Dancin' Fool

The world of exotic dancing (read:strippers) has made a major step in the right direction. The California AFL-CIO and Local 790 of the Service Employees International have come out in favor of the dancers efforts to organize at the Lusty Lady club.

Normally, the union identifies a group that has potential and cause to organize, and offers to help them. In this instance the dancers were planning to organize and took the first step in asking the unions for help. Their contract was signed in early April, and calls have come in from all over the country both to the Exotic Dancers' Union and Local 790 from other dancers wanting to organize. The disparities in pay and the arbitrary rule of club managers led to the organizing efforts, as well as their desire to protect themselves from the almost completely free-reign that customers were allowed in the clubs. The dancers were quite relieved to be recognized, as they have often not been taken seriously by unions.

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Jumbo Go Away

Ah, it's that time again. The Annual Swimsuit Edition of Sports Illustrated has reared it's ugly head and is doing it's usual damage.

Damage? Yes, damage. Of course, there's the obvious arguments between couples when some guy brings home this piece of porn-lite and upsets his significant other. However, this pointless waste of precious natural resources does far more insidious damage than that.

The obvious point, that these swimsuits have absolutely nothing to do with sports and are simply a crass attempt (albeit successful) to squeeze money out of a bunch of guys, usually is tossed aside as "boys will be boys". What about girls? SI's Swimsuit Edition is one of the most blatant offender in damaging women's self esteem. Most women do not look like the emaciated models who adorn the pages of this magazine. The false standard of beauty that the fashion and media industries force-feed women is fully realized in the Swimsuit edition as it is nowhere else. Women are told "This is what men want to see. If you don't look like these women, then you better start worrying." The plethora of psychological problems that women suffer due to this unrealistic and horribly damaging standard can (and does) fill volumes. And men are also victims. They are told "This is what you should like, and if you don't then you're a fag." Men are made to feel inadequate if they don't have a significant other that looks like those models. Further, SI is really a lie. It is porn for people who are afraid to buy porn. Porn for people who won't admit that they get turned on by sexy images. People who are afraid of their own sexuality. People who consider Playboy risqué.

I would argue that Hustler is more respectful of women and does more to promote women's self esteem than SI or Playboy for that matter. Hustler has the decency to print photos of women who are not considered pretty by "conventional" standards. They certainly do have their share of porn stars and strippers, but they also present women who would never be allowed to appear in a Hollywood movie except as an extra. And they present these women as being just as beautiful and sexy as any other women. SI present one homogenous ideal of what a beautiful women is. Between 5'5 and 5'9 underweight, perfect skin, perfect measurements. Most women do not meet this false standard. Even when they deign to show women who are more exotic, they are still as safe and generic and airbrushed as is possible. It is this sort of imagery which causes women to become depressed, anorexic, bulimic, and suicidal. This is why women spend fortunes on face lifts and tummy tucks and diet programs that will never work, because they are told they have to.

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The Deathless Horsie

I hate New Years' Resolutions almost as much as I hate "What's In and What's Out" lists and Top 10 (fill in the blank) of (last year). Any mass media publication that prints a In/Out list is usually off by at least 6 months.

Two fine examples are Newsweek and CNN. Most anyone who knows anything realizes that by the time Newsweek covers a trend it's been dead for at least a year or two (I recall their coverage of the "Breakdancing" phenomenon on the 80's - some 3 years after it was over).

CNN's list of In consists primarily of last years trends such as King of the Hill, Xena, Hanson, Jenny McCarthy (actually, she was hip in 96, not so much in 97), Spice Girls marketing, the Au Pair trial (how is that going to be a trend of 1998 when it was over months ago?), Anastasia (which tanked in the theatres), and Marv Albert (whose career is over). Their Out list includes such things as Simpsons (which is better than it ever was), Beverly Hills 90210 (which hasn't been In for years), Tea Leoni and combover hairdos for bald men (neither of which were ever In), OJ and Johnnie Cochran (who haven't been in the news since 1996), and Bill Gates (again, he has never been In).

I at least have modest respect for critics top 10 lists of music and movies and such, since they simply are proclaiming their personal tastes, and not trying to dictate the taste of the country (and since when has anyone accused CNN or Newsweek or Time or the New York Times of knowing anything about what the average person likes?). However, the critics lists never include anything I like because I have found my tastes in entertainment are vastly different from most critics, and if the critics hate something I'll probably love it, and vice versa. This is actually a fairly safe reference mechanism, as by simply doing the opposite of what the critics suggest I usually do pretty well.

