Oregon, your state for Open Source software It looks like the Oregon State House of Representatives is considering a bill which would require the state to consider open source software first when looking for new software. This is an interesting idea. I have seem similiar efforts that required governments to use open source software and I didn't agree with those. Requiring the use of a certain software liscence, no matter how good, is a bad idea. However, this bill only requires the state to evaluate the open source software, and in my book, that is a good idea. The bill is available online.  ¶ 4:29 PM

  Protest Experience Well, I went to the Anti-war demonstration (or if you prefer Peace Protest) last night after work. I thought I would right down my experience for posterity's sake and for those of you interested in Blogger land.

I left work about 5 p.m. and caught a bus to downtown. I met my girlfriend Megan at the corner of Morrison and 6th. As I arrived I looked down Morrison and saw a large group of protestors walking along 3rd Ave. Megan and I decided to go down and see what was going on and see if we wanted to join up. The group was very positive and peaceful so we decided to walk with them south on 3rd. We walked down 3rd until we got to the Federal Justice Center on Main. We turned East on Main and went down to 2nd and turned North on 2nd by the World Trade Center.

There were a group of riot cops in front of the Starbucks in the WTC and across the street in front of Boogie Woogies. As we walked by these cops there were many mentions about how we all appreciated the Cops protecting such important cultural institutions. We continued down 2nd and passed the Morrison Bridge on-ramp and off-ramp which were both blocked by riot and motorcycle police. Apparently earlier a number of protestors had tried to occupy the bridge, but now the cops were doing it for us.

The march continued down 2nd all the way to 2nd and Ash were it split into two groups. A smaller group went down Ash to the Waterfront and the main force of the march went to 2nd and Burnside and blocked traffic there.

At this point Megan and I had felt pretty good about marching and saying our peace and we weren't really sure if we wanted to get involved in the civil disobedience that was occurring at 2nd and Burnside. So we continued down NW 2nd towards the Chinease Gardens. At about 2nd and Davis a series of 4 police cruisers zoomed by loaded with riot cops. They went around the block and joined up with a SWAT vehicle with about 6-8 more riot cops hanging on to the side. This looked pretty serious. Megan and I then saw a group of protestors walking down Natio Parkway towards the Steel Bridge. We figured that this is where the smaller splinter group of protestors had headed.

We walked down Everett to the waterfront and saw a large group of protestors on the Ramp from Natio on to the Steel Bridge. They were completely blocking the the bridge, including the MAX tracks. We walked up the ramp a ways to within 100 feet of the back of the crowd and just watched. Soon about 10 police on horseback came charging up the MAX Ramp from 1st Ave. That was pretty intimidating. Then a minute or so later about 10 bike cops charged up the Max ramp as well. Then a few minutes later no less than 30 riot cops came up the ramp. From the other side of the Steel Bridge a police PA van drove up accompanied by an SUV with RIOT cops hanging on the side. I guess the police decided that they didn't want the protestors on the bridge. After a tense standoff and bit of pepper spraying and pushing and shoving a group of the protestors started moving down the ramp towards us. Megan and I decided that we had seen enough and headed down to the lower level pedestrian walkway of the Steel Bridge so we could cross over to the Rose Quarter Transit Center and catch a bus home.

All in all it was a pretty interesting night. By the time we got home it was 7pm. I think that by and large the protestors were very well behaved and practiced peaceful civil disobedience. The cops seemed very well in charge, but were very intimidating. If you want to know more about what happened last night after we left you might want to read the account at Portland IndyMedia or you could see what the corporate media has to say (KATU, KOIN, KGW, or KPTV)
  ¶ 9:36 AM

  Much better than CNN Earlier I mentioned "Where is Raed?", IndyMedia and Google News as alternative sources for war news. Here are two more:

The Agonist - minute to minute coverage of media reporting. Only the most important and interesting stuff.

BBC Reporter's Log - the war will be bloggerized.

