Edit : I originally posted this and then quickly withdrew it because, after reading it, I felt my views were both basic and ignorant and my biases were made plain without any factual support. However, I think it’s okay for me to express these views so long as I am prepared to engage them rationally. I understand that most of what I illustrate below is generalizations and bias and not factual information - but I don’t think I’m alone in my sentiment, and that is worth recording. So here is the original post as written.
Let me first make the requisite disclaimer that I am not an expert in this field whatsoever and although I try to be factually accurate in my observations obvious bias and subjectivity will creep in. However, for myself I wanted to put this in writing just to take a snapshot of my thinking on the issue.

It seems in my company, my family and friends, that they are universally opposed and highly critical of Israel and its actions in a large scale. This I find troubling not so much because there is little to be critical of, but the ridiculous distortions or misunderstandings they retain over why they should be critical of Israel and what it is Israel is doing.

Perhaps I’m parroting a certain deputy party leader when I think that Israel is attempting, not always completely successfully to strike a very difficult balance between protection of its people from the greater evil of terrorism through the lesser evil of heavy handed treatment of terrorists and their allies.

The Human Rights Watch, oft-cited as biased AGAINST Israel watches 70 nations and issues reports on them. In 2003, 2004 and 2005, 350 such reports were filed by HRW. A total of 5 dealt with Israel and the Occupied (Disputed) territories whereas 60 reports dealt with the Arab countries and Iran.

Obviously the brunt of criticism against Israel is on its foreign policy, or policy as it relates to what some feel are foreign concerns - Gaza Strip and West Bank. Organizations like the Mossad face heavy criticism by many for their shadowy and allegedly corrupt practices.

When one judges things like this it must be taken in the context of the goals of what they’re doing. Obviously violence is an unpleasant thing and its use must be justified. The Mossad, a relatively tiny intelligence organization is infamous for its espionage in actions such as Wrath of God (made famous in the film Munich). The United States retains the CIA, an organization that although superficially more accountable than the Mossad has been accused of detaining and torturing thousands through out its history. Not to mention attempting or supporting coups in various governments through the use of contras or CIA bankrolled narcotics operations.

The Mossad however, isn’t what gets everyone’s blood roiling when discussing Israel. When people think of Israel they think of jet fighters firing missiles at civilian targets, tanks rolling through villages destroying buildings while women clutching children flee in terror as the IDF occupies and summarily demolishes their homes. People imagine Israeli soldiers arresting civilians indiscriminately in some fascist attempt at rooting out terrorists.

Unfortunately these images are not too far from the truth on occasion. Israel is first and foremost self-interested and self-protective, as any rational nation in this world is - one cannot be the beneficent provider or honest broker if one is not protected. Israel as is plain, is not particularly aggressive, certainly not in the vein of Bush Doctrine large scale preemptive attacks. Israel is unafraid to protect itself through violence, and this is to be expected considering the dire threats it has faced since 1958, threats that far outstretch and overawe those posed by Iraq to the United States.

Here are some questions I’m asking myself, what is a comparable nation to Israel’s situation that has proven to be a better model to have made better decisions given the circumstances around them? What nations who have been continually active in an independent (ie, non-UN) but defensive military action are regarded as respectful of human rights? I wouldn’t know how to answer those questions, so I’m more than welcome to hear some response.

Again, to disclaim, I do not want to seem that I am unequivocally defending Israel’s foreign policy merely that it appears in my experience and with what information I have gathered - however limited. That people’s conception of Israel and the morality and ethicalness of its foreign policy and the factual truth behind it don’t seem to jive. In the sense that there is at least a tacit if not over resentment of Israel’s behaviour and actions that does not take into account the context that Israel fights for existence.

One would think that as Westerners we would be more hopeful and supportive of the only liberal democracy in the middle east, and would spend more time focusing on keeping nations like Saudi Arabia or Syria under the scrutiny of the media and in deliberation of the court of public opinion.

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As I mentioned in a previous post, Sony is releasing their eReader device in Canada at some point in the near future - the completely useless albeit enthusiastic sales reps at the Sony store said that rumour abounds that it might be arriving as early as next month but they honestly don’t know.

One has to love a company that can’t even inform their sales staff when their device might be hitting shelves - especially a device whose sales have everything to gain from foreknowledge of its release. This isn’t some lower priced undercut machine that would suffer from a competitor releasing their model first. The eReader has been on the market for a LOONG time - almost time for a new version to be released in fact and there is not comparable device - it sits in its own comfortable niche.

Speculation is also rampant over this device’s future. Sony is the commanding Shogun of the consumer electronics industry - the entire edifice goes where Sony points. However Sony is expert at destroying what would be a decisive advantage in the consumer electronics realm. From the victory of the VCR to SD Memory cards - inferior technology has reigned supreme through less fascist demand for control and total ownership.