New Year's resolutions strike me as particularly ridiculous. People stand up and (usually very drunkenly) proclaim their self improvement goals for the year, most of which they've shot to hell by the end of the week. If you can keep the resolutions, then you don't need to make them, and if you have to make them you can't keep them. Someone was interviewed on the local news last night (I regret I did not catch his name) and commented "Why do I need new New Year's Resolutions? I still have a bunch from last year I never kept."

A friend of mine came up with a much better concept, he decides upon a personal motto for the new year. For a few years that motto was "People are stupid", which I wholeheartedly agree. This was followed by "There is what is perceived and there is what really happened, and the two are rarely the same." ...

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We're Only In It For The Money

Pity the poor music retailer. The poor national music chains (Sam Goody, Wherehouse, Blockbuster Music, etc) are bemoaning the entrance of yet more competitors in the already voluminous music retailing foray. Places like Wal-Mart and K-Mart are traditional targets of music store complaints, though they have never truly been a threat. The Marts carry a very limited selection of latest hits and a few all-time favorites combined with an odd assortment of cut-out garbage. Anyone wanting more depth or breadth would go to a true music store.

A few years back, Blockbuster Video ("We censor what you rent so you won't be forced to think") decided to go into the music biz in order to supplement their video rental income. This of course is a classic case of a company not understanding the fundamental differences in businesses. There are HUGE margins in video rental, with minimal effort and overhead. Stocking and promoting music is much more complex, and the margins are nowhere's near as large, and the labor costs are much higher. At the same time, Best Buy began expanding with the idea that they would lure customers into the store with ridiculously low CD prices (read: reasonable) in the hopes they could get them to buy more expensive things like appliances, stereos, and computers.

In the midst of all the The Wherehouse became the first major chain to sell used CDs, which led to the major labels suing them and putting pressure on them to stop via withholding of product and promotional goods. The reason for this is that the major labels were about to launch higher price points for standard CDs, on the basis that in other countries people were willing to pay $20 or more for your average CDs, why shouldn't people here? The Wherehouse counter-sued charging price fixing and collusion, and the majors quickly settled out of court and dropped their suit.

The average new release goes for $16-$17 dollars, the music retailer pays between $9 and $10 for it. That does not include volume discounts or promotional deals they get. The music store obviously does have overhead and needs to make a profit. However, charging 70-112% of their cost seems a bit steep. If you went to buy a car and the dealer cost was $18,000 and he was charging $30,000 to $38,000 for it, you'd think it was a rip-off.

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Militia Mania

Ah, the American Militia Movement has once again taken advantage of the fine opportunity to show the world their diplomatic skills and intellectual prowess. And again, the leaders are being sought on various warrants for violating numerous state and federal laws. And we're supposed to take these people seriously?

The Republic of Texas is claiming that Texas was not legally annexed lo those many years ago and therefore was not bound to the laws of the United States of America. If these people know anything at all about history (which they obviously don't) they would realize that by claiming that Texas is not legally a part of the U.S., then they are admitting that it is legally part of Mexico. U.S. citizens living illegally in the Mexican territory now known as Texas declared themselves a sovereign nation in 1836, without the consent of any of the Mexican citizens living there legally. This gives an interesting spin to the argument against illegal aliens.

Once the U.S. backed Texas army forced General Santa Ana to surrender the land, James K Polk initiated proceedings to annex Texas. Texas was legally annexed 150 years ago with the full consent of a majority of the citizens. The militia movement seems intent on discrediting itself at every turn. The leaders spend most of their time being arrested for weapons violations, fraud, robbery, and assorted other mischief. They actively encourage their members to assault local law enforcement and to defraud businesses of all sizes and types.

If these people insist on being foreign countries, let them. But make sure they aren't allowed into our country. Set up border patrol around their "independent nations" and don't let them leave without applying for a visa and going through normal Customs procedures.

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He's So Gay

There has been a good deal of debate in recent months on the subject of "gay marriage". Many, many people get very up in arms over this, and I have had several very heated arguments over it.

What I keep hearing from those who support the rights of gay people to marry is "equal rights" and "legal benefits" and "recognition" and "mutual support". What I hear from those opposed is "morals" and "religion". Now, simple logic dictates that whichever side is capable of presenting concrete, rational, logical reasoning for their position has a superior case. An argument based solely on emotion and the purely subjective concepts of "morals" and "religion" is not defensible. It is an opinion, and though legal decisions are called opinions, they are opinions reached through careful analysis of factual evidence, not opinions based on superstition and emotion.

