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I finally bit the bullet and started the weblog. I can’t guarantee it will be updated every day, but I will update it as frequently as possible.

Friday 19th October

Manhattan, 11th September. Greg McNulty’s apartment is four blocks from the World Trade Centre, and he took photographs of the day’s events to provide a sense of what it was to be in lower Manhattan in the aftermath of those terrible events.

CNN may be feeling left out since it’s one of the only networks that didn’t receive a letter laced with anthrax. They have to do something. Will that something be an interview with bin Laden?

Are you a Sikh? Are you a Sikh in America? Feel unpopular because of that turban? Here’s the answer: get yourself a patriotic turban!

Watching events unfold since the 11th September atrocities, I have been struck by how impressive Tony Blair has been — previously, I had had no idea that he could be actually sincere as opposed to the faux sincerity he normally affects.

I have also been struck by how much George W. Bush still does not look presidential. Sometimes he gives the appearance of someone who has barely learned to walk. His speech is simplistic and mangled. Often he looks slightly lost. Or like a serious muppet. Some, though, see Bush transformed since the attacks, in charge and confident. Let’s hope they’re right.

Only in Russia could they say that despite temperatures just above zero, 44 people died from hypothermia this autumn.

Users won’t part with cash for content — well, raise ma rent! The Guardian reports on research into the bleeding obvious:

Companies that produce online content have long feared that if they attempt to charge for access to their sites, users will simply switch to alternative, free services, and researchers said today that impression is probably correct.

The report goes on to warn that much online content may have no intrinsic value that can be turned into cash payments from users, and that companies should instead focus on the more indirect value for their efforts.

This is obvious, and it’s obvious for a simple reason. If you want to buy a magazine, you can leaf through the mag in the newsagents to decide if you want it. Same goes for a book. You can’t leaf through a payment-only section of a web site to see if it’s worth coughing up money for it. If you can’t tell that it’s going to be worth it, then you won’t produce the money.

Additionally, many sites which want money take the approach of asking people to subscribe. For example, some newspaper sites want a subscription before you can access their archives. From the user’s point of view, this is insane unless you are one of the few users who knows they will make a great deal of use of that service. No one is going to subscribe to look at one, maybe two articles. As Jakob Nielsen puts it:

The main problem with subscription fees is that they provide a single choice: between paying nothing (thus getting nothing) and paying a large fee (thus getting everything). Faced with this decision, most users will chose to pay nothing and will go to other sites. It is rare that you will know in advance that you will use a site enough to justify a large fee and the time to register. Thus, most people will only subscribe to very few sites: the Web will be split up into disconnected "docu-islands" and users will be prevented from roaming over the full docuverse.

Subscriptions break the basic principles of the Web: the linking of information and user-controlled navigation. Charging subscriptions is like building a city wall: you keep people out. Authors who want to link to other sites for background information will rarely chose to link to subscription sites because they will know that the majority of their users will not be able to follow the links. Similarly, search engines will not be able to index subscription sites, so users will not find pages that relate to their interests on such sites.

Nielsen makes a case for micropayments, i.e. the ability to pay in pennies to see a document rather than pounds. As he says, Such pricing is obviously unpleasant and will only be acceptable for highly value-added content that users can predict in advance that they will benefit significantly from buying. Regular articles … cannot be that expensive. I’m not clear, though, how that would avoid some of the problems with search engines he described for the subscription model.

The whole point about the Web is that is is supposed to be a richly interconnected information space. Barricading off sections of it behind demands for money destroys the whole concept. From the point of view of ezines, surely the most sensible thing to do would be to find an advertising paradigm that works for the Web? Paper magazines, after all, are almost wholly funded through advertising, why should the Web be different?

The failure of advertising on the Web is surely not that everyone is completely advertising intolerant, it’s that advertising is done in an offensive manner. Banner ads., for example — when was the last time you saw one which was pushing something of any interest or relevance to you? If you click on one (and we’ve all done it, even if it was a long time ago), how often do you get something you expect and are interested in, as opposed to something you really don’t want to see? Not often.

Nielsen does sometimes talk bollocks, though. Here he is recently talking about browsers:

But the web browser is a completely improvished [sic] environment! There’s only one thing it does well and that is browsing articles. Think of the other things... like monitoring auctions, real time monitoring, the news, email.

