When Pigs .. something-or-other..

Gartner Says Swine Flu Is a Reason to Act, Not Panic

OK Have you got that? Gartner says so. Is it just me or does everyone seem to need Gartner to agree with just about anything they want to do?

When did professional advice turn into a mother-may-I scenario? What about when they are wrong?

I wonder what people would do if they had said to panic...

Whaaat!?

Remember what I was saying about Serious Rumors? Well that one actually fell apart. Now we have a new one:
Oracle to pick up Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion after rival suitor IBM dropped bid

File this under "the lengths that Oracle will go through to kill MySQL"

For anyone who doesn't understand what I mean by that - allow me to break it down:

Databases are what are used to store information on 90%+ of web sites.

Oracle's founders invented the database for IBM and later spun off their own company. The database concept is the center of their universe. They make a lot of money on them and they charge a lot of money for them.

MOST web sites use MySQL as their database - which is for the most part - free.

So Oracle intrinsically hates MySQL as much as Microsoft intrinsically hates Linux.

Get the picture?

I have not even begun to talk about the implications for the Java platform and programming language, nor for Oracle EBS for that matter...

I am going to continue to use NetBeans in favor of JDeveloper for now, but eyes to the horizon for stormy weather ahead. I am just thankful that Java was Open-Sourced in time. Oracle certainly never would have done that. They have not done so with PL/SQL for example...

Oxymoron of the Day

"Self Styled Anarchist"

Is there any other kind? Is there an "authority" that recognizes only the "official" anarchists?

This is a sound byte that is juicy with derision and pre-judgement. It is as if actually labeling someone simply an 'anarchist' somehow legitimizes them. Instead by calling them 'self styled' it equates to calling them an amateur or a 'wanna-be'.

What I find really very interesting about this particular sound-byte is just how thoroughly it has spread and been adopted in general use in the news-service-newspeak.

Just as an experiment, here is a summary of the first page of results from google, using that term:

• PORTUGAL'S KING ASSAULTED.; A Self-Styled Anarchist Throws a Stone at Him and Misses.
• No flagging: Self-styled anarchist collective ‘stays put’
  Anarchist bank robber on trial
• Jonah McGreevy, a self-styled anarchist, wound up in jail for attacking Nationalists and police.
• A Desert Anarchist's Legacy
• MI5's watchdog Kim Howells was an art school anarchist... trailed by the Spooks in his revolutionary student days
• greek anarchists
• Battle Over Gentrification Gets Ugly in S.F.'s Mission - Anarchist arrested, charged with making threats

Time is on My Side

Here's a few choice morsels that I mined from Time today:

• Obama uses applied mass psychology/herd mentality at think-tank behest
• China Wants to stop using the US Dollar for international trading
• How China is Capitalizing on the Economic Crisis
• Why Facebook Is for Old Fogies

The first one I found weird because as true as the research is about large groups of people and I find that the inverse is true on a person to person level. Peer pressure is not a positive source for social change because it reodes personal reponsibility.

In groups people tend to follow the herd. On a singular level, people try to game the system to their individual advantage.

OTOH That last one was just unreal to me. The reasons they listed were some of the Best Reasons I have heard not to use Facebook.

And I do not.

I've Been Upstreamed!

I received a random AIM message today:

CrushedCoho: You know, some guys just can't hold their arsenic.

Apparently there is a thing going on where someone calling themselves "Project Upstream" is running some AIM bots that send a weird message like this to 2 people & then forward their replies to each other.

I imagine that these folks usually end up doing exactly what I did - making some stupid punch-line reply that comes off like another non sequitur and then falling into a pattern of childish accusation of who IM'ed who first.

A quick google search provided Nixie Pixel to explain... and to give me the magic cheat code to unsubscribe for life - Just reply to the IM message stream with:
$optout

This prompts you to verify it - and claims that it will opt you out forever - and that it is not undo-able.

This is probably a very good thing, since to victimize someone with this 'spim' all you need to do is to go here and enter their IM handle. Note that once someone is opted-in in this way - they are not provided with the opt-out code - so Google is a useful ally in this situation...

Now - can I get the 1/2 hour of my life back that I wasted on this non-sense?

Serious Talks & Serious Money. Seriously.

The Rumors look more true every day.