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October 16, 2002
My readers:
In return:
| |
I love you, Doc.
Some mighty fine blogging on this topic going on over at AKMA‘s place. For example, he writes: “When we’ve been most effectively seduced, we’re not aware of it ourselves.” As they say in churches around the land: Bingo!
Also, I am reminded of Chris Pirillo’s Blogger’s Manifesto from February ’02 (as well as my parody of it).
October 15, 2002
Why I Can’t Ever Tell the Truth about Microsoft, Ever
To satisfy the requirements of the new Standards of Integrity and Professional Ethics for bloggers (for a discussion, see Dave, Doc and Mitch), I am hereby posting all the influences Microsoft has had on me, pro and con.
| I use and like many Microsoft products | Microsoft products have been crashing on me regularly for over 15 years |
| I got a reviewer’s copy of XP for free |
I’ve bought thousands of dollars worth of Microsoft stuff, including upgrades that I felt had been forced on me |
| I competed against them at three companies |
I cooperated with them at the same three companies |
| The Microsoft Word product manager listed the product I was flogging on a slide at Documation 1992 as an excellent complement to Word |
Word eventually incorporated many of that product’s best ideas. (You like them right mouse button menus? You’re welcome.) |
| I got a free beta of their Word-to-SGML software |
I couldn’t get the free beta of their Word-to-SGML software to work |
|
When I was liaison to Microsoft for a company I worked for 1991-1993, the Microsoft manager I was working with paid for my lunch a couple of times in their cafeteria |
During all the time that I was liaison, they never once took me to a nice place for dinner |
| I have routinely installed single-user Microsoft products on two or more household machines up until XP and Office 2002 |
Having to pay to multiply install software I’ve bought means this was my last upgrade, pal |
|
Every Microsoft engineer I have ever met has impressed me with his or her intelligence, customer focus, and integrity |
I routinely curse the stupidity of the assholes who design dumbass fucking Microsoft products. What are they, a bunch of morons? |
| I hate Microsoft’s de facto monopoly of office productivity software |
I am happy that everyone uses PowerPoint because it makes complex events so much simpler |
| I am very glad I am not Bill Gates |
I am envious of Bill Gates |
(PS: When Dave asks, “It’s a matter of what kind of blogging we want — do we want it to be sloppy or crisp,” my answer is an emphatic yes.)
Chip just sent me this poem by Ani DiFranco that apparently she’s reading at all her concerts now.
SELF EVIDENT by Ani DiFranco
yes,
us people are just poems
we’re 90% metaphor
with a leanness of meaning
approaching hyper-distillation
and once upon a time
we were moonshine
rushing down the throat of a giraffe
yes, rushing down the long hallway
despite what the p.a. announcement says
yes, rushing down the long stairs
with the whiskey of eternity
fermented and distilled
to eighteen minutes
burning down our throats
down the hall
down the stairs
in a building so tall
that it will always be there
yes, it’s part of a pair
there on the bow of noah’s ark
the most prestigious couple
just kickin back parked
against a perfectly blue sky
on a morning beatific
in its indian summer breeze
on the day that america
fell to its knees
after strutting around for a century
without saying thank you
or please
and the shock was subsonic
and the smoke was deafening
between the setup and the punch line
cuz we were all on time for work that day
we all boarded that plane for to fly
and then while the fires were raging
we all climbed up on the windowsill
and then we all held hands
and jumped into the sky
and every borough looked up when it heard the first
blast
and then every dumb action movie was summarily
surpassed
and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar
looked more like war than anything i’ve seen so far
so far
so far
so fierce and ingenious
a poetic specter so far gone
that every jackass newscaster was struck dumb and
stumbling
over ‘oh my god’ and ‘this is unbelievable’ and on and
on
and i’ll tell you what, while we’re at it
you can keep the pentagon
keep the propaganda
keep each and every tv
that’s been trying to convince me
to participate
in some prep school punk’s plan to perpetuate
retribution
perpetuate retribution
even as the blue toxic smoke of our lesson in
retribution
is still hanging in the air
and there’s ash on our shoes
and there’s ash in our hair
and there’s a fine silt on every mantle
from hell’s kitchen to brooklyn
and the streets are full of stories
sudden twists and near misses
and soon every open bar is crammed to the rafters
with tales of narrowly averted disasters
and the whiskey is flowin
like never before
as all over the country
folks just shake their heads
and pour
so here’s a toast to all the folks who live in
palestine
afghanistan
iraq
el salvador
here’s a toast to the folks living on the pine ridge
reservation
under the stone cold gaze of mt. rushmore
here’s a toast to all those nurses and doctors
who daily provide women with a choice
who stand down a threat the size of oklahoma city
just to listen to a young woman’s voice
here’s a toast to all the folks on death row right now
awaiting the executioner’s guillotine
who are shackled there with dread and can only escape
into their heads
