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Paul Andrews: "I'd feel more optimistic about R&D at Microsoft if the company could point to a single successful original product to emerge from R&D expenditure."  NY Times: "The stock market fell today as it struggled to hold on to some of Wednesday's stunning gains after two weeks of severe losses." Dow down 5. News.Com: ACLU to put DMCA on Trial. "I don't want to go to jail," said Edelman, who graduated from Harvard in June, and who plans to study law there this fall. "I want to go to law school."  A couple of weeks ago I said I don't understand books about weblogs. Double-click. How do you write about a book about the Web if it isn't on the Web? All you can do is write a very short review, unless you want to try to explain what the book is saying. Well, writing for weblogs doesn't work that way. I want to link to the source so you can read for yourself exactly what they're saying, not my paraphrasing of it. If all I can do is link to a page where you can buy the book, well, okay, I'll do that once or maybe twice, but if it's on the Web, and indexed by search engines, it can come up over and over. So I think the BlogRoots folks did the right thing. Their book will be studied, examined, probed and questioned by the weblog community, as they release chapters on a regular basis over the coming weeks. Will their book sell? We'll find out when it's published. I'll buy a copy to support the idea of books being dual-published on the Web and in print. It's a good idea, in general, but it's essential for books about the Web. Health note. I will not be going to San Diego for the Open Source Convention. Best wishes to the people who are there. It sounds like a great show. The O'Reilly people have been very helpful and understanding. My next public appearance in the industry will be at Seybold, on Sept 11 in San Francisco where I will lead a discussion about web services in the publishing industry. Amazon and Google are confirmed, we're now working on Apple and Microsoft. SJ Merc on the last days of Gene Kan's life. InfoWorld: "Microsoft's Bill Gates kicked off the company's annual Financial Analysts Day here Thursday by announcing the company will boost R&D spending by 20 percent from $4.3 billion in FY 02 to $5.2 billion in FY 03." NY Times: "Microsoft is now locked in competition with small start-up companies that originally pioneered the Web services field." I assume Markoff means UserLand, although we're hardly a startup and I don't see anyone locked in competition with them over web services. Microsoft clearly does not understand what they're used for. With all possible humility, if they want to get going in a productive direction with this stuff, let's reconvene the group that started the work in 1998, and plot out the next steps. No doubt the development and runtime environment that MS has developed in the interim will play a role, but there's more to it, and less, than Microsoft said there is, two years ago. There's a killer demo the reporters and analysts (and users) should be seeing, but aren't. Frank Schaap wrote an evangelical essay about directions for Salon and weblogs. According to results from last night's survey, the stock market has not hit bottom. Hold or sell, say the voters. John Robb says a contrarian would buy on the results of this survey, but that the summer months are not a good bet for a rebound. NY Times: Setting Up a Weblog. Q. How do I set up a Weblog of my own? Note to the Times. A correction. Weblogs.Org is not a UserLand site. It's confusing, perhaps because the site is managed with Radio and uses the default theme for Radio sites, but it is owned by Dan Geiser, one of our customers. It'll be interesting to see how the Times handles this. Weblogs and health  Glenn Reynolds sent me a pointer to Andrea See's quit-smoking weblog. I believe in this. For me, writing this weblog while I'm recuperating is very good therapy. If you've never smoked you might not understand. I'll try to explain. When you're smoking, the cigarettes tell you many lies, including this one: "If you ever stop, you won't be able to do the things you love to do." Well, needless to say, I can write prose without smoking, I've proved that right here on Scripting News. I haven't tried to write code yet without it, but I'm sure I can do that too. Here's another interesting angle. I started smoking when I was a virgin. So until I quit, on 6/14/02, I had never had sex as a non-smoker. I won't go into details, but it's quite a bit better without the cigarettes. Begging for peace I tried a new approach last night with some of the leading flamers and their friends -- an appeal to pity. I begged "Can the flamers take a vacation please. I am recuperating from serious surgery. If you have an ounce of kindness, now would be a good time to deploy it." It's starting to get ridiculous, there is no mail list or discussion group I can participate in without the flamers tracking me down. And they were trying to interfere with the new Salon weblogs project. These guys are real soldiers. I show some weakness, and they attack. Man. Postscript. Two of them, believe it or not, are pushing back on this simple request. Oy. Richard Rybolt: "There will be a time when loud-mouthed, incompetent people seem to be getting the best of you. When that happens, you only have to be patient and wait for them to self destruct. It never fails." |
 
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