Month: April 2004

soldiers of fortune

Private Guards Repel Attack on U.S. Headquarters (washingtonpost.com):

An attack by hundreds of Iraqi militia members on the U.S. government’s headquarters in Najaf on Sunday was repulsed not by the U.S. military, but by eight commandos from a private security firm, according to sources familiar with the incident.

Before U.S. reinforcements could arrive, the firm, Blackwater Security Consulting, sent in its own helicopters amid an intense firefight to resupply its commandos with ammunition and to ferry out a wounded Marine, the sources said.

This is disconcerting. A US Marine has to be airlifted from a a firefight by a private security detail, while another group of non-military soldiers fends off an attack on a US government installation.
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If it starts with an X, it must be good

This looked interesting . . . . XML-based network packets.

TCP is So Over
Most of us have been hearing rumors about this skunkworks XCP thing for some time, but now they seem to be open to the public. As they say, “Light the Fiber!” Think about it this way: I first went to the mat with TCP/IP in 1984, when 4.2bsd hit the streets. A twenty-year run is plenty for most technologies, and I’d say TCP has pretty well had its time in the sun. [ongoing]
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having it all

I’m NOT Going to Pay a Lot for This Baby!

Belle compares the costs of — and general sense of confidence in — healthcare in the US and Singapore. As noted here (a link I found on Crooked Timber where Belle is a new artist in residence), it’s possible to have both socially progressive policy and a robust economy: the hard part seems to be believing you can. Here in the land of the vanishing middle class, I wonder if it will ever happen.

I can only assume this is rooted in the worst period of American history, when the Puritans held sway. There’s still a strong sense of moral superiority held by those who have been swaddled in entitlements and other advantages without realizing it: for them the poor deserve to be so, as though they themselves have worked for their advantages.

The best descriptive term I have heard — uniquely American as it is — refers to this as “born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.” The unfairness of this is obvious, but fans of the game know that a triple is the hardest hit to manage.

two — or more — can play at this game

Online Business Networks Blog » Blogging and (Google) bombing for a good cause:

As you may have heard by now, apparently an anti-semitic hate group known as Jew Watch comes up as the top result on a search for the word “Jew” at Google. A staff reporters at j. magazine called this to the attention of Google executives, who were indifferent to the situation.

Linking to Wikipedia’s entry for Jew is the least I can do.

why does anyone really need an operating system?

GooOS, the Google Operating System (kottke.org):

Google isn’t worried about Yahoo! or Microsoft’s search efforts…although the media’s focus on that is probably to their advantage. Their real target is Windows. Who needs Windows when anyone can have free unlimited access to the world’s fastest computer running the smartest operating system?

Hmm, shades of Marc Andreesen wanting to “reduce Windows to a badly debugged set of device drivers” as part of Netscape’s plan to make the OS obsolete.

Jason expands on this article and muses on the notion of Google as an accessible-anywhere information utility that runs on everything, knows everything you do, and is always learning more.

The article he references is worth reading: a former colleague of mine is working on MSFT’s new search effort. If half the stuff in that article is true, it will be interesting to see how things play out.

what’s in a name?

mercenary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. :

*ADJECTIVE:*

# Motivated solely by a desire for monetary or material gain.
# Hired for service in a foreign army.

There have been a lot of comments about the murders of the US civilians in Iraq, with a disapproving spin, calling the security workers “mercenaries.” I wasn’t sure I remembered the precise definition, but I seemed to recall it described soldiers in the pay of a state or nation other than their own.

Given that there are two definitions, we know the second doesn’t apply. Who wants to make the case these folks just went for the money, that they had no other motives or interests?

I say we call them contractors or hired hands rather than debase their intentions, whatever they may have been.

how to audition for a job in MSFT’s PR group

Microsoft Notebook: In punishing Microsoft, EU hurts its consumers

Just write a column that casts every competitive initiative against MSFT’s dominance as petty, mindless rage, that underscores how MSFT knows best, and that government efforts to correct the monopoly’s behavior can only hurt consumers, and are futile gestures from ignorant busybodies.

And if you don’t get the call, you at least got your column in on deadline.