September 28, 2001 - Friday

Good Morning. ^^ Hmm... I don't really have anything to talk about. That's a first. ^^ I slept really good, does that count? No? Oh well... Okay, you guys just get on with your lives. I'll post something if, ya know, something interesting happens to me... Yah.

[^e^] - 8:40 AM PDT

All I ask is for management to stop giving a designer designing advice and let him do his job!!! AAAUUUGGGHHH!!!

[^o0Kynger0o^] - 4:02 PM PDT

Is Microsoft a problem, a threat to our future? They certainly aren't a Skynet, but a part of the process by which we lose some rights and privileges. Here's the dilemna: They do so many things right for so many people. They create a decent OS for a decent computing experience. They create good productivity products (Office et al) They create good games and gaming products Their products are, for lack of a competitor, easy to use (easy enough, at least, for most people) Then there are the problems; do they outweight the goods? Can we deal with the negatives without destroying the positives? They have shown a repeated tendency to use their clout, leverage, and monopolies to forcibly gain control in new markets. Internet Explorer, DirectX, and soon the XBox, Passport, Hailstorm, Windows XP, and the new Office XP. They encourage homogeneity and monoculture and cost us, in exchange, things such as Script Kiddies, Code Red, and NIMDA They tend to destroy their competitors and the competition, and leave us with weaker products and a weaker market. On the one hand there's the issue of people trying to live their lives, and don't want to care about the state of computing, much as the issue of people who don't want to worry about the politics that define how they can live their life (See DMCA, Dmitry Skylarov, DeCSS, encryption, Carnivore, DSC1000, and 2600. Hmm, Hello Carnivore! I think I set off a bunch of alarms...) People will settle for Microsoft because PCs are cheaper than Macs. They settle for Microsoft because Microsoft has ensured, through their business tactics, that it is the *only* viable desktop OS on the x86 PC platform. Can you imagine a world where 90% of the people drove around in Ford Escorts because Ford was crafty enough to make the world that way? I think that's the case right now. Most people aren't willing to put enough effort to buck the trend and fight the crowd, and Microsoft took advantage of that. So now I wait, for a world.NET, with subscription software, privilged access, insecure networks, and media rights management...

[^Louis^] - 4:30 PM PDT

September 30, 2001 - Sunday

Went on a beach bonfire camping trip yesterday... and boy, smoke is REALLY hard to get out of things. After my camping trip a few weeks back, it took a whole WEEK for the smell of smoke in my hair to go away. Today, after yesterday's beach outing with E-chan and Nekobox-gumi, I STILL smell like smoke. I wonder how long it'll take for the smell to go away this time. I washed my hair twice too.. bleh. The pains of having long hair =}

[^Young^] - 1:30 PM PDT

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