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Israel Reels at Pilots' Refusal to Go on Mission »

Sep 28, 2003 - 14:50 UTC »

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I'm sure most of you have already seen this news, but 27 pilots including a brigadier general and two colonels, nine in active duty, signed a letter saying that the Israeli air strikes were "illegal and immoral" and that they refused to take part in such missions.

Reuters
Israel Reels at Pilots' Refusal to Go on Mission

An F-15 pilot who signed the letter, identified only as Captain Alef, told Israel's Channel Two television: "If dropping a bomb on a seven-storey building only to find out 14 innocent civilians were killed, of them nine children and two women, if that is not an illegal order, then what is?" Israel drew international condemnation last year when 16 civilians died after an F-16 warplane dropped a one-ton bomb on a residential neighborhood in Gaza City to kill Salah Shehada, a top commander in the militant Islamic group Hamas.

This is truly a significant issue. If upstanding members the Israeli military feel that the justification of the attacks on the Palestinians is weak, it's clear that the extremists who are pushing for the continued attacks are on fairly weak moral ground.

This reminds me of the work that Peaceworks is doing to try to amplify the voice of the silent majority in Israel and Palestine who are against the continued conflict.

Beyond Fear by Bruce Schneier »

Joichi Ito

Sep 28, 2003 - 14:34 UTC »

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Just started reading Beyond Fear by Bruce Schneier. He write a lot about actual risks versus perceived risks.

Bruce Schneier - Beyond Fear
In America, automobiles cause 40,000 deaths every year; that's the equivalent of a full 727 crashing every day and a half -- 225 total in a year. As a society, we effectively say that the risk of dying in a car crash is worth the benefits of driving around town. But if those same 40,000 people died each year in fiery 727 crashes instead of automobile accidents, you can be sure there would be significant changes in the air passenger systems. (I don't mean to harp on automobile deaths, but riding a car is the riskiest discretionary activity the majority of Americans regularly undertake.) Similarly, studies have shown that both drivers and passengers in SUVs are more likely to die in accidents than those in compact cars, yet one of the major selling points of SUVs is that the owner feels safer in one.

This really illustrates how subjective people's feelings about risk are. Looking at and talking about risk statistically compared to how we mentally deal with risk is interesting. Media coverage of human rights issues based on the closeness of the culture to ours is similarly subjective. The fact is, mentally, the value of a life depends on the context. We are all very subjective. Acting like we aren't clouds the issues. Journalists who say they are impartial and politicians who represent "everyone" all run this risk. Bruce's book takes a very pragmatic approach to risk, trying to describe the actual quantifiable risks, but also describing all of the factors that are involved in the decisions about security methods to deal with those risk.

I'll post more about this book as I continue to read it. (I read slowly...)

PS It's interesting to note that traffic accidents account for about 10,000 deaths a year in Japan compared to 30,000+ deaths due to suicide. You're 3 times more likely to commit suicide than get in a deadly traffic accident in Japan.

Nazi's on trampolines »

Joichi Ito

Sep 27, 2003 - 14:52 UTC »

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Lisa's posted a funny clip of Nazi's on trampolines.

Off to Kyoto »

Joichi Ito

Sep 27, 2003 - 04:33 UTC »

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I'm off to Kyoto for the day to give a talk on Emergent Democracy. I think the audience is mostly professors and it's a 40 minute talk with 50 minutes of Q&A. Pretty long Q&A. It should be fun, but I'm sure I'm going to be ripped to shreds. ;-)

There are some other interesting speakers. If I have wireless access, I'll be on IRC and will try to post the interesting thoughts.

UPDATE: My wireless card works so I'm going to drop into IRC sometime between 0430 and 0510 GMT/UTC to give a demo...

Strong quake hits northern Japan »

Joichi Ito

Sep 26, 2003 - 05:22 UTC »

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BBC
Strong quake hits northern Japan
A strong earthquake has struck the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, according to reports.

The quake, which hit at about 0450 local time on Friday (1940GMT Thursday), was also felt in central Hidaka and eastern Tokatsu, the Japan Meteorological Agency said, according to Kyodo news agency..

I was blogging when this happened. The glass rattled a bit, but I guess we were pretty far away from the epicenter. I went up stairs just in case to wake up Mizuka.

