This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Heeding the Past As She Looks To the Future: "The strategy that Hillary Clinton relies on today has its origins in the repositioning Morris crafted in those bleak days of early 1995. Here is another irony, because as a conservative commentator he is now one of her most vehement critics. The strategy Morris advocated -- centrist positioning on the budget, and emphasis on small but concrete actions and rhetorical statements to underscore the incumbent's values -- came with relative ease to Bill Clinton. An accommodator by nature, he was instinctively comfortable with the split-the-difference brand of politics that Morris called 'triangulation.'"

Private Radio Nice blog.

The Superficial - Because You're Ugly Spy on the bimbos!

Senator Frist is Right - Compromise is Wrong - John Jay Hooker Blog

Arp Peculiar GalaxyClub Introduction ARP! ARP!

AP: Lawmakers Belatedly Disclose Trips: "WASHINGTON -- Scrutiny of Majority Leader Tom DeLay's travel has led to the belated disclosure of at least 198 previously unreported special interest trips by House members and their aides, including eight years of travel by the second-ranking Democrat, an Associated Press review has found. At least 43 House members and dozens of aides had failed to meet the one-month deadline in ethics rules for disclosing trips financed by organizations outside the U.S. government." So let's fire them all. Could term limits by any other name smell as sweet?

InformationWeek > Google Strategy > Interview: Google CEO Eric Schmidt Talks Business Technology > May 26, 2005: "InformationWeek: As you said during today's Gartner Symposium, five years hence you want to say you'd been able to out innovate people. And I think that people outside the company like to imagine that there's some sort of grand strategic vision that's driving everything. Schmidt: [laughs] They've obviously not visited Google. We delight in the lack of such strategy. We're very careful to say we're not trying to build one thing. We're trying to innovate in all these interesting spaces. Every innovation is end-user tested and as they become more and more widely adopted, we figure out interesting things to do with them. These teams show off all day when we do product reviews and I say just don't talk to me about long-term strategy. I'm not interested. I want to know why is your product not shipping until next week. And then after this thing is released, tell me what you're going to do about it."

Computing at Columbia Timeline: "1976: Hot newsletter topics: APL, the Gould plotter, PL/I, SPSS, BMDP, ASP3, Syncsort, 'Crosstabs with Multipunch'..."

Computing at Columbia Timeline Oooooh!

Microsoft: Remove Netscape 8 from Windows systems: "Microsoft Corp. is urging Windows users to uninstall the new Netscape 8 Web browser from their computers, saying it damages the company?s own Internet Explorer browser." I would think that might be considered a feature.

NewsForge | Windows rapidly approaching desktop usability: "Every year or so I like to see how Microsoft is doing in its attempt to make a desktop operating system as usable as Linux. Microsoft Windows XP, Home Edition, with Service Pack 2, is a tremendous improvement over previous Windows versions when it comes to stability and appearance, but it still has many glitches that keep it from being competitive with GNU/Linux for everyday users, including a tedious installation procedure, lack of productivity software included with the operating system, hardware compatibility problems, and a price so much higher than any of the Linux distributions I've tested lately that I don't feel this product is a good value for most home or small office users" hehe

NewsForge | Detroit high school opens its desktops

The Decembrist: The Fortas Filibuster and Janice Rogers Brown: "Thurmond would invite Senators one by one up to his office to have a look at these films -- but no ladies, of course! (There was only one woman in the Senate at the time.) The vision of Thurmond and his cronies sitting in that dark room watching black and white stag films of the pre-Deep Throat era, over and over again while pretending to be considering a Supreme Court nomination has always been a horrifying vision, but a reminder that there's nothing that much nobler about the Senate of the recent past than today's.)" This from a Liberal, who opposes the Janice Brown nomination. I disagree with his conclusion. The left has had several years to put up a good smear campaign against Brown and have failed. Her whacky Libertarian ideas can be summarized as: Government doesn't always solve as many problems as it creates. A sentiment that most American would agree with. The loopy left, consisting largely of lifetime government "servants" just don't get this, and if Government grows to include half the population (not as remote as it sounds) all hope for freedom will be lost. (I know some of these lifers who sit around viewing porn films at work to this very day).

Technocrat.net | Microsoft Abandons .NET for Longhorn Speaking of un-maintanable designs. Not that Windows was ever designed in the first place, but it has definitely grown beyond Microsfts ability to do anything with it (in a timely fashion). Time to start over here too.

NASA - Return to Flight I REALLY don't think they should be flying these things any more. They are way to complex for any one person or even any small group of people to understand. Time to start with a newer, simpler design.

Dredged soil-dumping incident in coastal bays investigated: "Richard McIntire, an MDE spokesman, said an inspector had visited the job site on Tuesday in response to the complaint. He said the problem has happened several times before after drivers complained that sediment was leaking from the trucks used to take away the dredged soil, and Ocean City officials advised the company to dump it in the bay instead. Chris Augsberger, a spokesman for the Corps of Engineers, said the public works agency considers all allegations of unauthorized dumping 'a serious matter.'" So, is this a case of evil company, or idiotic government? We report, you decide. Err, or something.

My Way News: "Rosen testified that he mistakenly thought some in-kind contributions, including the Porsche he used while in Los Angeles to organize the event, were simply gifts." Porsche? Party of the people. Yeah.

