I remember back in elementary school when another student made a science fair project and I noticed a few errors in it. One was that the solar system had eight planets. I mean, how outdated a source must that student have been using? Even if I hadn’t been an astronomy buff at that early age, I probably still could have told them that there were nine planets in the solar system.

Five extra-terrestrial planets have been known about since ancient times, since they are visible to the naked eye and can be observed changing position relative to stars (“planet” comes from the Greek word for “wanderer”). While people had inklings that they were not just points of light or some other mysterious forms of matter, it was not until Galileo that it was generally recognized that planets are worlds, like (or not quite like) our own. The original six planets did not grow in number until 1781, when William Herschel discovered Uranus (no jokes please, despite there being no real good way to pronounce that planet’s name in English). Interestingly, Uranus was first observed as early as 1690, but was not recognized for what it was, and even Herschel initially thought it was a comet. Later, he tried to name it “George’s Planet,” for the British monarch, but was overruled by the international community, which then began to set the commonly accepted rules for naming new planets.

Another celestial body was discovered between Mars and Jupiter in 1801, but was later considered not to be a planet because it was one of many objects that would later be classified as “asteroids.” That first asteroid found in 1801 was Ceres. More on that in a bit.

After that, it was a game of gravity: Uranus’ orbit was slightly off from what calculations said it should be, and so we started getting inferred planets–the idea was that the gravity of a then-unknown planet was affecting Uranus’ orbit. This led to the discovery of Neptune in 1846–although Neptune, like Uranus, was observed long before. In fact, the first confirmed sighting of Neptune was by Galileo in 1612.

Neptune’s observed orbit, however, seemed to also be unexpected, leading to another search for a planet that might be affecting the new discovery. That led to Pluto, but not immediately. It took almost a century to find the ninth planet, partly because Pluto, in fact, was not disturbing Neptune’s orbit. In fact, Neptune’s orbit was just fine–the astronomers had made a mistake in calculating the planet’s mass. But the error led to the search that finally ended in 1930, when Clyde Tombaugh, following the work of Percival Lowell, discovered Pluto. The name was actually suggested by an 11-year-old girl named Venetia Phair (which is also a cool name), and was accepted not only because it fit the rules of planetary nomenclature, but because the first two letters (now making up the planet’s sign) were evocative of Percival Lowell’s name.

But Pluto would start arguments among astronomers which would lead all the way to today’s news: is Pluto really a planet? When it’s size (smallest of the nine planets, even smaller than the Earth’s moon) and orbit (highly eccentric and well off the orbital plane of the rest of the planets) were determined, the differences between Pluto and the rest of the solar system cause many to believe that Pluto was not a planet, but some “captured” object, unworthy of planetary status. That’s where the debate remained until now.

For the past two years, astronomers have been debating the classification for what constitutes a planet, and many believed that Pluto would be demoted. Well, the results seem to be in, and though it won’t be official for another week, it seems that not only will Pluto remain a planet, but that three other objects will be added–and maps of the solar system will have to be re-written. Mind you, that’s not due to any new discoveries, only an artificial construct of vocabulary. The new definition is:

A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet.

In other words, it has to be round and orbiting the sun. Kinda inclusive, don’t you think? It could lead to a whole bunch of new objects out there joining the planet club, despite being kinda dinky. Maybe they should set an arbitrary size limit as well–“you must be this tall to join the solar system.” But for God’s sake, leave Pluto in!

Pluto will indeed remain a planet, and another object, now only named 2003 UB313 (the discoverer wants to call it “Xena,” but the convention of scientists is leaning towards “Persephone”). But there are two surprises: first, Ceres will become a planet. Though part of the asteroid belt, it is big enough, and, I guess, round enough to be considered a planet. The other surprise: Charon, which until now has been recognized as one of Pluto’s moons (it has three in total). Charon will join Pluto as a planet, in a new category called “Plutons,” which describes any Kuiper Belt-like objects (beyond Neptunian orbit) that have been or may be found. Charon and Pluto may become more like co-planets rather than planet and satellite; both orbit each other presenting the same face all the time.

There are a lot of other large spherical objects out there that could in theory join the club, so stay tuned. As for me, the biggest adjustment will be fitting in “Ceres” between Mars and Jupiter–it just seems so strange, kind of like getting used to the idea that Jupiter has 63 moons. I grew up with 12; 63 just isn’t right. And I guess that’s the whole point for some people.

