I’m trying to wrap my brain around the big dust-up regarding GNOME, and .NET, and Mono, and Miguel de Icaza. That means I’m probably going to be linking to a bunch of stuff here about this controversy over the next few days. (The link to “One Runtime to Bind Them All” was the starter’s gun going off.) This Miguel de Icaza email got things rolling. There’s an editorial at Kuro5hin about it. There’s a massive Slashdot thread about it as well. ...
From the speculation mill: a missile fired from a CIA drone Monday night may have killed Osama bin Laden. Then again, it may have killed some luckless Afghan who was the victim of bad intelligence provided by one of his rivals. The guys at Enron who came up with the partnerships that they used to hide debt also managed to line their pockets in a big way as a side benefit. I thought President Bush made out in a big way on his meager investment in the Texas Rangers baseball team, but he was a piker compared to these guys. ...
There are a couple of contests running that you might be interested in. The first is a logo design contest for the FreeBSD Foundation. Judging from the entries that have been submitted so far, if you’re a competent graphic designer, you have a shot. The second is a programming contest from Google. They’re looking for a program that does something interesting to massive collections of parsed Web documents, and the grand prize is $10,000. ...
I watched the Super Bowl. Here are some observations not related to the game (the game was great, but people don’t care what I think of the football game). I really wanted to know what mlife was. The ads never explained, and my trip to mlife.com revealed that it’s nothing but another name for standard AT&T; wireless service. So what. That guy in the Crazy Legs ad from Levis is amazing. I still haven’t figured out whether he really moves that way or if it’s some sort of special effect. I thought that the halftime show was utterly and completely crass. More crass than Playmate Fear Factor. Seeing the names of the victims of the 9/11 attacks scroll behind Bono skipping around the stage and thousands of fans cheering and waving their arms was utterly revolting. The entire affair reeked of Fox’s typical binge profiteering on the attacks. The anti-drug ads that linked purchasing drugs to funding terrorism were shocking, but strike me as being totally ineffective. Are we trying to resuscitate the war on drugs by linking it to the war on terror now? The Pepsi ad had a pointer to pepsi.yahoo.com at the end. I wonder how much Yahoo paid for that? When did CNet pick up the URL com.com? ...
Here’s a Bush administration idea that seems, at first glance, like a good one, but in fact is pretty stupid. In the administration’s next budget, all federal agencies are formally rated on five criteria, and their funding is adjusted based on their level of performance. In other words, agencies that are (according to the standard established by the Bush administration) well managed and efficient, will get budget increases, while those who aren’t will lose funding. ...
The New York Times reports that 102 Israeli reservists have signed a statement saying that they refuse to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip because of the way the IDF treats the Palestinians. Anyone following the spat between Al-Jazeera and CNN? Apparently Al-Jazeera interviewed Osama bin Laden on October 21, but never aired it. Somehow CNN got ahold of it and started showing parts of it last week. That really pissed off Al-Jazeera. Now CNN is reporting that Dick Cheney asked the emir of Qatar (the guy who pays Al-Jazeera’s bills) to tone down the Osama bin Laden crap on October 20. Could Al-Jazeera be mad because the emir ordered them not to show the interview, and now they stand to lose face with their core audience because they held back on the interview and CNN didn’t? ...
Everybody seems to be trying to come up with a plan for reforming the 401k system. Oddly enough, I like the Bush plan the best. It would prevent employers from restricting when employees can sell company stock in their 401k plans, which is the main problem in the Enron debacle. The plans offered by Democrats would place additional regulations on 401k plans that would amount to forced diversification. I’m for providing employees with maximum choice. That means preventing their employers from limiting how they can direct their retirement savings, but it also means the government not restricting how they can invest them as well. The other side of the coin is that we have to get legitimate numbers from corporations, so that all investors (including employees), can make informed decisions. That means auditors who aren’t in on the scam with these corporations. ...
Could Osama bin Laden share the fate of King Herod (of Bible fame)? AIM is blocking Trillian users. Do yourself a favor and switch to Yahoo. Bug 51015 - Microsoft should use Mozilla -- the title says it all. Salon has a chilling profile of Wafa Idris, the Palestinian woman who was carrying a bomb that exploded in Jerusalem a few days ago (I would refer to as a suicide bomber, but it’s not clear whether she intended to blow herself up, she may have been carrying the bomb for someone else). The chilling thing about the profile is that there’s nothing to suggest that this woman was an extremist of any kind – she didn’t wear a head scarf, and spent her time volunteering as a paramedic for the Red Crescent Society. Were I an Israeli, I think the question that would be haunting me is whether some of the suicide bombings are committed by people who are driven to suicidal depression by their day-to-day lives immersed in violence and poverty rather than by delusional Islamists on a hurry to get a one way ticket to paradise. ...
OK, I thought it was really pathetic that Ken Lay held a prayer session with Jesse Jackson for atonement or succor or whatever, but now his wife is doing the media rounds in an attempt to garner sympathy for the family. The thing is, she says that the family is basically broke, when in fact they have more assets than you can shake a stick at. (Both links go to NY Times stories.) ...
I transferred the last domain I had that was still registered with Network Solutions, and they sent me a cheery little form letter telling me how sorry they were to see me go and that I could transfer back any time. It was actually well written enough that I felt a little pang of guilt for dumping them. That is, until I remembered that they are evil, influence purchasing, customer hating, monopolistic scumbags who deserve to be run out of business as rapidly as possible. ...