Windows Vista, hyped for its “security,” is 18 months away and already it has more viruses than Mac OS X. An Austrian virus writer has published a how-to work to show others how to make viruses, and included five viruses, which is five more than the Mac has right now. It’s still in its conceptual stage, really proof-of-concept stuff, and Vista will undergo changes. But to have viruses designed to attack a “secure” system a year and a half before its even released is not so reassuring a sign of the system’s “security.”

Bob Novak just had a breakdown on the air on CNN’s Inside Politics a few hours ago. He said “bullshit” on live TV, and then stormed off the set in the middle of a show. CNN has already suspended him, and more fallout is likely to come. To see the uncensored video of this, go to Media Matters (Quicktime). The transcript of the event is as follows, in the context of a conversation on whether or not Katherine Harris would win a race for a Senate seat:

CARVILLE: … I suspect that the [Democratic Senator Bill] Nelson people are feeling pretty good here today.

NOVAK: A couple points here, first place, don’t be so sure she’s going to lose. A lot .. all the establishment’s against her, and I’ve seen these Republican anti-establishment candidates do pretty well. Ronald Reagan, I guarantee that the establishment wasn’t for him. We just elected a Senator from Oklahoma, Senator Tom Coburn, everybody in the establishment was against him. She may get elected.

[As Carville starts to speak, Novak attempts to cut him off]

NOVAK: Just let me finish what I’m going to say, James, please. I know you hate to hear me.

CARVILLE: He’s gotta show these right-wingers that he’s got backbone, you know. The Wall Street Journal editorial page is watching you. Show ’em you’re tough.

NOVAK: Well, I think that’s bullshit, and I hate that. [to host Ed Henry:] Just let it go.

Then, as the host tried to move on and ask Carville what he thought about the Senate race, Novak, looking stolid but disturbed, stood up, took off his microphone and walked off the set.

What should be interesting here is (a) what this represents, and (b) what the fallout will be. As to what it represents, Novak did this without any provocation he hasn’t been up against countless times before; he and Carville routinely exchange barbs exactly like those all the time. That he reacted in such an unprofessional manner is certainly an indication of the pressure he is under at this time, and may even reflect either a career tailspin or perhaps even more trouble with the law than we’ve been hearing. Pure speculation, but something has got to explain Novak’s actions, and it certainly was not solely Carville’s remark.

As to what the fallout will be, that should be even more interesting. First off, Republicans especially have carped and played politics over on-air decency, and here’s their top-rank TV representative saying “bullshit” on live TV. With how the FCC has been on TV and radio broadcaster with much tamer transgressions since the infamous Janet Jackson incident, if they don’t pursue Novak with equal vigor, they’re going to look bad. [Update: on reflection, since CNN is on cable, that will probably not happen.]

Already CNN has suspended Novak “indefinitely,” saying that what he did was “inexcusable and unacceptable,” and suggested that Novak “take some time off.” Right-wing commenters on the Free Republic web site are cheering this profanity, however (no one ever accused them of consistency) and are praying that Fox News hires him–which frankly would not surprise me very much at all.

At the end of the show, Ed Henry commented that they had intended to ask Novak about the Plame leak, and that Novak knew of this. This was likely mentioned because CNN probably promised said questions to viewers in promos leading up to the show. But it also raises the question of how this may have factored into his decision to leave the set.

CNN has the full transcript of the show online; the Novak segment is near the end. Just do a Find for “bullshit,” it’s written in full in the transcript.

The other day, President Bush told reporters that a theory called “Intelligent Design” should be taught in public schools. Although his support of the idea was eminently predictable, observers suggested that the president’s support gave the proponents of the theory a big boost–as if Bush had to think long and hard on it, and reluctantly and unexpectedly decided to support the new theory. Of course, he was predisposed to do so, and therefore his support means little except that he’s on their side, as everyone knew all along.

The real questions should be, “what is intelligent design?” and “does it belong in our schools?”

There is really no doubt on the first question: Intelligent Design (“ID”) is an attempt to disguise religious creationism in the clothing of scientific theory so as to allow the teaching of religious dogma in public schools. An analogous case is Alcoholics Anonymous and their “higher power.” In response to criticism that AA is a program used to propagate religion as much as it is to help alcoholics (which would be unacceptable as it is often a court-mandated program), AA proponents suggest that the “higher power” need not be God. Instead, the “higher power” could be a rock in your garden, or anything else you want to imagine it to be. Which is ludicrous, of course. But then so is the ID proposal: it is simply an attempt to disguise religious proselytization in public schools so as to bypass First Amendment protections.

ID’s basic argument is that since life, particularly human life, is so complex and organized, it could not possibly have evolved by the mechanisms that scientists claim. It must have been created by some intelligent force–perhaps that rock in your garden, for example. This central claim is crucially flawed, of course: there is no proof of any sort that would suggest that extremely high levels of complexity or organization cannot arise spontaneously. To ascribe them to ID is not an objective scientific observation; it is instead a very subjective example of anthropomorphism.

What is ignored by ID proponents (assuming they are even really bothering to think about this at all, instead of simply trying to disguise religious dogma) is the fact that we are talking about a time frame that completely obviates the “common sense” these people are using to reason. This is a common logical flaw when human beings consider situations that are completely outside their common perceptions. When we try to imagine what things are like at the subatomic level, or at speeds approaching the speed of light, or in time frames spanning millions or billions of years, our human perceptions become not only useless but in fact interfere with our ability to understand realities involved. We expect things to be like we experience them, when they are most decidedly not. The reactions of chemicals in building more complex forms over the span of billions of years cannot be judged accurately by a human being considering what level of complexity seems reasonable to them.

Furthermore, what we are really talking about is the introduction of ID into science classrooms. Before we decide to do that, we should reflect on what exactly belongs in such classrooms. The teaching of science does not include any wild idea that anyone comes up with. Every theory goes through a process. That process includes the laying out of the theory, the introduction of evidence to support the theory, the construction of tests to challenge the theory, the contrary arguments by opponents in an attempt to bring down that theory, the introduction and acceptance or dismissal of alternate theories based upon their merits, and then a continuous, repetitive cycle of review, challenge, and refinement. This is the process that evolution has gone through for nearly one and a half centuries. ID, on the other hand, is still at step one: it has been suggested as a theory, but has not provided any evidence beyond subjective perception, and partially because there is no evidence to judge, it has not experienced real reviews and challenges. If it were proposed as part of a philosophy or comparative religion course, it would have a place in schools under those categorizations. But not in science classes.

