DISQUS

THANK YOU. A huge help.

Dear Asus:

For the love of all that is holy, would you PLEASE STOP INTRODUCING NEW EEE MODELS FOR A LITTLE WHILE?

I can barely keep track of which one is which, and I'm a giant geek! How are normal people supposed to deal with it?

The MSI Wind will be available soon, and it looks like it fixes some of the EEE PC's more egregious annoyances (tiny keyboard, non-major distro, etc) for about the same price.

It's not just starting to be tapped out -- it's pretty far along. 90% of the world's big fish are already gone. 80% of the world's fisheries are at risk from overfishing.

I used to work at Oceana, an international advocacy group that's trying to turn things around before it's too late. If you're concerned about this issue, check them out, they have lots of info on how bad the problem is and what can be done to solve it.

As long as we're slagging on McCain, here's my contribution...

Memeorandum, maybe? http://www.memeorandum.com/

And also Newsvine: http://www.newsvine.com/

No, you are missing the point.

Republicans don't say "Democrat Party" to directly sway voters. They do it because it's disrespectful.

The idea is to make your opponent appear weak by doing something disrespectful to him right to his face, and then having him do nothing in return.

When you do this, you send the message that your opponent is weak. If he was strong, he'd stop you from disrespecting him. But he doesn't, so he isn't.

Josh Marshall calls this the "Bitch-slap theory of politics":

One way -- perhaps the best way -- to demonstrate someone's lack of toughness or strength is to attack them and show they are either unwilling or unable to defend themselves -- thus the rough slang I used above. And that I think is a big part of what is happening here. Someone who can't or won't defend themselves certainly isn't someone you can depend upon to defend you.

...and it explains a lot about GOP tactics in the modern era.

"You may think that what Thomas is doing as a CEO is unethical or reprehensible and that's your right to think that way.

But at the same time, that's your opinion."

Well, of course. It's not the law or anything. People are free to do all sorts of stupid things :-)

I'm just trying to explain to Thomas why people might look askance at him when he chooses to follow this path. He's free to take my advice or leave it.

I could no sooner quit talking, thinking, debating about flickr at this point than I could cut off my hand.

Jean-Luc Godard famously observed of movie reviewers that the best way to criticize a movie is to make another movie. I would go a step further and say that, if you want to criticize, you have to choose one approach or the other: if Movie A prompts you to make Movie B, it's disingenuous for you to also write reviews describing how Movie A sucks. In other words, you can either respond with words, or you can respond with actions.

With Zooomr you have decided to "make another movie". That's fine - it's actually laudable. But it also means that you have to let your work speak for itself. Zooomr as a service should stand as an articulate enough refutation of the things you dislike about Flickr. If it isn't, nothing you can write will change that.

"Getty is the most profitable photo site... It’ll be interesting to see how quickly they learn from upstarts like Zooomr and Flickr."

Wait a minute. If Getty is the most profitable photo site, what should they be learning from Zooomr and Flickr? How to make less money?

"there is no such thing as a “dedicated audience” now that there’s blog search engines like Technorati. Write “Amanda” on your blog and many of us will pay attention and try to read something deeper into it."

Huh, I wrote about Amanda on my blog last month ( http://www.jasonlefkowitz.net/blog1archive/2006... ) and I wasn't exactly deluged from attention by A-listers.

Maybe Technorati isn't all it's cracked up to be? ;-)

Gartenberg's quote actually originated with Charles de Gaulle, whose formulation was a little snappier: "The graveyards are full of indispensable men."

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/cha...

I second the recommendation for Navicat -- the Windows and OS X versions are great. The Linux version isn't as nice (it's not a very good port) but if your primary platform isn't Linux it's _very_ cool.

I propose "Web Components". Mostly because I want to hear all the geeks tell each other "You should check out my WC!" ;-)

"Why would IBM be interested in supporting the countless linux distros out there? How are they affiliated with them in anyway?"

Um, IBM will happily sell you support services for Red Hat and Novell/SuSE, both of which they have business alliances with.

http://www-1.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offe...

Nice try, though.

You left off what I would think would be the biggest one:

If I am starting a Web company, why on earth would I want to be dependent on a competitor for critical infrastructure for that business?

Microsoft competes with all these startups. If any of them find a good business model, Microsoft is likely to jump into that market. It's done so a million times before.

Given that, why would you want to put yourself in the position of having this huge potential competitor deciding what your licensing fees are for your critical software? Or, for that matter, having to call them when things go wrong?

Your point #1 ("Linux is free. Ruby on Rails is free. MySQL is free.") gets close to this issue, but not close enough. It's not that Linux, RoR et al are FREE that makes them attractive -- it's that _nobody owns them_. If I'm running a startup based on Linux and Red Hat decides to compete with me, I can switch to Debian or SuSE or Ubuntu. If I'm running a startup based on Windows and MS decides to compete with me, where do I go?