I haven't trotted out this "news" category in a while. It was created in a time when I read the newspaper every day and cared about things in it. Now I care about when my next on-call shift is and whether my monitor is color calibrated. But this wasn't going to be an entry about me.

This reminded me of the firsthand account of William Daugherty, another CIA employee and Iranian embassy hostage. Being an ops-focused agent, his story contains lots of fascinating operational details from the thickness of the hardened doors to the unreliable shredder that jammed and left them in the unfortunate situation of holding hundreds of pages of classified documents intact in the vault while the embassy was overrun. Now think about this. Here was an admitted CIA agent captured by Iranian revolutionaries (and they were called terrorists then too) and held for 444 days. What horrors must have been visited on his person, whether in pursuit of information about his CIA activities in Iran or just for fun?

It's a long article, but if you go read it, be prepared to be shocked at how brutal the Iranian captors weren't. He speaks euphemistically once or twice about "a physical price to pay" after deliberately insulting his interrogators, but goes on to say that "the penalty was never unbearable...and the ensuing disruption was always worth it."

However life may have been for the captured CIA agents, it looks to have been a fair bit easier for the civilian hostages. I didn't read the entire diary of Robert Ode, but in the parts I did read, the major difficulties were being given stale bread to eat, and inconsistent mail delivery.

Back to the present. Last week I was talking to a person who, coincidentally or not, worked for the NSA until recently. He explained that the newspaper accounts of waterboarding are, well, watered down. Apparently the way it works is this: Having been tied down and inclined so that your lungs are higher than your head, water is forced into your nose and mouth until they are full. There is nothing you can do in this position to expel the water from your nasal cavity. This is what triggers the uncontrollable panic reflex; your body believes it is drowning, and no matter how tough you think you are, you cannot force yourself to take a breath with a head full of water. So you suffer until you reach the point of suffocation, when the other uncontrollable reflex overrides and forces you to inhale. This is when your lungs would fill with water and you would actually drown, if you were underwater, but since you aren't, air bubbles through the nose and throat and reaches your lungs. You probably inhale some water too, but you get enough air that you stay alive. So the process starts over.

It's a neat trick, leaves no marks, is unlikely to cause accidental death, and requires no incriminating equipment. And it's obviously torture.

Now I haven't read anything by Tom Ahern, so if he was in fact tortured in Iran, then I retract my implied claim that the Islamist revolutionaries were better than us. But the fact that the question is even askable means that we have already lost. There's no point fighting a War On Terror unless "we" are better than "them." As it stands, what we're doing has no more meaning than a bar fight between Patriots and Giants fans. Which side you are on is mostly determined by where you were born.

18 Feb 2008 03:35 PT - persistent link - trackback - 3 comments

http://www.sysadminday.com

My address is conveniently available to the left.

28 Jul 2006 12:33 PT - persistent link - trackback - 2 comments

So much for that.

Incidentally, I volunteered to go to New Orleans for the Red Cross about a week or so after the hurricane. This wasn't a totally ridiculous idea, since I still have a federal amateur radio ("ham") license and, like many hams, was trained in emergency communications and disaster response way back in the day. I went to the local Claremont office, filled out all the forms, and called back at least three times. Each time I was assured that they would call me back for an interview "later today," but I never heard a word. Mind you, they were still running radio and TV ads for at least a month that said they desperately needed volunteers. So I, and many other people, it turns out, were not exactly impressed by the Red Cross relief effort either.

I can't help but think, you know, we should really have like some kind of federal agency that manages emergencies.

06 Mar 2006 23:43 PT - persistent link - trackback - 0 comments

Until now, my favorite mental image of Los Angeles has been one that came from the bad fire season that we had in (I think) 2003. Most of the hills and brush-land around Southern California were burning, including the foothills north of Claremont which were easily visible from my house. This was partly because it was very windy. So what would happen is that tumbleweeds would break loose from a fire area, get onto a freeway, and tear across the county at 50-60 mph. I never saw this with my own eyes, but something about it always struck me as hilarious. If balls of flaming death passing you at highway speeds on the 105 don't indicate that God has a problem with your city, then nothing ever will.

