Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 'Bush has already lost the war'
Iraqi civilian deaths bring mounting pressure on US-led coalition"Even before the dust cleared from the bloody scenes at a Baghdad market where at least 14 people were killed ... in a US-led air-strike, it was apparent that the Iraq war had taken a deeply disturbing turn. Coalition plans to advance on the capital are changing as US and British forces first deal with the resistance in the south ..."
Jeremy Allaire is blogging from teh PC Forum, and has a nice excerpt of an interview/session with Esther Dyson interviewing Sergey Brin about Google. Many a question answered, and a lot of new questions formed when reading this interview.
“We don’t do body counts” General Tommy Franks, US Central Command
Norwegian newspapers report that 750 Iraqi soldiers have been killed in the battle for Najaf so far. There are no official numbers for how many civilians have been killed.
A site that tries to put together information about civilian casualties is the Iraq Body Count site. At the time of this post the site claims the minimum civilian casualties of the war so far has been 213, maximum 292 souls.
The site has published its methodology for gathering its causalities estimates.
Its nice to see how the community keeps building on each-other. This time its Michael Gunn (Hollowcube.com) that has released a very nice, clean and fast mini-blog reader.
Yes, that is right. I have finally created my own RSS blog reader! And it's pretty darn cool if I may say so myself. It will eventually be part of the hollowcube.com blog interface, so it's in 'Beta' at this moment.
Its based on Samuel Wan's RSSDataFactory parser and Micheal has threatened to release the source code eventually. I can't wait. This is one of the fastest and cleanest Flash RSS-readers I have come across so far.
This is typical of the american government's hypocrisy:
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld told CBS that if they are indeed coalition soldiers, "those pictures are a violation of the Geneva Convention."
Arab TV Shows Captured American Troops (washingtonpost.com)
But, of course, the Afghan prisoners held in Cuba aren't prisoners of war, at least according to US government.
Slate : The Bush Doctrine: War without anyone's permission. By Michael Kinsley
[...] Bush is asserting the right of the United States to attack any country that may be a threat to it in five years. And the right of the United States to evaluate that risk and respond in its sole discretion. And the right of the president to make that decision on behalf of the United States in his sole discretion. In short, the president can start a war against anyone at any time, and no one has the right to stop him. And presumably other nations and future presidents have that same right. [...]
A very nice new resource from David Sifry, is the Technorati: Current Events, with context. Its basically an analasys of what blogs are linking to. 150.000 blogs are monitored every hour for links to established news sites, thereby making it possible to pick up on what current events make the buzz on the blogs. Very nice resource.
No money for the bet of what major topics the blogs are refering to these days,
[Via JD on MX]
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
This is a very cool initiative: BookCrossing.Com - the concept is when you've read your books, you label them with a bookcrossing-label and release them; either by leaving them at a café; giving them to a fellow traveler/friend/colleague/etc or have a book basket in your home for guests to take with them when they leave.
It makes for a better life for books that otherwise would be left to dust into oblivion in your bookshelf. I know a LOT of people that could have done a lot for others and themselves by releasing a lot of their books this way. I know I will.
[Via andersja's blog: BookCrossing.com]
BeastieBoys.com is supporting the anti-war movement by changing their web site to let everyone know what they think about the war.
"We felt it was important to comment on where the US appears to be heading now. A war in Iraq will not resolve our problems. It can only result in the deaths of many innocent civilians and US troops. If we are truly striving for safety, we need to build friendships, not try to bully the rest of the world." - Adam Yauch"Being together, writing and recording, we felt it would be irresponsible not to address what’s going on in the world while the events are still current. It didn’t make sense to us to wait until the entire record was finished to release this song."
- Mike D"This song is not an anti-American or pro-Saddam Hussein statement. This is a statement against an unjustified war."
- Adam Horovitz
They have also made a song that express their feelings, which is available for download at their site.
By Jackson Browne
From his album "Lives in the Balance", 1986
As if I really didn't understand
That I was just another part of their plan
I went off looking for the promise
Believing in the Motherland
And from the comfort of a dreamer's bed
And the safety of my own head
I went on speaking of the future
While other people fought and bled
The kid I was when I first left home
Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own
But the freedom that he found wasn't quite as sweet
When the truth was known
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
It's in my blood and in my bones
By the dawn's early light
By all I know is right
We're going to reap what we have sown
As if freedom was a question of might
As if loyalty was black and white
You hear people say it all the time-
"My country wrong or right"
I want to know what that's got to do
With what it takes to find out what's true
With everyone from the President on down
Trying to keep it from you
The thing I wonder about the Dads and Moms
Who send their sons to the Vietnams
Will they really think their way of life
Has been protected as the next war comes?