(I assume the typo is meant to be impoverished; but on the other hand, maybe it is a beautiful, serendipitous coinage, describing something which is both improvised and impoverished.)

Let me get that straight: a browser is "improvished" because it browses and doesn’t do anything else? Radios suck because all they do is let you listen to the radio, buses suck because they don’t do anything but transport you across the city — well, I won’t go on.

The last program I used which did everything on the Net was CyberDog, I think; it was a beautiful piece of software which let you surf the Net, send and receive emails, connect via FTP (as well as other protocols such as gopher), connect to Usenet. Unfortunately, the Net has moved on and CyberDog hasn’t, so it isn’t a viable choice for everyday surfing.

Browsers browse, and hopefully they do that well. We don’t need them to handle, say, email because there are other programs which do that well.

Comments like that make you wonder where planet Nielsen is, but here’s more:

Will Linux desktops innovate? No. I don’t think of that as being the solution: because it’s open source.

It doesn’t lend itself to coming up with new paradigms. The one thing it’s very good thing at is designing software for other hackers, for other nerds, really.…

For example they’re so proud once they’ve ported … PowerPoint. But that doesn’t give us a new way of doing presentations.

Have I got that right? Linux — an operating system, remember — won’t innovate because the people working on Linux aren’t producing better application software. Yes, that’s what we want: Linux as the new Microsoft.

Apple are bringing out a "breakthrough digital device" next week. What is it? No one knows.

Thursday 18th October

Diane Pretty, terminally ill with MND, has lost her court case to allow her husband to assist her in committing suicide. Now, I am deeply unconvinced of the arguments of those advocating euthanasia, having seen too many people in excruciating agony who would wish to die, yet some months later have a good quality of life following control of the pain. However, in a situation where someone has a progressively paralytic condition which will certainly kill them, and in a particularly distressing fashion, and that person wants to end their life but is physically unable to do so, it seems to me that their wish should be looked on with compassion. Certainly I believe the judges were wrong in saying that The right to human dignity … was not the right to die with dignity … — simply the right to enjoy as dignified a life as possible

The Guardian reports on the Middle Eastern press response to the Blair-Arafat meeting. Not suprisingly, the Jerusalem Post is not impressed; the Egyptian paper Al Ahram says Britain is the USA’s ventriloquist’s dummy: It was Blair who faithfully echoed the US president.… It was Blair who sang from the Washington song-sheet when he spoke of an ‘incontrovertible link’ between the 11 September attacks and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, although he gave no details.… The question uppermost in people’s mind is whether Blair has become Washington’s roving ambassador. The Gulf News says that it is The continued tolerance of Israel as an accepted member of the international community which Arafat should ask Blair to question.

I meant to post this link some days ago, but didn’t have time. However, it’s still relevant as the argument over censoring or broadcasting bin Laden’s videotapes goes on. Writing in Slate last week, William Saletan says never mind the hypothetical secret messages, what about the obvious message?

In the video, Bin Laden makes a point-by-point argument that our war on terrorism is a fraud. Why haven’t we challenged that argument?

Good question. There’s been much talk of the Coalition losing the propaganda war. Saletan makes a good argument that that is because we haven’t properly engaged in it. Tony Blair has at leest been interviewed by Al Jazeera TV; no one from the US government has done likewise. If Bush and his team do not counter bin Laden’s propaganda, they are letting their cause down:

You may find Bin Laden’s message absurd. You may find its resonance in the Muslim world absurd. But surely the failure of the United States to rebut it is even more absurd. We’re at war with a man who champions the mass murder of civilians. You’d think the easiest part of the war would be persuading the world that he’s the bad guy. But in the part of the world that matters most, we’re not even answering him. Bush has sent thousands of American soldiers to Afghanistan. He expects them, if fired upon, to fire back. They’re entitled to expect the same of him.

The New York Times gives an account of the sequence of events on the hijacked airliners on September 11th, referring to transmissions from the aeroplanes. On one of the planes which hit the World Trade Centre, a voice was heard to say, Nobody move please; we are going back to the airport. Don’t try to make any stupid moves.

