a Widebrant

Adding half-page scrolling to Firefox

2012-01-02T19:12:00.000+01:00

This is partially googlable stuff, but I thought I might as well put it down in a post, for memory's sake if nothing else.

I found myself swearing over how pressing the space bar in Firefox scrolls almost a page down, which is less than ideal for continuous reading as you lose almost all context. It also means that sites with overlaid "menu bars", like Twitter or Techcrunch, swallow some rows of each page.

The ideal solution would be to have a built-in setting in Firefox for how large part of the viewport the space bar should scroll down, with the default at today's 95% or whatnot. This seems to be controversial for whatever reason, but there's fortunately a work-around:

Download the keyconfig extension and add two new keyboard shortcuts (I've mapped them to ^D and ^U for half-page scrolling up and down, respectively) with the following code:

/* Down */
window.content.scrollBy(0, window.content.innerHeight / 2);

/* Up */
window.content.scrollBy(0, -(window.content.innerHeight / 2));

It's possible to bind these directly to space and shift-space as well, but unfortunately they don't seem to work on 100% of web sites, so I kept the standard bindings around as a backup.

Update: ^U seems to be a popular keyboard shortcut for sites to hog, so I went back to overriding space/shift-space - there's always PgUp/-Dn when those fail.

Update II: Found a better way to do this that seems to work on most sites as well as non-HTML pages.

McArdle's Voice

2011-12-20T22:00:00.001+01:00

Megan McArdle has a great post up on all the obstacles to leaving poverty, which pretty much blows away a lot of my previous annoyances with her all too frequent streaks of business school arguments.

My self-observed metric for the journalists I end up following seems to be mostly underdog-based. I picked up my Dave Weigel habit after the Washington Post fired him over the journolist scandal (although I'm still lukewarm on Ezra Klein), Moe Tkacik after she got in trouble for "outing" the women accusing Assange of rape and Mac McClelland based on the completely hysterical overreactions to her self-biographical piece on PTSD and violent sex.

Another way to put it is that I really like to follow journalists who bring their own voice and personality to their work (which is one reason I'm sad to see the demise of Bloggingheads), and I'm definitely beginning to discover that in McArdle.

The Limits of Deterrence

2011-08-09T17:19:00.000+02:00

NPR's excellent Planet Money show on software patents is a great primer on how absurd the patent system has become. Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures comes off particularly bad, looking like a mafia-style protection racket.

I think there's an even more damaging conclusion to draw, though, if one accepts the model of patent portfolios as the equivalent of nuclear arsenals:

"All the big tech companies have started amassing troves of software patents -- not to build anything, but to defend themselves. If a company's patent horde is big enough, it can essentially say to the world, 'If you try to sue me with your patents, I'll sue you with mine.'

"It's mutually assured destruction. But instead of arsenals of nuclear weapons, it's arsenals of patents."

In that kind of world, Myhrvold's essentially assetless company is a stateless actor with access to weapons of mass destruction. That is a potentially very unstable situation.

S&P's Real Bet

2011-08-06T14:18:00.003+02:00

Moe Tkacik nails it on the S&P downgrade:

Standard & Poor's real bet here is that the US government is too gridlocked to come together and extend a firm few fives-across-the-eyes to the ratings agencies for talking shit. Permanently reviving the SEC's "experts" rule seems like as good a place as any to start, and I'm sure it would leave plenty of room to escalate.

Now, if this is a winning bet, what are the odds the other agencies won't pile on eventually? And what are the odds that their recommendations for US policy will be any less idiotic than S&P's focus on government deficit reduction during a depression?

Senator Warren?

2011-07-18T00:56:00.000+02:00

The current speculation is that Elizabeth Warren, now no longer a candidate to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau she created, will run for Scott Brown's US Senate seat. Ezra Klein provides the relevant horse-race context, which I think is right -- a Senator clearly trumps an appointee.

If Warren did run and win, though, the bigger victory would be for financial sanity. As it stands, there is a distinct lack of "outsiders" among Senators that specialize in financial issues. Far too many Democrats and Republicans alike are quietly on the side of Wall Street interests. A Senator Elizabeth Warren, free to weigh in both publicly and legislatively on a variety of financial issues would be immensely welcome.

Besides allowing her a chance at addressing all sorts of financial issues and not only consumer protection, a Senate seat would also offer Warren a much greater public platform, which would play to the communication skills which make her stand out so among good thinkers on financial issues.

A friend offered the potential downside that to get through an election campaign, Warren could end up raising funds from donors that are rather comfortable with the status quo on Wall Street, which could in turn cause her to self-censor her views. I think this doesn't really match what we know about the influence of political donations. From what I understand, a candidate's basic ideology and opinions is usually what attracts donors in the first place, who then stand to benefit after an election victory. Outright conversions seem to be much more rare.

McArghle

2010-07-26T13:40:00.000+02:00

I have conflicting views on Megan McArdle. On the one hand, she's frequently wrong (two recent examples, but it goes on and on). She's also generally in the "government must be wrong" camp, at a time when deregulation has gone far too long, with plainly disastrous results.

On the other hand, unlike the majority of those who argue for the same things as McArdle, she at least acknowledges that arguments should rest on facts. Unfortunately for Megan, all this buys her is enough respect to receive qualified criticism. A lot of articulate individuals who understand that it would be futile to fact-check people a Beck or a Breitbart take pleasure in taking apart McArdle's arguments, since she appears as a person who might possibly acknowledge a factual mistake.

It's not the warmest of welcome to the reality-based community, but then I guess McArdle isn't the most gracious of guests, either.

Paris, June 29 & 30

2010-07-03T14:33:00.001+02:00

At the Eiffel Tower:

Montmartre:

Arc de Triomphe:

Franklin D. Roosevelt Metro Station:

And Where is the Left in All of This?

2010-06-20T12:00:00.000+02:00

If you keep up with global economics and tend to read people who tend to be right, you should by now have noticed that Europe and America are intent on starving themselves into a repetition of the 1930s, supposedly to pacify the financial markets (yes, those financial markets).

I suspect what's really going on here is a perversion of a political trend that was originally a positive development: the voters preference for competence over ideology. For years now, the trend has been to elect politicians who aren't necessarily very exciting, but do seem to be able to achieve some real social improvements. Obama, Merkel, Sarkozy, Cameron (and Reinfeldt, closer to home) all ran on competence first and with the possible exception of Sarko they were also notably centrist (Obama's bipartisanship, Merkel's grand coalition wrangling, Cameron's and Reinfeldt's tack to the middle).

