Dave Winer's Scripting News Weblog

Sunday, September 16, 2001
	I'm pleased to announce that Scripting News is now available in OPML, in addition to all previous XMLizations. And since I'd like to get some work done this week, I decided to make this the first item. Heh. I also posted announcements on quite a few XML-oriented mail lists. Getting the news out to people is part of what we do, so it's on topic, even though we're all still obsessing about all that we're obsessing about. In an email to Betsy Martens who says she failed at getting back to normal today, I said "I have a better idea -- let's not return to normal. What's so great about normal anyway? ;->" Mulle XML-RPC is a client/server implementation for Objective C by Marcus Müller. It's the 47th implementation. BTW, here's an algorithm for getting out of the clutches of the disaster. Turn off the TV. Turn off NPR. Write some code. Cook some food. Don't call a friend. Hole up. Dig in. Have fun. Shhh. Don't tell anyone. Now as we ease into the hand-wringing and trial balloons, have a look at this picture from space of the eastern hemisphere of planet earth, from a southern perspective. Ain't it beautiful? What if this was all you knew about the planet. How would you imagine the beings on the planet spend their days? Do you think they worry a lot about a building on the other side of the sphere? How many people do you think live there? 25? 250? You might be surprised to learn that most of the people on the planet live in this part. Billions of people. Is it any wonder they're angry with each other? You would be too if it was so crowded! DaveNet: Warfare trial-balloons. Fredrik Lundh, a Swedish developer, compiled a list that gives me goosebumps. Yesterday I wondered why was there so much sympathy for the US, and said I don't trust it. Fredrik shows us that the WTC was part of the world, not just the US. Jacob Levy: "After we're done 'smoking out the terrorists out of their holes,' what then?" John Robb: "A simpler plan for airline safety: arm the mostly ex-military pilots. We all put our safety in their hands anyway, why not arm them?" The politics between India and Pakistan are bewilderingly complex. Here's another website we haven't been reading, but will. Physics Today: Nations Tackle Nuclear Terrorist Threat. Brewster Kahle: "The Internet Archive in collaboration with Alexa Internet, SUNY, the Library of Congress and the University of Washington, is archiving pages and sites relating to the terrorist attacks in the NY and DC." BTW, speaking of apologies, it seems the US government must have something to say to the families of the people who died on Tuesday. After alll the money we spend on defense, there was apparently no plan to protect the air space of NY and DC. This amazes me. In 1994 a private pilot crashed his plane into the White House. Hello. Anyone home at DoD? I hope it's not necessary to ask if there are defenses for our cities now. Today's song: We Didn't Start the Fire. Survey: "Do you feel fear when you hear the sound of a jet overhead?" A message from Pakistan on their relationship with the US. Welcome to DAWN, Pakistan's most widely circulated English language newspaper. Mike Krus did a synthetic RSS feed for Dawn. Debka is an Israeli weblog. Jerome Camus explains how the US is seen outside the US. Paul Hardwick has a lot of background pointers on Carnivore. Dan Gillmor: Expert Says Hold, not Buy, Shares Tomorrow.

Saturday, September 15, 2001

Real-time essay: Warfare trial balloons.

NY Times: "Government officials and financial leaders are eager to open the exchange and resume trading for symbolic, and practical, reasons. Millions of people do not know the value of their investments. Investors who want to sell shares, or buy them, cannot. The government is losing taxes every day the markets remain closed, and the exchange itself risks losing business to other markets, like the all-electronic Nasdaq, which is also scheduled to reopen tomorrow."

United Airlines mechanic: "They've cut us all back to five hours a day. They're saying we might have to declare bankruptcy. The families are suing the airline - the families of people in the building."

David McCusker: "Carnivore is a black box attached to your system's network to eavesdrop on all the traffic."

A poster I got from Chris Pirillo, it says it should be circulated to everyone, and I totally agree. Let's keep all the friends we've got. No need to create new enemies, we've got plenty of those already.

Is there an authoritative site that lists all the people who are confirmed to have died in the attack on 9/11?

6:21 PM: Dave called from DC.

BBC: "Those who make war against the United States have chosen their own destruction."

Michael McCarthy: "Today mainstream Islam is under assault from the fundamentalist extremists, and are afraid to act lest they provoke more outrages -- but unfortunately it is clear that an Islamic hero is needed because they simply won't go away, die off, or become mollified."

Wired: Amateur Newsies Top the Pros. "One of the most striking things about the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York was the outpouring of outstanding Internet coverage from ordinary citizens."

Survey: "Do you favor a multi-year land war in Asia in response to the destruction of the World Trade Center, and the damage done to the Pentagon and the US financial system?"

Jacob Levy: "Everyone is talking about the events of Tuesday as if it's a single event. I'm afraid this could be very wrong."

Dan Gillmor: "I haven't seen anyone look truly happy in days, except some small children who are too young to understand why the rest of us are so grim. One very young boy ran through the terminal this afternoon. He was shrieking with evident joy. Maybe he was just delighted to be running on his little legs through this big new space. What kind of world will he inherit?"

Mike Donnelan: "If America cannot even eradicate homegrown terrorists like Tim McVeigh from our own soil, then isn't Bush's call to wipe out terrorism nothing more than feel-good rally rhetoric?"

Dan Gillmor called from the airport in Johannesburg, South Africa. He's trying to get back to the US. His next stop is Frankfurt.

Scripting News got a mention on this radio show in Canada.

12:06PM: Dave called from LA.

Rogers Cadenhead: "Tropical Storm Gabrielle moved into my area (St. Augustine, Florida) yesterday and knocked out our power for most of the night. It has been sitting on top of Daytona Beach all night, spawning floods and water spout tornados (we've had five warnings so far in my county). I have power now, but that may not last for long. This list could use an additional moderator, preferably on the West Coast, whose main task is to keep personal attacks and other strongly abusive behavior off the list. If you can help, send me mail."