Law that is based on emotion and superstition inevitably leads to chaos, which is the exact opposite of what law seeks to achieve, by definition. The moral argument against gay marriage is a null argument, as morals are subjective and speculative and cannot be proven in a court of law.I do not believe that churches should be forced to perform marriage ceremonies, as the ceremony has little if anything to do with the legal contract and the church is a religious entity which, through freedom of religion, cannot be forced to condone something which goes against it's rules and regulations (also known as beliefs).

I concede the right of a religious organization to believe what they choose to believe, but I do not allow that they have the power to force that belief on the rest of society (see also my piece on Church and State). Marriage, in the legal sense, is merely a contract. Contract law is considered by "the establishment" to be one of the great achievements of Western society. A marriage is a form of contract, just as a partnership or a corporation is. We sign rental contracts, employment contracts, credit agreement contracts, and so on.

Prohibiting two people from entering into a contract, that they both believe is mutually beneficial, based on their sexual preference is just ludicrous. When two parties enter into a contract of any sort, they have established terms which each of them will meet and they each expect to obtain some benefit from the contract, and they each have some responsibilities under that contract. As long as both parties are ready willing and able to fulfill their part of the contract, and there is no compelling reason (such as anti-trust laws) that the contract should be prohibited, then the legal system should not get involved

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Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot

It is once again the beginning of a new year. The traditional New Year's Hymn that asks "Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot?" may be answered YES if you're a Kennedy.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for anyone moronic enough to play football while skiing! My personal opinion is that he has done the country in general and the Kennedy family in general a great favor by raising the intelligence quotient of both groups by offing himself. The excessive news coverage focused on the Kennedy family problems of the past decades.

Is anyone surprised anymore when a Kennedy is in a sex scandal or dies in some particularly ignominious manner? This family is the poster child for dysfunctional America. The only family member whose death was truly a tragedy was Attorney General Robert Kennedy, as he really was the only one thus far to reach national prominence who was not completely corrupt.

The popular myth of JFK is just that, a myth. His actions from his military duty up to his death show a disturbing lack of concern for anything (including the truth) except his own prestige. News reporters lamented that Michael Kennedy will be remembered primarily for having sex with the fourteen year old babysitter of his children (this is not an allegation, he admitted it publicly). Why shouldn't he be remembered for that? Aside from the embarrassingly silly way that he died it is the only thing of any significance he did in his public life.

I do not question that he was a great father and husband (though being a Kennedy tends to suggest otherwise) as I know nothing of his private life other than his affair with the babysitter. I'm sure he was a wonderful person and a productive member of his community. But the hailing of him as a fallen hero of the (unearned) status of his famous uncle JFK is revolting and shows a complete lack of comprehension of reality.

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Jesus Thinks You're A Jerk

The attempts to impose a Judeo-Christian morality upon this country have been occurring with distressing frequency of late. From banning adult-oriented material on military bases to banning abortion to banning books to banning access to information on safe sex and AIDS prevention, the religious right has been lobbying to have their own personal beliefs and convictions forced upon the rest of America against the will of the majority of the people.

The justification, aside from it being God's will their contention that America was founded on Christian ideals. They cite the Founding Fathers as shining examples of Christian piety. A cursory glance at the factual historical record reveals that our forefathers were no more noble or pious in their thoughts or actions than are the people of today. Many of the men who are considered to be the most influential and important in the creation and shaping of this nation were deists, agnostics, or atheists, and many of them openly ridiculed Christianity or at least actively distanced themselves from the church and its' preachings.

Washington himself once remarked that the United States was "in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine". Another respected philosopher and politician of the day, Thomas Paine, wrote that "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church." Thomas Jefferson was quoted as saying "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks me leg...I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.". The Republicans often turn to Lincoln as a staunch defender of the Christian way, yet Lincoln himself said "The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."

Our founding fathers tended to be skeptical of religion and usually referred to Providence rather than to Christ or God. In 1776, the Continental Congress decreed a day of fasting and prayer to in which they specifically mentioned Jesus Christ, yet Washington intentionally omitted this reference when he repeated the admonition to his troops. Benjamin Franklin is thought to have believed in other gods, and believed strongly in an afterlife. Alexander Hamilton was even his day derided as being opportunistically religious, only using it to lambast his opponents and ignoring it otherwise. Rush Limbaugh has quoted James Madison as directing America to follow the Ten Commandments. No one has yet been able to find the source which Rush got the quote from, and the recognized expert on Madison, John Stagg of the University of Virginia, called the quote "Inconsistent with Madison's other recorded opinions."***

With the primary excuse for such shameless demagoguery removed the truth is that there is no basis in rational thought or historical ...

