Things I Think About Things I See.
*A note about the comments: Names, email addresses and website URLs are all optional. Give as little or as much information as you like.
Current Entries |
Archives |
|
|
PDA
Thursday, January 31, 2002
Doing a 'Dave'
Shelley thought about something she posted after a comment was left by a reader and pulled it. I didn't catch what it was she wrote but I tend to agree with her on why she pulled it. Some things need to be agitated and some things just need to let settle. In the comments here at Burningbird 'D' doesn't seem to think she should pull something after posting it because it goes against her credibility. I don't quite see it that way. I find Shelley much more credible for pulling one of her articles that really didn't need to be 'blogged in the first place than I would if she had just left something there that wasn't worth my time reading.
Writer's will write about everything. They can't help it, it's what makes them writers. Because of that some of the stuff they write is of no value to anyone but themselves. Oh, they turn out some beautiful stuff but along the way they also turn out some stuff that is just spillage. The editors protect us from most of the spillage on large sites but on these weblogs and journals the writers are also the editors. It's difficult for a writer to even cull the spillage at times. Shelley's doing a pretty good job of that but her weblog is being produced in front of us. We are watching her at her craft and as she corrects her errors as she goes.
If you want to see only a finished product, 'D', read only yesterday's posts. Those have been corrected. Today's stuff is still being formed. That goes, not just for Burningbird but for weblogs in general. Oh, there are many of us that just leave the spillage there for everyone to see but the interesting ones are either posted to only after all editing has been done or you see the editing take place live. That's just the nature of the genre.
Trackback (0) for Doing a 'Dave'
diveintomark
Okay, diveintomark is at a new location so I guess I need to update my bookmarks. He's also switched from Manilla to Greymatter. This fellow's writing is worth keeping up.
Posted by 07:36:27 AM | Permalink for Entry 9229491.Trackback (0) for diveintomark
Blogger Pro
I just upgraded to Blogger Pro. I would have given $35 a year for the service as I was using it but there are some features that I like. The blogging by email is one of them. Maybe some of the thoughts I have sitting at a lunch counter will find their way here through my PDA.
<edit>Okay, the post by email is a future feature so it will be a little bit before I can use that feature, but I've implemented the subject field. It makes my RSS file a little cleaner.</edit>
Trackback (0) for Blogger Pro
Wednesday, January 30, 2002
via /. Go to McWhortle Enterprises, Inc. and attempt to invest. The SEC is attempting to give some people a clue.
Posted by 04:27:25 PM | Permalink for Entry 9207451.Tuesday, January 29, 2002
Relationships are a strange thing. Some of them are good, some are bad and some are indifferent but the one thing they have in common is that they all change. Meryl Yourish examines how friendships change through here twenty odd year relationship with a friend.
I've always believed that the only people that we are capable of having strong emotional reactions to are those people that we care about the most. That's the reason that we see some marriages explode and others just fizzle. If the caring is still there there will be no amicable end to a marriage while the ones that just fizzle are because the strong feelings for each other have just faded away.
Posted by 07:00:25 AM | Permalink for Entry 9155699.Monday, January 28, 2002
After a whirlwind tour of houses in Atlanta, GA and Charlotte, NC this weekend (Atlanta on Saturday, Charlotte or Sunday) I think we've made a decision, Charlotte felt a lot more like home. Too many of the communities we looked at in Atlanta just had the feeling of throwing up a bunch of houses in the middle of a cow pasture and the older communities we looked at just looked run down. Charlotte, on the other hand appeared to be making a concious effort of including "charm" in even their brand new communities. There was more of an inclusive feeling between residential and commercial. I'll post more about this after I've had an opportunity to recover from the travel.
Posted by 06:49:22 AM | Permalink for Entry 9118706.Friday, January 25, 2002
Mark has gone through a loss. I'm not sure who he is speaking about but it appears to be someone very close. Having just lost my mother, I feel for him.
Posted by 11:17:21 AM | Permalink for Entry 9038922.Dave has a neat little piece of software called Radio. I've played around with it and it has a bunch of very nice features and for a lot of people it will make an excellent tool for 'blogging. I'm still interested in rolling my own CMS so I'm going to stay where I am for now until I get the scripts put together I need.
