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Friday, August 01, 2003 |
"Twenty years ago, in August 1981, the first IBM PC rolled off the assembly line and said Hello World." [Scripting News]
Where were you when the world changed forever?
11:12:28 PM 
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Lobbyist Reed Morgan Answers Your Questions [Slashdot]
This is great stuff from an insider.
A long, long time ago, you asked lobbyist Morgan Reed questions about lobbying, undue industry influence on United States laws as they apply to the tech sector, the future of internet taxation, and more. Reed, in the meantime, has switched jobs: he's now working for the Association for Competitive Technology (as he candidly and lightheartedly acknowledges, "the enemy" to many Slashdot readers, since they lobby for large software corporations, notably Microsoft), and is finally free to answer your questions. Read on for about as inside a viewpoint as you can find on how you can affect your elected representatives, from someone whose job is to do just that.
Many of the posts here throw out statements like "Washington is bought"; and it reminds me how little slashdot readers understand about the U.S. government.
People tend to avoid and denigrate subjects they don't fully understand or feel comfortable with. I am certain every reader can think back to an example of having a non-tech person make a disparaging, off-the-cuff comment about something of which they clearly don't grasp. Quotes like "empty suits" and "crooks" signify a response steeped in discomfort due to lack of knowledge.
10:51:22 PM
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Ian Murdock: Linux is a Process, Not a Product [Slashdot]
"Debian founder Ian Murdock says that Linux is a process, not a product. He also says that the product mentality 'misses the entire point of Linux and the open-source development model.' Because Linux is made up of many different components developed on independent timeframes, Murdock posits, to refer to Linux as a product is to strip it of its dynamism and closes its inherently open nature. Instead, he says that Linux should be viewed as a shared platform and infrastructure technology, and that business models should reflect that or else Linux risks becoming proprietary, closed and just another cookie-cutter piece of software."
10:42:44 PM
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Left Coast Quagmire
California is a desert land roughly the size of Iraq. It is also an object lesson in the dangers of trying to impose democracy in a culture that is not ready for it. California "is degenerating into a banana republic," writes former Enron adviser Paul Krugman in his New York Times column. Leon Panetta, himself a Californian, writes in the Los Angeles Times that California is undergoing a "breakdown in [the] trust that is essential to governing in a democracy." Newsday quotes Bob Mulholland, another California political activist, as warning of "a coup attempt by the Taliban element." Others say a move is under way to "hijack" California's government.
What isn't widely known is that the U.S. has a large military presence in California. And our troops are coming under attack from angry locals. "Two off-duty Marines were stabbed, one critically, when they and two companions were attacked by more than a dozen alleged gang members early Thursday," KSND-TV reports from San Diego, a city in California's south.
How many young American men and women will have to make the ultimate sacrifice before we realize it isn't worth it? Is the Bush administration too proud to ask the U.N. for help in pacifying California? Plainly California has turned into a quagmire, and the sooner we bring our troops back home, the better.
2:02:45 PM
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Bush-bashing in odd places: I'm neither surprised nor.... [ Daniel Drezner , 1:57 PM ] Bush-bashing in odd places: I'm neither surprised nor offended to see potshots taken at the Bush administration in the print media. However, some of these digs appear in the strangest venues.
First, there's this paragraph in Tom Shales' rave of Jerry Seinfeld 's series of comedy shows at the Kennedy Center in yesterday's Washington Post :
The one disappointment was that neither Seinfeld nor [opening act Carol] Leifer did any political humor. It seemed especially odd since President Bush is such an easily mocked figure. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's too easy. It was dismaying, too, to hear Seinfeld ask for a round of applause for "the troops" in Iraq. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And not that "the troops" don't merit honor and homage. But what an easy way to get applause.
Then there's the conclusion to Frank Deford's essay in Sports Illustrated on why football is the most popular sport in the United States, which goes beyond Bush-bashing into idiotarian land:
[M]aybe these times are most in tune with football. At a time when the United States is arrogant, unilateral and insular, baseball can have all its Latins and Asians, and basketball can have all its Croats and Lithuanians, but football is still ours, 100% pure 'Mercan. It's ironic. Although George W. Bush is of baseball, he operates with none of the patient rhythms of the sport but simply charges ahead. He is perhaps the most un-baseball president since the unrepentant Teddy Roosevelt, who declared: "In life, as in a football game ... hit the line hard." Bring it on.
