Never crowd youngsters about their private affairs – sex especially. When they are growing up, they are nerve ends all over, and resent (quite properly) any invasion of their privacy. Oh sure, they’ll make mistakes – but that’s their business, not yours. (You made your own mistakes, did you not?)

—Lazarus Long


Archive for November, 2008

Victory in Iraq Day

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008

It’s Victory in Iraq day today. The good guys – Western civilization, the Coalition of the Willing, the United States, and the people of Iraq – won this war. The bad guys – Saddam Hussein’s regime, al-Qaeda’s jihadis, all their allies and enablers – lost it. The entire world will be a better place [...]

The sound of empire falling

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

I predicted years ago that what would eventually do Microsoft in was white-box PC makers defecting because they needed to claw back profit margin as the Windows license became the largest single item in their bills of material.
And here’s the confirmation I’ve been awaiting: Microsoft Missing Netbook Growth as Linux Wins Sales. The boring [...]

moogly pwns the iPhone!?!

Sunday, November 16th, 2008

I got a chance last night to play with my friend Beth Matuszek’s iPhone, while she played with my G1. I’ve been blogging that I think the G1 is serious competition for the iPhone, but I must say I expected the iPhone to look better than the G1 when Beth and I did [...]

Linux-Hater’s Blog, considered

Friday, November 14th, 2008

One of the advantages of having helped found the open-source movement that I cherish most is that nobody can criticize me when I criticize it. I’m a gadfly by nature, disgusted by cant even (actually, especially!) when it’s my own insights being reflected back at me as dogma. Anyone who actually does that is [...]

Net neutrality: what’s a libertarian to do?

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

One of my commenters asked, rather plaintively:

You mentioned net neutrality. I’ve read about this, and the opposition to it. I’ve read about this, and the opposition to it. As far as I can tell, net neutrality is more supported by liberals/democrats, while the opposition is made up more of conservatives/republicans. But for the life [...]

Why Android matters

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

I’ve posted a couple of times about how kewl I think my Android G1 is. But I’m not jazzed about a mere gadget; the really exciting thing about Android is going to be the second- and third-order effects of the software, and how these tie into Google’s strategic interests and the future of open [...]

Great googly-moogly, the sequel

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

A few posts back, I described my good early experience with the T-Mobile G1, the first Android phone. It’s now two weeks later; I’ve learned the phone thoroughly and developed a stable usage pattern. That makes it a good time for a more considered verdict on the device.

Why “open source” is not mere marketese

Sunday, November 9th, 2008

Every once in a while I hear it alleged that “open source” is just a marketing device for a practice that would be just as well off without it. This is seriously wrong, but it’s a confusion I’m partly to blame for because I have emphasized the marketing utility of the term in the past.

Open Source — Can It Innovate?

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

There’s an argument commonly heard these days that open-source software is all very well for infrastructure or commodity software where the requirements are well-established, but that it can’t really innovate. I laugh when I hear this, because I remember when the common wisdom was exactly the opposite — that we hackers were great [...]

Obama won it

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

The crackup I thought I was seeing in the Obama campaign didn’t happen. I underestimated the ability of the mainstream media to cover for Obama’s weaknesses. We may all have underestimated the effectiveness of ACORN’s vote-fraud machine.
I’m glad we’ve elected a black man president; I’m sorry it’s one who looks quite so much [...]