Disqus - Latest Comments for Rowans

Re: The Grand Compromise - Atlantic Mobile

Rowan — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 11:55:12 -0000

In a game of chicken, the craziest guy wins.

Re: 'Mr. Sheen And Detroit Proved To Be A Disastrous Match ...' - Ta-Nehisi Coates - Culture - The Atlantic

Rowan — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 09:19:08 -0000

Yeah the fact that he thought it was a good idea in the first place just highlights that he's not in a very good place right now -- although, maybe he's always been like this. What has Twitter unleashed?

Re: 'Mr. Sheen And Detroit Proved To Be A Disastrous Match ...' - Ta-Nehisi Coates - Culture - The Atlantic

Rowan — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 09:10:26 -0000

Actually his subsequent show in Chicago appears to have been a smashing success. They re-jigged the show and turned it into more of an interview (someone actually interviewed him). Seems like that kept the crazy train on the tracks and made for a more enjoyable evening. Go figure.

http://www.montrealgazette....

Re: What Happens Then? - Ta-Nehisi Coates - National - The Atlantic

Rowan — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:19:12 -0000

I think that we were committed to removing Gaddafi from day one since no countries backed Gaddafi over the rebels and that will not have gone unnoticed by Gaddafi. The moment you side with the people (even if it is only verbally) over the mad dictator then the die has been cast.

Re: What Happens Then? - Ta-Nehisi Coates - National - The Atlantic

Rowan — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:14:27 -0000

Well put. I think if Iraq had not happened then many of the people in this discussion thread would be more aligned with your analysis.

Re: What Happens Then? - Ta-Nehisi Coates - National - The Atlantic

Rowan — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:06:59 -0000

So do you object to the action taken against Libya or do you just object to the fact that Congress hasn't officially consented to it yet? If you object to the action taken against Libya pure and simple, then in what situation would you support the US taking part in a UN approved intervention in another country from the air?

Re: same old same old, I think it's easy to learn the wrong lessons from Iraq. Same old same old would be willfully using dodgy intelligence to manufacture a reason to invade another country. As far as I can see, that hasn't happened here. The UN/Nato forces are intervening to stop a very real atrocity in progress. That is not same old same old.

Re: What Happens Then? - Ta-Nehisi Coates - National - The Atlantic

Rowan — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:50:21 -0000

I don't think Gaddafi is the type of person that you should assume the best of. His track record isn't pretty. Lets look at the "Violence and political activities around the world" section of his Wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

So if we were talking about a leader who had a clean slate internationally, who had never actively supported terrorism against other states, then I would agree with you, but that's not what the world is dealing with. Gaddafi has promoted, financed and *ordered* terrorist attacks against foreign states.

Gaddafi was only contained in so much as the world was willing to turn a blind eye to his past atrocities so long as he didn't commit any more, but the world cannot honestly deal with him now if he massacres his own people.

Gaddafi will be isolated again and will return to his old ways. I don't like it, you don't like it, but just because we don't like it, it doesn't mean that it isn't a very real situation that our political leaders have to have the courage to deal with (and face the consequences when us keyboard pacifists object).

Re: What Happens Then? - Ta-Nehisi Coates - National - The Atlantic

Rowan — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:31:52 -0000

This isn't just about civilians. Libya isn't in the same league as Côte d'Ivoire, Sudan and Somalia. Sudan, for example, is only a "country" because we must label everything. There is not one clear leader with absolute power against whom the people are rebelling. What's more, they don't have a leader who has financed terrorist attacks against western countries. Ditto with Somalia, etc.

Libya on the other hand... Gaddafi has been sponsoring terrorism for decades. It's only in the past decade where he has been brought back into the fold, but no doubt the UN Security Council members realized that this revolution, if he survived, was going to place him outside the fold again and he would cause very serious trouble for his people and for peoples around the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Re: What Happens Then? - Ta-Nehisi Coates - National - The Atlantic

Rowan — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:17:20 -0000

I think perhaps everyone needs to read up a little on Gaddafi's history at Wikipedia... after reading it you'll have a better understanding of why they're acting against Libya but did not against Sudan, Ivory Coast, etc. Long story short: he's highly unpredictable and very dangerous, with the wealth required to put his crazy thoughts into action.