AP: "Tropical Storm Gabrielle sloshed across Florida on Friday, knocking down trees and power lines, flooding roads and spinning off tornadoes on a course taking it into the Atlantic Ocean."

Jay Bryant: "You had asked the other day for photos of flags flying in front of homes. Here is my house in Plainsboro NJ with my dog Daisy."

Zeldman: "Tonight, for the first time since Tuesday, we were permitted to cross 14th Street."

Fray is running essays by people who were in NY on Tues.

NBC: "As Jeremy and Lyz debriefed each other, he was beginning to see the diabolical plan — that he was not a hostage, he was strapped to a guided missile."

Jeff Kandt's survey: "In our pursuit of the terrorists and their accomplices, is it acceptable for the United States to kill innocent people?"

The Dalai Lama: "It may seem presumptuous on my part, but I personally believe we need to think seriously whether a violent action is the right thing to do and in the greater interest of the nation and people in the long run."

NY Times: "During the hour or so that American Airlines Flight 77 was under the control of hijackers, up to the moment it struck the west side of the Pentagon, military officials in a command center on the east side of the building were urgently talking to law enforcement and air traffic control officials about what to do."

Jerry Falwell: "I apologize."

London Times: "September 11 is a consequence of trying to impose world order, not a wake-up call to redouble the attempt. September 11 is a demonstration of what you can never achieve with armies, spies, coalitions, conferences and international muscle, not an argument for buying more."

Guardian: "Searching for parallels to help them understand what has happened and what they should do next, Americans cite Pearl Harbour. A better reference would be the Cuban missile crisis."

Dan Gillmor: "The exhaustion in the voice of the woman at the other end was evident."

Jake Savin: "The scenario that played out at the World Trade Center on Tuesday, was debated at length in the Airliners.Net discussion area, last November."

Michael Stern: NYC, Day 4.

Don Marti: "The SSSCA would outlaw the software that powers the independent Internet."

I started a new mail page.

A new global shortcut for UserLand-hosted Manila sites. If you type "usFlag" you'll get a small flag linked to a larger rendering.

Dave Jacobs' journey

I spoke on the phone with my friend Dave Jacobs, who, due to a family emergency, is traveling from SF to Raleigh, NC, and then driving seven hours with a three hour ferry trip to Ocracoke, an island on the Outer Banks of NC. Murphy-willing, his trip will take him through Los Angeles, Dallas and Washington. Dave will see a lot of the US air system today. He says "There's an incredible sense of comraderie and calm at the airport, the lines at the ticket counters went out the door. There are hundreds and hundreds of people in the lines, but everyone is very calm, tearful eyes, everybody, a lot of talking among people of just how sad things are. Everyone has cellphones. Lots of families traveling with kids. I believe our air system is truly safe now, I'm traveling without any fear."

Dave called from LA and DC. He says that LA was very tense. Cops, army, everywhere. "Don't stand there sir, it makes us nervous," a cop said to Dave. The people he met in LA were the first wave from Asia, people who were stranded there. Lots of pilots. The Red Cross people are all in shock, many are crying. The flight attendants talk about people they knew who died. Obviously the DC airport is open (NPR is reporting otherwise) and quiet. Dave's journey continues, cellphones are great. I told him he has a lot of courage to do what he's doing, he's headed to a big mess in NC, but he's doing it for love.

Tech news

Mozilla 0.9.4 is released.

Sjoerd: "Beyond JS is a Javascript library that lets you write Javascript unlike anything you've ever written."

Talking into the Web

Yesterday I described a service I would like to use. Several readers sent pointers to services and products that claim to do this.

Proteron: Recording phone calls to MP3 files.

Harry Saal: "I user General Magic's Portico service. Incoming messages are accessible from their website (or by dialing in with a standard phone), and show up as RealAudio files. You said mp3's, but otherwise it provides exactly what you are describing."

DoTell enables you to "broadcast streaming audio messages on the Internet from any touch-tone telephone."

IWW: "We present here a fully interactive tool to publish your labor and anti-capitalist news."

Disclaimer: I am a capitalist.

Love Manila Month continues

Except for Tuesday, we've been busily adding new features to Manila, and continue the work on Radio 7.1. We're doing it because we can.

A new slogan

Imho, if you're a US-based developer, and your projects are moving forward, you're doing the right thing for your users, customers, yourself, and your country.

I'm going to modify one of my slogans for this occasion.

Keep diggin!

Friday, September 14, 2001

DaveNet: Palestinians, Mir Tamim Ansary on Afghanistan.

Thanks for thinking of the US.

Yahoo has collected over $7 million for the Red Cross.

NY Times: "Despite President Bush's request that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hold peace talks soon, Mr. Sharon decided today that he was in no hurry to ease the Palestinians' political predicament in the wake of Tuesday's terror attack in the United States, and he canceled talks planned for Sunday without suggesting a new date."

John Robb, an ex-pilot, says that a plan to make aircraft impossible to hijack, proposed by Steve Kirsch and David Coursey, could work. However, he adds, "Pilots would hate it and would fight you every step of the way. They would rather be sealed in the cockpit than let a computer fly the plane."

It's possible that this email is a joke.

Alex Simmons re Ansary's piece: "I suspect the Russians are going to help us get to Afghanistan through the back door."

Independent: "Despite calls from US President George Bush to Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking for full support in the wake of the suicide attacks, Russia is making it clear that it will not back an American invasion of Afghanistan from bases in the former Soviet Central Asia."

Dan Gillmor passes on an idea from Rory O'Connor. On Monday when the NY stock markets open, buy a few shares of stock to support the economy.

Jerusalem Post: Palestinians rally for bin Laden.

Stratfor: "The terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon Sept 11 practiced near-perfect operational planning, coordination and execution before their mission but left behind obvious evidence leading to other operatives who may have supported the hijackings. This begs the question of whether these evidence trails were intentionally left in order to distract U.S. law enforcement from other terrorists."