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Kosovo

Now that there is peace (or at least a cease fire) the pundits are pounding Clinton for NOT using ground forces!?!?! These are the same rich white men (almost none of whom ever spent a day in uniform) who screamed about the possibility of our military possibly experiencing casualties (isn't that part of what the military is ABOUT?).

Now they're complaining because NATO bombed the hell out Kosovo from a safe distance without facing any risks themselves. How do these men (and they're almost all men) live with themselves? Are they completely ignorant of their lack of a spine or any sense of morals? I was opposed to the bombing in principle, I still think it was a mistake, but the pure and unabashed hypocrisy of bashing Clinton because US troops may get killed, and then turning around and bashing him after he's succeeded in his stated goals because NO US troops were killed is simply disgusting. Amazing that no matter what Clinton does he's wrong in their eyes. I'm no fan of the President, but I give him credit for sticking to his word and accomplishing what he said he would. I also find it interesting that even though NATO approved these actions, and several other countries were major participants (the UK played a much larger and more aggressive role than the US) they are never mentioned by the pundits, as though Clinton were in charge and in control of the whole thing. I have to wonder if they are truly as ignorant as they appear or if this is some disingenuous attempt to paint Clinton in a bad light at any cost. And yet we are constantly reminded of the pervasiveness of the "liberal media". It is too laugh.

Once again the world is faced with "ethnic cleansing". Assuming this is true, what is the answer? As a committed leftist, I tend to view violence as an abhorrent solution. When violence is needed, it is usually as a result of poor foresight in dealing with earlier problems. One need only look at World War II for the prime example of this. The Versailles Treaty was a vicious and poorly conceived treaty, that can be clearly seen as a primary cause of every conflict in Europe since. Had the Allied powers been more willing to agree to a reasonable compromise rather than focusing entirely on revenge and punishment, the situation in Germany would not have been ripe for the rise of someone like Hitler.

The forced separation of many different peoples from their traditional homeland (Germans, Czechs. Serbs, etc etc) could only lead to conflict. We've seen it in Croatia, we're seeing it in Kosovo, we saw it fifty years ago in Germany. We will see it again. Super powers have had a tendency through history to carve up land based upon their desire for profit and easy exploitation with no regard for the people who've lived there for centuries. In their truly infantile ...

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School's out forever

George W Bush announced his support for stripping federal funding from poor public schools and giving the money to private schools. Conservatives are overwhelmingly in favor of eliminating public schools completely (and have been for about 100 years), this is simply the latest assault.

One of the announced goals of the "Republican Revolution"(whatever happened to that revolution, anyway?) was to dismantle the Department of Education. The racism is only very poorly hidden under the surface. Bush avoided the now semantically loaded term School Vouchers because they are largely perceived by the public as an attempt by the religious right to get public funds into religious schools (which is an accurate perception), but partially because the Conservative agenda is not just to funnel more money to religious organizations but to completely eliminate public education. They claim choice is the purpose of this.

Affluent white families have always had the choice to send their children to private schools, and most do. However, poor families simply don't have this option. School Vouchers by whatever name and ploy are a racist and religously motivated attempt to force the poor and especially the minority poor into an even worse situation than they are currently in and to make the US a christian-centric country even more than it already is (in spite of a Constitutional requirement for separation of church and state).

In this particular instance, Bush proposed that schools that fare poorly academically (which has been shown time and again to be directly related to underfunding and overcrowding, low per student expenditures, outdated textbooks, lack of teachers, etc) will have their federal funding discontinued. There is an interesting form of logic involved here: You don't have enough money to perform well, so we're going to take some of your money away and give it to rich private schools that don't need it so that wealthy white families have more cash to spend on luxury sport utility vehicles. Oh, and we're going to cancel public transit so get used to walking.

Bush claims that putting $1500 into an escrow fund for each student so that they can go to their school of choice is a nice concept. I have yet to see a private school that costs that little. These are people who save for three months to be able to take the kids to the $1 movie theatre, I don't see them being able to come up with the extra $1000 or more dollars it would take on top of the $1500 to send their kids to elementary school.

Granted the goal of the Conservatives is to have an uneducated pool of workers so that big business can fill the ever increasing number of service position openings that they have to service the families that can afford to send their kids to elementary school. And they acuse liberals of class warfare? Don't make me sick.

