katlalog archive march 2003

030331 14:27 Web development: Accessibility

Disability Rights Commission in the UK will investigate public and private sector websites for accessibility.

030330 00:39 Freedom of expression

Lawmeme: (Virtual) Sidewalks and The Public Discourse

Is there any truth left in the myth about the sidewalk as a scene for freedom of speech? Do we intentionally design our virtual environment with no sidewalks while simultaneously using the law to mute the sidewalks encounters?

030330 00:00 War

Predictable twist: German and Swiss built bunker might save Saddam.

The German architect of one of Saddam Hussein's main bunkers in Baghdad said on Friday the Iraqi leader can survive anything short of a direct hit with a nuclear bomb if he stays within its four-feet-thick walls.

If you want to know what's really going on in Baghdad or you want a good summary of the background of the whole conflict and some of the issues involved, read this Robert Fisk interview. Here are some excerpts from the long but very informative article:

About the Geneva Convention:

The issue, of course, is that both sides are taking prisoners, and that both sides want the other side to know of the prisoners they've taken. I watched CNN showing a British soldier forcing a man to kneel on the ground and put his hands up and produce his identity card and I've seen other film on British television of prisoners near Um Qasr and Basra being forced to march past a British soldier with their hands in the air. [...] And the real issue is that these prisoners should not be maltreated, tortured, or hurt after capture. When you realize that 19 men have tried to commit suicide at Guantanamo, that we now know that 2 prisoners at the US base Bagram were beaten to death during interrogation. To accuse the Iraqis of breaking the Geneva Convention by putting American POWs on television in which you hear them being asked what state they're from in the states, it seems a very hypocritical thing to do.

About the reasons for the invasion:

In their attempt to dream up an excuse to invade Iraq, they've started out, remember, by saying first of all that there are weapons of mass destruction. We were then told that al Qaeda had links to Iraq, which, there certainly isn't an al Qaeda link. Then we were told that there were links to September 11th, which was rubbish. And in the end, the best the Bush administration could do was to say, "Well, we're going to liberate the people of Iraq". And because it provided this excuse, it obviously then had to believe that these people wanted to be liberated by the Americans.

About distracting from the issues:

So, that in fact, the speech that Saddam made 24 hours ago, less than 24 hours ago, a speech that was very important if you read the text carefully and understand what he was trying to do, it has been totally warped in the United States by a concentration not on what he was saying, but whether it was actually him that was saying it. The American correspondent was saying to me yesterday morning, "This is ridiculous, we simply can't report the story, because every time we have to deal with something Saddam says, the Pentagon claims it's not him or it's his double or it was recorded 2 weeks ago". So, the story ceases to be about what the man says, the story starts to be this totally mythical, fictional idea that it really isn't Saddam or it's his double, etcetera.

About the unexpected resistance and about American tactics:

Nobody wants to die, but some people out here realize a new form of warfare has set in where, the United States, if they want to invade a country, they will bombard it. They will use other people's soldiers to do it. [...]

You see, we've already got a situation down in Basra where the British army have admitted firing artillery into the city of Basra, and then winging on afterward talking about 'We're being fired at by soldiers hiding among civilians'. Well, I'm sorry; all soldiers defending cities are among civilians. [...]

Every time I hear a journalist say 'liberation', I know he means 'occupation'.

030320 War

Operation Oily Residue is under way.

In today's Library Juice a reminder: When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History by Thom Hartmann:

It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. [...]

But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world.

No, he's not talking about Bush. This happened 70 years ago.

"War to cost millions..." of lives? No! "...in Oscar renenues". Good to know the Americans have got their priorities straight.

Thanks to userfriendly for reminding us of the really important issues.

030318 22:44 Job market

Salon article about the cruel state of the current IT job market, from unrealistic expectations potential employers seem to have...

...most of the advertised positions required prospective employees to have a skill set that rivaled Superman's -- you not only needed expertise in Flash and Java, but your new bosses also preferred that you'd graduated first in your class from MIT, knew how to shoot and edit and encode video, were "glamorous," typed 70 words per minute, took dictation and would perhaps wash the executive's car and feed his dog once in a while. [...]

...to the loss of respect for the profession:

"It's kind of embarrassing to tell people you worked on the Web. It's got this weird stigma attached to it now -- when you say what you do, people know you're unemployed. It's like when you meet someone in New York and they say they're an actor, you know they're not working on anything."

