Dean’s Hachamovitch from MS. Coupla good laughs early. Good work. Like the artist’s rendering of Microsoft’s campus (it’s the Death Start II). Funny ha-ha. Maybe Microsoft understands how they’re viewed in the world and have a healthy sense of humor about it. Maybe. Maybe it just kind of looks that way.

—-

We’re the first public audience to see IE 7. First impressions: it looks a lot like Firefox. Of course, it’s not finished yet. Things will move around. Really, how original can you get with a browser?

—-

So IE can automatically sniff RSS and view it in the browser. Their RSS view looks EXACTLY like Safari’s. Hmmmm…

Maybe I’m being a little unfair, but what these guys are talking isn’t that big a deal. I’m doing the same stuff on the Mac and I’m doing it now, not at the end of 2006.

—-

So here’s the key insight from Microsoft. All applications should natively understand what a “subscription” means and know how to deal with it. I think this is right on. Downloading will be done at the platform level, meaning applications will make a call to the built-in downloading service to get feeds, enclosures, etc. Applications will dip into this pool, or stream, of data. To the user, it’s a seamless experience. Very cool.

—-

There’s a little hostility towards the MS guys from the crowd, particularly from one Mac guy. I don’t think contention is the right tactic to engage the MS guy, but there is a little bit of an attitude that’s being presented by MS that they’re doing something really cool and forward-thinking, when it looks to many of us that they’re really just catching up. I think the hostility might be coming from the attitude that they’re telling us something new.

Here’s the problem: Microsoft looks like they’re not really aware of what state of the art technology looks like. They look like they’re behind the curve. They’d be better off, in my opinion, acknowledging what’s already available to bleeding edge techno-nerds, and start explaining how they’re going to make it bigger, better, and available to more folks.

—-

MS will be making their RSS extension specs available under Creative Commons. Very, very cool.

—-

Note to Dean, if, as you said, you’re interested in starting conversations, you’re going to have to participate in them, not shut down people who are poking at you. You look defensive. Not that I’d want to be up there in your place, but you have to recognize that the hostility is part of the conversation. You can’t just pretend it will go away. You have to listen deeply, figure out what people are hostile about, and respond to that. You’re shutting people down, but you need these folks, at the end of the day, to work with you.

Microsoft has a PR problem. In terms of how they’re presenting themselves to their public, they’re trotting out these scrubbed, clean-cut, Disney-esque, passive-agressive pretty boys to sell their products (and I think that this is kind of they way they act in the world—clean cut, coy, but they might just pull a fast one on you.) What they need is a fighter, a passionate advocate. Someone who thrives in the hostility, can see the other side, and can really engage.

They need to clone Scoble.

—-

Steve Rubel says, “This is Embrace and Extend Lite™.” In other words, it’s a good start, but we’re not convinced.

I’m at Gnomedex this week. 300 geeks in a big room, 50 geeks in a smaller room, and untold numbers of geeks listening to the audio feed. I’m in heaven.

Dave Winer is leading off with a keynote address in an “unconference” style. The idea is that the conference participants actually participate in the address. Not sure it’s entirely successful at all moments (does it have to be?) but I do really like the interactive nature of the talk.

Dave’s new product – an OPML outliner – is exactly what I’ve been thinking about and hoping for: it’s an almost-live interface with the web. Instant publishing, and a copy of your data both on your computer and your website. Open source, Mac version in the works. Very cool.

Here’s my big observation so far: In any other room, I’m the über-geek. Here, I’m just a guy. Three guys next to me at the reception last night pulled out their Treo 650s and I was almost embarrassed to admit that I only had the 600. This is the only room where I really get tech envy.

Another observation: Since leaving the theatre, this is the first community in which I’ve felt completely comfortable. I love computers, and everyone around me loves computers. I love gadgets, everyone around me loves gadgets.

Another (okay, now I’m on a roll): The number of Macs here is amazing. Probably half the folks in the Bay Auditorium have little white glowing apple logos in front of them.

I’m truly home.

Quote of the ‘dex so far:

Dave Winer: “I don’t know what my exact words were, but I don’t want to be held to them.”

Net connection is spotty. Hopefully it’ll get better.

Stay tuned…

In a perfect companion piece to the McGowan series, Driftglass ponders the story of Job and the proper relationship of The People to Authority. The essential argument, the most important point, and the one I fear we are too conflicted and confused as a society to come to grips with is this: our government only works if we say it works. Our systems become what we decide, nothing more and nothing less.

