Wednesday, August 28, 2002

William Safire: Bloomberg News cravenly deletes online article [Politech] Early this month, Patrick Smith, a Bloomberg columnist, dared to take note of the elevation of Ho Ching, the senior minister's daughter-in-law, to head Temesek, the powerful state-owned investment company. Her husband, Lee's son, is already deputy prime minister and finance minister, on a fast track to the top; Lee's other son is C.E.O. of Singapore Telecom. Lee himself, at 78, is chairman of the Government Investment Corporation. I have not read Smith's story because it has been expunged from the Bloomberg Web site, digitally erased from the mind of man. But evidently it annoyed some members of Lee's family, who are not known to lose huge libel suits that come before local judges. It's beyond me why American companies keep caving when threatened with suit by oppressive regimes such as Singapore. Why don't they just refuse to play the game? Don't even bother acknowledging the laughable Singaporean "courts!" When they inevitably lose the suit, just refuse to pay. It's that simple. comment () trackback ()  10:31:05 PM     Larry Lessig thinks the world would be a better place if the source of MORE was in the public domain.   [Scripting News] He also mentions HyperCard and the Newton. In the case of products which have been deliberately killed by the corporation that owns them, despite the wishes of their users, there's something to be said for the idea of setting them free after ten years. comment () trackback ()  10:20:47 PM     Today I saw a huge bumper sticker that said, in letters at least three inches high, "Arm Afghan Women." What a great idea! It's something that would actually have a chance of improving conditions for them, unlike all the hot air from the UN. In fact, why stop there? I'd be happy to give $500 to buy a pistol for a woman in any Islamic country. I think a well-publicized program, followed by a few dozen high-profile shootings, would do more than anything else to encourage Muslim men to stop treating women worse than slaves. comment () trackback ()  5:54:38 PM     Trail of Osama bin Laden Goes Cold [AP World News] Was there ever a point when the trail was not cold, really? It's not like "we think he's somewhere in Afghanistan" is hot on the trail. comment () trackback ()  1:45:50 PM     There's another feature in the pipe, should be released later today. Instant outlining notification over instant messaging. Very rational, right? Still a glitch or two remain.   [Scripting News] The instant outlining feature is somewhat interesting, but it doesn't really work with the way I use Radio. You use it from within the Radio app, but I have Radio running on my G4 desktop at home--that makes it fairly inaccessible to me, since it's too awkward to connect via Timbuktu just for that feature. I think it would be possible to make the instant outlines accessible via the web, though. It wouldn't be as fast, but each outline could be converted to HTML on the fly. Clicking on a picture of a triangle would generate a new page with that triangle either expanded or collapsed. New lines could be create using buttons, the way they are in the Newton outliner. comment () trackback ()  9:12:19 AM     'Happy Mac' Killed By Jaguar. The Macintosh operating system's corny but somewhat loveable startup icon appears to be a victim of the latest upgrade. And Apple doesn't want to discuss it. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News] Happy Mac was jettisoned to appease the aesthetics of Steve Jobs who has wanted for a long time to dump the "smirking symbol," sources close to Apple programmers confirmed. That's pretty typical--another symbol of the Mac OS gets "Steved." Apple's official response (on page 2 of the article) reads like advertising copy. comment () trackback ()  6:30:44 AM

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