And competence is good, right. But right now, it seems that we've all arrived to the conclusion that the competent, responsible thing to do is to get national budgets back in balance. After all, we all saw what happened to Greece, and debt is pretty universally accepted to be a Bad Thing. Some voices protest that we still need spending to get out of the recession, but that sounds populist and a bit extreme. The competent thing to do here is surely to pay for all those past excesses with some good old belt-tightening.

Except it's not. I mean, really, really not. All serious, centrist economists with proven records are absolutely opposed to any form of austerity right now. The data shows that it won't work: the effect of drawing down government spending now will put budget balances far deeper into the red in the future by locking us into years or decades of little to no growth. The bond markets currently have no appetite for punishing budget deficits, nor has anyone found a reason to believe that austerity packages would signal anything but weakness to the financial market.

If there's anything to be done for the budget deficits, it's -- amazingly -- France who has it right in pushing for an increase in the retirement age and raising taxes on the rich, which will do long-term budget outlooks a world of good without shutting down growth in the short term. Amazing because France's government is by the looks of it the most clear-cut right-leaning one of the bunch.

Which brings us to the title and my amazement that the centre-left does not seem to have the slightest bit of appetite to take this on. Here we have a long line of centre-right governments who are about to let misguided ideology stand in the way of sound technocratic practice -- keep spending money to get employment up -- that would be good for both the economy and for the vast majority of lower- and middle-class workers. And the reason they give is that they're scared of the financial markets! And the centre-left completely bloody fails to call them on it!

Opportunities

2010-05-31T06:15:00.000+02:00

Some have already made the charge that the Obama administration is letting a chrisis go to waste by not coming down hard on off-shore drilling in the wake of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, but if there's one good use for accrued outrage over this, it should be to strengthen a forthcoming bill on global warming.

The global thirst for fossil fuels is, after all, the reason why BP can by many counts afford to pay for cleanup and compensation without going under as a company. The incentives for oil companies are all wrong, and that can't be sustainably remedied by national legislation to control drilling. The price of oil simply has to come down to the point where it's no longer profitable to go after it in places where the environment makes it expensive to drill (if not for fear of cleanup costs then simply because it costs much more to drill deep offshore, or tear up huge areas of oil shale, etc).

Wish List

2010-05-04T21:56:00.003+02:00

Taking this off Amazon since their shipping seems shoddy.

Animal Spirits by George A. Akerlof, Robert J. Shiller
Born Again by Notorious B.I.G.
Breeding Bio Insecurity by LC Klotz
Economics by Paul A Samuelson, William D Nordhaus
Economics by Paul R. Krugman, Robin Wells
Living Weapons by Gregory D. Koblentz
Macroeconomics by Paul Krugman, Robin Wells
Microeconomics by Paul Krugman, Robin Wells
Moral Dilemmas of Modern War by Michael L. Gross
Ready to Die by Notorious B.I.G.
Russia and the Arabs by Yevge Primakov
The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman
The Future of Islam by John L. Esposito
The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine by Edward N. Luttwak
The Korean War by Bruce Cumings
This Time is Different by Carmen M. Reinhart, Kenneth Rogoff
Which Side Are You On by Thomas Geoghegan

Google-translated excerpt from a Swedish study on child abuse in foster homes

2010-04-11T15:22:00.001+02:00

This is from the concluding chapter, the full documents in Swedish can be found at Regeringen's web site

11 Discussion and suggestions

Survey interviews has uncovered abuse and neglect with a seriousness and an extent previously not been done in Sweden. Many of those who suffered abuse and neglect have been trying to get by, despite the severe trauma from childhood.

It is a difficult and important task to receive and convey these stories of neglect in the child welfare system. The work is like no other I have done.

This chapter comments on first results of the study. Then found that a heavy responsibility rests on the community, in the sense of state and municipality.

Responsibility means, first, to ensure that the interviewees talk about are not repeated in the present and secondly to ensure that victims are reimbursed.

The chapter ends with discussion and proposals on how the child welfare system in the future are to improve the safety of children in care.

1.11 Survey results

The study on the neglect of the child welfare system will come when its ready to be interviewed about 1 000 people. This interim report presents findings from 404 interviews.

There are at least 250 000 people who have been placed by the child welfare system during the eight decades by the investigation. Those who have been invited to interview are people who believe that they are victims of abuse and / or neglect, ie. neglect, during his placement in the child welfare system. The interviewees are not representative of all social care for children.

Their stories show what can happen when the child welfare foster parents and staff in institutions of neglect and assault children, when other agencies within the child welfare system did not perform their task in a way it is, or how bad things can happen when it becomes wrong. In this sense, the investigation can be regarded as an "Accident".

11.1.1 Neglect and abuse

Chapter 7 gives the neglect of the interviewees described. I note that 225 women and 179 men told of a working day in the child welfare system, which was marked by poverty, deprivation and cruelty. For the first time in our country, these experiences are now consolidated.

The 404 persons have been placed by a total of 130 municipalities. There are several communities who were interested to stay local because many interviewees were located far from home and do so in several foster homes and institutions during their childhood. The study therefore concern a very large part of the country's municipalities.

All tell of neglect and abuse

Results of the chapter found that of the 404 interviewees have 343 people (85 percent) told of abuse and neglect in foster care. 249 people (62 percent) have told of abuse and neglect in institutions. Many people have told of neglect in both foster homes and institutions.

Redeployment and the lack of information to children in respect thereof, has been so widespread that they can be characterized as a specific form of neglect. Several break-up while in the child welfare system has the most experienced. Barely 44 percent of men and about 39 percent of women reported having had 5 or more placements. Just over 8 percent of the respondents had had 10 or more placements. The average value (calculated as the median) are four placements. All the broad categories of neglect than physical violence with a weapon (49 percent) and threats and threatening situations (41 percent) were reported by more than half of the interviewees. 353 people (87 percent) have reported misconduct. In the case of abuse is the most comprehensive privacy category (346 persons, 86 per cent).

Sexual abuse is the only area showing significant differences between the sexes. 61 percent of women compared with 42 percent of men have told us they have been sexually abused.