Tokyo is widely acknowledged to be overdue for another "big one" soon. Recently an astronomer reported that a quake of magnitude 7 was going to hit Tokyo soon. The last big quake in the Kanto region was in 1923 and killed more than 120,000 people. This was also the quake where the Japanese army spread rumors that the Koreans had poisoned the wells and hundreds of Koreans were lynched. (I've visited their graves.)

I definitely don't want to be in Tokyo for the next big one and I'm glad I'm moving to Chiba where there are fewer earthquakes and will be living in a house surrounded by bamboo forests which make ground splits quite difficult.

The other interesting thing to note is that Jason D's comment on my blog was what got me to get my face out of my blogging and realize that it was actually a bigger earthquake up north and not a small one here. It's funny that someone in LA is feeding me news about Japan on my blog. ;-)

RIAA sues first, thinks later, no apologies »

Joichi Ito

Sep 26, 2003 - 04:31 UTC »

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Seth Godin
Liars, cheats and fools
The record industry sued a "little old lady" named Sarah Ward. She's not that old, but she's little and she's not a pirate. She's never even downloaded the software you need to download the music. The RIAA has dropped the suit, but Amy Weiss, their spokesman, says, "We have chosen to give her the benefit of the doubt and are continuing to look into the facts... This is the only case of its kind."

Now, regardless of how you feel about litigation as a business strategy, refusing to apologize is just a bad idea. This is clearly NOT the only case of its kind. Instead of stonewalling, why doesn't the RIAA say, "This is terrific! She's an honest citizen and we're proud of her. We made a mistake and we apologize. We're sending Ms. Ward a hundred CDs to apologize for bothering her. If there are any other cases like this one, we'll drop them immediately."

Totally agreed. Now all of you who supported the RIAA suing the 12 year old girl, do you think it's cool for them to be suing people who haven't done anything?

Being sued isn't like, "oh sorry... wrong number.."

SD2 »

Joichi Ito

Sep 25, 2003 - 15:50 UTC »

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Just Stealth Disco'ed my chairman, Jun. Gee this is addictive. 288K QT File

I must escalate to people outside of my company.

RSS 2.0 Enclosures »

Joichi Ito

Sep 25, 2003 - 06:14 UTC »

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RSS 2.0 has an interesting feature called enclosures. It basically lets you have a link in your RSS feed that points to a media file or something so that you can download it in advance so it plays without having to wait for it when you get to it. It's moving blogging to be more "push" than "pull", but that's a good thing for big files. It certainly fits my blogging/browsing style and makes a lot of sense in the context of RSS.

See Chris Lydon's special RSS feed for a very good example. Currently, PopHeadlines (.Net), Radio (Windows, Mac) and VOX Lite (Windows) support enclosures.

UPDATE: ChrisDodo on #joiito just mentioned a point that I'd missed. The bandwidth issues. I guess the aggregators are going to have to be smart and allow you to filter stuff so you don't end up with tons and tons of media files hogging your bandwidth.

FCCster »

Joichi Ito

Sep 25, 2003 - 05:37 UTC »

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FCCster is "A P2P tool for sharing FrequenCy Control fallacies."

FCCster Operational Goals
Operational Goals
-- Using completely public tools, promote interoperability within the additional data channels to be found in the most accessible Wi-Fi pirate bands
-- Convince the telecom finance industry that businesses dependent on new spectrum auctions and allocations can never again generate positive investment returns
-- FCCster will not promote or condone illegal radio use but believes that its short-term inevitability creates an inescapable social responsibility to promote realism, education, and reform

They are trying to coordinate the development of pirate radio equipment to be interoperable. I'm not sure if this is necessarily the right approach to put pressure on the FCC and whether this is a "good thing." It is however pretty interesting and is probably as inevitable as music file sharing...

Neal Stephenson launches a Wiki to explain his new novel »

Joichi Ito

Sep 24, 2003 - 13:47 UTC »

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Neal Stephenson launches a Wiki to explain his new novel Quicksilver. Very cool.

via Boing Boing via Jeremy

Joi Ito's Web

Joi Ito's conversation with the living web.

Israel Reels at Pilots' Refusal to Go on Mission »

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Beyond Fear by Bruce Schneier »

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Nazi's on trampolines »

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Off to Kyoto »

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Strong quake hits northern Japan »

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RIAA sues first, thinks later, no apologies »

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SD2 »

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RSS 2.0 Enclosures »

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FCCster »

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Neal Stephenson launches a Wiki to explain his new novel »

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