to find peace in the form of a dream
cuz take away our playstations
and we are a third world nation
under the thumb of some blue blood royal son
who stole the oval office and that phony election
i mean
it don’t take a weatherman
to look around and see the weather
jeb said he’d deliver florida, folks
and boy did he ever
and we hold these truths to be self evident:
#1 george w. bush is not president
#2 america is not a true democracy
#3 the media is not fooling me
cuz i am a poem heeding hyper-distillation
i’ve got no room for a lie so verbose
i’m looking out over my whole human family
and i’m raising my glass in a toast
here’s to our last drink of fossil fuels
let us vow to get off of this sauce
shoo away the swarms of commuter planes
and find that train ticket we lost
cuz once upon a time the line followed the river
and peeked into all the backyards
and the laundry was waving
the graffiti was teasing us
from brick walls and bridges
we were rolling over ridges
through valleys
under stars
i dream of touring like duke ellington
in my own railroad car
i dream of waiting on the tall blonde wooden benches
in a grand station aglow with grace
and then standing out on the platform
and feeling the air on my face
give back the night its distant whistle
give the darkness back its soul
give the big oil companies the finger finally
and relearn how to rock-n-roll
yes, the lessons are all around us and a change is
waiting there
so it’s time to pick through the rubble, clean the
streets
and clear the air
get our government to pull its big dick out of the
sand
of someone else’s desert
put it back in its pants
and quit the hypocritical chants of
freedom forever
cuz when one lone phone rang
in two thousand and one
at ten after nine
on nine one one
which is the number we all called
when that lone phone rang right off the wall
right off our desk and down the long hall
down the long stairs
in a building so tall
that the whole world turned
just to watch it fall
and while we’re at it
remember the first time around?
the bomb?
the ryder truck?
the parking garage?
the princess that didn’t even feel the pea?
remember joking around in our apartment on avenue D?
can you imagine how many paper coffee cups would have
to change their design
following a fantastical reversal of the new york
skyline?!
it was a joke, of course
it was a joke
at the time
and that was just a few years ago
so let the record show
that the FBI was all over that case
that the plot was obvious and in everybody’s face
and scoping that scene
religiously
the CIA
or is it KGB?
committing countless crimes against humanity
with this kind of eventuality
as its excuse
for abuse after expensive abuse
and it didn’t have a clue
look, another window to see through
way up here
on the 104th floor
look
another key
another door
10% literal
90% metaphor
3000 some poems disguised as people
on an almost too perfect day
should be more than pawns
in some asshole’s passion play
so now it’s your job
and it’s my job
to make it that way
to make sure they didn’t die in vain
sshhhhhh….
baby listen
hear the train?
a work in progress by Ani DiFranco
Copyright 2002 Ani DiFranco
All rights reserved. Used without permission.
According to Masha Geller’s MediaPost column today, a report from WebMergers says that the dot-com failure rate has “declined dramatically”:
So far this year…93 Internet companies have shut down, which is about a quarter of the number (345) that shut down in the first half of last year.
And here’s what I expect tomorrow’s headline to be:
Puhlease.
Jessica Pink did just one thing yesterday: gave birth to baby Saul. The world’s already a better place for it.
Mazel tov to Dan, Jessica and the three little Pinks.
…we’d be measuring transmission speeds not in bits per second but in pages per hour.
Microsoft posted a dumbass “testimonial” from someone (by coincidence, an attractive woman…what are the odds of that?!) who recounts why she switched from the Mac to XP. Everything about this “real life” testimonial is phony, starting with the faux voice:
To my surprise, the process of switching was as easy as the marketing hype had promised. I was up and running in less than one day, Girl Scout’s honor. First, let me tell you more about why I converted.
After the page had begun circulating through mailing lists (“Can’t they find even one real person to give a testimonial?”), Microsoft deleted it. We can’t know the cause, but we can only hope that Microsoft recognized that such an obviously bogus ploy works against them.
Thank goodness for Google and its amazing feats of memory (= its cache).
(There’s more on the story from the AP and at Slashdot.)
October 14, 2002
(Thanks to Ian Poynter.)
MoveOn.com makes it absurdly easy to give money to the campaigns of some of those brave souls who voted against the Gulf of Saddam bill that gives America’s Stupidest President a free hand to start a war. It’d be a particular shame if Paul Wellstone were to lose his Senate seat over this, giving the Republicans control of all branches of the government.
David Isenberg has published a new issue of his always excellent newsletter. In this one, you can read about “the future of voice telephony,” which is not about talking pachyderms but a software product from Global IP Sound that uses the Internet to transmit calls and does so with higher-quality audio than you’ll get on a “real” phone.
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