OK, well, maybe it wasn’t that big. But still, a 4-inch-long moth is nonetheless pretty impressive. However, it’s not as pretty as this one was almost exactly three years ago (though they certainly appear to be related). I’m deeply unnerved by just about any insect bigger than one centimeter, and not too fond of the ones smaller than that, but for some reason winged insects are an exception. Not that I’d wait in line to have this bug crawling on my hand, but it certainly wouldn’t provoke the same reaction as a cockroach the same size would. Or a spider.

Click for a larger image, if you like this kind of thing.

Finally. Eight and half months after breaking my foot, my doc gave me a clean bill of health today. Well, actually, he said I was 90% healed, but that was good enough for any reasonable activity. The spiral fracture has fused along the entire length of the break, and though the bone still has a month or two before it is 100% healed, it’s more or less done the important stuff. Over the next year, the bone should solidify more, with the few jutting parts smoothing off. I wonder if the bone will fuse well enough to look more or less natural despite the new shape.

What did I learn? First, don’t take any walking surface for granted. It seemed like a safe patch of concrete which I’d tread before thousands of times, but sometimes even the most familiar setting will catch you off guard. A confluence of speed, turning, angle and surface smoothness did me in that day. Second, I learned that I’m a slow healer. It took me perhaps twice as long as it should have to get fixed back up.

Third, I discovered that the “Beckham treatment” seems to work. Though I lost the crutches three and a half months after the break and could start to walk again, at the six-month mark, the bone still wasn’t healing properly. Note the image below: the middle image, marked “APR,” was a month after I lost the crutches, and that did not change too much a month after that, when I started using the ultrasound therapy called SAFHS.

Note the difference in mid-July, just a month and a half after starting the therapy. It all filled in pretty strongly except for the top part–and this morning, the x-ray showed that closed up as well, a month later. Without the SAFHS treatment, I don’t know how far along my foot would be, but I’d be willing to wager that it still wouldn’t be healed. The ultrasound really seems to work–which is probably why they’re now using it to grow new teeth. I don’t know if that’ll work, but I can recommend it for bone repair, if your doctor thinks it’ll work for you.

Look Ma, No Cables: USB is going wireless, maybe as soon as this Fall. Reportedly, the wireless version of the most ubiquitous computer cable will allow for the same speed as the cable up to ten feet away, or one-quarter speed up to 30 feet away. That will effectively make peripheral cables (not to mention poor old Bluetooth) obsolete–assuming, of course, that it works as advertised, and assuming that you’ll be willing to pay for the convenience.

However, it’s not the only game in town. Under the unromantic moniker “IEEE 802.11n,” Wi-Fi will be also getting an upgrade. The first Wi-Fi signals sent data at a rate of 2 Mbps, or 250 KB per second. That was earlier on, however, and most people started with WiFi-b, which could deliver 11 Mbps (over 1 MB per second). WiFi-a topped that at 56 Mbps (7 MB per second), but it was incompatible with -b; then WiFi-g came out with the same speed as -a, but was compatible with -b (though not with -a). Confused yet?

Well, WiFi-n will transmit at 560 Mbps (70 MB per second), 10 times faster than current speeds. In fact, that’s faster than USB 2 cables or their new wireless counterparts. The catch: it’s not due until 2008.

WiFi is usually for networking, however, so between WiFi and Wireless USB, the only cable you’ll need in the future is a power cable.

Look Ma, No Boot: Flash memory is making a splash as it is being used now as a buffer for hard drives (saving laptops huge amounts of power and a good deal of time by not making the drive spin up all the time), and may even supplant hard drives entirely in the future. However, since 1 GB of Flash memory costs $45, it can be prohibitively expensive as a total replacement, even if the price drops to the predicted $9/GB in three years.

But Flash can’t replace an even more important component: RAM. Flash degrades over time, making it iffy even for hard disk drive replacements, and not acceptable as RAM memory. However, there is another solution: MRAM, or magnetic RAM. Like Flash, MRAM is non-volatile, which means that it retains its memory after power has been shut off. Traditional RAM is volatile, which is why you lose all your data when your computer’s power is interrupted. Additionally, it’s why your computer takes anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes to boot: memory must be loaded off the hard drive (slow) and onto RAM. Essentially, it’s like your computer wakes up an empty vessel each time and must be filled with the OS and all apps before it can start functioning. Non-volatile RAM, like MRAM, would make that unnecessary.

So once MRAM is in your computer, you won’t have to wait for lengthy shutdowns and reboots; your computer will turn on and off like a light switch. You’ll still have to reboot from time to time to let the OS flush itself out, but that hassle too will likely be engineered out and made unnecessary.

