You get what you deserve. Everyone knows that the situation in Iraq is a quagmire and that our plans (or lack thereof) have been flawed and are still flawed. Report after report comes out saying that we are doing the wrong things and yet the president feels firm in his convictions. He is the decider, the commander in chief. His will is strong. Which is exactly why so many of you voted for him, right?
The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Democrats on Iraq report: Bush just doesn’t get it
Which Vista Edition is Right for You?: The Vista Editions
ExtremeTech has this super scary matrix to help you figure out which version of Vista you should buy.
Which Vista Edition is Right for You?: The Vista Editions
Now, there are two ways to look at this diagram. One is Microsoft is Stupid and the other is Microsoft is Evil. Having all these different versions is going to do nothing but confuse customers. How many times has this lesson been proven?
The Microsoft is Stupid argument goes like this: Microsoft is being good intentioned, meaning to let users pick the features they want for the price they want. This gives Microsoft customers a lot of options and options are always good, right? Having worked there for eight years, I know that the ‘soft isn’t as evil as most folks think. More, bumbling and not aware of its own size and influence. Kind of like the St. Bernard that is continually knocking things over. The folks in Vista marketing didn’t quite get the fact that the differences between all the different versions only make sense to a Software Design Engineer with a degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon. Now, when my mom goes to the store to buy her copy of Vista, she’ll just stare at them for an hour and then call me, an Engineering Manager with a degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon. While I understand the differences between the various versions of Vista, I’m gonna hafta figure out how to explain it to her. Good luck on that. “You don’t need disk encryption” “why not?” etc… Maybe this won’t matter ’cause most folks will just get the version of Vista that Dell slaps on their new machines and only the ones who care will upgrade. We’ll see.
Now, The Microsoft is Evil argument will have a lot of traction, especially on Mac fan websites and Slashdot. The argument is this: when faced with such a daunting set of options, most folks will just go for Ultimate, ’cause that must be the good one, right. No need to figure out which has what, just get the one with everything. This plays into American’s love of supersizing and Hummers. Now, when I said that Microsoft wasn’t as evil as most people thought, I should have added as a whole. There are some absolutely evil bastards working there who are just as plotting and evil as most people think. So, I think that the evil argument has some weight as well.
So, was the Vista version model the product of good-natured idiocy or soul sucking evil? Only Steve Ballmer knows.
Either way it is still stupid.
Adwatch: Zune Endless Cookie – Gizmodo
Holy crap gizmodo makes me laugh sometimes…
Here’s an ad that symbolizes the Zune’s song sharing with a cookie that is split for sharing with strangers, only to grow back, over and over again.
No one understands that after 3 days, the cookie DRM activates in your stomach, giving you a bleeding ulcer and diarrhea. Just kidding…about the cookie, not the DRM.
English Russia » Strange Soviet Buildings
English Russia » Strange Soviet Buildings
These buildings aren’t just futuristic, or weird. There is something really oddly compelling and beautiful about them.
Sources confirm plans for a smaller, ultra-thin form factored MacBook Pro | MacScoop
Sources confirm plans for a smaller, ultra-thin form factored MacBook Pro | MacScoop
I am writing this from a 12″ PowerBook, which I dearly love. I find myself drifting more to my 17″ MBP these days, but mostly ’cause I use it for work, and that screen real estate does come in handy for coding. For sitting around surfing or reading the e-mail or doing anything on a plane, you can’t beat that sub-notebook size. I was bummed that Apple hadn’t introduced a new 12″ MBP, maybe my wish will be granted next month…
Wow, talk about a buzzkill…
A non-profit group has constructed a billboard in second life to let people know how many preventable child deaths they could have done something about while f’ing around in the non-real-world.
Second Life escapists told to wake up | The Register
In this case, I can sorta see both sides. It seems kind of trivial to be spending zillions of hours and some dollars in a role playing game when you could be fighting injustice in the real world. Yup, absolutely right. However, having an outlet from the horrors of real life is sometimes a necessity for our information-overload, news-drenched, overworking lives. I guess there is always a happy medium, isn’t there?
Rumsfeld wanted to “change the course” and “cut and run” right before he was canned.
The timeline (at least the one presented by the Seattle Times) doesn’t support it, but it could be possible that Rumsfeld issued a memo suggesting that the Iraq war was falling apart and was fired immediately. It is also possible that he got wind of unhappiness and was trying to prove that he was flexible. Either way, it was too little too late.
The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Rumsfeld urged big changes in Iraq strategy
Cafe Campagne (Pike Place Market)
This isn’t directly about Cafe Campagne, I just happened to come up with this rule while leaving there with a meal half-finished.
The Rule? If you enter a low-ceilinged restaurant and you see a party of 8 or more seated (or waiting), just leave immediately.
On Friday, we sat down to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants during my favorite time of the year to eat there (Cassoulet season). We had our favorite table. Perfect for a romantic dinner. There was a group of around 10 middle aged women seated a couple tables over from us. They were well dressed and seemed nice. Soon, the volume level from that table was near airplane-engine-roar level with the occasional laugh-squeal or scream making me want to put a fork into my eye. They drew angry looks from all around the room, but the usually very attentive staff ignored the situation. I don’t think the ladies were trying to be rude. I don’t even think they understood how insanely loud they were. They were just trying to hear each other over the din of a busy restaurant with no soft items to absorb sound and low ceilings and tons of mirrors and windows which amplify it.
That kind of thing makes eating at any restaurant feel like eating in the bar at TGI Fridays.
The way the kids talk
I heard the phrase “Peace… Out” used as a verb a couple weeks ago, as in “If I show up and they ignore me, I’ll just Peace Out, ya know.”
This was coming from a guy who must have been under 25, and it honestly blew my mind a bit.
I hadn’t heard “Peace… Out” even ironically for a few years and only ironically before that. This was a phrase that was dead when this guy was in high school.
Weird.
Google doesn’t use Google Docs
I was reading the following post from Niall Kennedy: Google Mondrian: web-based code review and storage, and one line stuck out: “Recently some design reviews have moved onto an internal version of Google Docs.” The thing that interested me about that is I’ve heard Jason Calacanis and others on The Gillmor Gang talk about using Google Docs for coporate data. Now maybe Google isn’t using the public docs because they are dogfooding new features before they are unveiled to the public. More scarily, maybe they are using an internal version because the public version isn’t secure or stable enough to host their important documents.