In summary, the interviewees said that they have experienced many relocations, the physical violence of various blunt, other physical violence, harmful compulsion, rules and punishments, threats and threatening situations, privacy violations, exploited in work and victims of sexual abuse and neglect. In Chapter 7, the detailed investigation reported results from the interviews.

Big Deal

2009-12-19T22:18:00.003+01:00

WaPo:

"Starting immediately, insurers would be prohibited from denying children coverage due to pre-existing conditions. A complete ban on the practice would take effect in 2014, when the legislation seeks to create a network of state-based insurance exchanges, or marketplaces, where people who lack access to affordable coverage through an insurer could apply for federal subsidies to purchase policies.

"Insurers competing in the exchanges would be required to justify rate increases, and those who jacked up prices unduly could be barred from the exchange. Lifetime limits on coverage would be banned and annual limits would be "tightly restricted," aides said, until 2014, when they, too, would be banned entirely.

"Reid's package also would give patients the right of appeal to an independent state board if an insurer denies a medical claim. And all insurance companies would be required to spend at least 80 cents of every dollar they collect in premiums on delivering care to their customers."

Big, big deal. Despite the serious funding problems in the health care bill, these rules in effect establish health care as a fundamental human right in America. The rest, pardon the expression, is just arguing about the price.

Call of Distraction

2009-11-21T16:45:00.000+01:00

I finally got an opportunity to play Modern Warfare 2 this weekend, but I'm finding it kind of a mixed bag. For all the attention to detail and atmosphere Infinity Ward has put into the game, they can't seem to come up with environments that really stand on their own merits. An arctic Russian air base or a Brazilian favela are clearly both incredibly interesting places to explore, but MW2 has no time for that, instead turning them into comically overcrowded shooting galleries for the player to run and gun through.

To some extent I suppose this is a matter of taste or age, although I have nothing against twitch gaming. Some of the finest games I can think of are twitch games and I grew up on Doom and Quake. I guess I just feel that Half-Life marked the graduation day for the first-person shooter genre and any game that doesn't take its worlds as seriously tends to feel a bit childish.

The Atlantic vs Google

2009-11-09T19:11:00.002+01:00

This article strikes a real blow for the reputation of business executives, I have to say. In his examination of how to cut costs in American health care, the author manages to say this much about chronic disease: "(Chronic conditions with expected annual costs above some lower threshold would also be covered.)". An afterthought, parantheses and all.

The problem, of course, is this[PDF]:

Medal of Honour

2009-10-24T14:08:00.001+02:00

Finally had time to read up on the motivation for the Riksbank Prize. What fascinates me about Ostrom's type of research is the hard evidence it's produced for individuals valuing justice over profit.

Eyeballing Burma's Nuclear Programme

2009-08-03T16:39:00.002+02:00

Doh! See this discussion about The BOB for a much better look at what seems to be a genuine facility of some kind in Naung Laing.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Burma may or may not have set up a nuclear complex at a site called "Naung Laing". It's a bit sketchy, but I think this is what's referenced on Google maps as "Nawngleng", coordinates 22.829542,98.428574:

View Nawngleng in a larger map

Naung Laing is mentioned on the Myanmar Times's site as the "Naung Laing Village Tract in Tanyang Township in northern Shan State", which was visited by the DEA on February 28 in what seems to have been 2001 or 2002. This seems to broadly match the geographical location (northern Shan).

There is however also a "Tangyan" south of Nawngleng, and it could be the case that Naung Laing is a village near that location too small to be listed on maps:

View Nawngleng in a larger map

Naung Laing is mentioned in two reports (2006, 2007) from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, both times as an opium-cultivating village or "village tract".

This is all about as blurry as the satellite images, and doesn't make much of a case either for or against a second nuclear site, with the possible exception that it seems strange to pick a place that's been inspected at least thrice by international drug agencies and would presumably be of future interest to them.

ORLY

2009-07-27T21:47:00.001+02:00

Politico: "California resident Orly Taitz, the Russian-born attorney/dentist who has become a kind of ringleader for the movement"

I keep reading that quote over and over, but I can't really make myself believe it. "Only in America" just doesn't seem to cover this.

Hjärup, this morning

2009-07-01T20:06:00.003+02:00

My reward for getting out of bed at five and getting on the bike:

Sweden is holding its first referendum on copyright law

2009-06-07T16:41:00.002+02:00

Well, officially it's a European Parliament election we're voting in today. No subject, however, has had anywhere near the media impact in the run-up as that of copyright legislation and internet integrity, and it's showing in the polls, in which The Pirate Party (PP) -- a political party formed in 2006 to fight against increasingly stringent copyright legislation -- has jumped to over 8% of the vote, despite its youth and clear self-definition as a single-issue party. It seems clear that although PP's membership growth has been closely linked to the raid of and subsequent prosecution against The Pirate Bay, the party platform has developed legs of its own that seem to carry even as the Pirate Bay case recedes from the news cycle.

In immediate terms, this seems to ensure that PP will send at least one, and probably two, representatives to the European Parliament, but a more interesting long-term question is what a big win for PP will do to domestic policy. A share of the vote of 10% or more would have a significant influence on how the implementation of IPRED -- an EU directive influencing the ability of copyright holders to directly go after suspected infringers -- will be viewed by the public and the media. There is a newly re-discovered political reluctance to be seen as going after individuals, on display in the final pre-election debate where PP were not invited to participate but representatives for all but one of the parties present denied wanting to criminalize personal file sharing.

The final effect on Swedish legal praxis from IPRED is still up in the air, with the first case brought having stalled when the ISP declined to divulge the identity behind the IP address identified by the copyright holder. The law still seems to hold the possibility of a lenient interpretation of IPRED, which could draw some of the poison from the current debate, but leave the copyright holder industry in the unenviable position of needing another law passed to reach their goal of being able to prosecute all unauthorized use of their intellectual property.

Alternatively, the courts may find a much more strict implementation of the law, which would be almost guaranteed to be widely unpopular, possibly enough so to propel a reinvigorated Pirate Party into the Swedish Parliament proper. This would in all likelihood force the pirates to take much more concrete positions on topics outside copyright law and integrity, which might be difficult for a party with a membership spread widely across the political spectrum (one of the party's Europarl candidates is a former right wing politician, another has floated the idea of donating part of her potential new salary to organizations like Attac and Amnesty International). Should the party succeed, however, it could very well find itself in just the tie-breaker position it has been planning for. Sweden's right-wing coalition has at least one party (the Christian Democrats) that's balancing on the verge of the 4% limit for parliamentary representation -- its demise would give the Pirate Party a natural space to fill. The left is dominated by the Social Democrats, but has an uneasy dependency on the ex-communist Left Party and could feel tempted to lean on the pirates for support.