The only problem: cost and speed. MRAM is faster than Flash memory, but what’s going into production right now is still slower than the DRAM currently used. So at first, MRAM might be used in concert with DRAM, but when speed increases to DRAM levels and costs drop, MRAM will likely wholly replace DRAM. MRAM will not replace hard disks like Flash might, however.

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So put all this together, and you’ll have quite a different computer in just a few years. A computer that will start up instantly, require much less power, save data faster, and make data loss far less likely; a computer that will be able to wirelessly connect with all your peripherals at high speeds, making every cable except the power cable extraneous. And that’s just from two basic areas of new technology, just over the horizon.

I noticed that one of the channels on my satellite connection was airing a 5-hour film called Tokyo Saiban (“Tokyo Tribunal”), so I recorded it. Turns out it is a Japanese film produced in 1983. And considering the first ten minutes of it that I’ve watched so far, when it was made goes a long way in explaining what I saw.

This is, ostensibly, a film about the Tokyo Tribunals, hence the name. Trials held after the end of WWII where Japanese military officers were held accountable for war crimes.

So what was in the first ten minutes? Extended footage of the atomic bombings of Japan, with grisly images of the victims, including a dead baby charred black, and piles of skulls (which I’m not even sure were actually associated with the bombings). Images of the bombings of the Japanese mainland and attacks by American forces of Japanese-held islands. Japanese civilians jumping off of cliffs, and American soldiers spraying Japanese in caves with flame-throwers. Kamikaze pilots, but not images of them hitting ships and killing people, rather the planes being shot down, one after another, by American ships, showing the broken, flaming wrecks spiral into the ocean.

Now, this film being about the war tribunals, one might imagine that relevant footage of evidence of Japanese war crimes might make an appearance. But of course not. Not a single image of what Japan did in China, nothing of the Nanjing Massacre, nor of the results of the Japanese “Three Alls” scorched earth policy. Not a single image of the Japanese concentration camps where western prisoners were starved and worked to death. Not one reference to the crimes that were, in fact, the subject matter of the film. The introduction did show images from Burma–of Japanese soldiers who somehow were starved and emaciated.

So the whole introduction was of what the film’s producers clearly felt were American war crimes committed against Japanese. Ten minutes of images of Japanese suffering and dying. And then, switch to: Americans cheering, celebrating, dancing in the streets.

I don’t have time to watch the whole thing today, and after the first ten minutes I’m not sure that I want to, but I’m keeping the recording and will watch it over what time I can make soon.

But the introduction certainly made a clear statement about the intent of the film, in an unmistakable way. Perhaps the filmmakers were nationalists, but it is just as likely not; in the Japanese mass media, certain subjects simply must be presented in certain ways. Another film from Japan, in 1998, titled Pride: The Fateful Moment, centered on the same topic–the war tribunals–in a different way, as a docu-drama focusing on Hideki Tojo. Tojo, of course, is presented as a kind, patriotic family man who is used as a scapegoat by scheming Americans.

The first ten minutes of Tokyo Saiban does very much make the point that, although Americans also whitewash and revise, that Japan does it more starkly and blatantly than just about anybody else. While Americans protest when exhibits of the Enola Gay are shown with photos and descriptions which suggest the bombings themselves may have been wrong, never have I seen anything on the American side so starkly biased as this from the get-go.

Update: I would say it was a coincidence that I found this new series from Yomiuri, but this is the anniversary period for end-of-WWII events, so I suppose there’s no coincidence at all here. The new series asks who is responsible for WWII, which the newspaper has apparently unilaterally decided to call “The Showa War.” Surprisingly, Yomiuri blames Japan itself:

Some conservatives claim that the war against the United States was a “war of self-defense” for Japan. They base their arguments on the United States’ oil embargo and the Hull note of Nov. 26, 1941, which was considered a de facto ultimatum delivered to Japan by U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull shortly before the start of the war. However, the U.S. pressure on Japan to suspend its military advance in China came about, to a large extent, by Japan’s “misjudgment.” Japan in a sense drove itself over the precipice.

The series of 8 articles goes from the start of the Sino-Japanese war to just before the end of the war in the summer of 1945.

It might not be so surprising to see the Yomiuri, long dedicated to furthering nationalistic agendas, pinning the blame for the war on specific Japanese military and civilian leaders, since the owner of the Yomiuri Corp., Tsuneo Watanabe, six months ago announced a change of heart on such issues. With the help of his hamsters.