Poll majority say they'd be likely to vote for Clinton - Yahoo! News: "'Over time, Clinton fatigue has dissipated ... and people are looking back on the Clinton years more favorably,' says Andrew Kohut, director of the non-partisan Pew Research Center. In a Pew poll released this month, Kohut called former president Bill Clinton and the senator 'comeback kids' because of their rising ratings. 'This may also reflect that she has been recasting her image as a more moderate person,' he says." If it is well understood that she has "recast" herself how is it that people are tempted to vote for someone with no core beliefs? This is something that I'll never understand about the typical voter. Then again, the typical voter probably isn't reading this article, or paying any attention to such polls.

Microsophist: Rudder steers Microsoft back on course: "Eric's most distinguishing characteristic is that he is a complete and utter asshole. I've never met a more obnoxious adult."

Mr. Narcissus Goes to Washington - Peggy Noonan: "You've heard the mindless braying and fruitless arguments, but I'm here to tell you the facts, no matter what brickbats and catcalls may come my way. Lindsey Graham defied the biases of his constituency to do what was right, not what was easy. Robert Byrd put aside personal gain to save our Republic. David Pryor ignored the counsels of hate to stand firm for our hopes and dreams. Mike DeWine protected our way of life. These men are uniters, not dividers. How do I know? Because they told me. Again and again, and at great length, as they announced The Deal. And I believed them, because I am an idiot. Or as they might put it, your basic 'folk' from 'back home.'"

Smoke, mirrors and the next generation of video games - May. 26, 2005: "So what about the pretty pictures we all saw? Guess what... the graphics demos at those 1999 and 2000 press conferences were just as impressive (at the time) as what Sony showed off with its footage of 'Killzone' or 'Fight Night: Round 3' last Monday. Sony showed a lifelike female character from 'Ridge Racer' strutting a catwalk and winking flirtatiously at viewers when it unveiled the PS2. Early Xbox footage showed a buff woman named Raven and her hulking robot friend showing off their martial arts form. Both were amazing pieces of video, but no real-time gameplay on either machine ever lived up to that early footage."

Nokia - Nokia 770 I guess I could have looked this up myself. Found it on Dan Gillmor's blog instead.

The New York Times > Technology > A Front-Runner at Microsoft, but There's No Race Yet: "'Microsoft is a growth company, absolutely,' Mr. Rudder declared. 'The opportunities are unlimited.'" And sometimes confidence is not an ally.

Nokia debuts Linux-powered Internet tablet Oh I guess it is real news. Can they talk me into paying a few hundred for something that should probably cost $79? We'll see.

The Right Way to Spell Potato

Dan Quayle and That Stupid Potato(e) - by Carolyn Gargaro

Jeff Sandquist - Microsoft Evangelist - Welcome to Bitman's Place and MS Geek Blogger I'm so tempted to unload on these guys. They just don't get it do they?

Microsophist: It's all overhead: "The funny thing is, after all that time spent on process and overhead, we still don't have anyone signed up to do the actual project work."

Nokia Unveils Linux-based Web Device Without Phone: "The product will run entirely on open source software, including a standard Linux operating system also used in desktop computers, marking more unchartered waters for Nokia. 'Using standard desktop Linux means innovation is happening faster (than in Linux versions for small devices). We will be very fast in implementing this innovation,' Jormalainen said. Several of the innovations already in the pipeline are upgrades by early 2006 to enable Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) calls and instant messaging. Anyone who buys the device now will be able to upgrade the software next year." I'm assuming here that this is really news. I also found refrerences to such a device two and three years ago that got shelved. Funny how I don't trust anything I read in the papers any more.

Lebanese Political Journal: MSM Fails Again: Factually incorrect Propaganda Printed in the Washington Post

CXOtoday.com > News > People > The Penguin Replies And How!: "'You see, unlike Linux, which grew up on the Internet, Microsoft didn't really make Windows Internet-aware until it had been shipping it for 10 years. It's therefore hard to make Windows Internet-safe without dumping the total codebase and starting from scratch. Linux had the luxury of learning from all of Unix's mistakes on the Internet and it was implemented in a way which made it more resilient than Windows can be,' added Zymaris. "

WSJ.com - Heard on the Street: "One of the two industry executives said Apple isn't likely to market OS X for other PCs. Besides hurting its own hardware business, such a path would put Apple in more direct competition with Microsoft, whose application programs are important to the success of the Macintosh. Instead, the company is likely to package its modified software with its own Intel-based hardware, though it is not clear how the company will prevent users from shifting the software to other machines, the executive said." The original WSJ article isn't so optimistic about this idea. So I'm probably all worked up over nothing (so what esle is new?)

Technology News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc. has been in talks that could lead to a decision soon to use Intel Corp. chips in its Macintosh computer line, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday." Hmmmm. I always thought the most expensive part of an Apple computer was the Apple logo, not the PowerPC processor. Anyway, if they are collecting votes: I'd rather run Linux on a PowerPC than OS X on Intel. Intel shares a trait with Microsoft, namely that while touting their dedication to technological progress they routinely stifle inovative ideas to protect their monopoly status. The Intel architecture is one Kludge on top of another. Once the world jetisons a dependance on Windows hardware architectures will be finally free to accelerate at full speed. There simply aren't that many situations that need assembly language programming any more. About time our technology realized it.

Leaving the left / I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity: "Leftists who no longer speak of the duties of citizens, but only of the rights of clients, cannot be expected to grasp the importance (not least to our survival) of fostering in the Middle East the crucial developmental advances that gave rise to our own capacity for pluralism, self-reflection, and equality. A left averse to making common cause with competent, self- determining individuals -- people who guide their lives on the basis of received values, everyday moral understandings, traditional wisdom, and plain common sense -- is a faction that deserves the marginalization it has pursued with such tenacity for so many years."