Now, it most definitely does have a place in science. If it is, as its proponents claim, a scientific theory, then it must be listened to and given its due place in the system of scientific review. It must be taken seriously, but it must also be put forth seriously–in other words, there must be evidence to back it up. So far, I am aware of no evidence beyond the purely metaphysical arguments, which are not science. If the proponents of ID could, for example, construct an argument based on observation and established fact that it would be impossible for higher forms of life to spontaneously develop over billions of years, then that could go through the process. But they have most decidedly not done this. This article states the matter perfectly:

“Intelligent design” is not science. Its proponents have never had an article published on the topic in any peer-reviewed scientific journal. They conduct no experiments that would prove or falsify their hypothesis. Their conjecture makes no useful predictions, nor can it be mathematically modeled. There are no research labs doing ID science.

So can this theory be taught as equal to evolution in school classrooms? No. We do not introduce, as a major and serious element of science courses, any wholly untested and unproven theories simply because they are receiving political support. To do so would be to destroy the very integrity of that segment of education–which I am fairly certain ID proponents would not really mind doing at all.

But the key factor here is that scientific theories taught in standard accepted curricula, as a rule, go through the scientific process of review. To put ID in classrooms would in essence vault it to a prime position of privilege, as it would be taught without having to go through the same rigorous testing that all other theories must go through.

What this really all comes down to is that you have religious people and groups who (in my opinion quite prejudicially and needlessly) refuse to accept scientific observations when they contradict popular interpretations of religious scripture. That these people resent the fact that scientific observations are taught in public schools, which children must attend. And that their religious beliefs are not given equal voice in a science classroom. So they want to inject their own religious dogma into the public school system, and have tried repeatedly to no avail, due to First Amendment restrictions. And so they cooked up this red herring in secular clothing in an attempt to make an end run around the First Amendment.

In an upcoming blog post, I plan to discuss what I see as being at the core of legal reproductive rights in this country, but suffice it to say for now that I see the core element to be the same: religious people want to enforce laws and base government policy on religious tenets, and in order to do so, claim a false secularity that attempts to hide the religious basis of their desires.

And such attempts, however well-intentioned, must be stopped in order to protect the very freedom of religion that these people mistakenly believe they are trying to practice. Freedom of religion is a private thing. Trying to force it on others is not a freedom–it is exactly the opposite.

It’s about time.

Yesterday, Apple Japan rolled out the long-awaited iTunes Music Store for Japanese customers. Clearly in a compromise with record labels who don’t want there to be too much of a disparity between physical and online sales, the Japan iTMS will have two-tier pricing, with some songs on sale for ¥150 and others for ¥200 ($1.35 and $1.80, respectively). Albums, meanwhile, are priced at ¥1500 to ¥2000 (obviously, $13.50 and $18).

While this may sound expensive, keep in mind that new CDs often cost ¥3000 to ¥3300 here (up to $30), so the music store still represents a significant price cut, not to mention the fact that Japanese music shoppers can buy music by the song now for lower prices than before.

The Japanese music labels, meanwhile, have been even more restrictive in some ways about protecting their music from ripping, sharing and pirating; some CDs here are spiked so that they’ll munch up your optical drive if you put them into your computer (I know it’s out there, but don’t know how common it is). They have always had an even higher markup on music here than their counterparts in the U.S., and they are loathe to give that up completely. But that is also their downfall: in Japan, CD rental stores are legal, so a great many people just rent their music CDs from the stores for a few hundred yen, and then copy them at home. They even sell CD-Rs at the rental shops.

The selection at the JiTMS is still a little sparse, and is lacking in many areas (no movie soundtrack area yet, for instance). Many English-language artists are not represented (one example: Billy Joel is not there at all, despite having most if not all his work on the U.S. iTMS).

I just created an account for the new store, and had a bit of trouble: when I tried to go through the steps to create an account, I got “504” errors at each step, telling me to try again later. However, trying again just a few seconds later would do the trick. If you run into that error, just keep clicking. And by the way, iTunes detects if you’re using an English, and everything is kept that way even though you’re in the Japanese areas. They sometimes change the musicians’ names or song titles if they’re in Japanese, but not always (it’s a mixed bag); however, all the dialogs and such are kept in the language you’re using–the account sign-in was like that.

Podcasts seem to be universal, by the way–I’m still listed, even in the Japanese store.

Obviously, this is a work in progress; in some ways, it is amazing that Apple was able to get this far, considering how strongly Sony has been trying to lock Apple out of the portable player market. So we’ll just have to see how things come along–but this is, of course, a good first step.

On a side note, Apple is opening the new Shibuya Apple Store tomorrow, August 6th.

Sean has an interesting reference in his blog to something called “Googlism,” a page which accesses Google’s database to show what sentences are associated with your name. Enter your name into the search box, and a list of “(your-name) is…” strings are produced. It can be quite hilarious. Here is a list of many of the results that came in for my name, with some of the incomplete and more bizarre ones weeded out:

• luis is old and famous
• luis is my cousin
• luis is a real wanted man
• luis is removing parts from one of our mills in preparation to add parts that he has already setup in a holding jig for the next operation [I get that a lot]
• luis is magic
• luis is working over/weathering his motorcycle for a diorama
• luis is moving across the caribbean’s northern leeward islands
• luis is the owner of two pangas that he uses for two different types of fishing
• luis is a social butterfly at heart
• luis is a unique destination in the northern ecuadorian andes
• luis is responsible for the shannon explosives field technical operations group
• luis is different and is always changing
• luis is hard put to find in cuba a wife “who looks to the future” [danged tootin’!]
• luis is an interactive system that was designed for the ministry of the environment
• luis is to emerge from the blackness
• luis is boring
• luis is estimated to be 120 knots from the 3rd through the 5th while it was approaching the leeward
• luis is shamed by his friends into telling the truth
• luis is best known for the 1993 memoir of gang life
• luis is trying to estimate the accuracy of the contents of a documentary on video relevant to his essay topic
• luis is happy to have just weighed in with the biologists at the official weigh station in burton chace park in marina del rey
• luis is now a graduate of john jay college and is currently working towards his master’s degree in vocational rehabilitation at hunter college
• luis is no stranger to the game
• luis is sincere
• luis is a member of a denver metropolitan police department in colorado and is a member of the swat team
• luis is the only other “original” founding member of dlp
• luis is forced to look into julia’s past
• luis is a recipient of a career award from the national science foundation
• luis is sure it’s those girls
• luis is better known to silvia’s mother than he should be
• luis is a multi faceted guide
• luis is available from both houston airports with advance reservations
• luis is definitely a ladies man who harbors resentment towards the upper class [danged tootin’!]
• luis is the president of a small group of workers in ecuador who inspect the quality of bananas supplied by fairtrade farmers

And my favorite:

• luis is al goed geïntegreerd

Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that one!

You really have to try this out. Put your name in there, and the most unbelievable stuff will come out, stuff you could never dream up, stuff which will make that tuna fish sandwich you’re eating come out your nose.

I have finished responding to a comment to a person calling themselves a psychic, and decided that due to the content and length of the reply, I might as well make it a blog post. It concerns the accuracy of psychic predictions, and how something can seem psychic without being so. My writing has been edited to take the form of a blog post; block-quoted and italic excerpts are from the comment left by the visitor to the site.

By the way I do know many psychics that have helped find lost or stolen children, that never accept a dime…

Fine. But that’s a belief, not “knowledge,” unless you have scientific evidence that what you heard or saw was indeed the result of some psychic powers, and not human intelligence, intuition and/or random events isolated and exhibited outside the context of the x number of times nothing happened. The point of this blog entry is not that all psychics are frauds, but that people like Sylvia Browne certainly seem to be frauds. As for people who call themselves psychics and are genuine in speaking and intent, as far as I’m concerned the jury is still out on that one. I will not accept the idea of psychic abilities until I see proof, but I will also not dismiss the idea of psychic abilities until I see proof. So far I have not seen anything even resembling proof.

By the way did you know Medical Doctors have something like a 60 to 70 percent accuracy rate? And don’t even ask about brokers..

So? I would like to see the figures on that claim, by the way–inaccurate how, measured how, etc. Nevertheless, to the best of my knowledge, no psychic has reached anywhere near that level of accuracy under scientifically controlled conditions. If you know differently, please point to the evidence; I’d be interested. But I believe that many and possibly all people who genuinely believe they are psychic are simply mistaken. One case (and I admit it is hearsay, but it serves as example) of a young man who studied psychic readings from a book he discovered, which professed to enable true psychic abilities, telling the reader how to psychicly read someone. He studied the book, and then tried it–and was amazed to find that the person he read said he was 100% correct! He continued on and did very well, believing earnestly in his psychic abilities.

At one point, a skeptic friend suggested he try something: the next time he does a reading, report to the client exactly the opposite of what he “read.” If he read “healthy,” say “ill.” If he read that a family member died, report that a family member survived a health crisis. If he read the person was an optimist, tell them they were a pessimist. And so on. This person wanted to truthfully affirm his abilities, so he decided to do so, and carefully followed the concept as laid out, not trying to go too far and making it ludicrous and so “disprove” the challenge.

So he has a readee and he begins the session. As he goes on, the client gets this look of disbelief on their face, and the young man starts getting uncomfortable–they can tell how far off and completely wrong this reading is, he thinks. But he sticks to it. And at the end, the person he read just sits there in astonishment, and remarks: “That was the most incredibly accurate reading I have ever gotten!”

As I said, hearsay. But it demonstrates the concept about how “psychic” readings have problems in terms of calling them “accurate.” The person being read almost always helps the reading with interpretation, working (as humans have the talent to do) to associate what is said with something in their lives. Case in point (not hearsay, I saw this on video): Carl Sagan once met with a class of college students, many who believed in horoscopes, many who did not. He told them that trained astrologers had drawn out highly specific readings for each one of them. The readings were passed out on pieces of paper, and each student read theirs privately. After going over the readings, the students were asked how accurate the readings were; in this case, almost all of the students reported that the readings were amazingly accurate.

Then the students were told to compare their readings with other students–and to their surprise, they found that they’d been had: all the readings were identical.

The point to this is that the readee does a great deal of work in finding “truth” in generalities. That’s the way that the human mind works.

This can even happen in cases where psychics work with police. Now, if a psychic can regularly take a piece of evidence into their hands and report, “the body is buried 320 feet from the interstate 42 miles from Barstow, in a shallow grave under a walnut tree” that’ll be quite amazing. If said psychic can demonstrate such accuracy 70% of the time, that’ll be astonishing. But that’s not what happens. Instead, generalities are given, which can apply to most situations, if the investigator is inclined to work with the reading and make the connections work. Sometimes a psychic may be highly intelligent and/or intuitive, and can give many clues with good accuracy in the same way that profilers can. This does not mean the person is psychic.

One cannot dismiss intuitiveness and knowledge. Cold readers use it dishonestly, but people who feel they are genuine can use it without even knowing. Intuition can feel a lot like psychic powers if you have good intuition. Intuition is little more than making associations at the unconscious level, drawing on the vast repertoire of knowledge of people that all of us possess. From the way a person dresses, you can make connections that might tell you what they do. Mannerisms and body language can telegraph a great amount of information about personality and emotional states that usually don’t register at the conscious level. Good knowledge of people can discern common habits, common failings, common ways of dying and loving and feeling and reacting.

Additionally, people getting readings often give as much information than they receive. Readings I have seen are conversations, back-and-forth, which provide the reader (honest or otherwise) with a great many clues from which parts of readings may be derived, consciously or otherwise. A person not saying a single word, not giving a single fact or clue or any information during the reading will likely not get as accurate a reading.

Another part of the equation is the forgiving of misses. As I pointed out in the entry, a psychic gave a reading where most of the information was not confirmed and some was actually wrong, but King praised the psychic as being “100% correct.” We dismiss the misses and focus on the hits. When a psychic gives clues that lead to the capture of a killer, that seems significant and is reported widely. But when a psychic can’t contribute anything or is way off, that doesn’t get reported.