All in all, this is shaping up to be a pretty exciting election night, as Europarl elections go.

(Disclaimer: I'm an active member of the Pirate Party -- I'll be watching the results come in with them in Malmö tonight, I'll try to chirp a bit about it as it breaks if there's wi-fi to be found: http://twitter.com/Widebrant )

Malmö

2009-05-02T17:34:00.003+02:00

"Chain vandals[1] here"

Did the house owners paint these, or are they a creative act of vandalism?

[1] More accurately, "taggers"

Let's give it back

2009-04-24T19:00:00.002+02:00

Fredrik Strage in today's Dagens Nyheter (DN), translated:

A friend of mine downloaded Depeche Mode's new album "Sounds of the Universe". When he had listened to the record he got so disappointed that he erased it. Then he decided to give it another chance and downloaded it again. But once he'd realized that "In Chains" was the weakest opening track on a Depeche album ever, he once again angrily deleted the record. Now he's considering downloading it illegally a third time. "But this time I'm throwing it away immediately", he said. "Those fuckers deserve getting their music stolen several times over."

Personally I thought, ignorantly, that illegal downloading wasn't comparable to theft but rather existed in the same gray area as burning a CD for a friend or copying a rented cassette. The Ipred legislation made me wake up, along with last Saturday's DN op-ed praising the Pirate Bay verdict and explaining that downloading creates a "thieving society".

In my boundless naivitë I had imagined that downloading had rather contributed to the late 'naughties creative explosion in Swedish music. But DN's editorial board is of course right to declare file sharing a threat against culture that must be "banished to the criminal wilderness". They are as correct as Per Gessle, Joey Tempest, Jill Johnson and the other artists who on DN's debate page last autumn called for harder measures against the file sharers.

"The so-called Swedish music wonder that existed in the 90's and the beginning of the 2000's is unfortunately but a memory", the artists wrote. And what are indeed the recent years' Swedish indie pop, electro and metal, lauded across the world, compared to Jill Johnson's country and Joey Tempest's solo records?

To download music just to throw it away may seem illogical. But an increasing number of fans are bothered by the artists' arrogance and poor quality control. Now that the listeners have learned that file sharing equals theft, they also know how to get payback for artistic hubris, pathetic lyrics and tired comeback records. They'll bitchslap the musicians where it hurts most: right in the wallet. By downloading an album several times and pushing "delete" afterwards, you quckly blow through loads of artist money.

Unconfirmed rumours have it that The Pirate Bay is developing a new program, AWT (Artist Wealth Terminator), which will make sure that the torrent files end up straight in the computer's recycle bin, get erased, downloaded again and so on. In just a day this new software could make a rock star dirt poor. The technology is considered to be very user friendly since the consumer never has to actually listen to the music.

Regardless of whether we play the downloaded music, or erase it, the thefts must cease. "Deterrence is necessary", wrote DN's editors. "But the fight will not be won through the courts alone."

No, it's just as important that the downloaded music is returned to its rightful owners: the artists. "It belongs to them, let's give it back", to quote the righteous Australian band Midnight Oil. Because of this, we should immediately return illegally downloaded music to the record industry by mailing it to musikretur@ifpi.se. To make sure that the files arrive in order, the different genres must be mailed in alphabetic order during office hours. You can send your acid house and afro funk in today, but please wait with sending any calypso until monday.

A note on the torture memos

2009-04-19T12:08:00.001+02:00

There are two political considerations regarding president Obama's release of the torture memos that I haven't seen discussed.

First, while ruling out the possibility of (at least low-level) prosecutions of the crimes described in the memos will alienate part of the president's base, this will surely be at least somewhat cancelled out by the spectacle of former Bush officials denouncing the very release of the memos.

Second, you have to wonder whether releasing the memos is meant to be a test of public opinion on the matter. In this scenario, the president is leaving the avenue open for him to be forced by popular outrage to reluctantly allow investigations to proceed.

First proper long bikeride of the year

2009-04-18T16:06:00.003+02:00

Copenhagen

2009-04-18T15:59:00.004+02:00

First proper sun of the year

2009-03-29T15:36:00.005+02:00

Also first housefly of the year

Wisdom

2009-03-22T15:16:00.002+01:00

"Even as I read, I start to forget what I have read, and this process is unavoidable. It extends to the point where it's as though I haven't read the book at all, so that in effect I find myself rejoining the ranks of the non-readers, where I should no doubt have remained in the first place."

Morning commute

2009-03-20T15:39:00.001+01:00

Henrik

2009-02-19T12:51:00.001+01:00

Hjärup

2009-02-19T09:20:00.000+01:00

MUC Modifier 0.1.3

2008-09-09T09:05:00.002+02:00

MUC Modifier has been updated for OpenFire 3.6.0. Plugin JAR, zipped source code.

MUC Modifier

2008-08-16T10:28:00.007+02:00

MUC Modifier is a plugin for the Openfire real time collaboration server.

Download MUC Modifier 0.1.2: Plugin JAR, Zipped source code

Overview

The MUC Modifier plugin allows admins to automate the management of MUC user lists through a server socket.

Installation

Copy the mucmodifier.jar into the plugins directory of your Openfire installation. The plugin will then be automatically deployed. To upgrade to a new version, copy the new mucmodifier.jar file over the existing file.

Configuration

The port used for communication with the plugin is configured via the MUC Modifier Settings sidebar item located in the Server Settings sidebar under the Server tab in the Openfire Admin Console. By default, after the plugin has been deployed it will use the port 9876.

The plugin must be restarted from the Plugins tab before the change of port number takes effect.

Using the Plugin

When installed, the MUC Modifier plugin will open a server socket on the specified port. A client can connect to this port and communicate with the plugin in a plain text format. For all commands, room must be the name of the conference, JID a fully qualified JID of the user that is to be modified and level one of owner, admin, member or outcast.

