A few interesting stories: Jeff Jacoby says that The War On America Did Not Begin On Sept 11th, Victor Hanson writes that “These Are Historic Times,” and Arthur C Clarke’s dream of a space elevator may be becoming a reality, although the weight of government involvement may ground this project before this elevator goes anywhere.
Who is the bigger Apple?
This is getting ridiculous: The Beatles Sue Apple Computers Over iPod, iTunes
The purpose of trademark law is to prevent a business from mooching of another’s success by falsely representing it. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Apple Corps is using it for in this case.
Barbie dolls a threat to morality?
Saudi Arabia’s religious police have declared Barbie dolls a threat to morality, complaining that the revealing clothes of the “Jewish” toy — already banned in the kingdom — are offensive to Islam.
For more on the story, see Cox and Forkum.
Arafat threatens to commit suicide if he is expelled from Israel. Oh, the horror! Don’t do it Arafat – the thousands of innocent people you murdered will never get over it!
A California judge on Friday gave preliminary approval to a landmark settlement under which Microsoft will pay $1.1 billion to settle a class-action suit that claimed it overcharged consumers for Windows.
Hey, California, you’re overcharging people on taxes — where is their settlement?
Microsoft comments:
“Microsoft has offered great products at competitive prices and we believe we would have prevailed in this case,” a Microsoft spokesman said in an e-mail message to reporters. “However, we were committed to resolving this matter. This settlement further demonstrates Microsoft’s continued efforts to put these conflicts behind us and to focus on the future.”
So, theft is wrong in theory, but if we capitulate to crooks this time, they’ll leave us alone, right? Right?
Canadians: Government pot not up to par.
Walter Williams on "Click It or Ticket"
“Click It or Ticket” represents another bold step along the road to serfdom. History knows of no totalitarianism agenda where noble goals weren’t used as justification. Nazis used “for the good of the German Volk” and the Soviets used “for the good of the proletariat” as their justification. Health and safety have become the American justification for attacks on liberty.
Skype
Tim sent me a link to Skype, a new P2P telephony application from the makers of Kazaa. I was skeptical at first, but a test call changed that. It’s encrypted, reaches callers behind firewalls and NAT’s, has very high quality, and is extremely simple to use. The only downside is that it uses third parties to route calls when direct connections aren’t possible. If you want to try it out, you can add me by searching for capt_david@hotmail.com
.Net rocks!
I’m playing with the VB.Net-based DotNetNuke portal. Although it’s very new, the superiority of the .Net platform is allowing it to rapidly catch up with mature LAMP-based portals. It really gives a whole new meaning to RAD development. (Btw, did you know that you can run .Net on Linux/Apache using Mono and the ModMono Apache module?) I’ve already set up a blog, and I’d like to move my homepage to .NetNuke, if only I could find a .Net host. Anyone interested in getting a free Unix account in exchange for some space on a .Net-enabled host? I’d host it on my pc if Cox hadn’t blocked port 80…I’ll be damned if they make me upgrade to a commercial account just to run a web server. Speaking of which, the value/quality of the service Cox offers is ridiculous, but they have a local monopoly on cable Internet service, and I’ve disabled my landline, so I can’t get DSL. Incidentaly, I just found I get free web hosting at http://cox-internet.com/david, but Cox offers no scripting support, making my account rather useless.
Anyway, you should seriously consider using .Net for your web/GUI/Unix development needs. I’m going to do just that…right after I cash my check from the MS marketing dept.