“They Were Everywhere”. My parents just got back from two weeks in Belgium and environs. When we talked on the phone tonight, the very first thing they both described was not the beauty of the land, how expensive things were (Euro against the dollar), or even the chocolate. No, the one thing they wanted to talk… Continue reading “They Were Everywhere”
Month: April 2004
Don't Wait
Don't Wait. Michael Harrison, an English poet, was once asked how to become a good writer. He replied, “If you want to be a good writer, write. You don't wait for inspiration.” Don Box, co-author of SOAP, gives similar advice in the above link: Read fewer specifications, write more applications, write less code by using… Continue reading Don't Wait
US-Visit Spares No One
US-Visit Spares No One. The program that requires foreigners to be fingerprinted and photographed before entering the United States will now include millions of travelers from America's closest allies — including Britian, Japan and Australia. [Wired News]
Iraq on the Record: The Bush Administration’s Public Statements on Iraq
Iraq on the Record: The Bush Administration’s Public Statements on Iraq. 237 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq that were made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice. These statements were made in 125 separate appearances, consisting of 40 speeches, 26 press conferences and briefings,… Continue reading Iraq on the Record: The Bush Administration’s Public Statements on Iraq
Backup/Restore Failures – The Real Numbers!
Backup/Restore Failures – The Real Numbers!. How confident are you that you can restore from your backups? Check out this issue of W2Knews for some startling statistics about the reliability of tape media. A Yankee Group and Sunbelt Software survey of 362 IT executives in March 2004 found 42 percent of respondents had been unable… Continue reading Backup/Restore Failures – The Real Numbers!
Summer 2004 Tour Coming to a User Group Near You
Summer 2004 Tour Coming to a User Group Near You. Flash, Flex, ColdFusion “Blackstone”, … lots to talk about, and thus time for a user group tour. I love talking to user groups, and do so regularly, but it has been a long time since I did a full blown tour. And so we're putting… Continue reading Summer 2004 Tour Coming to a User Group Near You
Columns: Defending our privacy, except when they abuse it
St. Petersburg Times – St. Petersburg,FL,USA – Columns: Defending our privacy, except when they abuse it. Forget the claim of the Republican Party to be “conservative.” Just like Democrats, Republicans seek to use the power of government to ram their agenda down the throats of the citizens. A true conservative should love the first of… Continue reading Columns: Defending our privacy, except when they abuse it
rip peter ustinov
rip peter ustinov. Sir Peter Ustinov, dead at 82 [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
Weblogs and customer service
Weblogs and customer service. My earlier post about using Feedster to get status updates about Dreamhost's (my personal web hosting provider) outage resulted in an honest, timely, and personal direct e-mail response from the folks over at Dreamhost: This is Jeff with DreamHost Quality Control. I ran into your weblog posting and thought I'd take… Continue reading Weblogs and customer service
An example of helpful guidance
An example of helpful guidance. A reader took me to task for suggesting, in this week's column, that we need to do a better job of spelling out the user-interface implications of Internet standards. Robb Beal agreed with me, though, and today I found another example of the kind of guidance that his functional annotations… Continue reading An example of helpful guidance