On the Winds Of Change blog, Armed Liberal recommends Thomas Friedman's latest column:

Finding Iraq's W.M.D.'s is necessary to preserve the credibility of the Bush team, the neocons, Tony Blair and the C.I.A. But rebuilding Iraq is necessary to win the war. I won't feel one whit more secure if we find Saddam's W.M.D.'s, because I never felt he would use them on us. But I will feel terribly insecure if we fail to put Iraq onto a progressive path. Because if that doesn't happen, the terrorism bubble will reinflate and bad things will follow. Mr. Bush's credibility rides on finding W.M.D.'s, but America's future, and the future of the Mideast, rides on our building a different Iraq. We must not forget that.

While Armed Liberal is right that this is one of Friedman's better efforts, I think Friedman misses an angle on this. The WMD argument was adopted not because it wouldn't sell with the American people; Bosnia and Kosovo demonstrated that the American public was willing to go to war for humanitarian reasons.

The WMD argument was adopted because it was the only one that could get traction internationally. The UNSC was clearly willing to tolerate genocide (Rwanda anyone?), and would not have been receptive to the "He needs killin'" argument. A petition based on human rights violations or the need for democratic reform in the Middle East would have alienated, rather than inspired cooperation from, the Arab powers in the region, their own records on good government and human rights being suspect at best.

But when you said "Saddam should not have nukes", everyone nods, from Tony Blair to Prince Abdullah. Yes, that would certainly be a bad thing. Even Chirac, who previously sold nukes to Iraq, found himself forced to agree (at least until it came time to back it up with action). The UNSC was even on record, having resolved several times over that Saddam must not have nukes (or other WMDs).

So when it came time to sell this to the UN, the primary argument was over WMDs. But at the time Bush started making this argument, with the speech to the UN on Sept 12, 2002, the US public was already more-or-less sold on the idea of regime change; it was just a month later that, under pressure of an imminent election, Congress authorized the use of military force.

In that context, Friedman's point about Bush needing to find WMDs to salvage his credibility misses the mark. I've yet to hear of any American voter who supported the war mainly on the basis of the WMD argument, and who now regrets that support. (I do wonder whether Tony Blair feels that way, though.) The people complaining didn't support the war in the first place. With more revelations coming out like yesterday's grisly discovery, as InstaPundit points out, the erstwhile opponents of the war are desperate to reclaim the moral high ground.

The latest polls indicate that a clear majority of the public consider the war justified even if WMDs are never found. It would be diplomatically useful to find Saddam's WMDs, but as far as the voters are concerned, the War in Iraq was worth doing, and well done.

I'm a faithful reader of Jonah Goldberg's column, and always considered him a pretty bright fellow, even when I disagreed with him. But now I've lost all respect for the man. No, not because of his "film work"; I thought everybody already knew about that.

It's the fact that he's an AOL user.

I'm so disillusioned...

One of the technology buzzwords that has fallen in and out of favor over the years is 'convergence'; of the many forms this concept has taken, one was that the various household electronics devices would learn to talk to one another, and possibly even merge into a single information appliance. As video and audio components gained programmability, and as PCs have gotten better at handling audio and video, each has contended for the role of Grand Unified Media Device.

My money has always been on a particular dark horse candidate: the game console. It has the audio and video capabilities of the best PCs, and at its heart it's a computer every bit as powerful as the desktop PC; but it has the economies of scale, ease of use, and broad appeal of a non-technical consumer device like a VCR or DVD player.

My expectations are coming a step closer to being fulfilled.

Look again at the PSX and its specs. Its guts remain the PS2, the world's most popular game player. But around that core, Sony is going to wrap a 120 GB hard drive, a recordable DVD RW/R drive, a TV tuner, an Ethernet port and a Memory Stick slot. It will also feature USB 2.0 support and a slot to plug in Sony's upcoming Gameboy competitor, the PSP portable gaming system.

