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Friday, December 27, 2002
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 Friday, December 27, 2002
started 12/27/2002; 2:10:20 AM - last post 12/29/2002; 9:55:16 AM
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Doc Searls - Friday, December 27, 2002 
12/27/2002; 6:10:20 AM (reads: 7809, responses: 3)
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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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leonid - Re: Friday, December 27, 2002
12/29/2002; 12:34:53 AM (reads: 1176, responses: 2)
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Re: Japan capitulation in WWII.
That's what Russian history courses have always been teaching.
We also have bean taught in Russia that nuclear bombing was used for intimidation of the Soviets only because Japanese were ready to surrender at that time.
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Doc Searls - Re: Friday, December 27, 2002
12/29/2002; 1:36:45 AM (reads: 843, responses: 1)
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Wow.
Can you point to something on the Net that corroborates this? It's extremely interesting.
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leonid - Re: Friday, December 27, 2002
12/29/2002; 1:55:16 PM (reads: 1014, responses: 0)
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I made a search in the 'net but most materials are in Russian. E.g. this analysis has been written by professor Afilov, doctor of history: "Causes and Consequences of the Entry of the USSR in War on the Far East" http://www.ng.ru/polemics/2000-09-02/8_reasons.html.
I tried to translate some parts here (sorry for the grammar):
"In the summer 1945 Japan was in a condition to linger the war against China, USA and the Great Britain. By August, 1945 its armed forces totaled about 7 million. Besides, there was an opportunity to mobilize additional 1.5 million. Allied command assumed that landing to the islands will cost USA and the Great Britain of one million lives. American intelligence reported that Soviet operations against Japan are extremely desirable since it was impossible to achieve capitulation of Japanese by neither blockade, nor bombardment. Moreover, Churchill believed and Americans agreed that without participation of the USSR they would need 1.5 year to defeat Japan."
"In Washington it was well understood, that the introduction of the USSR into war against Japan will be recognized in the world as event of huge value. Therefore Truman aspired to take steps, which would weaken this impression.
The president of the USA has had big hopes to nuclear bombing, brutal in the essence. 447 thousand civilians were killed and crippled.
Application of nuclear bombs has not made the Japanese command sober. Japanese had continued to stake on a lingering of the war."
"Powerful attacks of the Soviets against 1 million Kwangtung Army in the first days have put Japan before catastrophe. August 14 the joint meeting of the Supreme military council and the government at the presence of emperor has made the decision on capitulation. Military actions however did not stop."
"The Soviet armies continued to carry out the fighting ... By August 25 the Soviet armies have cleared completely all southern part of Sakhalin. By September 1st they have finished route of the opponent on Kuriles. In these areas it was captivated 63,840 Japanese soldier and officers. In total during almost monthly continuous fights with the Soviet armies 83,737 Japanese were killed and 594 thousand captured"
"Entry of the USSR into war against Japan had huge value for outcome of whole Second World War. Defeat of the Kwangtung Army - the main land forces - has sped up the defeat and unconditional surrender of Japan. That was the major military-political result of the war of Soviet Union against Japan.
In the post-war period in the West many efforts were enclosed to belittle a role of the USSR in defeating of Japan.
Completely different, truthful appreciations of the role of Soviet Union in the war against Japan were given by Americans on the eve and right after the end.
For example, Senator Connelly, when learned about the announcement of the Soviet government August 8, 1945, exclaimed: "Thank goodness! War is almost finished ".
General Chennault, commander of the USA air forces in China, said to a correspondent of "New York Times" on August 15: "The entry of Soviet Union into war against Japan became the determinative which has sped up the ending of the war in Pacific ocean that would take place even if nuclear bombs would not be used. The fast attack by Red Army on Japan, has finished the encirclement, resulted in putting Japan on the knees"
Again, my apologies for the grammar and accuracy especially when I translated Americans from Russian to English :)
On the different note, it always amazes me how differently Russians and Americans tell the history of the WWII. E.g., who was the major force in defeating Germany?
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