Then there’s the “alternate explanation” problem. When something happens that seems psychic, people jump to the conclusion that it is psychic–and do not run through all the possibilities to explain the situation, and so of course do not confirm whether or not they really happened. One psychic on Larry King told a story (hearsay, no proof that any of it happened) about a cactus. Apparently, two men were in the desert and one died. A TV psychic did a reading on the dead man’s mother, and said that her son’s friend who was with him when he died would bring her a gift, a cactus. Sure enough, some time later, he brought her a cactus. Proof of psychic ability! Well, not quite–there are alternate explanations which could very likely be true.

For example, the reading was public, and so word could have gotten back to the dead man’s friend that he was supposed to bring her a cactus, and then for whatever reason, he decided to do so. Or perhaps the mother told him, directly or indirectly, and he said, “hey, yeah, I was thinking of doing just that” (truthfully or not), and so did. Or maybe it was simply that in this case, the gift of a cactus–representing the hallowed ground on which the woman’s son died–was simply an intuitive and very reasonable guess. None of these require psychic abilities to be true, and since none were investigated, one cannot claim that one “knows” psychic powers were the explanation, however easy it may be to jump to that conclusion.

These phenomena–readee association, not recording the misses, intuition, and ignoring alternate explanations, can make something completely mundane and non-psychic appear to be amazingly psychic.

Again, I’m not saying that psychics or psychic powers don’t exist; I am simply pointing out how we commonly mistake things for psychic when they are not. And these phenomena and others like them are exactly what the frauds take advantage of to fool people. But they are also what we commonly use to fool ourselves, however earnest we feel and however much we believe we are taking an “objective” approach.

The bottom line is, if something can be explained in other way, it isn’t proven–until you can dismiss the other ways and leave nothing but your hypothesis–and that’s what scientifically controlled tests are all about: making it impossible for anything else to explain the situation. And when psychics submit to these conditions (which they rarely do), their performance suddenly drops to levels that anyone could achieve through mundane talents. Excuses about “negativity” and “bad vibes” are just that–excuses.


Finally why isn’t the other side of the coin ever shown, I once did a reading … [writer goes on to detail a reading where an accurate prediction was made]

In my experience, that’s about all that ever gets shown, at least from psychics. I’ve heard psychics–including yourself–tell about their many hits, but I’ve never heard psychics listing their misses.

… I once did a reading Where the man asked did my father leave me anything That I haven’t found yet. I told him I saw sports tickets (which he kept saying he would do because they never went to sporting events they preferred to watch them on TV this was something they had discussed even described what they looked like though truthfully I was not able to read the team name He then asked me where to find it I told him the room they were in and that appeared to be inside a desk draw. Now I had read for him over an hour and told him many things and passed the many tests people like to give you. Later his wife said to me he doesn’t think your real, I said “Why? He said the tickets were in a short dresser draw not a desk. Swear true story!

First, your story here is not clear in many respects (I’m sorry, but your writing is a bit fuzzy). Your sentence, “I told him I saw sports tickets (which he kept saying he would do because they never went to sporting events they preferred to watch them on TV this was something they had discussed even described what they looked like though truthfully I was not able to read the team name” is both a run-on sentence and is unclear in meaning. He kept saying he would do what? Buy sporting tickets? Because they never went to sporting events? Was there a typo? Very unclear.

But the gist of your story shows flaws: first of all, intuitiveness. Tickets to sports events were found in a drawer (I’ll forgive you the inaccuracy of the type of drawer, but it should be noted). Now, if you asked me–a non-psychic–to look for sports tickets in a strange person’s house, where would I look first? No doubt, I would head straight for a desk drawer. That’s not psychic. That’s intuitive knowledge. It’s like predicting that cottage cheese would be found in a refrigerator or that you would find a TV in a living room.

The only part which could be claimed as psychic would be the prediction of sports tickets. And on this, I am unable to judge because I do not have access to the transcript of the conversation. For all I know, any number of verbal or even visual cues could have inspired this guess–a shirt with a sports team logo, the fact that men (often fathers and sons) commonly go to sporting events, or perhaps you heard him say they enjoyed sports and guessed tickets before he told you they never went to events but only watched TV. Depending on the whole hour of the reading and the contextual clues within, your prediction could be explained in many different ways without the need to ascribe them to psychic powers.

I also don’t know the other numerous “hits” you claim, nor am I informed of what “misses” you may have experienced, or what the ratio was. Nor do I know the nature of the hits–were they things no one could have possibly guessed, were they things which anyone could have guessed, were they predictable via hints and clues the person’s appearance, mannerisms and speech provided, were they little things like “you chew gum” which have a 50% chance of being hit-miss and you got 50% of them right? Without the specifics, there’s no way I can judge the accuracy or inaccuracy of your claims. And this is assuming you are 100% honest and genuine. What you give me is not even close to real proof; if I believe it, then I am not believing facts, I am believing unsupported claims. And I am not calling you dishonest or a liar, what you describe could absolutely be not psychic and you could absolutely believe it is.

Such is the nature of people’s acceptance of psychic abilities: not based upon carefully observed and analyzed facts or evidence, but in the vast area of uncertainty that is subjective experience.

But if you believe you are psychic, then visit this site and apply to take the million-dollar test. They will put you under scientifically controlled conditions. You will describe your psychic ability, and then together you and they will draw up mutually agreed-upon tests that will rule out all other possibilities. The tests will accurately count miss-to-hit ratios and account for probabilities for each guess (e.g., you get points for predicting correctly that a certain Muslim person eats bacon twice a week, but no points for predicting correctly that they avoid pork products).

If you are, as you claim, truly psychic, then you can claim a very public victory for the legitimacy of psychic reading, while you collect the million dollars and do a great deal more unpaid work because you’ll have a wonderful nest egg. How can you lose?

Today is my two-year anniversary of daily blogging. I started blogging without a break on August 2, 2003. 731 days. Whew.