I heard the news on the radio this morning, that power outages had hit parts of central Tokyo. According to updates, about two-thirds of a million buildings were hit, and some people were stuck in elevators in Shinjuku. About 260 traffic lights went dark, and some train lines (notably the Hibiya and Ginza subway lines) were stopped for a while. This all happened around eight o’clock in the morning. However, since this is the O-bon holiday season, a lot of people were out of Tokyo, so traffic was light and disruptions were minimal.

A few points of significance to those unfamiliar with Japan: the O-bon holiday is one of three major annual holiday seasons in Japan (the others are Golden Week from the end of April though the first week of May, and New Year’s, typically the first three days of January). Typically, you don’t want to travel much during those times, because everyone else is. In Japan, people don’t get so much time off, so when the three big holiday seasons hit, everybody makes for the door. The O-bon holidays are a time for Japanese to visit their hometowns, and pay respect to relatives and ancestors who’ve passed away. The peak time is August 13-15, but this holiday break is the least stringently assigned, and can come a little earlier or later for some people.

My other point: the reason why a simple power outage is significant is that it almost never happens in Japan. Back in the U.S., I remember power outages were a fairly common thing–we’d be hit by one every once in a while. In California a few years back, this was magnified by the whole power “shortage” and associated scandals, but even in good years, they’d happen with fair frequency. I never thought too much about them, but in the 90’s, a Japanese classmate at SFSU commented on our having so many, and it caused me to realize that in the seven or eight years I had spent in Japan by that time, I had never been in a power blackout, nor had I heard of one. I’ve commented on this before, but it does seem an interesting question. I thought fewer trees and newer infrastructure were probably causes, and Roy suggested the idea of smaller power grids. I have heard of one grid affecting others and how usage in one part of the country could cause trouble in another part.

For today’s outage, one thing it probably was not was overload. The weather is relatively cool, and a lot of people are simply out of town.

Update: Now we know why. A construction crane being transported on a boat going up the Old Edo River between Tokyo and Chiba apparently hit and took down some power lines there.

Despite lesser publicity than at first, the RIAA continues to seek useless, vindictive lawsuits against people they believe have cheated them out of record profits. They really have to sue such people, don’t they? After all, cheating others out of record profits is their territory, and they can’t very well have other people horning in on their racket, can they?

One case in Particular, Warner et al v. Scantlebury, shows the record labels at their finest. In this case, the defendant died. Did that end the case? Of course not! If the deceased ripped off a few songs over BitTorrent, the RIAA cannot allow a simple thing like the offender’s death to get in the way! So the lawyers are going to sue the deceased’s estate. After all, the deceased person’s family probably cloned his iPod minutes after his death and are listening to all that stolen music right now!

But here’s the compassionate part: they are holding off the attack dogs for 60 days to allow the family to grieve. Then they sue the ass off the memory of their loved one.

In case you’re unable to watch it directly, 30 Days is now available on iTunes. Essentially it’s the standard $1.99 per episode, with no price break for buying a season’s worth. But for the moment, the first episode of season 2, “Immigration” (an excellent episode), as well as a short making-of documentary, are downloadable free-of-charge. You do have to have an iTunes account, however.

What amazes me about this story is not that the U.S. was pushing the U.K. to step up the timing of the arrests of the bottled-water bombers, but that the U.S. government was not, apparently, trying to push the U.K. to make the arrests the day before the U.S. primaries were held, especially in Connecticut. That would be so much more in line with past Bush administration practice–timing terror scares with elections, practically a new GOP tradition.

Or is that what the disagreement over timing was about, and the Brits held back just enough? Maybe the U.S. was pushing for the day before the election but didn’t want to come right out and say it? Have we heard the totality of this story?

Update: another thought–maybe the timing was not too late. Perhaps the administration, stinging from the Lieberman defeat, wanted something to goose their popularity. Still, it would have been much more in line with their past behavior to engineer the story to break before the election.

Hey, whaddaya know… my first “diary rescue” over at DKos, on the Moralities post. I’ve been cross-posting a few of my entries over there, but the non-recommended diaries disappear off the page so fast–there are so many posts by so many people–that it seems few people get the chance to read it. The only way you can really get an appreciable audience is to get “rescued.” And, it does encourage one somewhat. (Tip of the hat to Paul for the original suggestion.)

A 44-year-old man in Hiroshima made a complaint call to an Information operator several months ago. According to this guy, “the operator dealt with it very kindly, so I wanted to hear these women’s voices.” He then started making silent phone calls on his cell phone to “104,” Japan’s information number.

37,760 times.

One day, he made a total of 905 calls. Assuming 8 hours of sleep, that means he made silent phone calls every 64 seconds.

