Scripting News

Sun, 23 Mar 2003 01:45:19 GMT

Nick Denton is mapping the invasion of Iraq.

Sun, 23 Mar 2003 02:01:08 GMT

NY Times: "More than 100,000 New Yorkers marched down Broadway today to voice their opposition to the ongoing war against Iraq."

Sun, 23 Mar 2003 01:47:21 GMT

Tonight I went for Cambridge's equivalent of spicy noodles at Mary Chung's, down by MIT on Mass Ave, with Holly and Bob Doyle. We had a wonderful time. Even so, I much prefer the west coast noodles. I'll go back and get some pics of the eastern noodles. This afternoon I took a two-hour walk around Fresh Pond. I'll post pics of that tomorrow.

Sun, 23 Mar 2003 01:39:22 GMT

A reader of my archive sent a question about this piece about baseball and men. It's a nice little story that may explain something about the role of war in our species.

Sat, 22 Mar 2003 21:12:44 GMT

A silver lining to all this war misery. People are getting politically active. If you ever doubted that your vote matters, now all doubt should be gone. Remember that next time you get a chance to say who runs things.

Sat, 22 Mar 2003 12:24:54 GMT

Best feeds for war coverage: AP War News (provided by GoUpstate), BBC World News, NY Times Front Page, International, National, Politics (provided by UserLand).

Sat, 22 Mar 2003 15:18:16 GMT

Cyberjournalist: Weblogs and Diaries from Embedded Journalists.

Sat, 22 Mar 2003 08:11:46 GMT

Joi Ito: "If I stop drinking, I will be able to blog at night and catch Dave Winer when he starts blogging in the morning on the East Coast." Cooool.

Cambridge is cool

Sat, 22 Mar 2003 10:55:14 GMT

One of the cool things about Cambridge is all the interesting people you meet.

I'm renting a house from a professor for two months, and the current tenants don't need the house for the rest of March, so I'm taking over starting today. I went over there yesterday afternoon, not expecting anything in particular, but this being Cambridge, and these being interesting times, a fantastic discussion ensued about weblogs, war, law school, doctors, hearts, more weblogs, the medical school, Mitch Kapor, more weblogs and finally to the reason I think I have a fellowship at Harvard Law School (at least from god's point of view, or Murphy's).

I wrote a follow-up email to my newest of Cambridge friends, a medical doctor. Here's what I said.

We all have to find people to trust in each others' professions. I put my life in the medical professions' hands last year. So did my father. I have a few law students at Harvard helping me out, and I can teach them how to be lawyers, but like all lawyers, they don't listen. ;->

Programmers are no different, but unlike the other professions, we're having trouble even existing. Yet our society runs on computers more and more every day. So let's figure it out. We are weird just like doctors and lawyers. But that doesn't make us bad.

That's why I was glad to see Mitch go back to writing software. He's one of those programmers, like me, who can complete a sentence and give a speech and find an idea that entertains.

Later it occurred to me that our lives are in the hands of the government. No one likes that, I bet even the government people.

BTW, they tell me I'm moving into Mitch's neighborhood. Hi Mitch! What a small world. I swear I didn't plan it this way. ";->"

Ohhhh Microsoft

Sat, 22 Mar 2003 11:09:20 GMT

Mary Jo Foley says that Microsoft is getting ready to woo ISVs. That's nice, but there are two problems.

First, there aren't any ISVs. So if you want to woo them, first you have to help get some going. For that love won't be enough. Think money. People have to eat while they're getting ready to ISV. They need medical insurance, and office space. And need to take a business trip once in a while. There's no money available for software now. Sorry to be the one to tell you this.

Second, they're thinking about it the wrong way. The article says they want to incentivize developers to put new Microsoft technology into their apps. No no no. That tells me they (Microsoft) have a problem, but you don't create new markets that way. This is what Apple was doing while Microsoft was eating their lunch in the late 80s and early 90s. Incentivizing developers to include new toolkits that provide functionality that users don't want. Oh what an awful strategy that was.

Instead, send your scouts into the field to find out what's hot, and back it with all you have. Lay off some of your internal developers, the ones who created the technologies that developers and users don't want, and give the money you were spending on them to developers who already have users who want more. That's how the software industry was meant to work.

Now, of course, Microsoft being the bureaucratic behemoth that it is, will never do this. They don't really exist to give customers what they want, the harsh truth is that they exist to keep employing more Microsoft people. Same problem Apple had. Ask Don Norman about this, I think he understands. Or Roger Heinen. Maybe even Larry Tesler. (Or Jean-Louis Gassee.)