shlomi

Hotmail — it’s not your momma’s Gmail!

shlomi on May 7, 2007

I’ll preface this by saying I’m looking for employment, and Microsoft is definitely one of the companies for which I’d like to work. At the same time, and at the risk of being deuced by them, the new Hotmail is another example of the wide gap between Web 2.0 and Microsoft. (Hint: if you hire me, I’ll help you out!).

I was really looking forward to checking out the new Hotmail. Having shown my spouse and friends the glory of gmail as opposed to clunky old Hotmail, I was really looking to see whether I should leapfrog back to Microsoft for my mail browser. After all, 2Gb does get eaten up eventually, and it would be nice to go to a web browser (the primordial SaaS!) with great features.

Alas and alack. The one thing I looked for wasn’t. A simple thing. A little feature that spells the difference between software as a service and service as addiction.

Filters? Sort of check.
E-mail signatures? Check.
Bragging rights of being a beta tester? Check.
Mail forwarding? What, are you kidding? All your e-mail are belong to us.

In other words, Microsoft has made the terrible mistake of thinking that a really nice GUI could be a softer, gentler set of handcuffs than MS Outlook for keeping users corralled in MS-space.

Don’t get me wrong, Google (hosts of this blog, for the purposes of full disclosure) does the same thing. But Google’s “handcuffs” are in the form form of great features that don’t hem the user in. I could host this blog on my Windows-based web site just as easily as on a Linux one. And connect it to RSS feeds or other throughputs without thinking about the corporate underpinnings. Forward my e-mails to Hotmail, or a personally-managed e-mail server. That I’m using Blogger (and Gmail, and Google pages, and Google documents, etc.) is a testament not to my enslavement to the mighty Google, but to the forthright, non-acquisitive nature of their web tools.

This is unfortunately yet another example of the inner nervousness, the insecurity, that has scarred, not marked, Microsoft in this market. It’s a great enough company, with fantastic enough features, not to have to create artificial limits on its users. And each limitation, no matter how trivial it might seem, is viewed as yet another indicator that Microsoft can’t let go of it’s craving for domination long enough to let the market see the good, the wonder, and the benign nature, of its products’ feature sets.

The Freedom of Speech as a Dull, Blunt Object

shlomi on April 27, 2007

A straight-A high school student was arrested for turning in a disturbing creative writing assignment, which included visions of mass killings with a pistol and necrophilia.

School: Danger! Virginia Tech! Alternative learning center, criminal charges, brou hah hah!
Student: Just being creative! Lookit the assignment! (Check out his hometown paper article on the subject and his comments on it.)

They’re both right, and the issue lies with the technical vs. temporally cultural definition of “free speech.” (I’m gonna get in trouble with this one: I’ve got a bro-in-law who’s a constitutional law professor).

I’d argue that if this student had written this in 1999, before Columbine1 and before VT, it would have come off as weird, sick, and perhaps resulted (if the teacher really cared) in a referral to the school shrink.

Now, after seeing what high capacity magazines and sick twisted minds can do, that same piece is a giant red flag for possibly aberrant behavior. And this kid should “suffer” the consequences of stupidity, the same as a person who yells “fire” in a crowded movie theater.

No, there’s no implied threat from the student. But there doesn’t need to be one for someone to see the writing as a warning sign that a person is capable of homicidal fury. After all, when a child is found to engage in animal cruelty, especially serial animal killings, it’s a sign this person may grow up to be a serial killer. It’s a known, established track. And if the writer happens to be a high school or college student, caveat emptor: find something equally creative but less disturbing to write about.

In each generation we learn more about the ‘tells‘ that indicate what a person might do. Twenty years ago was the animal thing. After Columbine, we learned that a young person’s writings had weight in terms of their future actions. That Virginia Tech outstripped Columbine in sheer numbers of martyred students was only due to some mistakes on the part of the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre2.

At this point, we can’t take that chance with our youth. The Illinois student deserves not just reprobation, but punishment. And counseling, for in every fantasy there is the grain of truth.

Having said that, it would be great if Americans could see past their own borders to the magnitude of tragedy overseas. What I’m about to say has nothing to do with my opinion of the President’s Iraq policy. We read on a daily basis about the tragedies that befall the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been two incidents involving students in schools in the last month. The total murmur on this in the general media has been body count and then moving on. To the children maimed or traumatized by being bombed, to the parents of those children, these events will change their lives forever. Helping them overcome or heal from those wounds is every bit as important as helping the survivors of the Virginia Tech or Columbine shootings. For all the money we’re pouring into Iraq in terms of bribes, generator and food handouts, and other ‘calming actions,’ helping these kids and their families is a greater and more powerful way for us to minimize the chance that they, some day, do not turn into hatred-fueled perpetrators of massacres of their own.