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People suck and should be destroyed

With all apologies to Henry Rollins.
Now, there are those who consider me to be a little reclusive, perhaps even anti-social. That's not true. I love to go out and hang out with my friends and so on and so forth. Problem being that I can't stand people. I like them fine individually, but en masse they just bug the hell out of me. Group dynamics tend to bring all members of the group down to the lowest common denominator, which frankly usually isn't all that brilliant. I don't have time for stupid people. I'm a busy guy, I've got things to do. Why would I want to kill several precious hours socializing with someone who is not only ignorant, but is PROUD of the fact that they're ignorant (that's a whole essay in and of itself!). The things I'm most irritated about right now, however, are three phenomenon that are far too common for my taste.

The first is smoking. I know all the addicts out there are going to scream "I have the right to smoke! Fascist!". It's a truly odd world we live in when I am considered a fascist. You have the right to smoke until your right to smoke infringes on my right to not smoke. Just as your right to swing your arms around ends at my nose. Aside from the fact that smoking is about the most disgusting thing a person can do (I'd rather have the guy next to me on the street shooting heroin than smoking).

In the apartment I live in, we can't open our windows no matter how hot it is, because then our apartment fills with smoke. I can be anywhere, on the bus, at a restaurant, at work, anywhere, and I smell smoke. If you smoke you must be aware that it sticks to your clothes and hair and teeth and you smell gross. That's one of the things I really miss about California, is that you can smoke in your own house and that's pretty much it. No smoking in public, no smoking in the workplace, there are even many apartment buildings and condos that do not allow smoking at all. I'm strongly in favor of that. You think I should have to put up with your smoking? How would you feel if I wanted to smoke crack and blow all the smoke in your face?

Next up, we have cel phones. People who talk on cel phones while driving, specifically. I've nearly been killed more times than I care to count by some soccer mom or "busy executive" who is to busy talking to be bothered with little things like red lights or looking before merging. In San Francisco yesterday a woman in an SUV (naturally) rear-ended a police car at 35mph because she was too busy talking on her cel to notice those flashing red and blue lights (he was issuing a ticket at the time). She didn't even apologize, she was ...

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Why I Don't Go To Movies

I don't go to movies. I wait for them on video or cable. I hate movie theaters. Not the buildings themselves, but the creatures that populate them. When I was in high school and college I enjoyed going to movies. But let's be honest, I was going to movies for social reasons, not because of the movies per se (I have seen some of the crappiest movies ever in that context). As an allegedly more mature person I want to actually enjoy the movie now. I can't do that in a movie theater. Two reasons.

Talkers : There are always people talking, often very loudly, which I find highly distracting. I didn't come to hear about your problems (see the bit about People Suck and Should Be Destroyed, last paragraph). My wife and I decided to risk it one Tuesday night a while back and we went to a small out of the way theater to the last showing that night. There were about 5 other people in the whole place. A group of trailer trash were sitting at about the halfway mark and they proceeded to talk through the whole movie, and their baby cried and cried the whole time and they ignored it. If this were a unique event, that would be one thing. I cannot remember ever going to a movie when this sort of thing did not happen. The one exception of course being art-houses, as you don't get people who are looking to see the latest action adventure blockbuster.

Smellers : I don't know what it is. Maybe there's some weird religious cult that only bathes once a year and loves movies. They always sit right in front of me. At an Academy Awards screening (invitation only) we thought "Great, high class crowd in eveningwear, no problem!". How naive. The guy seriously had not had a bath since the Nixon administration. Nice tux, but wow did he reek.

So I don't go to movies. You pay 8 bucks to get in the door, about 20 for a soda and popcorn, and don't even get to really enjoy it. And they get really pissed when you bring your own food. (As Steven Wright said "My argument was that concession stand prices are outrageous. And besides, I haven't had a barbecue in a long time"). I've got a big screen TV, a comfortable couch, and all the soda and popcorn I want for about 3 bucks. Plus I don't have to battle for parking.

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UCITA? No, it was too foggy.

Virginia was the first to pass the UCITA law. A law written by, of, and for the software industry to protect themselves from consumers who were damaged by their products. This law is akin to the auto industry requiring you to agree before purchase that no matter what they did wrong in building your car, it's not their fault and you cannot hold them liable. Poor workmanship? Tough. Missing several major pieces (say the engine, perhaps)? Your problem.

