Huh.

MaxSpeak went all Pajamas on us.

Then again, considering his experiences with Kos, I doubt he's going to be too inclined towards hooking up with Approved Sources. (tm)

I'm not confident that this will end well, but if it works, good on him.

Somebody Needs to Teach Broder the Prisoner's Dilemma

Maybe then he'll figure out that one guy conceding doesn't necessarily mean the other is going to concede squat.

How Broder missed Bush's tendency to pocket victories and go further whenever the Dems "play nice" is lost on me.

Matt too.

Warm Squigglies

Nothing brightens up the day like seeing something like this:



Thanks, Oliver!

(Edit: It should go without saying that the death of a young girl to a drunk driver is a tragedy. I would never make light of that.

Making light of an idiot like O'Reilley, though...)

BOOM!

...was narrowly NOT heard in the vicinity of the President yesterday.

The Detroit News: Credit Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally with saving the leader of the free world from self-immolation.

Mulally told journalists at the New York auto show that he intervened to prevent President Bush from plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of Ford's hydrogen-electric plug-in hybrid at the White House last week. Ford wanted to give the Commander-in-Chief an actual demonstration of the innovative vehicle, so the automaker arranged for an electrical outlet to be installed on the South Lawn and ran a charging cord to the hybrid. However, as Mulally followed Bush out to the car, he noticed someone had left the cord lying at the rear of the vehicle, near the fuel tank.

"I just thought, 'Oh my goodness!' So, I started walking faster, and the President walked faster and he got to the cord before I did. I violated all the protocols. I touched the President. I grabbed his arm and I moved him up to the front," Mulally said. "I wanted the president to make sure he plugged into the electricity, not into the hydrogen. This is all off the record, right?"

I know Darwin isn't really an avenging angel against stupid, but you have to admit that there must have been a few people who, upon reading this, didn't picture Darwin looking down, snapping his fingers, and saying "so close!"

Props to Brad DeLong.

Same Ol'...

And, yet again, we receive ample proof that Canadian Liberal "insiders" have absolutely no interest in winning the next federal election.

I mean seriously. Look at this:

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion told a gathering of supporters last night in Toronto that if the Prime Minister wants to force an election, the Liberals are ready.

He did not, however, mention the small problem of a campaign plane. The Liberals don't have one and, according to a source, are scrambling to find one after being turned down by Air Canada. Insiders say there is growing concern among Liberals that they will not be able to get one before an election is called...

...A source said a Liberal representative recently approached Air Canada about leasing a plane but was turned down. The source said the airline was already committed to the two other campaigns and did not have a plane or crew that could hopscotch the country several times a week during a hectic election campaign.

Why the hell leak this? It does absolutely nothing except make the party look inept. It isn't that critical a story (I'm sure this will get sorted out), and the only possible newsworthiness is "ooh, look at how disorganized them Libs are compared to Harper". Which, I suppose, is exactly what the "source" wants.

I'll say this for the Dems: they may fight like cats and dogs during the primary, but at least when they choose presidential candidates, they back them.

Interesting Crossover

Over at The Great Orange Satan, there's a blurb by a Canadian diarist about Jason Cherniak's Liblogs and their attempts to respond to Stephen Harper's attack ads with ads of their own.

Since I hadn't really seen much crossover between the established American blog scene and the still-new Canadian one, I thought it was worthy of note.

(So feel free to get to noting.)

One thing I learned from that entry that I hadn't known is that Harper outsources his attack ad production to an American firm, Mclaughlin and Associates. Quite a piece of work, judging by the client list, producing material for everyone from the RNC to the Smokeless Tobacco Council to the American Conservative Union to the lovely and talented people at the Media Research Centre.

Were I one of those Canadian bloggers making attack ads, I'd leave aside the general question of Harper using attack ads to focus on how and why Harper is retaining the services of such people. Attack ads attacking attack ads are kind of silly, as Calgrit ably points out, but Liberals can dine out for YEARS at the prospect of tying together Stephen Harper's and Big Tobacco's advertising connections.

In any case, this cements something that should be foremost in their minds right now- they aren't competing against "Tories", but against the Republican Machine. Disastrous governance aside, the Republicans' ability to use that machine should never, ever be underestimated.

