M$ Talks to a New Generation

I take a lot of pot shots at Steve Ballmer. He is an easy target and there is plenty of material out there to draw from. He recently spoke at Stanford to the Entrepreneur forum. This is perhaps the most eloquently that I have ever heard him speak, so I thought that I would draw attention to it in the spirit of fairness.

I will let you draw your own opinion.

Regardless of how well he comes across - the substance is really what counts. There is enough to take exception to within.

Never Agree to Hold Someone's Jacket...

The Pirate Bay has fallen. It was a spectacular trial with all kinds of interesting arguments thrown back and forth, including Perry Mason-style antics with surprise witnesses and lawyers getting chewed out by the judge for pulling them.

But in the end - the truly miserable part is WHY they all got a year in prison and a fine that maybe three people I have ever met could ever possibly pay :

"responsibility for assistance can strike someone who has only insignificantly assisted in the principal crime"

Prosecutor Håkan Roswall cited in his closing arguments a Supreme Court of Sweden opinion that a person holding the jacket of someone committing battery can be held responsible for the battery. - Wikipedia

This is a very tenuous claim to justify a Scorch the Earth policy of law enforcement. Everyone was found guilty of being an accessory to the 'crime' of copyright infringement. Mind you - there are no charges against anyone for those actual crimes. So it's a lot like buying a case with no iPhone to put in it just so that all of your friends who have them think that you have one too.

Why did I put the word 'crime' in quotes? Because copyright infringement IMHO is something that is more applicable to be dealt with in civil court. Having corporate sponsored raids on internet sharing facilities sounds a LOT like selective enforcement to me.

If I wrote a song and some local band was playing it in a bar - can I call in the cops to raid the place? How about if you plagiarize something that I have written?

What if a record company stole a song that I wrote, had someone else record it & released the album - do I get to call a raid on their CD-duplication factory?

And there it is - ONLY corporations get any kind of justice department backing for their copyright infringements. That is highly suspect and puts the public in a position where the ONLY power that they can claim is by doing something illegal.

It comes down to this - the record companies & movie studios only wanted to sell us their products on round pieces of plastic. So we - the technical people - figured out how to put that on a wire when they refused to consider it. Now that we can do it for free - they want to charge for it. The ONLY value that they can add is that "you're not going to be arrested/sued/fined".

As for stealing from the artists? The distribution companies robbed them blind to get their content to begin with. You can't steal from someone who has been mugged already.

In The News...

Here are just a few weird things of note that I want to rant about but just don't have the time:

• Regarding Enterprise Architecture : Is EA About The Business Or Just IT?
• Regarding the "flat world" being tilted towards India : Infosys chief urges action on ageing
• This tagline is insane "Are you stuck at home afraid to go out because of the swine flu epidemic? Here is something to do while you are there - watch an online seminar...."
• Regarding Asia weathering the US Recession : Asian shares hit seven-month highs
• and this: China's manufacturing sector returns to growth, data show
• Regarding Gartner visibly pushing the concept outsourcing : Gartner Announces Outsourcing & Vendor Management Summit 2009
• And lastly on the US Media being woefully deluded into believing that they have any real comprehension of the history of Taiwan : Taiwan and China Mover Closer to Normal

Trent Reznor vs. Apple

I enjoy music by the band Nine Inch Nails. I downloaded their iPhone app because I have tickets to an upcoming show & using that app is an interesting way to connect with the rest of the tour.

It seems that Apple rejected a recent update to the NIN iPhone application.

I like what Trent has to say about it & his rationale I believe is well thought out. NIN is one of the few bands that does not self-censor in an effort to placate the likes of Wal-Mart. I think that is to be respected. Apple should not be the self-appointed guardian of Moral Culture any more than Bill O'Reilly should be.

I find it interesting that international law forbids the practice of targetting culture. That covers religion, art and charity. For example, the Taliban destruction of ancient Buddhist statues.

So - in my mind - anyone who sets out as a "Culture Warrior" is intentionally thumbing their nose at international law and the tenets of peace. I think that even qualifies as "crimminal".

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.