It may come as a bit of a shock that I'm strongly in favor of UCITA. I think it's the best thing that can possibly happen to consumers. Have I suddenly become a Republican? Am I feeling strongly that Dan Quayle is the most misunderstood figure on the political scene? Not at all. I am a realist. Hypothetical: You are the CTO for an up and coming company. It comes time to upgrade a mission critical enterprise application, such as an email server or relational database server. You do some research and buy the top of the line package from some company in the Pacific Northwest. You install it. It wipes out all your data. No problem, you've got a backup (you're no idiot!). Problem: You can't import your data into this version of the product. Your company has ground to a standstill. There is no rollback option, so you will have to completely rebuild your servers and restore them to their previous state. The company has now lost several days of productivity, customers are furious, and your ass is on the line. You contact the company and are offered assistance for a small fee of $30/minute. You demand satisfaction! You paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for this product and it doesn't work! You're not going to pay for tech support as well! The representative politely informs you that they are not liable for anything their product does, under UCITA, and that if you don't want to pay for the support then they hope you have a very nice day and hang up on you. Of course you're going to shell out another several thousand dollars for the support, you don't have a choice.

Given the above situation, what is the likelihood you would ever buy a product from that company again? You talk to your buddy who had essentially the same situation that you had, but he instead opted to migrate to an Open Source solution. It cost only a few thousand dollars, and the few configuration problems he had were resolved for free in a few minutes on the internet by other people who used the same product. He wanted a bit of functionality added and hired a programmer for a month to build it. Everything worked and it was far cheaper.

It will only take one high-profile instance of a company getting screwed by UCITA to drive people en masse to Open Source. And even without that, many more tech-savvy companies are starting to head ...

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Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

I've been opposed to the "split MSFT into an OS company and an Applications company" since the beginning. As an outspoken critic of the Cult of Redmond, why would I be against this solution?

It accomplishes nothing. To honestly believe that the "two separate companies" will change anything is naivete in the extreme. MSFT has a long history of breaking the law and violating settlement agreements with the DOJ. What is one more? They will continue to do what they are doing today.

It simply allows MSFT to dominate the two areas as separate companies rather than as one company. Even positing the theory that they will not collude to exclude all others, they still have the pr machines in place to scare companies into only using their solutions.

Many people have compared this to the breakup of the phone system in the 80's, but I don't think that there is a true comparison there. Bell had an absolute monopoly, whereas MSFT simply has an overwhelming market share. I personally have never been particularly opposed to the way MSFT does business (at least not any more than I'm opposed to the way most companies do business in this country). My complaint is about the quality of their products, specifically their consumer products.

When you look at products such as Windows 9x or Microsoft Office you find huge, unstable, poorly optimized commodities that really are inferior to many of their competitors. MSFT is the IBM of the new millenium. The saying in the 70's and 80's wa "no one ever got fired for buying IBM". MSFT holds that sort of market share. IBM did not have the best product, nor did they have the best prices, but everyone knew who they were. Enter the PC, which IBM missed the boat on big time, and it almost ruined the company. IBM still is struggling to gain any noticeable market share in the desktop market after 10 years. I doubt this will happen to MSFT. They missed the boat on the internet (read Bill's The Road Ahead in which he dismisses the internet entirely) but pulled a 180 damn fast when they finally figured it out. However, they still seem to think it's OK to ship consumer products that are laughable. No one seems to mind too much when they have to upgrade their computer every year just to be able to run the latest monolith from MSFT, and they appear to have become accustomed to their computer crashing a few times each day for no readily apparent or replicatable reason. The backend systems (Windows NT, BackOffice, SQL Server, Exchange, etc) are a little better because IT dept's are less tolerant of such things. Sure people complain, but they put up with it.

People complain to me all the time about how slow their machine is, and they only bought it two years ago, how come it's so slow?

Well, gee, you have a PentiumII 400 with ...

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Men Are Better Than Women

"Women should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. That is the way God intended it to be. Men should be dominant in a relationship, and they should be the breadwinners. Women in business just get all emotional and act like complete bitches."

Amazed as I am to say this, the above did NOT come out of some Focus on the Family propaganda or a book from the 60's. This is what was expressed by a member of the Geek Life forum that I run. A 16 year old kid, in fact. While I'm dismayed that social conservatives still try to push this agenda, I recognize that many of them were raised when that was considered a normal point of view. I am far more bothered that someone younger than me can hold such an ignorant, misogynistic opinion. In the age of easy access to far more information than the average person has ever had, how is it that such basic misconceptions can still survive?

I equate misogyny with any other form of prejudice, the same as I do homophobia. The fear and hatred of something different that you don't understand (and let's be honest, men and women in general don't TRULY understand each other) is something that is archaic, even worse, illogical, in an educated society.

