Last night, I installed a new power supply and tried out some disk drives on batman (a.k.a. everybody.org
The disk drives are important because I'll end up RAIDing the disks together. This will give us a small saftey net if something goes wrong with the hard drives — we'll still have the other one ready.
Dan Gilmore has some great insights into the Microsoft antitrust case:
The most amazing thing about the current hearings in Washington is Microsoft's utter disinterest in changing its behavior. The company's own witnesses are testifying this way, not just the states' witnesses.
That's it. I've had pglogd sitting in the wings. But I'm putting it on at least my site tonight so that I can scavenge up some links I'm missing. Everyone else is backlinking, so why shouldn't I?
Of course, it all assumes someone linking to you, which I don't yet have much of.
This is why I love the web. Reading diveintomark about backlinks (below) and found he had commented on Winnie-the-Pooh in Latin. Which lead to this page on how Winnie-the-Pooh helped some people learn English during WWII. A facinating story.
My first real exposure to Pooh (the original, not Disney) was in a coffeeshop in Goshen, Indiana when Alexis and I went with newly-born Ginger to visit my grandmother, who wasn't expected to live much longer (she made it longer than expected).
Alexis and I sat on the couch in the coffeeshop browsing their books and found the original Pooh stories, which we read to each other and Ginger. The simplicity and joy in the stories is wonderful. It produces a depth not found in a lot of children's books. Wonderful.
What Europe can Teach Uncle Sam:
Volkswagen should be a basket case. It makes cars and trucks in high-cost Germany, has a highly unionised workforce who work a 28.8 hour week for up to £23 [US$33.57] an hour, and its largest shareholder is the state government of Lower Saxony, owning 18.6% of the company's shares.
...
Yet Volkswagen remains Europe's largest car maker and has increased its market share from 16% to 19% since 1993 - largely at the expense of Ford and General Motors. Even in the US, its market share has jumped by 2% over the same period. It is the most internationalised car company in the world. It has revived the near-bankrupt Czech car manufacturer Skoda. Its Passats and Golfs, redesigned VW Beetle and range of new cars are the envy of its rivals.
And, Dave Winer (an American) asks, in all seriousness: Is business the purpose of our civilization, or does civilization have some other purpose that business supports?
The above story has some very interesting anecdotes about Nokia, as well. Nokia started the 1990s worrying about how its toilet-paper sales would hold up in its main market — the former Soviet Union.
I get tired of the Rah-Rah politicking for capitalism that goes on in the U.S. Its nice to get an antidote to that once in a while. Maybe those European Social Democrats know something, after all.
Looking over today's posts, I note that I've been posting more than usual. I think I know why.
Yesterday, the toxicity around my workplace really began to get to me. The unusual event that started it all was that the Director had two helpdesk techs fired. I'm sure they could have worked harder, but the fact is that they were being blamed for other people's poor planning, and because the director need some scapegoats, he fired these two peons. Which is sad and shows the lack of concern for the individual.
Today, I also came across some old David McCusker posts wherein he talked about avoiding sharecropper-hood. This is where I'm headed.
I don't want to be drained of worth and then replaced, like those helpdesk techs. I am not a cog in your damn wheel. I don't understand why people value the hierarchy more than the individual, and I can't stand it when an organisation takes precedence over the individual.
Mostly what bugs me is the complete lack of love. Of course, love is unprofessional, not a corporate value, complicated, and just plain messy. It also stands against modernism — because modernism is about the rational, and the objective and love continues despite being irrational and complete subjective.