I’m including Pearl River and all other school shootings throughout the world when I say “Columbine”

Kliebold and associate had over 40 bombs set up in lockers and in two cars, placed so they would cause maximum casualties to police and ambulance responders — but they didn’t realize the alarm clocks they’d used had plastic instead of metal minute hands, which meant the circuits (thankfully) did not connect. The bombs were found and diffused after the last bullets had been fired. More on that here.

Nappy Hair, Rap and Virginia Tech

shlomi on April 17, 2007

In a seven day span that has seen a talk show host who built his career as a shock jock have his career ended (for the moment) and national Black figures finally talking about accountability for misogynistic rap “artists,” the horrific attack at Virginia Tech has pointed out the next real need for media improvement.

I’m not trying to compare any of the above in terms of impact. Of course my heart goes out to the victims, their families, and the entire staff and student body at Virginia Tech. It’s healthy for the nation to join in their sorrow, to have a connection with their anguish, and to have the opportunity to help them feel a little less alone at a time like this.

What the media — all the media — have done is to create the kind of second-hand PTSD effect that we had with the 9/11 attacks: rerunning the traumatic sounds and sights on television, radio and the web. Splashing the picture of the lunatic responsible for the carnage, and focusing on the little details of a life he ended, dragging innocent victims along with him.

This coverage, the drilling in on the evil, the violence, the technical execution of this act, has the effect of diminishing the focus on the survivors and victim families in the name of ‘ear share’ or ‘eyeballs.’ Revelling in the pornography of this demented person’s violence advances no causes, heals no wounds and provides no solace or closure. It inflames, incites formless anger and rage, or the kind of sadness that only helplessness can bring.

I can shield my children from the news at home or in the car, but the ever-pervasive media reaches beyond my hands clutching at their eyes and ears. I want to spare them from this far more than I wanted to spare my young children at the time from Clinton’s ‘little black dress’ and explanations of sex positions at too young an age.

As a nation we have to stop. Stop our unholy fascination for violence and its depiction in audio or video formats. Stop our obsession with guns (and this as a pro-carry supporter — they’re tools, not fetish objects).

We must also start. Start paying attention to the “loners,” the “losers,” the children or adults that have come adrift in the midst of our lives. It takes a village to have a village, not just to raise children. In Jewish Shtetls a century ago, every village idiot had a place to turn to for food, for a warm place to sleep. It wasn’t personal adoption, it was communal responsibility. Because all our children, all our co-workers are at risk from people allowed to break free from the social contract or from reality as we live it.

Which would you rather see: children being hauled out of dormitories covered in blood, or a glimpse of a breast? Which is more horrific? Which more deserving of ‘community values’ sanction?

What to do?

Call your local media outlets. Sure, they’re (statistically) probably owned by ClearChannel or Cox or some mega-corporation, but they have to document and report to the mother ship about listener/viewer feedback.
Send e-mails to the web site.
Complain to the FCC.
E-mail your state representative and senators.
Fax your federal representative and senators.
Bring the issue up at city council meetings, school board meetings and in your place of worship.

Every state has a child abuse hotline. If you see someone under fifteen acting strangely, get some details, at least the name of the child, their school and the name of a teacher. Then call the hotline. It’s anonymous, and it might save the life of someone you know or love.

Adults behaving oddly, stalking, making threats, should always be taken seriously. There are laws in place to protect people from “terroristic threats,” and protective orders, while not always effective, can be a good deterrent. The best deterrent is to stand up for your neighbor, your co-workers, and even strangers. Police officers would rather handle a dozen false alarms than one homicide. Every time.

I wish peace and comfort for the Virginia Tech victims and their families. And a measure of peace for the rest of us, so that we can comfort, not relive by proxy their experiences.

Easy killings, relative freedoms

shlomi on February 4, 2007

Switzerland has started down the slippery slope of allowing people with death wishes to kill themselves. One of the countries that evaded the deNazification trials after WW II by claiming “neutrality.” Eugenics continue where not positively abated.

In a country where President Clinton went out of his way to apologize for the Tuskegee Airmen, where States abandoned their forced sterilization of “mental incompetents” in the 1980’s, reading about a first-world country moving towards helping sick people kill themselves is tragic.