So it took a couple years for Los Angeles to outdo itself after that one, but the bar was finally cleared on Sunday of this week:

Move over flaming tumbleweeds, I think we have a new champion. Nothing says "koyaanisqatsi" like rivers of human, uh, waste bursting forth from the middle of the street, flooding basements and beaches, incisively described by one Fredda Doukollos as "stinky, stinky." A fitting memory of Los Angeles to go out on, I think, and a monument to the California brain trust that brought us electricity deregulation, Prop 13, and our many half-finished freeways and train lines to nowhere.

19 Jan 2006 01:33 PT - persistent link - trackback - 0 comments

No, I didn't go to CES, or MacWorld, or anything at all this week. As usual, I am only motivated to open my big mouth and say something stupid because so many people in the trade press are opening their mouths to say something stupid. On with the stupidity:

Microsoft and Toshiba try to demo HD-DVD, and fail

This isn't really that big a deal. I have had to do enough demos (albeit not exactly on the same scale) that I have some sympathy for the guys trying to get a dodgy prototype to work on stage after a bumpy plane ride and last-minute hacking in a hotel room. But I'm here to tell you what nobody in the breathless trade press will: It ain't going to be a "nasty format war similar to the Betamax/VHS video tape battle," because nobody gives a damn about Blu-ray or HD-DVD.

Every successful new media format that has been introduced in my lifetime has allowed people to do new things. People did rush to adopt VCRs, because they had nothing like it in their house already. Being able to rent videos and watch them at home, and even tape TV shows to watch later, was a major new development. CDs are hugely more convenient than LPs or tapes, not to mention more durable, not to mention that you could always copy a CD onto a tape if you wanted. (cue Jack "Home Taping Is Killing The Music Industry" Valenti.) DVDs were more or less CDs for movies: same convenience and durability advantages, plus new abilities to play surround sound or bundle special features.

Every new format that has not been a major functionality advance has bombed. Got any Laserdiscs? (Weirdly, LDs recorded analog tracks onto an optical disk and therefore did not have many of the benefits of DVDs.) How about Minidiscs? SACDs? DVD-As? Note well that none of these formats offer anything new except increased fidelity (even that is often debated). And nobody in the US cared about any of them. HD-DVD and Blu-ray, so far, look especially like the SACD/DVD-A story all over again: no significant new features, no real new applications, just Hollywood wanting to sell you the same movies yet again, in a more expensive and more restrictive format. What is taking off beyond anybody's wildest expectations is MP3 players. The iPod. Which has lower fidelity, but new capabilities.

Thus I say, Blu-ray and HD-DVD have no future unless their corporate parents come up with some compelling new reasons real soon now.

Bill Gates talks about some boring who-cares crap.

Oops, I pretty much said all I have to say about that in the title, didn't I. Windows Media Center Extender? BFD. Otherwise known as Front Row with Microsoft charm and personality, starting with its 39 button remote. Great indicator of what we can expect from Microsoft in 2006, though: More clunky, derivative products with that trademark Microsoft designed-by-committee-of-suits look and feel. I especially like how "Media2Go" is now "Microsoft Portable Media Center." I guess the old name might have led one to believe that some Microsoft employee somewhere in the world still possessed a tiny spark of creativity, which probably spooked the investors.

But again, who cares. Microsoft has no relevance to my life anymore. If it still has relevance to yours, my condolences.

But as long as I'm doing drive-by bashing, how about that Xbox 360? Did you like how 60 to 70% of them sat on the shelves in Japan for its first two days? This after Microsoft made so much noise about restricting the number of units available at launch, in order to make sure they sold out, and cut the Japan price by almost $100 compared to the US and Europe?

Apple announces first Intel Macs, as expected

Although I suspect that the fact that Apple stock jumped 6% today has more to do with the announcement of last quarter's revenue, which was off the charts: 14 million iPods sold, up from 4.5 million last Christmas, $5.7 billion total revenue when the projection was for $5.04.

