I think it bodes well for my positivity not to side with either Apple or Cricket in this issue... initially I simply linked to the Slashdot story, and I think that should be my stance in the future regarding my employer. In fact staying out of it entirely sounds like a peachy idea. Anybody who reads this blog probably also reads Slashdot.

A tip to any employers looking to use Section 2870 (a)(1) of the California Labor Code to force employees to hand over their products: try asking them for help instead. Tell the person that you'd like their help in producing something similar. Give them a bonus (even something small) for having the creativity to come up with something great for the Mac platform on their own.

Employees should be encouraged to take up such creative projects in the interest of furthering the Mac platform and their own knowledge of the Mac frameworks. Presence and NewtSync, moreso than any of the training I took within Apple, gave me the knowledge that allowed me to create QTSS Publisher and become a well-versed Cocoa programmer. And Netflix Fanatic presumably made Cricket a better engineer.

I developed chatSearch as a BSD-licensed SourceForge project, and I would welcome its inclusion in iChat.

Not sure what I'm doing with Presence and FilePad but I started them long before I worked at Apple. NewtSync... I can't see anybody caring about that. It makes Newton users hate Apple a little bit less, and gives them some much-needed functionality. Plus I made it BSD-licensed and open-source. Everyone's happy. Hopefully.
10:33:42 AM    comment []  

And Christine McVie is pleading with me on iTunes not to stop thinking about tomorrow.

I remember how the start of the Clinton era was marked by a Fleetwood Mac "reunion," with Lindsey, Christine, Stevie, John and Mick all putting their differences aside to give us that important edict. Don't... stop... thinking about tomorrow. Okay, so they probably did it for money or fame. Let me have my optimism for a second.

So the Clinton era was started with a message of optimism, with our president standing on a stage playing a saxophone. Gore hadn't invented the Internet, but he, as he put it, "took the initiative in helping to create the Internet." There's a big difference between what he said and how he was quoted. He got the funding and approval for the necessary steps to turn ARPAnet into what you're now using to read this hopelessly self-indulgent post. :-) NCSA and, following shortly afterward, Netscape, turned the world on its ear by making the Internet easy to use. Amazon showed us that we can shop online and never have to see a crowded shopping mall again.

Fast forward to the Bush era. We were being inundated with messages of bubbles bursting, soaring unemployment, hanging chads, recounts, bitterness and fighting. Mysterious men from a country we previously couldn't have pointed out on a map were on a religious crusade to turn our planes into missiles.

But while this was a national tragedy, we were supported by symbols of hope. People worldwide provided us with imagery of huge candlelight vigils. The unity, support, and sympathy that people were willing to provide in a time of tragedy was an incredibly beautiful and productive thing. And we turned that message of support and hope into one of hate and fear, and went on a crusade of our own. We're still on that crusade.

That's where negativity makes us all lose. In being negative we harm ourselves. It seems that everyone in this country is either unified behind Bush or unified in hating Bush. Either way, it's all about the W. Howard who?

Look at Microsoft. The acronym FUD was coined by them in an internal memo. They rule the industry by creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) in others while focusing inwardly on productive thinks like copying others. And we fall for it hook, line, and sinker.

There's one thing that sends Microsoft into a panic and makes Bill Gates rock in his chair like someone took his teddy bear away. That's the fear of being undermined.

Apple, Netscape, and Sun all sent Microsoft in a panic by working around them. Apple created whole new markets, levels of consumers that couldn't use a computer before were no longer technophobes. Netscape and Sun provided platforms of their own, an obfuscation level that made the operating system irrelevant.

In other words, instead of fighting fire with fire, they fought fire with water. Initially, anyway. Eventually they fucked it up by letting Microsoft undermine them.

In the next election we can see a failing economy and a nation at war, crawl into our shells and stick with the status quo, attack Bush and Republicans. Or perhaps we can look at ways we can eliminate our reliance on the Middle East, and rebuild with as little animosity and bloodshed as possible.

In our own country we can look for ways to improve our economy by reducing the skyrocketing discrepancy between the rich and the poor. Start this by funding small businesses again. Large corporations aren't good for the economy. They're typically not good for their own employees either. They're only good for their board members and CEOs. Small business have very specific lessons to learn from the dot com failures, and that gives them all the more reason to succeed. The small group of people that put together a new business tend to be focused on how to build something new, instead of zeroing in on the negativity of fighting others.

On a personal level, I'm trying to focus on positive, productive things. Yes, there are people and things I need to eliminate from my life. But at the same time I want to focus on things that improve my life, such as selling my car and taking the train to work every day, exercising several times a week, and stopping to watch the sun rise every once in a while.
9:16:03 AM    comment []