The price? Speculation ranges from $500 at the high end (the cost of those components today) to $299 at the bottom. I'll bet it's closer to the latter, even if Sony has to lose money on every box for a year or so.

I'm not going to go so far as to endorse this product. I haven't actually used a game console since the last time I moved, and didn't bother to reconnect my old Sega Genesis; I don't have the expertise to judge the bona fides of this product. But I will be severely tempted to pick up this one, or its inevitable competitors from Nintendo or Microsoft. (Yes, I'm a Linux user and open source advocate; but in this market, Microsoft is actually more open than its competitiors.)

The End of the PC?

Yet, the more you study the PSX announcement, the more you sense that something important is happening here, all of it camouflaged by the low-key nature of the announcement. Don't worry, folks, just another game player for your kids — except, of course, once you put it on top of your TV, why do you need a DVD player or a VCR? Or Tivo? Or your PC?

Look at those specs again, and the price. Now tell me again: Why do you need your personal computer?

Well, unless there are versions of Apache, Perl, and Python for the console, as well as a decent spreadsheet, I won't be retiring my PCs anytime soon. And reading dense text (like, I dunno, say weblogs) on an NTSC TV screen makes my eyes hurts just to think about it. But I take the writer's point. This ain't no Pong, and it's not even just a state-of-the-art game console; it's trying to be something much more ambitious.

From a marketing standpoint, it's an ideal way of testing the concept, with a mature product (the PS2) as its base, and with a successor product (the PS3) in the pipeline. Information gathered from marketing the PS2.5 will be used to fine-tune the PS3 strategy: stick with the pure game console, go full-bore with an advanced PS2.5-style console, or tweak the concept by adding features consumers want, or deleting features that they don't care about. Sony's PS3 planners are doing with the PS2 line what Microsoft normally does with its competitors: let them take all the risks with a new product concept, let them make all the mistakes, and then follow up with a product based on the information gleaned from the market's reaction.

I'll be following this sector a lot more closely in the future.

Mark Steyn makes a cogent point:

It’s easy to imagine an Iraq with three regional parliaments in Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, harder to foresee a single legislature filled by members of nationwide parties. But if it ever happens it will be the very last piece of the puzzle. Americans understand this: the original colonists learned self-government in their towns and their states and eventually applied it to an entire continent.

By contrast, those European sophisticates sneering that Washington won’t stay the course are often the same crowd who’ve found it easier to elevate the friendliest local strongman than create a durable constitutional culture. Dominique de Villepin, the ubiquitous Frenchman, declared the other day that Paris was indispensable to postwar reconstruction because it had so much experience in Africa. I don’t know about you, but I think Iraq deserves better than to be the new Chad or Ivory Coast.

If democracy in Iraq is to be successful, the culture of democracy must take root first. If the people believe in and understand self-government, the details of the form of their government are almost irrelevant.

By the way, I'm keeping the "Support Democracy in Iraq" graphic and link for now, since I consider the current phase in the liberation and reinvention of Iraq to be, if anything, more important than the war itself, and more prone to failure. World War II might have wrecked a large part of Western civilization were it not for the Marshall Plan that followed; and all Frog-bashing aside, that would have been a very bad thing, the fecklessness of Chirac and de Villepin notwithstanding.

I've never been a big fan of the grunge sound, but that may just change now: Eric Olsen reports that one of the premiere grunge bands, Perl Jam, has left its record label, Epic; and rather than signing with another label, they've elected to fly solo:

If Pearl Jam — now touring the United States to wildly enthusiastic crowds — is able to create a successful business model mobilizing its fans via the Internet and engaging in such “crazy” stunts as releasing live double albums of every show it performs, this could be the beginning of a stampede away from the lumbering dinosaurs that the major labels have become.

Great Googlymoogly, I hope so.