The Coalition left it as long as they possibly could before acting because they were hoping that their intervention wouldn't be required. If they had have waited even 2-3 more days then the rebellion would have been crushed in a bloody massacre and Gaddafi would have been given the chance to completely re-consolidate his power -- after which he would have sort revenge (by way of supporting terrorism presumably, something that he has done in the past) against any country that supported the rebels.

Simply put if the UN forces intervene now and provide air support to the rebels then it reduces the chances that Gaddafi will be given the chance to massacre his own people and sponsor terrorist attacks against other countries in the future. It also reduces the chances of a full-blown ground war being required later if, for example, Gaddafi supported terrorists are able to inflict serious damage against a foreign country.

Finally, if Obama took this to Congress then it would be inarguably "America's War", but as it currently is, the US is part of a Coalition supported by the UN. It is the "worlds" intervention against Libya -- it is not the US acting alone.

Re: PETA Super Bowl Ad Banned. Forgive me if I don’t get upset

Rowan — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:06:28 -0000

It was just banned because it's a bad ad. Studies show?? The intro to a terrible infomercial.

Re: The total unadulterated idiocy of building software businesses on the shell of Web 2.0

Rowan — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 11:47:25 -0000

Re: stats, I've no idea. It would be very interesting research for someone to do though.

Re: blogging -- there's blogging about your personal life (which I hazard a guess and say doesn't help you you get a job) and then there's blogging about the field in which you work. If you're know your stuff, and you're a good writer, then writing a blog on your area of expertise sure isn't going to hurt your job prospects. I don't know if it would result directly in you getting a job, but it might help you stand out from the crowd.

Of course the catch is that if you're going to put yourself out there in that way by showing your blog or mashups to a potential employee, then you'd want to be damn sure that it's quality and is going to reflect well on you.

Back to the topic of the post -- I think all of these "web 2.0" mashups are the result of a couple of things.

* Business isn't ready: business is slowly transitioning from the desktop to the web, but the technology and programmers are about 5 years ahead of the curve. Businesses aren't ready to give up their desktop environments entirely yet, but developers don't want to invest their time and effort into a platform (the desktop) that they believe is on the way out. So they develop widgets and applications for social networks until businesses catch up (and VC's start to realize that not everyone web startup can be monetized like Google).

* The web is the wild west: is there anything particularly remarkable about Twitter, YouTube or Facebook? No, not really, but kind of like gold prospecting in the wild west, they were lucky enough to land in the right place at the right time. They hit the jackpot. They aren't Microsoft, Google or Apple, they haven't revolutionized anything, they just got lucky (yeah I know, I'm totally over-simplifying it).

These widgets, gadgets and platform applications aren't going anywhere, but they get far more attention (and VC money) than they should, given that they don't have a business model outside of advertising -- and btw, who is going to pay for advertising when everything is free?

Re: The total unadulterated idiocy of building software businesses on the shell of Web 2.0

Rowan — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 10:30:21 -0000

Snark or no snark, Mark's right. It's a hobby, not a career (for the majority of us anyway).

Re: Online Inauguration Video Fail

Rowan — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:33:08 -0000

I watched it through the Hulu feed (embedded within the inquisitr) with hardly any problems (i.e. no lag, just the occasional glitch that fixed it self after a second or two). I guess the difference is that I'm using a genuine high speed Internet connection in Europe and your using a not so genuinely high speed Internet connection in Australia. ;-)

Re: OMFG! Joe the Plumber heading to Gaza as a war correspondent

Rowan — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:44:20 -0000

2012 prediction: Sarah Palin will be the Republicans nominee and Joe The Plumber will be her running mate. What a team!

Re: Microsoft Fail

Rowan — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:24:23 -0000

Btw, do you think Apple should open-source Mac OSX?

Re: Microsoft Fail

Rowan — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:22:02 -0000

Yeah, it was a fail, but who cares. I've got Windows 7 now and it's pretty good. A lot of the people who bag Vista genuinely want Microsoft to release a solid operating system in 2010. If for no other reason than to shut the mactards up.

