Words you STILL cannot say on television

I am watch a show on PBS – George Carlin being “honoured” at the Kennedy Center with the Mark Twain Prize. As I am watching this, they are showing a number of old clips, including the infamous “Seven words you can never say on television”.

Am I the only person who sees a great deal of irony in the fact that they can broadcast a show honouring a man like George Carlin, and bleep-out all of the “bad” words?

Microsoft Silverlight « Josh Anderson’s Blog

 Microsoft Silverlight « Josh Anderson’s Blog

I always find the predominant attitude in the software and Internet world amusing – it is important to have alternatives, unless they come from Microsoft!

Also, the installation model for Silverlight is not all that different from Flash – if you go to a site that uses Flash, and you do not have it installed, it asks you to install it.

BTW – given the market share enjoyed by both Opera and Safari, it is fairly generous that any effort is made to support them at all.

Interesting post – Conspiracy Theorists and free software

Here is an interesting post on the prevalence (or at least existence) of conspiracy-theory-types within the free software movement (actually, they exist within any community). However, this article points out something which I have said before, which is that these people, and other zealots in the open source world, do far more damage to the credibility of open source as a whole than any opponents of open source ever could.

Eventually, the pitch “we are better because we are not Microsoft” is just not enough, and in fact, begins to hurt the movement.

More absolutely moronic Anti-Microsoft rhetoric

Soviet Microsoft: How Resistance to Free Markets and Open Ideas Will the Unravel the Software Superpower. « VistaSucks.WordPress.Com

This is a very amusing analogy, since it was the “free market economy” which created Microsoft’s success, and continues to sustain them. They are not being propped up artificially through government subsidies or bailouts, as so many companies in other industries seem to be. They are not trying to force governments or the courts to force their competitors to give up proprietary information or abandon markets to make it easier to compete.

In reality, it is the open source community, the “capitalism is evil” crowd, and those lobbying to take Microsoft down legislatively or litigiously who more resemble socialists/communists – “all intellectual property belongs to everyone”, “the government should intervene to level the playing field”, and other such crap.

The reality is, if you truly believe in the world of “free markets and open ideas”, the you believe that better ideas, smarter people, and better business models will ultimately prevail. This is the world in which Microsoft has played successfully for 20+ years. It is this model by which others can ultimately defeat Microsoft. It is Microsoft’s competition which seems unable to live within this model. 

Flying the friendlier skies? Delta gives air etiquette tips – CNN.com

 

Flying the friendlier skies? Delta gives air etiquette tips – CNN.com

This is kind of ironic, given that the biggest source of “poor etiquette” is the treatment of CUSTOMERS by the airline industry itself.

Fred’s Laws – Part 0

Well, I am off to a good start. I was not counting on some issues around moving to my new laptop.

 All sorted out now, though. Hopefully tonight I will have Part 1 of this posted.

Vista equals Edsel?

Vista equals Edsel?  (which just refers to http://www.linuxworld.com/columnists/2007/082307backspin.html)

Ok – here is a thought. If Windows sucks so badly (and not just Vista, because you all bitched about XP before Vista came out, and 2000 before that, and Windows Me, and so on), and I am having one of those weeks that makes me believe Windows does suck, then why hasn’t Linux won? Or OSX?

How badly must you suck if you cannot beat something that sucks as much as Windows???

(and don’t give me the “20xx will be the year of the Linux desktop” crap – you’ve been at this for 15 years – get on with it).

RE: Bill Gates Raves about the Mac (1984)

Have a look at Bill Gates Raves about the Mac (1984)

Too bad Apple was too stupid to capitalize on its superiority in those days – then we could all be bitching about them instead of Microsoft now! 

Microsoft Windows Vista and Paranoia

There is nothing particularly new in this article Forget about the WGA! 20+ Windows Vista Features and Services Harvest User Data for Microsoft – From your machine! – Softpedia, but it was referenced on a blog post I came read this evening. I few thoughts came to mind:

1. From what I have seen of the various services which collect information, most seem to be collecting information to improve the OS, adapt to threats, or protect the intellectual property contained within the software (I am not arguing for or against the IP protection, but if you installed the OS, you accepted the EULA, and are bound by it – no one forced you to do so).
2. Despite the deep paranoia of the various conspiracy theorists, Microsoft really has little use for most of your personal information, and it is not really worth the time or effort to collect it. You are not that important.
3. Unless you are doing something illegal, none of the information collected is a threat to you.
4. It is interesting and ironic that a site posting this article to help protect all of us from evil Microsoft collecting our information, requires you to register and provide your eMail address in order to post a comment.
5. That in a world where much of our personal information, communications, and movement is tracked in great detail (and with questionable legality) that people can get this excited about anything Microsoft might be collecting! 

More OOXML Standarization Noise

I found this post by Mark Shuttleworth interesting and well written (I found it after reading a ZDNet article referencing it – I will not link to it, since the ZDNet blogs do not seem to handle trackbacks) Emerging consensus in favour of a unified document format standard?

I agree with a number of things in this post.

Is Microsoft investing heavily in getting OOXML accepted? I would be pretty sure they are – I would be.

I agree there are technical issues with the current OOXML spec, based upon what I have read elsewhere. I do not believe that these issues are a reason to abandon the spec, only that “fast-tracking” the spec without fixing them is wrong. The OOXML spec should go through as much review as is necessary to satisfy the standards bodies that it is ready.

I agree that ODF supporters (and other OOXML opponents) should make their opinions known in a technically meaning full way to their representatives on the standards bodies.

I also believe that supporters of OOXML should do the same.  

I still disagree with the belief that there must be one “standard”. It still seems strangely ironic to me that the open source community is very much in favour of having alternatives, as long as the alternatives do not come from Microsoft.