Obviously the big news of the day is Al Gore’s endorsement of Howard Dean. Josh Marshall has posted lots of interesting analysis at Talking Points Memo. William Saletan has also posted some valid criticism of the meaning of endorsing a candidate at this point at Slate.

You’ve reached the lowest level of the Hinternet when your computer and network connection don’t even really belong to you any more. The New York Times reports today on how trojan horse programs are used to take over people’s computers and use them to relay spam, distribute porn, or do other things that the scumbags use to make money. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t discuss how these programs are distributed, although we can guess that it’s through unpatched computers, email viruses, and the slimiest of malware.

The other day I mentioned that one long term solution to spam might be a widespread system of digitally signing emails so that the sender’s identity can be verified (basic web of trust public key cryptography stuff). It looks like Yahoo has proposed an anti-spam system that proposes exactly that. With any such system, you’d treat signed emails as trusted, and unsigned emails as suspect, but if it sees wide adoption, you would eventually be able to treat any unsigned email as spam. Now I’d like to see the technical specifications for Yahoo’s DomainKeys proposal published somewhere online so that the email and crypto geniuses can start poking holes in it before it’s actually deployed.

The New York Times published a stunning article today on our new get tough campaign in Iraq. If you’re too lazy to read it, it basically explains how we’re using the tactics Israel uses in the occupied territories in Iraq. You’d think that if we’re studing Israel’s tactics, we’d study their overall effect. In any case, I hope most American soldiers don’t share this sentiment:

“You have to understand the Arab mind,” Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. “The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face.”

If that view is widely held, I honestly think we and the Iraqis would be better off if we just pulled out our troops right now.

Douglas Gantenbein attemps to explain why Boeing has hit the skids and predicts that unless something changes, the company will be out of the commercial aircraft business in 10 years. I find it truly staggering that Phil Condit could turn a company that once was seen to emblemize everything that was right with American manufacturing and wrong with European manufacturing and run it into the ground. It wasn’t that long ago that people were discussing the demise of Airbus, now the shoe is on the other foot. (And he doesn’t even mention Boeing’s boneheaded decision to move its corporate headquarters out of Seattle. I don’t know how much difference that made to the bottom line, but it certainly epitomized incompetent management.)

I remain captivated by the various accounts of the attack on the US convoy in Samarra, mainly because accurate reporting seems so elusive. Jim Henley has a new item that cites an interview with a spokesman for the group that organized the attacks. If the spokesman is telling the truth, there were 12 attackers (not 60), and only two of them were killed. He also makes the obvious point that if the group wanted to steal money, they’d rob a bank, not attack a heavily armed US convoy. (I still have no idea how the attackers would have even know that the convoy was delivering money in the first place. If they were in a position to know, it would be a troubling sign with regard to the intelligence capabilities of the guerillas.)

I’m always amazed by people who look elsewhere, see things that disturb them, and say, “That could never happen here,” because that is never the case. In Maine, some religious zealots have banned all mention of non-Christian religion and civilizations from school curriculum. Fortunately, a teacher in the school district is not going to let them get away with it. The Taliban aren’t nearly as alien as most people would like to believe.

Update: See what I mean?

This morning I saw a pointer to yet another annoying open letter from SCO’s troglodyte CEO Darl McBride (or, more accurately, SCO’s lawyers and PR flacks). I wasn’t going to point to it, though, until I read a suitable response. Fortunately, Larry Lessig has provided.

I read today that Comcast is going to start rolling out set-top boxes with DVR functionality, and that they’re licensing the DVR software from a company other than Tivo. That’s a disappointment. I have two DVRs, one of which is a Series 2 Tivo that I love unreservedly. The interface is great, its performance is snappy, and it has all the intangibles that make it a joy to use. I used to have a second Tivo, but I gave it away and subscribed to the DVR service from Time Warner Cable instead. Its advantages are that I didn’t have to pay for the hardware, its monthly fee is lower than Tivo’s, and it has two tuners so you can record two things at once or record one thing and watch another live. (It also doubles as a digital cable receiver so I don’t have to use the weird IR hack that I use with my Tivo and my other digital cable box.) The downside is that it’s much more difficult to use than the Tivo is — the interface is less responsive, more confusing, and more cluttered. It has fewer software features than the Tivo does as well. I’d hate to see Tivo killed off by its inferior competitors, but I fear that if they don’t score more licensing deals, that could happen.

I remember listening to some lame EverQuest songs on mp3.com. Now, all gone (or, hopefully, relocated).