BillSaysThis

On the one hand we have a monster like Mike Tyson. On the other, a shy, retiring (but less so all the time, more power to him) guy like Noah Grey. Never would they occur together in a single thought except that while surfing this morning to Jim McCormick’s article about Tyson and his absurd rant to a sportswriter I saw a comment posted by Noah. For someone who has barely left his room in years, until quite recently, Noah has empowered thousands of folks to find their own public voices using his GreyMatter content management system at no cost.

Ed Yourdan is a respected thinker on the process of software development and has been for several decades. His company Yourdan, Inc. practically launched the software methodology business and most of the bright shining stars back in the ’70s. However there are some people who wouldn’t mind seeing him shut up, I guess, and those folks will find amusement by looking at his weblog in this way (click here and after the page loads hit your home key). Note that this may only work in Internet Explorer. By the way, I like Ed, always have.

The Wayback Machine is a very cool effort to essentially archive every bit of information possessed by the human race, starting with anything that’s ever been published on the web. In an interview with project head Brewster Kahle, we find out that they have over 100 terabytes of information already stored (which is five times the Library of Congress) and have written their own operating system overlay (called P2) that trivializes the effort required for writing parallel processing applications. Some very ambitious goals and very useful insights into tech in this interview. The non-profit project has also moved on to start archiving movies and cooperate with other researchers too. One of the neat things about the Wayback Machine is that you can get at old versions of a specific page, such as my homepage as it was on May 19, 2001–damn was it ugly!

Happy Birthday Byron

Tonight we had the third meeting of the Weblogger Interest Group here in Mountain View, first at Dana St. Roasting Company (thanks, Nick) and then over beers at the Tied House. About 20 people turned out and we had a nice discussion about personal versus professional conflict in what one writes in a weblog. While I don’t work just now, I am aware that future employers or clients may come and look at the archives. Good thing I don’t say fuck a lot. Or shit.

The big event tonight was a demo of the new Blogger Pro from Pyra Labs (aka Ev Williams), which is launching this week. I was definitely impressed with what I saw and will be coughing up the $35 as soon as he opens the PayPal door. Some of my favorite of the new features were draft/publish to the future posts (that is, write something now but hold off publishing until I say so or until some specific time), titles for posts, use of lightly loaded servers, publish to email, and (coming soon, not in the first release) RSS generation. Amusingly, I did not notice a new Blogger Pro icon but hopefully this will be remedied quickly.

Not surprisingly after claiming he would not be outbid, Jim Irsay is a happy man today after Dungy accepted his offer to coach Indianapolis. Can he pull off a St. Louis-like defensive turnaround and get a healthy Edgarrin James back? Those are the two keys to making the playoffs next year after the Colts didn’t even come close this season. Dungy will retain offensive coordinator Tom Moore, which is going to make the triplets (Manning, Harrison, and James) happy.

Liverpool at Manchester United: Lovely 1-0

Amazing match, all defense with many challenges by Man United until Murphy took a lovely leading pass from Gerrard at 84:20 and just got his toe on the ball to push it around a defender and over goalkeeper Barthez for the score. Just a beautiful play! The Manchester home crowd at Old Trafford was loud and partisan throughout. But the Reds beat their rivals for the fifth consecutive time and rose above the murk of recent results that had them falling from first in the Premiership to fifth. Danny Murphy has been on the edge lately but put in a fine showing with the game’s only goal. Next up is a tough away FA Cup match at Arsenal, who sit one point behind Liverpool in the league table, on Sunday.

AOL files antitrust suit against Microsoft

Everbody and their brother will be blogging and commenting on this lawsuit over the coming minutes, weeks, years. Key thing to note is that this is the other half of the Department of Justice case, the private half. After all, the DOJ is alleging that MS caused damages to citizens and other companies and the court has agreed with them (at this point, the only remaining question is the remedy). There is also a consumer-level class action suit against MS which was almost settled with a big donation to schools but the judge realized the settlement was a poorly-disguised attempt by Gates and Co. to take over one of the few market segments they don’t yet control and rejected it. Now AOL TW, as the successor to Netscape, is filing suit and I expect others to follow. This whole mess is far fom over. If the solution was simply money Microsoft would settle in a heartbeat with the almost $40 billion cash they hold but of course all the plaintiffss want behavioural remedies, which Gates can’t stomach. Expect to be reading about this for years and years.