They're selling recorded copies of every live show? That's an amazing idea; it's at least as good a souvenir as a tee shirt. I attended a Steely Dan concert in 1994 that turned out to be an important event in my life. I'd love to have a recording of that specific performance, and I'd pay serious money to get it. That's a brilliant idea, and a superb example of what can be done when a disruptive technology starts subverting an ossified business model.

Eric asks,

But can the Pearl Jam organization get enough recorded music out there through its Web site, fan club and independent distribution to make a go of it without major label distribution?

The dinosaurs will be watching closely.

So will I.

Kevin Pease has begun working again on his superb comic strip, Absurd Notions.

I missed Notions while it was on hiatus. The characters are well-developed, the dialogue is clever, and the characters' interests -- roleplaying games and computer technology -- dovetail with my own. (I even do a little artwork, albeit strictly amateur and for my own amusement, unlike the "Jay" character.)

Start from the beginning, or learn about the cast, or read some of the college paper strip where it began. Good stuff.

Oh. My. Ghod...

WB is doing a movie based on the "John Constantine: Hellblazer" comic book, from DC's Vertigo line.

Starring Keanu Reeves.

I cannot begin to describe how wrong this is. This would be a perfect role for Ewan McGregor or Rufus Sewell (see the latter in Dark City, and tell me I'm wrong, I dare you).

But Keanu Friggin' Reeves? They don't even have the decency to hire a Brit for the part? Or at least someone who can emote worth a damn?

(The bad news comes via Treacher.)

I hate when this happens. Hellblazer is a really good comic, but after a trainwreck of a movie like this, everyone will be convinced that it's as lame as ... well, as lame as they expect a comic book to be. It happened with Daredevil, and with many other worthwhile characters.

The worst example of this I can recall is the execrable "Sable" TV show, based on a superb creator-owned comic, Mike Grell's Jon Sable, Freelance; especially galling was that they took one of my favorite female characters, Myke Blackmun, and turned her from a sensitive, melancholy, romantic artist, into a loud, overdressed, shallow ditz.

(In doing a Google search for the above links, I learned that there was an abortive attempt more recently to do a Jon Sable movie; the rights were optioned by Gene Simmons, late of the rock band "Kiss", who was a fan of the comic. It was scrapped after 9/11, since the story featured buildings blowing up in New York City. Nuts, I would have liked to have seen it.)

Keanu Reeves. Bollocks.

NewsFox Laurie Dhue with an Uzi.

<sing key="off">O, Sweet mystery of Life, at last I've found you...</sing>

Set the wayback machine for 1983. Remember Adam Ant?

LONDON (Reuters) - Former pop star Adam Ant has been arrested after apparently running amok and stripping off in a London cafe.

Police said on Thursday they had arrested a 49-year-old man on suspicion of criminal damage, while The Sun showed pictures of the former 1980s heartthrob being held by two burly policemen, a blanket wrapped around his waist...

Ant's career saw him selling 15 million records, including punk-pop hits like "Prince Charming" and "Stand and Deliver". Police said he had been released on bail until mid-July.

Prince Charming? Surely there'a a more appropriate work of his to cite...

Bill O'Reilly whines about how people are fibbing about him on the Internet, and how this proves the Internet is a disgusting, horrid place. And he even manages to work in a mini-screed about child porn. (C'mon, Bill, that's so 1999.) He then explains how big media companies (like, for instance, I dunno, say Fox) are much more responsible, but are being unfairly victimized by mean old regulators.

Those who work for networks that broadcast World's Funniest Alien Autopsies and When Lawyers Attack shouldn't be casting stones. The coarsening of our culture has a lot more to do with Married... with Children than with anything on the 'Net. (Of course, they also brought us The Simpsons and Futurama, so I'm willing to cut them a lot of slack.)

And let's just pass over the fact that the original "lie" was told by one of those big, responsible old-media outlets, the San Francisco Chronicle. Bill exempts the Chron because it, hypothetically, is more likely to post a correction than are all those horrid people on that Internet thingy, who were so irresponsible as to repeat what they read in this supposedly-responsible newspaper.

