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January 31, 2006

What he said

in SPADES!!

Technorati Tags: Apple, Haxies, Programming, Hidden Installations, Unsanity

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January 25, 2006

Disney bought Pixar, and Jobs is now on the Disney Board of Directors...

They're about to get Steved...they just don't know it yet...

Technorati Tags: Apple, Business, Pixar

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January 23, 2006

Nailed perfectly here.

Technorati Tags: Friends, Tech Support, Technology

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January 14, 2006

In case you hadn't heard, Shawn King and Lesa Snider, of Your Mac Life and The Graphic Reporter, were married during Macworld Conference and Expo, on 12 January, 2006.

Yes, it was a real wedding

It wasn't some kind of goofball thing on the show floor, it wasn't officiated by a Steve Jobs lookalike, the vows weren't exchanged via iChat AV, it wasn't webcast. It was a wedding, for all the reasons people get married, and it was beautiful. But yes, when you hear about something like this, the trainwreck potential on the surface is SO high...

Technorati Tags: Friends, Mac OS X, Relationships

MacWorld Wedding

Yeah, the bride wore bondi, etc., yadda. And when you're talking about Shawn, the silly potential is off the hook. This is a guy who has lost cameras, iPods. He's even forgotten his pants.

But the truth is, there's almost no other place Shawn and Lesa could have gotten married. Macworld Expo is a critical part of their relationship in a very real, material way. They met there. They fell in love there. They went through a few trials and tests there. Without Macworld Expo, you have no Shawn and Lesa meeting, and no wedding. It was indeed, an unseen guest at the wedding, but it was the critical guest. When you have Paul Kent the IDG World Expo VP in charge of Macworld Expo and his band playing at your wedding, Expo is a part of your wedding.

But yeah, the "Oh holy shit they didn't" factor is HUGE. Mac people can be...well, sometimes, "elegance" isn't a common word. My sartorial choices are not always Blackwellian.

But like anything, a good wedding is made by dozens of factors, especially the location. I think, the location set the tone. The Great American Music Hall is...elegant. It's almost a hundred years old, and it has that turn of the century opera house/ballroom vibe. You walk in and it just looks like a place where elegance and glamor belong. The Vanderbilts should be dining there.

So I get there in The Suit. The Suit is a full on Zoot Suit, inspired by the one Flava Flav wore in "Strange Love. What's Shawn's first comment? You bastard, you out do me at my own wedding. My reply, "You could have gotten a pretty suit too :-P" I wasn't worried, he looked really good, even in a last minute suit. (Yes, last minute. He managed to forget his pants. <Sigh>. But the suit he got looked really good, so in the end, his forgetfulness was a good thing.)

The usual mingling, and everyone sits down waiting for Lesa to show. She comes in, and right there, it's a wedding. Yes, it's Macworld, and yes, Andy Ihnatko is the officiant, (and had been threatening to marry me to random people all day, since for 24 hours, he could marry people), and he's reading from an iPod, David Pogue is giving away the bride, Chris Breen is doing the music, but it's a wedding. It's a real wedding, and like every bride since the beginning of weddings, she *glowed*. The dresses were beautiful, but Lesa was shining, and her smile was the source. I've known her for a few years now, she's never looked more beautiful.

She stands across from Shawn, and neither of them can stop smiling. Which is as it should be, it was their moment. Andy was as good as I've ever seen him, (he told me later that he's never worked that hard on any words in his life. Every word, every comma, even the spaces had to be PERFECT. Not just good, but perfect. Anj, ya nailed it. It was indeed, perfect.) and even reading from an iPod, it didn't matter. The words were beautiful, as was the ceremony. It was rather cute at some points..."Look, Shawn's not crying. Look, Shawn's not crying harder. Oh, he's REALLY not crying now."

The ceremony finished, the toasts were done, and Shawn really cried while trying to thank us all for being there. Not just a little tearing up, but bawling. It was terribly cute. This was evidently due to the toast I had given them. As Shawn told me later, You bastard, that was your fault! While that really wasn't my intent, (although I figured if I did it well, that would be the effect), I'll take it. As I said later, I made Shawn cry, I'm TEH WINNAR!!! What I really wanted to do was to come up with something that would describe to them how I had seen what they had gone through to get to that point they were now at. I happened to think of it while walking from the cleaners to the hotel with my pants on a hangar. If my words did that well, then three decades of speaking experience was finally worth something. As Paul Kent later said, "Look, Pinocchio is a real boy at last".