Megnut: "I pulled an old college book off my bookshelf last night, The World's Religions by Huston Smith. I climbed into bed, proped up my pillows into reading position, and I opened up to a chapter I'd never read: Islam."

Wired: "FBI agents soon may be able to spy on Internet users legally without a court order."

NY Times editorial: "Since cell-phone technology first came into common use in the past few years, there have been instances where someone trapped, nearing death, was able to call home and say goodbye. But there has been no instance like that on Tuesday, when so many doomed people called the most meaningful number they knew from wherever they happened to be and prayed that someone would pick up on the other end."

Another famous cross-country car trip by Amazon's Bezos.

WSJ: "The New York developer who led the group that bought a 99-year lease of the World Trade Center said he is determined to help rebuild the complex."

High-res image of downtown Manhattan before the attack.

Harry Browne: "Our foreign policy has been insane for decades. It was only a matter of time until Americans would have to suffer personally for it. It is a terrible tragedy of life that the innocent so often have to suffer for the sins of the guilty."

Kevin Boyd: "Crisis, no matter how traumatic or unsettling, creates opportunity."

What you can do: Renew friendships with people who are considered enemies, but actually are not. Use the Internet to meet people with strange last names, and ask questions and listen to what they say. If they express anger, try to validate it, not negate it. Have the courage to go through your beliefs.

The Red Crescent is the Palestinian equivalent of the Red Cross. I gave them $100.

Something else we can do. Send less email. Mail servers are now becoming a critical resource. Yahoogroups is taking hours to deliver mail. If everyone cut their outbound email to new messages with new ideas and information, we'd be able to get more ideas and information transmitted.

James Spahr: "I've been very hungry for news that will explain to me why this happened. I'm not talking about the failure of our intelligence community; I'm talking about the history of the US foreign policy in the middle east."

Are you flying the American flag outside your home or business? Send me a picture.

Flag pics: Buck's, Scoble.

Much more mail.

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.

Dan Bricklin: "Having just flown in from Boston on a United flight the day before, the horror really struck home."

Black Hole Brain is in memorial mode.

Jeff Kandt: "President Bush now promises 'victory' over terrorism. This strikes me as incredibly naive, or cynical, or both. We can try to limit our exposure. We can turn ourselves into a police state, trading freedom for security. But how can you defend against someone willing to die for his cause?"

Michael Klare: "The image of American aircraft and missiles bombing Arab states and producing massive casualties -- many of them, inevitably, civilians with no ties to terrorists -- will surely confirm the belief among many ordinary Muslims that bin Laden is right: that the United States is intent on tormenting and subduing the Islamic world."

Christian Science Monitor: "If bin Laden is, indeed, the source of the attacks, US retribution is likely to be geographically complex and replete with risks that could lead to a wider war."

AFP: "A young Palestinian schoolgirl clutches flowers during a demonstration in support of the victims of the terror attacks on installations in the US, at the Beshir al-Reiss school in Gaza City, the Gaza Strip. Both Palestinians and Israelis have shown support and donated blood for the victims of the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, DC."

Lance Knobel: "In Britain, as across Europe, there was a three minute silence today at 11 in the morning. In my office, people switched off their computer screens and concentrated on private thoughts. What was extraordinary was the lack of sound. The bustling square outside our office was suddenly stilled, with no taxis or errant car alarms breaking the hush."

File this under things Dave wants for Christmas

I was asking for a scanner for a long time, I got it, and it's revolutionized coverage of concepts on Scripting News. I have another dream. I want a telephone number that I can call that records a message, stores it as an MP3 on a static server, and emails me the URL. Then I would run a script that moves it to a UserLand server, and link to it from Scripting News. This would allow me to interview people. This is something I like to do. If we can find such a service, I'd like to buy some stock. There would be a per-minute charge. Reliability and service would matter.

Tech news

Syndic8: Block diagram of planned information flow.

Rob Malda: "When many news sites collapsed under the load, we managed to keep stumbling along. Countless people have asked me questions about how Slashdot handled the gigantic load spike."

Internet News: "Companies don't want to appear too ready to get back to business -- at the risk of seeming insensitive. But at the same time, agencies and clients say they're eager to show the world that the nation isn't paralyzed by the news."

XML.Com: Pork Barrel Protocols.

Nathan Torkington: "Normal people blog their thoughts."

Eric Soroos's Love Manila list.

Thursday, September 13, 2001

Most interesting idea heard today, from Lee Thé at Fawcette. Even though Americans were victims on Tuesday, as soon as we get over the initial shock and pain, let's find out what we're doing wrong, and fix it. The US is the Microsoft of the world. We look to the left and right and see good people and don't understand that there's something wrong at the top. That's what the rest of the world has to deal with. It does matter who leads us. When we vote we don't use our power.

People don't sacrifice themselves for no reason. Let's find out what it is. And if we did something wrong (no doubt we did) let's apologize, ask for forgiveness, and then ask how we can do better. It's clear now that when we screw up we're going to feel it. And let's not waste the unity in the rest of the world. We now have the attention of the leaders of all the other countries. We've got to find a better use for it than use it as an excuse to unleash our anger through military force. What a waste that would be. The rest of the world isn't stupid, and they probably don't like the way we've been dominating. I wouldn't if I were in their shoes.

More mail.

CNN: "FBI Director Robert Mueller said a preliminary investigation indicated 18 hijackers were on the four planes -- five on each of the two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, and four each on the planes that crashed into the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania."

Doc: "What do we call Tuesday, September 11, 2001?"

Detailed space image of destruction at the Pentagon.

Awesome collection of pictures.

Wired: Congress Mulls Stiff Crypto Laws. "For nearly a decade, privacy mavens have been worrying that a terrorist attack could prompt Congress to ban communications-scrambling products that frustrate both police wiretaps and U.S. intelligence agencies. Tuesday's catastrophe, which shed more blood on American soil than any event since the Civil War, appears to have started that process."

