I found this on the ground, in the parking lot out by the mall.

This is just the saddest goddamn thing I've ever seen in my life.

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Some of you were wondering how Little Charlotte, the former laboratory dog, is doing in her new environment.

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I know very little about Wesley Clark, and already I'm not happy. But first, an important disclaimer:

Clark, once a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, graduated first in his class from West Point in 1966. He commanded a mechanized infantry company in Vietnam, was wounded four times and won the Silver Star and two Bronze Stars. Now, a Silver Star is a very serious combat badge. No matter what else I might say about General Clark, he's shown real courage and brains and I respect him for that.

So what's not to like? Hillary, is what.

Without Hillary - now co-chair of his campaign - Clark would be a virtual nobody, unfunded and ignored, trailing somewhere behind Moseley-Braun and just ahead of Joe Lieberman. Sure, he'd be an interesting vice-president, but as the lead guy? I can name fifty sitting state governors who are more qualified than he is.

Yes, Clark is a retired General, but that is simply not a primary qualification for being President. And yes, Ike was a General and he did all right, but for fucks's sake, Ike was the Supreme Allied Commander during WWII. Ike is on the first page of everyone's list of the greatest generals of modern times. Clark? Gimme a fucking break.

If there has been another man who credibly tried to ride four stars into the oval office in the last hundred and fifty thirty years, it's news to me.

Let's face it: Clark is on the radar only because Hillary put him there. To this day, the Clintons are probably the most powerful single force in Democratic party politics. Hillary's presence will draw serious money into his campaign, and will attract the support of some of the heavy hitters who make the real decisions behind the scenes.

The redoubtable Ms. Clinton can be called a lot of things, but she is certainly not politically naive and she is the last person who is going put her own political ambitions aside. She came on board and single-handedly made this guy competitive because she expects him to win, and because she expects his win to benefit her.

Clark - who didn't even decide he was a Democrat until a few months ago - has no political experience, no public voting record, and no discernable prior position on any public issues. He's a blank slate, perfect for molding into the exact form that the situation requires.

My suspicions are that Clark, in his raw form, might not be exactly what the Democrats are looking for. Not all military people think alike, of course, but it's no surprise that they tend to be socially conservative. These are people who generally think very little of affirmative action, who are not great environmentalists, who are not huge fans of gay rights and who have a firm, law-and-order contempt for criminals and welfare cheats. Clark converted to Roman Catholicism as an adult and it is fair to assume that abortion might not sit too well with him, either.

Nonetheless, my expectation is that Clark will magically transcend all this, and turn out to be just right on all the important issues: he will be pro-choice and pro-gay, he will support affirmative action, he will rail against Bush's environmental record, and he will exude nothing but compassion for America's downtrodden masses.

In short, I expect he will be Hillary's Golem. He's untrammeled clay for her to shape into the form that best serves her, so that she might breathe life into him and send him forth to do her bidding.

Everybody knows that the War on Terror has divided the Democrats. A substantial fraction of the party faithful are anti-war, a stance that poisons their relationship with much of the rest of the electorate. Clark seems purpose-built for the task - an "anti-war" General, he can appeal to both sides and seem somehow responsible and authoritative while he does it. His stance on the issues can be custom-tailored to fit the exact needs of the times, and without a voting record or a history of accepting campaign contributions, he can turn on a dime and change these positions as the situation demands.

He is would be the exact antithesis of what a good representative would be. He would be all of my prior criticisms of Hillary encapsulated into a new and cleaner form.

Maybe he'll surprise me. Maybe he'll come out and say he's pro-life, or that the military has taught him the value of merit over affirmative action. Maybe he'll talk about his opposition to gay right or discuss, in detail, how to lead the offensive in the War on Terror with or without the support of the UN.

But I'll bet money we won't see it happen. After all, Hillary is involved, and he needs her in order to win.

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Have a good look at this asshole:

He's a little guy, maybe 5-foot-5 and 130 pounds, and he's asthmatic, too. He is considered handsome, despite a rather pronounced nose. He speaks English and has lived for a while in Miami, Florida, and he has a Florida driver's license.

He's also known as Jaffar the Pilot, and the FBI believes that he has assumed a role similar to that of Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 19 hijackers responsible for 9/11. He has had flight training in Florida, and has had some unspecifed experience with gasoline tankers. Alert readers will recall that both gasoline and hazmat tankers have featured prominantly in plans for previous Al Queda attacks against the United States.

He is one of four men wanted, right now, by the FBI. I recognise one of the remaining three, a man named Abderraouf Jdey. He was among those who's left behind tapes of themselves pledging martydom, the sorts of tapes that suicide bombers make before they are sent out on their missions.

Know their faces. If these men are active now in the states there are probably a thousand Americans who have recently looked them right in the eyes.

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Imagine I were to give you a computer and turn you loose on the internet. You could read text, see pictures, watch movies and animations, play music and enjoy interactive games. You can save these things to view them later, and share them with your friends. You can print them, burn them on CDs, edit them and modify them and create new things from pieces of old things. Most of it is free, too.

