The success of Bush's foreign policy

President Bush:

Our understanding with Libya came about through quiet diplomacy. It is a result, however, of policies and principles declared to all. Over the last two years, a great coalition of nations has come together to oppose terror and to oppose the spread of weapons of mass destruction. We've been clear in our purposes. We have shown resolve. In word and in action, we have clarified the choices left to potential adversaries. And when leaders make the wise and responsible choice, when they renounce terror and weapons of mass destruction, as Colonel Ghadafi has now done, they serve the interest of their own people and they add to the security of all nations.

More links

• killMAIL. Another service like dodgeit and Mailinator.
• dBpowerAMP "Often called a Swiss army knife of Audio" ... "Convert from one format to another, just about every audio type is supported", via Martin
• Spoon Installer
• Reynolds: "hey, it's almost like it's part of an axis of evil or something".
• Via IP, Winds of Change quotes David Mader quoting Mark Steyn: "The one consistent feature of the post-9/11 era is the comprehensive failure of the international order."
• Also via the same trail, Mader on Dean's Speech - "So much for liberalism." Indeed.
• Mader also has good comments on The President's News Conferenece

I also want to find some comments I just heard from the President on CNN. This Libya thing is killing me (in a good way). The success of Bush's foreign policy is mindblowing. Well... everything except for the "road map".

• Poll Shows Americans Oppose Gay Marriage, But 9th Circuit Court Reverses Poll Results

Ah, here it is, right off the front page of Whitehouse.gov. More here

• Via Erik, Howstuffworks: How Cell Phones Work. Lots of info. With pictures

Cup holder patented

You know those little sleeves they put your paper coffee cup in? They're patented:

The invented cup holder and cup and cup holder combination are applicable in any situation where the gripability, insulation value, or decoration of a cup needs to be augmented.

Adventures in speeding

Confessions of a Recidivist: Adventures in speeding

Our nation's criminal justice system is based on certain tenets, like reasonable doubt, burden of proof, innocence until proven guilt. Traffic court? Not so much.

My "ticket birthday" was this month or last, so after 3 years I finally have no more points on my license.

Links (part2)

• More disgusting "objectivity" from the BBC. Also seen at LGF
• Roger Simon: Dean's "own foreign policy adviser, according to the New York Times article this morning, acknowledges that Qaddafi's stand down was caused by the War in Iraq"
• Debka says Qaddafi Buckles after Eying Saddam in His Spider Hole
• Josh Claybourn: The Bush foreign policy comes to fruition "What will history have to say? And will we ever be able to know what it would've been like otherwise?" - indeed.
• Scott Ott: Libya to Give Up WMD, U.N. Demands More Time
• LGF: Media Criticizes Iraq News Feed.
• Scott Ott: Local Media 'Not Ready' for Direct Iraq News Feed
• Josh Claybourn: Greedy Americans. "Fat we may be, but selfish we are not."

• Pike news: Andreas Pettersson: Introduction of new ADTs in Pike (PDF)

This report describes the implementation of a new library of Abstract Data Types to the programming language Pike. It deals both with the design of a new API as well as the design and implementation of two new ADTs, the Sequence and the CircularArray. It describes the design choices for the API and the new ADTs and documents them both in the appendixes. The result of the project is the foundation of a modern Abstract Data Type library that makes it possible to do generic programming in Pike.

• Via IP, The Economist compares weblogs to European coffeehouses in the 17th and 18th century.

Duck Dodgers, of the 24th, and a half, centurrryyyy! Holy crap, seriously? There's a whole Duck Dodgers show on the Cartoon Network.

Dream

I just had the longest and most elaborate dream I think I've ever had in my entire life. It seems like half the people I'd ever met were there at some point or another. One of the things that's interesting is that I actually fell asleep in the dream as well.

It was one of those dreams you want to go back to to explore more. Or, at least play back and watch again so you don't forget what happened.

It was probably my brain resetting itself, recouperating, and reorganizing after the week of finals.

Anatomy of a linkblog

It should:

1. be specific to a day, and not just a running thing of links that possibly expires (like Charles' does)
2. be closely associated with my weblog, so if you go to a day's archive on my weblog you get the linkblog too. It shouldn't have its own archive section (like Jeremy's and Simon's do)

But should:

1. each link be able to have its own category (like del.icio.us does)?
2. or have link-specific comments (like Kottke does)?

If either of the last two, then each "blogmark" needs to:

1. have its own record in a table
2. be separate from my normal weblog table

If not, then each blogmark can really just be part of a daily stream, which is what I really kind of want. If I do it this way:

1. a "stream" post would simply have a name within the day like "stream" or "links", and would get its own special category. Currently I use my Random category for things like this.
2. each "stream" post could be identified by my blogging software according to the post name or the post category and be shown differently. Really, this logic can be completely at the template level.

Now, there's a Type A linkblog where each day's linkblog is just a normal weblog post with a specific name and/or category, and a Type B linkblog where each link can have its own comments and/or categories.

