brentashley

Being that I live and work lately in the ‘burbs, I was in downtown Toronto today for the first time in a few months. Lovely day, bright, sunny, 25 degrees (that’s 77 fahrenheit). Did quite a bit of walking around.

I’ve gotten used to being in the relatively unpopulated open spaces outside the downtown core, so am quite content with the solitude of walking or driving there.

Interestingly, it occurred to me that while downtown, surrounded by huge amounts of humanity and activity, my aloneness and solitude wasn’t lessened any. That’s not to say it was depressing at all, just that despite the sense that you’re in a large community, you’re all really islands of solitude milling about without mixing.

Petula Clark seemed to like it.

je voudrais ecrire en français aujourd’hui. je regrette que je n’ai jamais l’opportunité à pratiquer mon français – si on peut être bilangue, je pense qu’on doit essayer (au moins, plus fort que j’essayes).

j’ai recu, cette semaine, un version de mon JSRS faites pour utiliser avec PHP, merci à mes nouveaux amis, Sébastien CRAMATTE et Pierre CAILLEUX, de Boulogne Billancourt, France (leur website). Je vais le mettre sur mon website bientôt.

I’ve just released the latest JSRS with PHP support as provided by Sebastien and Pierre. Cool!

Craig Mundie, Senior VP at Microsoft, spoke about The Commercial Software Model at The New York University Stern School of Business today. Even before the text of the speech was published, Slashdot and others responded with predictable polarized gainsaying.

I’m not going to argue the minutiae of Craig’s speech or the whole Open Source vs Intellectual Property thing. For what it’s worth, I’m more on Microsoft’s side than the OSS side. However, you don’t have to probe the actual issues to derive analysis from this particular Microsoft move.

Here’s the thing:

Let’s say that things are as they are presented. Microsoft believes that their commercial software model will prevail. They believe the OSS community is misguided and will fail miserably if they insist on continuing with their flawed unsustainable business model.

So what the heck is up then with clueing your opponents in to their own folly? This isn’t the Microsoft we know and [insert your preference here]. What kind of poker-face is this? You should be straining to hide your glee that you’ve got a straight flush to their pair of threes, not warning them that now’s the time to discard and regroup!

That is unless you’re bluffing. Unless you suspect there’s an outside chance they might just prove to have a better hand than you.

Now I don’t know which hand is better, but it seems inescapable to me that Microsoft wouldn’t be playing this strategy if they were really confident about their long-term position.

got to talking today about old obscure cartoon characters – Underdog, David and Goliath, Mr. Peabody and Sherman. major cool Brattli code on the Wayback Machine site’s opening page…

ASCAP, give your fucking heads a shake. So I guess if I’m walking down the street and accidentally fart out the chorus to Dylan’s Blowin in the Wind, I’ll have you threatening to sue my ass.

better get some absorbent underwear before you piss yourself listening to this stuff

scottandrew has been thinking aloud about adolescent fiction and it reminded me of one of my favourite books of all time – Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes.

Overlooked by many because of its wretched Hollywood bastardizations, it is fantastic (in the fantasy sense of the word) storytelling of the highest form. Don’t take my word for it – click the link above with all speed and read some of the first chapter. Riveting stuff.

It may surprise you that Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American who had a remarkable life of his own.

Along with the paperback Tarzan books (I think I had at one time the first eight in the series) I have Burne Hogarth’s illustrated Tarzan – a true artistic treasure, absolutely breathtaking.