I see..... football is popular because America is a racist country . All football fans must be intolerant nativists.
Drezner's assignment to Gregg Easterbrook : eviscerate Deford's absurd position -- in haiku ( click here if you find this suggestion confusing).
[The Volokh Conspiracy]
1:34:49 PM
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"Guess what, Microsoft won."
Oh, I CAN go to work today. Whew. Scott McNealy had me freaked out for a while there. ;-)
Three years removed from the breakup order and 10 months after a final settlement was struck, it's fair to ask who really came out on top. One clear winner was the team of high-priced defense lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell that Microsoft hired for the occasion. Another was the clutch of legal commentators who parlayed their rent-a-quote talents during the trial into comfy gigs.
But considering current events, the "end of Microsoft as we know it" crowd isn't looking quite so hot. While the specter of David Boies may haunt the corridors of Redmond like Banquo at the feast, no would-be challenger has yet emerged to wrest away the crown. Bill Gates' cyberempire is growing richer all the time. [The Scobleizer Weblog]
1:20:45 PM
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Toot my own horn department!
Thanks SocialDynamX . 
11:57:34 AM
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From: morons.org
It never ceases to amaze me how something stupid can proliferate. Take, for example, the following quote, which you'll find in people's signatures everywhere:
"There are two major products that came from Berkeley: LSD and Unix. We don't believe this to be a coincidence." Even the quote itself is not consistant and is sometimes written:
"Two things came out of Berkeley: BSD and LSD. We don't believe this to be a coincidence."
The quote is usually attributed to "J.S. Anderson" or "Jeremy S. Anderson".
The problem here is that both quotes are incorrect. First, LSD did not come from Berkeley. LSD was developed in Sandoz labs in Basel, Switzerland. Second, BSD did come from Berkeley, but it is not "Unix". "Unix" was until recently a trademark of AT&T. I believe the Open Group is the most recent holder of the trademark. BSD is a UNIX flavour but is not Unix.
This is probably a case of false authority syndrome. Did anyone think to question this "J.S. Anderson" or his credentials? Does anyone know who he is now? Do people question the validity of his statement before putting it in their signature files? Who is J.S. Anderson anyway? If you search for the name "Jeremy S. Anderson" on the web, all you will find are quote pages containing the aforementioned misinformed quote. For all we know, Jeremy S. Anderson might not even be a real person.
Knowing all of this, then, what would possess people to put a false statement from someone they don't know at the bottom of all their email or usenet posts without questioning it at all?
Copyright morons.org and its contributors
10:24:38 AM
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On Dead Horses and Dying Organizations
by
Carl L. Harshman
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from one generation to the next, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
However, in modern business and government, because of the heavy investment factors to be taken into consideration, often other strategies have to be tried with dead horses, including the following:
- Buying a stronger whip.
- Changing riders.
- Threatening the horse with termination.
- Appointing a committee to study the horse.
- Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
- Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
- Appointing an intervention team to reanimate the dead horse.
- Creating a training session to increase the riders load share.
- Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
- Change the form so that it reads: "This horse is not dead."
- Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
- Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
- Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby deducting its full original cost.
- Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
- Do a time management study to see if lighter riders would improve productivity.
- Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.
- Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs better.
- Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.
- Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses.
- Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
Some things should end without comment.
9:57:58 AM
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Democrats shun American values Comentary by Jon Dougherty
I'm not sure exactly when it occurred, but at some point in the past 30 or so years, the modern Democrat Party turned from a party championing the "little guy" into a party that breeds divisiveness, promotes socialism, and champions every ideal based on its aversion to "traditional" American values.
Consider some of the most liberal Democratic bastions, and you can quickly deduce that the party of the common man long ago adopted policies that enrich the party, not you or me. (Full story: WorldNetDaily)
7:18:08 AM
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© Copyright 2003 John Gist.
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