030318 19:47 Censorship / Search engines

Google Censorship - How It Works. An anticensorware investigation by Seth Finkelstein.

030313 22:35 War

BBC World News In Pictures: Leaflets the US is airdropping into Iraq (no direct link. 'Propaganda war' at bottom of page).

Coalition forces do not wish to harm the noble people of Iraq. To ensure your safety, avoid areas occupied by military personnel.

Do not fire at coalition aircraft. If you choose to fire you will be destroyed. Coalition forces will be attacking with overwhelming force. The choice is yours.

In the meantime, in the homeland, the Americans are getting childish:

The cafeteria menus in the three House office buildings changed the name of "french fries" to "freedom fries", in a culinary rebuke of France stemming from anger over the country's refusal to support the U.S. position on Iraq.

I assume the French will soon ask for the Statue of Liberty to be returned.

030313 22:15 Browsers

Mozilla 1.3 is out. Come and get it. New: Image resizing. Handy!

030313 15:00 Privacy

If they can't tag you, they'll tag your clothes:

In a move wireless industry analysts say will infringe on customers' privacy, clothing designer Benetton plans to weave radio frequency ID chips into its garments to track its clothes worldwide.

It gets better:

Privacy advocates fear that consumers will be bombarded with intrusive advertising since a history of customers' purchases and their identities would be linked with the tag even after they leave the store.

030313 09:47 Browsers

Mozilla.org: Browser Innovation, Gecko and the Mozilla Project:

The release of Safari has generated some discussion of Gecko's complexity and performance which bear addressing. Gecko is large and complex. We would like Gecko to be smaller and simpler and we're working on it. Elegance, like speed, is sexy. But simple and elegant must be weighed against the need to cope with web content as it exists today. And web content today is not simple, not elegant and not standards compliant. Today's web requires a rendering engine to do gymnastics to understand the wildly varying ways in which websites operate. Gecko performs these gymnastics with exceptional precision.

030306 16:53 Environment

Wired picks up the drinking water shortage issue and point the finger in the right direction:

"Attitude and behavior problems lie at the heart of the crisis," the report said. "Inertia at leadership level, and a world population not fully aware of the scale of the problem means we fail to take the needed timely corrective actions."

Young said that in an era when enormous sums are spent on armaments, it would not take much money to improve the situation.

030306 16:11 Browsers

Bookmark Context Menu. Cool. How come Phoenix has it and Mozilla doesn't?

030306 08:38 War

The BBC asks " Does the UN risk irrelevance?"

It has become a mantra among senior American officials that the United Nations risks irrelevance if it does not deliver a resolution that authorises...

That's blackmail.

Speaking to the Security Council in January US Secretary of State Colin Powell said: "This body places itself in danger of irrelevance if it allows Iraq to continue to defy its will without responding effectively and immediately."

I think the nation defying the UN is, and often has been, the United States. They are the ones who said they'd go to war if the UN approves or not. I say, let's kick the US out of the UN.

The US are losing respect and power all over the world. So they resort to the only means left to them: threats, violence and their huge and dangerous arsenal of weapons. I say, let's send the UN weapons inspectors into the US. And they'd better co-operate.

030306 06:59 War

In "I'm losing patience with my neighbours, Mr Bush" Terry Jones of Monty Python wonders if Bush's reasoning for attacking Iraq means that he is allowed to kill his annoying and extremely suspect meighbours.

Mr Bush's long-term aim is to make the world a safer place by eliminating 'rogue states' and 'terrorism'. It's such a clever long-term aim because how can you ever know when you've achieved it? How will Mr Bush know when he's wiped out all terrorists? When every single terrorist is dead? But then a terrorist is only a terrorist once he's committed an act of terror. What about would-be terrorists? These are the ones you really want to eliminate, since most of the known terrorists, being suicide bombers, have already eliminated themselves.

Perhaps Mr Bush needs to wipe out everyone who could possibly be a future terrorist? Maybe he can't be sure he's achieved his objective until every Muslim fundamentalist is dead? But then some moderate Muslims might convert to fundamentalism. Maybe the only really safe thing to do would be for Mr Bush to eliminate all Muslims?

It's the same in my street. Mr Johnson and Mr Patel are just the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens of other people in the street who I don't like and who - quite frankly - look at me in odd ways. No one will be really safe until I've wiped them all out.