Depression, bi-polar disorders and other mental illnesses can take a rational person and make them think suicide is a real option. They’re right — from a purely animal basis. But the damage they do to family really negates their selfish, tactical, short-sighted attempts to escape their pain. Medicine works. Therapy works. Suicide, as the MASH movie quote went, might be ‘painless,’ but the ‘changes’ it brings on affect the parents and families and co-workers (or fellow students) are far from that.

It’s easy to toss away those in society who waver. It takes a strong society, a just society to stick up for members who are not capable of sticking up for themselves.

Switzerland is showing it’s Nazi roots. The world should look at this, and then look at Darfur, the Gaza Strip and Iraq to see how it can avoid the curse of the blind eye in treating world citizens as they should be treated.

Peace, Weakness and Israel

shlomi on February 1, 2007

A small-time player claimed this week to have been involved in an Israeli-Syrian peace initiative. I say that because peace initiatives in the Middle East have involved “small time players” in the past, but most have foundered for one reason or another. Professor Suleiman, a Maryland resident, blamed, among other things, Olmert’s weakness as a reason for the talks failure.

He’s right. Katzav, Olmert, entire rafts of failed generals, and an atmosphere of corruption and failure of the government to uphold the public trust contravene any possible peace initiative.

That’s like saying “he didn’t win the Boston marathon because he had brain cancer.”

Israel’s continuing pandemic of morally and fiscally bankrupt leadership deprives the Israeli as well as Palestinian peoples of a partner in prosperity as well as a prospective partner for peace.

Don’t get me wrong: the hamas/PLO ‘love fest’ is a clear indicator that there’s no one home on the other side. But Israel in the past has at least had solid leaders with vision, power and the ethical standards necessary to at least stand at the altar of peace, even if stood up.

Now there’s no one, and the only benefactors are the extremists in Iran and the cunning in Syria. A sad state of affairs.

Check out The Pulse Crosspost

shlomi on December 23, 2006

Here’s the link to an article about the 1914 Christmas Truce and its relevance today to the “war on terror.”

Christmas 1914 and how This isn’t Your Grandparents’ War

shlomi on December 23, 2006

The first year of the War to End All Wars, was shockingly brutal for all sides. The accepted rules of combat from the previous century were shredded by technology: the machine gun, the tank, mobile cannon. Gas attacks, which helped birthed the Geneva Convention had yet to be committed.

On Christmas day, 1914, Germans and English, at various places along the front, stopped fighting. They came out first to bury their dead in shared prayers, then went on to talk (most Germans knew some English), trade tobacco, pipes, buttons and other momentos, and sing and even pray together. German barbers even shaved English troops during the ten day truce. Even after the truce was expired, some troops on both sides tried not to kill their erstwhile trenchmates.

This was the last global conflict of the nation-states. By World War II, the conflict had shifted from pure national supremacy back to the US’ Civil War: industrial and financial dominance and national fascism¹.

Our enemy bears no resemblance to our German foes, now turned full partners in democracy and cold, international industrial might. They don’t share our values of war, of life (theirs, their constituents, or their enemies), aims, goals. We have nothing they want, other than our subjugation or extinction. They have things we want, and have raped them for decades to get, and we Western nations are now reaping this bountiful crop.

This “war on terror” is truly the Jihad and Crusade, terms villified by both sides for its loaded terms. The emperor has no clothes. The fanatics backing terror will not come out of their trenches to sing Kumbaya on an emotional basis. And if they do, beware the blades behind their backs and bombs strapped to their torsos.

There are some similarities. Innocent civilians are caught in the middle. Cynical military leaders use ‘martyrs’ on one side, and socioeconomically hungry citizens on the other to do their bidding². And the grinding war itself has little point, cannot be resolved by force, and seems to be intermidable.

World War I ground to a halt in part due to the Allies finally strangling the Axis powers’ industrial might: oil, machinery and humans. It ended also in large part due to the influenza pandemic that was slaughtering close-quartered troops at a rate far in excess of any human cannons or machine guns.

Europe suffered from demographic cratering. Due to the sheer devestation and the magnitude of this high-impact war, the societies were able to rebuild — only to lash out less two decades later in nationalistic angers partly fueled by the nature of the initial defeat.

This low-impact, slow-motion war gives both sides endless opportunities to rearm, learn from their tactical mistakes, and, at least on the terrorist side, fill in the gaps in their ranks with new martyrs, disempowered, emasculated virgins in this world looking to make their first score with their counterparts in the next.