Read the whole thing. Driftglass says it better:

The Law is a sacred thing, but it’s not a physical object, and it only works its mediating magic and keeps us from spinning off into a very Dark Age if we believe in it. If we have confidence in it. If we can trust that it is, in fact, impartial and that no one’s meaty hand is on the scales and tipping justice against us.

And as with Nixon, once the public finds that the good-name of the Law has been pimped to provide cover for morally indefensible behavior, we lose faith in our institutions, and the consequences are ruinous.

This is another of the malevolent viruses that this Administration has turned pneumonic and is breathing into every corner of our lives. By making war on Reality itself, and by using a razor-thin (and ill-gotten, but not in a Diebold kind of way) mandate as if it were a magic wand, Bush corrodes the very meaning of “authority” itself. Perverting it from “one who knows WTF they are talking about” to “one who must be blindly obeyed whether or not he knows a damned thing and whether or not he has a malicious agenda”.

It divides citizens up in a way that cripples Democracy.

There is an important series of posts taking up residence at Michael Bérubé’s blog, and I would urge you to read them at your earliest convenience. The series, written by guest blogger John McGowan during Michael’s (forgive the familiarity, but it’s those damn diacriticals) recent convalescence, echoes thoughts I’ve had repeatedly over the past couple of years; namely, that we’ve strayed too far from our understanding of our democratic institutions to effectively defend them.

McGowan’s series, “The Republican Assault on Democracy,” points to the consolidation of power by the wealthy, the rise of a rich/poor caste system, and a flagrant disregard for the established rules and norms of governance (most particularly, though not entirely, by Republicans) as severe threats to American democracy. McGowan reminds us that, like the frog in a pot of slowly heating water, we have not noticed that our once-fierce pride in our system of government is starting to boil away, evaporating into nothingness.

McGowan notes that liberalism has gotten a bad rap. Liberalism was meant to keep tyrants at bay, to promote the general welfare and to preserve a place where all viewpoints are free to peacefully co-exist. But now, “not only the Republicans, but the American nation as a whole, seem to have lost any sense whatsoever of what liberalism means and what it strives to insure.” Where liberalism was meant to keep the peace among disparate factions by giving everyone a voice, the new Republican goal seems bound to squash opposition, a strategy that will inevitably create only bloodier conflict.

All this suggests a Democratic strategy for the coming years: remind the American voters that our system of government was created so that all voices would be heard. Our Constitution protects us from the tyranny of the majority; it disperses power among three branches of government, so that all sides and all voices can get equal hearing. Obstinate power games, election shenanigans, and naked propaganda plays are beneath contempt, and our leaders should demand better. We should demand better from our leaders.

I believe that, beyond party loyalties, the majority of Americans are justifiably proud of our democracy. If they are reminded of its genesis and of its benefits, they will rally to its cause. The minority party should be stirring those embers of passion for liberty and justice, before they’ve gone out for good.

...wherever you are.

Via the incomparable Digby at Hullabaloo :

All of this we know and have known for some time. But that doesn’t mean that there is no story now. Indeed, the Downing Street Memo presents a chance for the press to redeem itself; this isn’t the end of the story. So far, it has had to be dragged kicking and screaming into even broaching the subject of what this administration has done and their own complicity in it. They may never be able to admit all that. But in that it officially documents the fact that the administration knew there was no threat and knew there was no connection to terrorism, the Downing Street Memo gives the press the chance to ask, finally, why we really invaded Iraq.


Have any of you been at a social gathering in which this question comes up? Have you felt the palpable discomfort? Nobody really knows. Those that adhere to the “CIA fucked up” rationale can’t explain Downing Street. Those who think you had to back the government in a time of war, are visibly discomfitted by the fact that we never found any WMD. Flypaper is crap. The amount of money we are spedning is becoming salient. The project looks endless.


[snip]


How is it possible for the United States of America in 2003 to invade and occupy another country for a handful of different, unstated reasons? What kind of fucked up process could have the president with one reason for invading, the vice president another, the Secretary of Defense yet another—- and the congress and the press simply signing off on official lies?

So…. why did we invade Iraq?

Never “utilize.” Never, never, never, ever “utilize.”

“Use.”

That is all.

From Freeway Blogger, via a post at Eschaton.

http://www.freewayblogger.com/Images_3/downingst1.JPG

Kevin Drum, of The Washington Monthly. writes today that, “One of the reasons the previous Downing Street Memo hasn’t gotten much traction with the press — and the reason these new memos will probably get limited attention as well — is that I don’t think anyone really finds any of this a surprise.”

