...more recent posts
This seems like a good change to be making. Dave Winer is updating the weblogs.com recently updated page so that instead of their spiders hitting every site every hour to look for changes, the sites themselves have to send a message requesting the indexing.
To participate a site must be able to send an XML-RPC or SOAP 1.1 message to weblogs.com, and that will schedule a poll event for sometime in the next hour. Our server will only read sites that claim to have updated. This change is necessary in order for Weblogs to scale to support the number of sites that it now works with.I'm not in the index, but dratfink is, and maybe some other people here want to be. I'll add this feature as soon as there are more instructions from Userland. It's expected, but still very cool, that they are making this open so smaller people like us can participate. Thanks!
Still trying to get my ideas together regarding the communications device I have been thinking about. The main thing is that it is portable, wireless, and can work in two different modes. One mode is the standard internet mode, where the device searches for a gateway within range and if one is found it can connect through it to the internet. (I'm ignoring the cost structures, although there would be some costs here for someone.) The other mode would be a peer to peer mode. Each device would be a client and a server. If you are in peer mode then your device searches for any other peers within range. You would see some sort of list of available servers from which you could choose. As you physically move around the list would change as different people would come in or go out of range. On your own device you can either have your server on or off. If it's on, then people within range can connect to you. This would be like having your own apache (or whatever) server on an intranet. Also, in peer mode, your device is a router whether you have your server on or not. So people can connect through you to others. But there would be some (small) limit on the number of hops to avoid gnutella like problems with scaling. The peer mode would be a very local thing.
Apparently the different flavors of 802.11 (like Apple's Airport, or Lucent's Wavelan) can be used for things like this, so there is really nothing new here. I guess it just boils down to realizing that connecting to the global internet is not always what you want. This is what I realized in the hours following the WTC collapse, when a lot of Manhattan's communication infrastructure was knocked out. I wanted to talk to people outside the city, but contacting people who were here seemed even more pressing. Obviously if the attack had been more nebulous (like a bio attack) communicating locally would have been even more important. Being able to switch to peer mode, thus bypassing any fixed infrastructure (because the portable devices themselves are the infrastructure) would have been very convenient.
The internet itself is decentralized, but only somewhat. From what I understand about routing, this is an efficient design. Complete decentralization seems to have problems scaling because each node gets flooded with too many routing requests. I can only imagine that the internet itself is going to become much more regulated and business like in the near future. But as this happens perhaps a new frontier will open up in the space usually referred to as "the last mile." This space could be filled with an ad hoc peer to peer local intranet. This would be a community space - probably interesting in NYC and other cities, while less interesting or even non existent in very rural locations. The peer network would be free (in both senses) while the internet itself does and will continue to cost money. I'm actually in favor of a charge per byte structure on the global internet. Maybe being a gateway between local peer nets and the internet could be a business. People would pay to use your gateway to jump onto the net if they happened to be inside your peer network. And conversely, people could drop into local peer nets from remote locations using these gateways in the opposite direction.
In times of crisis the peer networks would work even if local infrastructure was knocked out. And then the government could keep a stash of disposable wireless gateways (something like 802.11 basestations) and maybe just drop them (on tiny parachutes or something) over a disaster area. Like seeding a field from the air. This way the local net would work right away, and connections to the global net could be gotten up and working very easily.
Or something like that. It's boring to read about it this way. I'm actually working on a short near future sci-fi story to flesh out this idea. Not sure if that will work out, but I'll put it up as I go if I make any progress.
Whenever I get back to the BCCI affair I know it's time to stop reading and go outside for a walk. There is no reason for me to think I can put the big picture together, so when these large pieces insist on falling into place I get a little nervous. Maybe this is a good time to dive into some difficult (for me) coding. Something with a lot of strands I can put together and then actuallly test as to whether I am right or not. Something that will either work or break. Maybe that mail interface, or the downloadable weblog snapshot feature. It's not as important as 60 briefcases that may or may not be missing, but at least I can work on it and then at some point reach a conclusion. I don't wish to learn any more about the Caspian Basin right now.
