Who’d have expected a sense of humour at an anti-war protest?

Hat tip: The Thinking Blog

There’s an interesting battle brewing that may decide the fate of Facebook, the hugely popular social networking site. The country network of which I’m a member, South Africa, has tripled in size to 300 000 in just three months. I didn’t know there were that many internet connections over here.

However, there’s a dark cloud on the horizon. A very dark cloud. Microsoft is, according to the Wall Street Journal, in talks to buy a stake in the startup:

Microsoft in recent weeks approached Facebook with proposals to invest in the startup that could value the fast-growing site at $10 billion or higher, said people familiar with the matter. If those talks bear fruit, Microsoft could purchase a stake of up to 5% in the closely held startup, at a cost in the range of $300 million to $500 million, the people said.

But Microsoft must first outgun Google, which has also expressed strong interest in a Facebook stake, according to people familiar with the matter.

Microsoft’s Passport signon technology (now rebranded as Live ID) has proved to be wide open to abuse, and not only by external miscreants. When Microsoft bought Hotmail almost ten years ago, the webmail pioneer turned into a sluggish performer and a hotbed of spam. As this page documents, Microsoft itself had for years been both negligent and willfully complicit in some of the abuse. On one occasion it changed, without notification, all users’ preferences to share information with third parties, for example. On another, it tried to claim copyright on everything sent via Hotmail. It certainly has not been particularly respectful of users’ privacy, and has burned its trust relationship with its more savvy customers.

I’m sure Microsoft has tightened up its privacy policies by now. It’s appointed a Chief Privacy Officer and its PR machine makes all the right defensive noises. However, a 3 500 word policy can hide many secrets. My reading of its copyright notice suggests that it still claims an exceptionally broad licence to copy, use and sublicence anything you post on any Microsoft service, even if it is intended only for a private community.

So I vowed never to use any Microsoft-owned online service — MSN Messenger, Windows Live, Hotmail — ever again. Publications that required Passport Network registration were simply dropped from my reading list.

Facebook is already over-cluttered with applications. Some are useful, some cool, some annoying, and some just downright offensive. I don’t mean in the prurient sense; I mean in the spam hotbed sense. I usually decline to install them, but I accepted a fun one involving beer just yesterday. Contrary to explicit instructions not to, it invited a random selection of friends, some of which I really didn’t want invited. This kind of spamware can kill Facebook.

But not as quickly as Microsoft can. If Google buys Facebook, I’ll live with it. The Googleplex 0wnz me already, and I’m not even a heavy user of its services. However, it has yet to show the kind of negligence or nefarious activity that will compromise my trust. For now, the convenience of its online tools outweigh the very real privacy risks. But if Microsoft buys Facebook, I’m outta there like a shot. The Hotmail fiasco alone was enough for me to never trust Microsoft with private information of any sort again. Through negligence, incompetence and deliberate action, Microsoft has abused the trust of users too often in the past. Here’s hoping Facebook doesn’t become the latest victim.

Update: In good Facebook tradition, I’ve created a group: If Facebook sells to Microsoft, we’re leaving.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s talk at Columbia University was a wonderful comedy show. But while his reception at Columbia is one thing, the respect the United Nations accords him is quite another.

He started with a pathetic complaint about being treated rudely, because Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, introduced him by reading his CV. It includes such items as the imprisonment of journalists, sponsoring terror, executing children, threatening the destruction of a nation-state, fighting a proxy war against the United States and hosting a Holocaust denial conference. A rush transcript of the introduction, the speech, and the Q&A session is here.

Ahmadinejad proceeded with his usual deranged notions about global politics and made an asinine appeal to fellow academics for further research into the veracity of the Holocaust. He points out that, “the key to the understanding of the realities around us rests in the hands of the researchers, those who seek to undiscover (sic) areas that are hidden, the unknown sciences.” Here’s to undiscovery, indeed. Perhaps if we undiscover the Holocaust, or Apartheid, or the Inquisition, or the Crusades, or the present Jihad, they will never have happened. Wouldn’t that be nice?