Supported Commands

ADD [room] [JID] [level] -- adds a user to a room with the specified level, unless the user already exists
CHANGE [room] [JID] [level] -- changes an existing user in a room to the specified level
DEL [room] [JID] -- removes an existing user from a room
LIST [room] -- returns a list of members and levels in a room on the form [JID],[level], separated by newlines
QUIT -- closes the connection

Successful commands are acknowledged (after any output) with a message on the form OK ([command name]) [message]. Errors are reported with a message on the form ERR ([command name]) [message].

Sample Session

LIST test
admin@sampleserver,owner
test@sampleserver,admin
OK (LIST) list complete
CHANGE test test@sampleserver member
OK (CHANGE) user modified
LIST test
admin@sampleserver,owner
test@sampleserver,member
OK (LIST) list complete

To: Letters@theatlantic.com Subject: With friends like these...

2006-03-10T20:46:00.000+01:00

Clive Crook's list of people who bat for the free market but fail to connect passes by one of capitalism's worst proponents: the die-hard libertarian. Unlike economists and businessmen, he feels genuine awe for the global market and is not afraid to say so. But he drinks to deeply from the cup: if the market is good for so many things, it must be the answer to everything. If the market creates problems for some people, it must be their own fault -- the market is, after all, a voluntary exchange of goods. His awe for what capitalism can accomplish turns into worship of the market itself.

So he who genuinely tries to tell others about the miraculous nature of capitalism will in the very next breath blurt out that it is not his responsibility to pay for someone else's disease, or that the unemployed poor only have theselves to blame for not getting a proper education. And people will, quite rightly, look at him as if he was insane, and, quite wrongly, say to themselves: this is what capitalism is all about.

Cartoon characters

2006-02-12T14:01:00.000+01:00

Flustered heads of state, burning embassies, dead protesters. Recently, the power of the printed word -- or, in the case of the now infamous Jyllands-Posten cartoons, the printed image -- has seemed strong indeed. But behind both the drawings and the violent protests lies political power and responsibility.

To begin in Denmark, Jyllands-Posten's publication of the illustrations of the prophet Muhammed, some innocuous and others intently provocative, was clearly an error of judgement. But this was not merely a case of a newspaper in a small, open-minded Scandinavian nation, naively experimenting with freedom of speech with no intention to offend. The proper context is that Denmark is an increasinlgly xenophobic nation, which has clamped down on immigration and naturalisation laws and where public discourse has turned shamefully against other cultures.

Danish politicians have offered statements ranging from a proposal that jobless muslims be put to work at pig farms, through a lament of the lack of death penalty for immigrant criminals (with Russian prisons offered as a substitute), to suggesting that Europe's muslims are only biding their time until their numbers are great enough to cut the Europeans' throats.

This climate, where Jyllands-Posten's cartoons were more the norm than the aberration, is a disgraceful and disappointing failure of Denmark's politicians to defend the core value of human equality that is fundamental to the very democracy that employs them.

But it pales compared to the deceit perpetrated by muslim leaders, who have concocted a thin soup of the original cartoons along with unpublished and much more offensive pictures and plain old rumours, and used this to fuel outrage against a Western enemy, merely to draw the attention away from the glaring faults in their own political systems.

The resulting clash of civilisations has done irreparable damage to the reputation (not to mention the lives lost) of the citizens and believers supposedly represented by muslim politicians and religious leaders.

While Denmark's regression has been a disappointment, the islamic worlds reaction has sadly been more or less par for the course. The cartoon debacle underlines how long many islamic societies have to go before they can be measured on the same scale as those who have been designated their antagonists.

New year's resoluteness

2006-01-02T15:03:00.000+01:00

The new year begins with a test for the European Union and Germany's new Chancellor, Andrea Merkel. Russia has decided to squeeze Ukraine for more natural gas money and slashed deliveries, as a none too subtle punishment for the Yushchenko government turning westwards. The consequence for European nations, which receive Russian gas through a Ukrainian pipeline, is a shortage as Ukraine siphons off some of the gas destined for Europe.

The European reaction was characteristically muted, at first, but Germany later warned Russia that it was acting irresponsibly, which might endanger its future energy deals with Europe. This seems like a welcome change of tack for a country which has been accused of being rather too friendly with the Russians, overlooking autocratic tendencies in the name of energy security.

Clearly, there is something to both Russia's wish to extract market rates for its gas exports, as well as Ukraine's insistance on a gradual increase towards that end. The EU will be pushing for a compromise of some sort. Yushchenko's statements on negotiations and a committee of international experts to decide price policy seem well adapted to the EU's preferred method of conflict resolution, making Russia's usual bluntness sound positively tone-deaf.

If Kiev can continue to play the reasonable technocrat and if other European nations follow Germany's lead, this conflict could let Ukraine take a significant step towards the European community. Moscow, on the other hand, might learn that while an energy surplus might guarantee Russia's independence, it will not necessarily buy it any political clout.

Happy new year!

2005-12-31T16:33:00.000+01:00

I have actually come up with a meaningful new year's resolution this time: I will strive to ask more questions.

Online, at least, I seem to be much more interested in offering my own opinion than in finding out the opinions and reasonings of others. My prediction for the new year is that I will probably fail to live up to my resolution. Oh, well...

Happy new year!

ALL INDIVIDUALS HANDLING THIS INFORMATION ARE REQUIRED TO PROTECT IT FROM ANY DISCLOSURE WHATSOEVER IN THE INTEREST OF OUR PROFESSIONAL CREDIBILITY

2005-12-09T23:54:00.000+01:00

This is totally totally awesome. From Secrecy News, via Armscontrolwonk.com:

ALTERNATIVE COVER SHEETS FOR CLASSIFIED INFO
While underlying questions of secrecy and disclosure carry a potent primeval charge, the actual implementation of government secrecy policy is about as boring as it could be.
In a rare attempt to leaven the subject with humor, some unidentified person has produced spoofs of the colored cover sheets that are often used on classified documents (Standard Forms 703, 704, and 705 for Top Secret, Secret and Confidential, respectively).
Three previously published bogus cover sheets (for Futile, Stupid and B*ll**** Information) have been augmented by three new ones.
The collection was circulated this week at the Pentagon.
See the set here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/coversheets.pdf

Now here's what I want y'all to do, for me

2005-12-08T08:37:00.000+01:00

Marty Lederman over at Balkinization deconstructs Condi's supposed volte-face on torture. To summarise, her statements leave plenty of room for American officials to continue treating their captives in "cruel, inhuman and degrading" manners which pretty much everyone but the Bush administration agrees are clearly forbidden by UN Convention Against Torture.