Red Rover Red Rover (JPEG Image, 1024x1024 pixels) I don't know if the Mars rover teams compete with one another or not, but if they do, the Spirit team must be feeling their oats right about now as the Opportunity rover seems hopelessly stuck. Of course if they had listened to ME they wouldn't have spent so much time in those first couple of craters and could have found themselves hopelessly stuck MONTHS ago. Oh wait...

frontline: house of saud: a chronology - the house of saud | PBS: "By 1945, the U.S. urgently needs oil facilities to help supply forces fighting in the Second World War. Meanwhile, security is at the forefront of King Abd al-Aziz's concerns. President Franklin Roosevelt invites the king to meet him aboard the U.S.S. Quincy, docked in the Suez Canal. The two leaders cement a secret oil-for-security pact: The king guarantees to give the U.S. secure access to Saudi oil and in exchange the U.S. will provide military assistance and training to Saudi Arabia and build the Dhahran military base. Also discussed at the meeting is the issue of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. King Abd al-Aziz acknowledges the plight of the Jews, but argues taking part of Palestine is unfair to the Palestinians. In a letter to the king that Roosevelt sends after their meeting, the president writes: 'I will take no action which might prove hostile to the Arab people.' But Roosevelt dies shortly after sending this letter and Vice President Harry Truman becomes president." Sometimes I get a bit tired of hearing the commy-libs spout off about the special relationship between SA and Bush. Surprisingly PBS gets the complete record.

Clickable Culture - Xbox 360 Not So Backward-Compatible I was wondering about this. I needn't have. Typical MS BS> After all the new Xbox is based on PowerPC, the old, on OldPC (catchy name eh?), so a good deal of emulation would have to be going on to run old stuff. I'm also wondering about MS suddently being so hooked up with something other than Intel. Will they get done with Longhorn before they realize they need to re-code it too to work with non-Intel devices? It seems like only yesterday when MS consoldated on Intel. Never made sense to me.

Imitation and the Slippery Slope of Portaldom: My Google (by Jeremy Zawodny) Methinks Google has turned Yahoo and Microsoft into a bunch of crybabies.

Time Warner May Consider AOL Spinoff: "This year, Miller has introduced a series of new products, including a local search engine, a travel site, a free e-mail service and the first upgrade of AOL's Netscape browser in five years." So WTF (Why) don't they use the bloody browser that they produce?

Bill Gates get as windy? as Curly Capellas at his best ZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Sun Found to be Good for You (this week): "Scientists are excited about a vitamin again. But unlike fads that sizzled and fizzled, the evidence this time is strong and keeps growing. If it bears out, it will challenge one of medicine's most fundamental beliefs: that people need to coat themselves with sunscreen whenever they're in the sun. Doing that may actually contribute to far more cancer deaths than it prevents, some researchers think." New study shows that paying too much attention to new studies may be bad for your health. (this message brought to you by the Milk Marketing Board, the Coffee Council, the Scotch Producers cooperative, the Tobacco Institute and the Society for Bad Things)

Is it finally time for 3D online? - page 2 | Newsmakers | CNET News.com: "What's your opinion of (Microsoft's upcoming graphics system) Avalon? Parisi: At the risk of sounding too technical, it's BS 3D. You can drop in a cube or a sphere and drop some video on it, and they're calling that 3D. If you want to develop any kind of 3D that has complex objects or behaviors or a rich 3D environment, what they don't tell you is that you then have to write code to that. You're basically writing C# or C ."

WSJ.com - Paris Hiltonomics: "Democrats and their media allies like to point out that only a tiny fraction of Americans -- the despised rich -- will ever pay estate taxes. Yet according to a survey by pollster Frank Luntz, 64% of Americans favor a complete repeal of the tax. They understand that the death tax isn't just about economics. It's about justice, and no policy that penalizes the thrifty and busts up family businesses belongs in our tax code, whatever its effects on Paris Hilton."

WSJ.com - An IRS Cover-Up?: "Yet now three highly partisan Democrats want to de-fund this probe and prevent publication of the report. 'There is no other way to characterize this but as obstruction of justice,' a source tells us, noting that Congress has never before tried to step on an Independent Counsel investigation like this. Surely given the ethical history of the Clinton years, the public deserves to see the report and judge for itself whether the IRS and Justice Department were misused for political purposes."

WSJ.com - Vladimir Ilyich Jobs?: "Dropped by a stork into California in 1955, the boy Jobs grew up among fruit orchards and found himself in Silicon Valley, the heart of entrepreneurialism in democratic America. What amazing providence for him and for us! That is the true genius of America: It takes would-be Lenins, redeems them in the crucible of capitalism, and turns out Steve Jobs."

The Master's Miracle Issues Nationwide Health Alert Against Applying Their Products to the Eyes I wonder why you would apply a fortified mineral neutralizer ANYWHERE... how do you neutralize a mineral anyway? Turn it into a vegetable?

Microsoft Pursues the Smallest of Retailers When it comes to POS software, Microsoft is king in my book.

ITworld.com - Microsoft Discovers X11: "Yo, Microsoft, go find any Unix book and lookup 'X11' and see what you can find. Or pick up any modern Linux distribution and look at KDE (http://www.kde.org) or Gnome (http://www.gnome.org) information. You know, the software that manages screen presentations without being intertwined deep into the operating system. It's a new thing called 'modular programming' and it's all the rage."

Spread Firefox - Igniting the web

75 Degrees South BRRRR

United States Patent: 6,895,426Someone at the USPTO should be fired for this. No, make that the entire USPTO should be fired for this.