Of course, I have cheated a bit some times. Blogging a day ahead or behind when things like travel and international date lines got in my way. Blogging past midnight some nights and counting that as the “next day,” then being able to slide until just before midnight two days later. But I’ve got some 1200 or so posts in those 731 days, so it’s not like I haven’t made up for it and then some. And I did do quite a bit of blogging before then, I just missed a day every week or so. But 8/2/03 was when I decided to make it a habit.

I gotta get a life!

There’s a new article out in E-Week online, titled “Apple’s Tiger vs. Windows Vista: Who Comes Out Ahead?” comparing Tiger and Vista. This is quite typical of Windows-centric writers comparing Mac and Windows: though they get some things right, they all too often are mistaken about what Macs can do, and give unreasonable props to Windows for things that don’t deserve it.

The article starts out on a legitimate track, pointing out all the things Vista will do which imitate Tiger, especially with the note of search design & features and look-and-feel, though he also notes some rather irrelevant items, like the similarity between the names “Aero” and “Aqua,” and the names for the “Network” and “Computer” areas. It does not talk about other more significant similarities, such as Internet Explorer suddenly become an RSS-savvy tabbed browser with startling resemblances to Safari.

But then the author begins to point out the differences, he starts getting stuff wrong. He starts with:

The more-advanced Aero Glass option uses translucent window title bars, a handy feature of Mac OS X that Apple dropped with Panther, but is still used in the Dock.

I’m not even sure what he’s talking about here. Title bars in the dock? They don’t even exist there–no windows in the dock. And if he’s trying to say that transparencies don’t exist in Tiger, he’s gone batty. And how are translucent title bars such a big deal? What’s the advantage with that?

Vista does, however, have some nice touches that Tiger doesn’t. Vista places previews of documents right on file icons. These are more sophisticated than the thumbnails that Photoshop creates, as they update as the file is changed. Tiger can display previews of graphic files, but not text-based files. … Vista’s folders display a representation of the type of files inside. Dialog boxes for saving files and other tasks use these thumbnails.

Actually, Tiger can do previews of text files as well if you use the column view in Finder windows. But I will concede that icon previews are better in Windows–though this is not really a Vista improvement, as XP can do the same things the author is talking about. But then we get back to the question, so what? Is this really a big deal for anyone? It’d be nice if Macs had this also, but I use both systems and never really feel the need. I mean, they’re icons–they can’t hold very much information about a document. Metasearch is more important here, and Tiger has that, while Vista had to abandon it already.

But I really get annoyed when the Mac is criticized for essentially not being Windows. One example is when the writer praises Microsoft: “Windows Vista will be superior to Tiger in terms of networking, mostly because Windows is a better client for Microsoft servers.” In other words, Microsoft is better because it can communicate with itself better than Macs can communicate with it! How’s that for Windows-centric? And it’s not even always true: many times in the past I have had an easier time connecting a Mac to a Windows network than I have had connecting a Windows machine to a Windows network. There are certainly fewer steps involved with the Mac, to be certain.

The writer also says a great deal about archiving and searching, virtual folders and stacking–but fails to mention the vital fact that much of this depends on the WinFS file management system, which has been delayed and will not be available until 2008. Which means that Vista users will have a relatively hollow shell of these features, most of which are already available in Tiger–and yet the author here uses them as examples of how Vista will outshine Tiger. Really? When? Three to four years after the fact? He even mentions the use of “stacks” in file management–an idea Apple has been developing since 2000.

What’s even more outrageous is when the writer concludes, saying that the next version of the Mac OS, Leopard, “will need to be a compelling alternative to Vista.” In other words, Apple better catch up with Microsoft–pretty arrogant, considering that not only has Tiger achieved a year and a half early what Vista promises later, but that much of what Tiger can do now won’t be available on Vista for another two and a half years, well after Leopard has been released.

And that brings me to the final and somewhat overwhelming flaw in this article: although it does mention Leopard near the end, it is overall a comparison between Tiger and Vista–an already-released Mac OS and a future version of Windows that won’t be released before Tiger itself is obsolete! Think of comparing Mac OS X Jaguar with Windows Me, or even Windows 98; a fair comparison? Please.

Considering the fact that the Mac has always been way ahead of Windows, this kind of reverse-logic comparison smacks of revisionism before the fact. You have to admit, if you have to go so far as to compare a 2008 version of Windows (pretending it’ll be complete in late 2006) with a mid-2005 version of Mac OS in order to make Microsoft seem even marginally comparable–well, that speaks volumes as to Who Comes Out Ahead.

Well, the blog comment and trackback spam have held up well. I wish I could say as much for the referral spam blocking.

For most of the month it did a pretty good job of blocking spam. Some spammers blew through initially with a hundred or two spams before I could add their domains to the blacklist, which I knew would happen. After being added to the blacklist, some still got through, but were restricted to just a few spams per day. By the 20th of July, the top 25 referrers were still mostly legit. But then things fell apart.

The culprit was a German porn spammer, who came in with three different domains (tzz.de, axxs.de, and cxa.de). I added the domains to the blacklist, but they continued to blow through with new subdomains until 14 of the top 25 spots on the referrer list were jammed with their crap. Although they did not post the thousands of spam that they could have, they mucked up my referral list enough to make it butt-ugly again. At least I have the satisfaction of never having given these scumwads even the tiniest bit of benefit for all their troubles. They’ve made things miserable in terms of my reading my stats, but they have not gotten an ounce of Google Juice nor a single referral from me and they never, never will.

In the end, the 18 spammers in the top 25 left behind 2427 referral spams. Take away the German porn spammer and that number drops to 4 spammers leaving 492 spams.

So it seems that the AwStats referral patch, while useful to some degree, is far from perfect. The question now is, will more spammers follow in blowing through it, or were the last few weeks a fluke?

As for comment and trackback spam, I have found an interesting trend: it’s dying down. Where it used to be flooding in at the rate of thousands per day, it has subsided to a trickle of only a few hundred a day (most of them coming from a porn web host). Why they’ve so dramatically dropped off, I don’t know for sure; maybe they detect the new version of Movable Type, figure it’s no longer worth trying, and move along? Beats me. But I like it.

Pluto is no longer the farthest planet from the sun. And I am not referring to the period between 1979 to 1999 when Pluto’s eccentric orbit brought it closer to the sun than Neptune (which won’t happen again until 2226).