Still, there's this coffee mug that Dave is using for a logo for Radio and I want one. The trouble is that I don't think they exist anywhere but in an image file. Dave, you're missing a market here. The fellows over at QuickTees can put this image on however many coffee cups you want at a decent price. I'm tempted just to take the logo over there and have one made just for me. Or maybe I'll have some made up with my journal's logo on it.
Posted by 09:49:27 AM | Permalink for Entry 9036639.It was raining fairly hard yesterday afternoon when I left my office heading home so I decided not to purchase the water heater and haul it home in the bed of my pickup. No sense spending a couple of hundred dollars on something and then haul it around in the rain. Is there? Anyway, since I didn't have to install the water heater I went ahead and added my bookmarks for weblogs I read regularly to the bottom of the right side bar. Look over there --->
One thing I noticed was that lake effect: a weblog is down and the name can't be resolved. I like reading Dan's take on things so I hope this is only temporary.
Thursday, January 24, 2002
I like detective stories so this story about a stolen iMac recovered by scripting was a very interesting read for me.
Posted by 09:52:20 PM | Permalink for Entry 9023252.Well, it's more awards time. Now it's the Second Annual Weblog Awards or the Bloggies. I guess it shows how far out of the loop I am because I don't read any of the ones nominated on anywhere near a regular basis.
I guess I need to make a list of the ones I read regularly like everyone else does, more than just the little page with the RSS feeds, but I never figured people would be all that interested in who was on my list. I guess the authors of those 'Blogs would probably appreciate just knowing that they are read and appreciated. Those of you who know I read their 'blogs, like Dan, Shelley, Tom and Dori please know that I appreciate you very much for what you are doing. I'll get my list up to let the rest of you know by Monday. Right now I've got to replace a water heater.
What do you do when laws crafted to protect children may expose them to prosecution? Two girls aged 11 and 12 are reported to have posted naked pictures of themselves on the internet.
Posted by 10:35:33 AM | Permalink for Entry 9003983.Wednesday, January 23, 2002
A Google search on glorious uxorcide returns no documents. That's just my contribution to Googlewhacking.
Posted by 11:00:31 PM | Permalink for Entry 8990966.Here's a standard that I want to work on, Emotitext. Really. That's my message forum. How often do you see people using <sarcasm/> tags in online discussions? Well, I want to develop a few CSS classes for this. The problem I have is envisioning the attributes that need to go with the different classes. I think it's something that could catch on if their were standard class names and certain default attributes for those classes. Well, not all standards have to be serious. Do they?
Posted by 03:08:41 PM | Permalink for Entry 8976201.A thread going on over at Flutterby involving theology and Christianity has Dori asking about sects that believe both faith and works are required to enter heaven. Petronius gives a great answer:
Very rarely do I find even Christians that understand this concept. Posted by 09:37:55 AM | Permalink for Entry 8967429.You're asking the wrong question. If you believe, good works are not necessary. They are inevitable.
I can't really think of a thing about me that I would just want to keep secret from anyone else. I live a pretty boring, plain vanilla life. Still, just because I've got nothing to hide that doesn't mean that I think it is alright for people to just have that information. That goes for the government, too. Even if they want to tell me the information they collect on me is going to be safe and secure with them that doesn't mean that I think that gives them the right to compel me to give that information to them. Someone at the The Washington Times feels the same way.
Just because it may not hurt for someone to have certain information it doesn't mean that they are automatically entitled to it. Just say no to the National ID or anything else resembling it.
Tuesday, January 22, 2002
A post I placed in here last week was about how people that we meet through our online identities are real people and when thought of that way they enhance our lives. Well, Shelley, the Burningbird, is having some kind of major financial setback and it hurts me that she is going through this. I'm not sure what form this crisis might have taken or how I can help other than send some prayers (or good thoughts, if your not into that sort of thing) her way and ask that ya'll do the same.
Shelley, if there is anything else I can do, please let me know. I'm across the country from you and I have limited resources but if there is anything in my power to do, all you need to do is ask.