He tells us, “Nobody should interfere in the affairs of the Palestinian nation. Nobody should sow the seeds of discord. Nobody should spend tens of billions of dollars equipping and arming one group there.” Something about a mote and a splinter comes to mind — I’m sure our Hizbollah-sponsoring friend knows the holy texts well enough to understand.

He used this rhetorical trick of inversion often. If such tactics fooled anyone (and judging by the applause in the audience it did), he finished with an enlightening flourish: there are no homosexuals in Iran. Granted, in a country where homosexuality is punishable by lashes or execution, I guess gay pride marches, burlesque cabaret and rainbow bumper stickers aren’t really all that popular.

Perhaps his Columbia address, as Bollinger said he hoped, brings home to a few naïve listeners the absurd regime over which he presides, and the nature of the enemy that faces those who love freedom and cherish civilisation.

What is less easy to accept is that this man remains — along with dozens of other leaders of unfree countries — a respected member of the United Nations. An excellent editorial at Investor’s Business Daily points this out, and calls for the failed global body to be closed for good.

The World Stage: Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, sponsors terrorism and colludes in the murder of American troops. So why is he given the honor of addressing the United Nations on U.S. soil?

To us, the answer is clear. The U.N. is as corrupt, brutal and morally compromised as Ahmadinejad himself. In its many affronts to civilization and decency, the U.N. has long since outlived its usefulness and reason for being. Time to shut it down.

Sounds harsh, we know. Isn’t it better, you ask, to have a place where people can peaceably gather and talk out their problems?

Sad as it is to say, the answer is no. For the U.N. has been hijacked by a rather diverse group of kleptocrats, dictators and fanatics who have successfully used it to their own rather nefarious ends.

An old proposal, put forward by Sen. John McCain a while back, would scrap the U.N. and replace it with a “league of democracies.” Great idea. Let that be the starting point for reform talks. Given the U.N.’s abysmal record and its epic depravity, there is no choice.

It cites numbers specific reasons, including the perversity that the worst tyrants and kleptocrats in the world get to chair commissions on human rights, nuclear disarmament and sustainable development.

It revives an excellent proposal by McCain, to establish a club of free nations. Membership would be by invitation only, and would be subject to adherence to minimum standards of liberty, democracy and human rights. Member countries would agree a common defence and military support arrangement, much like the North-Atlantic Treaty Organisation. As an inducement to non-members, member countries would agree to dismantle all trade barriers among them, but would not be so bound vis-a-vis non-members.

It is a capital solution to a huge and expensive problem the world has created in the U.N. It was created for a different world. Its costs, morally and financially, far outweigh the limited benefits it has brought in that time. It’s time to end the perverse charade.

This piece of politically-correct tripe was South Africa’s contribution to a UN waffle-fest on climate change recently:

Women and children are particularly vulnerable to the devastating effects of climate change. “For South Africa, the mainstreaming of gender and youth in climate policy, decision-making and implementation, is therefore a cross-cutting priority,” [ex-leader of an ex-party and now minister of flowers and tourist PR, Martinus “Kortbroek”] Van Schalkwyk said.

What pretentious newspeak. He wants “a balance between climate stabilisation and sustainable development” which at least admits that they’re contradictory goals. Personally, I don’t think we should be trying to mess with a chaotic climate system we don’t understand and which could kill us. Especially when we can use the prosperity for far more immediate, certain and substantial benefit — like saving productive lives lost to disease or malnutrition.

You may disagree, of course, and think climate change is a problem that demands top-priority action. But if so, are governments not the least likely to be effective agents in this cause?

Governments don’t develop technology. They don’t create the prosperity to pay for it. They are as far removed from the people who need the solutions as is possible. They have no material stake in the welfare of the people they claim to want to benefit most. What has half a century of foreign aid achieved? Politicians and their inter-governmental do-good organisations are like huge black holes that produce nothing, and even without blithe corruption and theft have an unquenchable thirst for other people’s money. Van Schalkwyk is unthinkingly regurgitating propaganda for governmental power and political central planning. There’s a big political power base propped up by all that tax money and well-intended charity.

