But what about the little guy?

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Robert Scoble pointed to Scott Johnson’s YAAMR post. Two hours after Scott made his post, he had an offer in his comments from a tester at Microsoft to pass on information about his crash to the appropriate team at Microsoft.

First thought: that’s cool.

Second thought: too bad things like this aren’t likely to happen for the rest of the poor shmoes battling Windows (like, oh, say…[ahem]…me, for instance). Offering high-profile bloggers help after they’re linked to by another high-profile blogger is certainly a nice thing to do, and nothing in itself to sneeze at, but all of Scott’s complaints with Windows are perfectly valid, and are the kinds of frustrations that many people have to deal with on a regular basis.

The fundamental problem itself is still unsolved — Windows is often a royal pain in the ass to deal with. Most of us have to deal with it on our own, though, and common experiences like Scott’s are going to keep happening, and Microsoft is going to continue to be perceived by many people as a lumbering, unstoppable behemoth of a company that can’t actually write decent software, but doesn’t seem to care because they’ve got such a lockhold on the industry.

Somehow, I just don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Propaganda at its finest

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Remember the heroic rescue of Private Jessica Lynch? I’m sure you do, it was practically the only story coming out of Iraq for close to a week.

How heroic is it, really, when US forces storm into an unguarded hospital, terrorize the staff and patients, and handcuff four doctors and two patients — one of whom was paralyzed and on an IV drip — before leaving with Private Lynch?

Another shining example of the US propaganda machine in full swing.

(via Alan Moult)

Long day

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Quick bits, because I’m too worn out to bother with anything more in-depth:

  • Rumsfeld is now admitting that we probably won’t find any WMDs. So much for that justification. (via Nurse Ratched)
  • UN Inspector Hans Blix continues to assert that there likely are no WMDs in Iraq, and that the justification for invasion was a sham. (via Tom)
  • Two of Bush’s cultural advisors have resigned in protest over the lack of protection for Iraq’s museums and libraries. (via Katherine Long)
  • The American Prospect asks, quite rightly, why so much of the American public seems to placidly accept Bush’s baldfaced lies. (via Elaine)
  • Kirsten picks up on the Syria/WMD story that I linked yesterday and gives it a nice chess metaphor that puts my “here’s a link, go read it” style to shame. I knew I was going to enjoy giving that girl a website!

A sci-fi museum? Cool!

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Paul Allen, the Microsoft Corp. co-founder and eclectic billionaire philanthropist, is expected to announce today his plans to build a Seattle facility to celebrate science-fiction literature in the same way his Experience Music Project honors popular music.

Tentatively dubbed the Science Fiction Experience, or SFX, the project will be adjacent to the EMP at the Seattle Center and open in the summer of 2004.

Rock on. I’ll let you know how it is once it opens. ;)

(via /.)

We lost the war

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An excellent editorial from truthout that covers the same points (plus many more) that I brought up while responding to a recent comment. They do it far better and far more in depth than I do, though.

Bush’s bloviating sermons on morality in this matter fail in the face of the facts. Saddam Hussein would not have existed were it not for the energetic support of the United States. We didn’t defeat Hussein. We fired him. The fact that he was a valued employee for so long, the fact that we averted our eyes as late as 1988 to his use of chemical weapons, the fact that we gave him vital intelligence data so he could more accurately and effectively use those weapons, and the fact that we gave material assistance via government and private institutions for the creation and promulgation of said weapons, all burst the bubble of righteousness the entire debate has been contained in. Bush can talk all he wants about the evil Saddam Hussein. There is little argument with the appellation of that adjective to that name. Yet it was America who allowed him to become so, and the moral arguments surrounding his firing are indelibly tainted by these sad facts. The Kurds in Halabja who were gassed to death in March of 1988 can level a damning finger of blame as much at America as at Hussein.

(via Tom)

Tim Robbins probably says good stuff

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Grumble. According to the Daily Kos, Tim Robbins gave a good speech to the National Press Club. The excerpt they have is good.

Unfortunately, Salon has the full text of the speech, and their daypass system seems to be broken — I haven’t been able to successfully get through with any browser on either my Mac or my PC, I either get a blank page or the browser crashes.

So…it’s probably good, and I could probably recommend reading it. I’m just not sure.

Syria's political brilliance

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Y’know, Bush probably think’s he’s a pretty durn good politician. Got himself elected President of this here country and all. Too bad Syria just seriously one-upped him…

And while Iraq wielded the propaganda tool clumsily, Syria is proving a far better foe. It’s latest move, tactically brilliant, is to introduce a Security Council resolution calling for the elimination of all WMDs in the Middle East.

The move comes as some in the US side scream about Syria’s alleged WMDs. Thus Syria’s move is nothing short of genius. If the US is truly serious about ridding the Middle East of WMDs, it should have no problem endorsing a resolution that would compell Syria to disarm. Right?

Wrong. The resolution would have the (intentional) effect of forcing Israel to surrender its nuclear arsenal — a course of action Israel would never accept. And the US, Israel’s most loyal ally, will thus be forced to veto the resolution.

So picture this — the US vetoing a resolution calling for the banning of all WMDs from the Middle East. In one fell swoop, Syria has negated the charges of WMDs against it, exposed the US’s hypocrisy on WMDs (our allies can have them, everyone else can’t), solidified its leadership of the Arab world, and forced the US to veto a seemingly common sense resolution, after blasting France and Russia for threatening vetoes on Iraq.

(via Daily Kos)

Update:

Upon preview, it appears that the Reuters article linked to in the Daily Kos’ post doesn’t say anything about this resolution. Was it edited out after the Kos made their post, or did they mis-link? I’ll try to find another link…

Second update:

Google News to the rescue! Islam-Online: Syria To Submit Resolution On WMDs To Security Council.

Penis!

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This made me laugh — The Penis Blog Project.

Needless to say, this is NSFW (Not Safe For Work), and an open mind and good sense of humor is encouraged.

[Disclaimer: I’m not part of this project. Just so’s ya know.]

(via Dyanna)

Memories of Meier Lake

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Dad just posted a series of photos of Meier Lake, the retreat center for the Episcopal Diocease of Alaska, on our family website. I spent a lot of time there as a kid, usually twice a year — once for the congregational Winter Retreat, and once in the summer for church summer camp.

I’ve got two very clear memories from my time there.

The first was one of those bizarre moments of weather you get occasionally. The main lodge building sits alongside one side of the lake, looking out over the water, and has a balcony running aross the face of the lodge. One summer day I was able to stand on the balcony, dead center relative to the lodge, with half of the lake and everything to my right in a deluge of summer rain, and with the other half of the lake and everything to my left in beautiful summer sunshine. Just amazing.

The second was another summertime day, when there was some downtime in the camp. I grabbed one of the canoes and went out to the center of the lake with a book, stretched out, and had a nice lazy lie in the sun, floating on the water. After a while, I noticed something in the sky, and realized that there was a bald eagle circling me overhead, probably trying to figure out what I was, and if I was edible or not.

Summertime in Alaska. One of the few things that I miss about living up there. Not enough to move back — but I do miss it.

No more 404's

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I just implemented a very nice little PHP script for my website that ties into my site search function — the end result being that my site no longer has a “404 File Not Found” error page!

In brief: if a visitor puts in a URL address that doesn’t exist, it gets shunted to my search script. If the script returns multiple hits, that listing is displayed, but if the script only returns one hit, the visitor is automatically forwarded to that page. Very slick.

As a bonus, it provides a convenient shortcut to searching my site — just put in whatever search terms you want after “http://www.djwudi.com/” and see what you get!

(script via Scriptygoddess)