We do stuff.: "Our name will confuse you, but, you have to admit, the logo design is pretty cool. And we're good at turning regular words into 'e-words,' such as 'e-consulting,' 'e-business' or 'e-sexual harassment.'" HAH!, I mean HUH?

Dan Crevier's Blog : My first patent! My first patent! @ Saturday, December 11, 2004 3:33 PM 'Getting patents is a great defensive strategy, no matter what you think of the patent process.' If Microsoft was really interested in combating obvious 'inventions' such as this one, it would lobby to correct the problem. Sorry, the 'everyone's doing it' defense is without merit. As for you, Dan, congradulations on implementing the *feature*, but you should still be ashamed. You and your employer are abusing intellectual property laws to stifle competition. Frivolous patents like this that don't pass the smell test to professionals as to their non-obviousness are tatamount to fraud and lying to the federal government if the applicant is just trying to slide something under the door in the name of increasing their 'defensive' patent portfolio. Just because the reviewers at the USPTO are too undertrained/overworked to understand software 'innovation' doesn't mean you should take advantage of it any more than someone should avoid taxes by faking business expenses just because the IRS doesn't look closely enough at them. Richard Tallent # re: My first patent! @ Saturday, December 11, 2004 5:35 PM Ok, this thread is closed. I don't want to host a discussion on patents. I am not a lawyer. That said, I'm going to have the last word, because I can! * Patents are written in legalese, not in english. Unless you are a patent lawyer, I don't think you can really judge them. That's why you see stories like Microsoft patenting the double-click or Apple patenting alpha compositing. * This is not a patent for autocomplete. It is much more specific. * We did innovate in this space in MacOE. * Patents are a good defensive strategy for any company. We get sued all the time. Witness the current Eolas lawsuit. * I think there are a lot of things that are lame about the patent system. Dan Crevier" I thought this exchange was interesting. No Microsofty wants to debate this, and they are right to HOPE that the company they work for uses this abuse of the process only defensively. We don't have to look at the code to know that it isn't rocket science, nor do we have to use our imaginiations too much to know that these things WILL get abused eventually. If its purely a defensive move then MS could issue a statement making the idea available to anyone couldn't they? I wonder if they have done so. No, really I don't.

CBS Cancels Wednesday '60 Minutes' - Yahoo! News: "NEW YORK - CBS said Wednesday it is cancelling the Wednesday edition of '60 Minutes,' insisting the decision was made because of poor ratings and not last fall's ill-fated story about President Bush's military service." Oh, sure.

HousingMaps I may have noted this before, or something like it. Very handy for Real Estate study.

The Seattle Times: Microsoft: New service to take care of PCs Another nail in the Nortone Utilities coffin. Who owns that these days? I need to make sure they are not in my *cough* portfolio.

Blogging Through The Tulips - Forbes.com: "Then there is the question of whether the FEC is limited to regulating only paid-for political advertising on blogs. Or is everything that supports or endorses a particular candidate appearing on a blog considered to fall under existing campaign contribution ceilings and, as such, subject to regulation? " Preemptory note to FEC: Bite my ass!

Global Dispatches - Computerworld: "TOKYO -- Trend Micro Inc. last week said it will compensate 3.5 million home users and its corporate customers in Japan for the cost of repairing PCs after it delivered a faulty antivirus software update. Whether the company will offer compensation to users in other countries was left unclear. Tokyo-based Trend Micro acknowledged that it had not checked some code in the update or fully tested the new software on PCs running Windows XP Service Pack 2 prior to the update's release on April 23. By midweek, the company had fielded over 370,000 calls from customers, including more than 650 corporate users. Dealing with the problem had cost Trend Micro about 300 million yen ($2.8 million) as of last Monday. The flaw, which uses up processing power and severely degrades performance, affects PCs running SP2 with Trend Micro's OfficeScan or VirusBuster software." Now if US companies would just behave like this they would, uh, be broke.

MCslp - Blog Archive - Resigning from LinuxWorld Magazine

Day By Day by Chris Muir, cartoon... Oh, just noticed this guy was back. So glad!

IEBlog : IE7 Has Tabs: "I?d like to ask you to post a comment with your favorite or most critical IE add-ins? we want to make sure IE7 works great with them." Comment: Whoop-dee-freakin-doo.

The New York Times Company Investor Relations: "While most of the news, features and multi-media on NYTimes.com will remain free and available to users, the work of Op-Ed columnists and some of the best known voices from the news side of The Times and The International Herald Tribune (IHT) will be available only to TimesSelect subscribers beginning in September. Home-delivery subscribers will automatically receive TimesSelect as part of their benefits. TimesSelect will be priced at $49.95 for an annual subscription." Good ridance!

Ryan Shaw ? Greasemonkey Stole Your Job (and Your Business Model): "I spent some time tonight playing around with Greasemonkey, and it pretty much blew my mind. What is it? Well, basically it is a platform for running scripts that inject new functionality into web interfaces. If you?re a UI designer, this might frighten you. What it means is that any kid with a bright idea and a knack for DHTML can create a new interface for your site, and it will probably be better than yours. (There?s a lot of bright kids out there in the world.) Why should you get paid when the bright kids will do your job better for free? The key to survival will be going meta: design for the bright kids. Create a flexible, modular set of APIs and a well-documented example UI or two that shows how they are used. Learn from Amazon and release your grip on the end-user experience." What a concept! At last a new technology that puts us back where HTML and the "Web" concept started. Content with as little formatting as possible that you can view in any way you choose. Don't worry though, some control freek in the form of an individual or organization will no doubt come along to put everything right again and make it "just so".