And what’s this rubbish about women and children? Aren’t men vulnerable too? Aren’t they affected when women and children are threatened? Aren’t we supposed to be in this together, equal in worth, equal before the law, and equally dependent on a healthy, productive earth? Van Schalkwyk might mean well, but his politically correct platitude is only an offensive slur against men. James Taranto would sneer: “World ends, poor hardest hit”. Of course.

There’s a new legend in the making. It’s set near Dayr az-Zawr in north-eastern Syria, and features Sayeret Mat’kal, a special operations unit of the Israeli Defence Force. Not only did Israel destroy, on 6 September 2007, a suspected nuclear weapons project on which North Korea was allegedly collaborating, but it sent commandos in to seize firm evidence first.

The Times of London has the story, and a great story it is. (Via Limbic Nutrition.)

It’s been 40 years since the Six Day War, in which Israel amazed (and mostly delighted) the world by defeating the Arab enemies vowed to its destruction. This feat, pulled off against overwhelming numerical disadvantage and with only “even-handedness” from the US and ill-disguised condemnation from the UN to counter full Soviet support for the Arab armies, is what put Israel on the map for the watching world. This was followed up by snatching victory from the jaws of defeat 34 years ago and the astounding Entebbe Raid three years later. And it’s been fully 26 years since a daring raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak entered the annals of military feats of the beleaguered state. Only then they didn’t have to get there on foot first.

Information remains sketchy about the Syrian operation. After the relative failure of last year’s attempt to eject the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hizbollah terrorist organisation from its entrenchment in the south of Lebanon, the details emerging from this assault suggest that the Israelis remain capable of defending their country, and aren’t ready to bow out of the fight against terrorism and unconventional weapons proliferation in the Middle East.

One commenter calls it “naked aggression”¹. This is typical of much of the modern world’s characterisation of any Israeli military action, no matter whether it’s defensive, retaliatory or placatory. I, for one, am looking forward to the book.

1. Update: it appears to have been deleted as at 26/9/2007 [↩]

There’s a new book out, called Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes, by Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne. Penn is a pollster for Hillary Clinton. The book is, a blurb on Amazon.com would have us know, “sound and cleverly written.” It will “undoubtedly appeal to marketing analysts and armchair sociologists, as well as fans of Megatrends and Malcolm Gladwell [author of The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference].”

Let’s leave aside for a moment the terribly annoying publisher’s habit of insisting on explanatory sub-titles, which can make a perfectly clever business book title filched from a perfectly decent British newspaper appear dull and obviously unoriginal.

One can only assume that the marketing analysts and armchair sociologists invited to write op-eds for the Wall Street Journal aren’t fans of Megatrends and Malcolm Gladwell. In a fairly dismissive review, with the derisive subtitle, “Experts try to predict the future without knowing the past”, Sam Schulman, the publishing director of The American, says that the observations in Microtrends aren’t exactly new, nor are they groundbreaking revelations, nor are the reasons behind them surprising. He concludes by stating the obvious:

Mr. Penn sees the future as a myriad of choices driven by individual tastes. And it may well be. But why are all these little trends possible? Because we live in a free society with a free economy, and our choices in coffee, sports and health care aren’t restricted by the government. Maybe that’s a trend he can share with his client Mrs. Clinton sometime.

I detest reading business books. Perhaps it is because the obvious needs pointing out to so many of their authors.

George W Bush’s public speaking skills have improved noticeable during his presidency. Passable is noticeably better than atrocious. But sometimes I’ll bet he rues the confidence he has gained speaking ad lib during press conferences.

