Monday, March 04, 2002

CNET has an article in which Steve Ballmer the CEO of Microsoft states that they will have to pull Windows from the market should the 9 non-settling state's sanctions be approved.  Now I think this is a bit of an overstatement myself.  I'm almost sure most of these modifications could be done, granted at great expense to the company.  I would however applaud and in fact endorse Microsoft pulling Windows and ALL of their software off the market.  It's not because I don't like their software (I'm using their browser, running on their OS to write this), but teach the government a lesson.  The lesson they need to learn is, Stay out of business.  The more control the government has over business the worse off we are.  I've said from the begining of this whole affair that Bill should just close up shop.  I mean completely.  He should give notice to all people he owes shipments that they will either be refunded their money or that the products will arrive as soon as they are finished and then stop.  Sell off the companies assets, but KEEP the intellectual property, ALL of it.  No Windows code, no Office code, no IE code...nothing....and have all employees sign NDA's about the companies products.  See where that lands the goverment when suddenly 100's of millions of people around the world suddenly don't have an OS provider, or an Office suite provider.  I would use my current installation as long as it worked and then choose an alternative that I found to be best suited to my needs.  Maybe then the government would realize that these companies do this for profit, not the public good, which is just what they should be doing.  These companies don't owe anything to the public, nor do they owe anything to their competitors including compatability or space in their product...that's why they're competitors.  I know this will never happen because it's too much the right thing to do but I can dream of the day when I'd pat Bill Gates on the back and say good job. comment [] 11:39:49 PM

Ok.  Now that I've had time to digest the score stuff a bit some thoughts. I'm 19.  I dropped out of highschool my sophmore year as I said before.  But I haven't passed a grade since 5th.  Honestly.  At that point the work was too easy and I got bored.  I basicly decided that "I know I'm smart enough, they know it too."  So I stopped doing work.  I took my tests, aced em and left.  Then around 7th grade I started skipping school at least once or twice a week..just showing up for tests and anything I thought might be interesting...my homework average was sitting somewhere around 0 for most of the rest of my educational career.  All this led to my eventual leaving of the system..  Now understand, I'm not proud of this.  I wish I had stayed in school and done the piddly shit cause right now I'd be at NYU where I belong.  Had I stayed in school and gone to my math classes I would have scored closer to 33 or so on these tests but I didn't.  What I am trying to say is that the learning I did was only marginaly due to the schools.  Most of what I know I read in books.  But more importantly I learned online.  Starting with BBS's while I was in grade school all the way up to the current state of the net a lot of my learning has been done at a computer screen.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that people clamour that the schools are failing because the teachers are underpaid (which they are) or that the schools aren't adequately equiped (which they aren't), but I think the reason is deeper than that.  I think the kids and the country are failing.  Today the emphasis in learning is placed on the group...group work, what the group thinks, and wrote memorization.  This is all wrong.  The reason I left school was because of that very attidude.  Learning is a highly personal experience because thinking is.  You can't think as a group, only an individual can think.  Schools have lost the individual.  Conformity to the group is not a goal.  Yes we're all "special" but I can still be better than you at something.  They've taken pride out because no one is allowed to be better than anyone, we're all equal before the zero that is the school system.  This rant has gotten kinda long and I'm not sure where I'm going with it.  I think I'll call it a wrap for now and write a story on this later when I'm a bit more organized. comment [] 4:22:04 PM

WooT WooT!  I just got my ACT scores back....I got a 27 which is better than I expected considering I dropped out of highschool my sophmore year.  The really sad part is that it ranks me in the 90th percentile.  I'm not sure what that says about the country's educational system.  Well no trouble getting in to college. comment [] 3:25:30 PM

Adam points to an article in the Star Tribune about America's New Bomb.  My friends and I have been talking about this weapon for a while now.  The theory behind it is that it ingnites sucking all available oxygen from an area, say a cave or underground bunker.  All living things are killed but the structures themselves are still intact...it's sort of a safer version of the Neutron Bomb.  Maybe this means we're starting to get the idea...it doesn't matter how many buildings you destory, you have to kill the people to stop the fighting.  This is something I've always said.  Human life is a precious thing but if you've attacked my country, I'm morally obligated to obliterate you until you no longer threaten me or my fellow citizens.  This includes the civilians living in the country.  They pay taxes, they join the military...it's with their support that these nations and leaders continue to flourish, they should not be exempt.  This view isn't very popular in today's culture.  It's more accepted to try to kill as few civilians as possible.  Look what happens when we do that...they re-elect the leaders we were trying to get rid of, Saddam Hussein being a good example.  When making war against a country you need to not only destroy their military but the government that supports it.  You then are free to set up a government that is less hostile and safer for everyone involved...  I know this will cost more American or Brittish or random country X's lives in the short term, but look at Iraq, by not doing this we are going to have to go back there and do it all over again risking the lives of our soldiers yet again, against a country who has now had more time to prepare. comment [] 3:02:32 PM

Morpheus a file trading network run by Music City completely changed platforms after being hacked last week.  They've now gone to the Gnuetella open source network allowing users to connect to all the other similar clients.  The reason I used Morpheus was that it wasn't a Gnuetella client.  The Gnuetella network is rather unimpressive for it's size.  It requires you to be connected to multiple "nodes" which are other users of the program and running searches in a chain reation.  There are some disadvantages of using a distributed network like this.  Search times are much slower and connections much less reliable as your nodes are constantly going on and offline.  Plus the client itself is more bulky and less user-friendly.  They've lost most of my friends as users for this move and I wouldn't be surprised if more people left than they'll gain.  Oh well...there's always KazaA. comment [] 5:58:04 AM

Yay Chris Pirillo's weblog is RSS enabled so I can start cutting down on the pages I have to visit and I can just use the aggregator.  They were just starting with that feature when I stopped using, sounds like a drug doesn't it?  Most of the work was still done in the actual Radio program back then..not this fancy browser stuff.  Much easier this way. comment [] 5:16:37 AM

Well basicly I'm doing this because I think Radio  might be a great tool for me to take to college with me.  Outliners are great tool for taking notes.  I really haven't written with a pen and paper since my freshman year and I didn't do that much of it then.  I do all my writing with a keyboard and that's where I'm most comfortable now.  I'm hoping to get an iBook over the summer and then load it up with Radio and take it to school with me.  It would basicly be a new tech package for me because I've used PC's since I was about 10...before then I used Mac's but that was long long ago.  So to sum it up I'll be trying out the features again and seeing where I could fit this in my academic life.  I used radio back when it was free somewhere around version 7.0 but have lost track of it since then..we'll see how it's changed I guess. comment [] 5:00:45 AM

Hello. comment [] 4:45:25 AM

Hello there.  This is a test. comment [] 4:43:35 AM

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