Tonight’s movie: Gone in 60 Seconds

Vroom vroom! Fast cars, a sexy woman, and some inexplicable explosions generate the heat in Gone in 60 Seconds. Nicholas Cage plays a reformed auto thief who gets pulled back in against his will (how else can we be sympathetic?) when his younger brother (slimy Giovanni Ribisi) gets in a mess with a psychopathic Englishman (Christopher Eccleston). Robert Duvall plays his also-retired mentor, Angelina Jolie is his pissed off but still, under it all, in love girlfriend, and Ving Rhames is a cop who can never catch Cage even when he has him under a gun. This moronic movie can be enjoyed if you ignore the script and just drool over all the classic sports cars that get ripped off.

What makes a movie good?

Britney Spears raises an interesting point as she addresses ‘Crossroads’ critics, Crossroads being the movie in which she has her first starring role. The critics are consistent in their negative reaction, as one would expect, going so far as to break out into laughter at screenings. Crossraods is not a comedy, though, and so Spears responds: “Everything the critics like, I hate.”

What does make a good movie? Why do critics so often despise the movies that audiences love? I’m no fan of Britney’s music although I love to look at her dance but I see her point. This is, of course, an old argument between a self-appointed elite and the teeming masses. Britney makes her money while the critics enjoy their mockery and everyone gets paid in their own way.

Football coaching merrygoround: Gruden to Tampa Bay?

The Raiders get rooked once again, in their opinion, by biased NFL officiating and the next day Gruden rumors are flying. A player (Pro Bowl db Ronde Barber?) and a draft pick from Tampa and Al Davis will rid himself of the hottest pro coach? Maybe, stranger things have happened. And this would give Al Davis a way to hire Denny Green, which (more) rumors say he wants to do. I still think, especially after Saturday’s win over Green Bay, that the Bucs would be best served by waiting for Lovie Smith to become available. The latest ESPN coaching rumors page shows that Carolina has the most interesting list of candidates, mostly good assistants like John Fox, Marvin Lewis, and Ted Cottrell. San Diego, while considering run and gun god June Jones, is mainly looking at WWBs (washedup white boys).

Last night’s movie: Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers

J. Michael Straczynski delivered a stunning and original vision in the late TV series Babylon 5. He felt five years, plus a couple of movies, was enough to tell the stories of that particular set of characters. So he moved on to a different aspect of his creation in the series Crusaders, which went nowhere fast. Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers is an attempt to recapture the magic of the original but at a different level; this movie is a pilot for a proposed series.

B5 was very political with a high level military component. Heck, the lead character was commander of a small world at the beginning of the series, leader of a rebellion against a dictatorship on Earth, and president of an interstellar alliance at the end. The connecting character to Rangers is G’Kar, a Narn, who is an ambassador for the Alliance now, although he was a leader of the Narns in B5. In Rangers we are going to follow a somewhat tarnished starship captain and a misfit crew. The Rangers, who played a key role in B5’s war against the Vorlons, are a 1,000 year old group of interstellar, well, cops.

In this movie, we meet Captain Dylan Neal and his crew as they disgrace themselves by running from a suicidal battle. As the saying goes, “We live for the one, we die for the one.” And these guys didn’t die. Actually I thought this was a logical weak spot since no military organization, at least that I know of, can afford to have highly trained, expensively equipped troops and officers throw themselves away in unwinnable situations. Still, they make it back home and are almost drummed out of the corps until G’Kar intervenes. Given an old, haunted ship, the crew head out on what looks like a milk run.

Of course the trip turns bad, we meet (at a distance) some of the puppets of the immensely evil bad race which apparently will be the villains should this be picked up as a series. Here is another complaint: Why would a race that is so ancient as The Hand and so powerful want to destroy everything? In B5 the Shadows at first seemed like a similarly inexplicable group of old baddies until we learned that they had a philosophy that said conflict breeds advance. I expect finding out what is guiding The Hand will come out eventually but for now it just makes them look two dimensional.

Overall I enjoyed the show and would probably watch if it turns into a series. The crew compliment and interviews with Straczynski show that this is set up differently than a Star Trek. Humans are only part of the mix, not the whole story. And Straczynski has a way with visuals that is terrific.