I also suspect that Apple has known since last year that the first Intel Macs would be ready by now, and that the headlines ("Intel Macintosh available much sooner than expected") are just because Apple has again done a good job of managing expectations. I mean, all that's happened is that the new Macs have caught up to Intel PCs performance-wise, but that's not how it gets reported:

Even I want one of these, and I hate everything.

All I saw about the iPod were some oddball new products: Apparently new Chrysler cars are going to have some kind of iPod dock built in, which is good, because I'm tired of having to drive with geriatric Chrysler owners that aren't paying attention, no doubt because they are trying to get their iPods to work with their incompatible car stereos. Also, Levi is going to make jeans that are, uh, designed for the iPod, or contain iPod headphones, or something. (Details are vague on this.) So if, like me, you have been walking around for years disappointed that your iPod experience has not lived up to its full potential because of a lack of support from your pants, your long dark wait is over.

Google (re-)announces Google Video

Here's the one that actually motivated me to write this whole thing, because the fool that writes the market news that comes free with my Ameritrade account missed the point so badly:

The big deal about Google Video is not whether it can get Fox to sell episodes of The OC, it's that you don't have to be Fox to sell any show you want, for any price you want. People have known for decades that with the Internet, IN THEORY, it is no longer necessary that half a dozen billionaires choose all of the music, TV, and movies that are available to you. The typical computer is more than capable of doing a completely professional job of audio or video production when used by a talented person. What's been missing was any kind of practical or scalable way for that person to distribute the finished product. That's what Google Video might be.

Whether there will turn out to be any basement productions worth watching, I don't know. There's never been such a thing as "indie TV" that I've ever heard of. But, look at how well podcasting is doing. I'd say video production is a whole order of magnitude harder than audio, but if there's an audience, somebody will do it.

The big unanswered question is, will Google Video sell porn? Mock all you want, but porn was what drove VHS, DVD, and the Internet itself from tiny geek followings to mainstream status. They're always the first, and sometimes the only, content producers to take advantage of new technology. (Ever wonder why your DVD player has an "angle selection" button?)

Google has a squeaky clean reputation, and I imagine they are going to be a little squeamish about selling porn. I'd be a little embarrassed about it myself, seeing how I'm going to be working there in just over two weeks. But if they don't do it, they'll have to get their brand new video distribution service off the ground with content that's much harder to sell, and they'll also be fighting an eternal battle with their own content producers over just what exactly is acceptable. If they do, they'll have a guaranteed revenue stream from day one, which will provide more than enough income to sustain the service until the kinks are worked out. (Haw, haw.)

Well, it's 3:30AM and that's probably enough for one night. Be sure to watch this space for more uninformed rants from the cheap seats.

11 Jan 2006 03:38 PT - persistent link - trackback - 0 comments

Even as a hippie pinko bleeding heart liberal, I can't bring myself to care that my state executed Tookie Williams half an hour ago. Like any good hippie pinko bleeding heart liberal, I know a little bit about the problems with capital punishment. I know that black criminals are far more likely to be executed, particularly when their victims are white. I know about the staggering number of death row inmates that were exonerated when DNA evidence became available. I think it was commendable when George Ryan suspended executions in Illinois, and I was disappointed when Connecticut (my real state) broke New England's 45-year tradition and executed Michael Ross last May. (At least in the Connecticut case, the inmate himself was advocating his own execution.)

But my objections to capital punishment are procedural things like that; I don't know nor particularly care about whether killing a killer is "right" in the abstract. I think a lot of people feel the same way. My problem is that we usually don't know for sure whether the condemned prisoner really is a murderer. That's what makes execution different from (say) life in prison: If we sentenced some guy to life in prison yesterday, and found out today that he was innocent, we can at least let him out. It still sucks to be him, but it sucks a lot less than if he had been executed.