And the cake...oh...MYGOD...that cake was beyond glorious. I wanted to run away with it so I could roll around in it. I now have a standard for "Death by Chocolate".

Anyone, and I mean ANYONE who thinks this was some kind of geeky joke wedding like getting married underwater by Elvis either wasn't there, or wasn't paying attention. It was what every wedding should be, what more weddings wish they could be, and I feel more than a little privileged to have been invited to be a part of it. Thank you guys for letting me be a part of it.

Oh, yes, and thank you Rivka for being a magnificent dance partner. How good was she? She made me look good, that's how good she was.

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Before we get into this episode of "John doesn't like people", I want to relay some information I was shown by a MacBU dev.

The next Office:Mac's, (aka Office 12) support for the MS Open XML formats are real. I've seen them. Me personally. I had a Word Dev who was annoyed enough by a few things to show me that indeed, the next version of Word and the rest will use the MS Open XML Formats natively. No, I don't view this as an NDA breach, as he asked me to, (not a deciding factor NDA-Wise), and this support has already been announced, (a deciding factor NDA-Wise) so the only thing he did was show me something that had already been talked about and confirmed. I can't tell you, (not won't but cannot) anything else about the next version of Office, but I have physically seen it working with the MS Open XML formats, and that its output was indeed what we've seen on Brian Jones' Blog. I'm not saying this is a reason to blindly follow Microsoft down the primrose path, but they are indeed working on the next version of Office actively, not just doodling about in OmniGraffle. Part of the issue for them is they have to wait for things like file formats and other items to be finalized and locked down in the Windows version of Office 12. But it's an active project. So calm down.

Now, onto the current stupidity.

Technorati Tags: Geeks, Mac OS X, Microsoft, MS OpenXML, Technology

According to quite a few reports, the Mac BU is "scaling back" their Mac Support. Wow, that's quite a claim. It's completely stupid, and ignorant, but I bet it generates hit counts from MacMacs though. <Homer>Mmmm...hit counts</Homer>

Why are they making that claim? Because with the end of Windows Media Player for the Mac in favor of the Flip4Mac Codecs, the only products the Mac BU is putting out are Office, Virtual PC, and Messenger. Which are the only products they've been putting out for years. In fact, Virtual PC is the new kid on this block, so if you want to look at it that way, Virtual PC represents an increase in the product count of the Mac BU.

The worst of these is the BetaNews article on it, but some others, including Rob Buckley have jumped on this bandwagon as well. All of this is inane, especially some of the points:

• Microsoft is scaling back the Mac BU and its Mac support in general because certain key developers have left to do other things within MS. While that's partially true, the reason given is dumb. Yes, people leave the Mac BU. Some of them have worked on Mac software for over a decade, and just want to do something new. However, what seems to get left out is that people join the Mac BU as well. So, if you were to be sensible about this, then it would appear that the Mac BU is like any other division in any other company. People come, people go. Wow, how weird.
• Microsoft is scaling back the Mac BU and its Mac support in general because they're only offering the same products they always have. I have to say, this one may be my favorite. How does doing the same thing for years constitute scaling back? Especially when at Macworld, the Microsoft was showing off an upcoming product, namely a new Keyboard and Mouse that will have the specific Mac OS X keys, (command and option). Not like you have now, where you use the Windows and Alt keys. There won't be Windows keys. It's a Mac - specific keyboard. You know that would appear to be a new product. It's not a Mac BU product, but it is a new Microsoft product for the Mac. That's a kind of funny way to scale back, to develop new products. Must be a new Internet thing.
• Microsoft is scaling back the Mac BU and its Mac support in general because they don't have any home/consumer products. Um...they haven't had anything that was specifically a home/consumer product in years. Years. But again, keyboard and mouse would fit that. Even stupider, you have this quote from Joe Wilcox, whom I hope was TOTALLY taken out of context: A consumer exit could mean the end of the low-cost Student & Teacher Edition, too, particularly with Apple offering iWork. Huh? The Mac BU offering the same product line it always has is going to mean an end to different Office SKUs?? Doctor, my head?

There honestly are days when I think if the Mac BU gave away a Mac version of every product Microsoft currently, has ever, or will ever make in boxes of Tide, along with a ten dollar bill, that the Mac community would gripe because it wasn't a twenty, and they only got one copy.

This entire thing is, with a little analysis and thought, a non-issue. Oh wait, the Mac Web, never mind.

