Month: November 2003

science fiction becomes reality — maybe

BBC NEWS | Health | Surgeons oppose face transplants

The Royal College of Surgeons has urged doctors not to carry out facial transplants.

I understand the reasons why this is considered a risky notion, more for psychological reasons than health considerations. But what if this has already been done, for less than honorable intent?

What if it’s already been done? It occurs to me that it would be *easier* to do this with a celebrity/famous person since they mix with a small number of people who may or may not be in the scheme.

for (i=0; i

About half an inch on the ground this morning and still coming down quite energetically. The predictions of late, overwhelmed as they have been with wind and rain of apocalyptic scale, failed to mention this possibility.

This is a great place to live if you like weather: we get lots of it.

<UPDATE> and it kept on through the day. By the end of the day, we had experienced, in order:

  • heavy (ie, un-Seattle-like) rain
  • strong winds
  • snow
  • blue sky and sunshine (OK, not much, but it was there)
  • thunder and lightning (again, uncharacteristic of the Emerald City)

iBook trackpad issues resolved (I hope)

My new iBook’s trackpad was still acting up today, so I resorted to reading the instructions.

I was looking through the manual and it showed how to add memory or an Airport card by removing the keyboard. I didn’t need to do it, but hey, why not? Then I found I couldn’t get it back on, and realized the Airport card wasn’t seated properly. It was warping the keyboard when I tried to reinstall it. Since the keyboard hadn’t been warped before, I can only assume that the stress was being felt by the trackpad assembly, and since I’ve seen no further recurrence, I think I’ve fixed it.

yet another idea: is the RIAA’s membership listening?

Educated Guesswork: November 2003 Archives

Why should the record companies go along with this? A number of reasons. First, it isolates them from risk. If people are buying in bulk without regard to the details of the collections that they’re getting then the record companies don’t have to worry so much about whether a particular album succeeds or fails. Second, it gives them an opportunity to extract more money. The record companies had revenues of about $12 billion in 2002. That’s an average of only about $50/consumer.

So why do consumers have to do all the work here? This doesn’t do much to overturn the stereotypical image of expensively dressed, ponytail wearing blockheads as representatives of the music industry . . . .

“We’re looking for a needle in a haystack here and he (Ashcroft) is just piling on more hay.”

MoveOn.org: Democracy in Action

A recent analysis by the Merkle foundation, (working with data from a software company that received venture capital from a CIA-sponsored firm) demonstrates this point in a startling way:

· “In late August 2001, Nawaq Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar bought tickets to fly on American Airlines Flight 77 (which was flown into the Pentagon). They bought the tickets using their real names. Both names were then on a State Department/INS watch list called TIPOFF. Both men were sought by the FBI and CIA as suspected terrorists, in part because they had been observed at a terrorist meeting in Malaysia.

· These two passenger names would have been exact matches when checked against the TIPOFF list. But that would only have been the first step. Further data checks could then have begun.

· Checking for common addresses (address information is widely available, including on the internet), analysts would have discovered that Salem Al-Hazmi (who also bought a seat on American 77) used the same address as Nawaq Alhazmi. More importantly, they could have discovered that Mohamed Atta (American 11, North Tower of the World Trade Center) and Marwan Al-Shehhi (United 175, South Tower of the World Trade Center) used the same address as Khalid Al-Midhar.

· Checking for identical frequent flier numbers, analysts would have discovered that Majed Moqed (American 77) used the same number as Al-Midhar.

· With Mohamed Atta now also identified as a possible associate of the wanted terrorist, Al-Midhar, analysts could have added Atta’s phone numbers (also publicly available information) to their checklist. By doing so they would have identified five other hijackers (Fayez Ahmed, Mohand Alshehri, Wail Alsheri, and Abdulaziz Alomari).

· Closer to September 11, a further check of passenger lists against a more innocuous INS watch list (for expired visas) would have identified Ahmed Alghandi. Through him, the same sort of relatively simple correlations could have led to identifying the remaining hijackers, who boarded United 93 (which crashed in Pennsylvania).”

In addition, Al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhamzi, the two who were on the terrorist watch list, rented an apartment in San Diego under their own names and were listed, again under their own names, in the San Diego phone book while the FBI was searching for them.

It’s instructive but painful to read these things . . . .

Where’s the outrage? Is the economy so bad we’re not able to see what’s happening in the larger world?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what is needed is better and more timely analysis.

I would restate this as more clear direction and better communication at the field level. We heard all about this problem after the attacks, as field agents in one office were unsuccessful at making the connections that could have prevented the attacks. It reflects a top-down management style that I thought the Vietnam war had sufficiently discredited.

O, Lazyweb, hear my plea

Perhaps this exists but I have found it not . . . . .