You can publish things, and remain anonymous if you wish. You can indulge your curiosity in embarrassing ways and visit porn sites, pictures-of-dead-bodies sites, radical revolutionary sites, and learn all sorts of stuff about everything, even if it is the sorts of things that decent people don't usually discuss. You enjoy a remarkable freedom because the whole place is incredibly open and unregulated; nobody owns it, organized it, controls it, edits it, censors it, manages it, rations it, or even really keeps track of what ordinary people do with it.

This is all going to change in a big way.

DRM will, of course, make it impossible for you to copy things without the author's permission. That's what it's for. DRM will also make it easy and common for most commercial websites to charge a fee to each person who visits. Sadly, DRM cannot do any of this unless DRM is required of everyone who goes on line. Use of DRM, like use of a credit card, also means that you have to surrender your anonymity and leave behind a record of everything you do. DRM also requires that your computer be limited to perform only those functions which government and industry allows it to perform; DRM will be built into your browser, your graphic programs, your scanner and CD burner, even your hard drives. Seriously.

DRM simply can't be made to work at all unless it is this pervasive. I'm not speculating about how it might someday be misused; DRM is designed to do exactly what I just described.

In short, DRM provides a mechanism to organize, control, edit, censor, manage, ration, and track every machine you wish to connect to the internet.

DRM is made possible by two things: technology and law. Up until now, internet techies like myself have felt pretty comfortable about our remarkable freedom because we assumed that neither technology or law would have sufficient force to ever regulate the internet. We didn't think that anything could ever put the Genie back in the bottle. We were wrong.

It's perfectly possible to force people into using only regulated computers, and to compel them to only perform permitted actions with them. All it takes is the eager cooperation of computer hardware manufacturers, and tough federal laws that impose penalties on ISPs who do not comply.

Tomorrow's computer will not be a general purpose computer like the one you have now. Currently, you can buy any sort of device that anyone cares to build - say, a device for copying CDs, or a device for scanning copyrighted works - and you can go ahead and connect it to your own computer without anybody's permission. Tomorrow's computer won't work like that. Tomorrow's computer won't mount a device unless the device driver is digitally signed, and that signature is only available to devices that meet the standards of the signer.

Your Linux box won't be using signed drivers anytime soon, but your Windows XP box is set up to require them right now, and your Mac will probably be forced to use them in a the near future. If the law requires it, Apple will surely comply.

So, maybe open-source Linux is the way to go?

Nope.

The first step - which we are seeing right now - is that older computers will be unable to view content made with newer machines. By this time next year, every new copy of Microsoft Office will be producing DRM-protected documents that can only be read if you are running a DRM-capable machine. Sure, you can still produce non-DRM content, of course, but commercial content providers will quickly take advantage of this.

If you think you will be able to read cnn.com on your Linux box after DRM machines comprise the vast majority of the market, you are probably mistaken. Commercial providers have a huge interest is protecting their material - it is, after all, how they make their living. They will not sweat it if a tiny, stubborn minority of non-paying customers are excluded.

The next step will be filters at the ISPs which only allow DRM machines to connect. Currently, ISPs who allow open SMTP ports to be abused by spammers are already facing legal action, and ISP who host Kaazaa users have already forced to turn over their records. Once DSM becomes a commonly-accepted industry standard, you can bet the ISPs are going to be required to go along with it.

The biggest kick in the ISPs teeth happens when DRM is used to support financial transactions. People who circumvent DRM will then be no different from counterfeiters. The legal penalties for subverting the system, or for assisting others to subvert it, will be severe.

These steps will be primarily justified as security measures, not copyright protections. Want to stop spam? You need DRM to authenticate your email. Want to stop viruses? You'll need DRM to authorize your computer program or it won't run. Want to publish your own website? Better use DRM to control access, lest the children find their way to adult content.

Oh, it's coming, all right, and I don't think anything is going to stop it, either.

1) Oh, Mike, you are forgetting the great worldwide strength of the internet. I'll just post my content on a server located in Burma.

Sure. And how, exactly, will I see it if my DRM machine won't let me see it, and I can't get my Linux box to connect anymore?

2) Um... well, a bunch of us will get together and form our own, outlaw internet then.

Good luck. The government (via the FCC) maintains very rigid control of communications media, and without media, there's no net to inter on. How will your outlaw internet work? Radio waves? Pirate ISPs who magically reroute the phone lines to evade the police? Tin cans and string?

3) OK, well, people will never accept this. The laws won't pass.

Sure they will. The industry types love it because it solves their copyright problems. Government loves it because it gives them control, businesses love it because it protects them from hackers and viruses, housewives love it because their children are saved from the horrors of adult content, and ordinary people won't even see it coming, or care much, so long as it's introduced one small step at a time. You think Linux users are real big voting block? Think again.