Dang, I knew it was coming but I still hate to see it. Kmart has filed for bankruptcy. It isn't that I'm a great fan of KMart. I'm not, really, but I would rather shop in their stores than at Wally World. Well, it's chapter 11 and not chapter 7 so maybe they aren't dead yet. I may go buy some of their stock just so I might at least have a souvenier.
Posted by 11:28:44 AM | Permalink for Entry 8935296.It was always a joke that the end of the "new economy" would be signaled by Amazon turning a profit. Well, I think it's about a year late, but Amazon.com Posts First-Ever Profit. Let's hope this signals the final end to the madness and the beginning of slow and steady growth of e-commerce.
Posted by 11:17:26 AM | Permalink for Entry 8934975.Tom, over at Backup Brain is fed up with Arafat. I am too, but I also know that this is a war between minorities. From talks I've had with both Palestinians and Jews from the area most from both sides are willing to live together peacefully. It's the zealots on both sides that are causing the problems. Now, I'm not saying that getting rid of the zealots will lead to complete peace and happiness between the two cultures. There is going to be tension and resentment between the two groups for a long period of time, even among the most compassionate among the two groups. But they will live together. It's the zealots that are introducing the violence.
Yeah, Tom, Arafat needs to go, but pushing all the Palestinians into the sea isn't going to be the answer. That's just continuing the mess.
Monday, January 21, 2002
Matthew Thomas gives a very good reason for supporting the Blogger API in your CMS. I have to agree with Dave on this. Tools like this is what will continue to expand the Web for writers. With only six XML-RPC calls it looks like something worth toying with.
Posted by 04:08:54 PM | Permalink for Entry 8908899.Laid off from a tech job and need a place to go to communicate with others who understand where you are coming from? Well, consider LAIDOFFLAND :: Resources and Community for the Laid-Off Masses. It's a fairly well done site that just might help you out.
Posted by 11:10:41 AM | Permalink for Entry 8900771.Saturday, January 19, 2002
Hmm, AOL in Negotiations to Acquire Red Hat (washingtonpost.com). This could be signaling a true division of the Internet.
Posted by 05:23:41 PM | Permalink for Entry 8852627.This winter has been mild. Ski resorts were late opening, ice fishermen have had to postpone tournaments and now ski planes may have to trade in their skis for wheels for the EAA Skiplane Fly-in.
Posted by 02:58:28 AM | Permalink for Entry 8839278.Friday, January 18, 2002
Okay, it ain't pretty but I've added a search function. If anyone finds a bug in it please let me know. Maybe this will help all those folks that get here through search engines looking for the entry I made on Annika Irmler.
Posted by 11:57:15 AM | Permalink for Entry 8817806.Okay, Todd over at Flutterby pointed it out and I like the playlist here: musicforhackers.com [Soundscapes for compromising a remote host]. So far it has proven very conducive to work.
Posted by 08:05:22 AM | Permalink for Entry 8812331.Sushi sent me this link to the Lancashire Ghosts it literally scared the @#$% out of me. You really do need to follow the directions on this one.
Posted by 06:23:33 AM | Permalink for Entry 8810810.Scott Andrew hit on a thought for what could be a solution to a problem I'm having. It sure would be nice if Blogger, first of all produced valid XHTML markup but, would validate the markup I placed in my entries to ensure that the mark up in my blog remained valid. So, what if something like the W3C validator existed that could communicate back with Blogger or Movable Type or any other CMS you might be using via XML-RPC or SOAP to let you know you have an error and where? I like the idea, Scott.
Posted by 06:13:52 AM | Permalink for Entry 8810664.Thursday, January 17, 2002
Sounds are being made that it is the US that has lead to European GPS plans being shelved. My opinion? I hope so. Today most of Europe is our allies. Tomorrow? I don't know about that. From the article:
Western communty? I'm not sure the US is still a part of that. Culturally, we probably are but our business ties are more with the South and the East. I'm not convinced that our next war won't be with the EU. If that becomes the case I surely hope that we have managed to block any grounds they might make in establishing anywhere near as effective of a military as we have.