UTARC UX-1 Balloon Launch

Sober Worm Spawns German Spam - Yahoo! News: "E-mail users perplexed by the barrage of German-language spam waiting in their inboxes Monday morning can point the finger of blame at the latest version of the Sober mass mailing worm which began rapidly spreading over the weekend." My Yahoo ID got these, Gmail filtered them somehow, or at least I didn't get any there. But the Yahoo accouns *is* as old as the hills and that probably makes a difference.

Kibo : Kibo's official site Heh.

'Rocketboom' May Be Future of TV News: "What's ahead on TV? In a couple of weeks the broadcast networks will announce their fall schedules. Meanwhile, viewers await word on how 'The CBS Evening News' will be retooled into a newscast for the next generation. Thus does television race to meet the future."

Daring Fireball: Why 2004 Won't Be Like 1984

Russell Beattie Notebook - Napster, Real and Yahoo! vs. Apple... Winner: Microsoft: "So all this and I really didn't mention Apple. Yes, Apple has lock in right now for their 10 million iPod users. Big Woop. It's such a small piece of the pie it's not funny and they're going to get crushed like a bug. The thing is, by holding the only competitor to the Janus codec (FairPlay) so close to their chest, Apple is not only bringing about their eventual demise in the media market, but also everyone else as well. I'm sure Yahoo (like every other Music/Media service out there) begged Apple to open up their codec for the YME and Apple said no. That just gave Microsoft a little more power. It's like 1989 all over again when everyone was begging to license the Mac OS. Two years later Windows 3.0 showed up and Apple is now at 2% market share. If you don't think the same thing is happening in the media space, you're dreaming."

Newsweek says Koran desecration report is wrong - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it erred in a May 9 report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article." Ooops. Sorry our sloppy journalism got people killed. We promise not to do anything like this again for another week.

Apple is a weasel and Microsoft is a ferret: "Moral, MS are fairly sleazy, but is that news? Apple is worse, and subtle, which makes them much more dangerous. Don't give these weasels money, it will come back to haunt you. As the refrain on the message boards goes, instead of don't feed the trolls, don't feed the megalomaniacs, they will just use the money to sue you." Might be some truth to this.

Company Tries To Purge Web Criticism - Yahoo! News: "NEW YORK (AP) -- The developer of a spam-fighting service is trying to airbrush the Web, asking some Web sites to remove references to criticisms that it sent out spam two years ago."

Jasper Rine: "Although I have unlimited respect for facts, and delight in their discovery and appreciation, I have come to the obvious yet almost blasphemous view that, with respect to teaching, the facts just aren't that important. Otherwise the weight of a truly modern biology text would be staggering. Actually, I suspect most professors in biology have come to this view but we do everything we can to avoid admitting it."

Mission to Mars More informative thatn NASA site about rover stuckness.

Microsoft Readies a 'Lean' Windows Client: "'Eiger is not a general-purpose operating system. It can't run games, office-productivity software or line-of-business applications,' he said. 'We'll tell users that these kinds of things won't run well in this environment.'" Uh, what does that leave? A web browser with no OS? This could get interesting.

Mars Exploration Rover Mission: Multimedia: All Raw Images: Opportunity: Panoramic Camera: Sol 461 Well, I hope I'm wsrong, but it sure looks like Oportunity's roaving days are over. The more they spin the wheels the deeper it sinks.

The End of Corporate IT - Computerworld

Bianca, You Animal, Shut Up! - John Taylor Gatto: "What exactly is public about public schools? That?s a question to take seriously. If schools were public as libraries, parks, and swimming pools are public, as highways and sidewalks are public, then the public would be satisfied with them most of the time. Instead, a situation of constant dissatisfaction has spanned many decades. Only in Orwell?s Newspeak, as perfected by legendary spin doctors of the twentieth century such as Ed Bernays or Ivy Lee or great advertising combines, is there anything public about public schools."

Molecular Expressions: Science, Optics and You - Secret Worlds: The Universe Within - Interactive Java Tutorial

Bill Gates: Cellphone will beat iPod - May. 12, 2005: "And the 49-year-old Microsoft chairman said he would not remain with the company for ever. 'I think that when someone is 60 years old he should better leave it to someone else to follow trends in technology. But until then there's still a lot to do,' he said." Maybe he should better go back to high school.

Bush Gets B for Honesty, Even Courage, on Social Security: "So Democrats now face a choice: Are they going to be alligators on this one? Why Bush has taken this on remains a mystery. There is no short-term political advantage, and there are other real long-term problems that are more pressing. But he has done it, to his credit. "

calendarlive.com: NBC's Zucker: 'We have to do better' Well, Duh! "'There's complete network parity right now,' he said." Yes, all the networks are equally useless. And promises to do better are about as meaningful as an alchoholics proimise to stop drinking "real soon now".

SCO's Legal Wrangles Take an Odd, Personal Turn

Decision '08: Form SF-180: Kerry Responds: "My critics ask why I have not signed the form, as if it were that simple, as if I could simply pick up a pen and sign my name. This unilateral approach is exactly what led to such tragedies as Mariah Carey?s career. I believe there is a better way." (Satire) (I think).

Michelle Malkin

Bennington Banner - Today's Headlines: "'A victory for Bernie Sanders is a win for Democrats,' Dean said in a telephone interview Monday." Funny. This article doesn't actually mention that Sanders is a Socialist.

SkylerSwticherQT2.mov (video/quicktime Object)

CC Mixter - The remix family tree

Minus Kelvin Music Blog

USNews.com: John Leo: Googling the future (5/16/05) Update on "EPIC".