He’s been arrested on charges of causing psychological distress to more than 100 telephone operators.

Watching the most recent installment of 30 Days, in which an atheist lives in a religious family and community for the requisite amount of time, I heard statements from Christians that I’ve heard many times before: if not the Bible or the Ten Commandments, what is the basis of your morality? To many Christians, there can be no other basis; without the morality given by God, a person can believe they have morality, but it is only an illusion. For example:

“It is true that some people who are irreligious can live seemingly decent lives, but when they do, they merely borrow from Christian ethics.”

I am not a Christian. I am agnostic, sometimes with leanings toward a personal spiritualism resembling Deism. But I most certainly did not derive my morality from Christianity. Am I fooling myself? Am I really an immoral person? I don’t think so. What, then, is my basis for morality? To understand this, I think it is important to understand what morality is.

I see there being two different kinds of morality: a general morality, and internal moralities. General morality is roughly the same as what many people see “morality” as being–be kind to others, don’t kill, steal, lie, cheat, etc. This morality, to me, is born from self-awareness. We are conscious and aware of our being, and as a consequence or extension of that, we realize that others are also conscious like we are. We can make the leap from knowing what we feel to understanding that others are capable of this as well. We know what is most important for ourselves and how we wish to be treated. We know that we do not want to be hurt or killed, lied to or cheated. Morality, or what I have called “general morality,” is the extension of that understanding to the treatment of others, possibly through nothing less than interpersonal negotiation. One might call this the expression of the “golden rule”: treat others as you would have them treat you.

However, this is an incomplete description of morality. The basic reason is that not all of us are the same, and not all of us want to be treated in the same way. Years ago, my brother pointed out to me a refinement of the golden rule: treat others as they want to be treated. This makes sense. If I love back rubs, but you hate them, I shouldn’t treat you the way I want to be treated. While most of our desires may overlap, not all of them do.

This leads me to the second type of morality I listed above: internal moralities. These are the rules or morality that do not derive from common desires and understandings, but from those particular to an individual or a group. An individual’s internal morality would be a rule or preference that applies to one person but not necessarily anyone else. This could include actions that you see as personally important, for example, specific rituals for exercise, language that is appropriate or not, or certain spending rules and habits. You violate these rules and you feel that you have done something wrong.

A community or group’s internal morality is more common, however, and applies to rules and preferences peculiar to a social group, such as a family, a congregation, a region, a religion, or a nation–any group with its own specific identity. This could include such things as saying the pledge of allegiance, going to church on Sundays, keeping your lawn free of kitschy ornaments, jury duty, not smoking, and so on.

The common quality of internal moralities is that they apply only to the individual or group that possesses them; they do not apply to those outside. It is immoral for Christians to take the Lord’s name in vain, for example; it is not for me. That is the most common source of non-immoral offense: breaking rules that belong to the internal morality of others.

The problem that naturally arises is when people impose their internal morality on others, not seeing the distinction between internal and general morality. As Shaw’s Caesar put it, “he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.” One believes that one’s internal morality is in fact part of the general morality.

Christians who believe that morality derives only from the Bible take this one step further, however–they not only assume their internal moralities are general, then cannot conceive of there even being any other basis for morality than their own religious doctrine. Therefore, to these extremists, non-Christians are immoral, or, at best, are simply poor imitations of true Christian morality.

To further rebut the claim that I am fooling myself and just “borrowing” their morality, I would point out that morality has to predate Christian morality, as well as the Judaic morality that gave birth to it. Before these religions, before the Ten Commandments, did people kill and steal and lie and cheat and think it was all fine? I think the obvious answer is “no.” So, where did they get their morality from?

The answer, of course, is that all general morality, including that part of Christian morality, derives from self-awareness and the resulting sympathetic understanding of the feelings of others. More specific internal moralities derive from group or individual customs, rules, ideas, and preferences. Now, specific internal Christian moral codes can be said to derive from Christianity; for example, the first five of the Ten Commandments are internal moral rules dealing with authority (with the possible exception of parental authority), while the last five are more general moral definitions. But to say that all morality derives from there is arrogant presumption and bias.

We found morality by ourselves; if it was God-given, it was because God built it into us, all of us. But morality has its roots in human awareness and experience, not scripture.

I just got this alert from the U.S. Embassy concerning air travel:

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is implementing a series of security measures, some visible and some not visible, to ensure the security of the traveling public and the nation’s transportation system.