Most frustrating for the Europeans is that, in essence, the Americans don't trust them with so powerful a tool. The Europeans argue that it makes sense for the Western community to have more than one system, just in case.
If I'm sounding like an isolationist, I'm not meaning to be. I'm all for keeping on good terms with every country in the world. That's a two way street, though and I'm not convinced that even Europe will always be an ally. If it ever comes down to either us or them I'm always going to be cheering for us. Posted by 05:22:20 PM | Permalink for Entry 8793451.
It takes him some time but when he gets it, he really gets it, Bill Gates has finally discovered security. Sure the man has his faults but in the past every time he has finally realized the full scope and importance of something to the future of Microsoft he bites down on it hard and won't let go. He finally got it with networking, then he got it with the internet, now he has it with security. Don't dismiss this as a publicity stunt. When the man gets it, the man gets it.
Posted by 04:07:24 PM | Permalink for Entry 8791264.Wednesday, January 16, 2002
Okay, I don't like those shoplifter sentries standing at the entrance of just about every store, they make me claustrophobic, but I tolerate them because they are mounted in the store and paid for by the store owner. However, this is going too damn far. The content industry wants me to pay for and house equipment to prevent copyright infringement. Folks, write your congressman about this stuff.
Posted by 05:55:43 PM | Permalink for Entry 8760711.Now for a little balance to what I stated below, Chattanooga's persual of passenger rail service along an Atlanta/Chicago rail route is possibly one of the smarter things the city council is getting involved in. It's a shame that a city that is synonymous with rail travel has no passenger rail service.
Posted by 01:10:38 PM | Permalink for Entry 8752590.Let me get local here for a moment. The idea of tuning McCallie Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard from one way streets to two way streets is about as stupid of an idea as the city of Chattanooga has had recently. Both streets see an enormous amount of pedestrian traffic. If someone thinks it is safer for pedestrians to cross two way streets than it is for pedestrians to cross one way streets I'd like to know what type of fumes they've been inhaling so that I can keep my kids away from it.
Posted by 01:03:20 PM | Permalink for Entry 8752380.Yeap, one of these days I'm going to write a book for O'Reilly. It probably won't ever get done but that won't stop me from playing with the cover design. I think I'll do one like this.
Posted by 10:13:34 AM | Permalink for Entry 8747558.Tuesday, January 15, 2002
I had a scare yesterday afternoon. My wife called me from the hospital emergency room to tell me she was there having chestpains and numbness in her left arm and for me not to worry and that I needn't come down there because she had one of her coworkers with her. Yeah, like I was going to be anywhere but the hospital with her.
Hospitals in Chattanooga seem to change on a weekly basis. There is always construction going on and entrances being moved. I decided my best bet was to park in the parking area at the main entrance and get directed from there to the emergency room. After the first turn after entering the hospital I by chance ran into my minister. He grabbed me and took me straight to the emergency room where my wife was waiting in the waiting room to be checked out.
This was a good sign. They had already checked her vitals and determined she was not in immediate danger. No major heart attack, but still all the classic symptoms. We didn't know exactly what was happening but there was still cause for concern. A few minutes later she was ushered back to a treatment room and I was told to "stay". I bristled silently for a moment but I complied.
My pastor sat with me and got me calmed down. We talked about motorcycles and airplanes and travel, anything to get me thinking about other things. I realised he was very good at his job. He was there visiting another church member having a triple by-pass, the husband of a dear friend of my wife and mine who was in our Sunday School class. I count myself lucky that he "just happened" to be there when I really needed him... or did that "just happen"?
My wife came out of this okay. It wasn't a heart attack afterall, just indigestion. All the symptoms were there for a heart attack so I'm glad she was taken to the hospital. She has been under enormous stress lately, with my mother dying, her office closing and my blood pressure rising. She worries about me, my father, the people working for her and our moving. It could very well have been a heart attack.
I've got a doctor's appointment in a couple of hours to see what I need to do about my blood pressure. Maybe I can take a little of the worry off of her after the appointment.