Wired 10.07: Nvidia: "An April 1 story posted on Slashdot announced a merger between Nvidia and AMD - where Huang used to work. It was meant as a joke, but such a merger has been the subject of serious speculation for months. It would give Nvidia total control of the PC's innards and, eventually, an array of post-PC devices."

The New York Times > Technology > Intruder Attack on Computer Net Is Called Broad

Rocketboom Who needs MSNBC. The internet can provide sound-bite news, catchy background music and an (need I mention oh so liberal) info-babe... on demand!

Robotross My kind of art.

Teaching Ideas & Resources - TES - The Times Educational Supplement 1: "Average costs, including software, hardware and support costs, were 24 per cent less per computer in secondaries using open source. "

When Will Apple Grow Up?: "For example, a real enterprise vendor wouldn't rely quite so much on secrecy and the element of surprise to create excitement for its products. A real enterprise company also would have a product roadmap and an extensive, open beta process for its operating-system products, which could prevent missteps such as Tiger's issues with Microsoft servers. The way I see it, Apple can be a company with big secrets or it can be an enterprise company, but it can't be both." I quote the same article from below once more and ask the question: Why doesn't this apply equally to Microsoft? Why are elements of what is going to be in Longhorn still a mystery? If Apple hasn't grown up to use Coursey's metaphore (and I agreee that it hasn't) then isn't Microsoft playing on the same swingset?

When Will Apple Grow Up?: "Opinion: Tiger is great, or it will be soon. But if Apple wants to be considered a player in the enterprise, then it needs to improve its beta trial system to avoid the surprises now visiting networked Macs."

64-Bit Linux Is Already Here: "Don't think for one second that 64-bit Linux is some kind of stunt, like the recent porting of Linux to the Nintendo DS portable game device. 64-bit Linux has been running on the AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron, IBM POWER, and Intel EM64T (Extended Memory 64 Technology) and Itanium families for years."

Asymmetrical Information: Fake compassion

A History of the GUI

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger Point of information: This is my third or fourth attempt to post here. So far none have showed up (as far as I know). I'm sure that most of my posts have been critical, but not to the point of being worth deleting, so I suspect what is at work here is a technical issue (or three). I know that my first post, which was a two-pager several months back got deleted, dropped, lost (pick one) as part of some server switch or malfunction that was later mentioned. It was a hum-dinger of a comment, but unfortunately I didn't keep a local copy and the muse had moved on once I found out about it. On one other occasion I thought a post had been accepted, but it never showed up. On the most recent occasion, upon hitting the submit button, I got a message that said I had not supplied an e-mail address (I hadn't) and everything I typed was gone. ("Back" didn't do it for some reason). So this time I'll supply a name (not my real name) and an e-mail address (not an important one) and the blog that I don't pay for the hits on (I don't care if people from here visit it or not), and if this post doesn't show up it will be the last time I try. I recommend that the posting form REALLY should specify which fields are required, and should also indicate what level of privacy a poster, who would just as soon remain anonymous, is likely to get. --- Now to reiterate the gist of my previous posts: I consider Scoble a cheerleader for Microsoft, and I don't particularly have a problem with that, other than the regular denials that that is what is going on. Nothing is more natural than to support the company that provides you with a living. In fact the frequent claims of relative objectivity, the ability to say whatever you want are just not believable, unless you are willing to forgo that paycheck, and even then, you have a point of view, and it's very hard to root out sources of bias. My own bias, at least partially, being that I was very much a committed fan of OS/2 (even when it was still a Microsoft project) and totally drank the MS Kool-aid hype about it professionally when the partnership was unceremoniously (from my point of view) ended in what retrospectively looks like gamesmanship by Bill Gates and Company. Finally, to the majority of people who "grew up" using Microsoft products, I just like to from time to time point out that Microsoft didn't invent the computer, or even the PC, not the operating system, or even the GUI form. They struggled, at first, against "the web", against TCP/IP. The "PC revolution" has claimed to be a throwing off of the shackles of mainframe computing, but in the end has re-invented a lot of concepts that were alive and well on the mainframes of the 70s (except the concepts were better documented back then). Microsoft doesn't deserve all the blame for the bad, nor certainly even most of the credit for the good in all of this and when it comes to innovation, it can't be said that Microsoft doesn't innovate, but I think it can be said that their innovation takes place on the margins of technology and not at its foundations. When the history of this time begins to solidify, MS will look a lot like the GM of technology: holding on to a good thing for themselves while technology in other parts of the world passed us (Americans) by. I can't help but wonder if that storehouse of brain-power in Redmond wouldn't be better off scattered to the wind where it could find better places to germinate. We can really never know the paths not taken.

Blogger: Blogger Mobile Well I'm sure this is the next big thing. It will be so much easier to post my blog by hitting the "7" key four times to get the letter "s", not to mention all the new low-rez photos we will be seeing. Of course the biggest benefit will be to the gene pool. You don't REALLY think people are going to be keeping an eye on the road as they annotate the latest blurry photo they took out the window as the subject whizzed by. I'm staying indoors for the next week or two. Besides, I want to be alive to read about Microsoft's lame response to this. Maybe an X-box in the form of a hat with a pre-mounted camera?

