Atom Feed
October 28, 2003
Dan Bricklin points out the irony of Microsoft using VisiCalc to demonstrate Longhorn’s backwards compatibility:
…the only reason I have a copy that can still work is that someone kept a “bootleg” uncopyprotected copy around
Just further evidence that, as Dan has written, “Copy Protection Robs the Future.”
October 27, 2003
Pito points out that if you query Google with “define: blogs” (no quotes, of course), it presents definitions from a whole bunch of places. Very cool.
And the previous entry on Pito’s blog is in fact about defining “blog”. He argues that we should try to hold on to a fairly precise definition. This is in part a response to my bloggery about what the word may come to mean once blogging really goes mainstream.
I happen not to agree with Pito’s particular definition because it leaves out multi-person blogs that I really want to put in the bag marked “Blogs,” but I also don’t think there’s any real point in trying to hold on to the word. Markets do to words what they do to ideas and there’s just not much we can do ’bout it. In fact, trying to hold on to the word may slow the market’s assimilation of the idea, technology and practice.
On the other hand, I hate to see the word abused. Go figure!
I just got a call from a company called ISGG in Israel offering me money to put a link on my page without acknowledging it as paid advertising. I wasn’t clever enough to ask him for what company and how much they’re willing to pay before saying no.
Damn!
Anyway, be on the lookout. Bribing people to put links on their page as if they really meant them is a bad thing. If you want to know why, pay me $5.
Gary Turner has some particular trenchant observations about why we stopped caring about the Concorde. He writes:
…have we just gotten too bloody good at saving time in almost everything that we do…that we just can’t save any more bloody time?
The excerpt doesn’t do it justice…
October 26, 2003
Ed Cone blogs about a comment thread on the John Edwards blog that altered Edwards’ stump speech. Ed writes:
Elizabeth Edwards commented here that comments on her husband’s campaign blog serve to inform him about people’s real concerns. I ask for an example. She replies with a specific example about the Earned Income Tax Credit that led to Edwards refocusing on the issue:
“Scott was on top of it and let us know through the blog, and the criticism that John had expressed earlier but that had been dropped from more recent speeches has been reinserted…
“John and I actually read the blog. When there is something there he finds useful or intriguing, he picks it up. If more research is needed, it goes to Robert Gordon’s policy operation. If not, it can got straight into his speech or his answers to questions.”
Mitch picks up and on Steve Ballmer’s claim that Open Source software is necessarily shoddier than software written in closed shops. Writes Mitch:
What Steve Ballmer doesn’t realize is that his own company takes virtually the same approach, hiring some young coder from Kentucky or Bangalore to write a bit of code that gets appended to Word or Windows, but without the feedback of coders and users that are incorporated into the collective decision-making that produces open source software.
There’s another proof that unmanaged, market-driven projects of some complexity can produce robust, innovative software: the Internet and Web themselves. What the hell, I’m going to out on a limb here and just blurt it out: The Internet is a better piece of software than Windows XP.
October 25, 2003
Steve MacLaughlin has a good take on the brouhaha over Rumsfeld actually telling the truth in a memo.
And Mitch Ratcliffe is running a photograph that my spidey-sense tells me just may have been PhotoShopped.
Kevin Marks does a recount of the top 100 and finds a bunch more women there.
Also, don’t miss the new multi-woman blog Misbehaving. (That’s Ms. Misbehaving, to you.)
According to an article by Lou Dolinar in Newsday, Al Qaeda may have initiated a denial of service attack aimed at Internet Haganah, a site that tries to get Web hosts to boot sites it believes belong to terrorists. Internet Haganah thinks that a recent DoS attack was directed at it by “hackers associated with Yussuf al-Ayyeri,” an Osama crony.
Although there was a DoS attack last week that shut down a bunch of blogs, the article gives no evidence to support the claim that it was directed at Internet Haganah or that it was instigated by any particular group. According to Internet Haganah, the Al Qaeda group discussed on various bulletin boards how to block its service, but the article doesn’t try to verify even that claim.
This is some sensationalistic, sloppy reporting. Big time.
At long last, just what I’ve been looking for:
C’mon, kids, let’s all sign up!
In case you’re wondering, this comes from my new Epson Stylus CX5200 printer/copier/scanner. My old one has been making clunking noise, like a car running over a tool chest, so I figured it was time to replace it. The CX5200 prints 22/ppm of black, does 15 copies/minute, and doesn’t need to go through the computer to make a copy. It cost $99 after rebates at MicroCenter.
Anyone need a black cartridge and a color cartridge for an Epsson Stylus 900, a model so old that Epson has now come out with a completely different 900? I’ll give you a real good price…
Joho the Blog uses WordPress blogging software.
Thank you, WordPress!