Monday, January 14, 2002
In I Must there's a story about Patti's seperation and divorce. I really don't know how to comment on other than to just say go there and read it.
Posted by 01:56:37 PM | Permalink for Entry 8685428.Sunday, January 13, 2002
I sometimes have problems with the language used on broadcast TV. As a parent I found out real fast that the words you would like for your four year old to learn a little later on in life are the ones he will pick up first. With that in mind I still find it hard to accept a TV filter that negates naughtiness.
It isn't that I wouldn't mind having one of these boxes when my kids were younger but with the list of 400 words it censors being unpublished and knowing that words like "jerk" and "moron" are on this list, I think it goes a little further than I would like. See it isn't those words that bother me so much but the context they are used in. I don't see a lot of difference between the phrase "You bleep bleep" and the phrase "You stupid jerk" when taken in the context of the rest of the dialog. It isn't those words, its the attitude.
Friday, January 11, 2002
I've been saying this for years, it's Canadians that we need to worry about, not Mexicans. They really are out to take over the US.
Posted by 07:38:38 AM | Permalink for Entry 8596365.I may have to give Radio 8 a try. Mark appears to be quite excited about it. I played with Radio 7 for a few days and found it a little too cumbersome to pick up quickly and integrate into my daily routine. Also the fact that I post from multiple locations makes it difficult to use an application like Radio. The more I look at OPML, though, the more I like it. Mark says Radio 8 is much easier to work with, though. So I guess I'll download it here shortly to give it a whirl.
Posted by 06:46:41 AM | Permalink for Entry 8595674.Thursday, January 10, 2002
Dave Winer points out that IBM had 3,411 patents issued to it by the USPTO last year. That's 3,411 seperate patentable ideas that you or I can not put to productive use without first paying IBM a royalty on their use even if we come up with one of those ideas in a clean room.
Posted by 02:14:30 PM | Permalink for Entry 8573210.Eric has an entry on Flutterby that has me thinking about where I view myself in cyberspace. He's been learning that interaction with real live people and laying hands on real physical material has been much more rewarding lately than interaction with online people and laying hands on "code". I've known Eric for about seven years and I've got to say that he is the Geek's Geek when it comes to computers. I've always enjoyed face to face encounters with him and have come away rewarded from every meeting we've had.
Still, he's been through a lot lately and I'm glad to see him coming to terms with himself in "meatspace" (his term and I like it). It has gotten me to thinking about my place in cyberspace and meatspace. I hope I'm melding them very well. I don't view the two as mutually exclusive. My acquaintances online have turned into real life acquaintances and my dealings with folks I know in meatspace has been enhanced as they have come online. I think that's the way it needs to be.
For instance, I got a nice note from, Meryl yesterday. This is someone that I wouldn't have met had I not had this journal. Meryl is a real person and by understanding that and treating her as such then my real world life is enhanced. Meryl found this journal by reading BurningBird, I had commented on a couple of items over there. Shelley, the BurningBird, left a comforting comment on this site when my mother died a couple of weeks ago. That really meant a lot to me and my "meatspace" was further enhanced. These are people that I haven't meet in the analog but who I know are very real people.
Over on Chattanooga Message Forum are a bunch of people that I have met in "meatspace" that I got acquainted with in "cyberspace". These folks, too, are very special to me. I don't get to meet with them a lot so the interaction I have with them online keeps them close.
I'm rambling now but the thought is that there really doesn't need to be the seperation of our lives into "meatspace" and "cyberspace". They enhance each other and should interact with each other. I think this should be reflected not only in our interaction with people online but with the software we develop for use here.
I got to get back to work.
The Wasington Post is reporting that some Taliban Leaders are being freed by Afghanistan and given amnesty after turning over their weapons and pledging allegiance to the new regime. The problem is that some of these leaders are on U.S. "most wanted" lists and some folks in the U.S. administration are ticked.
I'm not sure I'm so bothered by this. Haven't we said all along that it is al-Qaeda that we were after and not the Afghan people? I will be bothered if al-Qaeda fighters are turned loose and given amnesty but not necessarily the Taliban. I personally consider Mohammad Omar a member of both.
