Chris's Rants

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

PHOTO: When Nerds Protest The RNC.

PHOTO: When Nerds Protest The RNC. Shouldn't it have a namespace declaration?

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Thursday, August 26, 2004

Exactly

Sean McGrath on Resources and services.

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Tuesday, August 24, 2004

What a long strange trip it's been

WS-I has released three new profiles as "Final Material":

  • Basic Profile 1.1
  • Simple Soap Binding Profile 1.0
  • Attachments Profile 1.0

I'd like to thank all the members of my WG for their tireless efforts in driving these profiles to a successful conclusion!

For more on the specifics of the profiles themselves, and the delta from the original Basic Profile 1.0, please see my recent article on IBM's developerWorks site.

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Monday, August 23, 2004

Kittenfight [dive into mark]

ROTFL!

Kittenfight [dive into mark]

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Thursday, August 19, 2004

Jaws in 30 seconds with bunnies.

Jaws in 30 seconds with bunnies.

1 Comments:

  • They took Jawsbunnies off the site.
    GRRR!
    I used to love that.
    I'd laugh until I ached, and had tears in my eyes.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at November 26, 2005 9:38 PM  

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Wednesday, August 18, 2004

What I wish Kerry would say

Lincoln Journal Star Online
"In a dramatic departure from the Bush administration, Republican Rep. Doug Bereuter says he now believes the U.S. military assault on Iraq was unjustified. "
Rather than focus on the subtlety of the fact that the vote was a resolution to authorize the president to use force if he deemed necessary, I really wish that Kerry would simply make his case by being straightforward. Most of his subtlety is lost on the majority of americans who are either too simple or too busy to bother with parsing his words. Additionally, he is playing too much to the rabid war supporters, amongst us who think that Dubyas take-no-prisoners, damn the torpedos, "bring it on", cowboy-like attitude is "a good thing(tm)". He hasn't a prayer of reaching out to them in the first place.

Depending on which polls you read, somewhere between 55-60% of registered voters now believe that the pre-emptive war in Iraq was not worth the costs in american lives and our standing in the world community. Kerry should be "sensitive" to that sentiment that seems to grow with each passing day as the body count rises and the continued occupation of Iraq sows the seeds of future Bin Ladens and Mohamed Attas.

I'm certain that Kerry fears that changing his position at this time would only serve as fodder for the right-wingnuts to paint him with the flip-flopper brush. But, if you ask me, the majority of americans would likely see that change in position in a more positive light as it would give them hope that a change in leadership would improve the prospects for light at the end of the tunnel that is Iraq.

What he should do is face the nation and say: look, I realize now that my position as to whether the US should have engaged in a pre-emptive war against Iraq has been muddled by my own words, which I admit were carefully chosen so that it appeared that I was both a supporter of the war (and especially our troops) and at the same time opposed to the adminsitration's inept handling of the situation from the beginning, and at each and every step of the way. I have always answered the question: "knowing what you know today, would you still have voted for the resolution?" which is an entirely different question than "knowing what you know today, would you, as president, have engaged Iraq in a pre-emptive war?". The answer to the latter question is an emphatic; No, only an idiot would have done that! I would instead have focused this country's military and intellegence resources in tracking down and bringing to justice those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks rather than some tin-pot dictator who had neither the means, nor any immenent plans, to attack the U.S. directly and was clearly uninvolved either directly or indirectly in the 9/11 attacks.

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Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Dare Obasanjo:
"Edge cases should not dictate a software systems design but too often they do."

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Monday, August 16, 2004

Who is Gallup polling?

Who is the The Gallup Organization polling to get such consistently biased results for Dubya? Compare Gallup's findings to the other major polling organization's findings... there's a distinct pattern of inconsistent results.

I don't get it. I am not saying that there's anything funny going on, but it truely is a puzzlement.

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Friday, August 13, 2004

Regarding the question on every talking heads lips these days: "given what you know today, would you still have invaded Iraq?" this Boston Globe article is unusually candid in reporting that Dubya has basically publically declared the truth that the administration doesn't want you to hear:
It's hard to believe that any rational president would have done that. Indeed, earlier this year, Secretary of State Colin Powell came close to conceding the truth -- that the "absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus; it changes the answer you get" -- before he scrambled back into compliance with the White House line.