So if you're a person opposed to the death penalty, and you want to convince somebody like me, who thinks execution is probably a bad idea but doesn't really care all that much, why on earth would you pick Tookie Williams as your case study? He blew away four people at point blank range with a shotgun in order to look tough in front of his gang buddies. He got caught because he bragged and laughed about it to those gang buddies later. (He also left his shell casings behind, criminal mastermind that he was.) Nobody seriously thinks that he was innocent. No doubt there were plenty of other violent crimes he committed in his career with the Crips (which, apparently, he did not found despite the reports).

I really don't give a damn how many childrens' books he wrote, or how many times he spoke at high school assemblies. Free time is cheap when you're doing 24 years on death row. The fact that he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize tells me more about the Peace Prize than about Tookie Williams. I lived for a year in north Long Beach on the Compton border. I don't kid myself for a minute that I have any idea what inner city gang life is like, but I saw enough to know that the place is a walk-in septic tank, and I am not going to feel the least bit sorry for anybody that helped make it that way that gets the needle.

13 Dec 2005 02:08 PT - persistent link - trackback - 0 comments

An interesting story in tomorrow's New York Times:

Here's a guy that was working in a plastic factory, was separated from his second wife, had a 21-year old daughter that he abandoned as a baby (along with her mother, his first wife), and just generally hadn't made a hell of a lot of his 45 years. That is, until he won a $65 million Powerball drawing in 2000 (which, incidentally, is worth $23 million in cash after taxes).

Perhaps you have seen as many advertisements as I have, and have recognized the story as exactly the premise of some dumbass NBC show called My Name Is Earl. Check it out:

If it weren't for the quality of the photograph, would you know which schlub was which? Unfortunately, the real life story is not quite as wholesomely comedic as the TV version. The real Mack Metcalf first had to split his jackpot with his wife, who was long gone and living with her boyfriend, for reasons that aren't clear to me (although I could take a wild stab and guess that Kentucky is a common property state and he didn't have a choice). Then his first wife sued to get unpaid child support and a trust fund for their daughter, after a county social worker recognized his picture and tipped them off. An ex-girlfriend showed up and talked him into giving away another half a million. There wasn't much left by the time he died from his alcoholism, about three years later. So it goes.

I don't know if there is really anything much to be learned from the story of Mack Metcalf, it generally being a bad practice to generalize from a sample size of 1, but it was interesting, anyway. I might think this guy was just a jackass and that I wouldn't have thrown the money down the toilet like that, but is it true? It seems likely that even with ten million dollars, I would still be going to Taco Bell and screwing around with computers. I could claim this as evidence that I already have as much material property as I could really want, but Jen considers it a great failure of imagination.

05 Dec 2005 01:53 PT - persistent link - trackback - 0 comments

The New York Times is running a story about a new flavor of violence in Iraq, or at least one that hasn't been reported before:

These particular abduction-torture-executions are not to be confused with the ones carried out by former Baath party members supported by the US, foreign agents sent by governments trying to influence Iraqi reconstruction, common criminals, or actual terrorists working for al-Zarqawi. All of those groups have been known to steal Iraqi army equipment and uniforms, but these particular murders are said to be the work of the Iraqi army and police forces themselves.

Too bad about that story coming out just as the White House is trying to sell the story of "improved readiness of Iraqi troops" in advance of Bush's speech tomorrow. If somebody points out that the increase in number and effectiveness of Iraqi armed forces is only making the Shiite-dominated military more effective at murdering the Sunni minority, the administration might end up a little off message, eh?

29 Nov 2005 00:42 PT - persistent link - trackback - 0 comments

So we may not be able to elect presidents or send baseball teams to the World Series, but at least Los Angeles has retaken the lead in this other long-standing rivalry:

Suffice it to say that the pollution is not something I'll miss if I move away from here. And may I be the first to suggest that we adopt a new state motto: "California: The low-hanging fruit has been taken." Feel free to sign my petition for a ballot initiative, but I'm not paying you a dollar.

14 Nov 2005 21:43 PT - persistent link - trackback - 0 comments