90% Crud

NYC building code as code

The city of New York is doing a complete rewrite of its building code. They're throwing out their existing code and rewriting it from scratch. Maybe it's because I'm myopic, but the first thing I thought of when I found out about that was the similarity of computer code and law.

Lots of coders get to the point with unwieldy code where they want to throw it out and start from scratch. Take Things You Should Never Do, Part I from Joel on Software:

Programmers are, in their hearts, architects, and the first thing they want to do when they get to a site is to bulldoze the place flat and build something grand. We're not excited by incremental renovation: tinkering, improving, planting flower beds.

That sounds an awful lot like what they're doing with the building code, saying that it's completely unmanageable and needs to be rebuilt from scratch. Compare

"The code reflects the experience that has been accumulated in New York City over a century," said W. Gene Corley, a structural engineer who led a federal investigation into the World Trade Center collapse. "It has codified those things that are needed to provide the safety the public expects."

with

The programmer might have spent a couple of days reproducing the bug in the lab and fixing it. If it's like a lot of bugs, the fix might be one line of code, or it might even be a couple of characters, but a lot of work and time went into those two characters. When you throw away code and start from scratch, you are throwing away all that knowledge. All those collected bug fixes. Years of programming work.

The solution to this instinct in the software world has been to refactor the code, to go through and clean up the parts that are messy while not changing what it does. I don't think that solution would work well in law simply because everyone in charge of the law is trying to get re-elected and code maintenance doesn't win votes. Good thing, too, because it would put those "It's illegal to ride a squid on main street" odd law books out of business.

The urge to rewrite isn't the only similarity between law and software. There's been battles over copyright on law text which echo the issues of open source software. Ultimately software acts as physical laws for computer mediated environments, where government provides social laws for the real world. I wonder how much law makers and software engineers could learn about their processes from each other.

Sites that I wish weren't down (an incomplete list)

• GeoURL (Wayback)
• Localfeeds
• Government Information Awareness (Wayback)
• Artificial Slip (Wayback)
• Dysfunctional Family Circus (Wayback, Story about its takedown)

Missing the point of comments

mathowie wrote up a bit on this post about a show called Overhaulin'. What's remarkable is that the people leaving comments think that they are sending a message to the people from the TV show.

hi my name is mary langford,my husband and son have been fixing up this 87 bmw for 3yrs. i would assist overhaulin in stealing this car for a good makeover. this car looks the same as when he got it.please help mary langford,april 28

He speculates that people are typing something into Google and expecting the magic of the Internet to take them to the right place. While it speaks highly of Google's technology and brand, it also speaks poorly of people's reading comprehension skills.

This is something I'm actually familiar with, because searching for "Tony Hawks email address" lists this post from last August in the number two slot. The best part is that the post in question links to a site where a comedian named Tony Hawks responds to emails he gets for pro skater Tony Hawk. I'm getting mistaken comments from people who really just want to send mistaken emails.

As recently as yesterday I've gotten comments from people who want to get in touch with the skater, with whom I have no pre-existing relationship aside from the royalty checks he gets from me buying his game.

I'm not alone either, the number 3 result is getting these too, including a 10 year old who posted on my site. Where are this kid's parents, do they have any problem with their 10 year old putting his contact information on any website he comes across?

E-voting Scandal

There's a storm brewing. There's a new way for people to make their voices heard, but problems with the technology and malicious, computer savvy crackers are causing some serious doubts about the results. Many people think that the new electronic vote counters are too flawed to be trusted, especially after the how close the last race was.

No, it's not Diebold, it's American Idol.

American Idol Outrage: Your Vote Doesn't Count (via Waxy.org: Links) takes a look into how the votes are being counted, how they're being manipulated and why. The biggest problem is that they are using phone networks instead of data networks to receive votes.

Because phone networks can be tied up so easily, people with access to industrial strength dialers can attempt to prevent regular people from getting through. While it seems like it's just a jerk move, they can actually profit by betting on an underdog choice at sites online. Then they flood the lines to prevent the more popular candidate's votes coming through.