Scoble's Link Blog - Microsoft's principles for public policy engagement Other Issues Now that we have that gay issue out of the way I know there are some other public statements we have made recently that need our attention is this crazy new blog world we live in. With more than half the company now spending their days taking pot-shots at their employer (me) either openly or anonymously there is almost no "right" way for us to come down on any issue. Take for example Bill's recently statements on immigration, public education and so on. We are setting Bill up with his own internal blog where he can express such, um, insightful ideas, in the future. In the mean time, so as not to offend anyone we are coming down squarely on both sides of every issue we can from now on. We will be dividing the campus into quadrants with employment practices as follows: The west-most building will be our gay-friendly zone, and the east will be the more traditional "family values" area. The northern parts of the campus will hire mostly H1B visa holders while the south will take an America First point of view with respect to hiring decisions. The lower floors of each building will continue to favor hiring guys and the upper floors will hire mostly female workers, as we don't want any criticisms about a glass ceiling. Bill will be moved downstairs as we know he doesn't deal with female authority figures very well. We will have to subdivide the campus further as other social issues arise, or as Bill or I shoot off our mouths prematurely in the future. At some point the low-rise architecture we have chosen will probably have to give way to something more flexible. To me, this situation underscoresthe importance of having clearly-defined principles on which we base ouractions. We will do everything we can to avoid taking a firm position on anything, so that we can be true to our one core principal, which is that software should cost consumers a whole heck of a lot more than it costs us to produce it. Steve

Scoble’s Link Blog � Blog Archive � Microsoft’s principles for public policy engagement Is it just me, or is Microsoft becoming harder and harder to satirize?

news @ nature.com - Clear skies end global dimming-Earth's air is cleaner, but this may worsen the greenhouse effect.: "The researchers argue that this trend, commonly called 'global dimming', reversed more than a decade ago, probably following the collapse of communist economies and the consequent decrease in industrial pollutants. The widespread brightening has remained unnoticed until now simply because there wasn't enough data for a statistically significant analysis, says Martin Wild, an atmospheric scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and an author on one of the reports." OK, let me get this straight. Things have improved for the environment since the Commies over there stopped belching pollutants into the atmosphere from their primitive factories and so forth. Meanwhile this has made matters WORSE for global warming and the Commies over HERE will use that to criticize capitalism and suggest that we need to introduce a Commie economy over here. That will ACTUALLY start putting more junk into the atmosphere since we all know that Commies once they get into power don't do squat except fill their pockets from the public larder. But never the less, the Earth will be saved. OK. Makes perfect sense now. I'll move to Russia pending the next cycle.

Technology - Why Google Scares Bill Gates - FORTUNE: "Every month it seems as if Google hires away one of Microsoft's top developers. Before Google's IPO last fall, Microsoft executives dismissed this brain drain as a function of greed. But when the exodus continued after the IPO?especially when Marc Lucovsky, one of the chief architects of Windows, bolted for Google?it was clear that Microsoft had a bigger problem on its hands. As of March, roughly 100 Microsofties had left for its search nemesis."

frankenlies.com :: The truth about Al Franken and the Lies and the Lying Liars book

Ndiyo! - Ndiyo System: "In its current form, assembled in low volumes in the UK, the nivo already costs less than 100 (British Pounds) to produce - significantly less than the sale price of other thin-clients. Manufactured in larger volumes, the cost will drop significantly; ultimately to something closer to what you would expect to pay for a VGA cable than what you would expect to pay for a computer."

NewsForge | Tired of supporting friends' computers? Migrate them to GNU/Linux: "A few months ago I moved from New York to Florida, leaving behind all of the friends and family that depended on me for computer support. At least once per month I used to get a phone call asking me to go to someone's house and reinstall Windows or fix some other software problem. Rarely was there an actual hardware problem -- usually all I had to do was back up some personal data and reinstall Windows. But it's impossible to do that remotely, and I had no desire to spend hours on the phone after I moved walking people through driver downloads and various other tasks related to setting up a Microsoft operating system. So, two weeks before I left, I moved several of my accidental 'clients' to GNU/Linux and helped them make the transition. The result, after six months, is an end to the annoying phone calls and a much easier time diagnosing hardware problems." Of course it could be that these people no longer considered him their friend. But then, who needs friends that insist on running Windows! I have only one sample point so far. I GAVE someone a computer with Linux pre-installed, updated, and configured with useful applications such as Open Office. They reformated the machine with Windows and gave the machine to someone else. Number of times they booted Linux just to see what it was like: 0 I'm debating whether to try this experiment again. But this is my basis for the "screw-em" attitude.

JohnBatchelorShow.com - The Homepage of the John Batchelor Show Excellent stuff!

U.S. Military's PDF Fiasco Was Avoidable *rolls eyes* Not again!

VDH's Private Papers::Senators Who Live in Glass Houses: "The marathon confirmation hearings of John Bolton to be the American ambassador to the United Nations have become pathetic. Bolton is supposedly discourteous to subordinates. He was a hands-on-his-hips boss! Heaven forbid, he sometimes bellowed."

Victor Davis Hanson on Iraq on National Review Online: "All that being said, the disdain that European utopians, Arab dictatorships, the United Nations, and Mexico exhibit toward the United States is not ? as the Kerry campaign alleged in the last election ? cause for tears, but often reason to be proud, since much of the invective arises from the growing American insistence on principles abroad. America should not gratuitously welcome such dislike; but we should not apologize for it either. Sometimes the caliber of a nation is found not in why it is liked, but rather in why it is not. By January 1, 1941, I suppose a majority on the planet ? the Soviet Union, all of Eastern Europe, France, Italy, Spain, and even many elsewhere in occupied Europe, most of Latin America, Japan and its Asian empire, the entire Arab world, many in India ? would have professed a marked preference for Hitler's Germany over Churchill's England."