This is not a change of policy.

The Bush administration is not about to end its inhumane treatment of prisoners.

Don't believe the hype.

Green light for freedom of speech

2005-11-29T11:26:00.000+01:00

Sweden's supreme criminal court, Högsta Domstolen, today acquitted pastor Åke Green, who had been charged with incitement of hatred against homosexuals.

The court found that Green had crossed a legal red line, in that his statements were "beyond the limit of a serious and objective discussion", and that he therefore must be considered to have expressed disrespect for homosexuals as a group. Legally, and somewhat shockingly, that is grounds for a convicting sentence.

But crucially, the supreme court sought to determine whether "the term disrespect should be interpreted more restrictively than what is immediately obvious from the legal text", in light of Sweden's constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It found that Sweden's constitutional protections for freedom of religion and freedom of speech did not justify such a reinterpretation. However, the supreme court found that the European Court, in light of its previous praxis[1], would likely find a convicting sentence against Green to be in violation of the ECHR. This led the court to conclude that to ensure that the law was applied in accordance with the ECHR, the term disrespect must in this case be interpreted more restrictively than what the text and the preparations from the lawmakers gives at hand, and Green must be acquitted.

This reinterpretation of the law is, as I understand it, a quite unusual measure from the supreme court. The task of clarifying the meaning of the law normally falls on the lawmakers, to be set out in the aforementioned preparations, written as commentary on the law as it is passed.

The decision of the court to restrict the meaning of the word disrespect is both important and fortunate, as this was a very questionable part of the law. The court also commendably chose to argue from a largely general position of protection for freedom of speech, rather than making a special case for freedom of religion.

All things considered, today's decision makes a bad law better and Sweden safer for freedom of speech. It should be welcomed by liberals everywhere.

The full (Swedish) text of the court's decision can be found here.

[1] Among the cases mentioned were Handyside v The United Kingdom (1976), Jerusalem v Austria (2001), Murphy v Ireland (2003) and Gündüz v Turkey (2003).

Scandinavian exceptionalism?

2005-11-05T14:07:00.000+01:00

Frederic Sautet takes note of the success of Nordic socialism, but unfortunately falls victim to the common misconception that "Scandinavian countries are small and still have very homogenous populations".

Sweden proves this wrong on both counts. First, while Sweden is smaller than many other nations, it is not so small as to be a special case. Its population structure is very typical, with at least a plurality of the population living in the relative anonymity of large dense cities. Nor is Sweden by any stretch of the word a homogenous nation. More than one tenth of all Swedish citizens are foreign-born, a proportion comparable to the amount of blacks in America, for example. Furthermore, besides segregation along ethnic and economic lines within the large cities, Sweden is also divided between urban and rural areas.

The other two factors Sautet mentions are "rule of law and protection of property rights" and a focus on international commerce to drive economic growth. Both these factors are quite sustainable, which leaves no support for Sautet's conclusion that "as France and Germany are learning, the logic of economics always prevails in the long run", which presumably means that all welfare states, including Scandinavia's, must eventually falter.

Scorched

2005-10-31T14:18:00.000+01:00

A quick and over-obvious point regarding Iranian president Mahmod Ahmadinejad's infamous remarks on Israel:

Whatever the plausibility of a rumoured grand bargain once on the cards, that path of action has now been taken off the table, put in the waste basket, lit on fire and pissed out. And without such a bargain, there really seems to remain no way left at all to halt Iran's nuclear programmes.

Whoop

2005-10-31T07:45:00.000+01:00

In the biggest piece of unnews I can recall ever hearing, the leader of Sweden's Left Party (formerly Communist Left Party) has decided to stop referring to himself as a commuist. This despite the fact that he has apparently not changed the political opinion he held when he did call himself a communist. His explanation for the decision is that journalists and people put a different meaning into the word than he does, which makes debate difficult.

The Left Party, like the Greens, supports the ruling Social Democrats in a parliamentary coalition, but have no cabinet posts.

Deficiencies

2005-10-23T09:50:00.000+02:00

The New York Times reports on just how alarmingly dire the American health insurance market has become. Apparently, being able to cope with a chronic illness without financial ruin is rapidly becoming a luxury, even for those Americans that are covered by health insurance.

The Dorsetts, Sharon and Arnold, were concerned about Zachery's health, but they were not worried about the financial consequences. They were a young, middle-income couple, with health insurance that covered 90 percent of doctors' bills and most of the costs of prescription drugs.
Then the bills started coming in. After a week in the hospital, the couple's share came to $1,100 - not catastrophic, but more than their small savings. They enrolled in a 90-day payment plan with the hospital and struggled to make the monthly installments of nearly $400, hoping that they did not hit any other expenses.
But Zachery, who was eventually found to have an immune system disorder, kept getting sick, and the expense of his treatment - fees for tests, hospitalizations, medicine - kept mounting, eventually costing the family $12,000 to $20,000 a year. Earlier this year, the Dorsetts stopped making mortgage payments on their ranch house, in a subdivision outside Indianapolis, because they could not afford them. In March, they filed for bankruptcy.

Private health insurance in America is utterly, utterly broken. Between stories of this kind and the American companies who have promised their employees health care for life without putting away the funds to pay for it, something surely has to give, sooner or later.

Herre du milde...

2005-10-06T19:39:00.000+02:00

Paulina Bylén går lite bonkers i en annars välkommen artikel om fenomenet Buffy/Joss Whedon.

Man skulle kunna säga att Buffy, varje natt, försvarar feminismen och den värld av ommöblerade identiteter hon och hennes vänner byggt upp mot alla de skräckinjagande demoner och onda väsen (patriarkala värderingar) som hotar att krossa dem.

Man skulle kunna säga så. Men allra bäst hade nog varit att låta bli.

French efficiency

2005-09-28T14:31:00.000+02:00

The French seems to tire of fighting unions, at least Corsican ones:

HELICOPTER-borne French troops have recaptured a French cargo ship that had been seized by striking workers to protest the privatisation of a state-owned ferry company.

Black-clad and masked commandos rappelled from five helicopters to the deck of the cargo-passenger ship Pascal Paoli as it tried to enter the port of Bastia on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica.