Wednesday, January 9, 2002
I downloaded a copy of Movable Type this morning. I hope to get it installed in the next couple of days to give it a whirl and see if it meets my needs. I really, really like Blogger but I'm seeing a need to host my on content management system just to avoid the frustration of problems beyond my control. We'll see how it goes.
Posted by 05:17:20 PM | Permalink for Entry 8548344.When a bum show's you a sign that says: "Homeless, my ass! I just want to get high!" you really need to give the man a quarter. I think I'd even drop a fiver his way. Thank you for a much needed laugh this morning, Tom.
Posted by 10:58:09 AM | Permalink for Entry 8540933.Tuesday, January 8, 2002
Dave had a link to the story about the bad service at the DoubleTree Houston which Shelley linked to but then Dave to his link down. The link is here and it explains why he took down the link to this PowerPoint presentation which I was lucky enough to find. (I don't know for how long this link will be good seeing as how Joseph Crosby, General Manager of DoubleTree Houston is at convincing folks that they require his permission to talk about him and this incident.) I'm linking to all this because I want to see if I get contacted over it. One thing is sure, though. I will never stay at the DoubleTree in Houston even though I am a Hilton HHonors member.
##Update, Dave posted a link to this USA Today article letting us know the rest of the story. After reading this I might go ahead and stay at the DoubleTree in Houston afterall.
I just found out that Microsoft is suing Lindows.com over the name. That isn't really that much of a surprise however, Microsoft also has this to say:
"We are not asking the court to stop the production of this product. We are simply saying that they shouldn't use a name that confuses the public," Microsoft spokesperson Jon Murchinson says. "We would prefer to work with them to resolve this problem voluntarily."
Via Larkfarm, came a link to a site about the SR-71 Blackbirds with some fascinating question and answer section.
These things were built for $33 million each and sold for $34 million each to the US. I wonder how much the scrap titanium would go for in salvage? Posted by 02:21:07 PM | Permalink for Entry 8516708.
5. What materials was it constructed with?
Actually, it was the first true Stealth aircraft. It is composed of Titanium and Composite (plastic) materials. The landing gear is the largest piece of titanium ever forged in the world. The United States did not have enough Titanium to build the fleet and ironically, we bought the needed Titanium from Russia.
It's been a long time since I've gotten excited about a new car design. I guess it was really back around 1969 with the Dodge Charger Daytona. As a teenager, that wing just did something for me. Well, that was over thirty years ago and I thought I'd nver feel that way again. Actually, I still don't. The wing just looked cool, this whole concept is way beyond cool. Take a clean sheet of paper and design a car around a fuel cell. Think about it, one chassis, with a twenty year life span, and multiple body configurations that you reconfigure as your needs change.
This hits the recycle, reduce and reuse philosphy nail right square on its head. Instead of a new car every three to five years you adapt your current car to your current needs. You start out your car owning life with a little two seater and a single fuel cell. You leave home and get married and you change it to a hatchback. Kids come along and you add a fuel cell for more power, extend the chassis and add the SUV body kit. When you become an empty nester you shift over to the luxury sedan kit. All this and the only emmissions are water and heat.
On top of this you have the aftermarket industry supplying custom body parts for a resurrgence of the carriage companies. GM supplies the chassis and drivetrain and all these old custom van companies start supplying custom bodies.
Yeah, I know its still several years away but it just excites me thinking about the possibilities.
I laughed a few years ago when I read about a port of Linux to the Palm but now we hear rumors of a soon to be released Linux PDA just about every day. Well they aren't rumors anymore, Royal is offering a Linux based PDA and it sounds pretty cool.
Posted by 06:57:32 AM | Permalink for Entry 8508892.Monday, January 7, 2002
My wife just got word this morning that her office is being closed. This probably means that I will be moving to another town in the near future. I really didn't want to get this news right now.
Posted by 10:37:57 AM | Permalink for Entry 8484078.Sunday, January 6, 2002
Shelley, over at Burningbird has been relating car stories in the wake of her finally getting her drivers license at a, er, somewhat latter time in life. Her latest story relates to her brother and his fascination with parking brake releases. I had a very similar brother who was a couple of years younger than me. Her story brought back memories for me.
