It snowed!

It seems to only come around about every quarter century or so, so we're very lucky to have woken up to a white tableau this morning, even if we're cursing the cold.

The kids of course rushed out to experience their first snow.


Yolande told me later that Kieran had actually prayed for snow a couple of nights ago, so we're now in "careful what you pray for" parental education mode ;)

Patent cold war

The News 24 article on Microsoft's claimed 235 patent infringements within Linux, likened the battle between The Beast and OIN to the cold war. The closing jibe is priceless:

Nobody wants a patent Armageddon on their hands; it would hurt the industry and especially the customers. Microsoft should remember how the real cold war ended, with the victory of the free world and the collapse of the "evil empire".

Silverlight

Scoble chiding Microsft blogger Loke Uie caught my eye and made me take look at Silverlight. Tim Sneath has another entry on the topic.

Don't know enough about it yet, but if the hype is close to reality, it seems to be really interesting and worth some time fiddling.

It comes in two flavors: Windows and Mac. No Linux version, so I don't know how they can claim to be cross platform.

The install size is really the surprise 1.1 MB for the Windows bversion and 3.5MB for the Apple version. Have Microsoft stopped bloating?

Guns and killing

The killing spree at Virginia Tech is most disturbing, as are some of the responses calling for more guns.

I've put down my views on gun control on a comment on Richard's blog entry about the event.

In short, even if you arm yourself and feel safer than if you were unarmed, you'll always be looking over your shoulder, just in case someone gets the drop on you. If you don't, you might as well not have armed yourself in the first place.

People want to feel safe, end of story. They don't want to live in fear for their life, or maintain a permanent state of heightened military alert just to survive.

Update: Just got a call from Yol warning me that there's been gunfire down the road from our house and that it sounded like a war zone. So South Africa joins Israel on that list. Wish I hadn't left the gun in the safe this morning.

Blogosphere manners and politicians

Well, the whole "How to behave in blogosphere" ruckus is still going on, and is getting a bit much.

However I did like Wired's reference to Civility. Go on, follow the Wikipedia link, it's a very interesting read and leads me to another, more local rant.

I think we all understand what is meant by civility, but it's rather important to note that it's an important mechanism regarding governing a democratic populace.

Which makes the irony of Jacob Zuma's recent actions all that more sweet. Now he's not alone, I've personally experienced it a number of times here in Johannesburg. The speed crazed lunatic version (180+km/h) is the most dangerous in my opinion, but that doesn't make their arrogant "get out of my way, I don't care if you have to climb the pavement" cousins any less annoying and threatening.

These "above the law" government officials are a clear indication of where our young democracy is headed. Perhaps they would do well to read the bit about Socrates, and how, even though he disagreed, he remained true to the law and drank the hemlock.

The lesson of Cincinnatus, also referred to in the article, is also relevant and should be noted by our political leaders, but that's a whole other rant.

Google dropped the SOAP!

I missed out on Google's SOAP API. Damn, just as we're getting client side SOAP in R8.

They closed the project in favor of an AJAX API but are still running the server for those already using it, so if anybody has an ID they wouldn't mind donating to me, just to play with, I would really appreciate it :D

This of course means that I will have to find a way to do this using AJAX in the Notes Client, thank goodness Bob's got a new job and will be looking at stuff like this.

Enforced silence

After a week of enforced silence thanks to Telskum's 3 Gig per month cap, I came across Kathy's Death Threat post via Nathan's blog.

Bit of link surfing brought me to another side of the story from Rageboy. RageBoy - HAH! Self-important, bombastic Grandad with a rather lopsided view of life.

Now that personal attack is to illustrate a point, so remember your reaction.

This past Thursday, I was lucky enough to catch Reg Lascaris of TBWA Hunt Lascaris on Classic FM's leadership platform. He had many a useful insight, but one thing stuck and is relevant here, "... always attack the issue and not the person."

If you've bothered to read the links to RageGrandad, you'll see he is all personal attack and no substance. His response to Liz Tay's last questions is the most telling:

1. By his own assertion, he is not in touch with the IT industry. Therefore, in my view, is not in a position to truly criticizes Kathy's work, if at all.
2. He hates Kathy, not her work, ideas or principles. Her personally, and that is just plain twisted.
   

It is far from surprising that he catalyzed the situation and attracted further unsavory characters. Given that he's been around the block so many times, he can hardly feign ignorance, nor even surprise.

So what do we learn out of this? At best another way to identify low quality drivel, even if well written, and filter it out by searching for the issue. At worst, who to "spill" a free (as in speech) beer on the next time you see him ;)

I know this response is a bit late, but hey I'm doing African time here.