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January 7, 2006

So the latest iteration of "Why you should date a geek" is going around, (Maryam Scoble has one of the better - written ones even if I disagree with much of what she says. Please note how someone who knows how to write can make you laugh even if the subject matter normally makes you grind your teeth. That's talent there.), and as usual, the "geek as social retard/pathetic loser" is the image at the heart of them. Now, I'm not going to say that a lot of geeks aren't social retards and pathetic losers, especially when it comes to the opposite sex, (or the same sex). But not all geeks are men, (Yes, female geeks can be just as dumb about the opposite sex as the male version), and not all geeks are the same.

I can only speak to the Network Engineer/Sysadmin Geek sub-species, since I'm a member of it. As a rule, we're not like the "tech-enthusiast-but-not-really-technical-geek", (Think Scoble here), or "programmer-sit-up-for-days-on-a-problem-geek" or the Gamer Geek. We're a bit more...well, we can be more social creatures than many geeks, because we have to be. We do a lot of social interaction as a part of our jobs, and we're good at it. Well, we can be. Many of us didn't start out as geeks. A lot of us started out as graphics designers, sound engineers, musicians, etc. We just drifted into it. (No, really. I'm one of the few sysadmin types I know who started out "wanting" to be a sysadmin) So with that in mind, I'm going to take a whack at this, keeping in mind that I know a lot of female geeks too, and hopefully, provide a different view on this. Some of these are going to be things not to do when dating a geek of my subspecies, so take note...

