John Murdoch

When the news media pounced on the story of the criminal background of Norman Hsu, one-time big-time Democratic moneyman, Democratic candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama fell all over themselves to give money they received from Hsu "to charity."

Okay--which charities?

In particular, was the money given to "charities" such as 527 organizations that effectively run as proxies for those campaigns?

The international media is abuzz with the news that an assistant coroner in Oxfordshire, England, has ruled that a British television newsman was "unlawfully killed" by U.S. troops in Iraq.

The news accounts seem to focus on the press releases of the widow and the family--the scant facts that appear in public seem to include these items:

• Terry Lloyd was a journalist for the U.K. television network ITN. He had been covering the buildup to the Iraqi invasion from Kuwait. When the invasion of Iraq began, Lloyd followed to cover the story, with a Lebanese translator, a French cameraman, and a Belgian cameraman.


• Unlike many journalists, Lloyd and his team were not "embedded" with U.S. or British troops. They were in Iraq as "unilaterals"--not subject to censorship by military authorities, but not associated with (or protected by) military units.


• On May 22, 2003, Lloyd and his team were in a 4x4, clearly marked "Press"--and got caught in a crossfire between U.S. units and the Iraqi Army outside Basra.


• Some newspaper accounts suggest that the vehicle was hit by Iraqi fire--the coroner's report states that the coroner believes that the 4x4 was hit by fire from a U.S. tank.


• Lloyd survived the initial shooting (albeit having been shot once)--he was helped into a minibus driven by an Iraqi civilian.


• The civilian then attempted to drive away from the scene. According to press accounts, the minibus was fired on by a U.S. attack helicopter--Lloyd was killed.

(Let me say, incidentally, that there is a developing Wikipedia entry about this here.)

The coverage seems to raise more questions than it answers:

Why is a combat casualty in Iraq a matter for a coroner in Oxford?

For starters--how did this come to be the subject of a coroner's inquest in Oxfordshire, England? The Mainstream Media seems to be giving big play to the coroner's sound bite:

Mr Walker said: "I have no doubt Mr Lloyd was killed by a tracer bullet fired from an American gun. This injury was received after Mr Lloyd had been placed in the rear of the minibus and was consistent with a hole in the back of the minibus ... In my view, I have no doubt that the minibus presented no threat to the American forces. It was obvious that wounded persons were getting into the vehicle."

What seems to be missing is the last paragraph from The Guardian Unlimited's coverage:

The US soldiers did not fire in self-defence, he ruled. Had the killing taken place under English law "it would have constituted an unlawful homicide".

This would seem to make it clear that the killing did not take place "under English law." In other words, this coroner has no jurisdiction in the matter. That seems to be underscored by the fact that the coroner is going to write to the Director of Public Prosecutions to ask for a trial. (It also seems to explain why the "inquest" appears to have been ignored by the U.S. military, beyond a press statement that the U.S. military did not, and does not, intentionally target journalists.)

Is this a political stunt?

The assistant coroner getting all the press appears to be getting all the press by mouthing red meat sound bites to a British media keen to oppose the Iraqi War. Is he running for office? Is there reason to believe (the jurisdiction, his political affiliations, etc.) that this was a "show inquest"--staged for the purpose of criticizing the U.S. military?

Is there any chance that U.S. combat troops--acting under the rules of engagement--will actually be subject to prosecution in England?

Key distinction here--the assistant coroner's accusation insists that the soldiers were not firing in self-defense, so the death of Lloyd (and two other members of his team) were "unlawful." That's based on the English legal definition of "unlawful death" as being a death caused by another, unless in self-defense. The rules of engagement on the battlefield in Iraq were not the civil laws of England--the reason those soldiers were there was precisely to cause the death of others--and precisely to fire in something other than self-defense. The idea, to paraphrase General George S. Patton, is to make the other, poor, dumb son of a bitch fire back in self-defense. Is anybody with any credibility in English legal circles claiming that there is any jurisdiction for Oxfordshire coroners to bring charges against U.S. military personnel?

Is there a trend here?

Belgium has claimed the right to bring charges for "crimes against humanity" regardless of where a crime might have been committed. The U.S. opposed, for several years, the establishment of an International Criminal Court--based in part on concerns that the court might be used to prosecute American soldiers. Is this "inquest" part of a political movement to use the courts to oppose military action?

I'm not a lawyer...

But I really, really wish that some legal scholar would shed some light on this....