I didn't mean to watch it, but we ended up in front of a TV last night having our emotions manipulated in that all too easy way. Still, it was worth it for the highlights. Of course Imagine is the song. I mean: The Song, given the moment, the context, and the particular city. When I heard the first few notes on the piano I just thought, skeptically, "who is playing this?" as if no mere man could be up to the task. Then the big cowboy hat tipped back revealing a rather serious looking Neil Young. "He's got clearance" I said out loud, stunned, and then Gandalf, er, I mean Neil cast the spell. Perfect.
"...You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one..."
Amen
And just to show I'm not always completely swallowed by such emotional orchestrations, I'll complain that if Simon can't get back with Garfunkle for one night, do we really stand a chance of all living together on this planet? I mean, come on - a solo Bridge Over Troubled Waters doesn't really cut it.
Here's a little something I wrote after using Mozilla 0.93 and 0.94 as my main browser for the last few weeks. Short version: It's usable, but you probably don't want to yet unless you have something against Microsoft.
If you use Microsoft Outlook Express for email, please read and follow these 4 simple steps. Very easy. This will help stop many of the worms that are plauging the internet. Please do this.
Not so unusual I guess, but I've been having bad dreams for the last several nights. Last night the government was doing a test explosion of a nuclear bomb in Manhattan. I guess so we could see what it would be like and be ready. Sounds dangerous (I thought so in the dream) but we were carefully covering all our windows with aluminum foil, and this was going to somehow keep us safe. Strange. The night before it was a slow motion mid air collision between two riding lawn mowers equipped with giant fans (like those hover boats in the Everglades.) Two fat white suburban type guys were driving these craft over the city at something like one half a mile an hour. One was bearing down on the other, bumped it from behind, causing it to suddenly fall very quickly to the ground. Everybody was running around in the street shouting "Call 911! Call 911!" And the night before that there was a helicopter hovering over the city, slowly lowering itself to the ground. It was pitched radically forward, so the front window was facing the ground (but still somehow hovering) and when it got very close to the ground someone reached up and handed the pilot a sandwhich. Then the helicopter began to ascend, and a little way off the ground the whole thing exploded in a massive fire ball.
One other thing about the flying lawn mower dream is that once again I realized I was dreaming. I had a 5 dollar bill in my hand at one point, but then the next time I looked it was a 1 dollar bill, and then I looked again and it was a 10. I thought "Hey, that's like what happens in a dream!" And then I thought "Oh, I'm dreaming right now." I guess I'm primed for that right now, because all week, while awake, I've been wondering if maybe I'm not. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and look out the window and the towers will be right there where I expect them. Many times I've had to seriously ask myself "am I dreaming right now?"
We walked down south of Canal Street for the first time yesterday. This turned out, in my opinion, to be not such a good thing to do. They are busy down there, and while we weren't exactly in the way, we also weren't really helping the situation. A friend got us through the Canal Street check point, but the security is not really very tight. Once below Canal we made it all the way down to Chruch and Chambers, and then walked west to the river. If you don't know Manhattan, this is very close. Here's "the pile" (which is what all the workers call it) from a few blocks north. We ate dinner at a friends restaurant, and on the way back we walked past this truck loaded with an enormous steel beam. The beam itself had the smell. The officer pictured said he thought it would take a year to finish the clean up. I think they'll start going faster once they decide nobody could still be alive, but in any case, the amount of wreckage is incredible. Much more shocking than I guessed it would be.
[Original pictures of post impact WTC are here.]
Bizzare article in the Village Voice about Laili Helms, niece by marriage of former CIA director Richard Helms, and suburban Mom living in New Jersey, who is the unofficial Taliban representative in the U.S. (via scripting news)
Microsoft worms are running rampant on the web today. I've been experiencing mail problems on one of my servers. Anyone else seeing this? These sorts of things happen rather frequently, but now it just seems more ominous. In any case, DO NOT open attachments.