Edit: This particular ad may not be professional, but it ain't bad.



The comments over at Youtube for it cement a problem that the Liberals are going to have to face, though- Liberal supporters are severely, severely underrepresented online compared to their Conservative counterparts.

"What Do You Want Us to Do?"

So asked the Pentagon during the Iranian hostage crisis, (according to Matthew Yglesias quoting the Guardian), setting out a rich smorgaboard of military options to get that long-overdue war in Iran started.

Oddly enough, Britain just focused on getting her soldiers back diplomatically, instead of using it as an excuse to supposedly bomb Tehran into letting the MLK take over.

Odder still, it worked. Yes, Charles Krauthammer's complaining about it supposedly making the UK look bad and Iran look good. He's just pissed that, after the Iraq debacle, he's not going to be able to give his crackpot adoration of military force a second chance to work in the other "Ira" country. The sane people (including those running countries) have seen both the UK and Iran handle this reasonably well, sketchy British maps and against-the-wall Iranian intimidation tactics aside.

(Intimidation? Well, the soldiers reported that they were made to stand up against a wall, facing towards it, with the sound of weapons being cocked behind them. This is definitely not acceptable treatment of POWs- it's a coercion tactic plain and simple. I don't believe they were in any real danger, though, as that would have placed Iran itself in tremendous danger. I do wonder whether this has been influenced by the erosion of prisoner's civil liberties by the US and its allies, but it's hard to say.)

Krauthammer's vulgar "realism" aside, that the UK and Iran solved this diplomatically is a good thing.

Slight edits for clarity.

Pelosi in Syria?

Matthew Yglesias highlights how crazy the right (those in the press and otherwise) are going over Nancy Pelosi going to Syria.

Me, I say let 'em stew. The American public that could conceivably vote for Pelosi's party aren't going to be swayed by this, not anymore. Lines about how "America needs to speak with one voice" have always been nonsense, as Matt correctly points out. The president sets official policy, but unofficial positions and debates are as old as diplomacy, and the niceties of official policymaking aren't of interest to anybody outside Foggy Bottom and editorial writers with no memory beyond the last news cycle.

These guys are just ticked that the president can't dictate to the Speaker anymore.

A Simple Question

Yes, Sen. Clinton has supporters. That's not in question. The question, which I'm not seeing an answer to on Eschaton, is why?

Matt's right that some Clinton supporters might be dissuaded if they knew some of her policy positions. So, yes, in some sense some of Clinton's support, as with the rest of the candidates, might be based on voter ignorance.But the point I'm trying to make is that there are a lot of people who really like Clinton. Maybe they don't agree with her on every issue, and maybe they would disagree with her more on issues if they actually knew more. But lots of people really respect Clinton. They admire her. They believe she would be a good president. They'd be more than happy to trust her with the job. It's that basic fact - plenty of people really like and respect Hillary Clinton - which I see left out of a lot of the online chatter about her campaign.

First, and I'm sorry Atrios, but this is pretty goddamned milquetoast. "You have to respect her supporters because they actually like her?" Well, yes, of course she has supporters. So did Alan Keyes, but that doesn't stop people from (justifiably) making fun of him.

Online Dems, those who aren't trying to win influence with the Clinton crew, are very, very concerned about her foreign policy, and I gotta say that as someone who's a fan of interactive media I'm not the biggest fan of some of her domestic policy either.

(Someone trying to score points with soccer moms by attacking media is going to lose the male vote under the age of 40 droves. Absolute droves. Hollywood ain't necessarily going to like it much either.)

Say it isn't the policy. Say it isn't the mile-wide-but-puddle-deep appeal of name recognition. Say it isn't nostalgia for Bill. Say it isn't just ignorance. Say it isn't the ol' double-X chromosomes. Say it isn't whatever you want, Duncan, that's fine. Just say what it actually is afterwards, because I for one would like to know, and I think everybody who isn't on the Clinton Train would like to know too.

New Twist on an Old Line

Over at Republic of T, terrance talks about how his kid doesn't really hassle him for junk food much, because he doesn't watch that much advertising.

Fair enough. I wasn't one of those kids who didn't watch TV, or live in a TV-free household, or anything along those lines, but I've known people who are.

