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Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.
 
Permanent link to archive for Saturday, July 20, 2002. Saturday, July 20, 2002

A picture named steveAndFriend.gifPapa Doc: "What KPIG deserves from the RIAA is a fucking award, not a knife in the heart." Doc, this is why the stock market is tanking. Common sense is not part of how our businesses work. Clearly KPIG was pushing the envelope, honorably, into a new channel for distribution of music. The music industry, run by a bunch of people who probably understand music about as well as Steve Case and his little buddy do, stuff a cork up the ass of the distribution channel, and then complain about all the shit that's splattered all over the place. That there's demand for music delivered over the Internet is totally obvious. For the 18th time in eight years, we're waiting for the idiots to get out of the way and let the goddam business develop.  

NY Times: "If consumers shut their wallets, hope for an economic recovery goes out the window." 

Steve Outing wrote a very deep article about weblogs and professional journalism. 

A great parody of Apple's TV ads. "My dad used to beat me with his PC." 

Rush Limbaugh says Apple makes a great product but that Steve Jobs has his head up his butt. Hey when Rush says you're stupid, that sounds like a compliment to me.  

Dvorak: "The retraction in corporate confidence began shortly after the dot-com bust, which left the industry filled with marketing people who know nothing about marketing or even selling." 

Paolo: "SharedOutline is a Radio UserLand tool that lets you share outlines with other users." 

NY Times editorial: "Before anyone gets too excited about the restoration of Time Warner culture, it is worth remembering that it was Time Warner management that blundered into the AOL deal in the first place." 

John Robb: "The gain in homes over the next decade will make your head spin." 

On this day three years ago: "The Bees are back. Every year I write about them when they reappear. Every year they teach a different lesson." 

Palladium briefing 

Background: #1, #2, #3, #4.

I got a briefing yesterday from some Microsoft people on Palladium. It was an interesting but depressing meeting. They're putting a lot of effort into something that no one I know wants. There are few if any developers to validate the idea. Any developer with a mind is going to stay out of Microsoft's program, remembering this is the company that cuts off the air supply of its successful developers. This is a tragedy, because MS is a PR-conscious company, that at its core probably wants developers, but in the heat of their war with Netscape and Sun, and then the DOJ, forgot their mission and lost their way. Now the software business is a wrecked landscape. They're producing products as if it were not. That won't work.

Net-net, if you want developers, you have to work really hard over a long time to get some trust so there can be some triangulation on your ideas. As it stands, there's no way to know if the claims MS makes are credible. Absent any way to know, I'm going to assume the worst. Unfortunately, based on the history of the last ten years, that's the only reasonable assumption one can make about Microsoft.

DaveNet and Scripting News 

If there was ever any doubt that there's a diff betw DN and SN, as of now, that's erased.

Yesterday, I wrote very briefly, about my medical situation, and smoking cessation, in a DaveNet piece. A huge amount of concerned, and very sweet, email is coming back. Now, that's not a difference, the people who read Scripting News have been fucking wonderful in their support and encouragement, but it's a different quality. People who are in the DaveNet loop tend to be older, and have known me longer, sometimes much longer. It seems the DaveNet people are more concerned. I want to tell them I've already been through the worst of it. But then again, from their point of view, as non-daily Dave-readers, they're going through the worst part right now. Who am I to deprive them of their shock, grief and whatever else they're experiencing.

As I wrote a few days ago, to SN readers, my sudden absence was very much like a sudden death. To the extent that readers project a familial relationship (inevitable, we're all human) the feeling of loss is immediate. You can see the same thing in the thread on Queso. Everyone processes grief in a different way. Some people rally, putting the past behind them and others hold on. I have a theory that if you go through a challenging medical situation in your family, you're better prepared for such situations outside your family. I've certainly seen that both in my family and among my friends, both online and in meatspace. To the people who are still troubled, let it go -- I'm going to be okay, but different. I wrote about this in Programmers, in May 1997. Here are a couple of quotes.

1. "This is not one of your ancestors (unless it actually is) and they are not behaving just like someone you know very well."

2. "Just when you think you know someone, they change."

Those are keys to consciousness, imho. In reality, this thing you experience as a "person" is actually just a series of zeros and ones traveling over an HTTP connection. That's point one. And it's even worse than it appears, because this virtual person is changing all the time. "Wheeee," I used to say, but don't anymore.

I'm doing everything I can to feel better, and live a long time.

Maybe it'll work maybe it won't.

PS: People give me shit for editing my copy on my weblog. Well, you try taking the risks I do on yours and see if you don't want to tweak it up every once in a while.

     

Last update: Saturday, July 20, 2002 at 2:38 PM Eastern.

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