JD Lasica: "Ray was on the 100th floor of the second World Trade Center tower. After the first tower was hit, he walked down 100 floors and managed to escape because he exited the south side of the building while the second plane hit the north side."

ESPN: "A plane carrying 16 Seattle-area tourists -- fans of the University of Washington football team -- and three Mexican crew members crashed following a visit to Mayan ruins in the state of Yucatan on Wednesday. All aboard died."

Rory Thompson: "New York's Financial District will be closed until Spring, at the earliest. The devastation to infrastructure and the surrounding neighborhoods is complete and utter. Once the search for victims is ended (which by itself will take weeks), then all surrounding structures have to be checked. Many will have to be demolished."

James Spahr: "New York is so big, it makes understanding this tragedy very difficult. The area effected looks quite small when viewed in the context of the city. The area is not small, in fact it use to take about 5 or 10 minutes to walk from one side of it to the other when everything was normal."

Paul Nixon: "This log is dedicated to presenting those graphics created to explain the terrorist act against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001."

AP: "The NFL will not play its 15 games this weekend."

Grace Suh: Views of the World Trade Center.

Time photo-essay.

PC World: Will attack hurt net privacy? "Writers of weblogs, or 'blogs' as they are called--a sort of interactive online personal journal--are debating whether security measures intended to ensure safety might turn out to be more of a threat to personal liberty than are terrorist attacks. Many tech industry old-timers are weighing in with their concerns."

Steve Duin: "Our ingenuity is being tested. And the reward for our resourcefulness isn't the head of Osama bin Laden, or any other terrorist, but limiting the possibility of another incinerated city."

Thomas Creedon started a site for posting memorials.

Five firefighters, trapped in an SUV, were rescued from the WTC rubble.

Chris Kwak at Bear-Stearns in NY: "We were just evacuated. Bomb threat." Alex Whitney: "They just cleared out Grand Central, Met Life which I look out on at the back, and my building due to a bomb threat; I walked home."

Dan Gillmor is in Africa.

Motley Fool: "The collapse of the Twin Towers may send a shock through the economy just as it sent shocks through the streets of lower Manhattan. It's too soon, however, to speculate what impact it might have on consumer confidence, and too easy to say consumers will be frightened into an economic shell. No one knows. In many ways, the economy is just as strong and diverse as New York City itself."

USA Today: "Yarkoni said crucial mistakes were made Tuesday in the United States. The first two planes which hit the World Trade Center may have surprised the authorities, but he said the third plane should have been found and shot down before crashing into the Pentagon 45 minutes later. Israeli warplanes would have been airborne within minutes, he said, while it took the U.S. air force an hour to launch its fighters."

Today's song: "Things ain't what they used to be."

Peter Navarro: "We are in a recession now. The question is, will we go deeper into recession? The most dangerous problem right now is that the attack could further erode consumer confidence and perhaps discourage increased business investment. If it does that, we will have both a long and deep recession. The Fed and Bush administration can prevent that by taking certain actions."

Jerusalem Post: "Sephardi Chief Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron today called on the Islamic clerics who have published fatwas (religious rulings) ordering suicide-bombings and declaring the bombers shahid (martyrs), 'to rescind the order and to call on the world to preserve the sanctity of of life, and to forbid large-scale attacks on innocent civilians.'"

Wired: "An administrator at one major network service provider said that FBI agents showed up at his workplace on Tuesday 'with a couple of Carnivores, requesting permission to place them in our core, along with offers to actually pay for circuits and costs.'"

Heard on NPR: US airspace will re-open at 11AM Pacific.

Jim Roepcke: "I live a few miles from SFO. Planes usually fly over our apartment dozens of times a day. But not yesterday. And not today."

BBC: "Police in the north German city of Hamburg have arrested a man in connection with the terror attacks on the United States."

Moscow Times: A Muscovite's Frantic Descent from the WTC.

Tehran Times: "Iranian President Mohammad Khatami condemned the kamikaze 'terrorist' attacks in the United States and expressed his deep sorrow and sympathy with the American nation."

Guardian: "Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent."

9AM

Radio script that automates link publishing to Web and email.

Safe computing tip. Remember viruses. Don't open enclosures. In the rush of email going around now it could be easy to forget. Be careful out there.

7AM

NPR walked through their morning schedule. Psychologists will talk about how children process these events. From all different angles. Nothing about the international picture. Totally self-obsessed. Childlike. Bedtime stories. I'm an adult.

Please don't send huge PowerPoint enclosures. I don't run PowerPoint. Thanks.

The news is flowing to this site largely from the mail list that started yesterday. If you want the intense version of the flow, please subscribe. The people are totally kicking butt. While all this is going on I'm getting tons of ideas for how the software can work better to link people together in time of crisis. It's also a time of great opportunity. Keep your eyes and ears open, observe, and share what you learn.

6AM

I want to shift gears today out of navel-gazing -- that fog lifted for me last night --it's time to decide what our goals are. The pervasive fear of retribution is a tool for the US president. Now I'd like to see an LBJ-like approach, let us reason together, how can we all win now. It's OK to think about the dead, but they're dead. Think about all the people who are alive now who will be dead if we go to war. American culture is so self-centered, now we're part of the rest of the world. Security in Europe is pretty heavy. So what. We'll get over it. Now how can we use our new unity to make some peace. This is our wakeup call. Wake up.

Non-WTC links

Paul Nakada: My Manila Wishlist.

Wednesday, September 12, 2001

Today's Song: The Star-Spangled Banner.

NY Times: "Many Americans have come to consider politics irrelevant in recent years. Now politicians matter again, and the president, in his role as commander in chief, becomes our focal point."

The image of the firemen with the flag came from the Bergen County Record. This picture destined for the history books.

NASA photos from space of the WTC smoke plume.

US Senator John McCain: "We should demand that Afghanistan immediately extradite to the United States Osama bin Laden. We will know in due course if he is the architect of yesterday’s attacks, but we already possess sufficient evidence to have indicted him for orchestrating the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania."