Benefits of Type A:

1. Much simpler to implement:
   1. fits right in the main RSS feed (and of course, works fine as a category specific feed if your site offers those - my software doesn't yet, but I plan to implement that)
   2. automatically has its own category page to serve as the linkblog page (no need for a separate linkblog archive)
   3. it will work right now with no extra programming required. I can change the template logic later to actually make it display differently.

Benefits of Type B:

1. More features
2. Potentially easier to find links later since they can each be categorized
3. With sites like "del.icio.us" around, I think there's a chance at having distributed linkblogs. With distributed linkblogs, you can do neat things like easily see how popular a given link is, like del.icio.us already does for people using its system (which is very cool). Having a linkblog with each link as a distinct entity would allow this type of crossmogrification.

Downside to Type A:

1. Fewer features
2. Having a bunch of links without the ability to specifically comment on one might preclude someone from commenting when he or she otherwise would. What do you think? OTOH, if you get a bunch of comment threads going on different links, that would get confusing.

Downside to Type B:

1. Lots of extra work and complexity, with questionable payoff. Are the extra features worth it?
2. Less amenable to change. With a "stream" type of linkblog, if you want to make a larger post out of something that started as part of the stream (such as this pontification on linkblogs), you can easily cut it out and paste it into its own post. Dave does this all the time. OTOH, with a Type B linkblog, each link is its own record which would have to be deleted, or renumbered somehow if you wanted to reorder the links within the day.
3. Less room for freeform information

Obviously I'm leaning heavily towards the Type A for now. The only question involves change and ordering. If you modify something that's already been somewhere in the linkblog, the change might be missed. But if that's where the change logically goes, that's where it should be. As for ordering... I'm leaning towards a "new stuff goes at the bottom" format, though I'm not completely sure. I think it tends to be easier to mentally scroll down until you get to what you haven't seen than to start at the top and stop when you get to something you have seen. Unless you do a neat thing like Simon and strikethrough visited links on your linkblog.

Finally, for RSS readers, would it be annoying if the same post kept changing throughout the day?

One more thing. A linkblog makes you draw the line between what's "just a link" and what's worth a whole post. If you have a "Type A" linkblog, then it can be a kind-of important question because there's no way to comment on individual links. Also, with a Type A, links will have a tendency to sometimes grow into more than just a link -- sometime's you'll go back to it and add some comments. So then maybe it should have been a whole post to itself in the first place.

Though really, if I could just post faster then I wouldn't need a linkblog. Though, I don't think I'd really want 30+ separate posts to handle each of the links I put in this post (before I moved this part out into its own post).

Update: Here are a couple updates to this post.

Links

• Via LGF, Meryl Yourish: Biased reporting [against Israel], continued. Also see The “al-Aqsa Intifada” – An Engineered Tragedy.
• Via HtP, Sun researchers: Computers do bad math
• Via LtU, Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation
• A Day in the Life of #Apache
• A few interesting links from InstaPundit today, in particular, Austin Bay: Cascading Effects of Saddam's Capture, Virginia Postrel: How Christmas displays illuminate a strong economy, This is the Loyal Opposition?, and Frederick Turner: Tiananmen in London
• Via LGF, Dean is Beyond the Mainstream
• Lunatic Python
• XML in PHP5: An in-depth look into advanced XML features, via Haiko Hebig
• Belmont Club: 2039
• Simon: Open Mosix
• Paul Graham: Stopping Spam. I hadn't seen that article before.
• The Wonderful World of Linux 2.6 - A really interesting in-depth look into what's new in Linux 2.6.
• ONLamp.com: Ruby's Present and Future
• Code Generation in Action
• Once More With Hobbits, via WHEDONesque. I laughed hard at The Mustard.

Oh, and Return of the King was playing in at least 5 theaters in the multiplex we go to.

• “So you think you know how to program a Web App do ya?”
• Stackless Zope
• Via Sjoerd, dodgeit, like Mailinator. I used Mailinator for real for the first time the other day!
• The Importance of Being Textual
• Shirky: The RIAA Succeeds Where the Cypherpunks Failed

I definitely need a bookmarklet I can click to say "This is cool, add it to my linkblog".

• LGF: Good on Ambassador Welch ("I think your moral compass has gone crazy.")
• Social Bookmarks Manager Right-Click Context Menu
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/interviews/shulman/index.shtml
• Charles: Lots of Little Languages
• Phillip Pearson: blo.gs weblogUpdates syndication
• and Prototype of a way to make weblog polling way more efficient, via Martin
• Examples of Complex Rendering, via Dan
• Mandrake Linux 9.2. I'm going to want to try the first version of Mandrake based on v2.6 of the kernel.
• Dick Morris: The left has taken over the Democratic Party
• $14.6 billion later, Boston's Big Dig wraps up - ""It rivals anything in the history of the world built by men," says Matthew Amorello, chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which oversaw the project."
• Perl is 16
• Perthon

Whoo. Time for bed. I need a linkblog. Ok, some pontificating on my linkblog... expanded into its own entry: Anatomy of a linkblog.

• Saddam Hussein’s Loyalists Infiltrated U.S. Operations in Iraq
• Via Julian Bond, The Decline of the Middle Class.