It's an good study in network security and DDoS attacks, but it should be interesting to see whether people get more upset about failures in the technology controlling American Idol voting or presidential and congressional elections. I really hope that it's the latter.

Reuters TV RSS Feed

While not exactly broadcatching, I'm consistently impressed with the World News from Reuters Television RSS feed (preview). They provide links to Real Video streams that show sometimes polished, sometimes raw television segments about world news. They show the fighting on the streets and the government hearings that are important news. Plus, it's a peek into the future of television when no one will be beholden to network time schedules, a joy TiVo owners know all too well.

Firefox, Flash and OS X

[Update: It looks like a lot of people are finding this page when searching for "firefox flash." If you're looking for instructions on how to get Flash working on Firefox, try downloading Flash player or just go to Mozilla Plugins for easy-to-install plugins. You might want to get Java while you're at it.]

If you're using Firefox on OS X, you've probably seen the Flash problem. Bug 106397 describes the problem pretty well, basically Flash is hella slow, can lock up or even crash Firefox and the only way to try to recover is to hold down the mouse button. It is by far my biggest complaint with Firefox, and Mozilla in general. My favorite part is that the bug was opened in late 2001 and still hasn't been resolved, 2 1/2 years later.

Safari isn't a much better alternative, due to the fact it sometimes gives me the spinning beach ball when I load Bloglines or when I click on a mildly complicated form. I wish Apple had put its energy into Gecko instead of KHTML, but I suspect Dave Hyatt got tired of being frustrated with Gecko on Camino and wanted a new type of frustration.

I'm probably going to have to start playing with adblock, which kind of sucks because I don't want to deprive sites of their income. On the other hand, I rarely click ads anyway, so it won't be a huge loss to anyone.

[Update: Steve pointed out FlashBlock in the comments, which may be exactly what I was looking for. Well, almost exactly what I'm looking for. Exactly what I'm looking for would be for Bug 106397 to be closed.]

New TidyText Pricing

I'm pleased to announce a great new pricing structure for TidyText! While it was free and I am able to support myself through related business activities, I feel that everyone would benefit from me adding surprisingly expensive, restrictive and arbitrary restrictions - especially my prime demographic of poor students (see, I need to make more money to learn more words like demographics, or as we in the "biz" say, "demos").

Also, if you were planning on using TidyText for a commercial product, good news! I've jacked up the price so high that it's got the same price point as some professional tools! Unfortunately, this isn't well suited for commercial sites and the only reason it was considered in the first place was because of the low cost, but I'm sure I'll make a ton of money without the evangelization of the cheap webloggers who spread the word.

Personally, I don't have a problem with SixApart trying to make money, but the terms seem a bit out of whack with what I would think the market will bear. I'm just going to keep using Movable Type 2 unless I decide to ditch a bunch of weblogs and authors or if one of the challengers to the MT throne can wow me away. I might have paid $40-$50 to keep my current 4-5 weblogs with 5-10 authors if MT 3 had some impressive new features, but I don't have $100 - $150 to spend on software that has reasonable open source competition. Also, isn't it weird that they allow more weblogs than authors? I know a lot of collaborative weblogs, but not too many people who keep more than 1-2 personal weblogs.

• Multiple Weblogs: One Movable Type installation can support multiple weblogs, as permitted by your license.
• Comments: Create and manage a community on your weblog by letting readers respond to posts with their thoughts. Comments can be enabled or disabled on a per-post or per-weblog basis, and an extensive suite of tools for managing, authenticating, and approving or disapproving reader comments is available.
• Multiple Authors: Movable Type supports the creation of new authors in the system, as defined by your software license. Each of these authors can be assigned specific permissions on a per-weblog basis, giving you fine-grained control over the activities of your users.
• Thumbnail creation: Movable Type automatically creates thumbnails from uploaded images, eliminating the need for processing pictures with image editing software.
• Publishing API: Movable Type 3.0 supports the MetaWeblog and Atom APIs, allowing you to use a broad range of existing client tools to manage your blog, with AtomEnabled support that allows developers to use a single XML format for syndication and publishing.