Technorati Tags: Relationships, Geeks

1. They know something about everything Sysadmin geeks, due to the idiotically wide range of knowledge they need for their jobs, tend to be renaissance (wo)men. So their bookshelves, (yes books), are covered with everything from science fiction, to "mens" adventure, to Political Science and everything in between. We'll read anything we can, including cereal boxes. This can be annoying too, as if we're really in the middle of a good book, getting us to stop reading can be about impossible. On the other hand, we also tend to have insanely fast reading speeds, (no really. I did a Boston to S.F. flight with a stop in Atlanta. By the time I got to Atlanta, I had finished most of Lord of The Rings, the combined version), so even a "big" book won't take us long. The other downside is that, well, we know something about everything. We're know-it-alls. It's part of what we do and who we are.
2. We have an extremely wide range of interests This relates to 1., obviously, but isn't a duplicate. Sysadmin geeks tend to not just know something about everything, we like something about everything as well. My latest hobby is the guitar. Started it at 37. I also love oriental food, (all of it. Pretty much anything between Istanbul and Tokyo is good eatin' here), the history of the English royal family, papal history, flying, racing, southern and cajun cooking, Korean martial arts, etc. I'm not even close to unique here. I've a friend who loves to read in-depth histories. You want to get us good presents, get us books that are in-depth analyses of some topic we like. We'll love you for it. The upside of this is that as long as you stay away from the few things we really don't like, (Broadway musicals and modern country, UGH), we're up for almost anything, and we'll probably enjoy it. The downside is, we're kind of ADD-ish about things, so keeping us focused is difficult.
3. We're not helpless around the house Sysadmin geeks are not the kind of people who can't burn water or boil steak. In fact, most of the people I know who are excellent cooks are geeks. It seems to be related to having to put stuff together on the fly, but I'll put my pumpkin pie up against anyone's, along with my Pear Bruleé and I know some other folks that will bake you into a coronary without breaking a sweat. We're also good at cleaning, (although in my case, I just hate getting started. However, once I do, thanks to the Air Force, I can clean a bathroom like a fleet of anal-retentive hotel crews), and some of us can even sew. I iron like a dry cleaner, I've friends who are decorators like you wouldn't believe. The point is, we are more than adept in a domestic situation. The downside? We get territorial. Don't be trying to tell me how to clean, iron, or cook, I get...terse. As I tell people, "Get the hell out of my kitchen".
4. You can take us out in public Yes, I know, someone known for giant yellow high-tops and an 80s fashion fetish shouldn't be talking up sartorial skills. But since we have to go to meetings and even behave ourselves in them, sysadmin geeks do have the ability to clean up nice, and we sometimes even like to do so. (You want proof? Take me to a Versace outlet and give me someone else's AMEX) We know how to use three forks in the correct order, we can order good wine, beer and booze, and some of us can even pronounce food from other cultures correctly. In my case, I don't know how to order Cuban food in English, so it's a necessity. But, thanks to our jobs forcing us to move between wildly different groups smoothly, we can move between many different social situations adeptly, and if you aren't careful, we'll make you look like the clod. The downside? We probably don't really want to. We'll bitch like hell, grumble, and generally try to get you to say "FINE! I'LL GO BY MYSELF!". This of course is what we wanted. If we do get pushed into going, we tend to make sure there's something off about our appearance...shoes, a hat, ties...some kind of crack in the mirror. We're used to extracting subtle revenge, and we're good at it.
5. We'll fix your computer... However, unlike some folks would have you believe, that's not an infinite resource, and if you start trying to pawn us off on your friends, that well dries fast. We'll fix your computer, because whether it's via cash, dinner, beer, booze, or sex, we're getting paid for it. We fix computers all day long. The last thing any of us wants to hear is JOOOoooooohhhhhhhhnnnnnn....My Computer Broke! or whatever the appropriate name is. More likely than not, if it becomes a constant issue, we're going to make you learn how to keep the damned thing running yourself. If that doesn't work, we're going to make you switch to whatever environment we can fix the fastest and with the least amount of thought, and if you complain, we're going to say You can run whatever you want, but I'm only fixing this. Take our skillz for granted, and the whole subtle revenge thing again. However, there's a corollary...
6. We want you to learn how to do tech stuff for yourself See, we have non-tech things we like to do, and if we're playing tech-bitch at home, we can't do them. So if you start asking us to help you learn how to fix this crap on your own, we are delighted to help you do it. For one, because it means we don't have to. Sysadmins are lazy, why do you think we script things? For another, it gives you insight into our world. Not on the same scale or to the same degree, but a little. That allows you to perhaps empathize with us a bit more and understand why we have the love-hate relationship with technology that many other geeks don't seem to have, at least on the hate side. But you want to make our day? Tell us how your computer broke a week ago, and how you fixed it and we never even knew. That's a really fast way to a Sysadmin geek's heart. Competency makes the blood rush.
7. We have non-tech hobbies That love-hate thing? Yeah, the hate part is pretty strong. It's why we get the irrits when we hear crap like blogosphere, or inkernet or <inane phrase here>, because usually it's either another label for something that's been around for a while, or a new take on something that's been around for a while. Usually, the prats getting squishy about such terms haven't a bloody clue. We do. If you're dating a Sysadmin geek who's been in the business for the last twenty years or more, yes, we indeed have seen it all. There's new stuff, but not that new. So we get annoyed by techophiles who think they're on the bleeding edge of some new wave. Because they aren't, but their fervor and ignorance will make our lives suck for some too-long period of time, usually accompianed by quotes like My dentist says your network sucks. Our response is usually rather...curt, and along the lines of, Well, if I can do your next root canal, your dentist can redesign my network. So we tend to have a lot of non-tech hobbies. Music, cooking, motorcycles, classic cars, old movies, you name it, one of us is into it. Again, we have to support tech all day long. We're not going to make our hobbies just like work, that's unhealthy. However, it creates a very large chance that you'll have a non-tech thing you can share with us.
8. We're plain-spoken If a Sysadmin geek is (un)happy, or annoyed, or whatever, you'll know. We tend to not mince words. The downside of this is that when we want, we can flame you to within an inch of your life. We've all had to flambe some assclown en brochette, and we're good at it. We even get a perverse joy out of it, because we take years of frustrations out on the poor bastard that earned our ire. So if you really piss us off, well, we can verbally lambaste you like you've never been lambasted in your life. That's not to say we cannot be tactful when needed. We have to regularly inform CEOs that they did something that was, in retrospect, sub-optimal, and yes, it is stupid that we let the network allow them to do such a silly thing. We're quite good at tact. But we find it tiring when we constantly have to talk around a problem. Being direct means less time spent living with a problem.
9. We have a healthy concept of relationships We don't like to waste time, so we tend to be pretty clear on what we want out of a partner. We don't pick them lightly, but when we do, we're serious. This should not be translated as worshipping the ground you walk on to the point of being a doormat, and if we have to choose between Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt and a new fast computer, well, the computer's going to be used as a place to put our clothes. Yeah, we're good with tech, but we're not fools about it. The only reason we'll blog about being naked with a hottie is if we have pics to prove it. But, if we're in a good relationship, we're not going to give that up for something as silly as a nooner. We don't like breaking stuff, especially stuff that's working. So we're loyal. We just aren't slavish. Keep that in mind, and you'll do fine with a Sysadmin geek.
10. We're the janitors/cops of the tech world We aren't particularly well-liked by almost anyone else in the tech world. Programmers, enthusiasts, they all pretty much hate us. Because of that, we don't like to call attention to our jobs at parties, and we envy other people's jobs. We're not that impressed with our careers. So we appreciate whatever it is you do that's not tech-related, and we'll probably take a real interest in your career, and the things you enjoy. That makes for a good partner, regardless of career