London Times: "Both Egypt and Jordan still have Israeli Ambassadors on their soil, despite growing popular demands for their expulsion. President Mubarak and King Abdullah II of Jordan are seen by Islamic radicals as American puppets, leaders who are unable to sway opinion in Washington and unwilling to confront America over its support for the Sharon Government in Israel."

Jerusalem Post: "Peres said that if Arafat does not renounce terrorism, he will have to face the wrath of the world. The balancing act Arafat has played successfully for years in appeasing the Western world while harboring and sponsoring terror can no longer continue, he said."

Thomas Friedman: "Hey boss, did you hear that? We just blew up Wall Street and the Pentagon and their response is no more curbside check-in?"

Standard: "Phil Rosenzweig, 47, a director in Sun's software organization who had been with the company since 1991, worked in Burlington, Mass., and was on his way to Los Angeles, Sun said. American Flight 11 was the first flight to hit the World Trade Center, slamming into the north tower at 8:45 a.m."

BBC: US computers networks at risk. "One day after the terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, a congressional report has warned of the vulnerability of the country's computer networks."

Standard: Markets Won't Open Before Friday. "Citing concerns over safety in downtown Manhattan, America's two biggest stock markets, the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, won't reopen for trading until Friday at the earliest."

Salon: FBI: We know who they were. "Mueller says no arrests have been made, but the agency has identified most of the hijackers and their 'associates.'"

A reader who requested anonymity has a plan for rebuilding the WTC in a slightly different form. Look at it twice and use your imagination. A very New York response. Gotta love it.

Nadirah Sabir: "America is on alert and on the defensive. So, too, are American Muslims."

Lockergnome: "The Lockergnome staff has come to the decision of officially postponing Gnomedex."

O'Reilly: "We are postponing the Peer-to-Peer and Web Services Conference in Washington, DC."

BBC: "It was the fire that killed the buildings."

PayPal has "created a special fund to help PayPal members provide assistance to those affected by this tragic event."

BBC: "The gloom which enveloped stock markets after the terrorist attacks in the US has begun to clear after a rollercoaster day for European traders."

I started a new unmoderated mail list for news about the World Trade Center bombing. I suggest that it not be used to debate issues, or express emotions. If you find a story that you think should flow out through the weblog community, please post to the new list.

BBC: "Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat expressed their horror at the attacks."

Metafilter thread starting at 6AM yesterday, with photos.

Chicago Tribune: Backups let firms keep running.

Jerry Pournelle: "Jeremy and several other passengers decided there was nothing to lose by rushing the hijackers."

Joseph Pistritto: "I think we can consider this confirmed. Another person on that plane's wife was interviewed on KGO radio this morning, he lives in Pleasanton, CA, and apparently he made a total of 4 cellphone calls from the airplane to his wife in California, who told him about the WTC airline crash which had happened a few minutes before."

Jon Carroll: "There will be pressure to suspend our freedoms, to allow the government to invade our privacy and control our speech as part of the glossy new war. If terrorists force America to give up its freedoms, then they will have won."

AP: "Maine Gov. Angus King said two suspects had flown to Boston from the Portland International Jetport, and left behind a rental car that was impounded in the Portland area."

NY Daily News photo-essay. Warning, there's carnage.

John Robb: "The response to this attack shouldn't be seen as getting even or going to war with the group that did this (most likely bin Laden). Rather, it should be seen as a wake-up call to the world: terrorism and the states that support it are not to be tolerated anymore. The world is too small, people are too interdependent, and the ability of an individual or small group to do harm is so great that terrorism in all its forms cannot continue."

NY Times editorial: "There is a world of consoling to be done."

Poynter.Org has a collection of today's front pages.

NY Times front page for today.

Empire State Building webcam screen shot at 8:35AM Pacific.

Myers Carpenter has a war room.

BBC: "The suicide pilots struck not only at innocent civilians, but at the heart of what has been buoying America's struggling economy: the innate confidence of the country's people. By undermining that, the terrorists hope to destroy much more than one of the world's tallest buildings. They want to bring down the Western world's financial system."

Mail Starting 9/12/01.

Jerome Camus: Did the world change yesterday?

L3 Communications: "One of the greatest safety inventions for the commercial airline industry has been the crash protected flight recorder, more commonly called the 'Black Box.'"

Salman Rushdie: "The worst-case scenario of crossing the road, after all, is that you'll be hit by a truck and killed. Yet we all do cross roads every day, and could hardly function if we did not. To live by the worst-case scenario is to grant the terrorists their victory without a shot having been fired."

Lance Knobel: "Like so many people around the world, I had no appetite for work yesterday. I stayed in the office listening to the radio, then went home to watch the BBC's superb coverage of events (CNN, usually good in breaking news, was nowhere in comparison)."

Josh Watts took a picture of the WTC on a nice day before it was blown out of the sky.

Non WTC-links

Survey: "If we had an easy gateway connecting Scripting News to instant messaging clients, allowing me to send news items out in real time, which would you likely use?"

XML.Com: "As an addition to the family of web technologies, SVG is a welcome arrival. It emerges at a time of new opportunity and challenge, as new devices and user communities proliferate. The W3C SVG Working Group has done a fantastic job with the development of the specification, and it's set high standards that other groups would do well to aim for."

LOCKSS stands for Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe. "The beta version is being distributed to over 40 libraries worldwide who will run about 60 caches. Beta test sites include major libraries such as the Library of Congress, and smaller ones such as the University of Otago in New Zealand. Four 'shadow' publisher machines at Stanford will mirror about 15 GB of content from real journals, and simulate brief failures and permanent outages." (Via Nathan Torkington.)

I've gotten several requests to point to Amazon's page for donating to the Red Cross. I won't do it. At some point the crisis will alleviate, and Amazon may have recouped its reputation with Web developers because of this association with charity. Amazon's policy on software and business process patents remains unacceptable. If they want my support they should release their patents, and then I will happily point to their page for charitable giving.

