The Iron Yuppie

Gates: 'Linux makes interoperability harder' - silicon.com

Everyone on the blogs I tend to read seems to be up in arms about the most recent Executive memo from Bill Gates. There are three things that seem to be pretty interesting to me about it. One, almost no one is reading the memo; people are reading the headlines all over the place that "Linux is not interoperable", which I did not find to be the point of the memo. Two, I've used Linux for a long time, and while there is no question that everything has a text in and text out characteristic, this does not make for interoperability. Interoperable is defined by more than simply parsing text output manually and inputting it somewhere else. And third, the real difference between the open source and proprietary models is the nature and style of the testing. Linux and OSS do minimal testing before releases, compared to the development system inside Microsoft. However, this may not be a bad thing! Because as they are developing the systems, each developer EXPECTS to do so little testing, it is much more common that the connections between the systems are less fragile. Microsoft tests the hell out of their software, but then when a key component is missing (your network latency is way too slow as an example), the software tends to fall down more. In addition to that, the Linux folks can and do cut legacy support much more quickly than the Microsoft folks, which further exacerbates the testing problems. Both sides probably agree to all these facts; the volume of disagreement probably occurs due to the visibility of the positions. Given the fundamental "engineer-ness" of everyone involved, I suspect that if they sat down on both sides of a table they'd probably both agree to 99% of the facts. It's a shame that they don't.

New MSN Maps URL (Querystring) Link APIs

Man it is about time that the MSN Mappoint people got back in the game. I've been wondering when people are going to start getting in the Web API world and, though there have been some tests so far, the article in last month's MIT tech review and this feature really brings to light the coming battle. I was actually going to write a stupid little web app that would let me paste in addresses myself, but this is just great. It not only handles pasting in, but you can write entire apps with mappoint as your backend. Cool!

What this really changes is now, having a million machines and some cool features (data, images, etc) allows you to have a revenue stream. Charge a desktop app for accessing your stuff $0.001 a piece and, presto, you've got a business. ISPs (and google) should be all over this.

Salon.com News | "Disruptive" detainees

I know this is old news, since it comes from last week, but can you imagine the state of despair that you have to be in if your only way of causing a disruption is to commit suicide? I know, I know, they said that the majority of them were not entirely serious, but at least some were. I believe it was the Red Cross commentator on NPR said that the rationale for this is because the prisoners have absolutely no recourse… they have not been formally accused and they have no idea if or when they will get out. Remember in the old days when people had to have charges read against them and lawyers appointed to them? Good times…

Defamer: Paris Steals Paris: Back On Videotape

In this case, I must bow to the king of all snark that is Defamer and quote them directly:

The newsstand owner has videotape of Paris [stealing her video] (oh! the irony is crippling!)

INDEED.

No room for progressives on cable news inaugura ... [Media Matters for America]

As much as I see on the blogsphere, it is posts like this which I think make the most difference. On media matters, the author does a simple data posting on the number of commentators on the inauguration and their leanings. This is the kind of stuff that, when presented correctly as it is here, gives the reader a new take on their environment. As for the coverage "bias", it's a Republican majority in both House and Senate and the White House... I'd guess that it makes some sense to cover it with the people who have the best inside view into what's going to be going on. But to Media Matters, especially well done!

Cover the Terror War as a War via Instapundit.com

Interesting theory on how to make the coverage of the war on terror, in Mr. Hewitt's opinion, more accurate for the American public. My biggest problem with the war on terror is that it is absolutely never ending. That pretty much goes against the idea that it is a war. Wars (WWII is the example that Mr. Hewitt uses) have distinct beginning and endings. In the midst of WWII, you could go to Hitler and ask him to stop fighting and, then, peace. What do you do here? Go to Bin Laden? That doesn’t stop it. There is no end to this.

The real parallel here isn’t war, it is crime. You can try and reduce crime, but because the guy who mugs the individual down on the corner has little overlap with the stock broker trading on inside information, you cannot really associate the two. Not to mention the fact that if you define the problem in this way it makes for much more natural organizations to be created. Global police? Check. Security firms? Check. Root cause analysis? Check. Yes, it’s more pervasive, and, yes, it means that you cannot keep bringing it up as a forcing function (“We had to do this because it’s a war on terror!”) but it makes for much more natural choices about what you are going to invest in and why.