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
Her shining dream plays in my mind
By the rockets red glare
A generation's blank stare
We better wake her up this time
The kid I was when I first left home
Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own
But the freedom that he found wasn't quite as sweet
When the truth was known
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
I can't let go till she comes around
Until the land of the free
Is awake and can see
And until her conscience has been found
This is fun. Josh Dura and his brother Daniel has been working on a project/site/app they call Flogspot
It looks like a lot of fun. Right now its a Flog like application with a flogspot forum attached to it. A desktop application is on its way, hopefully a Flash based and cross-platform application.
It is going to be very interesting to see how it all works out and how the dynamics of the project will affect the community and vice versa.
This is cool. The AMF-PHP Flash remoting project has spawned a Perl project; FLAP - Flash remoting in Perl, making Flash remoting available for Perl coders.
[Via JD on MX]
For a little while this morning, I've experienced what life without Google would be like. For some reason, it's down (or at least the closest cluster to me is down) this morning. Worse, I'm doing a whole bunch of research for the book and am trying to munge through with other search engines. It just drives home how valuable a resource Google has become.
I found the same this weekend. Never thougth to mention it, but trying to do research while Google was down was no fun. In the end I ended up with using AllTheWeb.
[Via Google weblog]
It is truely nice for a usability/programmer/none designer as me to see the major search engines going away from being overfilled portals to being user-centered and ridding themselves of all the flutt they used to have.
Now I am just waiting for Excite and Yahoo to follow the trend. :-)
William Rivers Pitt: Arrest me
George W. Bush is out of control.I'll say it again.
George W. Bush is out of control.
I'm waiting for the black government cars to come squealing up in front of my house, for the thump of leather on my stairs, for the sound of knuckles on my door, for the feel of steel braceleting my wrists, for the smell of urine in some dank Federal holding cell as I listen to questions from men who no longer feel the constricting boundaries of constitutional law abutting their duties.
Sounds paranoid, doesn't it? Straight out of the Turner Diaries, maybe. Sounds like I'm waiting for the ominous whop-whop-whop of the blades on a black helicopter churning the air over my home. Sounds like I'm waiting to find a laser dot on my chest above my heart before the glass breaks and the bullet pushes my guts out past my spine.
Crazy, right?[...]
Cool new search engine: Roogle, it searches through RSS feeds - and also allows you to add your own feed into the search engine. Could become very useful as it grows.
[Via SwfNews]
Here is a cool plug-in for MovableType, it is sure to become very useful considering how many Flashers are using MovableType today. (Not to mention all the Perl and PHP programmers using it): MTCodeBeautifier - MovableType Syntax Highlighting Plug-in
It is Sean Voisen of Voisen.org (former EatOrange) that has taken a project called Beautifier, used for Perl code highlighting, and added support for ActionScript and several other script/programming languages, as well as adding the necessary code to make it into a MovableType plug-in.
Great work Sean! :-)
Testing the plug-in:
CheckerBoard.prototype.drawBoard = function () {
// Settings necessary for resizing of the board
Stage.scaleMode = "noScale";
Stage.align = "tl";
for ( var i = 0; i < this._rows; i++ ) {
for ( var j = 0; j < this._cols; j++ ) {
if ( (i+1)%2 == 0 ) {
if ( (j+1)%2 == 0 ) {
this.private_drawSquare( "WhiteSquare", i, j );
}
else {
this.private_drawSquare( "BlackSquare", i, j );
}
}
else {
if ( (j+1)%2 == 0 ) {
this.private_drawSquare( "BlackSquare", i, j );
}
else {
this.private_drawSquare( "WhiteSquare", i, j );
}
}
}
}
// Set the drawn variable
this._drawn = true;
}
:-)
Times Online: Shooting the messenger: lawyer arrested over anti-war T-shirt
POLICE have arrested a 60-year-old lawyer wearing a T-shirt saying “Give Peace A Chance”. A judge charged Stephen Downs with trespassing after he politely declined to leave the Crossgates Mall in a suburb of Albany, New York State, on Monday evening, or remove his top, which he had had printed there.Mr Downs pleaded not guilty and cited his right to free speech. He could face up to a year in prison. His son, Roger, 31, avoided arrest by removing a T-shirt saying “No War With Iraq” on one side and “Let Inspections Work” on the other.