How can this be? Do we blame Hollywood? They are certainly a tempting target, and I think they do deserve a heavy share of the blame in this. While there are notable exceptions, the media in general and Hollywood in particular still treat women as objects, as possessions. Women are still rarely portrayed as being in a position of power, and when they are they are either shown to be bitches or incompetents who are being held in place by others (usually men). In the media, women should be pretty before anything else. They aren't supposed to think, just smile and do what they're told. Is that so different from Leave It To Beaver?

Our schools, sadly do not score much higher than the media when it comes to accurate portrayals of the role of women in history (I will be writing a whole article on our schools shortly...).

The world of fashion encourages us to see women as merely another object, something else for a man to possess. A trophy-wife to show off to the friends and enemies. "Hey, look what I bagged! I'm more of a man than you!" I cannot have any respect for anyone who says any other person as simply an object (well, except maybe marketing people, though they're really more like obstacles than objects).

Any generalization is by definition inaccurate. To claim that all men are better than all women is truly no different than Hitler's claim* that all non Aryan people were inferior to Aryan people, or the contention in the ante-bellum South that blacks were inferior to whites (still present in many parts of the country today, unfortunately). I ...

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AOL: When the Lie's so Big

I had a brief need for an AOL account when I moved, thanks to the usual incompetence of Qworst, who turned off my DSL service a week early. I called this fine evening to cancel said account. As you might expect, the customer service rep I spoke to tried to convince me that I should keep AOL on top of my regular ISP. What approach did he use? He asked if I use email a lot. I naturally replied "Yes". He said "Well, you know that if you use someone other than AOL, when you read your email it automatically writes to your hard drive and you can get a virus that way."

I had neither the time nor the patience to tell him that this was a blatant lie, but I did comment that that all depends on what mail program you use and how you have it configured. I then pointed out that I use Linux and that I wasn't worried about virii anyway. He started to try to convince me that Windows virii will do the same thing on Linux as they do on Windows, but I cut him off and said "in linux, anything that you do execute only has the user-level permissions anyway, so it wouldn't cause any real damage." I give him credit that he realized that I obviously knew he was full of shit and didn't know what the hell he was talking about, and he stopped trying to convince me to stay with AOL.

So, the ISP known as "hackers paradise" is claiming to be the only one that can protect my computer from virii? Gee, and how many security advisories can we find about AOL? Only several hundred (mostly related to AIM and ICQ, so even if AOL isn't your ISP you are extremely vulnerable to hackers if you use either of their instant messaging clients). And oddly enough, no security advisories at all about Yahoo Messenger, Jabber, everybuddy, even MSN Messenger only has about a half dozen (which frankly surprised me).

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Mandrake Linux 8.0

Mandrake released 8.0 of their Linux distribution this past week, and I was lucky enough to find a mirror that wasn't full, so following are my initial thoughts.

Installed on: IBM Thinkpad A20m (pIII-600 version), Penguin Computing Niveus Workstation (Athlon 700, added SB Live Platinum, DVD), homemade AMD k6-2-500 (384M RAM, 15g HD, Soundblaster, Stealth S540, Memorex CDR).

First impression: it doesn't recognize the built in mouse in thinkpad. This is not a good thing for the average user, but since I hate that little pencil eraser thing anyway it doesn't bother me. The optical USB mouse was recognized without incident. Mandrake still has the nicest installer of all, and is definitely something the average user would feel comfortable with. The install recognized and configured my sound card and 3Com PCMCIA NIC with no problem (this is the first time I've had them working without having to recompile the kernel). All components recognized/installed properly on the other two computers.

Mandrake has done a fine job of making their distro reasonably secure on install, allowing the user to select the level of security they want (low, medium, high). I would recommend the medium level, as being nicely secure without hindering useability of the workstation. One thing I'd like to see in more distros is replacing wu-ftpd with proftpd, which they do in order to increase security. I did find it interesting the utilities that are not included by default (nmap, procinfo, traceroute, tcpdump, etc etc) that I had to choose manually. Mandrake also warns before install of possible security issues you expose yourself to by allowing certain services to run on start (http, ftp, mysql, etc) and asks if you REALLY want to start them. It should provide a help link at that stage to give you more details about the security issues, but it is nice nonetheless.

It did recognize my Win2k partition properly (first distro to do so in my experience), and properly set up lilo, whereas I usually have to edit lilo after booting to get access to the Win partition (an argument can be made that it is good that most distros don't play well with Win2k, because it prevents you from booting into an unstable non-secure platform).

The version of Gnome that ships is crippled on my laptop (some keyboard mapping issues. Kinda hard to install an rpm when the r key doesn't work). I've spent much of the weekend playing with Mandrake on several boxes and the keyboard problem with Gnome is consistent across several different computers. I'll have to start trolling newsgroups to figure out what's going on.