It does raise a question, though: considering that kids tend to spend so much time on the Internet or playing video games or whatnot rather than just watching TV nowadays, will the hold of advertising lessen over them? Are we going to see a generation of kids like the no-TV types?

Vlogging?

Matthew Yglesias is all about the vlogging.

Kevin Drum isn't, because text is easier to scan and easier to link in".

Demosthenes would like to point out that vlogging isn't really an option for some of us. That whole "nobody knows you're a dog" thing is way harder to pull off when everybody can see your muzzle and paws.

That said, I do think there's a happy medium of using video footage to supplement text.

Elsewhere on Tapped

McCain's new funding co-chair has killed, skinned, and barbecued a dog.

Originally on Think Progress.

Is it time to trot out the "cartoonish supervilliany" line yet?

Edit: An anonymous commentator pointed out that it was originally blogged at A Tiny Revolution, which linked to this Washington Post piece.

So there's the rest of the chain.

Syria Ended the Standoff?

First. Michael? It's Gruniad, not Guaridan.

Anyhow, the American Prospect linked to a Guardian story saying that Syria may well have convinced Iran to end the Iran/UK standoff. Which, if true, would be enormously embarrassing to a percentage of people who work in Washington that hovers somewhere around 100.

The Iranians are also claiming that the main reason this took so long was because everybody with the authority to DO anything was "out in the villages and mobile phones don't work there." Which I can also see, because bureaucracy is forever. I think it's far more likely that Ahmadinejad wasn't reigning in the Revolutionary Guard fast enough, though, because he thought that he could get some political advantage from the situation. I imagine Damascus cabling "what, are you absolutely MENTAL?" might have sharpened his perception somewhat, even if the domestic goals hadn't been met. Which they had, thanks to the confessions.

The main remaining question: "was there a deal?" Not sure. I'd say it's likely. The US/UK will never admit to it, but that doesn't mean squat. I'd keep a sharp eye on those Iranian prisoners in Iraq.

In the meantime, it looks like war just became a little less unlikely. Wingers will be screaming, but hell with 'em, this is an officially dodged bullet.

Speedy Summary

We’ve already seen that a nearly evenly divided Congress, incapable of taking definitive action, not only can but must be ignored. The Congress that cannot uphold its own votes has no mandate to dictate terms to the president, particularly in perilous times that call for strong leadership.

"All power to El Presidente."

The scary part is that this guy's a columnist for the Boston Herald.

Crisis of Confidence

In comments in that last post, William Hallowell pointed to the Foreign Affairs/Public Agendas' Foreign Policy Index. It shows that the American public wants a diplomatic solution in Iran, and that there's a growing preference for diplomacy over military action in general.

It also shows that public anxiety over America's place in the world is rising fast- it's already at 137 on their 200 point scale, scraping the edge a full-blown crisis of confidence. Not a big surprise, but definitely a big problem.

(The download link for the report itself. I'll get into it more when I have a chance to read through it.)

British Soldiers in Iran Freed?

So it would appear. Ahmadinejad said it was a gesture of goodwill and friendship.

Me, I'm more interested in this:

The action was a goodwill gesture for the Iranian new year, he said, adding that Iran had received a letter from Britain promising not to intrude into Iranian waters.

"The British government sent a letter to our Foreign Ministry and said it would not happen again. Of course, our decision had nothing to do with the letter. It's a decision made by our government to give a gift to the people of Britain," Ahmadinejad said in answer to a reporter's question.

Did this actually happen? The Guardian said that there was no confirmation, and the question of whether the UK relented on this point is huge, and I wasn't expecting them to do so.

Then again, it could be related to this:

Ahmadinejad's announcement came after Iran's state media reported that an Iranian envoy would be allowed to meet five Iranians detained by U.S. forces in northern Iraq. Another Iranian diplomat, separately seized two months ago by uniformed gunmen in Iraq, was released and returned Tuesday to Tehran.

This was the other question always lurking in the background- whether this was a tit-for-tat deal attempting to free the Iranian prisoners in Iraq. While they aren't freed yet, it looks like this may have opened the door.

In any case, it's good to hear that they're (probably) on their way home.

Charlie Stross is Goddamned Brilliant- This Time About Piracy

Why? Because he's the first content provider I've ever met who actually understands the pirate subculture.