EV1 Servers?

Does anyone have any thoughts one way or the other on EV1 Servers? I can get a Red Hat or FreeBSD box with 1 TB of transfer for $99/mo, and I already have one friend to defer the cost / admin duties. mathowie seems to like it. I like the idea of being able to do interesting things like host BitTorrent files without abusing our graciously donated bandwidth on the current server.

E3 So Far

So here's a list of E3 news that has peaked my interest, in no particular order:

• Gameboy DS - As Leslie points out, everything old is new again


• Metal Gear Acid (PSP)


• Metroid Prime: Hunters (DS) - seems like a useful application of the second screen
• Mario 64x4 (DS) - I've actually never played Mario 64, but gives you an idea of how much power the DS has


• Punisher (PS2 XBOX) - Remarkable because Garth Ennis wrote the script and it's bound to be bad because it's based on a movie and a comic book. I did like the Spider-man game though...


• Nightmare Before Xmas (PS2) - I would have thought that it was a little late to come up with a game for this, although they probably won't include a hidden level where I have my first date at it.


• Tron 2.0 (GBA) - The PC game was fun but this looks awful
• Prince of Persia 2 (XBox, PS2, GCN) - 2005 never seemed further away


• Tribes: Vengeance (PC) - It's worth noting that Tribes 1 and 2 are available for free downloads


• Geist - I'm hoping more info shows up about this, because the stuff I was hearing about it last year sounded really cool.


• Metroid Prime 2: Echos - What? Nintendo milk a license? Why I never!
• Mario Kart DS


• Wario Ware DS - Wario Ware alone justifies the purchase of a DS


• Animal Crossing DS - Is AC a popular license? Even Jenny-the-Sims-addict doesn't really play it much


• Zelda: Four Swords Adventures - Following in the footsteps of FF: Crystal Chronicles


• GoldenEye: Rogue Agent - Probably the most convoluted title justification in history.


• Metal Slug Advance - About damn time


• Metal Slug 4 & 5 (PS2) - The PS2 needs more sidescrolling shooters

This is just stuff that caught my eye so far. What did I miss?

[Update: I just noticed that everything on the list besides Geist is a sequel or a license in some form or another. This is partly because familiar stuff caught my eye when going through the list, but there's certainly no shortage of sequels.]

Kinder, Happier Real Player

Yeah, the free player is a lot easier to find now:

T-Mobile Rumor Mongering

According to Duane if you call T-Mobile before 11:00 AM Eastern time you will get an American representative. After 11:00 AM the calls are off shored to India or whatever country they send the calls. This is based on his experience of calling them every 4 days for a month because they are fucking him over on his Nokia 3650 order. This seems a little odd though, due to the fact that 11:00 AM Eastern is 8:30 PM in New Dehli but maybe that's just how the work shifts go over there.

New Résumé

Not that I'm looking for work, but I'm working on my new résumé. It's not done yet, but I'm not sure what else I need in there.

How the Internet is broken, how to fix it, and why that's not going to happen

The Internet is broken. Not in a "I-put-the-Internet-in-the-recycle-bin" kind of way, in the "data-won't-go-from-one-computer-to-the-other" way. You probably don't believe me, which is understandable considering that you're reading this over the Internet. Let's try a little experiment.

Chances are you're behind a router. Open up AOL Instant Messanger (or a reasonable facsimile) and try to send a file to someone else behind a cable modem. Chances are it won't work, because the Internet is broken. This is one example, there are plenty others. Enabling computers to talk to each other is the fundamental purpose of the Internet, but as it stands personal computers have to go through servers to talk to each other.

