Blue Sky On Mars

Eric Sink wrote about choosing software platforms in Be Careful Where You Build on MSDN. Eric has written a number of good, practical articles based on his experience at SourceGear. It shows a lot of editorial integrity that this article appears on MSDN, because it provides realistic portrayals of how things stand with Windows (MFC), Windows (.NET), the Mac, Java and Linux. His central theme is absolutely correct: it’s all about the user.

I think 12 Reasons Gay Marriage will Ruin Society does a good job of breaking down the arguments against gay marriage. It even makes banning gay marriage sound downright un-American.

Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and it hasn’t changed at all: women are property, Blacks can’t marry Whites, and divorce is illegal.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer chuckles over Linux woes in the Munich rollout, according to the Toronto Star. Apparently, the rollout is turning out to be more expensive than anticipated (and Ballmer is gloating that the Linux TCO is higher).

I wonder what the specific problems in Munich are. Are they people problems, or software problems or both? If they’re software problems, then hopefully those problems are being addressed as part of Munich’s work, thus paving the way for other municipalities to roll out Linux.

Munich is a bit of a trailblazer here. They may have a higher initial TCO, but over time that should come down. The work done in Munich should reduce the TCO for others (and likewise as those others hit their stumbling blocks). Though that all sounds very communist, in the end it’s all about reducing a cost center.

The headline talks about Google pair make billionaire row, referring to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, each estimated at $1 billion. I found it more interesting to see that JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has become a billionaire. That’s pretty dramatic for someone who writes books to have generated that kind of money in the 21st century.

The EFF has proposed a licensing system for music to replace the existing, starting-to-fail model, in A Better Way Forward: Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing. The RIAA, not surprisingly, dismissed the proposal as too drastic. I agree with many of the comments on the slashdot thread.

The numbers used in the EFF article are unrealistic. They’re assuming that all 60 million file sharers in the US will pay $5 a month, and that the $3 billion taken in is pure profit, compared to the $11 billion in revenue the RIAA members have today. This sure sounds like the EFF doesn’t understand where the RIAA’s money goes. Sure, a chunk of it goes into physical production, distribution and the retailers’ share. But, they also spend chunks of money actually, you know, producing recordings. They also spend money promoting the artists. Occasionally, they’ve been known to give a dollar or two to the artists themselves.

OK, so maybe the target price isn’t $5. I’d certainly pay $10 per month to legally have access to a gigantic catalog of non-DRMed music files. But, getting the RIAA to agree to this seems like it would be next to impossible, because it puts individual artists on the same level in terms of distribution as they are. Control of distribution is a strong competitive advantage, and they wouldn’t want artists and independent labels being in as strong a position. This would be a tough sell.

I’m not ruling out the possibility that a government intervention will be needed here, and I just hope that Congress keeps a balanced perspective when the question comes up.

As an aside: the EFF is a great organization that is well worth supporting, even if this particular plan does not seem quite workable.

Though listed as the “Strangest” products at the Toy Fair, some are quite cool. Like #3, the Blade Racers from Dynatech Action. Those sound nifty. Other things, like Ned’s Head, are indeed strange.

Elmore Leonard provides nice tips to avoid getting in the way of the story in: Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle.

An interesting set of child car seat safety tips, including some things that I wasn’t aware of. The article explains the reason for an infant seat being rear facing, and says that it’s good to leave the infant rear facing as long as possible to avoid spinal injuries.

President Bush has taken the leap and now endorses a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage. As the article points out, amending the Constitution is difficult, so let’s hope that this doesn’t pass and put a black mark on our Constitution. I wonder if some of the gay marriage opponents think that legalized gay marriage will somehow mean that their churches will be forced to marry gay couples. The US government can’t do that… the only marriage-related action the government can take is on a civil basis.

The Guardian Observer reports that a secret Pentagon report tells Bush that climate change will destroy us. It’s scary stuff. This report suggests that within 20 years climate change will cause wars over water and energy shortages and mass migrations from places like Europe that will become less inhabitable. The head-in-the-sand, let’s dig up Alaska attitude will undoubtedly have to stop sometime. I didn’t expect that the harm would reach that point within the next twenty years.

Update: Boing Boing has some good coverage of this topic, including a link to the actual report at Greenpeace’s site. The short of it is that this was one scenario (described as not the most probably scenario) the Pentagon folks were exploring. Additionally, this is not new, as Fortune had an article about this a month ago. So, while climate change is an important topic to consider, discuss and probably take action on, it is not necessarily the imminent threat that the European press portrayed it to be.

I do still stand by my statement that we cannot ignore the effects of our greenhouse gas emissions forever.