Even the tiniest bit of research would indicate that the top-ranked webloggers are far more likely to run corrections than are major dead-tree outlets. But Bill O'Reilly has his tiny little mind made up, and won't be swayed by mere facts or logic. Besides, researching this stuff, aside from being disturbingly similar to work, would mean that would have to actually use this Internet thingy himself. He couldn't possibly do that; he might get cooties.

Perhaps I am misreading it, but it does sound as though everything he knows about the Internet is second-hand knowledge. How can anyone who prowls the 'Net regularly characterize the Internet -- the whole Internet, in its all-engulfing diversity, from Snopes to kuro5hin to the Wikipedia to Senate.gov, and everything in between -- as one big gutter?

It's one thing to fail to do adequate research about a specific topic for a specific column; that's the sort of thing that could be set right by, say, publishing a correction. (<irony dudgeon="high">But how likely are we to actually see such a correction from irresponsible commentors on the Net like Mr. O'Reilly, hmmmm?</irony>)

It's quite another for a media professional like O'Reilly to show himself to be so ignorant about such an important new medium.

Like Glenn said: grow up, Bill. And I might add, start taking your professional responsibilities a little more seriously. After all, unlike us gutter-dwelling bloggers, you're actually getting paid to snark. Earn it.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh has more O'Reilly-bashing goodness at The Conspiracy. Actually, Eugene does it with such grace and artistry that it can't properly be called "bashing"; he does to O'Reilly as a toreador does to a bull. I say we award Eugene both ears and the tail.

Donald Sensing directs our attention to recent remarks by Senator Orrin Hatch, where he declares his desire to vandalize my computer.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet...

[Former DoJ cybercrimes prosecutor Orin] Kerr predicted it was "extremely unlikely" for Congress to approve a hacking exemption for copyright owners, partly because of risks of collateral damage when innocent users might be wrongly targeted.

"It wouldn't work," Kerr said. "There's no way of limiting the damage."

Now, this question really ought not to come up in the first place. It ought to be obvious that vandalizing someone's computer is simply wrong even if there is evidence that they committed a crime. (Hatch, who is a lawyer by trade, shouldn't have to be told the difference between the existence of evidence, and guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, to say nothing of due process.)

But even if one is unpersuadable on this point, consider the following:

• The damage done to the copyright owners -- if in fact there is quantifiable damage, a premise I do not grant -- is measured in pennies per download; "destroying" someone's computer inflicts damage in the hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars in damaged equipment, and possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost data.

• There is no way of knowing whether the "pirate" is actually using his own computer; he may be borrowing a machine from someone else, such as perhaps his employer. Thus the damage inflicted would not only be disproportionate, it would be inflicted on the wrong party.

• Creating this capability means maintaining a deliberately created, and widely known, security hole in PC operating systems; inescapably, this "backdoor" will be figured out, and exploited, by other parties. The cost of the resulting computer vandalism would be staggering.

This is a bad, bad idea, and Senator Hatch is acting irresponsibly to even raise it as a possibility. This idea needs to be roundly defeated, and a stake driven through its heart.

Hatch's office can be contacted using this webmail form.

UPDATE: Laurence Simon reports that Sen. Hatch may himself be a copyright violator; his website contains some commercial JavaScript code that does not appear to be properly licensed. Such lawlessness! Doesn't he recognize the importance of protecting intellectual property rights? Shame!

The mercy that was quick in us but late,
By your own counsel is suppress'd and kill'd:
You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy;
For your own reasons turn into your bosoms,
As dogs upon their masters, worrying you.

--Henry V, Act 2, Scene 2

Isn't public domain content a wonderful thing?

A new book from Harvard Business School, Code Name Ginger, describes the development of the Segway scooter, and the various people who participated. Here is an excerpt from the book describing a meeting between vanture capitalist John Doerr, Apple's Steve Jobs, Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, and the Ginger project planners.