What's happened is these NAT routers that enable multiple computers to connect to a single cable modem aren't a perfect solution. They're a horrible solution, in fact. The networking equivalent of using water in your radiator - it'll work in the short term but come winter your pipes will explode. John Walker, creator of AutoDesk, has written about this and other threats to the Internet in The Digital Impimatur.

The typical home user never notices NAT; it just works. But that user is no longer a peer of all other Internet users as the original architecture of the network intended. In particular, the home user behind a NAT box has been relegated to the role of a consumer of Internet services. Such a user cannot create a Web site on their broadband connection, since the NAT box will not permit inbound connections from external sites. Nor can the user set up true peer to peer connections with other users behind NAT boxes, as there's an insuperable chicken and egg problem creating a bidirectional connection between them.

Sites with persistent, unrestricted Internet connections now constitute a privileged class, able to use the Internet in ways a consumer site cannot. They can set up servers, create new kinds of Internet services, establish peer to peer connections with other sites--employ the Internet in all of the ways it was originally intended to be used. We might term these sites "publishers" or "broadcasters", with the NATted/firewalled home users their consumers or audience.

There's a lot of things that you can do with an Internet connection that you can't do with a NAT connection - for instance sites like LegalTorrents give preferential treatment to people on Internet connections and gamers behind NAT connections can't host games. So why do people use NAT routers?

Most ISPs only give their customers 1 IP address, which allows a computer to communicate on the Internet. If you want to hook up more than one computer, you either need to buy a NAT router or more IP addresses, assuming that your Internet provider even offers them. ISPs are only stingy with IPs because IP addresses aren't as plentiful as they once were.

Routers typically assign their computers addresses that start with 192.168, 172.16 or 10. These are parts of the Internet dead zone - it's impossible to communicate across the Internet to these addresses. Since you can't reach them, routers use them as private addresses. So even though your computer has an IP address 192.168.0.2 and your friend's computer is 192.168.0.3 they can't talk to each other because they're on private networks. That's why your file transfer fails.

The current system the Internet uses is IP version 4, which is limited to roughly 4 billion addresses, give or take. While that seems like a lot, think of how many IP addresses you personally have. There's your computer at home, your computer at work, your cell phone (yup, they have IPs), your TiVo (it updates over the Internet) or your XBox or your PocketPC or anything else that uses the Internet. Suddenly 6 billion people sharing 4 billion addresses doesn't seem that plentiful.

It seems odd that something as ethereal and arbitrary as IP numbers could be scarce. After all, if we run out can't we just make more? Unfortunately, that would be a bit like printing your own form of currency when your run out of money. No one would know what to do with the new stuff, so it would be worthless. What's needed is a new set of IP numbers that have enough addresses for now and the future. Geeks reading this already know what I'm getting to: IPv6.

IPv6 has roughly 1,200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 addresses to IPv4's 4,000,000,000 addresses. If we used IPv6 instead of IPv4, every computer on the Internet would have its own IP address and we could freely send files or host games on our XBoxes or do any number of things that come with being a real Internet citizen. Great, so where do you sign up? Not so fast.

The good news is that most operating systems support IPv6 - Windows XP and 2000, Mac OS X and (unsurprisingly) Linux. Unfortunately, there's a bit of a chicken and egg problem with IPv6. IPv6 doesn't have backwards compatibility built in, so people on IPv6 networks can't talk to the IPv4 Internet. Since few people are using it, there aren't many services for it. And since there aren't many services for it, few people are using it. The NAT router solution is "good enough" for most people, and they don't know that things could be better.

OK, hopefully I've convinced you that there is a problem with the Internet. Luckily, there's a way to slowly migrate from IPv4 to IPv6 - upgrade Linksys NAT routers.

While I can't find the market data, my own experiences tell me that Linksys is the most popular NAT router provider for people on home broadband. They pick up one of Linksys' little purple boxes, plug it in and it works. They make a quality product and its hard to argue with that.

There's a program called 6to4 that will allow IPv6 networks to talk to each other through a gateway. If Linksys were to start installing this software by default on their routers and providing a gateway to connect their users, this would jump start the IPv6 revolution.

