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Friday, December 27, 2002
News for everybody. Stuff that really matters. 
| | The story hasn't hit Google News, meaning the bigger papers and news services haven't picked it up yet. (When they do, this link will bring results. Meanwhile the SB site will scroll the original off the web in a few days.) |
| | UCSB history professor Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's upcoming book on Japan's surrender at the end of World War II may well rewrite popular history... |
| | The historical record holds that Japan surrendered in response to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States. Revisionists argue that the Japanese were already defeated at the time, and the atomic bombs were used simply to intimidate the Soviet Union. |
| | Mr. Hasegawa dismisses both views as "very, very American-centric." |
| | Instead, he suggests the Soviet Union played the most decisive role in bringing about Japan's decision to surrender in "Race to the Finish: Stalin, Truman and Japan's Surrender in the Pacific War," to be published by Harvard University Press next year. |
| | It was Josef Stalin's final-hour declaration of war on Japan that marked the end of the conflict in the Pacific, according to Mr. Hasegawa, whose specialties include Russian and Soviet history as well as Russo-Japanese relations. |
| | He also refutes the idea that President Truman bombed Japan because it refused to surrender unconditionally under the July 1945 Potsdam proclamation. Instead, Mr. Hasegawa suggests, Truman may have included the surrender clause, knowing that Japan would not agree... |
| | "His findings are going to be controversial," said Fredrik Logevall, a fellow history professor at UCSB who teaches American foreign policy with an emphasis on the Cold War, and who with Mr. Hasegawa founded the newly named Center for Cold War Studies. |
| | The story goes on to quote others who disagree with Dr. Hasegawa (here's his UCSB bio page, with an unfortunate photo). As no doubt will many others. (This is fresh meat to warbloggers and peacebloggers alike.) |
| | Even though I doubt President Truman used Potsdam's unconditional surrender demand as an excuse to drop the bomb (Searls' Corollary to Winer's Law: It's more complicated than it appears), something about Dr. Hasagawa's revisionist account rings true to me. Even if it's just one more truth among the many that will ultimately be told, it's one we could use right now, while we're getting ready to bomb the crap out of Iraq while also protecting Seoul and Los Angeles from Pyongyang, |
| | There's no excuse not to revisit history that might be more relevant than it appears. |
Blive from Iraq
| | You learn to deal with the scheduled blackouts, you know when they are and for how many hours. But the last couple of days have been really bad. Very erratic, they turn it on and off whenever they like. We just freeze and thaw then freeze again. It has been very cold for the season and it is expected to get colder. The prices of kerosene heaters have gone thru the roof. There is a local factory, state owned, which manufactures these heaters, 130,000 Iraqi Dinars a pop. But buying one requires approval from the general manager. Don't ask. I can't figure why. It wouldn't be called bureaucracy otherwise. |
Markets are relationships
| | Speaking of undentity, EJN is still at it on the NEA thing, and also carping on Verisign's latest venalities. Meanwhile, here's Dr. Weinberger, who also responds to what Bryan Field-Elliot says here (where his red herring line is "Strong Identity" (what Doc calls "full power") is synomymous with Digital Rights Management. You can't have one without the other.) Bryan's response to DW is here. It's real good stuff, but it ends with this: |
| | Incidentally, the task of offering a personal identity information authorization system is the goal of the Liberty Alliance Protocol, version 2.0, due next year. And (again based upon my earlier article), I believe that while the software-only approach of LAP-2.0 will be a giant step forward, it will by definition (because it's software-only) lack the kind of teeth consumers will demand. The same kind of teeth that the major content companies want in DRM. |
| | My response to both gentlemen is this: |
| | DigID will never join the suite of the Net's basic services if the word "consumer" applies to what it's about. If we substitute "customer" everywhere "consumer" appears, we'll start making useful sense. |
| | The Net is a world of ends. DigID is a means to every end's ends. That principle applies equally to the biggest supplier and the smallest customer. The teeth that matter, however, are the ones the customer controls. Without sovereign customers, we don't have marketplaces — just more distribution systems that assume the label. |
| | SourceID's job is to give customers the tools they need to initiate, change and maintain relationships with vendors and other parties in marketplaces. Those relationships need to be voluntary, not coercive. |
| | Microsoft's, Liberty's and PingID's jobs are to find ways of equipping and welcoming those customers, and of generally helping customers do business in the world in more ways that are under the customer's control. If DigID is about vendors owning or controlling customers, or about limiting customer choices, it will fail. |
| | Unfortunately, that's what DRM has been about since the beginning. Its letters are sewn onto the entertainment industry's anti-Net flag. It's swung constantly as a sword against "piracy" and "theft." If we want the geeks of the world to support the good work SourceID is up to (and we'll fail if they don't), we'd better come up with a new TLA. Mabye VRA, for Vendor Relationship Management. |
| | Because that's what customers really want. Hey, if I want to rent a Ford Focus in Raleigh next month, and want every agency in town to bid for my business, I should have a way of inviting those bids without uncorking a torrent of sales calls. If I want my GPS-equipped PDA to tell me there's a coffee shop coming up at the next exit, the VRA protocols and APIs of my DigID should inform vendors with which I already relate — or would like to relate — that I'm coming down the pike. If Larry Lessig wants to stay only at hotels that offer free Intenet access, that preference should be part of his DigID, and known to the companies and intermediaries with which he has relationships, or is willing to have relationships, on his own terms as well as theirs. |
| | We don't have any of that today. If we did, the economy would be a lot more upbeat for the simple reason that customers pay more to vendors and suppliers with whom they relate than to those from whom they only consume And do it more often, too. |
| | Think relationships. Equip them with the stuff of function and trust. |
| | Do that and we'll be empowering marketplaces to degrees we've never seen before. |
First drive-ins go to hell. Now this.
Undentity
| | The Dow that can be charted is not the eternal Dow. |
| | The name that can be registered is not the eternal name. |
Yes, both. In droves.
| | The lack of broadband access at hotels drives me nuts. It was bad enough when you had to carry a screw driver and alligator clips. But it's been years since cheap and effective broadband technologies should have been deployed in major hotels. So it was a pleasant surprise when I received spam about this offer from W Hotels -- offering "free" Broadband Internet Access plus telephone calls -- for stupid people, apparently.... |
| | So: if you use the internet to get WIRED rooms with the W, you'll pay $100 more a night than if you use the internet to get "Internet Only" rates. Only with "Internet Only" rates, you don't get the internet. To get the internet with internet only rate rooms, you have to pay $9.95. Go figure. At least you'll be saving about 90 bucks. |
| | Hey hotels, here's an idea: Just offer simple, unfirewalled, wireless broadband access on 1/2 your floors; charge $10 more per room, and see what the market demands. And stop picking on stupid people. |
| | Since it's an old post, I'm wondering if W has gotten the clues yet. Anybody know? |
More vocabulary challenges
Why sweat Saddam?
Random acts of senseless prophesy
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