The Chicago Tribune reports that many of the recent pro-war rallies were sponsored by Clear Channel. Clear Channel is currently lobbying against proposed regulatory changes that would limit its ability to expand. This doesn’t diminish or negate the sentiments expressed by those attending, but it sure raises some interesting questions about Clear Channel.
Month: March 2003
Danger has released a developer SDK for the Sidekick, with some interesting restrictions. Namely, user-developed applications can’t be transmitted to the Sidekick over the air unless they’ve been approved by both Danger and (at present) T-Mobile. Let the recrimination phase begin!
I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, it’s hard to deny that part of the Palm’s success was the open SDK and the resulting flood of applications. I want to play IF on my Sidekick… oh. OK, then. (I swear I did not find that link before I chose my sample desired application.) Still, you get the point.
On the other hand, saying that closed-development machines won’t make it in the consumer market is just silly.
The open question, I think, is whether the Sidekick is more like a TiVo or a Palm. The average consumer doesn’t care whether or not he can write applications for his cell phone, or even if there are a lot of third party apps. If the Sidekick primarily appeals to the average cell phone user, the ease of use of the SDK won’t matter. If it’s a high end tech toy, it will be an issue. And let’s remember that despite the avid adoption by the geek market, the Sidekick is intended as a hip teenager-oriented tool.
In other Sidekick news, Danger and T-Mobile released the new software release last week. I can now auto-lock my phone without worrying about not getting phone calls. In an unexpected side benefit, my battery life has been extended by around 50%, which means I can forget to plug it in at night and still have a cell phone in the morning. I don’t know if this is because the keyguard saves a lot of battery life or what, but it’s nice.
Weird little Cheney interview. He says, referring to terrorism, “[T]he United States and the president have been forced to come to grips with issues that our allies to date have not yet had to come to grips with…”
And I really don’t understand that. Has he somehow missed the Red Army, or more recently the Chechnya terrorists who took over a theater in Russia? Shining Path ring a bell? Or, hey, how about the IRA and the Basque separatists? It seems very clear to me that many European nations on both sides of the debate have seen more than enough terrorist activity to get a very clear idea of the issues.
The WISH of the week:
Do you (or your GM) ‘play favourites?’ Do you feel you have to justify your answer? Do you have a horror story to share?
I agree with Greg Morrow’s comments (follow the link above), with some additions. Favoritism shows up most often as spotlight time, a concept I find tremendously useful when thinking about balance. It doesn’t matter if Bob the Paladin can deal out more damage than Ernie the Weedy Cleric if Ernie does all the negotiations and it’s a socially oriented campaign.
Favoritism is rarely, in my experience, a case of the GM giving one player lots of cool things. It’s usually a case of feeding one player spotlight to the detriment of others — and the GM can always do that. It’s easier to do that without feeling unfair, too, since you’re just directing the story in an interesting direction.
Now, there is another form of favoritism that’s even subtler and in some ways more insidious — campaign discussion. What happens when a GM spends a lot of time talking about a campaign with one of the players, but not others? The same kind of spotlight problem, but the other players can’t see it. The effects are still there, though.
(And nah, nobody I’ve played with a lot over the last five years has had either of these faults in anything more than the most minor ways. I share Greg’s worry that I hog spotlight, though.)
The other day, I was debating the legality of entering my apartment without prior notice with my landlord when my neighbor got home. My neighbor is French; I don’t know the first thing about him other than that. He’s quiet. My landlord gave up on our conversation, and started haranguing my neighbor about speaking French. “Don’t go speaking French around here! I don’t like what France has been doing!”
I wimped out; I didn’t tell him that my neighbor had every right to speak French if he wanted.
I live about a mile and a half from Harvard; about the same from Tufts, and maybe three miles from MIT. It doesn’t get much more liberal college town than this. Still, my landlord was yelling at my neighbor, because he is French.
This is kind of trainspotting at this point, but the Guardian is running live coverage of the British House of Commons debate on Iraq. There’s no doubt Blair’s resolution will pass at this point; the question is how many Labour MPs will defect. Robin Cook adroitly separated opposition to war from opposition to Blair’s government yesterday, which makes today more interesting.
There we go. Here’s the full text of Robin Cook’s resignation speech, which I’ve been pitching as a must read, so hurry up already. In other British political news, Clare Short withdrew her threat to resign, confirming everything skeptics think about the left.
So. We’re going to war.
I think a number of things, which I will outline here, as much to remind myself of them in the days to come as for any other reason. I think that regime change in Iraq is an admirable goal; Saddam Hussein is a terrible leader who has caused great harm to his citizens. He is a dictator and a criminal. I have no doubt of this.
I do not think that war is inherently wrong. Given the way in which the international community functions, I was in favor of the war in Afghanistan.
I do not think that Saddam is any kind of immediate threat to the United States. He has no viable nuclear program, despite the fact that he’s been trying to get one for years. He probably has chemical and biological weapons. It is not moral to wage war on a country based on theories about what that country might do. Bush spoke tonight of the moral justification of preemptive strikes. I say this: that there is a difference between the belief that Saddam might someday hurt the United States and the knowledge that Saddam is about to launch an attack. In one case, a preemptive strike is justified. In another, it is not.
I think that had Bush managed to keep UN approval, this war would not be damaging to the United States. As is, there is more anti-American feeling in the countries of the world than there has been for some time. Today, the Canadian Parliament cheered Chretien when he announced that Canadian troops would not participate in this war. This is not an isolated incident. Pursuing this war in the manner that Bush has chosen has an undeniable cost. I do not think that toppling Saddam is worth that cost.
I believe that if Saddam isn’t in a position to launch terrorist attacks today, he wouldn’t be in a position to launch them next year. Let alone in the 30 days provided by Chile’s last proposal for a Security Council resolution. A unified world has kept Saddam from gaining nuclear weapons for over a decade. There’s no reason for that to change.
Despite my opposition to Bush’s war, I hope that it is very successful. Now that the die is cast, I hope that the war ends in a matter of weeks and not months. I care about the lives of US soldiers; I don’t want a long, messy war and I will not hope for one. I think we’ll get a pretty messy war, but I very much hope I’m wrong.
I also hope that those who think Saddam is a real and immediate danger are proven wrong. If Saddam is an immediate threat, Bush’s speech should be quickly followed by devastating terrorist attacks. I don’t think that will happen; by the logic of their positions, many do. I hope they share my desire to be proven wrong.
And there it is.
Two very important speeches were delivered today. One was delivered to the people of the United States; one was delivered to Britain’s House of Commons. I’m glad I had the chance to watch both of them.
President Bush made what we must now consider the definitive Administration case for war on Iraq. Robin Cook made what I consider to be the definitive case against. (I have not found a transcript of the latter, but there is a RealVideo archive.)
I want to encourage everyone to watch or read both. Cook’s speech is a textbook example of how to disagree with governmental policy without being unpatriotic. Bush’s speech, considered objectively, was probably the strongest he has ever made. I suspect most reading this will have read the Bush speech by now; take the time to watch Cook, too.
Edit: trimmed down Cook transcript; Bush transcript. The Cook transcript removed some of the interesting bits, so you should still watch the RealVideo.
Robin Cook and Tony Blair displayed uncommon class in their letters regarding the former’s resignation. That’s how you disagree with someone’s policies without attacking them as a person. It’d make good reading for a lot of people on both sides of the aisle.