The sources said the vessel was recaptured in 10 minutes, and then set sail for the mainland.

Let them eat GIGN!

Perversions

2005-09-27T16:45:00.000+02:00

The Economist ticks off some problems with America's health insurance for the poor. As it turns out, Medicaid helps keep poor people impoverished:

For low-paid workers, Medicaid's very generosity creates perverse incentives. If they earn too much, they can lose their benefits. Since these average more than $6,000 per beneficiary, a pay rise can make a single mother simultaneously much worse off and more worried about her children's health. In some states, Medicaid recipients are similarly discouraged from saving or accumulating assets, such as a car that might get them to work. This keeps many trapped in poverty they might otherwise have escaped.

The implied solution is to end the "generosity" of Medicaid, which would in itself be perverse. As the article notes, the programme is already competitive when compared to private insurance. Medicaid costs grow slower than those of private insurance, despite embracing the expensive chronically ill that private insurers shun. This greater efficiency is hardly an effect of overly generous policies. Cutting benefits would exchange one form of segregation of the poor for another. Poor health (poor teeth, in particular) is quite as effective a disincentive to improve oneself as the withdrawal of Medicaid coverage.

The article mentions some sensible reforms, such as plugging the loopholes that let well-off elderly move around assets to get Medicaid coverage and aggressively pushing for greater competition among healthcare providers funded by Medicaid. To come to terms with the perverse incentives, however, the solution is to offer Medicaid to anyone that wants it. That would free corporations from being compelled to provide increasingly unviable insurance policies for their employees, which would greatly improve America's business climate. Since it would also need to be funded with raised taxes, it is unfortunately a non-starter.

At least on a federal level. One possible way forward could be to give individual states more freedom to design their own medical insurance systems. But that risks becoming a race to the bottom, screwing over the poor even more than today. Additionally, devolution does not appear to be much more popular than tax hikes in America today.

The UN according to Bolton

2005-09-10T23:03:00.000+02:00

Jeffrey Lewis of Arms Control Wonk.com has gotten is invaluably grubby little hands on some of John Bolton's 750 changes, the ones made to the "Disarmament and Nonproliferation" section, to be precise. Lewis naturally goes on to point out relevant and important stuff -- read the whole thing, as they say, and do download the PDF. All that is left to me is the opportunity to comment on golden quotes from the document like this (Bolton's changes in red):

Complete the destruction of chemical weapons consistent with the Chemical Weapons Convention in a timely and effective manner;

A timely and effective UN? Not on this ambassador's watch!

Slicing the pie

2005-08-22T10:07:00.000+02:00

To put it somewhat glibly, the market for organised violence in today's Iraq is shared between four groups of fanatics: the Kurdish Peshmerga, the Shia militias, the Sunni insurgency and the United States Marine Corps. Their common attribute is the moral ethos of fighting for a cause they strongly believe in. The nascent national Iraqi military and police forces are supposed to establish a monopoly on organised violence within Iraq's borders. But today, they are only bit players in a market dominated by others, not because they are corrupt or incompetent (although some surely are), but simply because they are not fanatic nationalists. Running towards gunfire is not merely a matter of training -- it also requires a moral conviction. I think it is fair to doubt whether the coalition is willing (ability disregarded) to create a fanatically nationalist Iraqi government with the military and police forces necessary do dominate the country. Doing so would certainly be a huge gamble: this government could turn out to be hostile not only to democracy and pluralism, but America and even the West at large. But in absence of such a dominating central government or an overwhelming American military presence, Iraq will be dominated by local militias. Any political compromise will require the recognition that political power in Iraq comes today not from the ballot box, but from the barrel of a gun. The disproportionate accommodation of Sunni demands in Iraqi parliamentary politics today is a good example. Sunni politicians bought this influence by their links to the insurgency and their supposed ability to make it draw down its violence. The trouble, of course, is that there is no guarantee that the politicians can actually control the militants. This is most obvious when it comes to the fractured Sunni insurgency, but any power brokering in Iraq requires careful attention of the relationships between the men of the ballot boxes and the men with the guns. If Kurdish politicians make a deal on Mosul that the Peshmerga will not accept, there is no deal. The questions, to me, is not whether Iraq can train the military and police to replace the coalition forces, and how just the national laws of Iraq will be. Rather, the questions are whether a stable accomodation can be made between the groups who are willing and able to enforce at least local monopolies on violence, and how just their treatment of their shares of the population -- in particular local minorities -- will be.

Render unto Caesar

2005-07-13T22:29:00.000+02:00

The Economist's Lexington examined this week how the social conservative movement has involved itself in turf wars between casino-running Indian tribes. Strikingly, the conclusion is that "the Republican revolutionaries who promised to purify Washington back in 1994 have changed the capital less than it has changed them. Many of Newt Gingrich's radicals are now making a good living exploiting the very government that they once despised. George Bush's presidency has seen the fraternity of lobbyists doubling in size, from 16,342 in 2000 to 34,785 today.". The American religious right movement's fundamental mistake is rejecting the separation of church and state. This arrangement is not, as it might seem, meant to protect sinners from the judgement of the church. On the contrary, it protects the believers from the influence of the state. Politics is firmly rooted in the material world. Its power to corrupt those who participate in it is greater than any movement's ability to make politicians follow a moral standard.

The hits just keep on coming

2005-07-09T14:39:00.000+02:00

Tony Blair looks much stronger today than he did after the British election, due to two improbable disasters. The French and the Dutch first saved him from almost certainly losing a referendum on the European constitutional treaty. The terrorist attack against London then gave him the opportunity to give a statesmanlike speak, literally backed by the world's most powerful leaders. He seized it, pointing out that "there is no hope in terrorism, nor any future in it worth living. And it is hope that is the alternative to this hatred." The attacks should also pour some oil on European waters, which have been stormy since the rejection of the constitution and the recent EU budget debate. That would give Blair a better chance of using Britain's EU presidency to introduce a constructive discussion on how the European political project will go on without the constitution.

Rut roh

2005-05-03T17:22:00.000+02:00

China has decided to present Taiwan with a gift of giant pandas:

"We hope the pandas, with their tame nature, air of nobleness and cuddly looks will bring joy and laughter to the Taiwan compatriots, children in particular," (Chen Yunlin, the director of the Chinese Communist Party's Taiwan Work Office) said.