No, this is different. They have, so they claim, discovered a tenth planet.

The planet (photos here) is at least as large as Pluto and may be 50% bigger. It orbits the sun 9 billion miles out, three times farther out than Pluto, though its orbit is just as eccentric as Pluto’s–at closest approach, the new planet would be only a little farther out than Pluto is at its farthest. It takes 560 years to orbit the sun, as opposed to Pluto’s 248 years. It revolves around the sun at a 44-degree angle relative to the ecliptic plane which most planets inhabit (Pluto is the other exception, at 17.5 degrees off the ecliptic).

A name for the new planet has been submitted (but not made public), which is good because the present name of “2003UB313” would be hard to pronounce. It might be named “Xena,” in recognition of (a) the TV warrior princess, and (b) how geeky these guys are.

Of course, there is a question of whether it’s even a planet or not, as scientists are in disagreement that even Pluto is a planet; the eccentricity and deviance from the ecliptic could identify these bodies as captured objects, which wandered into the solar system from the outside and got captured in the sun’s gravitational pull.

But seeing them as planets is way more fun.

Yes, I know, I haven’t been blogging about politics as much lately. I’m in one of those periodic burn-out modes. I have maybe a half-dozen half-finished posts that I can get back to at some point, and a few topics–like a look at Roe v. Wade, or what “strict constructionism” is supposed to be–that I plan to get to soon. But when I ask myself, what should I blog on, the idea of delving into any of the current stories seems less than appealing to me at the moment.

But how about a quick rundown of the top two stories?

Roberts is looking a little bit less confirmable with new information that both is and isn’t coming out. After raging at the Clinton White House for not releasing every last document about everything, the Republicans are being even skimpier with their own sharing of paper. Specifically, what Roberts did in his job as the Justice Department’s deputy solicitor general under Bush 41. The reason? Violation of privileged information. One problem: Roberts was representing the people of the United States. Or at least he was supposed to be. Otherwise, all documents released from that time and from his time working as counsel under Reagan will be released after a strict screening process–which, of course, means that they’ll withhold anything that could hurt his nomination. Josh Marshall points out quite aptly the right wing’s indefensible argument that the White House should have access to more information about Roberts than Congress will get. Otherwise, what we learn of Roberts is yet more and more that he has been an extreme partisan, including his figuring prominently in shutting down the vote count in Florida in 2000. Well, Katherine Harris got her payola. Why shouldn’t Roberts get his, eh?

Rove & Plame: in a nutshell, everyone knows that Rove & Libby were spreading the story about Plame being a CIA operative. It now appears that the source of the information was very clear that she was undercover and that the information must not be shared. Now there are so many versions of what happened from Rove and Libby and McClellan and Novak and others that contradictions abound.

In a nutshell: the White House doesn’t give a rat’s ass about intelligence when there’s a political point to be won. Case in point: in August 2004, the Bush White House ordered a fake terror alert, one of a series of many timed to take attention away from John Kerry whenever the news started going his way. The August leak, timed just a few days before the Democratic convention, was based on the claim that evidence found on one Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan’s laptop computer indicated a plan to attack financial buildings in New York, New Jersey and Washington D.C. These claims were false, the “solid intelligence” trumped up. But in an effort to bolster claims of the legitimacy of the terror alert, the Bush administration leaked Khan’s name to the press.

Now, why is that a big deal? Because Khan was a computer expert working for al Qaeda. He had many connections within that organization, and could potentially have access to information of priceless value. When he was arrested in July 2004, his arrest was kept a secret and Khan worked secretly as a double-agent–our greatest known source within al Qaeda. Under cover, Khan’s value to anti-terror intelligence was immense. But then the Bush administration, in order to defend a political lie, blabbed the name of the covert operative to the press. Sound familiar?

So Khan’s cover was blown. The intelligence agencies handling him scrambled to arrest his associates, the al Qaeda people they might have used to find the leaders of the organization and further terrorist plans, but many got away. The ones who were captured escaped full prosecution because not enough evidence had been collected to fully convict them of their crimes.

What’s worse, the data on Khan’s disks in fact did not point to American targets–the data did point to British targets, and the Pakistan ring’s cover being blown by Bush has been connected with the recent subway bombings in London. In other words, had Bush not leaked Khan’s name, the attacks in London could have been found out and stopped before they happened. This blog does an excellent job of explaining the whole issue. And not that this is anything new for Bush, he’s got experience allowing terrorists to succeed because he’s trying to play politics.

But maybe Bush and Co. feel vindicated: after all, the real enemy, John Kerry, was defeated. And if all they had to do to secure that victory was to let go their intelligence on capturing and stopping al Qaeda, and putting civilians’ lives at stake, then maybe they feel that it was worth the price paid. Outing secret agents to secure the political agenda certainly seems to work as far as the White House in concerned.

Which vital national security source will the Bush White House expose to win their next political victory?

Stay tuned!

I’ve been a bit remiss in getting these images up. These are some of the photos my father has been taking over the last several weeks up in the San Juans (a group of islands near Seattle, WA–you get there by ferry out of Bellingham). My folks have a cabin up there and spend the summer months in a less urban environment. I wish I could visit it more, but the air fares in August will clean you right out–often times the plane tickets are double the price of other seasons.

But my parents are up there right now, and since my father bought his Canon S2-IS, he’s been shooting the local birds, and has gotten some great shots.

First, a Belted Kingfisher:

I love these birds, and would like to get this detailed a shot of the Kingfishers here in Tokyo. Then there’s the Great Blue Heron, which is similar to Japan’s Grey Heron in many ways:

Click for a larger version of the photo

Note the feather in its bill–it was just preening.

Here’s another one, different coloring, and a different angle:

Click for a larger version of the photo

…And a nice picture of one on the water:

One more seabird for today: some Heerman’s Gulls:

That’s all for today–more to come soon!

This article gives you a sneak peek at features in the new Windows Longhorn/Vista to be released in a year and a half. Essentially, most of the features described are directly ripped off from Mac OS X, from the icons to graphic transparencies to the tabbed/RSS browser to the virtual folders–right up to the exact location of the contextual search boxes in the upper-right corner of each new window.

