by Merlin Mann

Simple, succinct, awesome.

Evan Osnos from the New Yorker writes of the major change the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is making:

…the Web is set to make “the biggest change technically to the Internet since it was invented…Given the patriotic tendencies of China’s online population, we should prepare to see Web addresses start popping up with 中国 on the end.

Personally, not too excited about this. I think the uniformity of limiting URLs, etc. to the Latin alphabet was a good thing. Sure, maybe those in China and elsewhere felt slighted, but at least there was a common set of characters throughout the web.

I’m not exactly sure why, but for some reason I can see this getting out of hand. Numerous times I’ve ran into the problem of a particular computer not being able to display Chinese characters. I guess for standard web browsing though, your average Internet user in the U.S. probably isn’t going to be browsing through large numbers of Chinese websites. Should be interesting to see if there are any major repercussions from this change.

In the wake of all the hoopla surrounding this hit, I think one important point has been omitted: in this play, David Booth put himself in a vulnerable position to get hit like this. It’s awful any time you see a player absolutely crumple after getting hit like he did on this play, but I think in all the recap, this simple point needs to be remembered. All I’ve heard discussed about this hit is about Mike Richards and no one is talking at all about Booth.

As a former hockey player myself, and having played at a fairly high level, I know that it’s a fundamental part of the game not to put yourself in vulnerable positions where you’re going to get steamrolled. You learn there are certain body positions you can take to avoid getting knocked out. Perhaps more importantly, you learn there are spots on the ice where if you’re not fully aware of all the players around you, you’re going to be in trouble.

Cutting to the middle right around the blue lines is a major hazard area. If you’re not paying full attention you are, more likely than not, going to get laid out. That’s exactly what Booth was doing on this play, he was watching his drop pass and never saw Richards coming.

Now, had Richards jumped, stuck out an elbow, or did something else to increase the destructiveness of the hit, then this would be a different story, but he didn’t, he hit him with a lowered shoulder. As Booth was slightly bent over and his head was extended, it was unfortunately placed squarely in the position where it’s most vulnerable. In my opinion too, the hit was a bit late, but apparently league officials didn’t think it was enough to merit a suspension or any further disciplinary action.

Once again, it was awful to see Booth laid out on the ice after the hit and I hope he has a full and speedy recovery, but I don’t think the victim can be completely absolved of all blame in hits like this.

Recently, I’ve been in slash and burn mode with my Mac, trying to clear off as much of the old crud as I can before I upgrade to Snow Leopard in the near future. Here are two utilities that have come in very handy in doing that. They’re great for reclaiming disk space from a buildup of junk, or, as I’m using them, to clean things up in anticipation of an OS upgrade.

Onyx

An excellent free maintenance utility for your Mac. The official description:

It allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files, to run misc tasks of system maintenance, to configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, Login window and of some of Apple’s own applications, to delete caches, to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome and more.

Very, very useful to have around for maintenance tasks, as well as the occasional tweak here and there.

Caveat: As with Terminal.app, be careful when mucking around in here. Some of the things this application can do can be very destructive on your system if you don’t know what you’re doing. They recommend (and this is always a good idea) to do a full backup before doing anything major with Onyx.

Monolingual

Personally, I only use two languages on my Mac: English and Chinese. All the others are a complete waste of space. This utility will allow you to select whichever language packs you don’t need and it will then completely delete them from your system. It can also find input managers for certain languages and delete those as well.

Mac OS X includes a lot of languages. Still, I was blown away by how much disk space I reclaimed by running this: 3.6GB! Fantastic.

Caveat: Before you run this, be sure this is in fact something you want to do. The program strips out the languages from all your programs, in addition to the OS, so after you’ve performed this, the only way to get them back is to either restore your entire system from a backup, or reinstall the OS.