Riiight. More seriously, the recent visit to China by Taiwan's opposition leader seems like a good sign, especially after China's recent saber rattling.

Billah!

2005-04-27T00:13:00.000+02:00

I have found the perfect mp3 player! Its name is Billy. No skins, no tags, no bullshit, just a playlist and a coupla good keyboard shortcuts. I love it.

Tragically hip?

2005-04-08T21:02:00.000+02:00

Podcasting and chavscum and Gmail, all in one survey? The Economist may have a pretty conservative reputation, but I have yet to see Time expound on the Burberry misappropriations of the English hoodlum youth.

A livejournal moment

2005-03-13T16:24:00.000+01:00

I tried this pointless English test, and this was my score: English Genius You scored 93% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 87% Advanced, and 88% Expert! Yay! ^_^;;; and so on, and so forth...

I am now officially a poli-sci wonk in training...

2005-03-04T19:56:00.000+01:00

...and I can't quite decide whether it's sad or neat.

w.anders: How's school? Vlip: cool sometime, horrendously boring othertime ;) w.anders: I hear that. Cool: actually studying political science with lecturers that seem to turn up on national TV all the time. Horrendously boring: Writing a paper on the three new institutionalisms and their applicability on economic development and welfare... Vlip: lol, indeed I can understand that. care to shortly define what institutionalism is? w.anders: Well, it's a focus on institutions in society, in order to better explain it. The idea is that individuals make choices and perceive the world based largely upon the institutions (formal and informal) that they construct and use. w.anders: In other words, a social safety net or a justice system does not merely distribute money or punishment. As institutions, they change the way people think about how to interact with each other. Vlip: seems coherent Vlip: and what are three kinds ? w.anders: Historical institutionalism, which emphasises path dependence -- the nature of earlier institutions strongly influence new institutions. Rational choice institutionalism, which emphasises institutions as rules for strategic games played by rational actors. An institution gives individuals information about how other individuals are likely to act. Social institutionalism, which takes a broader perspective on what can be an institution, including cultural rules and ideas. In contrast with rational choice, it points out that individuals often form institutions because they seem culturally valid, not necessarily because it actually benefits them materially. They also point out that we need institutions to comprehend the world at all, and in that sense they are intertwined with rationality.

Green light?

2005-02-11T17:45:00.000+01:00

Pastor Åke Green, accused of incitement to violence against homosexuals, was acquitted today by a Swedish court of appeals, reports Dagens Nyheter. Although Green's sermon was despicable, the court's decision was correct. Somewhat contradictory to descriptions in some English-speaking media, the charge against the pastor was not that he was merely guilty of hateful speech. Green was accused of hets mot folkgrupp, which does not quite translate to incitement against an ethnic group. One issue in the court case was whether or not homosexuals should be protected under this law, along with other groups. They clearly should, but that is not sufficient reason to convict Green. The law was meant to be a tool in the fight against violent organisations that target minority groups in society. Although Green called homosexuals a cancer to society, his speech cannot be considered to be an incitement to violence. Nor is Green affiliated with violent groups. His sermon is protected as free speech by the relevant Swedish law, which specifically includes 'shocking and disturbing statements'.

Damn, I just rued again

2005-02-08T20:22:00.000+01:00

This New Yorker article -- Outsourcing Torture -- is massively depressing reading. The worst part is that there seems to be so few standing stones from which to criticise this as the outrage it is without ending up neck deep in the sewer that is the current debate between left and right.

Economic policy and resentment

2005-01-23T15:51:00.000+01:00

In discussions about America's growing deficits and its plunging dollar, the point is often made that the rest of the world cannot afford to let America's economy crash. The consequence, which strikes me as accurate, is that graphs and numbers that would have predicted certain doom for a smaller country means something else for America, since it can rely on others to shore up its economy. However, this type of argument is extremely single-minded. When other countries' economies suffer from America's mismanagement, their citizens tend to blame their elected representatives. These politicians know that the economic problems are rooted in American policy, but are unable to sell that kind of complicated argument to their voters. If the American economy grows more demanding of outside intervention, the resulting friction will serve to build in the political elites the kind of resentment against America that already exists on the popular level. This is not a hypothetical scenario. The gap between the Euro and the dollar have produced a fair amount of moaning from European bankers already, but it has yet to produce an economic downturn. If that should happen, the results could do further damag to the transatlantic connection.

Business

2005-01-22T11:43:00.000+01:00

I find it interesting that two of my favourite songs right now both have the word business in the title -- "Strictly Business" by EPMD, and "Business" by Eminem. On the other hand, Kanye's "Family Business" and Mos Def's "Grown Man Business" both pretty much suck ass.

Let it be, let it be

2005-01-14T14:46:00.000+01:00

It seems that the notion of the Bush administration taking a laissez-faire approach to foreign policy, launched (I believe) by Naomi Klein in the excellent article Baghdad Year Zero, is catching on. In the Jan/Feb issue of Foreign Affairs, John Lewis Gaddis presents his view for a Grand Strategy in the Second Term. In what I would categorise as a cautiously critical analysis of the Bush administration's first term, this part stood out:

Finally, one apparent assumption that runs through the Bush grand strategy deserves careful scrutiny. It has to do with what follows shock and awe. The president and his advisers seem to have concluded that the shock the United States suffered on September 11 required that shocks be administered in return, not just to the part of the world from which the attack came, but to the international system as a whole. Old ways of doing things no longer worked. The status quo everywhere needed shaking up. Once that had happened, the pieces would realign themselves in patterns favorable to U.S. interests. It was free-market thinking applied to geopolitics: that just as the removal of economic constraints allows the pursuit of self-interest automatically to advance a collective interest, so the breaking up of an old international order would encourage a new one to emerge, more or less spontaneously, based on a universal desire for security, prosperity, and liberty. Shock therapy would produce a safer, saner world. Some such therapy was probably necessary in the aftermath of September 11, but the assumption that things would fall neatly into place after the shock was administered was the single greatest misjudgment of the first Bush administration. It explains the failure to anticipate multilateral resistance to pre-emption. It accounts for the absence of planning for the occupation of Iraq. It has produced an overstretched military for which no "revolution in military affairs" can compensate. It has left official obligations dangerously unfunded. And it has allowed an inexcusable laxity about legal procedures--at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere--to squander the moral advantage the United States possessed after September 11 and should have retained.

(My emphasis)