The Guardian:

calls to [bin Laden's] laptop-size satphone ... 00873 682505331 ...now hear a message stating he is "not logged on or not in the dialled ocean region"

The Geep - 3d shockwave fun.

After 9/11, "Internet users were more likely than nonusers to display some kinds of emotional and civic engagement with their country."

My server logs still show lots of CRII-infested open-root Win2k machines on the network, and someday someone will use them to launch a distributed denial of service attack. The Net is vulnerable.

Robert Fisk: "Bush originally talked about "justice and punishment" and about "bringing to justice" the perpetrators of the atrocities. But he's not sending policemen to the Middle East; he's sending B-52s."

Salon: "Modern democracies have perfectly adequate justice systems for dealing with terrorists," says William Schabas, a leading international law scholar and director of the Irish Center for Human Rights in Galway. "We track them down, catch them, bring them to trial and impose fit punishment. That is what the United States and the United Kingdom did with those responsible for the Lockerbie crash, and for the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. It is what the U.N. is doing for those accused of genocide and crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda." Indeed, says Schabas, "How much more healthy it is for democracy that Milosevic be judged by an international court rather than murdered by a cruise missile aimed at his home."

There's a hidden message in this picture. Can you guess it?

(Answer here, with a conclusion: "We have analysed two million images downloaded from eBay auctions but have not been able to find a single hidden message". But the bird? And the faux-cool T-shirt?).

Robert Fisk in the Independent:

President Bush is talking about a "crusade'' --it would be difficult to find a word more likely to enrage Muslims-- ­ but if he plans to wage it in Afghanistan, the United States faces a military campaign more fraught and potentially even more costly than Vietnam.

Are you being lied to, yet, or just kept in the dark?
AP: "Pakistani officials have said some skeptics in the region might be more easily convinced of bin Laden's guilt if the United States released more evidence of his involvement. Rumsfeld said it would make no sense to give out intelligence".
National Review: "No one's been told they can't publish or print whatever they want.... Oh, wait. That's not true".
Truth, not the first casualty but likely not the last, is increasingly hard to find.

The Guardian:

"It is already a humanitarian disaster," said Yusuf Hassan, of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Islamabad.

Before any of last week’s events took place, there were already close to one million displaced people inside Afghanistan, and aid agencies were struggling to keep their heads above water. After the evacuation of all international aid agency staff, UNHCR is extremely worried that the situation for all these people – and millions of others – could deteriorate very rapidly, leading to major population movements, and even widespread deaths. Already many people are reported to be too weak even to become displaced. They simply don’t have the strength or the resources to move from their villages.

The petition.

Bruce Schneier:

"Strong police forces without Constitutional limitations might appeal to those wanting immediate safety, but the reality is the opposite... It is our very liberties that make our society as safe as it is.
"I consider the terrorist attacks on September 11th to be an attack against America's ideals. If our freedoms erode because of those attacks, then the terrorists have won. The ideals we uphold during a crisis define who we are."

Back to tech: this made me search for this again: it's the latency, stupid. How long since I read that? Too long.

A surprise. Today, really listen to Dave Winer.

Another surprise. Rudy Giuliani on TV, a man with a mission, doing it well.

Rageboy says:

"'It's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism,' [Wolfowitz] said.
"For many, the sanctuaries and support systems were removed long ago. The logic is backwards. What creates terrorists is living too long in terror. Until you no longer care."

Some amazing pictures from the last couple of days. But the pictures aren't as eloquent as the blog coverage, the personal conversations. Visions of Guy Debord turning in his grave.

Mark Smith has a Groove tool nearly ready. Could be good.

24 hours' silence. Private conversations only.

Google 2.0. Starter:

...browsers are dumb terminals for web servers.
Well, guess what. Microsoft doesn't control very many web servers. They aren't even close to dominating the server market. However, they do control browser software. ... Instead of letting servers control the user experience, they are using the browser to control the user experience.

I don't know what this is, but I intend to find out. "Link this page". Let's see...

Hey - this is good. I'd better buy the book.

Happy 1e9. The time right now (according to my PC clock - try <(@now)> in EasyWeb) is 1000034835 (point 542 with floating-point...). "Gonna party like it's (time_t) 1e9"...

Clay Shirky on Microsoft: "Half a decade or so after announcing Windows Everywhere, Windows is still mainly on the desktop. They don't have a majority market share, much less a monopoly, in any other device class..." (here).

Today I have a lunch meet with Bob and George (what a website!). Should be very interesting.

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) becomes a W3C Recommendation. I like SVG - it's an incredibly flexible and powerful 2D graphics language, and it's XML. Over-specified, meaning that there are only a few really good implementations: the awesome Batik (part of the Apache project), and Adobe's very good Windows ActiveX control. (Adobe don't get links from me anymore, at least for a while). JASC's editor should be worth a look, too.

Syndic8 has some content.

FT series: the telecoms crash. I feel sure we can't blame it all on Gilder, though... The wireless revolution is every bit as real (if the government will allow it) as the telecoms hype was overstated.

Rhythms, Boundaries, and Containers: Creative Dynamics of Asynchronous Group Life. Old and still quite definitive.

What is Linkify?

The NewsClient tool now has a webpage (and an injectable). It's not been resurrected properly, yet, so treat with caution.

My kinda job: "To identify & facilitate opportunites for implementing documentation imaging and to develop sound business justifictions..."

Yesterday along with 15,000 other crazy people, we decided to stand in the rain in Inverleith Park, in the middle of the night, to watch a fireworks display about a mile away. Loved it. Peering at Edinburgh Castle through the mist.