If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles —  Sun Tzu

Recently in conversation I heard the group Al-Qaeda referred to as an Afghan group. Although the comment passed quickly and the opportunity never arose to correct this mistake, I feel like it’s an important distinction to make, and one that has seemed more and more blurred as the our years in Afghanistan drag on. So, three things:

The Name

The name itself, “Al-Qaeda” (The Base), is in Arabic, not Pashto or Dari, the two main languages of Afghanistan, or Urdu, the dominant language in Pakistan.

The History

Al-Qaeda is and always has been an Arab-centric organization, even though members have been from across the Islamic world, from Europe and western Africa to the Philippines and up north into Central Asia and the Caucasus. Formed in the late 1980s by Osama bin Laden and several others in the border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the group was born amid the jihad against the Soviets. By the mid-1990s al-Qaeda had worn out their welcome in all of their previous bases. The move to Afghanistan became necessary after bin Laden, his Saudi passport having been previously revoked, was expelled from Sudan. Going back to a place they were familiar with from their years making life hell for the Soviets during the 1980s, bin Laden and his associates returned to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s.

Facilitating this move was the relatively new group that had taken over large swaths of Afghanistan, the students, or, as they’re more commonly known, the Taliban. In Pashto, talib means student, and the plural is taliban.  Originating in the south of the country, near the city of Kandahar sometime around 1993, the Taliban grew out of the chaos and anarchy that followed the Soviet withdrawal from the country in 1989.

They took Kandahar in 1994 and took the capital Kabul two years later, in 1996. Though they captured large tracts of land, they never fully conquered the country and large areas remained outside their control. Despite this, they became the de facto government, though they were recognized only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates as the legitimate government in the country.

The Relationship

The Taliban has traditionally had designs on Afghanistan. Factions have recently expanded to include Pakistan on their wish list, but they have always primarily had regional, not global interests. It certainly wasn’t the Taliban that attacked us on 9/11.

Al-Qaeda on the other hand, does have global interests, as well as reach. While the Taliban’s motivation for killing Americans is primarily because we took their country from them and are tramping around in their backyard, al-Qaeda’s motivation for killing Americans is because they are Americans, regardless of where they happen to be. The fact that they can do so in an already Muslim country, alongside like-minded Taliban fighters, simply makes their job easier.

As they’ve been holed up together for almost a decade now fighting the same enemy (the United States), the line between the Taliban and al-Qaeda has blurred somewhat, and some of their goals have become more shared than they were in the past.

Conclusion

Despite the slight blurring, there’s still an important distinction to be made between the two groups. The Taliban have historically worked at the nation-state level, fighting for control of territory and governance over a population of people.

Al-Qaeda, while claiming to have ambitions of creating a new Islamic caliphate, have not been primarily fighting for territory or sovereignty over a particular area. They are a much more underground organization built for creating violence and teaching others to create violence so they can return to wherever their home might be and pursue whatever rebellion, revolution, or jihad they feel is necessary. They don’t, so far at least, operate on the nation-state level. This has, in fact, been one of the most difficult facts to come to grips with for many elements within the U.S. government, a bureaucracy that occasionally still seems mired in the  geopolitical reality of the Cold War when the primacy of nation-states ruled the day.

If we’re going to be successful in confronting these groups in Afghanistan or elsewhere, we need to be as informed as possible as to who it is we’re fighting, what their goals and motivations are, what their background is, and what their capabilities are.

A scheme to flood the Market with counterfeit stocks helped kill Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers – and the feds have yet to bust the culprit

by Matt Taibbi

Published in Rolling Stone, this article is a long and very deep look into   some of the sketchy things that were going on on Wall Street surrounding the collapse.

These in depth, very detailed articles are some of my favorites. They offer so much to chew on, and are a refreshing alternative to the half-page news reports that are so prevalent now.

Come on Google, I’m just trying to get on Facebook here, that’s all!

from The Economist

This article is from several weeks ago but it’s still a good read. It hold special interest for me because it deals with some of the main nuclear weapons issues I worked with last year in Washington D.C.