Sony is willing to excise its nose to spite its face - the word rootkit shall ring in the halls of Sony America for quite some time. The PlayStation 3, for the moment is limping along in the battle of the consoles - something the first two never did.

Sony does one thing very very very VERY poorly - compromise. It’s so vaingloriously protective of its content and distribution mechanisms it will literally sacrifice entire product lines and consequent profits in an effort to preserve their unilateral will over content.

The PSP could’ve been a portable version of the original XBox, popular due to its hackability or even just the promise thereof. Instead it’s a very expensive shiny brick that is lagging behind its cheaper, technologically inferior competitor, the DS, by what most people would consider a futile margin. One has to wonder if the PSP is even profitable at this point.

The Mini-disc was a brilliant format - very popular in Japan and potentially wildly successful in a NorthAm that hadn’t yet been enamoured with the white deck of cards that plays music we call the iPod. Sony could’ve owned the mp3 player market before Apple even entered it.

Sony could’ve spear headed wireless home theatre / PC integration. Instead we have renegades like the slingbox. Sony literally could be propelling the market into the future instead of generating profits off of the old stand-by of TV and movies.

So, Sony has cocked up mp3s, digital content delivery, memory formats and seems to have at least be lagging in the video game front. Their TVs are getting overshadowed by Samsung and Toshiba in both size, quality and cost. JVC still beats Sony hands down in handicams - everyone else simply couldn’t afford to make them in a consumer world of cell-phone videos. Canon and Nikon make digital cameras that sony couldn’t dream of producing, from point and shoot to SLRs. I’ve used an Alpha, it’s a nice camera but I’d sooner drop the cash on Pentax then get locked into Sony’s hideously expensive Carl Zeiss lenses

I don’t claim to know Sony’s profitability or business plan inside and out. They could be making more money now than ever - but I doubt they’re growing the way they used to. It used to be a no-brainer when shopping for electronics, if you had the money you bought Sony - it wasn’t the cheapest but it was probably the best for your money. This was common wisdom because it was generally true and the competition generally rolled out crap.

Now, Sony isn’t boss-hog in terms of quality. So, what can it do? Beat the snot out of everyone on innovation and stay away from sabotaging their efforts. As a consumer it’s MADDENING to see a product one really likes, or wants to like, perverted through some ridiculous effort at technological hegemony. Sony has been handing their competition a free lunch for practically a decade through bungling of otherwise sound products. Sony needs to start integrating their products more seriously and allowing flexibility in content distribution.

Sony can learn a lot from Microsoft - it’s good to be a good guy on occasion. When Microsoft stopped being the evil corporation that everyone claims they were and started producing products that didn’t seem like they were intentionally designed to infuriate their consumers they saw huge dividends.

Now, to shout over the roar of anti-Microsoft vehemence I just need to point out a couple examples. Compare the difference between Windows ME and Windows XP Home with Windows XP Home and Windows Vista Home - there’s a big difference in their sensitivity to consumer needs.

Compare Excel in Office XP with Excel 2. They’re spreadsheet applications - the technologically pretty much plateaued immediately after VisiCalc in terms of functionality, everything after Lotus 123 was integration with other apps.

These are just a couple of examples but the list goes on. Microsoft has successfully kept profitable control over all of its rights (the caveat here is profitable control - e.g. enough control to be profitabl) and still releases a slew of new product lines all the time. If one thinks about the quantity of software coming out of that company it’s no surprise they’re the biggest.

Sony is the Microsoft of consumer electronics - they need to start acting like it.

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I sat down last night to design the database schema for the liberal lab application and realized I hadn’t really decided on a logical relationship between articles, users and forums. So that’s what I’m going to has out here.

Firstly we have to decide who has permission to view what content. My initial instinct is to close the forums off to only members while leaving policy drafts open for viewing (but not editing) by the general public. This would allow anyone to view the outcomes of the discussion without being aghast by the nitty gritty of the process. It would also make it trivial to see which policy processes are being productive and are on schedule. It would also encourage each of the discussion groups to produce as the wiki is the only externally accessible result of their efforts.

Authorial authority is another issue to grapple with, who can edit the wiki? Obviously random surfers shouldn’t be able to meddle with it, nor is it a good idea to allow any Liberal Lab member to edit any document. So, only members of the corresponding policy discussion should be allowed to edit a policy draft. Should this be narrower? Considering the initial requirement of parity between forum topics and articles in the wiki it might be wise to limit authorship even further.

