Thursday, January 24, 2002
Very high slash/dot ratio
David Weinberger's new book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, just got a nasty review from Jon Katz on Slashdot. David's response on Slashdot is here. He shows remarkable restraint for a guy who just got blindsided pretty damn hard. A final slash: the post was moderated to a score of just 1. What a pisser.
I've been tuning in to JOHO lately, especially now that it's turning into a blog. Since I haven't read the book I'd prefer not to comment on it's thesis, but I have to say it seems pretty ironic to hear Jon Katz (of all people!) proclaim The End of Cyber BS. For what it's worth, I had moderation points at slashdot and modded David up to +5.
Putting a Value on Lives
There has been mounting criticism from the families of the victims of Sept. 11 that the compensation fund established last year by Congress is unfair. Indeed, Kenneth Feinberg must occasionally wonder why he ever took the job of administering the multibillion-dollar fund.
My dad and I were recently discussing the compensation fund set up by Congress for the victims of September 11. My opinion (which is worthless because of how the law was written, among other reasons...) is that the estate of each victim should have been given an amount of money equal to the total amount available divided by the number of victims.
Downtime, 10 hours
Talk about a flattery jinx.
You might think that a computer would only respond poorly if you curse at it or hit it upside the head. But no - too much flattery is also bad, you see, because the computer doesn't want you to take it for granted.
The XML Coffee Mug
Big news if you like coffee mugs...
Do I like coffee? I'm probably solely responsible for 10% of Starbucks' income. Oh, and that XML doohickey is pretty cool too... 
Christopher's Restaurant & Bar
Tina and I met some friends there last night. The Yuppie Nachos
(with delicious but pretentious toppings like goat chese and sun-dried tomatoes) are great, but beware! I love nachos, so I ordered the huge
, but when I finally gave up (after two hours) it wasn't obvious just from looking at my plate that I had eaten anything...
Netscape/AOL: Legal Fantasy
I do not believe that a legal injunction ... could do anything to bring back Netscape's market share.
I used Netscape Navigator for a long time after I had determined that Internet Explorer was the better browser (at least for me). I did this to take a stand
against Microsoft's anticompetitive practices. But Explorer kept getting better, and Navigator kept getting worse...