There's a figure I've heard quoted (unfortunately I don't know the source so I can't cite you chapter and verse on it) to the effect that the typical dead-tree book has, over its life cycle, an average of four readers. Moreover, sell-through in paper is around 50-60%; that is, for every book sold to a customer, 0.8 to 1.0 other books end up being returned or pulped. So the real figure is more like ten readers per book actually printed by the publisher.

Think about that. Today, publishers try like crazy to tie ebooks to a single reader via DRM, in their misplaced zeal to reduce profit leakage; but for the economic hit from piracy to equal the economic hit from libraries and second-hand bookstores and friends lending friends books, the unlicensed distribution channels would have to be shifting nine ebooks for every one that is sold commercially.

And you know what? I don't think most of the ebook sharing subculture is even about reading the books in the first place — it's about collecting, and participating in a gift sub-culture where your kudos is governed by how much stuff you can give away. Yes, this probably sounds alien to a lot of you. All I can say is, you haven't spent enough time monitoring alt.binaries.e-books.flood and the other pirate ebook distribution channels. There are folks there who, of a weekend, post more books than I could read in a lifetimes. Random, eclectic, nonsensical collections of books, some of which are hopelessly corrupted and most of which are poorly proof-read. These folks are not reading what they put out. They're not putting it out with helping other people read the stuff as a primary goal, either. There's another dynamic at work, and no scheme to stop or reduce ebook piracy stands a chance of working until we understand why it's happening.

This is very true, and very old. Anybody who had come within fifty miles of the old game and software piracy "scene" (which is really the grandfather of everything done today) will be familiar with this mindset. The ONLY metric for how l33t you were was the sheer volume of 0-day (up-to-the minute content) that you hosted and/or uploaded. The quality didn't matter, and the content itself barely mattered. What mattered was the number of files and/or bytes that you pushed. When MP3 became big, back during the pre-Napster Internet, it was the same way for music. It's still pretty much the same way now.

Charlie's right- trying to use these guys' enormous stockpiles of unused material as any sort of metric of lost sales is pointless and deceptive. The two really have nothing to do with one another- it's like looking at a warehouse of unsold books and pretending that they've actually been sold to somebody. I'm not sure what a good metric is for the effects of piracy, but that ain't it.

Charlie's also right about the problem of libraries and used booksales. I think he missed an opportunity, though, in looking at other media and how they approach these issues. Libraries tend not to have anywhere near as many movies and television shows as they do books, for example, and while one could sneer about quality issues, a really good show can still be a more worthy addition than a crappy book, but you're more likely to see the latter than the former. That's partially because (I believe) movie sellers and rental outlets don't want to see books in the library, but also because the culture of lending that surrounds books has never caught on with other media.

And yet, if you look further, you'll notice something else- while you may see a few movies at the library, you will never see an electronic game. Why? Well, it's simple: the culture surrounding THAT format is still newer than movies, and absolutely paranoid about producers not getting maximal control over their "intellectual property" (A term that came into existence around the same time as mass market computer gaming). Look at the growing controversy over something as innocuous as used game sales:

As I began to collate these woes, I started to get the sense that there was a kind of Mexican Standoff taking place, except one of the parties is pointing hundreds of guns at the other - one weapon per retail outlet. There is literally no bargain to be made, and without a shelf to sell your software from it's not so much "their way or the highway," it's their way or oblivion. So they're free to do things like, oh, suggest "market correct" pricing, or nudge the release date. Note that they are doing this while at the same time planning to stock your product at a low threshold and then preferentially sell the used version. I'm surprised that these camps don't fight with knives at shared events.

I don't think breaking the ability to play used games is the answer, like they were talking about in this ancient rumor, but I understand why they would experiment with that kind of Doomsday Device. For me, it's not any more complicated than "used titles don't support the people who make games." The sale doesn't exist. I don't expect this to be a concept that the Madden Gamer seizes upon and makes his way of life. But as people who genuinely respect the medium and those who toil to refine and elevate our leisure hours, it's worth keeping in mind.

Going completely digital is a growing option for PC centered titles and its native developers - for example, I'm typing this post while Command & Conquer 3 drips down to me via EA's digital solution. I've also been a huge proponent of Steam. But even in the next round of consoles, you'll see those massive hard discs put to work storing full products. Marketplace, EDI, and the Shopping Channel are the first chapter of a story that ends poorly for Gamestop.

