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February 27, 2003

Ironic, isn't it?

Walmart.com - Unions

Hmmmmmmmm.

February 25, 2003

Seems silly to me

via Slashdot, Google trademark concerns. Google objects to the use of "google" as a verb meaning "to search." Like they just discovered this? Surprising, I would have thought they'd be pleased that they'd become so ubiquitous as to be generic. Go figure. Supposedly "protecting the brand."

February 14, 2003

I have the antidote, but it'll cost you.

Scripting News

It's not just open source developers that Microsoft must learn to work with. They often are just as arrogant and hell-bent on world domination as Microsoft itself. Better to partner with those who accept everyone's right to exist, who assume there will be no world domination, and try to make users more powerful by offering choice everywhere. This is the philosophy of inclusion.

I have a hard time reconciling this optimistic view of commercial (Some might say proprietary) developers when I see this: Wired News

Security firm Symantec withheld information about at least one big cyberthreat for hours after spotting it, possibly harming millions of Internet users.

Symantec claims to have identified the Slammer worm that ravaged the Internet during the last weekend of January hours before anyone else did.

Symantec then shared the information only with select customers, leaving the rest of the global community to get slapped around by Slammer.

How many users did this deeply reprehensible action on Symantec's part empower? This should really be actionable, it's so cynical and greedy.

February 12, 2003

Bon anniversaire

Hey, 3 years of this, first as a very spotty Blogger blog called Chunkstyle, and then as a very spotty MT site, and now a semispotty, almost entirely obscure (Hi Karel) MT site. How time do fly.

Is it a thermometer?

In what could be an indicator of the tension brewing on the international front, the "Why do you hate America so much?" thread, which I am not even linking in this post, has been drawing fresh comment activity recently. I've gottena number of comments to that post in the past few days. Why isn't the Tom Tomorrow cartoon originally linked in the post the #1 result in Google for 'why do you hate America so much?' Very strange.

In the thick of READ

I am working on something for MLB that I have to get finished if I want to even think about going to FL with the family (despite the fact that we're probably going to drive now given the various warnings and alarms afoot), so I have not been saying much (well, besides my not being very articulate to begin with). I am following the power law discussions with some interest. On the one hand, it is massive justification for the eventual and possibly inevitable stratification of the media as it matures. On the other, the swing the conversation is taking -- whether this stratification can actually be manipulated to yield larger exposure for lesser-known blogs -- is very interesting and might actually be the first real "new" thing in a glutted field. What we are really discussing is an API for attention.

I may have more on this later if I can, but I have to remark that I have never seen so many people comment that their brain hurts wrt the math in the power law stuff. I was a lit major, and it's not that hard.

February 10, 2003

Early and often

Doc Searls Weblog

My laptop was stolen this morning. Pretty much my whole life was on it. I'm not even sure what to do next, other than go get a new pair of glasses, because they're gone too. Gotta restart somewhere.

My sympathies on this one - this might be the worst way to learn the backup lesson. Second would be catastrophic hardware failure. But it doesn't have quite the same horrible feeling of out and out violation that theft does.