corps’ martial culture: those with the most at stake are among the least involved in the decisions that send them where they go.

From the NYT via Truthdig.

Diplomatic notices

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BRITISH CONSULATE
Basra: Iraq

Opening Times

SUICIDE BOMBINGS
9.30am – 3.30pm
Monday to Friday

Those wishing to bomb the
Consulate outside those hours
must apply in writing at least
two weeks before they hope
to embark on their journey to
paradise.

MORTAR ATTACKS
11.00am – 2.00pm
Monday/Wednesday/Friday

No incoming mortar attacks
will be accepted outside these
times.

From this week’s Private Eye.

Pot-luck supper

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I avoided the Society of Editors’ Grand Gala Dinner by going home. (I had work to do.) But the conscientious Roy Greenslade went — and later wondered why. Here is an excerpt from his report:

It is always difficult to grasp quite what these annual dinners are about, but last year’s in Windermere was relieved by an entertaining speech from Melvyn Bragg. I also remember that there were mercifully short speeches of welcome. Oh, how we ached for Melvyn during last night’s dreary non-event.

The Lord Provost of Glasgow, Liz Cameron, spoke well enough but for so long we were in danger of fainting from hunger because the woman just didn’t know when to stop. I think we got the message. Glasgow has changed and is changing… our newspapers – The Herald and the Evening Times are terrific… this art gallery is a palace of dreams. Indeed it was for the several sensible people who had fallen asleep.

A speech by the Scottish First Minister, Jack McConnell, was so insufferably stilted and stuffy that we wondered how he had ever got elected. (In the cab later a Scottish delegate explained in his defence that he was great behind the scenes. Fine. Let him stay there then). But McConnell was a mere warm-up act for the most stunningly dull “address” I can recall.

Sebastian Coe, chairman of the 2012 Olympics organisation, spoke without imparting a single intelligent thought. I tried to take notes but he said nothing of any consequence whatsoever, and he said it several times over. It was unrelieved by wit or wisdom and was heard in total silence by a now disbelieving crowd…