I don't know if he wants me throwing his theories around the internet, so I'll just say that my friend B., who seems to understand more about this stuff than anyone else I know, was scaring me again last night with his near future mid-east scenarios. He thinks Bin Laden is probably already hiding in Pakistan under very tight security, and that his big play will be to show up in Mecca where he will start preaching against the infidel. We cannot bomb Mecca. It will be exceedingly difficult to go in there and get him. And of course, the infidel is not just the west, and not just the jews. It will also be the moderate Islamic leaders. And what might his rallying cry be? How about: seize the oil fields.
Probably he would need us to strike the holy land a few times first to get people really upset or else the Saudi royal familly will be able to stop him themselves. This rubs up against the well circulated ideas of Mir Tamim Ansary
who thinks the U.S. is being led into a trap. And I think Bush's use of words like 'crusade' show that he is taking the bait.
(Here's a map of Saudi Arabia showing Mecca on the west coast by the Red Sea.)
Here's a directory of central Asian news sources.
I guess Steve and I weren't the only ones to think about dropping food and medicine on Afghanistan instead of bombs. Still, I know it won't happen. Plus, it wouldn't necessarily work. Still, if we are in a struggle with a trickster like enemy it seems very foolish to react the way we are expected to react. Or maybe people don't know much about trickster spirits.
David McCusker speculates they might shut down the internet.
I swear we heard Andrea Mitchel (sp?) start to break a story last night about an investigation into someone with a massive position shorting reinsurers (is that how you would say it?) One sentence into it (on MSNBC I believe) she was cut off without a word of explanation and they just went to some other story. I can't find anything about this on the web. Very strange. I guess it would be too scary for us to know if they are that sophisticated. (Selling short is basically making a bet that a stock will go down. It involves agreeing to deliver stock that you don't yet own at some point in the future at today's prices. If the price falls between the sale and delivery dates then you buy the stock at the new lower price and deliver it at the previous agreed upon higher price. Reinsurers are the companies that insure insurance companies and are sure to be hit by a massive disaster like this. At least I think I have this right.)
The Fray has a section for first hand stories from NYC and Washington D.C. In usual Fray style, you can add your own.
Open letter to Michael Eisner: please don't outlaw the open internet. (link via htp)
[update: new link to that story is here.]
Amazing photo collection of the world's reaction.
Thursday night I pretty much lost it. I felt so helpless. I think it was the initital shock wearing off. I've noticed that in moments of crisis I go into a very unemotional state of mind. Obviously this could be a good thing if the crisis calls on you to take some action. But by Thursday night it was clear that no action was really possible. No immediate secondary attack was coming. Few survivors would be found. Nothing could be done to make the immediate situation any different. Yet I really wanted to do something. Not being able to was very frustrating. And then this was all mixed with my growing realization about where we are headed. I was starting to see lots of writing on the web calling for war. I started to get very scared. And I sort of lost it. The emotion came out.
Yesterday I didn't talk too much. Today I think I'm out the other side of that phase. Now I'm just sinking into a deeper cynicism. We walked up to Union Square Park last night and it was absolutely packed with people. Completely filled. Candles everywhere. Everyone carrying signs with anti-war slogans: "Justice not war" - "Islam is not the enemy" - "stop the cycle of violence" - things like that. People singing. Huge cheers every time a fire truck went by. Workers covered in dust, draped in American flags, having walked up from the pile. Everyone looking each other in the eye. Tears. Hugs. Love. New Yorker's seem to get it (or maybe just the one's who would be drawn to Union Square to assemble.)
But I fear the rest of the country isn't going to share the peace vibe. And regardless, it seems clear our leaders do not. There is at least a fair chance we're headed into a massive global conflict. Somebody on the national stage has to step forward and ask the basic questions. How is it that our country is rich while other countries are poor? How? And the answer can't be that "we are the chosen people" or "we work harder" or "we are better." People are very mad at us. And even a cursory look at the world would seem to give some very good reasons.