The question is: is the West willing to really fight for victory, or keep the sniping up?

Economically, international corporate-nations with ties to all sides of the conflict are profiting by the tens of billions; it’s not in their interest to fight this war to conclusion. Why rebuild a school once if you can rebuild it three times? If the current infrastructure destruction in Iraq continues, it will be importing gasoline like some other major oil producers, a clear added bonus for these “reconstruction firms.” This is the ugly military-industrial complex of which President Eisenhower warned.

Politicians have loved the war until recently: fear sells votes. The turnover in the US House and Senate were as much about absolute corruption as the Iraq War. War is great for a country’s economy: the huge post-WW II boom was fueled by the technologies and capacities built up during the war³.

I’ve heard many Americans cut the Gorgian knot and point to the obvious solution: Do not to abide by Western rules of conduct; instead follow that of the enemy. Attack with full strength, quickly cause maximum, lasting damage, and ensure that whatever population is left rebuilds by our rules, not theirs.

That might have worked in Iraq at the start of this war. Now, it would resemble a sore loser tossing a board game into the air, scattering the pieces, when play does not go his way.

There is something to be said, however, for overwhelming, drop-that-20,000-ton-bomb- and-then-invade-with-200,000-soldiers force in small areas. If the United States is to be taken seriously, it will need to be serious, pervasive force, with specific objectives and a take-no-prisoners attitude.

Right now the administration doesn’t have the guts to make that decision, and generals may not have the force strength to take that decision. Maybe some variant of the H5N1 flu will come to our aid. God forbid.

Happy holidays.

[1] Hitler’s rise to power was funded by industrialists who saw the money to be made in a war-oriented German economy. America didn’t want to get involved in the foreign war because it was not economically expedient. Like England until the Nazis got too close, it was seen as better to let the various powers fight their own war. Japan attacked the US in part because it was threatened by Washington’s oil (energy) sanctions — a turnabout on America’s oil policies of today.

[2]Even after joining, many US soldiers’ families rely on food stamps or other aid, as the pay, even with hazardous duty bonuses, is not sufficient to raise a family. Non-citizens join the US army in hopes of citizenship — which is granted posthumously in some cases.

[3]The difference today is in debt and trust. Whereas in WW II Americans were exhorted to save gasoline, grow their own vegetables and be more frugal, President Bush exhorts citizens to keep up their level of spending (debt) and consumption. That’s critical because we are not short so much of supplies as we are of the movement of money in our economy.

From the Mouths of (Jewish) Babes

shlomi on December 22, 2006

My daughter, to a school friend trying to convert her (named Christian, lest there be any doubt): “I know you’re trying to save me like, from the burning flames of hell, but… I’m okay.”

Cross-Post Alert II Apartheid & President Carter

shlomi on December 17, 2006

Check out The Pulse for the latest on this story.

Apartheid — A Stinking Rose by Any Name

shlomi on December 16, 2006

Former President Carter is a naive fool, playing into the hands of both a cynical media and an equally cynical antisemitic Arab PR machine.

Jewish leaders protesting Carter’s use of apartheid are self-delusional at best, lying at worst.

Israel has generally treated not only the West Bank and Gaza residents (however they want to refer to themselves) as something a little better than cattle, and something definitely less than human for over thirty years. I’ve seen it, anyone who’s lived or worked in the agricultural, construction, or industrial sector has seen it, and anyone denying it is lying.

Israeli arab towns and cities get less economic, social, cultural, infrastructure, tourism, security and every other support available to their Jewish — and even mixed ethnicity — cities. Go drive up a street in Deir Al Assad, then take a spin in neighboring Karmiel. Check out the practice soccer pitches in Haifa, the drive up to Massadeh on the Golan Heights (officially annexed by Israel years ago).

That’s not to say that there aren’t great people, companies and relationships that transcend these terrible and institutional practices. But the norm is a form of apartheid. Carter’s blunder is to let the media equate the concept of apartheid with the level of apartheid. Israel, at its worst, was far better a master than the South Africans. Just writing that sentence makes me cringe, but it’s a true, qualitative statement.

And Carter using that statement turns a possible discussion about the non-revolutionary ways out of the quagmire that is the Middle East into a firestorm of fury about the players, guilty and innocent, that have to survive it.

President Carter should stick to building houses for the homeless, and American rabbis should stick to helping their constituents. Neither seems qualified to engage in this current discussion.