Month: May 2004

Since Mena took the time to ask

Six Log: How are you using the tool?:

If free isn’t an issue for you and you’re willing to pay for a version of Movable Type (say the $69 version) and the blog/author limits won’t work for your current use, write a non-emotional post explaining how you’re using Movable Type and TrackBack this entry.

Of course, I had to read Adriaan’s site to learn about this . . . what exactly is the mt-users mailing list for, anyway?

Anyway, on to what she asked for:

* I have one weblog and I am the sole author. It doesn’t get any simpler than that. I use it as my soapbox/megaphone: it’s like a voice vote in a legislative body, and I’m just adding my voice.

* free is somewhat an issue: if if came down to it, I might be forced to switch. I don’t need another hobby that comes with costs.

* I have to echo Adriaan’s sentiments that MT was got me started doing this, and I feel reluctant to migrate out of some loyalty or just unexplainable stickiness.

I have also suggested/lobbied for organizations and institutions to adopt weblogging (with MT as the tool of choice): if that worked out, it would be no fun to go back and tell them that the great free solution I talked about wasn’t anymore.

And did I mention that all my URLs have “movabletype” in them? That was conscious decision: if I migrate, I’ll go with something like “weblog” or some other generic thing, but I was so pleased with how easy this was, I wanted to spread the word.

I have to add, I’m just not hearing much about performance or scalability and these are big issues for me. I had expected these to be addressed before now, and would make it a deal-breaker if this isn’t addressed in 3.0. Couple that with the problems beta users are having dropping back to 2.x when they find that 3.0 doesn’t work for them: I think SixApart can do better.

eep! an OS X exploit

mamamusings: serious os x security problem:

If you’re an OS X user, it’s extremely important for you to be aware of a security vulnerability that’s been identified by users but not acknowledged or corrected by Apple.

The proof of concept is harmless but effective: go get the fix.

<update>

This is for real, and potentially nasty.

I have yet to see any reports of the exploit actually being used maliciously, but it’s worth protecting against. Here are a few simple things you can do to protect your system:

# RCDefaultApp, a free System Prefs panel from Rubicode. Install it in the PreferencePanes folder in your Library folder.
# Open System Prefs, then open the new Default Apps panel.
# Click on the “URLs” tab.
# Set the ‘disk:’, ‘disks:’, and ‘help:’ protocols to “<disabled>”.

when celebrities pay their own way, I’ll listen to them

I won’t quote any of Shelley’s post on how the other half blogs.

I’m not sure I feel as strongly as she does, since my attention was drawn to a different point. I do agree that the blogerati, if I can use so meaningless a neologism, seem to take themselves a little too seriously. Dave Winer says those of us who object to SixApart’s new licensing agreement are just cheapskates: he pays more for taxi rides and dinners than 6A expects for their license. Doesn’t everyone live like that?
Continue reading “when celebrities pay their own way, I’ll listen to them”

hijack it

Family Research Council: Legislation: Capwiz:

Elected politicians in Washington need to hear from you every day on the importance of passing an amendment that defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Or if you prefer, you can tell them that you favor an expansion of the definition of marriage to encompass any two committed people, regardless of their sex.

Given the hash straight people have made of “the sanctity of marriage” it seems unreasonable to claim we’re the only ones whose marriages are recognized.

Feel free to fill out the Family Research Council’s helpful email form and let your representatives know what you think.

Don’t these people have anything else to do?

Shakespeare on plausible deniability

Shakespeare understood the temptations of power: interesting how little has changed.

The New Yorker:

One Pentagon official who was deeply involved in the program was Stephen Cambone, who was named Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in March, 2003. The office was new; it was created as part of Rumsfeld’s reorganization of the Pentagon. Cambone was unpopular among military and civilian intelligence bureaucrats in the Pentagon, essentially because he had little experience in running intelligence programs, though in 1998 he had served as staff director for a committee, headed by Rumsfeld, that warned of an emerging ballistic-missile threat to the United States. He was known instead for his closeness to Rumsfeld. “Remember Henry II[1]—‘Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?'”[2] the senior C.I.A. official said to me, with a laugh, last week. “Whatever Rumsfeld whimsically says, Cambone will do ten times that much.”

fn1. was war inevitable?

fn2. parsing

Santayana was right

I couldn’t settle on any one quote to pull from this: it’s all or nothing, so I recommend you read Tim’s take on this.

ongoing b7; The Language of Force

Then with that in mind, read on:
inluminent: The Video:

One of my best friends from the Army just returned from Iraq and when I asked him about what it’s like, he said: “The people over there aren’t all bad – the insurgents are animals. They only understand power. They only understand pure unadulterated power and they only respect people that show and use their power.”

Equating other people with animals was a key element of the Holocaust. A political strategy based on a morally bankrupt ideology calls to mind the leadership that brought that to pass. But it would not have gained a foothold without the ruinous peace imposed on Germany after WWI. Are we seeing a similar scenario here? Are we punishing the victims we came to liberate?

what a war costs

Some perspective on the human cost of war.

DESTRUCTION: For a variety of reasons including guerrilla warfare, changes in international boundaries and mass shifts in population, statistics on WW II casualties are inexact. Only for the United States and the British Commonwealth are official statistics cited with some degree of assurance. For the United States, World War II (1941-1946) engaged 16,112,566 soldiers, with casualties of 1,076,245, including 405,399 deaths, 291,557 of which were battle deaths. The emphasis here on U.S. deaths is by no means an effort to diminish the lost of military and civilian lives throughout World War II. By comparison to the U.S. losses, more than 380,000 civilian lives were lost every month of the entire war. Conservatively, this means that for the years 1942-45 alone, approximately 18,240,000 civilians died. [emphasis mine]

One source estimates that the entirety of World War II cost more than 38,000,000 lives, 22 million of which died in Russia (Davis, 1990:310-311; Information Please Almanac, 1992:310). Still another source estimates that the total dead varied between 35,000,000 and 60,000,000. Compared numerically, however, the U.S. was relatively fortunate.

http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~critcrim/dp/dppapers/lil.exec.us.gis

TypePad vs MovableType: “this company isn’t big enough for both of us.”

BuzzMachine… by Jeff Jarvis:

Bottom line: If I do not believe a company has my best interests as a customer at heart, then I would be a fool to stay with that company. That is the net net of this conflict of interest.

The conflict of interest is the future of TypePad as a source of ongoing revenue vs a large number of small self-hosted MT installations with multiple authors who would otherwise be TypePad customers.

Have I mentioned the two different markets/audiences that 6A should be aware of and working with?