"Playing the world's policeman is not the answer to that catastrophe in New York. Playing the world's policeman is what led to it."
The talking moose has lost his mind. And he seemed sort of reasonable. Let's get a grip on ourselves. Here's a little tip if you're having trouble being human: you should never want to go to war.
I kept singing this song in my head as I was walking around today. Seems like a good one to be humming. Maybe I can put it in your head:
Make love and not war! 'Cause we don't need no trouble.
What we need is love (love)
To guide and protect us on. (on)
If you hope good down from above, (love)
Help the weak if you are strong now. (love)
We don't need no trouble;
What we need is love. Oh, no!
We don't need - we don't need - no more trouble!
Lord knows, we don't need no trouble!
(We don't need) We don't need trouble (no more trouble) -
no more trouble - no more trouble!
Seek happiness! (...) Oh, ...!
Come on, you all and speak of love. (...) Oh, yeah!
We don't need no trouble;
What we need is love, now. (What we need is love!)
("No More Trouble" by Bob Marley from the album "Catch a Fire" - complete lyrics here.)
People gathered in Union Square today in the wake of the World Trade Center disaster. Everybody wants to say something about what happened.
For the few people who read this page, get ready to start reading lots about decentralization. This whole episode has made a few things clear. One is that we need a different telecommunications infrastructure, and it has to be radically decentralized. (Try this Google search for "ad hoc mobile wireless" for an idea.) The NYC cellphone system was not up to the task (although it didn't go down entirely which was nice.) If there had been more panic (like, say, if there had been credible rumors of biological agents on the planes) it would have been necessary to have better communications. We know horrible things can happen. Being prepared with the proper communications technology will make a big difference in the aftermath. The blogging community did a good job, but there's more we can do with some better planning. I can relate to what Dave Winer is saying: "While all this is going on I'm getting tons of ideas for how the software can work better to link people together in time of crisis. It's also a time of great opportunity. Keep your eyes and ears open, observe, and share what you learn."
When Bush says "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these attacks and those who harbor them," does he include those who armed and trained the attackers? If he does, and Bin Laden turns out to be involved, doesn't that put the U.S. in a tricky situation, since the CIA armed and trained him when they needed a pawn to use against the USSR in Afganistan? If we don't critique ourselves we lose.
Added a series of stills from video footage of the second tower collapse.
Well, I guess it's turning out to be a little more complex than I had imagined. Probably not just anyone with a knife could have done this attack. Still, I think it was about as much damage as you could wreck with a conventional (non nuke; non bio/chemical) attack, and it was carried out with only small knives and box cutters. So there is a distrubing disconnect between the level of technology employed, and the scale of the damage. And I think my fear still stands that this is a difficult attack to defend against short of completely seperating the cabin from the cockpit. There'd be some restroom issues to work out but it still seems reasonable to do. Watching those towers come down was so sad. I don't want anything like that to happen again.
I think the best argument I've heard against a repeat occurrence is that other people on planes that are being hijacked in the future will probably not just sit around. I guess what seems to have happened with the fourth plane (where some of the passengers may have rushed the hijackers and forced the plane down in Pennsylvania) would probably happen in any future attempts. And I guess that's always where our real saftey comes from. Not from "officials" or "the government" (although so many of them are doing a great job right now) but just from the mass of reasonable people out there in the world. I think we're all a little wiser as to the stakes, and I think it would be hard to get us in the same way again.
Winds have completely shifted this morning. They will shift again this evening and blow everything south, but for now we are in the cloud. I know it's not healthy, but we are staying in doors with all windows shut. I thought about leaving, but I think I have to stay. Not for any particular reason, but just because this is where I live. Despite the horror, life in New York City does go on. AKA will be open for business tonight. Come on by.
One new picture added to the World Trade Center photos. Also, I fixed the issue that was preventing some versions of IE on the Mac from seeing the photos. I'll fix all other pictures on the site over the next few days.