NO LIQUIDS OR GELS OF ANY KIND WILL BE PERMITTED IN CARRY-ON BAGGAGE. SUCH ITEMS MUST BE IN CHECKED BAGGAGE.

This includes all beverages, shampoo, suntan lotion, creams, tooth paste, hair gel, and other items of similar consistency.

Well, that’s nice. You can still bring matches on board so you can light up as soon as possible after deplaning, but bottled water is now forbidden.

OK, I understand, it’s because of the latest terrorist plot. But it’s still inconvenient as hell. And would it slow things up that much to be given the chance to take a swig from each water bottle at the security checkpoint to show it’s not an explosive?

They’d damned well better have lots of bottled water ready and waiting on all flights, as much as anybody and everybody can drink. I’ve been on flights where they ran out–which is why I typically bring along several bottles when I fly, and so do a lot of other people. Hydration is important on long flights, and I can just see them not caring enough about this. Even better, they should carry a new cache of bottled water and be ready to give as much as anyone wants when asked for, in the bottles–easier on the flight attendants than constantly filling those damned little cups. I used to travel longer, with more connecting flights, and I have to say, toothpaste and shampoo were kind of important; sometimes you can be up in the air a pretty long time, and you can get to feel pretty crummy without these things. Are people who want to brush after meals simply out of luck?

Note: as long as this is on the main page, check out the Sesame Street Terror Alert Notice in the sidebar–Elmo is up!

Lieberman’s site, after more than two days, still is off the air–deliberately, as a knowing choice by Lieberman. What’s even stranger is that the site still features this “STATEMENT FROM SEAN SMITH”:

Why is that weird? Because Sean Smith has been fired. For not attacking Lamont enough.

Verbing proper nouns, via Google News:

Ever get into an discussion with a creationist or an ID’er, and they throw some factoid at you “proving” evolution is fake? Or have you just read some creationist tract and are interested in the other side? Or, even more challenging, are you a creationist or ID’er and you want a healthy test of your beliefs? (Ha! As if.)

Well, in any case, check out the Talk Origins Index to Creationist Claims. Even if it is of no immediate practical use, it’s a very well-documented and exhaustive list of “arguments” forwarded by creationists to “disprove” evolution, each with an excellent explanation of why each claim is bogus. From “evolution is only a theory” to the “half an eye” argument and far beyond, it’s all there. Very interesting reading.

And if you ever get the chance, watch this PBS documentary on evolution, narrated by Liam Neeson. Excellent series.

Lieberman got a huge cheer from his crowd during his “concession” speech when he said,

“You can go to my web site tomorrow, www.joe2006.com, when it’s unhacked.”

What a liar. Even as he spoke those words, his site was showing a message crafted by his people, the message that’s still up there now, proof that not only is the site fully under their control now, but that it has been since early on. Even conservatives are now saying that the claim of hacking is “embarrassingly clueless,” and that it was obviously a crash caused by heavy traffic on a weak-ass web account.

The thing is, the media is still running with the hacking story, with only a few outliers picking up on the BS angle. Betcha that when the FBI probe shows it was what it was, that the media doesn’t pick up the story. I hope I’m wrong on that, but I still bet that I’m not.

Okay, Lieberman has lost, roughly 52%-48%, and immediately announced his bid as an independent, as promised. Not enough time yet to gauge the reaction of the Democratic establishment, but if they do right, they should back Lamont and drop Lieberman–that’s what the people want, and they serve the people, right?

About the website thing: what a mess. It appears that the Lieberman campaign used to use a host called 2 Dog Media, but three months ago switched to an account at MyHostCamp. That web host’s site continues to be down, just as Lieberman’s page is down. I tried looking at the site via Google’s cache, but not much can be gleaned from it that way. However, it should be noted that MyHostCamp is not really a web host. The web host named The Planet rents out a single server to the guy running MyHostCamp, who then in turn rents out individual accounts to users, like the Lieberman campaign. This is called “reseller hosting.”

While Kos claims that the Lieberman campaign paid only $15/mo. for their hosting and got just 10 GB bandwidth (that’s the total amount of in-and-out traffic allowed before the site shuts down), the guy who runs Lieberman’s site said that they paid “a bit more” than that. The people who run the web hosting service for Lieberman’s site claim that they pay around $150 a month and that they were allotted 400 GB of bandwidth. That does seem more reasonable–I don’t think that 10 GB of bandwidth would last them more than just a few days–but even 400 GB is a bit sparse for a web site in a race like this. This blog uses an account which gets exactly 400 GB of bandwidth, though I usually use only a bit over 30 GB. If Lieberman’s site only gets ten times more traffic than my dinky blog, then maybe that helps explain why he lost the race.