Bolding is mine. If anybody said anything like this about books, particularly the bolded section, they'd get laughed out of town. They lend books, for heaven's sake, and you're complaining about used book sales? Yet there is no functional difference between a book and a game. None. Both can be copied, both can be lent, both can be sold to a bookseller and rebought used. Both can be good, both can be crap. It's just different media, brought forth in different cultures: one celebrating the public domain and sharing information, the other fearing and loathing it while making nasty little comments about resales.

Unfortunately, the march of progress in this case does not appear to be on the side of the angels.

So, Charlie, when you ask "what is to be done", I'd suggest that the first step is getting away from the books, and looking at what else is going on out there. Ebooks are just one small part of a much, much broader conflict.

Internet Power Seizure?

I'm not sure, but it looks like the US government is trying to pretty much take over control of the whole DNS system.

(DNSes, or "Domain Name Servers", are how it translates an IP into a web address and vice versa.)

Essentially, this is how it works. Right now the biggest problem with DNS servers is that they're pretty easy to spoof. This is how most web "hacking" is done- you simply convince DNS servers to go to IP A instead of IP B, and boom, everybody who's trying to go to the White House's website ends up on the website of unscrupulous thieves and villians.

(Ahem)

They're trying to get around that by using public key encryption. This is the same kind of encryption that you use all the time when you're doing sensitive stuff on the Internet, like banking or shopping or donating money to said unscrupulous thieves. The whole thing is supposed to be controlled on a geographic basis, so that the authorities that handle domain names within a certain area now (like Verisign) still do so, but on a more authoritative basis.

Unfortunately, the Department of Homeland Security is trying to step in and scoop up ALL the keys themselves, for the entire Internet. They would know the keys, and be easily able to generate them. This would allow the US government to spoof any website it pleases, anywhere on earth, with relative ease.

Needless to say, the non-US domain name providers ain't too happy about this. To be honest, neither am I. Not necessarily just because one country shouldn't have all this power, but because I'm damned sure that the right-wing ideologue tools over at DHS shouldn't.

I mean, seriously, do YOU want to give the guys who screwed up Katrina the keys to the Internet?

Just for Upyernoz

Robert Mugabe should be shown the door as quickly as possible, but I don't think he's going to leave until he has to.

And I don't think the general strike is going to be enough to get him to go, because I'm not convinced that he really cares about the economy of Zimbabwe anywhere near as much as he cares about keeping down the opposition.

That said, he's also got little in the way of crutches to lean on to retain power. He can't blame the wealthy white minority, because he expropriated their land and wealth, and trying to call the opposition "terrorists" is just pathetic. He'd better be sure the military is thoroughly on his side, otherwise he could be looking at a coup.

Posted Without (much) Comment:

From Atrios:

Things Which Make Me Want To Shoot People In The Face

People who bitch about other peoples' blogrolls who don't even have a blogroll on their main page, but just a link to one.

From terrence:

The thing is, I do have a blogroll on my front page. It’s the dropdown list right under the ad-strip, labeled “Blogs Linking Here,” but I’m guessing Duncan didn’t hand around long enough to notice it. It needs to be updated, mind you — some blogs need to be added, and some that no longer exist need to be removed — but it’s there. Always has been. Then again, maybe he did notice it, and I just have the wrong kind of blogroll.

The funny thing is that I put it there as a compromise. Because of an advertising network I’m on, I need to have a front page blogroll of progressive blogs. However, My blogroll (blogrolls, actually, since I broke it out into categories) had gotten so long that readers complained that the blog was taking too long to load, and asked me to move it to a separate page. (Plus my host was recommending I do something about the amount of server requests it was generating.)

So, as a compromise, I moved all but one blogroll, to another page, and put up a reciprocal blogroll, of progressive blogs that link back to this one. That means you won’t find many of the “usual suspects” on it.

Anyway, it’s good for a laugh if nothing else. The worst he can do is send loads of traffic my way for a day or so, and those visitors will probably hang around about as long as he did and never return. Which is fine by me. Really.

Atrios is getting a little testy about this, isn't he?