Category: observations

FT.com | Search | Article

A merger of CNN and ABC’s news operations could produce an unmanageable organisation incapable of reacting quickly enough to events, senior figures on both sides have warned.

Interesting that neither side is all that sanguine about it, at least at the level of where the work gets done (Mr Eisner’s opinion is not as important).

But my favorite snippet was this one:
Earlier this year, ABC sought to replace journalist Ted Koppel’s respected news programme with David Letterman’s comedy show. Ultimately the plan failed when Mr Letterman refused to leave the CBS network. But inside ABC News the effort was seen as an indication that ratings had become more important than news.

Ratings have always been more important than quality on the entertainment side of things (how else do you explain Three’s Company or Married with Children?): why should news be any different?

Local news has been following the “if it bleeds, it leads” model for years: their latest trick is starting the local newscasts at 4:57, to make viewers who tune in at 5 PM think they’ve missed something.

I say scrap network news altogether: when there’s an event, people go to CNN on the air or on the web anyhow: why bother to fund an operation that no one cares about? When was the last time one of the networks broke a story, versus reporting an existing one?

forebrain: Did I miss something? Archives

* What is Mono?

This is a long read, but worth reading as well as following up on the threads (Alan Cox of Linux fame weighs in on it).

The bottom line is that .NET and it’s publicly available counterpart MONO promise language independent programming: code in the language you are most comfortable with or that suits the task and get a portable, OS-agnostic program.

I dunno. It seems like there have to be some hidden compromises in there somewhere.

I thought this was cool enough.

The Paul Wall : Eyeball to Eyeball with Hollywood; California Fine Whine

The Crying Game

Stewart Alsop comes out as a self-confessed California Whiner in his Fortune column, which is fine. He makes some legitimate points about today’s commercial software. What I’m wondering, though, and a question I increasingly ask Microsoft bashers, is simply this: Why live with the software equivalent of hemorrhoids? Have you actually tried an alternative? I remember Stewart’s famous columns announcing his switch from Mac to Windows. What about switching back? Or trying out Linux/open source?

It’s hard not to have to deal with stuff that 95% of the world uses. Bear in mind that their reach expands beyond the products they offer.

Microsoft Memo Examines Linux Threat

Instead of trying to discredit open source software as a viable alternative to Microsoft’s proprietary software, Microsoft should emphasize the costs involved in maintaining open-source software systems, the document said. Saying that open source software has reached “commercial quality,” free software “poses a direct, short-term revenue and platform threat to Microsoft, particularly in the server space,” according to the document posted on the Open Source Initiative Web site (http://www.opensource.org/).

Does the author really mean that Linux et al are as good as MSFT’s offerings or they just willing to say it to steer the argument to this “costs of open source software” argument? Only by comparing equivalent offerings can you compare costs. So what are the costs? If you want to run Linux or FreeBSD unmodified, you need someone to run the various installers and handle administration of the systems: UNIX system administration is pretty well-documented and finding the right mix of seasoning and expertise is not too hard. Same goes for the Leading Brand, up to a point: the skillset is a moving target, in some ways.

If you want to modify or customize your infrastructure, having programmer/hackers on staff becomes a necessity. There are costs associated with that but there are also benefits, in that you can make modifications if you need to. It’s pretty well understood that a UN*X box wil deliver better performance than the Leading Brand, so there’s a hidden savings that you won’t be hearing about. The savings comes partly from the efficiency of the code base over 30 years of work, but also stems from the fine-grained control you get with these systems. You can control individual services in ways other OSes don’t offer, and with very little overhead (read: no GUI). I suppose the “hidden costs” will include some FUD about intellectual property and the risks of using GPL code, but IBM seems to be able to work with it just fine.

And if it really becomes an issue, there’s always the BSD license or just dropping any copyright references altogether.
Continue reading “MSFT looks at Linux: must be Halloween again”

Apple – Education – X for Teachers

Apple wants to provide every K-12 teacher in the United States with a free copy of Mac OS X v10.2. This program is designed to show teachers the stability and manageability of Mac OS X and how it gives them a powerful foundation for integrating technology into their classrooms.

Shame it won’t run on the 36 new Dell Celerons my son’s school just took delivery of . . . . . I wonder how the eMac compares with whatever’s in those boxes.

The Seattle Times: Northwest Weekend: First Thursday: When gallery hoppers take to the streets

One piece, Paul Davies’ “Help the President Decide,” shows a smiling President Bush alongside two lights: one labeled “war,” the other “peace.” Viewers are invited to push a button and cast their vote for war or peace, but no matter how they vote, the war light goes on.

The Miami Herald | 11/01/2002 | Today’s hawks conveniently avoided combat

“It might be interesting to wonder why all the generals see it the same way, and all those that never fired a shot in anger and are really hellbent to go to war see it a different way.”

— Gen. Anthony Zinni

The Doc Searls Weblog : Tuesday, November 5, 2002

Cause your own effects
Got an email from a reader this morning � another polymath with a polyspecialized background, now sidetracked at midlife without any obvious career track. He wanted advice.
I wrote back: Start a blog.
I’ve been giving that advice for quite awhile now. A lot of people on the blogroll to the right are there because they took start-a-blog advice. This very blog was started at Dave’s insistence (advice wasn’t working, so he cranked it up a notch), back in October ’99.
Anyway, I was responding to this guy’s request by email when I decided to cut the last line and paste it over here. You can be the pinball or you can be the pinball machine. With a blog you can create your own machine.

TCS: Tech – Paper Ballots

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the paper ballot: An idea whose time has come again.

open source tithing

Stolen from John
How much time should one contribute toward the development of the open source software they use? The concept of tithing comes to mind. Just contribute 5 or 10 percent of the time that you use open source software (OSS).

Example: Suppose you use OSS every day, all day, to do your work. Now say you work 40 hours a week (stop laughing!). Maybe only half of that time is on the computer (whatever). So we’ve got 20 hours a week of usage. Just an hour or two a week meets your quota. While that doesn’t sound like much, there are a lot of users out there. Multiply!

Two hours a week proofreading or updating documentation, doing some performance tuning and sharing your findings, whatever. Remember, you don’t have to be a coder to help The Cause.