In the late 1300s Gilbert de Clare, an Anglo-Norman lord with political and military ambitions, seized extensive holdings in south Wales. Facing an impending counterattack by the Welsh, he commissioned the building of a castle--what would become Caerphilly, a 30-acre colossus just north of the city of Newport, Wales. I was there last week, and it is genuinely breathtaking. The web site (http://www.castlewales.com/caerphil.html) and the official brochure don't come close to doing it justice--it is an engineering marvel.

Which, ahem, is kind of the point: as I walked through Caerphilly, with Daughter #2, I marveled again and again at the brilliance of the engineering, and how well that brilliance has stood the test of time. More than seven hundred years later, the walls and towers of Caerphilly (with one unfortunate exception) are plumb and square. Despite wind, weather, and time, a structure largely built within a two-month period with hand labor has stood, indestructible, for centuries. It isn't just that the castle has thick walls (it does), a big moat (it does), or ample storage room to endure a long siege (yup--that, too). The design of the castle so thoroughly addresses the problem at hand that any potential attacker would recognize instantly that the fortress really was impregnable. The castle was besieged, but never fell--reportedly because the attack was half-hearted, it being plain to all concerned that any attack was pointless.

Terrific engineering--but were they engineers?

There is very little we know, in truth, about fourteenth century Wales. One thing we can be certain of, though, is that nobody involved with the construction of Caerphilly was a licensed Professional Engineer. Nobody had a degree in engineering--but in less time than you or I would take to document a project design in UML static structure diagrams they managed to design and build a thirty-acre fortress that has lasted hundreds of years. And it will still be there, long after you and I are gone and forgotten.

My business card says that I'm an "Engineering Software Leader." My employer tells me that I'm to lead teams of software engineers, doing engineering. My associates, without exception, have degrees in computer engineering, software engineering, electrical engineering, or computer science. Many of them are firm in the belief that they are engineers--heirs to the engineering traditions of the Greeks and the Romans, of Fulton and Morse and Roebling and I.K. Brunel, of Edison and Westinghouse.

Let's posit, for sake of argument, that they're engineers. Are they doing engineering?

If you haven't guessed by now, I'm profoundly skeptical of the notion that software is a form of engineering. I've been a software developer for almost twenty years, my stepfather was a civil engineer, and a lifelong interest (and university major) in 19th-century American economic history (think "railroads") convince me that while we sometimes talk and think (and every once in a while act) like engineers, the overwhelming bulk of what software developers do has little to do with engineering.

It is one thing to assert that--it is something else entirely to state the proposition and defend it. And that's what I propose to do over the next month or two--state and defend the notion that software development isn't a branch of science (my high school computer teacher wore a lab coat to demonstrate that he was a scientist), or a branch of engineering. If anything, software development is, in the main, a form of communication. If you have happened to stumble across these pages as I write, I welcome your comments.

For the moment, though, it's time to wrap up this post and go to bed. But let me leave you with a last thought: two weeks ago I was chatting with a colleague in the hallway at work. The earliest piece of code that I have written that is still in use (as far as I know) dates from the early 1990s. My colleague has still-functioning code from the late 1980s. That puts us in a very small minority among developers--there are lots of developers working today who don't have functioning code that dates from last year. If we're supposed to be engineers, why is it that so many of our best-trained and best-qualified can't write code that will run, unchanged, for more than a few months? And what can we learn--from the engineers who built Caerphilly, among others--to do what we do better?

Hint: it's about communication.

(This isn't a new post--this is actually something I wrote and posted in my journal at SlashDot (http://slashdot.org). Think of it as a bit of background--or perhaps a bit of anthropology if you're young enough to have never thrilled to hear the modem tones of a [oh! the excitement!] 2400 baud modem.)

Yesterday, while running down some items in the family budget, my wife paused for a moment. "Hey--why don't you cancel the CompuServe account?" It's a touchy subject--a subject she has brought up before. Month after month after month we pay an automatic $9.95 to CompuServe to continue keeping account #71507,1212 alive....

I joined CompuServe back in the late 1980s. In those days practically any piece of PC software came with a free CompuServe membership signup certificate--I signed up with a certificate I found in an Aldus PageMaker box. (That was in my "bi-" days--I programmed on a PC, but did graphic design and layout on a Macintosh.)
CompuServe was so cool--once you figured out how to actually connect. In those days you used a terminal emulator--and you emulated a terminal. You dialed a local phone number, you got a terminal prompt, and you started typing. I still have the CompuServe membership kit I got when I signed up (the heavy fiberboard slipcase, with a set of manuals inside). It's right on the shelf next to "How to Get the Most Out of CompuServe"--a book known as "HTGTMOOC" by NEWMEMBER forum members.