"Good morning to everyone," said Tim, smiling at the front of the table. "Before we start, we'd like to ask you to hold your questions until after each presentation."

"Yeah, right!" snorted Bezos, followed by that honking laugh.

"Otherwise we might as well not be here," said Jobs.

"How long is your presentation?" asked Doerr. "Each pitch is about ten minutes."

"I can't do that," said Jobs. "I'm not built that way. So if you want me to leave, I will, but I can't just sit here."

When the Segway was unveiled, I have to say I was underwhelmed. I still am. Apparently I'm not the only one.

Fourteen months after being marketed to businesses and five months after sales to individuals commenced, the Transporter remains more of a novelty than the revolutionary transportation device trumpeted by tech industry luminaries and others. You can usually spot one being demonstrated at an amusement park, or your postal carrier may be testing one, but city streets and factory floors are practically devoid of the gizmos. The device has a top speed of 12.5 miles per hour, up to three to four times the average walking pace.

Doerr, Jobs, and Bezos are all smart guys. Yet they are all also all billionaires, able to buy whatever consumer goods they want without a second thought; so even with all the critical thinking going on at their meeting, it didn't occur to any of them to ask the most fundamental question:

Why would Americans, with an average household income in the $35,000 range, spend $5000 to buy a high-tech skateboard?

I live about six miles from work, and could probably scrape together $5K if I wanted to. I am presumably squarely in their target demographic. Yet I have no desire whatsoever to buy one of these devices.

At 12 miles per hour, it would take me half an hour to get to work, even under ideal conditions. With no roof and no air conditioning, this means I spend half an hour either baking in the sun, and show up at work drenched in sweat (this is Houston, after all), or getting soaked to the bone in the rain.

There's no cargo space, so I'm limited to what I can tuck under an arm, or stuff into a backpack. Stopping for groceries on the way home is not an option.

I would have to navigate around Houston traffic -- there isn't continuous sidewalk from home to work, and even if there were, I'd still have to cross at intersections -- without benefit of bumpers, seatbelts, or airbags.

All this for a mere five thousand smackers. What a bargain.

What the hell were they thinking?

Winds of Change has a new contributor: none other than Baghdad Bob, who will now be handling the Error 404 duties.

Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings presents a nice overview of the history of comics, in the form of an attempt to categorize the history into more-or-less discrete Ages. The Golden and Silver Ages are fairly well defined (Golden begins in 1939 with the intro of Superman in Action Comics #1; Silver in 1956 with the intro of the modern Flash in Showcase #4); but the history of the medium since then is a bit harder to get a handle on. Henley gets it right, I think, by concentrating less on the creative content, and more on the business and distribution model surrounding the medium.

The current model has (mostly) monthly periodicals distributed (mostly) to specialty shops that also (mostly) deal in games. This first run might not truly be considered a loss-leader -- I don't know if it makes money for the publishers or not -- but the real money materializes when the best of this content is collected into trade paperbacks, which can be marketed to the big-box bookstores and mall outlets, and even general retailers (both real-world and virtual).

Interestingly, Henley misses another link in this chain, as free web-based content may form another, earlier stage in this process. Liberty Meadows, PVP Online, and Dork Tower are all being collected and published in periodical comic format (with some new comic-book-only material); others, such as Jesse Chen's She's a Nightmare, aspire to do the same. If they do well, they may in turn be collected as paperbacks.

If this works, it may develop into a complex multi-tiered commercial ecology with very low barriers to entry (other than sweat equity). Free internet distribution at the entry level, with possible syndication in daily or weekly print publications; monthly or bi-monthly collections distributed to specialty shops at the next level; and trade paperbacks distributed to booksellers at the top of the economic pyramid.

I wonder, too, if a similar economic pyramid may develop for prose offerings as well. The Onion or the vast Lileks empire may prove to be a model for this. (And whatever happened to the warblogger book someone was working on way back when?)

Interesting, and worth watching in the future.