These are the first indications that the invasion of Iraq will be the first internet war. Where as the Spanish-American War was the height of newspaper coverage, WWII was the height of radio coverage, Vietnam was the height of TV coverage, and the Gulf War was the height of Cable TV coverage.   ¶ 11:37 AM

  Bias I went to KATU's website a bit ago to see local media's coverage of the protests. I found the story located here and was upset to see a link at the bottom to a "pro-troops" rally website, but no link to peace/anti-war rallies. While this upset me, it definately didn't suprise me. The media seems to be very biased on this issue. Last night while watching Fox News Channel (rebrocast on KPTV) one of the anchors said, "The liberation of Iraq has begun". Yuck!  ¶ 11:30 AM

  War Prayer All those who pray for victory over our foes should read Mark Twains "War Prayer".   ¶ 9:28 AM

  Better than CNN? That might be saying a bit much, but I am really fascinated by the coverage provided by "Where is Raed?". I am trying to shun traditional news sources when I want information on "the war", and this blog from an Iraqi in Baghdad. I am also surfing Portland's IndyMedia site and Google News.  ¶ 8:49 AM

  Blogger Trial and Error Wow, I forgot to type in an ending double quote in a post on my other blog and all hell brakes loose in Bloggerland. I can't edit my posts (even in safe mode). Finally I find the edit link for the post in the source code of the preview frame and I am able to fix my simple mistake. I guess that will learn me!  ¶ 5:32 PM

  The Switch So I use Safari at home on my Mac, but up until an hour ago or so I was using the dreaded I.E. at work on my Win XP computer. So while surfing to Slashdot I saw that Mozilla 1.3 was out and I figured, now is as good a time as any to get the I.E. monkey off my back. We'll see how long I can go without needing to use I.E. to browse. I need to apologize to Moira for not looking at her well designed blog in Mozilla before now. I can now fully appreciate the really cool graphics on her site. I don't think I like blogger's interface in Blogger, but it is forcing me to use HTML a bit more, and that is a good thing.

By the by, does anyone know how the quick key to switch between tabs in Mozilla? Please tell me!

Update: I figured out how to switch between tabs. You use the ever logical ctrl-tab. Dohhhh!  ¶ 2:31 PM

  TriMet Rant TriMet updated their website in the last couple of days. I saw it today, and noticed that they hadn't fixed a problem I had told them about a while ago. Then I noticed a few more knitpicks. So I wrote a critique.

Noah's TriMet Website Critique  ¶ 10:13 PM

  Disconnectidness Defines Danger A interesting story appeared in the March issue of Esquire magazine. Entitled "The Pentagon's New Map", this story is an interesting insight into the thinking of a U.S. military strategist and his view of the world. He basically says that countries disconnected from globalization (politically, economicly, and otherwise) are the areas that are the cause/result/location of political, economic and military problems. He devides the world into "Functioning Core" (i.e. North America, Europe, North Asia & Australia) and the "Non-Integrating Gap" (i.e. South America, Africa, South Asia).

As I said, it is an interesting read, but I disagree with his assesment overall and I have to nitpick a few points:
-North Korea is inexplicably left in the Functioning Core on his maps. If there was ever a country that was disconnected from global economic and political system it is North Korea.
-His priorities to fix this problem are 1)protect the core, 2) isolate the gap, 3) shrink the gap. He pats himself on the back for even including the last one, but I think there might be some global resentment to the US by the time we get arround to #3 on his list.  ¶ 12:46 PM

  oderint dum metuant* A few days ago I heard that John Brady Kiesling, a career foreign service employee and political counselor in Athens, Greece, had resigned because of his opposisition to a U.S. lead war against Iraq. Today I read his letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell. This is an extremely eloquent arguement against a war in Iraq and against the Bush administration's general foreign policy.

* translated as: "Let them hate so long as they fear"
  ¶ 9:02 AM