Apparently, some kind of “Apple Music Event” has been scheduled for 10 am on Thursday, August 4 at the Tokyo International Forum. Reporters have been invited to the event by Apple, so unless this is something completely unexpected, it’s probably going to be the long-rumored opening of the Japan iTunes Music Store.

Still unknown will be the pricing (rumored to be ¥150, undercutting all other music download services in Japan) and the selection–Sony’s rather large collection of music may likely not be available because Sony is trying like crazy to undercut Apple and its success with the iPod.

Well, finally. I’ve been trying to shoot one of these guys for a long time, almost as long as I’ve been photographing birds, which is maybe six months now. They’ve been somewhat elusive to me. I got a quick, low-quality shot of one at Tama Reien months ago, and would’ve gotten better had a bicyclist not scared them off. I almost got a beautiful shot of a mother feeding her young on a power line right in front of me, but they scampered off before I could get my camera out.

This time, I wandered into an area where a ton of starlings and pigeons were feeding in a field–upwards of a hundred birds or so–and I noticed a half-dozen or so magpies flying around the fringe of the field. I followed them uphill a bit as they moved, and wound up getting some nice photos.

The first one has two in a tree, and one of them is probably immature, seeing as how the black cap is still somewhat white, probably from baby down.

Here’s what appear to be a few more in intermediate stages:

In this one, the magpie seems rather annoyed at an intruding Oriental Turtledove:

Here are some adults:

And you can really see in this one why the birds are named オナガ (“Onaga,” or “Long Tail”) in Japanese:

This has been my first chance to get these photos up, from last Saturday’s fireworks show on the Chofu banks of the Tama River near where I live. Next weekend I might go out to Tachikawa and see if their festival is worth watching, but I haven’t decided yet. In early- or mid-August, Seiseki Sakuragaoka, also near where I live, will have yet another.

And then here are some stand-alone photos, just the small versions–but still some nice images.

By the way, that’s a train going through the bridge at the bottom of the photo above.

There might be more coming… I also have a bit of video. But this is all for the moment. I hope you enjoy them!

Not that I’ve ever said anything otherwise, but recent evidence only supports this, via DKos and the NY Times.

First of all, Costco treats customers well: it allows no more than a 14% to 15% markup on items it sells. That allows for fair pricing in some areas, and excellent pricing in other areas.

Second–and very importantly–it treats its workers well. The average wage earned by Costco workers is about $17 per hour, not too shabby at all. In contrast, Wal-Mart claims to pay an average of $10 per hour. And while average retailers require their workers to pay 25% of their insurance premiums, Costco only makes workers pay 8%–and that’s only after the shareholders forced the company to take it to there from the 4% it was asking before. In addition:

This knack for seeing things in a new way also explains Costco’s approach to retaining employees as well as shoppers. Besides paying considerably more than competitors, for example, Costco contributes generously to its workers’ 401(k) plans, starting with 3 percent of salary the second year and rising to 9 percent after 25 years.

ITS insurance plans absorb most dental expenses, and part-time workers are eligible for health insurance after just six months on the job, compared with two years at Wal-Mart. Eighty-five percent of Costco’s workers have health insurance, compared with less than half at Wal-Mart and Target.

Costco also has not shut out unions, as some of its rivals have. The Teamsters union, for example, represents 14,000 of Costco’s 113,000 employees. “They gave us the best agreement of any retailer in the country,” said Rome Aloise, the union’s chief negotiator with Costco. The contract guarantees employees at least 25 hours of work a week, he said, and requires that at least half of a store’s workers be full time.

Costco holds that happy workers are more productive, and there is less turnover and less employee theft.

Wall Street disagrees, saying that Costco’s CEO “has been too benevolent,” and that “he could force employees to pick up a little more of the burden.” Apparently the conservative economic crowd just doesn’t believe in a happy, well-paid middle class; those working stiffs have to “pick up the burden” for the wealthy stockholder class.

Of course, thhis view is contradicted by the fact that Costco has been performing well:

If shareholders mind Sinegal’s philosophy, it is not obvious: Costco’s stock price has risen more than 10 percent in the past 12 months; Wal-Mart’s has slipped 5 percent. Costco shares sell for almost 23 times expected earnings; at Wal-Mart, the multiple is about 19. … Costco’s profit rose 22 percent last year, to $882 million, on sales of $47.1 billion.

Of course, this does not faze Wall Street analysts, who call Costco’s offerings a “cult stock.” Apparently, if you’re not a mainstream, greedy, blood-sucking, worker-exploiting miser then you can’t have respectability.

Furthermore, Costco’s CEO Jim Sinegal, aside from being a multi-millionaire from stock holdings, gets a salary of $350,000 and a bonus of $200,000 yearly, making him one of the lowest-paid executives in America. Of this, he said, “I just think that if you’re going to try to run an organization that’s very cost-conscious, then you can’t have those disparities. Having an individual who is making 100 or 200 or 300 times more than the average person working on the floor is wrong.”

So we have a company that gives workers good pay and benefits, gives some of the lowest prices to consumers, keeps executive pay scales down, and is highly successful.

And they’re a major contributor to the Democratic Party, while Wal-Mart contributes to Republicans.

What more could you ask for?

Shop at Costco, and stay away from Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club.

(By the way, you might also want to check out this unrelated but very funny article at the WaPo; very Dave-Barryish.)

When I was back in college, I recall a lot of my Japanese friends got a shock when they dealt with some of the more militant Chinese and Chinese-American population of the school. Here were a lot of people who were supremely pissed off at Japanese people, and didn’t hesitate to dive in after them, wearing rather noticeably large chips on their shoulders. To a certain degree, one cannot blame them, but let’s face it–every country has its dark past. China is not without its own.

Still, being upset and protesting is within limits. If I traveled to Hiroshima and someone whose parents suffered in the bombings started getting miffed at me in a representative way, I would move along and hopefully understand the motivation, if not the specific attempt to blame. Feeling as I do that the bombings were not necessary, I would not mind offering my apologies, at least on behalf of myself alone (not being able to speak for the whole country). Such is my personal choice.

But what if I was hit by a bus in that town and taken to a hospital–and said hospital refused to render medical aid until I expressly apologized for what my country did sixty years ago?