Certainly if one is to take Bush at his word, he has essentially answered guilty to the accusation that after Sept. 11, he was determined to oust Saddam and simply looking for an excuse to do so.
Strong words for the traditional press which seems so reluctant to say it like it is these days.

The article ends with this
Make no mistake: This is an issue where Bush, not Kerry, should be on the defensive. And yet, ultimately Kerry may have to take a clearer stand to put him there.
And there-in lies the rub. Jon Stewart also made this point on last nights show... suggesting that Kerry was trying to lose the election... that his answer should have been a straight-forward "no".

The problem with Kerry is that he *is* intellegent as opposed to Dubya who is an illiterate moron. He answered the question: "given what you know today, would you still have voted to give the president the authorization to go to war." Of course, he means just that in his response, that he would have given him the authority as a stick to press Iraq into cooperating with the UN inspectors on the WMD inspections.

Of course, the way that the administration appologists spin it, they intimate that Kerry would have gone to war which is an entirely different question.

I agree with the analysis that Kerry should be more straightforward in his responses... He should indeed have answered a simple, straight-forward "no" and followed up with a strong statement that hindsight is 20/20 and we can't change the past. We are there and we must be focused on bringing stability to Iraq and continue to support our troops... and that means that we need to admit that we have made mistakes... BIG ones... that we need the help of the international community to bring that stability about.

He should then point out the specific failings of the Bush administration, at every step of the way in not having a plan to win the peace, in not supporting the troops with the armaments they so desperately need, with under-estimating the troop strengths required and then failing to listen to the commanders on the ground when they pleaded for more but couldn't get the neo-cons in the Pentagon to listen, with ignoring the advice of his own State Department's experts on Iraq and the middle-east, in pandering to the greed of contractors such as Halliburton instead of using the reconstruction $$$ that congress approved to employ Iraqi men and women to help rebuild their country so that instead of being unemployed and angry they would have jobs and hope and a real stake in the success in rebuilding their country, etc.

Note to Kerry: Keep it simple stupid!

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Bon appetit!

Julia Child passed away today. A little known passion of mine is cooking, and I really enjoyed watching her show over the years. It was as much entertainment as educational. I will miss her joi de vive.

Good bye Julia, you will be missed.

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Wednesday, August 11, 2004

National Sales Tax?

CNN is reporting that the Republicans seem to be floating the idea that the federal income tax be replaced with a national sales tax. What's worse is that of the 18k respondants to the accompanying online survey, 65% agree that that would be a good idea.

This is a terrible idea. Hopefully, the truth will out in any substantive debate on the subject. This is one of those subjects that seems like a good idea at the time but will have the exact opposite effect as its ill-informed supporters think.

Talk about rigging the tax code to allow the rich to get richer... A national sales tax replacing the federal income tax would be about the most regresive form of taxation imaginable.

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Which Biological Molecule Are You?

Water
You are water. You're not really organic; you're
neither acidic nor basic, yet you're an acid
and a base at the same time. You're strong
willed and opinionated, but relaxed and ready
to flow. So while you often seem worthless,
without you, everything would just not work.
People should definitely drink more of you
every day.


Which Biological Molecule Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

continuing the meme via Bill De hOra

Nader is too gullible to be president

The Boston Globe reports that GOP is accused of aiding Nader. No, duh! Que'lle suprise! Unfortunately, there isn't much that could be done about this. I think that it would be hard to argue that campaign contribution limits applied since they are going to more than one campaign (technically).

Personally, I fall into the "ABBFP" (anybody but Bush for president) camp which means that we need to rally around the candidate that is best positioned to beat him. Not that I would consider Nader qualified to serve as president... he's far too naive.

It has been reported widely that any second term election is in reality a referendum on the incumbant. If we had an electoral process that required a majority rather than merely a plurality, then the Nader candidacy would be a non-issue in this election (or the previous for that matter). However, we don't have that luxury. Those who support Nader on principle are, by definition opposed to the Dubya administration's policies. Given that the electoral process is what it is, it demands compromise. The Naderites (and Nader himself for that matter) should wake up to this fact and rethink their position. Nader keeps repeating/insisting that he is committed to seeing Bush ousted. He's living in a fantasy of his own making.

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Sage advice

Sage advice from Tim Ewald: I refuse to let the angle brackets fall where they may!

