Month: May 2004

And Speaking of The Davinci Code

You know it’s getting silly when what Dan Brown left OUT of “The Davinci Code” is newsworthy.

Dan Brown said that when he wrote the best seller that dissects the origins of Jesus Christ and disputes long-held beliefs about Catholicism, he considered including material alleging that Jesus Christ survived the crucifixion.

It’s a reasonably entertaining novel but it’s not going to sit next to “Wuthering Heights” or “I, Claudius” in the annals of classic fiction. I have to assume that it’s the subject matter, and that some people are having a hard time having their religion treated as fodder for fiction.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised. The amount of traffic my little review of “The Davinci Code” has generated is still regular, more than six months after I posted it.

I’m currently in the middle of a Daniel Silva novel, “The Confessor.” It’s a decent read so far. I hope he doesn’t have the same third-act problems that Dan Brown has.

Biden Zinger

Greetings from New York City. It’s warm and muggy.

Quote of the day, from Senator Joseph Biden by way of the Guardian:

“With at least 82% of the Iraqis saying they oppose American and allied forces, how long do you think it will be before the Iraqi government asks our departure?”

Ouch.

Response to Mena

OK, I’ll add my two cents to the list of “How I use MT” trackbacks. I currently have one author and two blogs. I expect to add one more blog every 6 to 12 months within my own personal blog. Plans are in the works to add two more blogs and two more authors for friends/family members.

But I also want to make it very clear that my personal concern is not ultimately about the number of authors and weblogs allocated to each segment of the license. That’s a symptom of the bigger problem. Simply put, it’s about perceived value for price. The issue is not “I don’t want to pay for MT”. The issue is, I don’t want to pay this particular price for this particular feature set.

I would be quite willing to shell out $ for MT above and beyond what I already paid last fall *if* there were a current and/or future feature set worth paying for. Optimizing existing code is fine but that plus one questionable new feature (spammers have already begun to register over on typekey) is not enough change. Right now there is no compelling reason for the user like me to upgrade except for the fact that if we don’t do it now, it may well cost more to upgrade in the future. Maybe you can get away with that if you’re Microsoft, but not if you’re a startup like SixApart.

Here’s a few examples: Give me a CMS that does not require me to rebuild my site because I add one link to my links list. Give me more and better tools for managing comments that does not force me into a 3rd party service. Give me more and better tools for creating and mangaing templates. Make it easier to integrate graphics into posts, or even a whole photo album.

Give me stuff like that and I’ll get out my credit card again.

Since Mena said she was going to delete trackbacks that are “commentaries on SixApart” this one probably won’t stay in the trackback list for long. But I hope that it at least gets read and the message gets through.

Seymour Hersh & the New Yorker

To be honest, I couldn’t finish reading Seymour Hersh’s expose in the New Yorker. It’s way too depressing.

One thing that does bother me a little is that in the tradition of Watergate, few sources cited in the article are identified by name. Not surprising, given the subject matter, but it does make me a bit uneasy. I’m going to give Hersh and the New Yorker the benefit of the doubt, though, and assume that if they’re going to publish accusations like this, then their sources are multiple and significant.

The DOD, of course, put out a standard denial (thanks to Talking Points for the link). It’s interesting, though, that although the spokesperson claims that the article is ‘filled with error’ she only cites one relatively minor point as an obvious error. One would think that if Hersh had truly made some ‘dramatically false assertions’ she’d have more specific corrections to make than just that one.

I’m not completely naive. I know that gathering intelligence is a hard business. But I think there are some lines a civilized nation should not cross unless under the most extreme of emergencies – and as far as I can tell, Abu Ghriab was not one of them. It wasn’t even close.