Anyone using JDOM on a real live project? I bought the Brett McLaughlin’s book Java and XML, and note that he devotes quite a bit of space to this new API. I checked out the JDOM site today and see that they still haven’t released an official 1.0 version. Is it like the Perl DBI — not released but being used by everybody anyway?

Who says Dubya is a uniter and not a divider? Clearly, Bill Clinton has done a better job of bringing conservatives and liberals together than Dubya ever will through his abuse of the pardon. It’s amazing to me that a man who is supposedly obsessed with his legacy would use what many consider to be the most sacred power vested in the Presidency in such a capricious and offensive manner. I feel strongly that many of Clinton’s acts as President have been misrepresented, and that he’s one of the most lied about figures in recent history, but that doesn’t excuse his legitimately bad acts. What galls me the most, of course, is that he has absolutely crippled the Democratic party at a time when they need razor sharp focus to make up for their lack of power in the current government.

The American Journalism Review has a long article on Salon magazine and its prospects for survival. The most interesting statistic in the article is that prior to the last three months of 2000, 50 Salon advertisers were online stores, in the last quarter of 2000, that number dropped to one. Ouch. I hope that Salon can get the money issue worked out, because I don’t think it can be replaced.

I just wanted to express my amazement that Oscar de la Hoya was nominated for a Grammy award last night. That was just about the stupidest thing I ever heard.

Ars Technica has a reasonable editorial theorizing on why record labels aren’t going for the Napster settlement offer. Of course, Occam’s Razor dictates that we simply assume that the RIAA isn’t going for it because they either don’t believe that Napster isn’t good for the money, or that they know a billion dollars over five years isn’t enough money to make them happy. I think that they see Napster as complicating their world unnecessarily, and just want it dead.

Tog has real problems with the Dock in Mac OS X. It’s pretty amazing how far the state of UI design at Apple has fallen. (And what’s up with those new, crazy looking iMacs?)

Danger, rant ahead: The continued bitching about Google’s purchase of the Deja archive frankly amazes me. I don’t know whether any of the whiners have noticed, but deja.com is gone. So it looks like the site was going to be taken over by Google or by nobody. There’s no question that Google’s search interface needs to get better, but if it doesn’t, what right have they to complain? It’s not like they’re paying Google for the service. And the demands that Google turn over the source code to Deja’s site or the archive itself to a public body are completely laughable. All the ongoing ranting about how the Usenet archive should be a public resource is moronic. Yeah, maybe it should be, and it would be if anyone had bothered to get off their ass and archive all of the postings over the past 5 years or so. Nobody did, though, did they? And in fact, Usenet was used for an awfully long time without anyone archiving any of it. It’s only since Deja started doing it that Usenet users even expected to have such an archive. So, if you’re one of the complainers, get over your sense of entitlement and move on.

How much trouble is Amazon.com in? It seems nobody really knows, in part because Amazon really cooks its books. However, the speculation is fun to follow. My own opinion of Amazon.com is split. I think that they have the best site on the Web, period, but at the same time, I think that the way they run their business is disturbing.

Over at Slate, Bill Gates Sr. and T.J. Rodgers are debating the repeal of the estate tax. It opens with a reprint of Gates’ Washington Post editorial on why repealing the tax is a bad idea. I look forward to reading both sides of the debate, but I’m extremely biased toward Gates’ position. I really can’t see any social value in allowing the extremeley rich to hoard their wealth from generation to generation. As a liberal, social value is more important to me than “fairness” to individuals who have obviously already reaped massive benefits from being members of our society.

In the ongoing lawsuit between the evil bastards at the MPAA and 2600 magazine, amicus briefs have been filed by an all-star cast of cryptographers and Internet law luminaries. The ongoing assault on the rights of citizens by media companies is truly staggering. These guys are just short of tobacco companies in their willingness to spend money to manipulate the government so that it protects their profit margins.