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Phil Carter has a good piece at Slate on the necessity of rewriting the laws of war.

Jason Kottke has been saying for some time that Google is working on a web-based operating system of sorts, and today he comments on how Google might release a Google browser based on Mozilla to support those efforts. That sounds completely plausible to me, but it brings up an interesting question. When does Microsoft turn all its guns on Google? When Netscape started making noise about being a platform company and Mark Andreessen started talking about Windows just being a bundle of device drivers, Microsoft stepped up its efforts to destroy them. When will that moment come for Google? Microsoft is already attacking Google on the search engine front, but to my knowledge there’s no evidence that Microsoft is attacking Google the way it did Netscape, that is to say, but coercing its partners and customers to abandon them. That said, Google is not and will never be as dependent upon bundling as Netscape was. Netscape lost the browser war when Internet Explorer was added to Windows and became a good enough substitute that people didn’t need to go download Netscape Navigator over their slow modem connection to surf the Web. I don’t think that Microsoft has a similar front upon which to attack Google, but let there be no doubt about it, if Google starts looking like a platform, Microsoft will stop at nothing to destroy them. ...

For all of the baseless accusations made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, there was one that seemed to stick – the charge that John Kerry was not in Cambodia in December, 1968, as he had claimed. I’ve read two arguments in favor of Kerry on this, one that argued that he might not have remembered that he was there during Tet in February 1969, not at Christmas, 1968, and another arguing that he very well could have been there when he said he was. I confess that I didn’t put a lot of stock in either story, I just assumed that Kerry’s story sounded better saying he was there at Christmas instead of in early 1969, and he just told it that way. Unfortunately, my problem was projection – I tend to believe that other people at least try to be honest because I try to be honest. As it turns out, the guy making the accusations is just a liar. Here’s what he had to say about Kerry’s claim of being in Cambodia: ...

An alpha release of Hibernate 3 is available.

See how smart I am? Here’s what Sunday’s Today’s Papers had to say about the Kerry campaign’s handling of the Swiftvets: With Kerry's push-back against critics of his Vietnam service so far succeeding only in prolonging the discussion over whether he earned his medals, the wisdom of his response seems increasingly questionable. The Post's lead illustrates the dangers for Kerry: Before the Democratic nominee acknowledged the attacks on his record, the big papers didn't have much to report. Now that he's responded, however, papers like the Post are presenting both sides of the argument and leaving it to readers to decide what's true and what isn't. Reporters' dogged commitment to "balance" makes them unwilling to say which side is being truthful and which is not. The Post lead takes this route; the paper says Kerry's critics have failed to prove he's lying but adds that neither side is being totally honest. This answer, although unclear and unhelpful, is where the issue is likely to remain. The article by Swift boat veteran and Tribune editor William B. Rood may push the debate in Kerry's favor, however. Rood strongly supports Kerry's side of the Silver Star story and undercuts a leading Kerry critic by noting that the man praised Kerry during the war. I wrote up my pessimistic bit before Rood came out in Kerry’s defense. As it is, I haven’t thrown in the towel. The only thing to do is fight for the truth until the election is over, and then plot revenge if Kerry loses due to these lies. ...

Mark Cuban argues compellingly that DVD is dead, the industry just doesn’t know it yet.

William Rood, the commander of one of the swift boats that was on patrol with John Kerry on the day that Kerry was awarded his silver star, has gone public with a first person account of the day’s events. There were three boats on the patrol, one was commanded by Kerry, the second by Rood, and the third by Donald Droz, who was killed in action less than two months after that day. Here’s what Rood has to say: ...

I started reading Tony Bourdain’s memoir, Kitchen Confidential this weekend, and it’s great. It’s been on my list since it was published in 2000, and I’ve only now gotten around to it. The book gained much notoriety for its warnings to diners about what not to order in restaurants (don’t order fish on Monday and avoid seafood at Sunday brunch being the the two most well known), but what interests me most is the insider look at what being a working chef is like. In the book, he describes the concept of mise en place, which is French for “everything in its place” (more or less). What a cook’s workstation is “mise en place,” then all of his tools, condiments, and seasonings are well organized for use, and he has all the ingredients he needs for the dishes he’s tasked with making close at hand. It’s hard for a chef to work efficiently unless a state of mise en place has been achieved and can be maintained throughout his shift. That led me to think about my own profession, programming. As I’ve matured as a programmer, my obsession with mise en place has increased. These days, I just can’t start on a project unless all of the files are properly organized, I have version control set up, and I have build scripts and so forth. That said, on my current proejct, I have all sorts of areas where my “miz” is being violated, and I was just this morning thinking about how much time it’s costing me. My first problem is that my build scripts create WAR files that don’t deploy properly under Tomcat. For some reason, Tomcat can’t extract the files, so I have to create the directory myself and then unzip the files manually. That takes a little bite of time every time I want to update the application. Ideally, the build scripts would deploy the WAR files themselves, but they don’t do that yet. The second problem is that I’m not handling database configuration very gracefully. It’s in a configuration file that’s packaged inside the application, so whenever I move the application from development to staging to production, I have to do some manual hackery to make it work with the proper database. That also makes it more painful to deploy my applications. There are some other little problems that make things a bit more difficult here and there that I need to address as well, and when you put it all together, it’s amazing what kind of impact it has on your overall productivity. When you can’t deploy your application quickly and easily, you’re less likely to update it with small fixes. It’s just too much of a pain. And when you’re in the Java world (as opposed to PHP, for example), small problems with your environment can be a big deal. The preparation to get things cooking is a lot more complex than just making sure a file is in the right directory, and so problems of organization and infrastructure are magnified. I urge you to make sure you keep your mise en place in shape. ...

It seems that BugMeNot has been taken down by its hosting provider, and is looking for new accommodations. It’s also being filtered by some content filtering companies.

Tyler Cowen explains succinctly why growth must be the linchpin of successful economic policy.