If they included IPv6 software, not much would be different from the perspective of users. People would still just plug it in and it would still just work, but it would also be assigning compatible computers IPv6 addresses in addition to those 192.168 IPv4 addresses. That would provide enough of a market to get a few niche applications ported. Suddenly people who were using IPv6 AIM would be able to transfer files, or IPv6 XBox Live would allow anyone to host a game. That would be enough to drive the push to IPv6, and within a few years cable and DSL providers would start offering IPv6 addresses.

Now I like to think I'm a pretty smart guy, but the people over at Linksys are much smarter than me, especially when it comes to networking. They've most likely thought of exactly this plan (if they haven't they are more than welcome to implement it with my blessings). So why haven't we seen any movement on this front?

Linksys is the biggest provider of NAT routers, and NAT routers are a huge part of Linksys's customers. When IPv6 finally comes into its own, no one will need routers. That will put a huge dent in the bottom line, and could possibly shut them down. So what incentive does Linksys have to take the initiative on this front, if IPv6 will ruin their business? To me, it seems like a classic market faliure (unlike QWERTY) and I have serious doubts as to whether we'll ever get IPv6 addresses.

RSS To Fortune

OK, this could be the most useless service on the web, but I made it and there's nothing you can do to stop it. I cajoled Andy Baio into putting his Links Archive up, then berated him for not putting them in the file format used by fortune.

So here's a little program to convert RSS feeds to fortune files. Don't ask me what good it will do you. And the source is simple enough that anyone who would need their own copy can most likely write it themselves, considering the audience. Not that I'm sure why anyone would need their own copy.

[Update: OK, fine, the source is at http://george.hotelling.net/projects/rss2fortune.phps]

Reminder

Friday, May 7th 2004 is No Pants Day. That is all.

One Worm To Rule Them All

Every day we hear about new worms circulating our networks, if it's not Sasser it's Netsky or MyDoom.

I've heard a lot about the monetary cost of these worms, usually from companies that profit from the hystaria surrounding them. I mean, the virus and worm writers create the market for anti-virus software, and the anti-virus software companies feed the egos of the virus and worm writers with their exaggerated figures. It's a wonderfully symbiotic relationship.

Two useful sites are Free-AV.com and Vmyths, the first takes care of malware and the second takes care of the hype surrounding malware. But the hype is interesting, what kind of worm would really put it in perspective? As an intellectual exercise, what would the worm to end all worms look like?

First, it would have to run on several platforms. Windows is a given, especially Windows XP Embedded, which runs on many ATMs. Also, Mac OS X is a prime target due to the lack of anti-virus software (which is due to the lack of OS X viruses). It would be possible to make a multi-platform worm by carrying payloads for both systems and sending them with the appropriate exploit. Linux doesn't seem like as good a target due to its fragmented nature and the higher percentage of Linux users who know how to secure a computer. Still, it would be nice to see a Slashdot discussion about the latest virus without the usual smugness.

I won't really get into delivery methods because Warhol Worms: The Potential for Very Fast Internet Plagues covers this in far greater detail than I would bother with. One thing it doesn't cover is the fact that a lot of pirated software is available on P2P networks, and so infecting those executables seems like a fairly trivial task with a high payoff in terms of infections.

Now for the payload. Most worms these days exist only to propagate, or maybe to destroy some files. While it's annoying, it's not exactly earth shattering stuff. What if the payload contained a network stack for a P2P file sharing network? What if it shared your entire hard drive on a P2P network for the world to search?

We got a glimpse of what would happen when the SirCam emailed private FBI documents to random people. Only with a P2P worm, someone doing a Gnutella search for Paris Hilton might get an Excel spreadsheet with quarterly profits for the Hilton hotel in Paris, thanks to an infected computer. That's as close as I can imagine to a non-nuclear information apocolypse.