My mother went into the post office in Red Bank one day leaving my brother and me in the car. I was probably about seven at the time and my brother was five. This was the early '60s and no one was thinking baby snatching or anything like that back in those days. My brother immediately jumped up into the driver's seat when my mom went into the post office and began pretending to be driving the car. He managed to release the parking brake and knock the car out of gear.
The parking lot was a slight but significant incline and the car was pointed uphill away from the busy little street the post office was located on. The car began a fairly fast acceleration down the incline and across the street where other cars were parked. I remember jumping up and looking out the window as soon as I felt the car in motion and seeing a lady running out into the street to stop traffic so our car could at least make it across the street without someone driving down the street running into us.
Our guardian angel must have been with us because the car backed smoothly between two cars parked across the street and stopped harmlessly against the curb. I looked around to see my mother coming out of the post office with as close to a panicked look as I ever saw on her face. My mother rarely got excited over things. She came awfully close to it that day.
Perhaps we are a lot more tolerant to radiation than we once supposed or perhaps the relocation around Chernobyl was more successful in preventing a lot more radiation related diseases than thought. The UN seems to think that the cure was worse than the disease in a report that says more people died from the relocation than from radiation illnesses following the Chernobyl incident.
Posted by 10:36:18 AM | Permalink for Entry 8456253.Have you ever wondered what if old Atari designers started working for Pentagon contractors? Just think of the weapons systems that could be developed.
Posted by 10:12:31 AM | Permalink for Entry 8455933.CNET.com has an article about Mira, Microsoft's new consumer electronics tablet-shaped device that will serve as a bridge between the TV, the PC and the company's .Net services. Basically it sounds like a tv remote that will pull in TVGuide style information from your PC over a wireless connection and can be used to save game state information of your XBox back to a central server. It sounds kind of cool but what struck me most about the article was how quickly it turned into a commercial for Microsoft's .NET services, specifically .NET My Services or what was originally termed Hailstorm.
Now, I still have mixed feelings about Microsoft's .NET innitiative. I think it is a spark that might reignite interest in the Web in ways that could put a lot of my out of work friends back to work. I honestly don't believe any company other than Microsoft has that ability to strike that particular spark. Outside of the tech community no one hears anything unless it is said by Microsoft. That's just reality.
Another upside of the .NET initiative is that it will put a lot of technology in the hands of people that just don't have the technical accumen to handle this stuff on their own. Sure, every bit of what .NET My Services is offering the consumer I can build at home, but I realize that I'm in the minority at every family get-together and every social gathering I attend with social rather than business acquaintances.
What I'm afraid of, though, is that everyone is going to have to pay a pretty hefty price to Microsoft for that spark and for that availability of technology. I'm also afraid that this is going to cause people to be far too reliable on servers that are completely out of their control for storage of personal and critical business data.
Another concern that I have is the cost of these web services. We are talking about subscriptions to data, not just any data but subscriptions to your own data. Subscriptions are recurring costs. Forget about upgrades they are done automatically for you and rolled into the cost of the subscription. Easy monthly payments mean you'll never have to worry about paying for an upgrade again. Easy monthly payments also mean that you will never pay off your investment in this technology.
On the upside, .NET means that a lot of folks that could never had access to the technology will now have access to it and my friends go back to work. On the downside, .NET is going to be a way for Microsoft to gain a grip on a very delicate portion of our anatomies and they will squeeze.
Friday, January 4, 2002
I just saw this, Gators' Spurrier resigns to pursue NFL jobs, and was amazed. Who are the folks in the SEC East going to hate now?
Posted by 03:17:55 PM | Permalink for Entry 8411686.Happy Birthday to me. Justin's Journal started a year ago today. I almost missed it.
Posted by 11:46:37 AM | Permalink for Entry 8406554.Thursday, January 3, 2002
It saddens me to learn that Pres. Clinton's dog, Buddy, was killed by car. I've got to wonder how this could have happened, though. Was Buddy allowed to run loose? Where was the Secret Service?