That would be something very different. And maybe the Chinese city of Haikou is just responding to an immediate fad, or somehow politics is involved, but if you ask me, it’s a seriously demented act. The hospital now sports a sign which reads, “Japanese people first apologize, then enter. Japanese people who ‘decide not to admit to their crimes’ are prohibited from entering.”

When a Jilin City restaurant started demanding the same of Japanese customers before service was offered, that’s different–you can just go to another restaurant. But a hospital? There’s a point after which Victimhood starts becoming Schmuckhood. Even if you had an exception for ER cases, it’s still way over the line. You don’t deny people medical care over such stuff. Period.

Seriously. Imagine a New York hospital refusing to take in any person of Arab descent unless they personally apologized for 9/11. That might make a few American yahoos feel good, but most Americans would recognize it for the moronic trash it is. I can only hope that most Chinese people feel the same way, and that what we’re looking at here is just a few extreme cases of idiocy unsupported by the mainstream.

Update: One day later, the hospital has lifted the restriction. Apparently, “not a lot but not a few” Japanese people attempted to enter the hospital that day, which may have eventually prompted the lifting of the demand.

Am I the only one who absolutely hates web pages with black backgrounds and white or bright-colored text? Perhaps my eyes are really sensitive, but whenever I try to read text on such pages I quickly develop after-images from the contrast that give me a headache. And yet such pages seem to proliferate, increasing rather than decreasing in number.

Maybe it’s that the people who publish pages with such color schemes don’t read their own pages in finished form…

I got the book last Saturday morning, and had it finished by Sunday afternoon. I haven’t commented on it yet so as to give the readers of this blog time enough to get through the book before I reviewed it.

One of the hurdles I had in reviewing this book were the inevitable comparisons to my brother’s own continuation from The Order of the Phoenix, a continuation my brother already followed through the seventh year of Harry at Hogwarts, and beyond. After having read even the first of my brother’s novels, I knew I’d have a tough time trying to figure out which was better.

In the end, I choose my brother’s Veil of Mystery over Rowling’s Half-Blood Prince. I’ll try to go into the details here, though any spoiler information for Rowling’s book will go below the fold (if you are reading this in the archives, it’s all here in one piece).

This is not to say that I didn’t like The Half-Blood Prince; I did find it entertaining. However, it was not as good as it could have been, either for my brother’s prose or for Rowling’s herself.

A few things one has to take into account for the Harry Potter books is that Rowling’s style is toward caricature, brooding, and more than a bit into darkness. Her characters tend to act in extremes, to the extent of often seeming unreasonable. Harry’s brooding in The Order of the Phoenix was more than most would have felt reasonable, even for a 15-year-old. Snape’s cruelty has always been almost cartoonish, as have Malfoy’s nasty sneers and cowardly bullying. But then again, we are dealing with children’s literature, so this can be excused–though for that genre, there is more than a little of the usual touch of darkness. In the first book, Harry had to face his parents’ murderer, grafted onto the back of a professor’s head, and when he touched the villain’s face, it crumbled into ashes. Kinda dark stuff for kids–but maybe that’s a big reason why it’s so popular.

In that respect, Rowling is in usual form in The Half-Blood Prince. Harry’s upset a lot again, Ron and Hermione are going to extremes to tick each other off, and Dumbledore is amiable yet mysteriously reticent. We learn more about Voldemort. There’s a mystery afoot, misleading clues abound, and a truth is revealed at the end. These aren’t spoilers–this could describe most if not all of the Potter books.

There are a few inconsistencies, however. For example, Rowling departs from her long-held writing style of third-person limited (writing about Harry in the third person, but limiting the action solely to what Harry himself experiences). The first two chapters of the new book center on events completely outside of Harry’s experience; after the third chapter begins, however, we again pick up with Harry’s limited point-of-view. This is a strange stylistic departure, especially given the nature of the opening chapter, when we learn of the British prime minister’s contact with the wizarding world. What’s strange with this first chapter is that it is completely unnecessary. Unless Rowling has something planned for the seventh book that requires this initial scene, it is inexplicable why she would want to start the book with it. The book’s second chapter is more understandable; it introduces an important plot element which Harry cannot witness–though it could have been possible for Rowling to work this information into the story at a later time. But at least this scene would have made more sense as the book’s opening chapter.

Once we get back to Harry’s point-of-view, we see the usual course of events unfold: Harry at the Dursley’s, the trip to Hogwarts, Harry getting into trouble and missing the Sorting ceremony, the introduction of the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. All of these with the expected new twists and diversions, but the same routine all the same.

Once into the meat of the story, another inconsistency–albeit a consistent one–appears. Dumbledore, as usual, acts completely unwilling to tell Harry what the hell is going on. While Harry himself is more forthcoming in responsibly telling everyone what he thinks they should know, Dumbledore is yet again being frustratingly closed, cutting short Harry’s questions, only giving out mysterious snippets of information for little-understood reasons, and then quickly hustling Harry out of the room, when he has so many questions to ask. While this is consistent with Dumbledore’s past behavior, it is not consistent with the conclusion of the previous book, when Dumbledore apologizes to Harry for keeping him in the dark, and laments about how foolish he was not to tell Harry what he needed to know. And yet from the start of this book, he’s right back at it again, as reticent as ever, for no reason we can figure. A bit annoying, that.

Aside from these nits, however, the book forms up well. We get the usual serving of Rowling’s adventure, twists, and revelations, and the usual confrontation at the end, and the denouement afterwards. Of course I won’t reveal–above the fold, at least–the nature of the climax, what we learn about Voldemort, or who the half-blood prince is. Suffice to say that none of these could be guessed at, all of them being original beyond any clues in past books.

Still, the book left me unsatisfied, beyond even the inevitable comparisons between this novel and Veil. It just seemed like it could have been much more than it was. The characters acted less than convincingly, and the story seemed to lack meaning. Perhaps this is an artifact of the being the lead-up to the final book; it does leave you wondering, at the end, about how much you’ve read really happened, and how much is part of some plan that Harry has not been let in on.

Nevertheless, it is an interesting yarn. Worth reading, but it could have been better.

More below the fold…

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