Our home used to house a four-megaton warhead. Now it’s been converted to a place of peace — feel like living in a missile silo?

Arts and Terrorism 1: For at least ten years Hollywood has been the scapegoat for just about everything, particularly anything to do with violence. OK, some violent acts have been perpetrated in manners reminiscent of certain movies — but is there any evidence that the criminals concerned would not have carried out any violent acts at all had the supposed (and supposition is all it is) rôle models not been available? You would expect film directors to be less hysterical — apparently not: Robert Altman has blamed Hollywood for inspiring the 11th September terrorist attacks.

"Nobody would have thought to commit an atrocity like that unless they’d seen it in a movie," said Altman, who also directed MASH and The Player.

Violent blockbusters "taught them how to do it" and Hollywood must now stop showing mass destruction in movies, he said.

"The movies set the pattern, and these people have copied the movies," added Altman.…

The 76-year-old Oscar-nominated director said violent action films with big explosions — usually targeted at young men — amount to training films for such bold attacks.

"How dare we continue to show this kind of mass destruction in movies?

So there’s no chance that the World Trade Centre was picked because it’s a) very big, b) a symbol of American-led global capitalism, c) in the most famous city on the planet and d) difficult to miss? There’s no chance that the method of attack was used because it was actually quite easy to do? Makes you wonder why bin Laden has training camps at all, doesn’t it?

I also can’t help thinking that he’s whistling in the wind when he says, Maybe there’s a chance to get back to… grown-up films — anything that uses humour and dramatic values to deal with human emotions

Arts and Terrorism 2: Yesterday Rowan Atkinson wrote to The Times to express his concern at Blunkett’s proposed new laws (see also this comment from The Times, and this from the Lord Desai) to outlaw "incitement to racial hatred:"

Having spent a substantial part of my career parodying religious figures from my own Christian background, I am aghast at the notion that it could, in effect, be made illegal to imply ridicule of a religion or to lampoon religious figures.

Supporters of the proposed legislation would presumably say that neither I, nor any of my colleagues in the comedy world, are its intended targets, but laws governing highly subjective or moral issues tend to drag a very fine net, and some of the most basic freedoms of speech and expression can get caught up in it.

I have always believed that there should be no subject about which one cannot make jokes, religion included. Clearly, one is always constricted by contemporary mores and trends because, after all, what one seeks above all is an appreciative audience. However, how would a film like Monty Python’s Life of Brian, criticised at the time of its release for being anti-Christian, be judged under the proposed law? Or that excellent joke in Not the Nine O’Clock News all those years ago, showing worshippers in a mosque simultaneously bowing to the ground with the voiceover: "And the search goes on for the Ayatollah Khomeini’s contact lens"? Not respectful, but comedy takes no prisoners.

A spokesman for Tony Blair has said the proposed legislation would not limit comics’ freedom of speech.

I think we are able to tell the difference between comic sketches and comedy and people who are trying to whip up and incite religious hatred," said the spokesman.

Really?

Sunday 14th October

Target number 2? Investigators in the USA suspect that Iraq may have been involved in the anthrax attacks; there is also growing suspicion of Iraqi involvement in the September 11th attacks. What is going to be more disruptive: anthrax, or panic about anthrax?

Does Al Qaeda have nuclear-related (i.e. radioactive but not fissile) arms? Additionally, they are believed to have chlorine and phosgene gas.

Last year the CIA intercepted an Al Qaeda message which spoke of Osama bin Laden planning to carry out a ‘Hiroshima’ against America The article goes on to say, Clearly … the United States failed to grasp the organization’s transformation from an obscure group of Islamic extremists into the world’s most dangerous terrorists.

On the same tack: does Clinton deserve some of the blame? The conclusion: Clinton could have done more. But whether it would have made any difference, no one can really say.

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a spokesman for Al Qaeda, warned the UK and USA that there would be further attacks in retaliation for the bombing of Afghanistan; also, if Britain and America do not withdraw troops from the Gulf then he said, the land will burn with fire under their feet. He warned Muslims in Britain and the USA to avoid planes and not live in high buildings.