4) So, we'll unleash the hacker army and break it.

You might get away with that for a while, but not long. The core technology involved here is nothing more elaborate than public key encryption. The implementation will surely have some holes, but as you do the hard work of uncovering them, these holes will eventually be filled. When you find a hacker who can break the PGP authentication I use and who can send me a letter signed with my own private key, give me a call. I won't be holding my breath.

5) Dude, you are such a downer.

Yeah, I know.

Seriously, now - if anybody thinks I overlooked something important here, let me know. I'd love to be wrong about this.

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My wife emailed this one to me this morning:

Did I mention my wife emailed this to me?

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Picture your local FedEx driver. If your driver is like mine, you'll probably imagine a nice, helpful person who delivers your package quickly and with a minimum of fuss. If you have a problem, you can always contact the local office and you can expect to get your problem fixed. The FedEx folks are the good guys.

Now take you local FedEx driver and put him into a malfunctioning Star Trek transporter. Two drivers will come out. See that one there, with the goatee? That's FedEx Ground, the dark, evil twin who will deliver nothing for you but chaos and regret.

FedEx Ground is not regular FexEx - it's an entirely different organization, apparently made of up contractors, retarded monkeys, and homeless people lured in off the street. They are a stunningly inept and downright callous organization, the sort of thing that simply should not exist in a functioning free market economy.

Think I'm kidding? Read on.

I recently had a computer shipped from somewhere in Middle America to my home in upstate New York. Whoever took charge of my package made mistake number one and routed it to the wrong city, nearly sixty miles away. Nonetheless, their driver kindly attempted to deliver it to my home, but declined to navigate my long driveway and took the package back.

Fair enough. One small mistake, and one good-faith effort to make it right. That's good service, and I'm happy so far. They call and ask me what to do, and I ask them to please send my package to my local FedEx office where I can pick it up. Wonderful, no problem. Thanks a lot.

That was Monday.

Late Tuesday afternoon I stop by the local office, and there's no package. The lady at the desk tells her supervisor she's got "another FedEx Ground problem" and starts making calls. She informs me that "the girl was out today" and that my package will surely be here tomorrow afternoon.

The girl was out? They didn't have a spare? OK, whatever.

On Wednesday my package is sent to Town Number Two, still sixty miles from my home and about a hundred miles from where it was the day before. The nice lady at the desk tells me that she'll have my package for me the following day, probably around one o'clock.

On Thursday afternoon I try again. My package is still in Town Number Two, and the tracking system has it flagged as 'delivered'. The local FedEx office has tried to contact them, but the manager (who personally signed for my package) does not answer the phone and does not return his calls. In frustration, the lady at the desk finally gives me his direct number in the hope that maybe I can get through to him. I leave three messages over the course of the day, each one polite and clear, each one including the tracking number, my phone number, and the exquisitely simple instructions necessary for proper delivery. "Please send MY package to MY town? Thank you."

No reply. That night I find the section of the Fed-Ex web site that allows you to file a complaint. I write yet another a polite, complete message, headlines with the title MY PACKAGE HAS NOT ARRIVED YET and concluding with a request for a refund. About a minute after I sent it, I got an automated confirmation message telling me that the'll be happy to get right back to me. OK.

Friday afternoon I stop by the local office again, and by some astonishing bit of luck the lady behind the counter just happens to be on the phone with the unreachable Dark Lord of Town Number Two, trying to sort out yet another "FedEx Ground problem" for yet another pissed-off customer. When she's done, she hands the phone to me.

I explain my situation and ask why my calls weren't returned. The manager flatly misunderstands my situation and ignores the part about not returning my calls. I repeat myself. He again ignores the part about the unreturned calls and eventually finds what he thinks is my package. He reads my phone number off the package, which is clearly labeled Hold In Town Number Two For Customer Pick Up. "We were wondering what to do with this one" he tells me.

Hang on, now... my phone number is on the package? WHY DIDN'T YOU CALL ME??! "It didn't say to call" he explains. Why didn't you return the three messages I left you? "I didn't get them" he says.

You lying cocksucker. I suggested that he deliver my fucking package right away before I personally came down there and stomped the rancid fat out of his head, but not in quite so many words. My package arrived on Monday, exactly one week after my adventure began. This whole problem could have been quickly wrapped up if this asshole manager had the common courtesy to return even a single message.

So, let's recap, shall we? The first mistake was made when they routed my package to the wrong place. The second and third mistakes were made by the receiving office, and the fourth and fifth mistakes were made by the following office a hundred miles away. Based on the comments overheard during my frequent visits to my local office, I was not the only customer having a hard time with these people.

This was not just a one-time thing, and it was not just the fault of low-level people. This entire outfit is really fucked.

And here's the best part: it's been over a week since I requested my refund and I have still not received a reply. Apparently, a message beginning with the phrase MY PACKAGE HAS NOT ARRIVED YET is not a high priority for these folks.

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