7/24/00: "The Internet which you and I use was built out of an open sharing of ideas. By erecting barriers, as Amazon has, and being aggressive about it, they are milking a cash cow they didn't create."

Note to our customers and users of our software. September is still Love Manila Month. And we're working on the next release of Radio UserLand. The power of easy content management is behind everything we do. When people ask how I'm able to keep up with so much the answer is simple. To update my website I just type into my outliner and hit Control-S. Anyone who can use a computer who has something to say can do it. It's easy.

Many thanks to Faisal Jawdat and Stan Krute who have been feeding me links for the last two days.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

DaveNet: To peace-loving people everywhere.

NY Times: Web Offers Both News and Comfort. "At www.scripting.com, a site normally devoted to technical discussion of Web programming, people sent in pictures of the World Trade Center buildings collapsing and reports."

Comments: Of course it's great to get a link from the NY Times, but they missed what's going on. The Web has a lot more people to cover a story. For most of the day the Times home page had little or nothing about the crisis. We, collectively, got on it very quickly once it was clear that the the news sites were choked with flow and didn't have very much info. Hat-tip to Bill Seitz for remembering the Empire State Building webcam. And we got first-hand reports from people who were there. There were real-time human touches that are hard to capture in a print pub with a lead time. There's power in the new communication and development medium we're mastering. Far from being dead, the Web is just getting started.

Talking with Scoble this evening about this stuff, he told me about an earthquake web app in California that lets people report quakes and it aggregates the data and distributes rescue resources accordingly. Someday soon every home will have a weblog, and we'll have great aggregation tools that allow us to quickly assemble lists of loved ones who survived. A new button on cellphones that says "I made it" and it flows the fact to all your concerned friends. Today I learned first-hand what it feels like to worry about a family member caught up in catastrophe. That kind of information doesn't need a business model.

Anyway, it's time for me to sign off for the night. Today I started at about 5:30AM, and typed and read and thought and felt every minute of the day. I'm wiped. I'm also lucky -- I get to come back tomorrow. Thousands of Americans aren't so lucky. Their families and friends won't sleep so well tonight. Say a prayer for all of us, and for the world. Those assholes fucked with a very powerful country. I hope we all survive that. Peace and love, Uncle Gravy.

Survey: Have you been to the World Trade Center?

Eric Soroos: "Buildings are designed to provide a few hours of fire protection for normal fires. But for extreme events (like the big earthquake), the design criteria becomes 'survive long enough to evacuate.'"

On a scale of 1 to 10, how weird is this page?

Lockergnome: Blogging is hogging mind boggling bloggers.

Jeff Barr: "It seems to me that the work of Syndication can help in some small way to make the world a better place."

Wes Felter: "I'm hearing rumors that gas prices have doubled and tripled during the day in some places. Has anyone witnessed that?"

Wes says: "I didn't understand how they could have collapsed; the buildings didn't look damaged below the crash sites." NPR interviewed a Berkeley engineering professor, he explained what happened. Basically the steel in the top 20 stories got very hot and softened, and collapsed on the lower 90 stories. They couldn't handle that kind of load, so they collapsed too.

John Robb on the knives used in the hijacking and the implications for America's future wealth.

Great Buildings: The World Trade Center.

Engineering News-Record: Dynamic Duo of Height.

Historical anecdotes about the WTC.

Eugene Pervago reports from Mexico.

Reuters: Putin Expresses Condolences to American People.

Editorials: Houston Chronicle, Seattle Times, London Guardian.

Joel Spolsky: "Here on the Upper West Side, about 5 miles north of Ground Zero, I saw streams of people in business clothes walking home. I saw people planning to walk all the way up to the George Washington bridge and then across to New Jersey where they lived."

US Attorney General Ashcroft at a press conference: Hijackers were armed with knives. President Bush will speak at 5:30PM Pacific.

John Perry Barlow compares today's events to the burning of the Reichstag that led to the Nazi takeover of the German government in 1933. He said in a published email "Within a few hours, we will see beginning the most vigorous efforts to end what remains of freedom in America. Those of who are willing to sacrifice a little - largely illusory - safety in order to maintain our faith in the original ideals of America will have to fight for those ideals just as vigorously."

These were not terrorist attacks. The Pentagon is the US military headquarters. It's an impossible stretch to see that as terrorism. If the targets of attack were only civillian targets, that's terrorism. This picture must haunt the military. Soldiers look helplessly as their headquarters burns and their colleagues die. The attack on the Pentagon was an act of war.

Internet News: World Markets Plunge on US Terrorist Attacks.

London Times: Quotes from a day of terror.

Boston Globe: '''This is a price you pay for a weak response to the Lockerbie bombing, a weak response to the first World Trade Center bombing, a weak response to the bombing of the USS Cole, a weak response to the Africa embassy bombings,'' he said. ''We've allowed Osama bin Laden to go on with life, to be protected by the Taliban in Afghanistan.'''

Brent Simmons: "CNN reports that the White House states that the explosions are not a U.S. strike."

James Spahr: "The photo below is from my apartment and I have others. It will be a while before I can post them. 3 of my ISP's trunks where severed this morning, obviously these things are far from a priority right now."

Jonathan Shapiro: "This act required logistic support and coordination involving hundreds of people, with major-league funding."

Daniel Schorr on NPR: "With Pearl Harbor there was a return address." An important point as the cowardice of today's attack sinks in.

FDR: "Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."

Full text of FDR's Pearl Harbor speech.

Google is caching major news sites today. (Screen shot.)

News.Com photo essay.

NY Times: "From the World Financial Center, another tall office building across the street to the west of the Trade Towers, employees watched out the windows in shock as the building fell. Angelo Echevaria, 49, said he had to prod fellow workers who were frozen with fear, urging them to evacuate."

This is London: "An Arab journalist with access to Bin Laden said today that the terrorist leader warned three weeks ago that he and his followers would carry out an unprecedented attack on US interests for its support of Israel."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "Minutes earlier, a man who said he was a passenger on the plane told an emergency dispatcher in a cell phone call: 'We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked!'"