Still, we’re talking about a shared hosting account on reseller web host. As I explained here, shared hosting is the lowest tier of web site existence; you pay a small amount, and get a space on a single server (network computer) along with dozens to hundreds of other web sites (in Lieberman’s case, apparently, 73), all which share the same resources of that computer. That it was a reseller makes it even worse.

The highest usual tier is dedicated hosting, where you can get a whole server computer all to yourself. Here’s a page showing example plans, from my own web host. As you can see, they start from about $100 a month up.

But despite paying $150 a month, Lieberman was on a shared account on a reseller; his people might have made a special deal with the web host, asking for the amount of traffic they figured they would need, and getting a special quote. And this may have been their undoing. Their campaign had a $10-12 million budget. And yet they bargained with a low-end web host? Idiots. They should at least have gone to a more expensive and reliable service, and shelled out a few thousand bucks a month for a dedicated server with appropriate backups. Anything less, and you’re going to suffer for it–which seems like exactly what happened to them.

Discussion by people who know about this stuff (here and elsewhere) seem agreed that what happened was not a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, and it was not a hacker attack–both claims made by Lieberman’s camp, despite their incompatible nature. The consensus seems to be that the site was using a weak hosting plan on a weak server, and was simply overwhelmed by traffic and shut down. All evidence seems to point to that so far. Since the firewall was also apparently disabled, then it certainly could have been some kind of attack, but with a site that weak, all that would be needed would be a good, stiff wind, and down it goes.

One interesting point: the Lieberman campaign, early on, displayed an email from their web host that claimed it was a DoS attack, which now it seems fairly clear it was not. Was that a sign of the host’s incompetence, or did the web host simply write that because the Lieberman campaign told them to?

An even more mysterious question: why is Lieberman’s site still down? Even if it was a hacker or a DoS attack, it should have been back up in a matter of hours–not a day and a half or more. But if it was simple bandwidth excess, it should have been back up even faster. The page that is displayed when you access the site has changed several times, once even including a message from the Lieberman campaign about the site being “attacked.” This means that they do have control over what appears there. So why is it still “down”?

There are only two possible answers that I can see: (1) their web host is unbelievably incompetent–an answer which is not satisfactory to me, because you would have to be a huge honking moron to let it go on like this for this long, and no one like that could run a web hosting business for more than a week being that stupid.

No, the only remaining explanation that makes sense is: (2) the Lieberman campaign wants the web site to stay down. Like a soccer player who gets slightly nicked by another player and collapses in feigned extreme agony, it looks to me like the Lieberman campaign, having made such a big noise about hacks and attacks, needs the site to stay down for publicity’s sake. With the primary now ended, they need a working web site far, far less than they need a good PR point to play on. With the web site down, they can point to that as the only reason they lost by 4 percentage points.

Of course, they can’t make too big a noise to that effect; with the FBI investigating, if they find that it wasn’t an attack at all, Lieberman is going to look pretty silly–especially if it was all caused by the campaign getting web hosting on the cheap.

Lieberman’s people are alternately claiming their site was hacked and that it was subject to a denial-of-service attack. But Skinner at Democratic Underground got this screenshot showing that at least for a time, they changed the “suspended” page on Lieberman’s site to a message on the “attack”–but now the “suspended” page is back to a generic message. This proves that Lieberman’s people had access to the server and can now control the page that appears–and they have changed it back to a generic page! Why the hell do that?

This post also explains why the Lieberman story doesn’t add up.

More weirdness: Lieberman’s site is on a shared server, without apparent backup. That is so stupid as to be unbelievable. Hell, I have a shared server to run this dinky little blog. Lieberman is running a senate campaign that is receiving more attention than any campaign in the country–virtually a national campaign from a web perspective–and he’s got a shared server? What is Lieberman paying for his web hosting, ten dollars a month? Any political campaign, especially such a hotly contested senate seat, that doesn’t have a dedicated server and at least one solid backup, should be shot for incompetence. This is looking more and more like either the Lieberman campaign’s own incompetence, or a deliberate setup.

This post on DKos has very good technical details on the situation, with evidence that this was indeed a setup by the Lieberman people–specifically, the site is being run without a firewall, practically begging for an attack, and since no sysadmin would be that stupid, it is likely that it is deliberate.

In the meantime, the media is giving Lieberman great publicity, buying into his victimization story fully, with Lamont as the bad guy.