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January 6, 2006

So recently, there's been a spate of posts decrying the lack of manners and civility in blogging. Robert Scoble, and even Mena Trott have both come out with posts on this, along with a few others. They want in some cases to go back to some (nonexistent) time when civility and reason dominated debates, or to just stop any kind of anger and heated words. Mena Trott is saying that she's "Frankly, I'm a blogger and I'm afraid of bloggers". Oy. The general theme seems to be:Passion and enthusiasm are okay, but let's not hurt any feelings.

I would say that anyone buying into that hasn't the slightest clue as to what passion and enthusiasm are.

No one here is surprised that I'm not lining up with the don't hurt a feeling crowd, but let me say that I'm not in favor of random cruelty or being mean because you can. But rather that if you want passionate defense of ideas, well, someone's going to stub a toe. If you don't like that, don't use terms you don't really understand, like passionate. The other thing is this: Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I hate you or think you're stupid, and just because someone rejects your idea or position, that doesn't mean they're rejecting you as a person. There is a tendency to overpersonalize debates, as though an opposing opinion is a de facto attack. This is silly. Everyone will never agree with you, and maintenance of your self - esteem is your job, no one else's.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Manners, Writing

Look, I grew up with people who loved the language and arguing. Conversation, especially debate was a full - contact sport. You were expected to passionately defend your ideas, yet always listen to your opponent. If you turned out to be factually wrong, you admitted it, ate your crow, and learned something. There are people to this day whom I really, personally despise. Yet, if I were to be put in charge of an IT department, I'd recruit them like they had the cure to herpes in their saliva. Because I may never want to spend one second of time outside of work with them, in the work environment, they know their stuff. In some cases, much better than I do. I don't like them, but I respect their abilities, even though they don't agree with me on most things and never will.

I've gotten told dozens of times, "If you are that harsh with people, you'll never change their mind". Well, I don't expect that I have the power to change anyone's mind, no matter my approach. I'll debate, argue, yell, what have you, but I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. The only mind I can change is mine. If they're factually wrong, then I expect them to admit that because they're wrong, not because I was reasoned and calm or ranting and foaming at the mouth. If I'm proven wrong, I expect that I admit it too. (Sometimes, it's really hard, but hey, sometimes I want to be proven wrong.)

I don't care if I change anyone's mind because it's not a requirement for me. I don't want everyone to agree with me. I don't need everyone to hold my view on things. Indeed, I prefer it if the people I know do disagree with me regularly. It doesn't make me wrong, doesn't make them wrong either. Someone not agreeing with me doesn't invalidate my opinion or worldview. It just means they don't agree with me on <issue>. I don't personalize things to that degree, and I think this, more than anything is the source of the "mean-ness" problem on the Internet. People cannot handle someone disagreeing with them.

For far too many people, the existence of a different opinion or point of view almost..no, not almost, does constitute a kind of attack on them. It seems as though they think that unless the entire world agrees with them, that they're somehow invalidated. So when you tell them, (in so many words or not), "I think you're wrong/full of crap", they go on the attack. Because they can't comprehend that you can have two diametrically opposed opinions and/or approaches to an issue or a problem and have them both be right. If you disagree with them, then you're saying that their view is wrong, and so they get angry and hurt.

My advice to these people? <dennisleary>Life's tough, wear a helmet</dennisleary>

No matter how sound and reasoned you think your opinion or view to be, unless you can show empirical proof that is not open to interpretation, people are going to look at your arguments and use them for toilet paper. Accept this and move on. You cannot make everyone think the way you do. Disagreement is not an attack, so stop acting like it. You don't agree, great, put up an article on your site telling the world I'm full of crap, and ugly too. Don't expect me to be terribly concerned about it, I don't need other people's approval and agreement to feel good about myself.

Which brings us to my second point: Your self-esteem is your business.