This speaks to another relationship to be considered - the parity. Should it be a bi-directional parity or a one-sided push? Meaning, should there always be as many forum topics as document sections? Should I have it push, so when a section is added to a policy document the system starts a new topic, but a new forum topic creation doesn’t necessarily prompt a section generation?

How granular should the parity get? Should each revision generate a new message in the appropriate forum topic?

Moreover, some of the larger issues are how to decide which policy issues to tackle? Should there be a submission period, a sort and then a vote? Should a committee draft up six or seven to choose from and hold a vote? Or should we just allow anyone who wants to moderate a policy discussion to petition to generate a process. These are important problems but aren’t immediately relevant to the database quandry.

I shall have to think about this, but any input from my reader(s) would be appreciated.

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Well, this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone but documents recovered by the press have revealed the Tory proto-policy on net neutrality.

It seems that Industry Minister Maxime Bernier’s advisors recommended against implementing a Canadian version of the Net Neutrality Act. American legislation that ensures ISPs cannot charge for preferential usage of bandwidth.  This prevents a scenario where Time Warner can pay Telus to pipe those damned video banners at high-speed while that obscure Wikipedia article or video about African beetles trickles in with the leftover “free” bandwidth.

Net Neutrality is such a no-brainer policy I’m surprised there’s any controversy at all. The only companies that could possibly want it are headed up by avaricious baby-eating money-grubbers.

Not only am I including commentary here because this is one of those ultra-rare headlines that actually fulfills my blog’s obscure niche (technology and politics) but it’s also an extremely important issue that I don’t want lost on anyone.

The primary opponents to net neutrality, according to the article, are Telus and Videotron. Interestingly, Videotron along with others, recently refused to pay into the Canadian Television Fund. Someone needs to write some angry letters to Darren Entwistle (President & CEO of Telus) and Brian Mulroney (current board member at Quebecor the owner of Videotron).  Not mention our Minister of Industry Maxime Bernier about this.

What’s interesting is that spokespeople for the government are claiming that the Ministry is retaining an “open mind” about net neutrality. I don’t see what exactly there is to debate given the primary issue at hand - this is not an issue of strong controversy with many ethically equivalent sides arguing about something that is vague and far reaching. This is a very definite effort to curtail censorial efforts over what is designed to be a disinterested medium, this is not some “fuzzy” area of techno-mumbo-jumbo.

This is your phone company putting your family on hold whilst telemarketers can get through no problem. This is your library making you wait for books you want while handing you leaflets about phentermine and enlargement pills. This is your TV station making PBS and CBC broadcast a day late while ABC news and Fox get there right on time. The analogies are endless but fact of the matter is, I pay for access to the internet not for access to content ON the internet

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Microsoft, as has been made clear through the endless “wow” marketing campaign intends to make Vista secure, or at least, more secure. Microsoft has taken measure to limit access to the kernel and to tighten the requirements for up-to-date software on for your version of Vista. Symantec, makers of the Norton collection of security packages naturally complains, citing a conflict of interest.

John Thompson, CEO of Symantec likened Microsoft’s not-so-renewed commitment to security to a book keeper being responsible for its own audits. My primary issue with this analogy would be that an audit is there to ensure good bookkeeping, which we know Windows does (devices I plug in work and software I install runs, for the most part). An audit will also detect fradulent input by employees who stole into the bookkeeper’s filing cabinet and falsified the records. This however, should principally be the domain of a responsible book keeper. Just as system security, or at least integrity monitoring should be the domain of a responsible operating system.

Symantec is getting pissy because they have no product’s to offer save those that plug holes in the Windows operating system. Holes Microsoft is sagely going about sealing up itself. My advice to Symantec, research some new markets and start coding

For the record, I am no Windowphile. I cut my teeth on Macintosh and campaigned to keep my household free of the Microsoft contagion as a youth - and with notable success. I wouldn’t trust Windows with anything but the most primitive PC tasks and the ability to run Direct X drivers to play my PC games of choice.

I am, however, no fan of opportunistic business models and company’s that rely on them campaigning to keep them alive to the contravention of the interests of the consumer.

I had the full Norton suite installed on my machine for 34 days, I was absolutely sick of it in two days and decided to give it a chance for a remaining thirty-two. The software hobbled the day-to-day operation of my system in a way not even the most devastating malware has done on any system I have used - and I didn’t have to pay a subscription fee for the privilege either. Moreover, on all three of my PCs I have received a grand total of 4 malware programs all of which were treated within minutes of reading some documentation on ridding my system of the problem. This same documentation was typically annotated with various mentions of how Norton could not rid any system of such problems or that I must disable norton in order to treat the problem.

Suffice it to say I’m in favour of any motion that forces Symantec to deliver a product that doesn’t capitalize on consumers who don’t understand technology and annoys the rest of us who do.

