Month: December 2003

why we fight: by choice, not out of necessity

A War of Choice or of Necessity? (washingtonpost.com)

According to Richard Haass, director of policy planning at the State Department until June 2003 and still the Bush administration’s special envoy to Northern Ireland, the administration “did not have to go to war against Iraq, certainly not when we did. There were other options.” Really?

This is not what the administration told us before the war and continues to tell us to this day. On March 20, as he was sending troops into Iraq because the regime of Saddam Hussein allegedly possessed weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al Qaeda, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld told them, “We are at the point at which the risk of not acting is too great to wait longer. As you prepare, know that this war is necessary . . .”

those who don’t understand the Big Mac Index are doomed to repeat it

Licence fees and GDP per capita

There is a strong case for free software (also known as open source or libre software) being deployed widely in developing countries. As argued in this note, the open source development community provides an environment of intensive interactive skills development at little explicit cost, which is particularly useful for local development of skills, especially in economically disadvantaged regions. Further, this note argues that the controversy over total costs of ownership (TCO) of free vs. proprietary software is not applicable to developing countries and other regions with low labour costs, where the TCO advantage lies with open source, and the share of licence fees in TCO is much higher than in high labour cost countries. The note concludes with a table comparing license fees for proprietary software against GDP per capita for 176 countries.

Of course, this has been done before: the Open Source model is a little different, and I think a more interesting model would be to compare hardware costs. Hamburgers are a physical commodity, after all, and like computer hardware, can be assembled locally around the world.

Economist.com | Markets & Data | Big Mac Index

The Economist’s Big Mac index seeks to make exchange-rate theory more digestible. It is arguably the world’s most accurate financial indicator to be based on a fast-food item.

new button

Tired of the standards wars? Irked by sites boasting of their compliance with this, that, and the other three, four or five letter acronym?

if your site works for you, who else matters? Tell the world what you think: stick a “works for me” button on your website . . . . today.

works for me

new hardware in place for this site

After much angst and not-quite-enough preparation, I successfully moved this website and weblog to a different machine this afternoon. Kind of a complicated business since I’m using this machine for network address translation and such as well. I did a lot of file copying and config munging to make sure everything was in place for a seamless transfer, but missed one crucial detail: I made sure the web content and all was in place and that apache was all configured as it should be. But I neglected to build the options for NAT into the kernel. D’oh.

<sigh>
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a compromise on who gets their likeness on the dime

CNN.com – Dime debate pits Reagan against FDR – Dec. 5, 2003

Congressional Republicans are pushing a bill to honor former President Reagan by putting his profile on the dime.

Here’s a way out of this that everyone should agree on: put Reagan’s likeness on the 1000 dollar bill. That way, the only people who are likely to see it are those who benefited financially from his regime, and the rest of us can continue to honor a president who actually worked for everyone.

Credit for the idea to my young wife (though the blame for the astringent phrasing is all mine).

To her credit, Nancy Reagan is against this, and perhaps her husband’s lapdogs will take the hint and do something constructive with their time.
Continue reading “a compromise on who gets their likeness on the dime”

the image that inspired a storybook?

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

This link, featuring “number three in a series of object-eating trees” is strikingly similar to the image on the last page of this book by the inimitable Berkeley Breathed. Since “Red Ranger Came Calling” is a holiday-themed tale, it might be a good time to re-read it.

(Since the tree is identified as being on Vashon Island, where Breathed’s book is set, this would seem to close the loop.)

apocryphal quotes and institutional crassness

So I got a comment on an earlier post, refuting the story about Rush Limbaugh referring to Chelsea Clinton as the “dog in the White House.” Trouble is, it’s referenced in so many places, it’s taken on the status of Bill Gates claiming that “640k [of RAM] is enough for anybody” which he didn’t say.

But this page intrigued me: a reviewer claims there is a fake transcript in circulation, and with Lexis-Nexis being somewhat restricted, it’s not easy to verify.

Of course, if the one being cited is a fake transcript, it should be no problem for someone to produce the real one . . . . . and it’s not like the one I see cited isn’t pretty damning.

Even in the fake transcript, the corpulent commentator makes repeated comments about a 12 year old girl’s physical appearance, and manages to drag in other White House kids as well. And the transcript, fake or not, clearly says that this is the third time this joke has been told (about there being a dog in the White House) and the third time that the “crew” has shown the wrong picture. Another Amazon reviewer claims that this was the show’s first season, so plainly he was scraping for material early on.

WMDs found, but not where anyone expected

CBS 11: CBS 11 Investigates Poison Gas Plot

Investigators have seized at least 100 other bombs, bomb components, machine guns, 500,000 rounds of ammunition and chemical agents. But the government also found some chilling personal documents indicating that unknown co-conspirators may still be free to carry out what appeared to be an advanced plot. And, authorities familiar with the case say more potentially deadly cyanide bombs may be in circulation.

Well, no wonder no WMDs have been found in Iraq: they’ve been looking in the wrong place.

Seen @ MetaFilter