People would spend all sorts of time searching for words like "confidential" and "private" in hopes of turning up something juicy. Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL database filenames would probably become common searches among curious geeks. And of course, the really scary stuff like credit and medical reports would show up too, remember that this would run on ATMs.

So that's pretty much the worst worm I can think of that doesn't specifically target military or medical machinery. What could be done to protect against it?

Barring some sudden jump in computer science, computers will remain vulnerable to exploits. Barring the invention of a terminal computer worm, people will remain vulnerable to being tricked into running worms emailed to them. The P2P payload problem could be mitigated if it used an easily blockable protocol, there are already network filters that stop popular protocols like Gnutella.

Any thoughts on how a worm like this could be even more devistating or how you would stop a worm like this from spreading?

Voter Discouragement Coming From Campaigns?

Wired has a piece today called Blogs Counter Political Plottings that talks about how social software like weblogs and social networking sites are increasing voter turnout. What caught my eye was this admission from Markos Moulitsas Zúniga:"In a traditional campaign, 'you strip out all of the people you can't control -- to keep as many out of the process as possible,' said Moulitsas."

I've heard this before and touched on it briefly when talking about making election day a national holiday, but reading about it in Wired got me a little more pissed off. I tried to find some information to support the claim, but came up empty. Do campaigns actually admit to discouraging voters? If not, is anyone out there watching who is conspiring against voters?

I understand that lower voter turnout makes elections predictable, which is beneficial to both parties, however I think it's deplorable that we are electing people who don't want to hear what the people have to say. If we have to beg for a holiday from people who have a vested interest in keeping us from electing our own leaders, that says volumes about our republic.

Still, it makes voting more enjoyable if I know that I'm pissing off politicians.

The All Seeing Eye of Coke

Coca-Cola has developed a new can for their prizes that includes GPS to track their winners. It reminds me of the MagiCan promotion where money would pop up in winning cans, only much creepier. I wonder if it would be possible to probe these cans for winners based on their electronics? Given that the winners get an SUV, there's some incentive to try and find them. (via Boing Boing)

HOWTO: How and Why You Would Want To Get Ogg Vorbis on iTunes

OGG? OGG? WTF is OGG? I'll get to that in a moment, and then after I've gotten to that I'll get to two methods for getting Ogg Vorbis files to play in iTunes. One method is insanely easy but will take a while, the second method is much quicker and somewhat harder. Now, I get to the getting to that.

Ogg Vorbis is a free competitor to MP3. "But wait," you say on cue, "MP3s are, err, free-ish. I don't have to pay anything to legally encode my legally purchased CDs on a computer that I certainly didn't win in a bar bet in Tijuana." That's right, you don't have to pay anything, but someone does.

A company called Faunhofer owns several patents that are used with MP3s, and so every time you download an MP3 playing program the maker has to spend money. If you still hate Apple after all they've done for you you could download iTunes several billion times and drive them into a much-predicted bankruptcy. (Probably not)

If you or one of your geeky friends wanted to make your own MP3 player you'd have to pay Fraunhofer, even if you gave it away for free. Sure that seems unlikely - considering the free mp3 players available for download - but my girlfriend seems to insist on cooking from scratch when there's perfectly good meals available in my supermarket's frozen foods and cereal aisles. My point is that people make all sorts of crazy things from scratch, except she doesn't have to pay royalties on her excellent pasta salad.

(Aside: MP3 is short for MPEG Audio Layer 3, and MPEG is an acronym for Motion Picture Experts Group. Does that mean that MP3 expands to "Motion Picture 3," even though it's an audio format? What's the matter, did I just blow your mind?)

Am I against giving Fraunhofer their due? Not really, but I'm not champing at the bit to give them money for something the Vorbis people are able to do for free. Should you get rid of all your MP3s and re-encode all your albums as Ogg Vorbis? If you've got that much time on your hands, I guess, but I'm not doing it.

