Rants 'n' Raves: Integrity First
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Readers defend the profit motive, are skeptical of a government subsidized media and remind us that magnets break down.
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I've been saying this ever since I started blogging.  When you have a product to announce, start a blog (if you don't already have one) and announce it. Before there were blogs, I wished Infoworld or PC Week would give space to the lead developer of the product, whether he or she is a marketer or technical, even the CEO if they wouldn't assign a former reporter or ad guy to write it, and tell us what you meant when you designed this product. Who were you thinking of and what would they do with it. And where does it go? What does 2.0 look like if it's 1.0 or 3.0 if it's 2.0.  I like it when people like Zuckerberg, Andreessen or Canter write a blog post that tells you without pulling any punches what the intent of the product is, in their own words. I'd like to hear what they said to the team that worked on it. I'd like to use my imagination. That's why I don't like Steve Jobs' keynotes, he's telling you what Eddie Haskell would say about the product to Mrs. Cleaver. You never get the intent when it's filtered by the press. And many of the people that call themselves bloggers, love them and bless them, aren't anything like bloggers, and they're everything like the bored hired writers that used to work at CNET and Fortune. In fact, many of them are exactly like them (because they are them).  We live in the age of DIY, that means if you have something to say, just say it. PS: Here's a picture of three child actors from Leave It To Beaver, taken when they're in their fifties. From left to right, Eddie Haskell, Beaver and Wally. Time Waits for No One.
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Windows, Linux and Java each fail some basic integrity rules.
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Comment is free: Polly Toynbee: Labour's record on getting people into work is admirable. So why pander to tabloid panics about benefit cheats?
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Is this your first night? You have to fight The regulars among you will have noticed that our cunning comments on stories plan has proved somewhat popular - at least as an arena for fanboy versus windows apologist slugfests, transcendental musings from amanfromMars and poor-quality quippery inevitably resulting in coat&gt;door&gt;taxi.â¦
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Robert Cox wants to bring some professionalism to the blogosphere.
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Opinion Pay up, or your server gets it
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By Pam Firmin, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss.  Jun. 8--PASS CHRISTIAN -- If anybody assumes a contractor's house will be the first one repaired -- or rebuilt, they're likely to be wrong.
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InfoWorld - The Story: What???s in a name? Back in the days of the Gingrich revolution, the nastiest label you could pin on a politician was ???liberal.??? And now that open source has become an essential technology, the quickest way to get a rise out of an open source executive (and to get flamed on dozens of blogs) is to say his or her company is ???commercial.???
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Can you fake authenticity? Probably not, but it might be worth a try if you're running for president at a time when voters think leaders lack integrity.
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I'm a big fan of Richard Stallman and his work â even though, the first time I interviewed him, he proceeded to criticise my questions before answering them, not a journalistic experience I'd had before.  Without his vision and sheer bloody-mindedness in the face of indifference and outright hostility, we would not have the vast array of free software we enjoy today.
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special coverage Court ruling casts pall over software maker's customer bash. Also: How to boost employee morale?
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Comment is free: Madeleine Bunting: The new honesty of community leaders must be matched by a strategy from government that is patient and painstaking.
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Tycho:  We put Monday's strip up early, so you might have seen it already - but you might not be familiar with the EGM interview it is based on, an excerpt of which appears here.  I sometimes worry about appearing partisan in these communiques, but it is not my job to be fair.  I'm not a journalist, I'm a consumer.  I don't buy one product from each company in the interests of some karmic ideal, and I don't need to purge my posts of wrongthink because I haven't produced something suitable for use as a press release.  Sony is grinding down their goodwill with every smug, psychotic interview, and someone needs to tell them so in clear terms.
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There's been a mostly fantastic discussion about fair use in this neighborhood for the last few days.  It started when a photograph of Lane Hartwell's was used in a video spoof of the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire."  The first I heard of this was in a Twitter post of hers where she said she was turning off access to her entire Flickr collection because this picture was used without permission. A series of communications with the people who did the video resulted in the video being taken down. Later Mike Arrington, who is a lawyer, wrote a piece saying she didn't have right on her side, and that the video's use of her picture was probably fair use. I found Mike's piece compelling. Others took offense. It thought it was a useful part of the discussion. I understand Ms Hartwell's point of view. I hate it when people copy a whole post of mine and paste it into theirs. But then I grab bits of images and put them on my blog and people rarely complain. The blogosphere is built on being loose about copyright and fair use.  I'm doing a deal with a content company and all these issues are coming up. We haven't been able to write a contract that covers all the things they want covered and make it possible for me to do what I need to do, and they want my product to work. It's a real mess we're in. Bloggers are supposed to be radicals when it comes to fair use and copyright, but that generalization doesn't work with many creative people. Hartwell's position in some ways is like the RIAA or MPAA, who bloggers often dismiss as clueless. How can we have it both ways? How can some defend her position yet not defend the entertainment industry? There's a lot to discuss here, and a lot of the discussion on the blogs has been informative and respectful. Not all of it, but to an unusually high degree.  So, I am interested in doing an in person "flash conference" on the subject of fair use in a few weeks. I'd say next week if it weren't Christmas. Most conferences are so boring. I want to do a conf on a hot subject when it's still hot in the blogosphere. This may be a good subject for such a quickly organized conference. What do you think of the flash conference idea for this??
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I love these NeoCon vote supression rules.  They're *sooooo* cute!  I have some more:   - If you've ever traveled outside of the US you can't vote.   - If you have a graduate degree you can't vote.   - If you make less than 6 figures you can't vote   - If you can spell Nuclear and pronounce it correctly then you can't vote.   - If you haven't accept Jesus as savior then you can't vote.   - If you've never ordered anything from Bass Pro Shops then you can't vote.  This is fun... if you can think of anymore please add a comment!
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Forget altruism. Think about yourself first.