Press release: "With great sadness, Akamai Technologies, Inc. today announced the passing of Daniel C. Lewin, co-founder, chief technology officer and board member of the Company. American Airlines confirmed that he was on board the Boston to Los Angeles flight that crashed in New York City today. Danny was 31 years old and is survived by his wife and two sons."

My dad is OK. Just talked with him on the phone. He was in Grand Central Station when the subways shut down. He walked from mid-town over the 59th Street Bridge with thousands of other New Yorkers. He didn't know the planes were hijacked. What a relief that both my parents survived. And thanks for all the good wishes.

Afghan News Network: "This is a terrible act of horror and our hearts go out to everyone involved in this heartless terrorist attack. This act is against the teachings of Islam and Muslim nations condemn this attack."

Where to donate blood in the Bay Area.

Check in here if you're alive in New York City or any other affected city. And if you see this guy walking around Manhattan, Brooklyn or Queens, send me an email.

Still no word from my father. I just went outside and heard a plane overhead. On most days that would be a pretty normal thing. Today I wondered what was going on on that plane. A friend was coming to visit from Florida for the weekend. Now that's off. It's just beginning to sink in how much things have changed. Yesterday would it have made no sense to run a survey to ask if we are at war. Yesterday was a normal day. Today started normally too. I have a feeling that the takeaway from this will be There's No Time Like Now. Yeah, there's no time like now to start forgiving, to turn the other cheek, to show the world not that we're tough, but that we're commited to making the world a better place. Do I think our government will do that? No I don't.

China People's Daily: "Chinese President Jiang Zemin here at midnight September 11 conveyed a message to U.S. President George W. Bush in which Jiang expressed sympathy to him and to the U.S. government and people for the disastrous attacks against the U.S. He also expressed condolences to the family members of the victims."

CNN: Chronology of Terror.

London Times: Attacks Celebrated on West Bank.

Selenium: "I am only a block from the White House. There are currently two layers of security around the White House from what I can see. There is an outer layer has Secret Service and other police officers to turn back people and cars, and an inner on complete with road blocks."

Jerusalem Post: Exclusive interview with WTC architect.

Jerusalem Post: Israel evacuates embassies, Palestinians celebrate.

Maurice Rickard: "I'm in Pittsburgh. A United flight (a 757) went down in a rural area 70-80 miles southeast of here, near Somerset. NPR has reported that one of the passengers called 911 on a cell phone, and indicated that the flight was indeed hijacked."

Jason Levine: "I'm beseeching everyone in NYC to go donate blood over on Q; you may want to ask people to do the same."

I just got an email from a Amy Harmon at the NY Times. She says: "I am working on a story about how people are responding across the Net to the news of today's terrorist attacks, and I noticed that you're devoting your blog to it. I wondered if you might have a minute to talk about the impulse to collect and share news and reaction and how the Net facilitates that." I can't get through to NY on the phone. I see this as an opportunity to cover a big news story, it's largely the same reason the NY Times home page is all about this. We want to figure out what happened, what it means, and where we go from here. The world changed today. It's still very fresh. Is there an opportunity for something good to come from this? I think so. Talking with my mother on the phone she's sure that Jewish people will be blamed for this. I asked can we hope for something better to come from this. Perhaps a new connection between peace-loving people everywhere?

AP: New York City Shuts Down.

A mailing list for discussion of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and other sites.

Joichi Ito: "A Japanese military analyst mentioned on national TV in Japan that US forces have been issuing warnings and raising the level of alertness over the last week around the world and early comments from the analyst suggest that there was some warning."

Rob Fahrni: "My wife informs me that there are still fifty domestic flights in the air and two international flights that cannot be contacted. This may not be over by a long shot."

Joe Foss: "I have heard from one person (an in-law) who was on the 57th floor of tower one when the plane hit. He is now home safe. He said the emergency systems in the tower were functioning and it was the most orderly evacuation he could imagine under the circumstances."

Cameron Barrett: "There is soot falling out of the sky outside my apartment in Brooklyn."

My father was in downtown NY when the planes crashed. My mother saw the whole thing from a rooftop in Brooklyn. She had a camera. We haven't heard from my father yet.

Survey: Is the US at war?

All air traffic in the US has been grounded. The President who is in the air now is returning to Washington. A third plane has crashed into the Pentagon.

Timothy Timlin: "A fifth hijacked plane crashed near Camp David, MD. There is a sixth hijacked plane circling around in Virginia airspace; it is surrounded by our aircraft at this time."

Please post news and pointers to pictures to this discussion group. Email is fine, but let's use all the communication tools we have.

One tower of the WTC has collapsed. (Update -- the other tower collapsed at 7:30AM.)

Webcam photo of where the WTC used to be.

Photo of the Pentagon burning.

A dramatic picture that gives you an idea of what's happening in NY.

Mirrored video of the tower collapses.

Reports of a plane crash in Pittsburgh at 7:40AM Pacific.

I've gotten email asking my position on Palestinian terrorism. Apparently I'm listed on some website as a supporter of such acts. Here's my statement. "I am Jewish, son of Holocaust survivors, first generation American. I am against terrorism, period. I support Israel, but understand and empathize with the frustration of Palestinians. I have a friend who is Palestinian. Jews who think all of them are terrorists are mistaken. They are more like us than they are different."

Grace Suh, in NY, has a photo-essay of the WTC demise.

Nando Times has lots of photos too.

A screen shot of the NY Times home page at 7:21AM Pacific.

Stories: Washington Post, BBC, London Times, Chicago Tribune, CNN.

Scobelizer: America Under Attack.

Bryan McCormick: "I'm at the epicenter. According to a neighbor everyone in WTC2 below the 90th floor got out alive."

Adam Curry: "The US embassy in Amsterdam is now surounded by heavily armed guards and news crews. All flights to the US grounded at Schiphol Airport."

