Steven Den Beste has an interesting article that responds to some of the statements that the German Foreign Minister put out this week. But it got me thinking about how much the world has changed in just the past 50 years. 50 years ago, we expected strategies to play out over decades. Now, we have the German Foreign Minister claiming that the domino strategy in the middle east has failed. Huh? We've only been over there a few months. Germany of all countries should know that it's not wise t...
Chicago Boyz has an article that outlines the continuing problems between the French and the UK. The French perspective seems to be "How can you Brits side with the Americans?" the British view tends to be "How can you not?" British Foreign Minister Jack Straw thinks the problem comes from differing experiences from the second world war. IT was a watershed moment for the French. As the Chicago Boyz blog points out, the French capitulated quite easily. As I'v...
See a video of this desktop in action Why? What's wrong with the default Windows look? That's the question I sometimes get from friends and family. For the life of them, they don't understand why anyone would spend the time, let alone money, to customize Windows. I often get a look of benevolent patronization when I inform them that our software has slightly over 6 million users or that WinCustomize.com gets nearly 2 million unique visitors each month. "Sure you do...sure you do.....
If you think CNN is biased, you should try listening to the BBC. The BBC's partianship is so extreme at times that it just comes across as sloppy journalism. A mere symptom of a disease known as "lack of competition operating on a level playing field." The BBC lacks significant domestic competition and has slowly drifted into being completely out of touch with reality.For example, this morning the news report (i.e. allegedly hard news) talked about the "draconian" changes to American laws "sever...
For the past year I have been blogging about the various things that interest me. If you click on the JoeUser classic link near the top you can see the kinds of things I've talked about over the past year. It's been really fun. But I was distressed by a few things during my blogging: It sometimes felt like blogging is already a clique. A handful of blog sites got all the "glory". Part of my job at Stardock is to analyze the popularity of various websites. So when I applied my techniques ...
I'm wearing my Register shirt as I type this so given I'm already apparently a tool of The Register I might as well go all the way and point you to an article John Lettice there has written about Microsoft's seeming obsession with Linux. Personally I think Linux is crap. At least from a desktop point of view for getting general office productivity done. But as a server, Microsoft needs to worry. I think they have an uphill climb to win the argument that Windows is less expensive than Linu...
A lot of people claim Fox is a tool of the Republican party. But one has to wonder where that comes from. Being a regular FNC viewer, I decided to take a look at the line up and disect its "conservativeness". In a nutshell, FNC is simply a mirror of the other major news organizations. Instead of liberals picking and reading the news, it's conservatives. But unlike the other news organizations, FNC seems more inclined to present both points of view. Take a look and judge for yourself or...
People on the right tend to have an almost blind faith in market capitalism. But people on the left tend to have a blind faith in the government's ability to distribute "Fairness". Nothing shows the perils of fairness more than when you talk about how much different professions pay. After all, what kind of world is it where a basketball player can make $10 million a year while a teacher only makes $30,000 a year? That, on the surface, strikes many people as a reasonable question....
The internet has definitely taken a beating this week. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week the Internet was practically shut down for some people. Particularly Tuesday and Wednesday. The first chart represents how many people are doing stuff on the net. The second two charts represents the lag and packet loss. As you could see, on 9/2 and 9/3 traffic was down yet lag and packet loss were up. That spells doom for dial up users and pain for everyone else as well. I st...
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It must be something in the water. As Right Wing News points out, Johnny Depp, just before the opening of his new movie, "Once Upon a time in Mexico" was in France slamming the United States Would he have us emulate France? Possibly the most cynical self serving country on Earth? These are the guys who wouldn't let their "ally" even fly over their air space during a strike on Libya after Libya's terrorist bombing of a disco frequented by American troops As RWN points out, his remarks will...
The best part about being an entrepreneur is working with really good talented people. They say you can't choose your coworkers but that's the one perk of being an entrepreneur. And over the past few years, we've put together an outstanding team of developers. I don't mean this as an idle boast but we have some of the best people on earth working together. Years ago, in the OS/2 market days, we had put together a pretty good team too. But it all nearly collapsed when the OS/2 market died. ...
The problem with supply-side economics as a theory is that it's too broad. When dealing with tax rates, there are really two completely different tax debates. First, you have the individual tax rate. And secondly, you have the corporate tax rate. Individual tax rates in the United States are too high at the higher levels. But I don't believe that lowering this rate would improve the economy in any noticeable way. Contrary to what Bush thinks, whether the money is in individuals hands or in the h...
Anyone watch Stargate SG1 on the Sci-Fi channel? I am totally addicted to it. Got my Tivo set up to record any time it shows up. If you're not familiar with the show, the premise is that the US government has control of a stargate that allows travel to a multitude of different planets across the galaxy. The government sends teams (SG teams) usually made up of 4 people on missions to these worlds to explore and make contact with other civilizations. But what really makes the show is the ...
I swatted away a yellow jacket at the BBQ while listening to to my friend patiently and firmly explain that the wealthy and companies need to pay more in taxes. I am not sure if the average American has always been as woefully ignorant of how our economy works as they are today. But if so, it's amazing that our country hasn't collapsed economically. We live in a representative democracy of universal adult suffrage. The problem with unqualified voter rights is that those who don't produce ...