The Sunday Times reports that the Afghan people are cursing the Taleban and Osama bin Laden, but the Taleban supporters remain as fanatical as ever. Another report suggests that even Afghan Taleban supporters think the "foreign fanatics" are mad.

Sir Vidia Naipaul (who has just won the Nobel Prize for Literature): the Taleban are vermin and must be overthrown.

1500 – 3000 peace protestors demonstrated in Glasgow yesterday; 20,000 in London.

Tony Blair is irritating broadcasters by telling them to censor any bin Laden video tapes they show and telling them to be more sceptical of Taleban casualty claims. Since the terrestrial TV channels at least have never screened the bin Laden tapes in their entirety (and almost all of the sound of what they do show is inaudible beneath the voice-over) and the impossibility of knowing whether Taleban claims are true or not is regularly stated, what is the point of his putting broadcasters’ backs up?

Editorials: The Sunday Times is certain that the West can win the war and dismissive of the defeatists. The Telegraph takes a similar line and says, Give war a chance. Scotland on Sunday says this is a time to stand firm.

The Observer comments on the Taleban claims that hundreds of civilians have been killed: Even if their claims are exaggerated, any loss of life is deplorable and unacceptable. But after terrorists killed more than 6,000 innocents on 11 September, and with evidence that there are more prepared to repeat such atrocities, it was impossible to do nothing. The leader also notes that the Taleban defence infrastructure is a legitimate object of attack.

The Independent wants to know what the aim of the military campaign is, exactly.

Operation Vegetarian: Britain manufactured five million anthrax cattle cakes in 1942–44, planning to drop them on Germany. The aim would have been to wipe out the cattle and then have the infection spread to humans. Millions could have been killed. (Could, of course, is the operative word: delivery of biological agents is enormously difficult, as the Japanese found in the Thirties.) The operation was never carried out because by the time the anthrax cakes were ready, Allied armies were advancing in Europe. The war was being won by conventional means.

The Sunday Herald’s news page describes this as Allies World War Two shame, but I don’t think that any of us can be so pompous about what was done at that time. It was a war like no other, a total war where everyone in Britain was involved in the war effort, and everyone in Britain was in the front line. Despite Tony Blair’s bizarre comments that the USA stood with Britain during the Blitz, Britain was isolated against the Nazis until Hitler invaded the USSR and, following Pearl Harbor, declared war on the USA.

We have the luxury of 50 years of peace in Western Europe (pretty well unprecedented, I think) and a more developed system of international law; that doesn’t mean we can heap cries of "shame" on actions thought to be necessary to survival in a time of life-or-death conflict. And after all, the cakes may have been made, but they were never used.

Railtrack: receivership was being discussed as early as 27th July, according to the Sunday Times, which claims that the true scale of Railtrack’s financial problems was hidden from shareholders by the chairman. Shareholders, of course, are screaming that they were cheated when the government pulled the plug — but they were taking dividends from the company at the same time as it was begging for vast sums of money from the government. Does that sound like a group of people who deserve compensation? (Incidentally, that link is worth visiting even if you don’t give a damn about Railtrack just for the sarcasm.)

Rudolph Giuliani is to be awarded an honorary knighthood.

A rarity: A book review that actually makes you want to read the book. Alan Taylor reviews Roy Jenkins’ book on Churchill. Jenkins says Churchill was the greatest human being ever to occupy 10 Downing Street — greater even than Gladstone; as Taylor says, he should know.

Shock news from the USA: God isn’t Santa. How refreshing to hear an American Christian who isn’t certifiably ten lies short of an Archer.

Welcome back, Joe! Across the USA, college faculty and staff who express opinions on the terrorist attacks and U.S. bombardment of Afghanistan are facing rebuke in public and private, suspension and investigation. At least two professors were asked to leave their schools as a security measure. Who exactly is free in "the Land of the Free?"

Computer viruses don’t seem so scary compared to Bacillus anthracis. Companies shutting down mail rooms is not so devastating as it might have been because of the ubiquity of e-mail — and because it’s simply more convenient. Will the anthrax scares be a nail in the coffin of snail mail?

Web patents: Apple Computer and Hewlett-Packard have both submitted statements to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) urging the organization not to adopt a policy that would permit the charging of royalties for technologies used in approved standards.