Scripting News

Tue, 24 Dec 2002 03:14:12 GMT

News.Com: Microsoft ordered to carry Java.

Tue, 24 Dec 2002 01:46:20 GMT

TS Elliot: "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal."

Tue, 24 Dec 2002 05:35:41 GMT

Chris Gulker: "It used to be 'Microsoft steals ideas and crushes companies,' now it's 'Scott McNealy says Microsoft steals ideas and crushes companies.' There's a big difference."

Tue, 24 Dec 2002 05:46:58 GMT

Ernie the Attorney: "Great musicians know that perfection isn't possible, and even though they strive for it, they also strive for something greater, that is more readily attainable: Passion. But, of course, that has nothing to do with copyright law."

Tue, 24 Dec 2002 02:14:09 GMT

An update on my father's health, below.

Tue, 24 Dec 2002 01:55:23 GMT

Yes JD, I do indeed use a news aggregator.

Tue, 24 Dec 2002 03:18:41 GMT

Jon Udell: "The 115 columns I wrote for BYTE.com are now restored to the public Web."

Mon, 23 Dec 2002 17:57:49 GMT

Press release: Yahoo to acquire Inktomi. Clearly they're getting ready to kick Google off their portal.

Mon, 23 Dec 2002 17:59:36 GMT

According to the Register, Microsoft is lining up to buy Macromedia. It's Flash they want.

Mon, 23 Dec 2002 18:35:30 GMT

I have some time to spare this morning, and thought of an interesting thing to do. I'm going to figure out which Creative Commons license should apply to the module I designed last week, and then, following Denise Howell's advice (she's a lawyer) apply it. The first thing I did was run the CC license chooser, it suggested the attribution license. My intent is to let people do anything they want with my module, change it, enhance it, commercialize it, but I want credit for originating it. The next step is to get a bit of HTML code to put on the page. The CC site supplies this code here. I added it to a section at the end of the module. Comments, questions and suggestions are welcome.

Mon, 23 Dec 2002 18:22:47 GMT

Bump: "My brother and I discovered that someone in our parent's neighborhood has a WiFi network that we can connect to." Interesting. I did the same thing, flipped around. I bought a Linksys wireless router for my parents' house in Queens, if the neighbors are clever, they'll find it. Lots of spare bandwidth on the cable modem. The router was only $135 incl tax. It's very fast, and it's nice to be able to write without having to use my father's office upstairs.

Mon, 23 Dec 2002 17:36:10 GMT

Wired: "It's been said that newspapers write the first draft of history, but now there are blogs. These days, online scribes often get the news before it's fit to print."

Mon, 23 Dec 2002 17:33:18 GMT

Sean McGrath: "Do we need a way of representing anti-links?"

Mon, 23 Dec 2002 17:44:00 GMT

Here's a screen shot of the subscriptions page of our desktop aggregator taken on this day two years ago.

Mon, 23 Dec 2002 17:46:17 GMT

On this day five years ago I got new glasses. When I get back to California new glasses should be waiting for me, Murphy-willing. Every five years one should radically alter one's vision. Why not?

Dad update

Tue, 24 Dec 2002 02:05:53 GMT

Today I spent hours and hours at the hospital with my father. His health took a dramatic turn for the worse late last week. It's a long story, one I might write a book about, but I'm sure it wouldn't be the first. It's one of the oldest stories in the world. I have lots of notes that I've been sharing with family and close friends.

In his haze have come some of the sweetest things my father has said in a long time. Yesterday he asked if I wanted to go to the zoo with him. Of course I do. Today he looked at me and asked What's the concept? I said I don't know, I asked him to tell me what the concept is. Yesterday he turned to my mother and said in a loud assertive voice -- Let's get out of here right now. Where would you like to go? To a Chinese restaurant. What would you get? Chinese orange soda.

My father is a PhD and a college professor. A man with a deep and powerful mind. A mind that now is somewhere else.

Some wise person said that our parents teach us so much, and the last thing they teach us is -- and there I have to leave it blank. I don't yet know what the last thing my father will teach me is, but one thing's for certain, even as his health is failing, he is sharing so much with me, and in ways so much more than he has since I was a child. His eyes are a gentle brown. He is a handsome man. Somehow it's been 40 years or more since he let me look into his eyes and study them. Now he welcomes me. His guard used to be so high, now it is all the way down.

It's an honor to be able to return the gift of care he gave me, and if you ever doubt if it's great to be so needed, it is.