Amen brother Tim!

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Tuesday, August 10, 2004

New WS-I Profiles Explained

I've published an article on IBM's DeveloperWorks site that provides a comparison of the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0 with its successor, Basic Profile 1.1.

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Spin

Spinsanity carries an entry about the (absence of) veracity of the infamous Swift Vets for Truth attack ad.

Of course, the problem is that it matters little that the ad is pure bullshit when Fox keeps perpetuating the message in the guise of news analysis (and as the entry points out, in exaggerating the association between the disgruntled vets and Kerry).

Some analysis suggests that the ad will actually backfire on the Dubyas... we'll see. My guess is that most but the true believers who wouldn't change their vote if Bush sprouted horns and a tail on national TV side with McCain and find the ad offensive and irrelevant.

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Web Services Addressing

BEA, IBM, Microsoft, SAP and Sun submitted Web Services Addressing to the W3C today.

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Monday, August 09, 2004

N.E. Sectional Championships

My USTA Mens 3.0 team won the R.I. District Championship this weekend! I won both my matches (#1 and #3 doubles) handily, 7-5, 6-1 and 6-4, 6-1. The competition was pretty good (the determinant was the 1st tie-breaker: matches won), but should prove even more challenging in the New England Sectional Championships later this month where we face the winners of the other Divisional Championships throughout New England. I'm really looking forward to the match play!

Last year, we lost the Divisionals by a single match (argh!) and the winner (this year's second runner-up) was trounced in the Sectionals. Hopefully, the same fate doesn't await us in Springfield later this month.

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Friday, August 06, 2004

Tim on Patents and Linux

Tim Bray with a post on Patents and Linux:
But what I really worry about is the basic broken-ness of the US Patent system. It’s sucking money and time and resources out of the whole technology ecosystem; it’s a bleeding sore on our business and our culture and our people. It’s way past time to fix it.
Amen!

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Thursday, August 05, 2004

They Knew...

They Knew...

A must read.

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Wednesday, August 04, 2004

The Case Against George W. Bush

Esquire has published Ron Regan's The Case Against George W. Bush:
When the party Mr. Bush is hosting in his world ends, you'll be left picking shrimp toast out of the carpet.

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The teflon VP

The NYT reports that Halliburton Settles S.E.C. Accusations to the tune of $7.5M for accounting shenanigans during the reign of Mr. f*** off himself.

Conveniently, the commission skirted the issue as to whether Cheney had "been aware of the effect that the accounting change on the company's profits" and his legal beagles are declining to respond to such questions.

YAEOTLOAOTPOMOTCA -- Yet another example of the lack of accountability on the part of members of the current administration.

Yeah, these guys surely did return "high moral standards and values" to the White House!

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Tuesday, August 03, 2004

Me thinks thou dost protest too much

The raving right wingnuts like Sean Hannity (whom I heard last night driving home from tennis) have been going off the deep end in criticizing Howard Dean for his recent comments suggesting that the raising of the terror alert from elevated to high in NYC and Washington D.C. had political overtones. (Note, I listen to these nutjobs occasionally for a laugh and to find out what the bushies are putting out as the party line talking points, but then I usually find myself shaking my head in sadness that these blowhards have large, dedicated audiences who believe their rantings as gospel) Thus quoth Hannity last night:
It is simply beyond the pale!
He went on, and on, and on ad nauseum (and I do mean nauseum). He also tied in Dean to the Democratic nominee (Kerry), suggesting that "if he weren't such a nutjob (or maybe it was fruitcake, can't recall his exact words now), Dean would be the party's nominee..." clearly with the intent to convince his listeners that the liberals are simply not to be trusted... they are undermining the war on terror with statements like these... beyond the pale! (rolls eyes)

Of course, even Kerry seemed to distance himself from Dean's comments. I too thought at first that based on the fact that there was general bi-partisan affirmation from the likes of Leiberman that the intellegence was "disturbing" and "credible" that the raising of the alert status was probably warranted, despite the fact that Ridge capped off his announcement with a campaign pitch about how this demonstrates how effective our commander in chief has been in leading the fight against terrorism and in addressing the inherent problems in intelligence sharing between agencies. (gag)

However, today's headlines reveal that there's more to this story than had first been made known. Much of the surveilance information that had been discovered in the laptop of the al Qaeda operative captured in Pakistan over the weekend predates the 9/11 attack. Furthermore, there's no evidence that suggests that there were or are plans for a related attack based on the surveilance. There was even reporting that the information was often out-dated.