What should you do with Ogg Vorbis? If you're part of the 83% of musicians that provides music online consider putting up Ogg files. When you rip your new music, rip it as Ogg Vorbis. Or you can just listen to LiveJournal Phone Posts and make fun of people for all their drama.

More importantly, why should you use Ogg Vorbis? Well it sounds better. Also, copyright protections are eroding our rights and by using an open format you know that it won't track users. If you don't think that file formats are that important, Larry Lessig puts forward an excellent case in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace for how computer code is creating laws that no citizen can protest.

So now that the advocacy for Ogg Vorbis is out of the way, continue reading for how to get it going in iTunes.

I promised an easy way and here it is: Contact Apple and tell them that you want Ogg Vorbis support in their products. I told you it was easy, and I also said it would take a while. A long while considering iTunes 4.5 just came out, I wouldn't expect to see iTunes 5 for 12 to 18 months. But this part is key: in their most recent iTunes conference call, Apple said that they don't support Ogg Vorbis because no one is asking for it. Let Apple know that you don't want to rent music, you want to own it. Apple admits that you* are the reason that it doesn't support Ogg Vorbis.

If you don't want to wait for Apple to officially support it (and I don't blame you if you don't), you can still get it working by going to the QuickTime Components project and downloading the Ogg Vorbis plugin for Windows or Mac OS X. Exctract the file and either put it in C:\Windows\System32\QuickTime (Windows) or /Library/Quicktime (OS X) and restart. iTunes will start playing Ogg files! Awesome. That wasn't that much harder than writing Apple, and it's got a much faster payoff. Of course, following both methods yields best results.

*: Yes you. You personally. They named you but Gizmodo wanted to spare you the wrath of Apple zealots and didn't print your name. You should thank them. [back]

Syndication Limits

I can't live without my news aggregator, Bloglines. That's not to say that Bloglines has some mojo that other aggregators like FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, AmphetaDesk, or even My Yahoo! don't have, Bloglines is just the right fit for me. I think I would be more upset if Bloglines were gone for 24 hours than if my email were down for 24 hours. A lot of people seem to agree with me, because Wired News is asking Will RSS Readers Clog the Web? Luckily, this is a somewhat solved problem. (Note, for this post I'll be referring to any syndication format, be it Atom or one of the 7 or so RSS formats as RSS. Deal.)

The first solution is the current set of RSS generators. Take Movable Type for example, it generates an RSS feed for the site and then saves it as a regular file. The beauty of this approach (as opposed to, say, generating the file dynamically) is that Apache or IIS or whatever is pretty good at letting user agents know what they can cache. If a user agent says "don't send this unless it's been changed in the last hour" Apache won't.

Of course, that implies that user agents are smart enough to say that. Atom aggregator behavior outlines some very important tech specs that RSS readers should support. RSS also has useful information about how often it is updated, which an aggregator should take into account. The Perl XML::RSS::TimingBot class is a pretty good example of using information from both the server and the client to save bandwidth.

Unfortunately there will always be bad eggs that don't respect common services, which can be a major burden on network transfer. A service like Feedburner seems like a good line of defense. You tell it the URL of your RSS feed, and then tell subscribers to get your updates from them. That way they can worry about user agents getting out of hand and you don't feel the bandwidth crunch. Of course, then you're relying on a third party service to handle this for you, but I haven't seen any CGI or PHP scripts that will do this for you (yet!).

Rate limiting isn't always a good idea, though. Take Slashdot for example, if you load their feed more than once every 30 minutes one too many times they ban you for 72 hours. Unfortunately they don't make exceptions for sites that distribute their feed, so if (for example) Bloglines or LiveJournal loads the feed too often (or more likely, there's a problem with their rate limiter) 1105 Bloglines users or 536 LiveJournal users load up desktop aggregators and start hammering Slashdot's server. This isn't a hypothetical situation, either. Bloglines is currently banned from Slashdot's RSS feed, and so instead of sending out one RSS feed faster than their limit allows they're sending out 1000 RSS feeds at the limit.

