Month: April 2005

China: Zombie Army Rising

And no, the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee is not meeting!

Looks like the rising number of computers in China has lead to a large number of Zombie attacks from this fine nation. [here]

If you have checked your logs lately, this should be as surprising as The Gropenfuhrer taking steroids.

Microsoft: The Thrill is Gone?

Jeremy Wright, one the main dudes in my blogosphere, hits this one out of the park.

Scoble nailed it: Microsoft simply isnÂ’t thrilling me anymore. They used to. IÂ’ll still happily defend Microsoft when the time is right, will evangelize dozens of products to the right people and so forth. But itÂ’s less joyful, and slightly more forced, than it used to be.

Bingo! This is how I feel. Although I have been antagonistic towards Microsoft over my professional career, there was still something cool happening there.
Scoble says that there are cool things and strategic hires still occurring. [here]
But Scoble…how will you thrill us?
Hugh has some comments on this… [here]
TDavid weighs in here.

US Banking: WTF?

SOGrady has some comments on the US Banking system. [here]

I have yet to figure out the US Banking system. I have lived in this country for 6 years, and what banks do here seems so 19th century. In Canada, when you use the nationally accepted electronic debit system (InterAC), the money is gone from your account. Now. Like, Right Now. Not sometime within the next 1-30 days.

When I pay my bills online, the money is taken out…sometime.

We gave up on electronic transfers from the US to Canada, relying instead on the Ground Yak method: when we move money home, we send a real cheque to our Canadian bank.

How hard can it be? How can the banking system in the US be so outdated that it is the laughing stock of third-world nations?

Please…I really want to know.

The Rentier State

John Robb:

While I was away, the Republicans have continued their push to create a neo-Victorian America with:

  • the anti-entrepreneurial “Indentured Servitude” law
  • the “American Aristocracy” tax reduction
  • and a crackdown on moral turpitude in the media

Of course, Victorianization wouldn’t be complete without a good dash of hypocrisy. More signs that are becoming a rentier state with abandon…

I like John. Of course, he helped found the company I work for, so I do owe him a debt of gratitude.
Do you accept PayPal, John?

Urban Blight: The Exodus From California Cities

Jeff Nolan and I have had our differences, mainly over Prop. 13. But his posting that links to an article listing the reasons why people are fleeing California cities (or the state entirely) is heartening.
Not for California. But for those of us who decided that we couldn’t stay there and live in one of the world’s richest economies, and tolerate a third-world public infrastructure.

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