Meanwhile, Lamont’s campaign has linked to Google’s cached version of Lieberman’s original web site, and has been offering to send their own tech guru to go help put Lieberman’s site back up. The answer from the Lieberman side: silence.

Update: DKos now says that Lieberman’s people were paying $15/mo. for their web hosting and getting 10GB of traffic per month. I don’t know if Kos really knows this or if he just looked at the shared hosting plans for MyHostCamp and guessed–I think he probably guessed. I can’t imagine Lieberman’s site would last two days with only 10GB traffic. Addenda: Kos now lists 74 sites hosted on the same server, including Lieberman’s, in his post–but he still doesn’t say where he’s getting this info, so there’s no way to judge the legitimacy.

Update 2: MyDD has a much more detailed analysis now. The short story: Lieberman’s web admins were incompetent.

I have got to get to sleep…

I’ve been watching this story on Joe Lieberman’s web site being attacked with mixed feelings; while it could be a legitimate attack on Lieberman’s web site, it could just as easily be inflicted by someone supporting Lieberman–perhaps even more likely. To have something like this happen on the eve of an election is always sticky: there is not enough time to confirm what is actually happening, so voters get the impression that they hear the most in the media, without the benefit of evidence to say what is in fact the truth.

It started with Lieberman’s site (www.joe2006.com) going dark, showing only a message saying, “This Account Has Been Suspended: Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.”

Immediately the Lieberman campaign released the news about the site being down and claimed the site was hacked. Lamont’s people expressed skepticism, noting that the Lieberman site had crashed before due to excess traffic, and suggesting the possibility that Lieberman’s people forgot to pay their hosting bill–noting that the Lieberman story had a screenshot (“Under Constructiuon”) different than the “Suspended” one that could be viewed publicly. The Lieberman camp then showed an email from their web host saying that it was a denial of service attack and that all bills had been paid in full and in advance (though such an email cannot be relied upon–they’re working for him, and likely would say anything he wanted them to, true or not). Then screenshots started surfacing as if the site were hacked (“Thehacker Ownz you System”),” which flies in the face of the prior claim of a denial-of-service attack–besides which, that sig has appeared on sites for weeks.

Lieberman’s site could have just failed due to too much traffic, and since his site’s been down, the legitimate requests for it have probably surged even more, causing more outages.

But now the Lieberman campaign is accusing “political opponents” for the “cyberattack,” despite lacking any evidence, and is calling for a criminal investigation. Meanwhile, they are using this as a broadsword to attack Lamont:

“We call on Ned Lamont to make an unqualified statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately.”

Frankly, I find it impossible to believe that Lamont would have anything to do with this, or have any influence with whomever carried this out; I think it’s certain that the Lieberman people know this full well, and released the statement to trap Lamont. If Lamont calls for the attacker to cease, it will look like the attack came from his “side”; if he calls for it to stop and it does, it will look like he is connected to it; and if he doesn’t call for it to stop, it looks like he condones it.

But there is just as much reason, if not more, to suspect someone affiliated with Lieberman’s campaign. A hack attack like this can only make Lamont look bad, making it an incredibly stupid move if it came from his supporters. Unlike the Republican dirty trick a few years back of jamming Democratic phone lines, this attack is highly visible to the public and is guaranteed to backfire, especially on election day.

The fact that Lieberman’s people jumped on this so quickly and so effectively adds to the suspicion. Besides which, on election day, the web site and email are not as critical at this point; having them crash and being able to attack Lamont for dirty tricks is a thousand times more valuable to Lieberman than having a functioning web site at this point. Not to mention that this has all the hallmarks of a Republican dirty trick, from several possible angles; it matches what has been done in the past in several ways, and Lieberman has strong Republican support.

Other facts cloud the subject: why has the site been down for 24 hours now? A DoS attack shouldn’t do that. The site still is down, and any attempt to go to joe2006.com resolves to http://server1.myhostcamp.com/suspended.page/. Just as suspicious, an attempt to access “myhostcamp.com” brings up a suspended page address which redirects to an address which redirects right back, causing a failure to open the page. A hacker could do that, but only for a very short time indeed. Any web host worth their salt, especially in such a do-or-die situation, would have fixed the issue hours ago, by any variety of means. So why not?

If we look at this from the viewpoint of who has the most to gain, all evidence points to Lieberman’s side as the engineers. But we cannot discount human stupidity, a possible idiotic and unthinking eager-beaver hacker believing he’s doing Lamont a favor.

In the end, it’s not good for Lamont, even though it is all but certain he had no part in this, even despite the fact that odds say it was a reverse-dirty trick by someone on Lieberman’s side.