His father’s second offending message was: “Peace On Earth.” “We weren’t talking to people or handing out leaflets,” Mr Downs Jr told a local newspaper. “My point was I’m not trying to convert anybody,” his father said.
Congratulations Macromedia, with a new site. I like the design, but that is about all the good things I can say about the site.
I guess it is true that a picture is worth more than a thousand words. In this case its worth more than any words, because without Flash - using Opera - this is what I get:
I guess Macromedia isn't all too interested in trying to push Flash on me either, not even to allow me to view their site..
Branden has some comments about the new Macromedia site that is worth reading.
[Update] The MM site does not work in Opera 7.02. It gets stuck in a loop the startup screen with the "Initiating Application Manager..." coming in, and then a glimse of the menu, before it start all over. Highly unusable. (This with the Flash 6 player installed).
Branden has a cool rant on his blog "How did I get here? (What Have I done?)", its a short story about how his life has changed through the Flash community. Its a real sunshine story, he got fame, wife and riches through his work with Flash ;-)
You can read more about Branden at Flashmagazine.com. Jensa did an interview with Branden at the FlashForward 2000 NYC conference entitled "Flash changed my life" which goes into more detail than Branden's post :-)
There is also a Flash/audio interview up at Flashmagazine.com: But wait, there is more.., that interview is about Flash 5 - and you can really hear Branden's enthusiasm for programming and Flash. An enthusiasm he has kept through the years. No wonder the guy is doing good :-)
Keep up the good work Branden!
FlashBang is probably going to become one of the popular extensions to Dreamweaver MX, it allows for adding navigation elements (menus, buttons, pause/play controls etc). to web pages, but it could also become a tool to hide from search engines. An effect I doubt the creators either thought of or intended and I know a lot of its users will be equally ignorant to the problems and invisibility it will bring upon them.
Now, Dreamweaver MX already has the evil of Flash menus and text implemented, and allows for generation of SWF for your web site. How that can be misused has been discussed in detail on Flazoom.com, case in point was the use of Dreamweaver MXs "Flash text" feature in a site map over at Time Warner Cables corporate site.
It might be that eye-candy and other such "subtleties" is necessary to sell software to the general public, but I still think that it should be required to add big warning messages to stupid evil functions such as the Flash menu/text in Dreamweaver MX, and programs such as FlashBang.
So why the need for warnings and why is it evil to add a little Flash to a site? Well, as I have already mentioned - the regular Joe/Jane Schmo don't understand that putting all your navigation in Flash leads to two rather serious problems:
- Search engines will have a harder time following your links, and indexing his/her site. Which in turn leads to less traffic to the site, and making it harder for any possibly usable information to propogate to the search engines.
- Users without Flash won't have access to your site. Case in point, the FlashBang web site, which - without Flash, doesn't allow any possible customers access to the order page without Flash. (Yes, I know its a bad example, since most of the people coming there probably will be Flashers on their way to get a cool new toy).
[Via JD on MX]
Robert had some concerns about how Macromedia will respond to the AMF-PHP project. So its nice to see John write about AMF PHP legalities. Or not write about, depending on how you look at it ;-)
Anyway, if you've read this far, yes, I don't know anything about the legalities of all this. ;-) If you need something ironclad then I'd recommend contacting the lawyers directly. I haven't seen any red flags in this area, for whatever that's worth.
He has, however, some nice comments on AMF-PHP and to me it seems like the culture of Macromedia is pretty open to these kind of projects, so then all we have to wonder is if the legal department agrees ;-)
Nice to see examples of use of AMF-PHP together with Flash remoting applications: Flash Remoting with PHP and the DesDev Resource Kit 2
For the Flash .fla file, I only had to modify 3 lines of the ActionScript, specifically the gateway URL and the service connections, so that they reflected the location of my AMF PHP based gateway. That was it for the .FLA. The real meat of the work involved creating a PHP class that replicated the functionality of the ColdFusion Component
Interesting story in the Guardian today:
Revealed: US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war
Secret document details American plan to bug phones and emails of key Security Council members
I wonder when this story will be picked up by the US Media.