Frank Rich (I think it was) made a similar point on the Al Franken Show recently, and it’s a point that’s getting some play. this idea that the media’s not really that impressed by the Downing Street Memo because the war was a foregone conclusion and everybody knew it.

So, it’s old news, is it? Perhaps, but isn’t that beside the point? This memo doesn’t just bolster our paranoid fantasies about a corrupt Bush administration, it fairly well proves the case. Here’s direct evidence of an American administration planning and prosecuting a bogus war, and cynically manipulating the public, the press, and the international community. This is the smoking gun that could, in the hands of an independent prosecutor, build a legal case for impeachment, and possibly war crimes, as well.

How does Drum and the rest of the press just yawn at this? I have one rather cynical theory: evidence doesn’t matter, because nothing will be done anyway. There will be no independent prosecutor. There will be no congressional investigation. The NeoCons own the government. They control the levers of power. There is no oversight, no mechanism for remedy. At least, that seems to be the media’s calculation.

I kind of expected better from Kevin Drum.

Update to my not-even-posted-yet-post: Just as I finished typing, Drum switched course (a bit) in this post, which responds to Michael Kinsley’s editorial in the LA Times.

I’m somewhat swayed by Kinsley’s point that perhaps this memo isn’t direct evidence of anything. But given that it’s the recorded discussion of the highest-level officials in the British government, isn’t it more than just a passing curiosity?

Moreover, Kinsley again makes this weak argument: What a surprise! Bush was fixing intelligence to fit his intentions. Kinsley even calls it a scandal, yet dismisses this as non-newsworthy; we KNOW this already.

I guess I still don’t get it. Why is this not getting more play? Why is there no investigation? Why does the press seem to be actively shirking its responsibility to follow up, to ask questions, and to tell the full story of the run-up to the Iraq war?

Maybe there’s a larger question. Why, if as Kinsley says, the press knew full well that the war in Iraq had been decided on far in advance of any official declaration, was there no detailed coverage of this? Why didn’t we raise more of a ruckus? Are we, as a country, okay with being manipulated? Are we okay with how this war was initiated, planned, and executed? Are we as Americans just not too upset with how the whole thing went down?

More reaction at Voices of Reason.

Also, via BoingBoing, here’s an excellent site detailing the Downing Street Memo: what it says, what it means, and why we should care.

And it wouldn’t be bad to have a hundred more like him in the Senate.

Following is an excerpt from Barack Obama’s Commencement Address to the students of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois (thanks to hilzoy at Obsidian Wings for calling our attention to the speech). I encourage you to read the whole thing. I ache for the day when we’ll hear more rhetoric like this coming from the mouths of our country’s leaders, when our current political climate will only make us lightly shudder, as at the passing thought of a bad dream.

This is how to stir Americans to action. This is how to be hopeful, clear-eyed, and optimistic. This is what we need more of…

Like so much of the American story, once again, we face a choice. Once again, there are those who believe that there isn’t much we can do about this as a nation. That the best idea is to give everyone one big refund on their government—divvy it up by individual portions, in the form of tax breaks, hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own education, and so on.

In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it—Social Darwinism—every man or woman for him or herself. It’s a tempting idea, because it doesn’t require much thought or ingenuity. It allows us to say that those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford—tough luck. It allows us to say to the Maytag workers who have lost their job—life isn’t fair. It let’s us say to the child who was born into poverty—pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And it is especially tempting because each of us believes we will always be the winner in life’s lottery, that we’re the one who will be the next Donald Trump, or at least we won’t be the chump who Donald Trump says: “You’re fired!”

But there is a problem. It won’t work. It ignores our history. It ignores the fact that it’s been government research and investment that made the railways possible and the internet possible. It’s been the creation of a massive middle class, through decent wages and benefits and public schools that allowed us all to prosper. Our economic dependence depended on individual initiative. It depended on a belief in the free market; but it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we’re all in it together and everybody’s got a shot at opportunity. That’s what’s produced our unrivaled political stability.

And so if we do nothing in the face of globalization, more people will continue to lose their health care. Fewer kids will be able to afford the diploma you’re about to receive.

More companies like United Airlines won’t be able to provide pensions for their employees. And those Maytag workers will be joined in the unemployment line by any worker whose skills can be bought and sold on the global market.

So today I’m here to tell you what most of you already know. This is not us—the option that I just mentioned. Doing nothing. It’s not how our story ends—not in this country. America is a land of big dreamers and big hopes.

It is this hope that has sustained us through revolution and civil war, depression and world war, a struggle for civil and social rights and the brink of nuclear crisis. And it is because our dreamers dreamed that we have emerged from each challenge more united, more prosperous, and more admired than before.