Lindows has changed its name to Linspire, in response to a trademark challenge from Microsoft. I had been hoping for Winux.

I swore to myself that I wouldn’t post on Israel and Palestine, but I have to chime in and say that I’m disgusted by President Bush’s support for the Ariel Sharon plan for stealing all the Palestinian land he can and telling the Palestinians to deal with it. The settlement movement has been working for years to establish “facts on the ground” and our current President is perfectly satisfied with rewarding them for doing so. In his statement today, President Bush made it clear that the new policy of the United States is to discard any role as an honest broker for peace between Israel and the Palestinians and to instead stand firmly behind Israel, regardless of its actions. I don’t think that’s good for us, and I don’t think that’s good for Israel. Honestly it looks to me like both Israel and the United States have given up on ever having anyone to negotiate with on the Palestinian side of things, so Israel will take what it wants and deal with the violence as best it can. Maybe that’s sensible for Likud, but I don’t like the repercussions for America. It’s also worth remembering that we have troops on the ground in Iraq who are in harm’s way, and that this move by Bush isn’t going to make things any easier for them.

Update: Electronic Intifada says that Sharon’s proposal isn’t too different from the other peace proposals that have been floated in the past (I wanted to find a pro-Palestinian site to gauge the reaction).

John Battelle has the scoop on A9, Amazon.com’s search engine. The Web shifted a bit today …

Last week, I linked to Tony Blair’s “stay the course” essay in the Observer. I can’t very well now not link to Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) response to that essay. One wonders what kind of verbal punishment Jones could deal out to our President.

That clever Slacktivist fooled me again.

Add national ID cards to the list of proposed security enhancements that wouldn’t actually enhance security.

William Saletan siezes upon Bush’s closing statement in the press conference last night, which I must confess made my jaw drop:

One thing is for certain, though, about me, and the world has learned this: When I say something, I mean it. And the credibility of the United States is incredibly important for keeping world peace and freedom.

I find it nearly impossible to describe how angry President Bush’s refusal to admit any mistakes at all made me. Perhaps he refused to answer those questions because his political advisors told him that admitting any mistakes would provide ammunition to the Kerry campaign, but everyone already knows about Bush’s mistakes (except for the Bush supporters in the deepest denial), and his refusal to cop to them just makes him look crazy (to me). Even if Bush were to confine himself to postwar planning for Iraq, there are plenty of mistakes to choose from, and that’s before you get into the botched job of hunting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the botched job of reconstructing Afghanistan, or the credibility destroying arguments that the we used to justify invading Iraq.

The other alternative is that Bush doesn’t think he’s made any mistakes, which leads to the conclusion that Bush believes that where we are today is the best case scenario, and that’s disturbing.

As it turns out, the guy who was supposed to have quit in disgust (Rich Green) following Sun’s settlement with Microsoft, actually quit for a job at a startup.

I don’t normally like to play amateur psychologist, but after tonight’s press conference, I’m pretty sure our President has a personality disorder. He was asked more than once about mistakes he might have made and refused to admit any mistakes whatsoever. That’s a sign of a deeper problem, I think.

As a liberal, I believe that the government is a useful means of addressing various social problems, but that doesn’t keep me from being disgusted by politics most of the time. California state senator Liz Figueroa has drafted legislation that would block Gmail because of the way advertising is presented. Senator Figueroa compares the advertising to “having a massive billboard in the middle of your home.” I have no problem with valid criticisms of Gmail, like the complaints about accessibility, or the worries about Google correlating your email with your search requests, but to complain about the advertising in Gmail is just idiotic. Google is providing a service that they plan to fund by selling ads. This is, after all, the most common model of doing business on the Web. Let’s compare Google’s advertising to advertising in another popular webmail client.

Having opened Yahoo mail, I see five ads, and I don’t see a list of messages in my in box. Opening my in box, I see five more ads. Having opened an individual message, again, five more ads. I have no idea whether any of these ads are based on the content of my email messages, but I’m assuming not. All 15 of the ads I’ve seen have been graphical, and 3 of them have included animation. I just emptied my bulk mail folder, and again, 5 more ads, one of which is the largest I’ve ever seen.

Now I open Gmail. I am immediately taken to the in box. No ads are displayed. I click on another folder … again, no ads. I click on an individual message. In a narrow column on the right, I see a list of “Sponsored Links,” and also links to two related pages. Tell me about that billboard in my living room again?

The bottom line is that this is not a political issue. If Google requires users to accept some terms of service and then violates that contract, it becomes a political issue, but I think that consumers can decide whether the “cost” of letting Google scan messages to provide relevant sponsored links is less than the value provided by their email client. If not, there are plenty of competitors out there that you can use for free, or, if you prefer, pay for.

Update: Mat has a lot more on how the Gmail ads work (with screen shots).