Shrook for OS X has a pretty interesting take on this. Shrook will occasionally load the feed directly from the site, but between loads it will check with a central database that Shrook reports updates to, so if an update happens between normal updates Shrook will find out and fetch the update. This is what weblogs.com was supposed to fix, but in my experience most webloggers don't ping weblogs.com.

The upshot of all of this is that RSS is taking off. If we're moving beyond the starry eyed PointCast RSS-will-save-the-world phase and into the holy-crap-we've-got-to-fix-this phase, that means the technology is actually taking hold. As far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing.

Mission Accomplished

I haven't really posted much on the war in Iraq, but there's been so much going on that I really need to put some of my thoughts up.

First off, I'm a progressive liberal. I don't like the current administration's attempts to turn America into a theocracy, I don't like them using fear to push the USA PATRIOT ACT, which is being used for non-terrorist related drug enforcement. I don't think we should have sent our troops to Iraq.

That said, I don't think that we should bring our troops home either. We shouldn't be there, but since we've destabilized the country we damn well better stay there until it's stable again. We can't simply say Ooops, we went to war under false pretenses and didn't realize how hard it was going to be, so we're going to leave the Iraqis to their own devices. We made a mistake in going into Iraq, but it would be an even bigger mistake to leave now.

Now that I've provided some context for my opinions, here's what I've been seeing lately:

You need to be reading From Ann Arbor to Beirut by David Enders. David is a journalist and University of Michigan alumni who is in Iraq. Some recent posts have included anectdotes about kidnappings and Public Affairs Officers recognizing him from his High Times article.

I spotted this imagery at Seat of the Revolution and thought it was pretty poignant:

The first image is a picture taken of an Iraqi POW that was told that if he fell off of the cardboard box he is on he would be electrocuted. Obviously we don't put people in concentration camps because of their ethnicity (we just deport them) but the similarities are striking. This war was was presented using the language of good vs. evil, it's important to make sure that we stay on the good side.

Another thing to remember is that we didn't go to war with Iraq because we're the good guys. We went to war because Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed a clear and present danger to the United States, which is what made a preemptive war - a war that we fought even though we weren't attacked - acceptable. While I didn't question the existence of WMDs in the buildup to war (I objected to the preemptive declaration of war without international support) I think that it's disgraceful that our bravest men and women are dying because of faulty intelligence.

Is the world a better place with Saddam Hussein in prison? Of course, but if the ends justify the means then any sort of vigilantism is acceptable. Some people don't seem to understand that even though the end result is good, if it comes from bad actions the bad finds its way into the good. Democracy hinges on the rule of law, and if our leader can decide to go above international law, what does that say about our faith in democracy? In November it's important that you exercise democracy and vote against Bush, it's doubly important if you live in a swing state.

Finally, as more and more American men and women die each day in Iraq, it's important to remember the words of our Commander in Chief: There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on. It's that hubris, that arrogance, that cowboy swagger that turns allies into enemies and isn't going to gain the trust of the Iraqi people.

Of course, the opposite sentiment wouldn't necessarily be much better. Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said that Thai troops would be recalled from Iraq if attacked. I'm not sure what's a better way to invite attacks on your troops, to ask insurgents to "bring them on" or to say that as soon as you are attacked you will leave.

Finally, there was a bit in this week's Onion that Extrastout caught:

Bush To Iraqi Militants: 'Please Stop Bringing It On'
WASHINGTON, DC—In an internationally televised statement Monday, President Bush modified a July 2003 challenge to Iraqi militants attacking U.S. forces. "Terrorists, Saddam loyalists, and anti-American insurgents: Please stop bringing it on now," Bush said at a Monday press conference. "Nine months and 500 U.S. casualties ago, I may have invited y'all to bring it on, but as of today, I formally rescind that statement. I would officially like for you to step back." The president added that the "it" Iraqis should stop bringing includes gunfire, bombings, grenade attacks, and suicide missions of all types.