New York Post Online Edition: entertainment

I know this is why I wear glasses. Actually, I'm a bit surprised. I never heard that much about Tara Reid being crazy or party girl or anything until recently, but now everyone is freaking out about her. Being a star is such a pain in the ass. The life is great, you have to admit, but one must constantly walk a fine line. You must be the name on everyone's lips, but not because you're crazy. You have to constantly get your name in the news, but not look like you're trying to get your name in the news. It's absurd! Can you imagine if our daily life was like this?

A: Bill in accounting just put together a phenomenal report, good for him!
B: But did you hear, he just broke up with his girlfriend... I think she was cheating on him.
C: Cheating on him, ha! She caught him going out to strip clubs all weekend.
B: That's it, I'm never reading another report that Bill does.
C: Hey, I'd rather be Bill in Accounting than Sarah in HR. I haven't heard about her in months!

On second thought, maybe real life is like this.

Instapundit.com on Malaria

Instapundit's point is that malaria kills more per year than many tsunamis, yet we fail to spray DDT to solve this problem. I think this kind of thinking is absolutely right (find the biggest problem and solve that, rather than the very serious but extremely sporadic natural disaster), but the persistence of DDT is just too nasty to contemplate. Agreed that we need to solve the malaria problem, but there has got to be a better way. Just because I have the chance of having my car stolen does not mean I should key the shit out of it to deter the thief. We have some of the most specific chemicals ever created for drugs and other medicines. Surely there is SOMETHING we can do with mosquitos and/or malaria that won't stay in the food chain for countless generations.

MSNBC - Disclosure and glass houses

The attached link is a story by Glenn Reynolds (instapundit) which highlights a key problem with news coverage today. I think there are two major problems, both of which impune the news in any number of ways. The first was wonderfully identified by Steven Colbert during an interview on Fresh Air. It breaks down to this: there are a finite number of news items that occur every day (that are widely interesting), and that number has not significantly increased since the number of 20 years ago when there were 3 hours of news on TV (one per major network). Yet now we see 24 hours of news, blogs, etc... and how does the extra data get filled in? Opinion. Which actually leads to the second problem... all opinion is not equal (discussed briefly (warning: ugly self quoting follows) here )! Let me demonstrate:

A: Is the Earth flat?
B: Yes, I don't think there's any question the Earth is flat.
C: Uh, no, the Earth is not flat, you can fly around it, we have pictures of it from space, etc etc
B: Well, that's your opinion. I ask you, look around, do you see the Earth curving anywhere? When you drop a marble on the ground, does it roll away from you?
A: He has some good points, C how do you respond?
C: Just because you can't see it does not mean it's not happening. In fact the marble example you use would not even work because...
B: (Interrupts) So let me get this straight, you have not even SEEN the Earth curve, yet you expect US to believe it? I'm sorry, I need a little more proof than that.
C: I have proof, it's right...
A: (Interrupts) I'm sorry, we're out of time. Thank you both for this important discussion. Later on "365 New Talk Show with Yelling Guy" we discuss, "If the Earth WAS round, how would it affect you?"

And so on.

To the point covered in the original story, my only problem with the different "scandals" when it comes to opinion being funded, or voter fraud, or whatever, is that they are all made to be equivalent. As these debates go on, I hope the main stream media (or whomever is covering the story) at least makes SOME attempt to put the two opinions about a given story in perspective. There are some things that seem pretty clear (disclose where you are getting money from, no matter how much) and others that just muddy the waters (don't blame Armstrong Williams, everybody does it, just look at DailyKos, etc).

TigerHawk

Sometimes, I don't understand what businesses are doing. There are a lot of recent studies that highlighted how simple statistics and modeling allowed businesses to be far more successful (the Oakland A's/Red Sox are two recent examples); I'm curious as to why more organizations are not going through this kind of process. To the point, I saw this same article in Fortune and Tigerhawk captures the essence quite well. G-rated movies make more money, why wouldn't movie studios focus on them?

The commentor on the same page highlights the real problem... is the situation that there are very few G-rated movies so they all get high returns but make up a lower percentage of total returns (thereby indicating the market for G-rated movies are saturated) or is there still room for more? You'd think that this would be what market forces would be perfect at finding out. Unfortunately, with so little flexibility in distribution, we do not have a true market economy for that end of the entertainment industry... yet!