[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

Josh Marshall has been writing a lot of good stuff on North Korea lately. I have some comments on this post. In it, he discusses the administration's claim that North Korea is already a nuclear power, and thus it's not a huge concern if they get more nukes.

One might well argue that the administration is correct in this. If North Korea has had nukes for several years and hasn't used them, then maybe there isn't so much urgency after all. The sense of urgency around North Korea's nuclear program is predicated on the idea that if North Korea has nukes, something bad will happen. If North Korea has had nukes and nothing bad's happened, what's a few more?

Of course, if the administration uses such logic, it makes a hash of the Bush national security doctrine. I think that's the real hole in what Powell had to say, but since Bush has already positioned Powell as the maverick who's not always in line with him, it's deniable.

I think in the long term, America's going to have to learn how to survive in a world in which nuclear weapons have proliferated, so in some ways I'm heartened to see Bush treating this as a minor issue. Alas, I don't really believe that's a policy statement as much as it is the result of his focus being elsewhere.

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

Eric Raymond's just published another internal memo from Microsoft. (Hint: the fisking doesn't improve your credibility, Eric.) I recommend skipping over the snide commentary, because it's actually neither that clever or that interesting. Read it for what it says about Microsoft's belief about where it stands vis a vis nation states, and perhaps reread this post of mine in which I discuss the role of NGOs in the new world order.

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

Gephardt's in, which is somehow deeply unexciting news. Ah, bah; it's good to have a traditionally Democratic candidate in the field. In theory, I'd like to see candidates in both sets of primaries from all over the political maps. I must try and be less cynical.

Course, that means I'd rather see Bernie Sanders than Howard Dean as the candidate from Vermont.

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

I'm standing at a bus stop in Harvard Square, realizing that I'm better off posting via Web than by email. Whoops; maybe not, since I can't set categories this way. Oooops. Ah well. The first day review of the Hiptop: pretty good, it' got a very thoughtful design. For example, the @ sign is unshifted, which makes a ton of sense since it's used so much. There's decent autocapitalization. The keylock automatically tturns off if you flip the screen open, cause you'll never do that unless you want to use it. The core interface is good enough for now. There are some warts; you can't do an address book lookup while writing an email message, for example, which is dumb since you can store email addresses in the address book. On the other hand, you can launch email from within the address book. The only really annoying quirk is that the email client loses track of attachments if you save a draft message. oh, and it sorely needs cut and paste, or at least a way to delete text from an email message so you don't wind up quoting the whole damn message each time. The unit is nicely integrated with the T-Mobile web site. You can import Outlook or Palm address lists via the Web. Nice stuff there. The physical unit is barely big enough for me to type on, but not big enough to be clumsy on my belt. The case that comes with it kind of sucks; I'm on the lookout for a better one. Let's see. Oh, yeah, the camera. Check out Hiptop Nation for an idea of the quality. It's bad, but the concept is exciting. Realtime pcitures from the mass event of your choice, good or bad? Heady stuff. Overall I rather like it so far. And everyone in my office wanted to play with it, which has to say something.