As for open-sourcing, now that would be an epic fail (anyone can provide support, updates, patches if it is open source -- what is in it for Microsoft?). Why throw away a business model that is actually making money, when it isn't evident yet that the Facebook/Twitter business model is actually going to bare fruit? I.e. how are they going to make money outside of advertising -- they are not Google. Somewhere, someplace, someone has to actually sell something (for which they get cold hard cash in return) so that they can go and spend some of that money on advertising on social-networking sites that don't yet have a business model that can sustain them without the help of VC's.

Microsoft won't make the same mistakes with Windows 7, it is going to be a solid operating system, and all those epic fails that were associated with Vista are going to be replaced with comeback kid headlines.

It's a cycle. Apple will release a shitty product sometime soon and everyone will be talking about the end of Apple's golden era. Just wait and see...

Re: Angelina Jolie Does a Pamela Anderson, and by that I mean Look Ugly

Rowan — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:00:22 -0000

Looks more like Madonna here..

Re: English Scientests Claim Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Will Cause New Ice Age

Rowan — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:02:24 -0000

Which is why climate change is a far more appropriate term for any human engineered change in weather patterns than global warming. We can only hypothesize as to what might happen in the future because of excessive amounts of unnatural (i.e. caused by human action rather than a natural cycle in the earths ecosystem) CO2 in the atmosphere. It might warm, it might cool or it might stay the same. Either way, the risk is concerning.

Re: Is there a global left wing conspiracy to kill the Internet?

Rowan — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 04:06:24 -0000

Oh you're just asking for some drive-by flaming aren't you... ;-)

Left/middle/right doesn't have anything to do with it. Have you forgotten about Net Alert already? Your man Johnny didn't mind a bit of net censorship himself. And the Tories in the UK would have gotten their hands dirty by now if they had have been in power at any stage in the past 10+ years.

As for Bush, well he's probably already instituted a net censorship program -- except it would have been a secret program initiated by executive decree in the interests of national security -- so websites will just disappear, never to be heard of again... what's that smell? Whiffs of a right wing conspiracy? ;-)

No, but seriously, net censorship of the kind that you described in the article is a horrible idea. It won't work and it'll just drive the illegal elements further underground, making them even harder to catch.

Unfortunately though, I tend to think that net censorship is inevitable as more of our commerce and lives move online -- the best we can do is put it off for a few more years.

Re: Jennifer Aniston: Naked and Heavily Photoshopped for GQ

Rowan — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:54:14 -0000

Wha?? You think Keira Knightley is better than Jennifer Anniston??

What the...

Re: HowObamaGotElected.com

Rowan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:09:49 -0000

They'll blame anything that moves at this stage -- but to be fair, rightly or wrongly, quite a few people were unhappy that Bush got elected as well. The election is over, so now we just sit back for the next four years and see if it was right or wrong decision (but hey, at least let give the guy a chance to actually do something before you call him a dud).

Oh by the way, that Zogby poll -- yeah, not so great.

http://www.fivethirtyeight....

Re: Will.i.am is back with It’s A New Day

Rowan — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 06:01:10 -0000

Cool. I had put off listening to these song because I thought it would be too cheesy, but hey it was pretty good considering how bad it could have been.

Re: Google bids goodbye to Yahoo

Rowan — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 11:45:53 -0000

Sucks to be Yahoo. The Microsoft deal is looking pretty good right now ain't it. Shareholders must be pissed.

Re: FriendFeed and Politics

Rowan — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 07:56:01 -0000

"And remember, the truth is sometimes in the middle."

Amen.

I try not to take much notice of anyone who leans too far to the left or the right, because it's an indication that they have stopped listening to any opposing arguments; that they no longer have any doubt about their beliefs -- and that's dangerous territory.

Re: America! Fuck No!

Rowan — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 06:27:11 -0000

I think the homeless people issue is a good point. I, too, find it quite disturbing when I visit an American city and am confronted with a huge number of homeless people. There is, of course, homeless people in Australia, but the number doesn't really compare at all.

I've also spent time living in Swedish cities and nearly had a heart attack one day when I saw a beggar. A beggar? In Sweden? Extremely unusual. Yes, yes, I know, bloody socialists.

@scott, yes of course there is racism in Australia, but that's not the reason why he'd struggle to get elected. He'd struggle to get elected because we don't really do speeches -- it's a bit too showy and big-headed for our liking.