I eventually resigned myself to using KDE on the laptop until Ximian updates their install. At least Evolution and Nautilus work. I'm actually pretty impressed with the new KDE, but it's still a little resource intensive for my tastes. I do find it to be a better environment for people migrating from the Windows world, however, so I will be ...

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Dot Bombs

The world is collapsing! The sky is falling! My stock options are worth less than they were yesterday! Imminent Death of the Tech Industry is once again being predicted. As with the semi-regular "Imminent Death of (the internet/usenet/Linux/Open Source/Apple/fill in the blank)" panics, this one is not entirely accurate. There is without question a slowdown in tech hiring and an increase in layoffs. Most of these, but certainly not all, are occuring in the internet sector with a special focus on startups. What is going on and why? This is just one man's opinion, but here you go:

Internet startups are failing because of (pick one or more of the following reasons): No business plan; crap business plans; hiring too many consultants; poor capital management; spending too much money on outsourcing (especially hiring overpriced/underskilled "web integrators" that have been "leading edge web development" companies for at least several months); being run by kids fresh out of college who have shiny new MBA's and no real world experience. These are not the only reasons, but they are undoubtedly the most common.

Non Internet Startups: See above, though usually (not alway) minus the too much money on outsourcing.

Internet Non Startups: Companies that are infrastructure companies or companies that have been around for a long time (Cisco, Verio, UUNet, etc) are facing tough times largely through poor financial forecasting and/or unrealistic investor expectations. Frequently they are still profitable, but aren't growing at the wildly unrealistic rates that greedy Wall Street types want. Yes, there was some phenomenal growth for a year or so, but to expect that to continue is simply naive. Investors/brokers who continue to demand profit growth above 25% are ensuring the continued economic slowdown (which may be their intent, as it drives stock prices down and they can make a killing in the long term).
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Replacing Windows With Linux

I was having a discussion the other day with someone who had kept using as his excuse for not trying Linux the "fact" that there were no non-programmer apps available that were comparable to what Windows has. Personally, I suspect he's one of those people that would be lost without something (Windows, in this case) to complain about and is afraid that if he switched to Linux he wouldn't be able to complain about how his system is always crashing or getting virii etc etc.

A few minutes research turned up the following applications that encompass all that the average computer user (e.g. someone with no programming or IT background at all: there are a lot more of them than there are of us).

• Word processor: Star Office, Open Office, KWord
• Money management: GnuCash, Kapital, Moneydance
• Email client/Contact management: Evolution, KMail
• Web browser: Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, Konqueror, Galeon, and of course Lynx
• Photo/Graphics Editor: Gimp, skencil, inkscape
• spreadsheet program: Star Office, Open Office, KSpread, Gnumeric
• Presentation maker: Star Office, Open Office
• web editor: Bluefish, Quanta
• newsreader: Netscape, Pan, KNode
• ftp client: igloo, gftp
• media player: Real Player, VLC
• mp3 player: There are literally hundreds of these, just check freshmeat/sourceforge. The universal favorite, however, is xmms
• cd ripper: Most MP3 players now include this.
• cd burner: Most distros come with the ubiquitous cdripper command line app, and there are literally hundreds of front-end apps that will help you use it.
• Flowchart app (Visio): Dia, Kivio
• IM clients (AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, icq): Gaim, Yahoo, Jabber
• Development IDE: Komodo, Eclipse, KDE Studio, KDevelop, Black Adder, JBuilder, Kylix, NetBeans
• Sound Recorder: grecord, audacity, protux
• CD player: xmms, cdplayer
• Backup tool: BRU, Arkeia, Amanda.
• Adobe Acrobat: xpdf, Adobe Acrobat
• Access replacement: MySQL, Star Office
• Video conferencing: Gnomemeeting
• Video editing: Cinelerra

There is quite clearly no lack of sufficient applications for Linux. Note that I don't address games because I don't really play games very much, but from what I understand there are plenty of games available for Linux. The two commercial games I play on occasion, Quake and Unreal, both run on Linux and there are dozens and dozens of games that come with most distros (I like pingus and TuxRacer !). Other things to look at in terms of why you would choose to use Linux:

scalability - ability of a system to handle increased workload by adding resources in a predictable manner, or the ability to increase performance nearly linearly as resources are added.

reliability - ability of a system to continuously perform, standard measurement being Mean Time Between Failures

availability - A system that is resistant to a single point ...

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