Borland, as retold in Biblical style

Read the Dead C Scrolls as written by humor columnist Verity Stob, after the King James’ Authorised Bible. Sample quote:

When the sons of Kahn looked upon Veesee-ell and Delphi, and they saw that Delphi micturith upon the head of Vi Su-Albahsic, as though from the top of the mountain of Rockee.

More in the same style are Yocam Hocum and Book of Yocam (contd). Great laughs!

Like they would tell us

Many people have speculated on where the Bush team will take the War on Terrorism next. Somalia, Yemen, Iraq. But whichever they choose, there is no way that the target would be leaked to a tabloid rag like the NY Post. So of course the Post runs SECRET PLAN TO TOPPLE SADDAM and attributes the story to an unnamed individual and then only claim this person is “reported to have said” it. Gee and people think newspapers are full of crap; articles like this are precisely why!

A reason to see a show

E! Online News is reporting The Boss Goes Broadway?!?, that a theater group called the Culture Project is putting together a show called Drive All Night featuring lots of Bruce music as it tells the story of a working-class guy named Eddie. This would for sure get my dollars. Now let’s see if Bruce gives it a thumbs up.

I thought the fighting in Afghanistan was over

Apparently some protesters don’t think so since 50 of them from the War Resisters’ League turned out at St. Patrick’s Cathedral this morning. However, they clearly don’t know how to dress or make dolls either.

Even sexy women wear granny panties

No question that Spice Girl Geri Halliwell is sexy. But in this photo we see that she has poor taste in panties. Love her, hate the music, it’s all good.

Football coaching merrygoround: Tampa Bay sucking wind

So sure, Parcells was all set to take over the Bucs, he was even accused of tampering with some other teams’ assistant coaches, but The Tuna blew the Bucs off so he could enter the Hall of Fame. EPSN’s Len Pasquarelli says the choices are limited for Tampa Bay and he reviews what is for the most part a bunch of washed up white guys. Okay, Denny Green is a washed up black guy, better he should go fishing and run a NASCAR team next year than coach.

To me, the only interesting name on the list is St. Louis defensive coordinator Lovie Smith. He did a great job with the Rams’ D this year and could end up being the key to a second Super Bowl win there in two weeks and is only one year away from being the Buc’s linebacker coach.

Pasquarelli also has a good column on why John Fox will be the next Carolina coach. Fox is currently the Giants’ defensive coordinator (do we see a theme here?) and defense wasn’t the reason the Giants missed the playoffs a year after their amazing run to the Super Bowl. Fox deserves a shot but this could be another case of friend hiring friend too.

US to Europe: shut up already

Steven Denbeste, the warblogging captain of the USS Clueless, pulls the camouflage off the biggest secret of the last 60 years in By george, I think he’s got it: After WWII, America occupied Western Europe. We did it in the guise of keeping the Soviets from invading but Steven points out that our million troops stationed there also kept the French, Germans, and British from attacking each other (and drawing us in) a third time; note that the Soviets have been gone for years and there is no more threat of invasion but American troops are still there. I think I’m a fiarly well read person but I’ve never read this rationale for NATO before.

Until late last year, we tried to play nice with the Europeans in world affairs (ref. the Marshall Plan, the Gulf War, Yugoslavia) but all they did was give us bad advice and hinder/prevent the optimal outcome. After the Al Quaeda attacks in September we responded on our own, ignoring the advice proferred unasked by various European politicians and pundits and succeeded faster and with less collateral damage than anyone foresaw. So, as Steven implies, isn’t it time for the Europeans to shut up and listen to us for a change?

Posner’s “Public Intellectuals”: an odd book

Americans love their lists. Remember the bestselling “Book of Lists” from the ’70s? Richard Posner, the federal judge who attempted and failed to mediate the Microsoft Antitrust case, is a prolific author whose latest work tries to quantify the top intellectuals. He uses the investigative tools of our times, the Google search engine, the Lexis-Nexis database, and several indexes of scholarly publications, to generate several listings. Henry Kissinger leads the media mentions list, while the author ranks 70th. Alan Wolfe, who shows up at 98 on the list, excoriates the methodology and results of Posner’s work, saying that in the end, Posner had to choose between the academy and the marketplace and although his heart said market, he couldn’t shake loose his fears and wrote academy. I doubt this book will make it onto many reading lists.