John Robb: "What is amazing to me is that for an operation this large and closely coordinated we had no warning."

Jim Biancolo: "I don't expect you to respond, but I had to take a shot at asking, since yours is one of the few news sites that's up. Have you heard anything about evacuation plans around the Pentagon - where they're sending the injured and uninjured. Trying to track down information for a friend whose husband works there."

Richard Martin: "Tower two has collapsed. Pentagon has been dropped in on by an explosion on the helo pad. A helocopter has fallen on to the mall, the White House has been evacuated along with Treasury and others. This is deep. The two planes were a 767 from Boston (Logan) hijacked and the second was a United flight. The Sears tower is being evacuated."

Ariel McNichol: "From London the news reports that 'The United States is under seige.' Now Tony Blair is on TV saying that the center of asking his people for empathy to the US, a place of carnage, with innocent people dead, etc...and now he asks all the UK to send a condolences, and he's going on about democracies of the world needing to come together to erradicate the evil terrorism of this world. He looks genuinely upset, and is planning an emergency return to London...HOLY FUCK! I really hope that you're safe over there in California. LOVE, LOVE, Love Ariel in London."

I just tried calling my parents in NY. "Beep beep beep.. All circuits are busy."

6:45AM: I sent out a bulletin.

6:15AM: Bill Seitz reports that a plane has crashed into NY's World Trade Center.

The Empire State Building cam provides a real-time view. (Screen shot.)

Mike Donellan has a color picture and links. It was a hijacked United Airlines plane.

Update: Two planes hit the WTC.

Bush: It was a terrorist act.

Reuters: A Palestinian group is claiming responsibility.

NPR: American Airlines flight from Boston, a Boeing 767, hijacked. Heavy loss of life.

Most of the news sites are too busy to get through to. Interesting, perhaps the Web isn't as dead as some say it is.

Author David Bank will do readings from Breaking Windows in Berkeley and Menlo Park next week.

Wired: Hollywood Loves Hollings' Bill.

SchoolBlogs is offering free Manila hosting.

Monday, September 10, 2001

DaveNet: Open Source in 2001.

InfoWorld's CTO: "When I grow confused about what Web services means, I read the XML-RPC spec and it makes sense again." Sweet!

WSJ: Microsoft drafts settlement proposal.

The Syndication mail list is starting to address the core issue of RSS: The link-title-description model doesn't work well for weblogs. Not only can weblog items contain more than one link per item (like this item), they can also reasonably contain markup. It's a written medium. In writing sometimes you want to italicize for emphasis, or to add a new voice, there are even formal rules that some publications follow to the letter. Further, many weblog items don't have an easily discernable title. RSS defines a rigid publication style, weblogs are less formal. Anyway, it's great to see the community get past the respect issues. I'm not sure where it's going, but the most important thing is that people are addressing each other as adults. With that, problems can be solved, and perhaps new formats and services designed and deployed. Mazel tov to the members of the Syndication community.

Correction: The Allman Brothers came from Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia. I know why I got confused, two of the brothers died in consecutive years in Macon. And they had a big album called Eat A Peach. (Georgia is the Peach State.)

Steve Goodman is looking for a job.

More Love Manila Month features & fixes on Frontier News.

News.Com: "Great Bridge, a company that had hoped open-source software would allow it to take on database giants such as Oracle, has expired after failing to find investors or a company to acquire it."

John Robb started a weblog for Singularity, whatever that is.

Jeff Barr has some new RSS sources this morning.

Peter Saint-Andre: "What is a technology revolution?"

Dylan Tweney: How to Beat Corporate Alzheimer's.

How to get Dubya's attention.

Ken Dow does his part for Love Manila Month. My comment. People always ask for a one-step home page flip, but as a software designer this burns my braincells. A big step like that requires confirmation. There's no way to undo an accidental flip. But the feature shows up on the lists every time. What's a developer to do?

Yeah-yeah, everyone says Do Undo. Uh huh. And where would you put the Undo command in a Web app so that people would actually see it and use it? It's not so simple folks. I'm just a little smarter than I look.

Steve Ivy has the best suggestion so far. Do the confirmation in Javascript, and avoid a roundtrip to the server. This probably is the best compromise. It doesn't require a new subsystem in Manila, and gives Ken and others the performance improvement that they want.

A new Bryan Bell feature request for Manila.

NY Times: AOL Pursuing AT&T;'s Cable Unit.

The first Talking Moose parody site. "Ask him if he would rather pay for content management software now or a psychologist and mood altering drugs later."

On the XML-DEV list a debate is going on about whether or not MSIE 6 is an XML parser. Another how many angels fit on the head of a pin hair split. MSIE 6 is breaking the rules that Microsoft agreed to re conformance in XML, which was a very good idea. Now the Microsoft rep is spinning that it was never intended to be an XML parser. Hmmm. Next time a Microsoft exec gets up and says We Love XML you should be sure to ask which XML it is that they love so much.

The problems with MSIE and XML that sparked the debate were reported by Elliotte Rusty Harold on his Cafe con Leche website. He doesn't maintain permalinked archives on his blog, so I can't point to his specific comments. He's a harsh critic for sure, uses too many adjectives, and impugns their motives (falling for the MS flamebait) but he's on the money this time. Microsoft can't have it both ways, say they support XML, and then ignore the core thing about XML -- it's absolute insistence on processors not accepting any variability in what XML is. This is the lesson of HTML that XML tries to learn, now with little hope of success, thanks to Microsoft.

Also I know there are professional and thoughtful people at Microsoft. So why do they send their professional wrestler to talk with the people on the XML-DEV list? Could they possibly care less about interop? Questions questions.

Nicholas Petreley: "Since it's a foregone conclusion that Microsoft will be littering its XML with pointers to Win32-based components, the best that can be said about its adoption of XML is that it will make it easier for browsers and applications on non-Windows platforms to understand which parts of the document it must ignore."

Today's song: "Every other Christmas I would practice good behavior."