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Strangely, the one thing I get asked about a lot as of late is what I think about the iPhone - as if it’s an issue of controversy where everyone has to form an opinion.

So, here’s my $0.0180 USD on the matter.

MP3 playa + Phone = two devices with different demands

An mp3 player and a phone are two competing devices that are not initially compatible. Apple better be on top of things and pipe your phone audio through the head phones automatically as it’s a pain in the ass to pull out the little buds to answer your phone.

Vibrating rings mess with hard drives. Anything that vibrates shouldn’t be next to a spinning desk, it’s just bad mechanics.

Apple also better be intelligent and have the phone beep into music so you can answer calls while listening. Further, Apple better release high quality HK Bluetooth earphones if they hope to take their wirelessness seriously.

Video player is STUPID 

I know many people who own iPod videos, not one of them actually watches videos on the damn thing. I realize I’m probably some tiny fraction of a minority but I just think making a device that stores and plays videos that’s smaller than an index card is a whoppingly stupid idea. I understand the inclination to have cutting edge features but I would’ve taken bluetooth connectivity over video playback any day.

The World does not need another Phone OS

Having developed for a number of microdevice operating systems I can tell you it sucks and that’s why all the software for them also sucks. Symbian, Palm, Blackberry, even J2ME is frustrating. Apple has never been the paragon of ease of development for native software - they’ve recently taken some steps to alleviate an issue but that just elevates them from industry worst to in the pack with everyone else.

The iPhone better have kick ass Java support, otherwise they’ll be cutting themselves off from a huge chunk of existing software - a mistake Apple seems to ENJOY making. I don’t think it’ll pan out the way Mac OS did…oh wait, Mac OS nearly bankrupted the company until they decided to dress up BSD instead.

But it looks so pretty

The screen is nice and high quality. Should this be in the coffee table book on industrial design alongside the iPod? No. This goes next to the eMate in functional but brainless design. It’s a shiny black brick. Much like the Sony towers made a couple years ago (they look like PC versions of the monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey) they aren’t what you call inspired genius - featureless boxes.

AT&T released buttonless phones WAY back in the 80’s and early 90’s they were total flops. Mind they didn’t have a shiny dynamic animated interface the way the iPhone does and had buttons that were like the Speak-And-Spell toys from Texas Instruments - but nobody liked them because they lacked the tactility. Apple’s trying to work around that by animating shit but I like to be able to dial or even txt without looking at my phone.

Also, much like the blackberries it suffers from the not looking like a phone design problem. I still find it weird and supremely dorky when someone has a plastic box stuck to their ear.

Mac-iness as much a liability as assset

The iPod, despite being indisputably Apple, was reasonably distinct from the Aqua aesthetic, so users of other operating systems didn’t get the false impression of lack of compatibility. If anyone thinks I’m off my rocker, please refer to the “made for windows XP” or “compatible with Mac OS X, Intel and PowerPC” stickers on USB devices with generic universal drivers (eg. keyboards, mice, dongles etc).

The iPhone looks and behaves like MacOS X, this is not a bad thing, Mac OS X behaves nicely - for what it does. However for someone who likes their Windows XP just fine thankyouverymuch something like the Blackberry might be more familiar feeling - not to mention immediately compatible with critical apps for a phone in this market such as Outlook.

Other companies should make their merged phones

Nokia made the horrendous frankenstein N-Gage by merging the hollowed out corpses of two awful devices and producing an unholy taco shaped piece of expensive plastic. (When held to the ear it look eerily like you were conversing intently with a futuristic taco)

However, Nintendo, which likes coming out with enhanced versions of its portable hardware (how many game boys were there? How many GBA’s?) should come out with a GMS version of the DS. They could have a stylus based interface. You phone data could be stored on a special DS card that as a little dongle adapter to connect to your PC to download from Outlook - heck the device could just use Wifi.

The same is true of the PSP - though with bluetooth devices on the existing unit.

Basic Economic Reality 

The matter will be settled largely by economics. If cost of iPhone is greater than cost of iPod plus phone then iPhone is waste of money. If iPhone same cost or only slightly more, then it provides the utility of merging the devices.

I however have been a member of the simplicity and discrete design school for some time. I own an mp3 player, a cell phone and a palm pilot. I bought them all at roughly the same time and I did so not because I couldn’t afford a unified device. I did so because I don’t necessarily need all that functionality all the time and each of the devices does what it does better than a unified device could.

In other news…

The Sony eReader is hitting the Great White North very soon I’m told and I want was desperately. I know my dad, an voracious, and I would get a lot of use of it. My dad would because he reads a lot of books and I would because I read very thick books and this device would be much smaller.

It’s SD card compatible (thank you Sony for not hating your customers) and all around very awesome.

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