Here’s a very funny example, from a press conference yesterday:

The transcript of the relevant section, in which he is speaking about progress in Iraq:

I thought an interesting comment was made, I heard somebody say, you know, “Where’s Mandela?” Well, Mandela’s dead. Because, Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas. You see, he was a brutal tyrant…

The real Nelson Mandela is, as we all know, very much alive and (I trust) well. But the literal-minded anti-Bush crowd is having a field day with this comment, treating it as yet more proof, if any were needed, that Bush is an imbecile. See here, for example, or here.

To those with half a brain, who are able to understand a statement in context (as a spokesperson for the Nelson Mandela Foundation urged listeners to do on Radio 702 earlier today), it seems clear that the question, “Where’s Mandela?” refers not literally to Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, a.k.a. Madiba. Rather, it refers to a peacemaker, a unifier, a conciliatory figure in Iraqi politics. Where is Iraq’s Mandela? In this sense, Bush’s response makes perfect sense. It is biased towards an adult audience, perhaps, because it uses advanced literary devices like figurative speech, but it does make sense.

It may still be wrong, of course, and vulnerable to rational argument. I don’t know whether Saddam did indeed kill all Iraq’s unifying figures. But the statement is not stupid. Here’s some free advice for the over-wrought anti-Bush crowd. If you’re going to argue about Iraq policy and disagree with the Bush administration’s prosecution of that war, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, it would help your cause if you didn’t prove your own pettiness and stupidity first.

If I seem a little distracted, it’s because I am. I’m having fun, all nostalgic for my cool tech toy days when I wrote hardware reviews for PC Report in the early 1990s. After months of struggling to buy a PC in parts, rather than buy a pre-assembled, overpriced, lowest-common-denominator box loaded with an operating system I won’t even bother to boot once, I finally have all the bits and pieces I need. So I’m assembling and installing and downloading and tweaking and fiddling and hoping not to blow the whole thing up.

Actually, I’m one piece short: a little connector that lets me plug a second monitor with a normal VGA cable into the fancy DVI connector on the back of my graphics card. So I go hunt for one. I get told it would cost me about R50 (about $7 — probably $10 by the time you read this). Fine, except that I run into the usual South African IT distribution channel problem: no stock on anything except a basic range of complete machines. The only part I can find that’ll do the job is an Apple Mac component. Of course, it costs R300 ($42.50). Some choice language later, I get the final offer: R200 ($28.30). In the States, I see you can get it for $20 or so.
This, you must understand, is for two plugs and short piece of cable. Very pretty plugs, of course, but prettiness made from moulded white plastic. No wonder Mac users look so smug. When they pay for their cutesey accessories, two thirds of the price buys nothing but a superior smirk. It’s the only way they can cope with that falsehood, that heresy that keeps gnawing at the back of their minds: that somewhere on some babe-crewed yacht in some turquoise paradise, Steve Jobs is snickering.

From ITWeb in South Africa, regarding the state-owned terrestrial broadcast signal distributor and wannabe broadband infrastructure provider, Sentech:

While Sentech has improved its financial performance, the state-owned institution says it is still hobbled by funding constraints, which are keeping it from reaching its full potential.

This is great news. The government has finally discovered that throwing good money after bad is not smart policy. Long may it continue failing to fund inefficient state-owned monopolies, since at full potential they’re a disease that hobbles everyone else.

Yes, there is a connection between Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman who has a book on the market, and sea urchins, who don’t. Some very selective quotation is doing the rounds in the media about Alan Greenspan’s latest book, suggesting that the Iraq war was all about oil. (Here’s a typical version, here’s the outraged hysteria take.)

Greenspan himself refuted such oversimplification, and there’s a good editorial rebuttal here. Among other arguments, it expresses mystification not only that the US never laid claim to any Kuwaiti or Iraqi oil — instead buying it on the open market from the countries in question — but also that the US, despite its supposed oil greed, remains reluctant to exploit its domestic oil reserves, in the name of environmentalism. I largely agree, but would take issue with the last paragraph:

Perhaps those who really think Iraq is about blood for oil can explain just why we would put the lives of young Americans in harm’s way for energy while we safeguard the oil-rich habitats of caribou and sea urchins.