Posted by 12:33:45 PM | Permalink for Entry 8377373.Via Larkfarm, Prof. Joseph Davidovits believes the .pyramids were cast from concrete, not built with carved stone. He gives a very compelling argument for his theory. He believes the stone was quarried at Giza and desaggregated to be reaggregated in forms built on the pyramid itself. This would explain how all the stones are so symmetrical, how they were aligned within a hair's breadth and how they managed to get such clean edges. Naturally, his theory has its detractors. Personally, I didn't realize they had concrete trucks back then. ;-)
Posted by 10:52:26 AM | Permalink for Entry 8375137.I was looking for a more left leaning news outlet to add to my newsfeed page and I thought I had found it with the Progressive Forum but they haven't updated anything on the site since 10/17. Does anyone know anything about them?
Posted by 10:36:29 AM | Permalink for Entry 8374802.Wednesday, January 2, 2002
Via NewsForge comes an internal memo from Microsoft detailing new ways they intend to discredit Linux. Well, I can't blame them for that. They are competing with Linux and they need to educate their sales force in how to best position their products against their comptetitors. The part that makes me laugh though is this independent study that MS has hired DH Brown to conduct that Brian Valentine appears to know the results of before the completion of the study.
Kind of breaks your confidence in just how independent an independent study is. Don't it? Posted by 02:49:02 PM | Permalink for Entry 8350329.
III. Finally, we're working hard to debunk the myths around Linux. We're approaching this in waves.
a. The first wave will attack the perception that Linux is free. To that effect, we'll have an independent analysis commissioned by DH Brown looking at a very popular topic these days -- server consolidation. If you're not seeing this yet, you probably will. IBM is proposing to use Mainframes running many virtual instances of Linux as a low cost server consolidation scenario for file and print, messaging, and database activities. The DH Brown report will be customer ready and will help your customer understand just how competitive Microsoft is in this arena.
While being well-educated and holding a degree aren't necessarily the same thing, the fact that only Arkansas ranks below Tennessee in college degree holders is a sombering statistic for my state. I'm going to have to do a little more digging to see if there are any reasons speculated for this.
Posted by 11:18:55 AM | Permalink for Entry 8345496.With one comment from Dave Winer, Burningbird goes on to nail the concept of community among webloggers. Dave's comment?:
Dave, it wasn't just you. Shelley had an interesting comment that I also linked to, as did Flutterby and many other webloggers. The discussion got better because word got out about the discussion. Isn't that what community is all about? Posted by 08:23:55 AM | Permalink for Entry 8342263.Your discussion on web standards got better when I gave it a prominent link.
Walter Hewlett has it on the nose, mergers involving computing companies have consistently destroyed shareholder value. I've never seen any advantage to this merger for either company at all.
Posted by 07:05:50 AM | Permalink for Entry 8341287.Rob Miller makes a very good point about world domination and operating systems. I agree with him that it isn't important which OS is the dominant OS as long as we can all work together. It is the interoperability that we need to unite behind, not one brand over another.
Posted by 06:27:06 AM | Permalink for Entry 8340809.Tuesday, January 1, 2002
I really need to thank a lot of people. I've had more support than I could have ever imagined from friends, and even folks I don't even know, here online in the recent loss of my mother. None of you can ever know how much this has helped me get through this... and I am getting through this a lot better than I thought I ever would.
Posted by 08:57:37 PM | Permalink for Entry 8330810.
I was looking through NASA's accomplishments for 2001 and saw that they have had a very busy year. Perhaps it is just my intrest in aviation but even with this marking the first year of habitation of the International Space Station the most impressive accomplishment on their list for me was a little 3D display for the cockpit that should help pilots better avoid controlled flight into terrain.
Copyright© 2001-2003 Dallas Bay Networks and Justin Thyme Productions all rights reserved.
With that said, if you see something you would like to use elsewhere, even commercially, an e-mail notifying me of its use and an attribution is all that is necessary for its use.
Bandwidth and webhosting provided by Higher Technology Services, Inc.
.
.
.
