Garrett Fitzgerald’s Blog notes “VFP EULA makes Gripe2Ed. Ed Foster thinks that VFP is a “very worthy write-in candidate” for the position of “worst EULA“.
Well, they say any PR is good PR.
Archive | 2005
We hold these truths to be self-evident…
Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc. point to A Continuing Stain on America’s Honor. Bob Herbert (NY Times): Stories From the Inside. The Bush administration has turned Guantanamo into a place that is devoid of due process and the rule of law. It’s a place where human beings can be imprisoned for life without being charged or tried, without ever seeing a lawyer, and without having their cases reviewed by a court. Congress and the courts should be uprooting this evil practice, but freedom and justice in the United States are on a post-9/11 downhill slide.
Students: what’s so important about free speech, anyway?
Alex Feldstein notes Morons in the News: Students Ignorant of First Amendment. Another story on a subject that never ceases to amaze.
High school students don’t see the trouble with government censorship of news and unpopular ideas…
Half of high school students thought that the government
should be able to censor the news. Only 83% of students
thought people have a right to express unpopular opinions. 75%
thought that flag burning was illegal, and about half thought
that the government could regulate what it thought was
indecent content on the Internet.
Let’s remember these immortal words:
“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”
G.W. Bush, Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000
Truly disturbing trends.
Peterborough MonadLUG meeting cancelled
The National Weather Service maintains a great set of RSS feeds so that you can get any alerts, warnings or advisories in your RSS aggregator. I’ve been watching the incoming snow storm for two days. Just in case you were thinking of visiting the Monadnock group because of the posting I put up here earlier this week:
“Due to the winter storm about to hit our area and some forecasts showing a worst case of up to 20 inches of snow by tomorrow, this month’s Monadnock Linux User Group meeting will be cancelled.”
“We will resume the normal meeting schedule next month, second Thursday of the month. More announcements will follow as we get closer to that date. ”
Guy Pardoe
MonadLUG Coordinator
MonadLUG’s meeting announcement mailing list is having a few problems at the moment, but consider signing up in a few weeks to stay abreast of their activities.
Jeff Gannon, who are you?
Laura and I heard about this on Emily Rooney’s “Beat the Press” edition of Greater Boston last Friday, but the implications are deeply disturbing. Some man, using a pseudonym, was not only posing as a journalist with approval of the White House but (follow the links) was likely not the person he was claiming to be. What is going on in the White House?
Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc. reports:
‘Reporter’ Gannon is Gone. The “Jeff Gannon” saga took an ugly turn. Gannon, you may recall, was the White House “reporter” of questionable bona fides — apparently a Republican operative whose main role was to ask friendly questions of the president and his spokespeople, a countervailing force to what the Bush administration plainly believes is an overwhelmingly liberal White House press corps. (That view of the suck-up brigade is laughable, in my view, given the half-baked, credulous coverage the administration has enjoyed.)
“Various bloggers have been investigating Gannon, and one of them turned up some news that led him to silence himself.”
“Timothy Karr has some details. See also Daniel Conover’s analysis, in which he notes: “It must be clear now that blogs and websites are providing the bulk of significant real-time reporting on MSM matters. Those of us who work in the MSM and care about these issues turn to these “non-official” sources to get the scoop on our industry, and I don’t expect that to change any time soon.”
“Fair enough. But this episode should give people a queasy feeling. The scandal is the administration’s contempt for the public, and the lack of journalistic credibility this person demonstrated, not whatever he was doing on the side.”
MSM = Mainstream Media, for those not up on the latest TLA — Ted
What is the marketplace effect?
InfoWorld: Application development reports “Judge questions impact of Microsoft settlement. WASHINGTON – A U.S. district court judge on Wednesday praised Microsoft for efforts to improve technical documentation for its communications protocols, but questioned the effect in the marketplace of her final judgment in the U.S. government’s antitrust case against the software giant.”
Microsoft kills another word: interoperable joins innovation
Computerworld News reports “Microsoft’s Gates vows ‘interoperable’ software. In a lengthy letter to customers yesterday, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates spelled out a new mission for his company’s software: better interoperability. ”
That’s just silly. Microsoft got into the market interoperating with IBM LAN Manager, then Novell networking. Until Microsoft actually shows they are acting differently, this is just a rehash of “Embrace, Enhance, Extend, Extinguish.” Microsoft is using their marketing machine to kill the meaning of another word, just as they distorted the “right to innovate” to mean “using monopolistic practices to dominate a marketplace and crush competition,” they are trying to redefine “interoperate” to mean “Microsoft can access everything but no one can access them.”
Recently, Microsoft was embroiled in a controversy over the “openness” of their Office XML. (HINT: Don’t bother, go with OpenOffice.org’s soon-to-be-OASIS-standard format. Tools are out there.) The resolution was for Microsoft to issue a new license for their XML that effectively limits others to read and not write the format, and also a poison-pill requirement that software contain a clause specifying the technologies are licensed from Microsoft, a requirement which prevents the formats from being used in GPL software.
It is interesting to note that Microsoft is trying this tactic. Let’s see what happens next.
Fat Tuesday followed by Patch Wednesday
Computerworld News reports Thirteen patches planned in next Microsoft security update. “Microsoft has telegraphed its plans to release 13 security patches as part of its regular monthly security update next Tuesday.”
Details on MS05-04 through -015 include critical patches to prevent remote code execution in Internet Explorer, OLE, COM, the DHTML editing control, the License Logging system, PNG processing, the Windows Shell, Sharepoint, ASP.NET and Microsoft Office. Microsoft Bob appears to be unaffected. It is the seventh week of 2005.
Novell PSA
Novell published this Public Service Announcement [FLASH]
Learn something new every day…
Ed Lawson did a great presentation on CUPS, the Common UNIX Printing System, last night at CentraLUG. Christopher Schmidt did a great job of taking meeting notes when he wasn’t showing us how he programs his cell phone in Python via Bluetooth from his PowerBook. Really. Cool.
The Python SIG also held a session in the hour before the main meeting, and we’ve tentatively agreed on the 3rd Wednesday of the month as the time for the SIG to get together. Location still TBD – we may use the NHTI in Concord, but are also looking at Manchester as a more central location.
Thursday night the Peterborough LUG, also known as MonadLUG, will be holding its first session in a while, coming back from a period of somnolence thanks to their new coordinator, Guy Pardoe. Looking forward to the meeting!