The Industry Standard takes on the H1-B visa debate in a long article that weighs the arguments from both sides. I have no idea what the right answer is on this one.

Scott Rosenberg hits the nail on the head once again in criticizing the statements of Chairman Bill in the wake of the proposed remedies in the antitrust case, and at the same time lambasting the government’s idiotic proposal. The government generally operates pretty stupidly, but when you have to get the DOJ and 19 state attorney generals to agree on one set of remedies, it’s a recipe for disaster. I honestly think that this whole affair would already have been settled if the negotiations hadn’t involved the 19 states as well as the federal government.

BLADE is an interesting looking language-independent application server based on CORBA.

Remember when Microsoft said they were going to publish the MSN Messenger protocol? Did they ever do it? I can’t find the specification anywhere.

As of this morning, I can’t watch ABC on Time-Warner Cable any more, just like 12 million other people around the country. I got sucked into that Arabian Nights miniseries last night (which is actually quite good), and now I’m not going to be able to watch it tonight. There are some other shows coming on ABC that I’d like to watch as well. At this point, I don’t give a damn whether Disney or Time-Warner is to blame, I just want this fixed. I will say that the one thing keeping many people from going to satellite is the fact that the major networks aren’t carried. If Time-Warner blows this, they could be in real trouble.

Dack flames Flash, and is flamed in return by many idiots on Usenet. At the risk of facing similar abuse, I’ll go on the record as saying that Flash sucks 98% of the time. I’ve seen some cool Flash cartoons, but most applications are as stupid as animated GIFs. The idea of building entire sites in Flash is so unashamedly moronic that I won’t even address it.

If someone took a poll asking what the sleaziest job in the world is, spokesman for an industry trade group would have to be near the top of the list. How would you like it if your job were trying to make every nasty thing an industry does look good? At least attorneys can fall back on the argument that they’re acting within the context of an adversarial legal system. Anyway, Hilary Rosen paints a rosy picture of the RIAA in a Salon interview.

Michael Sippey on Pyra.