Microsoft Monitor: Emphasis: User Benefits: "Like the boy who cried wolf, Microsoft's promises of better in the future are exhausting. At some point, people stop listening. I hear lots of talk about how security, Web browsing, system management, etc. etc. will be better in the future."

Who Seeks to Lead?With respect to last few posts, a nice Biblical tale: "8 The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us. 9 But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? 10 And the trees said to the fig tree, Come thou, and reign over us. 11 But the fig tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees? 12 Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us. 13 And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? 14 Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, and reign over us. 15 And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow: and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon." If good government should ever apear (again?) on earth, the sign of it will be leaders who serve only a short time and view that service as a sacrifice rather than a lifelong calling. Hard to find such people these days.

WSJ.com - China's Uncivil Society: "China is currently a social time bomb, slowly ticking. No one knows when some random incident or crisis might inadvertently serve to trigger the explosion. But once it happens, all thought of 'building a harmonious and stable society' -- the Communist government's latest slogan -- will be too late. China needs civil society urgently. Workers, peasants, and all other ordinary Chinese need their own representative organizations to defend and look after their basic rights and interests. Only the emergence of a genuine, functioning civil society in China can suffice to avert the looming crisis."

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Laura Bush Talks Naughty: "Otherwise, how do you explain why they're Republican? Or answer the question Democrats asked in astonishment when they saw Mr. Bush's vote totals: Who are these people? The favorite Democratic explanation is that the red staters are hicks who have been blinded by righteousness, as Thomas Frank argues in 'What's the Matter With Kansas?' He laments that middle-class Kansans are so bamboozled by moral issues like abortion and school prayer that they vote for Republicans even though the Republican tax-cutting policies are against their self-interest. But middle-class Americans don't simply cast ballots for Republicans. They also vote with their feet, which is why blue states and old Democratic cities are losing population to red states and Republican exurbs. People are moving there precisely because of economic reasons - more jobs, affordable houses and the lower taxes offered by Republican politicians."

Slashdot | Fortress: The Successor to Fortran?: "Guy Steele, a co-author of Java and member of the Fortress development team, hopes that Fortress will to 'do for Fortran what Java did for C." I have no idea what that means.

WSJ.com - Lenovo Completes Its Acquisition Of IBM's Personal-Computer Unit: "IBM's PC unit, which operated globally, has three times the revenue of Lenovo's legacy operation, which operated almost exclusively in China. The combined company will have annual revenue of about $13 billion and trail only Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co."

Miguel de Icaza-Making Gnome Fun I'm just in the process of switching back to KDE after trying Gnome on two machine for the last few months. I find neither one quite what I want (but then I don't think OS X or Windows are perfect by any means either). One thing I find puzzling about this blog entry though is: "My feeling is that the Gnome Desktop itself is fairly complete at this point and that is why we have seen people invest less into the actual infrastructure on the desktop and a lot more on getting things right. Am personally very happy with the incremental goodies in Gnome 2.10, it continues to be a pleasant upgrade every time and it is a good direction to polish and improve while some of the fundamental components of the desktop are sorted out." I would think it desirable to sort out the fundamentals sooner rather than later. Isn't one of the objectives of doing good design to get the skeleton in place before you hang the meat on it? Otherwise you are constantly re-implementing the user interface to cope with underlying design changes. Which come to think of it, sounds a lot like what is going on with Linux today. I don't know if the design of KDE is better than that of Gnome at this point or not, and by that I don't just mean eye candy. I actually don't care all that much if the interface "looks" good or not. I like to be able to change icons to soimething that is meaningful to me and that ability to change icons can go a long way toward a pleasant looking interface. What bugs me about KDE is that the preferred KDM desktop manager seems to slow everything down a tad, even agnostic applications such as Mozilla. XDM and GDM by comparison are much snappier. On the other hand, in my recent experience, Gnome doesn't even have file associations working right. I click on a file for which Xine is the one and only associated application and it tells me there is no association. If I right click on the file, and wait for the menu, what I see is that the menu drops down with no association and then a second later Xine shows up at the top of the list (or sometimes elswhere on the list). That's not eye candy, thats functionality, and I'd rather have the slightly slower response of KDE than the unpredictabilty of Gnome at this point. I can't help but thinking that this Mono project is doomed to fail. Any standard largely in the hands of Microsoft is going to be a target moved for their own convenience. Novell does not yet have a track record for supporing Linux, Icaza by comparison has a record of starting projects and getting them developed to the point where they have widespread public attention. Then he moves on to the next thing. Gnome, Evolution, Ximian, Mono, and I can't name a single person that is working on KDE, but there is an organization that seems to stand behind it and not let it stagnate. I'm not sure the same can be said of Gnome or Evolution at this point.

The Time Traveler Convention - May 7, 2005 Everywhen should try and attend.

Round-up of Libertarian Resources

American Liberty Foundation - Home

Free State Project ? Liberty in Our Lifetime

International Society for Individual Liberty: Libertarian Activism Worldwide

Advocates for Self-Government - Libertarian Education

The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism

Capitalism Magazine - Individual Rights are the Moral Basis of Society

Downsize DC: Big government harms you, hurts your family, and injures your neighbors

ABC News: Reporter's Notebook: Bush May Turn Setbacks into Assets: "To Democrats slamming the president's proposed Social Security benefit cuts, Grassley pointedly observed that 'doing nothing is not an option because doing nothing is a cut in benefits. Grandpa Grassley gets Social Security but my granddaughter, when she retires 56 years from now, if we do nothing is gonna get this cut that you're talking about.'"