My amazement continues. What a perfect attack. Beautiful really, if it wasn't so horrible. So simple and such complete destruction. News reports keep speculating about the masterminds behind the plot and how only a few terrorist groups in the world have the capabilities to pull something like that off, yet there appears to be no evidence to back that up. The reality, and the elegance of the attack, was that almost anyone could do it. The whole thing might have cost just a few thousand dollars. The damage is certainly well into the billions. Maybe trillions? That's some return on investment. And then on top of that, there seems to be no way to defend against it.
Assuming that the public will not stand for mandatory strip searches of all airline passengers I can only think of one thing to do. Airplanes should be reconfigured so that the cockpit is seperate from the cabin. No doors, and reinforced thick steel walls seperating the two areas. Not a locked door - no door. These planes can still be attacked. They can be blown up with bombs. Passengers can be killed. But the plane itself cannot be commandeered in mid flight by a passenger and turned into a guided missle. This seems like a simple to implement step that will almost completely take away the possibility of this sort of disaster (I guess the plane could be taken over on the ground while the attackers could still get into the cockpit section from the outside, but that seems orders of magnitude harder for the attackers.)
Without this measure, it's hard to imagine this won't happen again. And again. And again. A few hundred bucks for a couple of tickets, and a few ceramic knives is all it takes to bomb the pentagon or knock down the World Trade Center? (Well, plus that willing to die part.) This is not acceptible. Tougher security checks at airports are not going to matter. Moving naval battle groups into New York harbor is not going to matter. Star Wars or any other crazy high tech solution will not matter. We must try to make peace, and in the mean time we have to make it impossible for people to easily get their hands on giant flying bombs.
[I'm posting more WTC related stuff in the comments below]
I'm O.K., if anyone is wondering.
I wasn't expecting the future for a few more years, but Senator Fritz Hollings (Democrat, S.C.) is introducing a bill that makes Richard Stallman's dystopian fantasies seem right on the money. And in case you don't know, that is not a good thing. The bill is called the SSSCA (security systems standards and certification act,) and you can read the staff working draft here. For those less legally inclined, here's the first paragraph (they don't even try to bury the outrageous stuff!):
(a) IN GENERAL.--It is unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies that adhere to the security systems standards adopted under section 104.I'm utterly speachless. I've been trying to write something about this for a few days, but I am not able to do it without flying into a fit of rage. The effects of this bill would be so far reaching, and so completely devastating to "humanity" (at least in terms of how I think about "humanity") that it is difficult to sum up. Wes Felter offers this: "Anyway, general purpose devices would be essentially outlawed under SSSCA. Your PC's tamper-resistant TCPA BIOS would only load certified, DRM-laden operating systems." (Here's the entire HTP thread.) But outlawing linux (and most other open source software) is just the tip of the iceburg.
I know that crazy bills get brought before congress all the time, and just because it is a bill does not mean that it will ever become law. Still, I'm finding it hard to rely on the good judgement of others to keep this one from happening. Just who is in control here? I'm beginning to suspect that it is not human, whatever it is.
Here's the wired coverage.
Do you work for a large corporation? Are you sure that's what you should be doing?
Unix time is now 999967032 which represents the number of seconds that have elapsed during the "unix era" or, in other words, since January 1, 1970. Sometime later today it will roll over to 1,000,000,000 seconds. This is like the geek millenium (complete with possible y2k like problems.)
Photos from Sandy Neck Beach, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Labor Day weekend, 2001.
Haven't been posting much lately. Trying to get back on track, but of course there's no point in forcing anything. Something knocked me a bit out of orbit a few weeks ago. Still struggling to regain my normal path. Hopefully things will be picking up soon.
Was I dreaming, or did Thomas Friedman (author of The Lexus and The Olive Tree and frequent NY Times OP ED columnist) say that the Bush whitehouse is filled with "Strangelovian lunatics" on Charlie Rose last night?