If I call you a jerk, okay, that's one thing. You have the right to be hurt or offended by that. I may or may not care, depending on the situation or our personal relationship, but in that case, you have a right to not be happy with me. But if I put up a post, even a ranting, profanity-laced diatribe of a post on an issue that I have a strong opinion on, that isn't about you, and you don't share that opinion, then I don't even begin to care how you feel. You want to disagree, great. But don't come in all angry and offended 'n' shit. Because what am I supposed to do? Change my opinion to suit your worldview? Change the wording so you're not able to be offended by it? Bah. Not happening. Barring factual error, the chances of someone I don't know getting me to change a post or an opinion because a post, and the views contained therein hurt their feelings somehow approaches zero. Aka, if you don't like it, there are other places on the Internet you can go.

I don't like reading the writing of someone who has edited all personal feelings and passion out of their post. If I'm really bothered or offended by their opinions, I don't read their stuff. I may rant about Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Rush, and Michelle Malkin, (Lord, what a coup for the right wing Malkin is...female, non-white, and just to the right of Geobbels), but I'm not going to go to their sites and write them angry letters. I've read enough of their tripe to know what they're going to say, so I stop caring unless I need them to make a point. If I want to read something dry and without feeling, I can find some nice technical papers or articles to read, like my infamous USB 2 article for MacTech. Now that's some stimulating writing. I put myself to sleep writing it. I can't imagine reading it.

I like people who speak plainly, or even profanely. I don't want the Internet to become a dry, sterile room padded and patrolled for my protection. I can handle the rough and tumble of vigorous debate, I'm a big boy. If someone else can't, that's their problem, not mine. Let them stay at Disney.com , don't force - feed the rest of us a diet of pablum just because someone got a hurt feeling. If someone hurts your feelings, deal with it like an adult. But unless I personally attack you, it's not my problem, nor anyone else's. Mena Trott's "afraid" of other bloggers? Sounds like she needs to learn to handle life in a more effective way. Scoble thinks people flame him too much? Maybe he should stop begging for it. The people who got all hurt because Chris Rock's TV show pointed out there's no Santa Claus? Grow up.

A "nice" Internet? Only if you think that bland is good. As for me, I welcome the challenge of it all.

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January 5, 2006

So someone tell me how Terri Schaivo was, according to Dubya and the Republican Party, worth keeping alive at any cost? I mean Ol' Doc Bill was diagnosing her via television, and rendering neurological diagnoses and Congress and Dubya rushed legislation through at a furious pace to keep an non-responsive brain-dead woman alive. Hell, protests, the Vatican, right to life, who wasn't fighting for Terri Schaivo on the right.

But in Texas, when a law that Dubya signed is used to remove a conscious, alert woman from life support because she was terminal anyway, and not a peep from the right wing. Tirhas Habtegiris didn't want to be kept on life support indefinitely. She wanted to be kept on it long enough for her mother to be at her side when she died. The complication? Her mother lives in Africa. Getting here from there takes a while. It takes longer than the ten days the hospital, Baylor Medical Center gave her.

But she had no insurance, and was going to die anyway, so what's a couple of days? Her mother knew what she looked like.

It couldn't be because Terri Schaivo was a nice white Catholic girl, and Tirhas Habtegiris was a black immigrant from Africa. That couldn't be the reason it was okay for her to die, but completely wrong for Terri Schaivo to die.

I'm sure it was just the money. Because that's a much better reason to kill someone. As Tirhas' brother, Daniel Salvi said: "A fund issue is what I understand. Because she is not insured and that was the major reason the way I understood it," Salvi said.

So someone please explain to me why Terri Schaivo deserved life at any cost and Tirhas Habtegiris did not. Please. Because I'd rather not think that the Republican Party and the Right To Life Movement only fights for the lives of white people.

Technorati Tags: Insurance, Politics, Racism

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January 2, 2006

It looks like KDE is going to support Dashboard Widgets in KDE 4 (Thanks Dori for the info!). So Widgets will then be cross platform, and not bound to the browser. Well, I guess in three more years, Windows Live and the rest of that rubbish will be able to move beyond the browser.

Of course, by then, Widgets will have evolved too, but hey, when you only update your OS once every three to five years, you have to expect that you'll spend a lot of time and effort catching up to everyone else.

Technorati Tags: Dashboard, Live.com, Mac OS X, KDE, Technology, Widgets, Windows

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But now I have even more reason to hate that whiny voice.

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January 1, 2006

This is so brilliant, it makes me weep for not having thought of it first.

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