CompuServe used to cost $12 per hour of connect time (and it was only that cheap if you could connect directly to CompuServe's network; if you connected across Tymnet, InfoNet, or another network service it typically cost $22 per hour). The typical new-user experience included a $200 bill for the first month. You quickly learned to sharply ration your online time, or you found an "offline reader" like TAPCIS to automate your activity.

The best thing about CompuServe were the forums--bulletin boards where you could find files on a particular subject, and participate in threaded discussions. CompuServe's forum threading is worlds better than anything you'll find on the Web--each forum member had an HMN (High Message Number) stored when he last left the forum. When the member returned he (or she) only saw messages with a higher number--so you didn't have to wade through thousands of messages that you'd already seen.

Everybody who was anybody was on CompuServe. Want to participate in a Microsoft beta test? You joined a private beta forum. Want to get tech support on practically any commercial software product? Just "GO [Product name]" on CompuServe and you found that company's forum. Tech support was just where the forum started--most vendor forums developed communities of hard-core users who provided a secondary (and sometimes primary) support team. When Microsoft shipped Word for Windows 1.0, support for the new WordBASIC macro language was sparse, to say the least. The WINWORD forum on CompuServe, though, was the place to go for help--there were dozens of shareware, jokeware, and freeware macros you could use to properly format a number 10 envelope on an HP LaserJet IIP.

I was most active on two forums: XEROX (later VENTURA)--the vendor forum for Xerox Ventura Publisher; and MSLANG/MSBASIC, the vendor forum for Microsoft Visual Basic. I ended up being named a "sysop" on both forums--which meant that I didn't pay any connect charges at all. (This was a big deal--my sysop account saved me roughly $100 per month.) I was also very active on the DTPFORUM (Desktop Publishing) and sometimes was active on HORSES and IBMSPEC (PC Users with Special Needs [i.e. disabilities]--routinely mistaken as the forum for IBM users who needed something special).

These weren't just places to find the latest macro or get the buzz on the newest version. These places really were virtual communities. Any decent forum had a "hangout" section--a place for offtopic messages of all sorts. In the "hangout" section and across the other sections of a forum a real community developed--you quickly grasped who the really helpful people were, who the blustering clods were, and who the forum jesters were. I developed real friendships on CompuServe--including friendships and professional relationships that continue today. I even participated in an online wedding--when two sysops on the DTPFORUM fell in love and married (he was from Saskatchewan, she from New Jersey), the sysops from the VENTURA forum arrived at the virtual wedding reception with ASCII artwork of champagne bottles and martini glasses.

These weren't just geeks talking about geeky stuff. When my youngest daughter was born with Down syndrome, I found myself in agony and no one to talk to--an anguished cry to the MSBASIC forum led to weeks of messages, phone calls, and real community support.

"Dragons live forever," wrote Noel Paul Stookey, "but not so little boys...." When the Internet happened, CompuServe collapsed. In the space of two years practically every commercial software vendor moved their support off of CompuServe onto the Web. Everybody with a CompuServe account suddenly was using SMTP email. Forums tried to create matching websites--CompuServe scrambled to remain relevant. After sneering at AOL ("CompuServe: the information service you won't outgrow") for years, CompuServe succumbed to the inevitable and was bought out.

But many of us have kept our CompuServe accounts for years. I've been 71507,1212 for fourteen years--I've used that account to maintain a place in different online communities whether I was connecting from Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Montreal, or Tokyo. 71507,1212 is me.

Or it was, until today. I have kept track of my email on my old CompuServe account--I haven't received anything other than spam in more than a year. And today I called CompuServe Customer Support--and got an AOL operator. "Do you have CompuServe 2000? Or 4.0?" she demanded. "How about if I give you my CompuServe ID number?" "Oh--that's 4.0." She tried to sell me on the benefits of CompuServe 2000--and then suggested that I "move up" to AOL membership. "Gosh!" I gushed, "how about not?" I cancelled the account, and hung up the phone.

And I've been bummed ever since. CompuServe was so cool....

71507,1212

Hi!

Welcome to my first attempt at blogging--but by no means my first attempt at online communication. I've been online for a long time--starting on CompuServe back in the late 1980s, and including a lot of time spent on mailing lists, newsgroups, SlashDot (http://slashdot.org/~John%20Murdoch ), and writing on my own web page.

I'm intrigued by blogging for a couple of reasons. First, well--because it seems so simple. I don't have to do a ton of coding. Second, the blog software includes the messaging code necessary to permit a reader to post additional thoughts. That's pretty neat.

But for now--well, this is it. I'm going to spend some time seeing what I've created before I get a whole lot more involved.

- John