I would like to enable alerts of updated comments to a post to prior posters. For example, if Post 99 is commented on by Posters Aloysius, Beatrice and Carlyle, I would like each poster to be alerted, similarly to the way the weblog owner is, as new comments are added.

So when Deirdre adds her 2 cents, Aloysius, Beatrice, and Carlyle can come back and add theirs, and likewise when Elihu adds his . . . .

advice is easy to give when you don’t understand the problem

How to install Windows XP in 5 hours or less [dive into mark]

My Windows XP installation has reached its half-life. (You do know that Windows has a half-life, don’t you? Every installation of Windows naturally degrades along a logarithmic curve until it becomes annoying, then unbearable, then unusable. Each successive revision of Windows has featured a slightly longer half-life. Back in the day, Windows 95 would last me about 3 months, while my copy of Windows XP has lasted me almost 9. I’m not bitter; when you realize that you’re measuring on a logarithmic scale, a factor of 3 improvement is really quite impressive.)

A long article and a still longer thread of comments.

I’m struck by two things: 1. how Mark’s experience was similar to my own of earlier this year with WIN2k, and 2. how few people understood what he was trying to do.

To be fair, he could have been more precise: he wasn’t just installing Windows XP, but doing a lot of post-installation work to make it useable. That said, nothing should be that difficult, and the fanboys’ reaction is typical. They’re most likely gamers to whom reformatting costs them nothing since their scores are stored on a server, or minimally skilled users of a couple of applications (like IE and the various pr0n viewing utilities they need).

the magic of XML

Albums in MP3 Format (Sat Nov 15 21:54:25 2003)

[My] Albums in MP3 Format

This is a nice little thing, even if it does rub my nose in the sad state of my ID3 tags (I swear they were OK on the machine this collection used to live on: I guess more than just the track counts got lost in the two moves this wad of material has been through lately).

<UPDATE>I spent some time poring over ID3 tags and re-ran the script: it looks better now, but it does point out some inconsistencies in how CDs get ripped. I specified 192 kbits and too many of them are 128 or 160.

It seems we’re one step closer to this idea. At the very least, if lots of people generate these lists, Google will help locate like-minded music fans, but what about something more, well, lazy?

mysterious resonance

Google Search: Notes from Underground [Dostoevsky]

I stumbled upon a passage from Notes from Underground, and was struck by how it echoed — in an ironic way — the intellectual premise of the Superior Professor’s research (no, I have not yet expunged all my recollections of that experience).

The resonance is on a couple of levels: first in the content, the notion that simple human contrariness and choice, good, bad, or indifferent, can somehow be “fixed” by a legal framework of rationalism in contract law. Everything would be subject to contractual terms and there would be no margin of error or doubt.

But I’ll sit down and let Mr Dostoevsky say his piece . . . .

The — this is all what you say — new economic relations will be established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical exactitude, so that every possible question will vanish in the twinkling of an eye, simply because every possible answer to it will be provided. Then the “Palace of Crystal” will be built. Then … In fact, those will be halcyon days. Of course there is no guaranteeing (this is my comment) that it will not be, for instance, frightfully dull then (for what will one have to do when everything will be calculated and tabulated), but on the other hand everything will be extraordinarily rational. Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say people will be thankful for the gold pins then. Man is stupid, you know, phenomenally stupid; or rather he is not at all stupid, but he is so ungrateful that you could not find another like him in all creation. I, for instance, would not be in the least surprised if all of a sudden, A PROPOS of nothing, in the midst of general prosperity a gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a reactionary and ironical, countenance were to arise and, putting his arms akimbo, say to us all: “I say, gentleman, hadn’t we better kick over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish will!” That again would not matter, but what is annoying is that he would be sure to find followers — such is the nature of man. And all that for the most foolish reason, which, one would think, was hardly worth mentioning: that is, that man everywhere and at all times, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his reason and advantage dictated. And one may choose what is contrary to one’s own interests, and sometimes one POSITIVELY OUGHT (that is my idea). One’s own free unfettered choice, one’s own caprice, however wild it may be, one’s own fancy worked up at times to frenzy — is that very “most advantageous advantage” which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply INDEPENDENT choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice.

The other resonance, the part that brought me up short when I read this, was the mention of a “Palace of Crystal” (it was the Crystal Palace in the other translation I read). This was the nickname I gave to the new building the UW School of Law moved into over the summer, inspired by the large skylights in the courtyard that illuminated the law library. They were always referred to as “the crystals” (I guess calling them skylights was vulgar) and coupled with the high expectations for the building as a means of unifying the institution gave me the name.

Anyway, the notion of a legal framework that obviates any other recourse — no more consumer protection laws, for example — is what the Superior Professor sees as her main chance for lasting legal fame. My experience in contractually-managed dealings with her suggest it’s a non-starter, but then I have no legal training (as she was wont to remind me) and therefore have no standing.