Yearly Archives: 2003

Greg Palast

Books

Saw an interesting speech by Greg Palast today, in which he made a lot of very strong assertions about a number of issues, most notably of the 2000 presidential elections. He is not as much as a wack as I expected him to be going in, but I’m going to reserve further judgment until I read his new book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. I did get to have a brief but informative conversation with him after everything about his time “undercover” with Milton Friedman and situation in Venezuela, which he called the most badly reported story since Vietnam. He seemed like a very nice guy, despite his inflammatory views and writing. Check out some of the articles on his site if you’d like more background.

Because They’re Watching

Meta, Travel

This is just post to let everyone know that you can now browse PhotoMatt securely. The secure site is functionally equivalent except it doesn’t display the Wanderlust code because it will pop an annoying error since it’s loading remotely. It uses a self-signed 1024 bit SSL certificate which will pop up as not being from a trusted authority the first time you visit but if you add it to your trusted certificates (usually just a button click away) it won’t bug you anymore. Why do this? Because I can.

This will appeal to exactly 2 people.

A Little Curly

Web Standards

I’ve finally got it figured out. Put whatever text, html, whatever you want into this and if it breaks click the button. It works with things like the '70s (closing), 5'9" (prime marks), ``this stuff'', multi-paragraph quotes, and pretty much every other situation I could think of. It also doesn’t touch a thing in HTML tags or between code, kbd, or pre tags.

Just a Little Static

Meta

I’ve implemented a very crude caching system on the front page only. Due to increased traffic and my lack of time for a better solution at the moment, the front page will be updated every two minutes. All the other pages will remain as dynamic and random as always. If you don’t see your comment right away don’t worry, it’s there it just isn’t displaying just yet. Update: Nixed it, wasn’t worth it. I’ll just wait ’til Smarty is in the system.

Retiring Microsoft Executive

Microsoft, Open Source

A retiring Microsoft executive said some pretty interesting things in his farewell letter. It sounds like not everyone is oblivious in the Evil Empire.

“Microsoft must survive and prosper by learning from the open-source software movement and by borrowing from and improving its techniques. Open-source software is as large and powerful a wave as the Internet was, and is rapidly accreting into a legitimate alternative to Windows. It can and should be harnessed.” Simply fighting open source through “litigation and proprietary protocols” is a strategy for failure, Stutz said.

“Microsoft is in agreement with much of the position that David has of the future. But Microsoft believes that breakthroughs will come mostly through commercial software companies, like Microsoft,” a company spokeswoman said.

I’m glad she said “like Microsoft” to clear things up, for a moment there I thought she might be talking about Oracle, Sun, or IBM.

Why Houston?

Meta, Travel

It started this morning while on my way to meet with Eli (whose website is almost ready) there were about 30 people on horses at the place where I like to eat breakfast. I thought to myself, “Only in Houston.”

Fast forward to this afternoon as I’m trying to take a “shortcut” on Memorial, but instead I get stuck behind a trail ride going who knows where at 5 miles per hour. Whose bright idea was that?! Let’s put someone on a busy street in rush hour and see how much we can mess things up. Since when were horses even allowed on streets and such? Isn’t traffic bad enough? Bah. This is why people think in Houston we ride horses to school and have cattle. (I’m not making that up.)

It’s Only Right

Meta

Friends don’t let friends do Livejournal. If you or anyone you know wants help setting up a blog, let me know. I’m trying to help as many people I know as possible get online and blogging. It’s the Right Thing to Do. Plus I have this big ’ol dedicated server running at less than 10% capacity.

Reason for War

Economics

While browsing around I stumbled on this post which I think makes some very interesting points in terms of the implications for the dollar. Check it out and my response is below. If it wasn’t on LiveJournal I would trackback, but lacking that:

That’s very thorough. I think you have some excellent points, but I think you dismiss fiat money too quickly. It isn’t backed by nothing, it’s backed by all of the goods and services produced in the US. Those goods and services are currently about a quarter of the world’s total, which is far ahead from the second best, Japan.

People put money in America for the very reasons you stated, and it will stay there for those reasons. Without major changes the euro’s future is not bright because (a) they’re trying to take what was a very smart economic union and turn it into some sort of political union, which anyone familiar with European politics will tell you won’t work and (b) they are currently having problems with their unified monetary policy being an ill fit for all involved. The EU does not have the market transparency and labor flexibility that the US has, and probably never will because of deeply ingrained cultural and language issues.