Sure, it is "disturbing" to find hard evidence that al Qaeda has been conducting such thorough surveilance, but is there really enough of substance here to warrant the elevation of the terror threat status at this time? I mean really, any idiot knew that al Qaeda has and continues to be "out to get us" and we have been told all along that there are likely still ongoing operations here in the states. This is not news... only the affirmation and detail with which they have been carrying out their activities is new... certainly not unimaginable unless you think that because these guys hang out in caves on the boarder of Pakistan and Afghanistan that they must also be unintellegent. They have demonstrated repeatedly that they are far more sophisticated than the administration and the intellegence community thinks they are.

Will the Holland Tunnel be restricted to commercial traffic for an indefinite period of time? Will the 12 hour shifts for the police remain in effect indefinitely as well? Should we report anyone wearing a khaftan as being a suspicious muslim terrorist? Doesn't the raising of the alert in this manner simply play into the hands of the terrorists?

For all we know, this guy in Pakistan could have been set up as a fall guy by al Qaeda; to be caught with enough information (which was probably archived to a zip drive for further dissemenation anyway) to scare us into thinking there'd be an attack (the quintessential definition and motivation of terrorism) so as to alleviate the pressure on Pakistan to find HVTs. Afterall, this guy was basically unknown to our intellegence crowd before May according to various reports; he may have been deemed expendable.

The bottom line though is that there's little doubt in my mind that the raising of the terror alert status was politically motivated. I'm not quite convinced that it was entirely unwarranted, but clearly, Dubya doesn't want to be caught with his pants around his ankles again, especially during the election season. But therein lies the rub. Dubya is being too reactive and rather than thwarting terrorism, he is giving into it and in the process, he has put us in a state of FUD which is exactly what al Qaeda wants.

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Derby

IBM announced today that it will create a new Apache open source project, named Derby, based on Cloudscape. Way kewl!

This further demonstrates IBM's commitment to open source.

Hey Jonathan, now it's your turn to do the right thing!

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Monday, August 02, 2004

Responsibility without authority

In the headlong rush to cherrypick recommendations from the 9/11 Commission Report, Bush Calls for New Intelligence Director yet
... rejected the panel's recommendation that the director control all intelligence budgets, and have the authority to choose who would lead the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies.
What a maroon! It doesn't take an MBA to know that you don't vest responsibility without authority. But, Dubya, being the anti-intellect that he is, seems to think that he knows better.

Does Dubya really expect us to believe that he is "tough on terrorism"? By his actions (or rather inactions), I'd say the exact opposite.

The members of the 9/11 Commission are not Pollyannas, yet they are deeply concerned that the administration, and congress, do not have the sense of urgency that they should. No, duh! They are also not fools. They know that it will be difficult to change the status quo because much is so deeply mired in entrenched feifdoms of some very powerful politicians and career bureaucrats.

So, now apparently, the administration expects to be able to get away with some window dressing instead of really addressing the fundamental flaws in our intellegence gathering and safeguards against terrorism that the 9/11 Commission so effectively brought to light.

Of course, Dubya and co. know full well that most of the American voting population is either too dense to see through the charade, too busy with their 2 or 3 jobs (they now need to hold to make up for the one that was shipped overseas thanks to the corporate tax incentives granted by the administration) to take the time to educate themselves as to this fraud, or too befuddled by the FUD generated by the administration around non-issues such as gay marriage and stem-cell research to rally the radical right to vote against those amoral liberals who would deign to allow *judges* to undermine the sanctity of marriage and the rights of the unborn zygote.

By vesting in this new national intelligence director and counter-terrorism center the responsibility without the budgetary, personnell and management authority (that Rummy clearly doesn't want to give up!), the Dubya administration may in fact make matters worse than they are today, not better. Many of the 9/11 Commissioners made this clear in their various interviews given since the report was made public.

The real problem is that Dubya and his crones are running scared. They can see the writing on the wall and it doesn't bode well. Thus, they will be given (increasingly) to knee-jerk responses aimed at fooling those few voters on the fence as to whether they deserve another term in office.

This is by far the most inept and self serving administration I never voted for.

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