The term “safeguarding” should have read “over-protecting”. There is little evidence that exploiting offshore or Arctic oil reserves would pose a significant danger to either caribou or sea urchins. Environmentalists demand zero cost, and no risk. The environmental cost of exploiting those reserves could be zero — after all, caribou thrive among the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, which is similar to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge where environmentalists claim even small-footprint extraction operations would destroy caribou breeding grounds. However, there might indeed be an environmental cost to drilling. We can step lightly, but the only way for humanity to leave no footprints is not to progress at all. Even if there is an environmental cost to be borne, however, there is no evidence at all that the costs cannot be mitigated, and more importantly, that the benefit to US energy security and economic interests would not vastly outweigh them.

Dick Clark has an interesting view on Wikipedia’s philosophical underpinnings and its efficient allocation of resources over at the Mises Institute. It was prompted by a Reason magazine article on Jimmy Wales, its founder, in which he says: “One can’t understand my ideas about Wikipedia without understanding [libertarian economist F.A.] Hayek.”

Writes Clark:

But how does [Wikipedia’s] polycentric — even anarchic — system, composed of editors acting independently and for their own reasons, result in such an utterly useful resource? The answer goes back to the Hayekian inspiration for the project. Because editors receive both psychological satisfaction and material usefulness from their contributions, the project has grown to include safeguards that help guarantee that the development of the project will move in a positive direction — towards broad, accurate articles that depend on reliable, verifiable sources.

… Wikipedia’s reflection of market dynamics is most easily observed in what many people view as the project’s weakest areas: obscure articles that draw little traffic. In articles about … topics of limited interest, one will often find factual and typographical errors at a much higher rate than in high-traffic articles … . The much higher demand for information about the latter topics means that many more eyes will be combing those much-demanded articles for mistakes.

Since Wikipedia is open to correction by anyone, it stands to reason that the articles attracting more potential editors will be of a higher quality. Rather than a failure, this is a great demonstration of Wikipedia’s efficient allocation of resources. The project, like any other, has a finite amount of productivity to apply to its various activities. It is a positive thing that those articles in greatest demand — those about topics of popular curiosity — would be the ones that are the most complete and reliable.

This explains the usefulness of much of Wikipedia, but doesn’t address the common criticism that Wikipedia cannot be cited as a source of any authority, or even as a source equivalent in authority to, say, Encyclopaedia Britannica. That is to a large extent a red herring, however, since an encyclopaedia is anyway not a citable source in any academic or journalistic work. What is to me a much greater problem with Wikipedia is the fact that it battles to consolidate opposing views on matters of opinion. Its utility declines dramatically, even with popular articles, on subjects such as politics or environmentalism, which are controversial or on which views are strongly polarised. It has a tendency to converge on a populist view on such topics, which isn’t particularly useful.

Yeah, Californians are suing each other over exhaust emissions now. They’re nuts over there. Must be something in the air.

This BBC report says a judge ruled against the state in a case brought by California’s former attorney-general, Bill Lockyer against six car makers. The case claimed that the car makers had created a “public nuisance” by making “millions of vehicles that collectively emit massive quantities of carbon dioxide”. Presumably they intended to be a less ambiguous, since I’m sure your average Californian would have considered the failure to make millions of vehicles for them an even greater public nuisance.

The court ruled that there is no law about what level of emissions constitutes a “public nuisance”, and laws are for elected legislators to write. Kudos to the judge for recognising this important principle. The losing side — the state government, that is — told the BBC that:

…the state brought the action on behalf of the people of California because national authorities had failed to act over setting emission targets.

“We do think that because the federal government has failed to act, this is a judicial obligation to jump in where those entities had failed to act.”

So why doesn’t the Californian government not sue itself to force itself to pass the required legislation? And if it was the federal government’s fault (of course it’s Bush’s fault!), why does the state government sue a bunch of innocent citizens who were only trying to solve the nuisance of having to walk everywhere in the brain-addling Californian sun?