"Microsoft Skull-fucks Iceland’s Economy, Contracts Syphilis"

I honestly wasn't sure whether to tag this under technology or humor.  I ended up settling for both.  This is Icelandic blogger Smári McCarthy talking about the implosion of Microsoft's business (and Microsoft Certified partners) in Iceland.  There's some great quotables, like this one:

The only important difference is that OpenOffice.org doesn’t support all of Microsoft Office’s weird macros, and it doesn’t come with a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Access, the only database software on the planet that’s better at printing mail-merged stickers than it is at storing data.

Or this one:

[...]  And the MCP’s, struggling to stay topside, they go to extreme lengths to stay afloat.  One Icelandic company, already embroiled in a massive antitrust scandal by way of their owners, just laid off their entire staff and offered to rehire them at deducted pay.  The networking department, they said no.  They weren’t going to take a pay cut.

So the management types, with Microsoft breathing down their neck on one side, and the Icelandic Competition Agency (samkeppnisráð) on the other, they think, oh shit.  Oh shit.  Our data hosting services department, these geeks, they’re the guys who are hauling in the real moolah.  They’re selling the services, not just reselling dud licenses to software that could be free, and that at a loss.  So let’s do anything we can to rehire them, let’s give them a raise.

And the hosting guys, true to their egelitarian [sic] hacker nature, they said no.

“We appreciate that you’re being skull-fucked, but we aren’t going to screw over our colleagues, our friends, by accepting your raise when they’re taking a cut.  No sir, can’t do it.”

The following afternoon they were escorted out of the building by the police.

Go read.  It's interesting and enlightening.

Deliberate amnesia

You:  "Tell all my friends where I am right now."

Google Latitude:  "Done."

You:  "OK, now forget it."

Google Latitude:  "...Forget what?"

Google's Latitude now tells your friends where you are, but forgets where you've been, and doesn't keep logs.

The intention is to make sure Latitude doesn't become an honeypot for cops wanting to be able to easily find out where you have been or even say the names of everyone who attended, or was near, a political protest.

[...]

The government tells courts, almost always in secret proceedings, that it is entitled to location records without a warrant, even if the person involved isn't even a suspect in an investigation.  The government argues you have no privacy interest in the data since you already told it to your phone company.

What Loopt — and now Google — are asserting is this: when you tell your friends where you are, you are using a public conveyance to communicate privately.  And, just as it would if it wanted to record your phone call or read your e-mail, the government needs to get a wiretap order.  That's even tougher to get than a search warrant.

(Via bruce_schneier)

[meme] Skiffy scriveners

I am: Hal Clement (Harry C. Stubbs) A quiet and underrated master of "hard science" fiction who, among other things, foresaw integrated circuits back in the 1940s.

Which science fiction writer are you?

And thus are novels born...

With considerable snippage for relative brevity:

<strega42> wow... this credit card offer is Such A Deal! <chokes>
<strega42> annual fee $114, monthly service fee $11, and 23.9% interest
<strega42> a one time $4 internet access fee
<strega42> credit fee 50% the amount of the credit.
<strega42> of course i am waiving any right to a jury trial for arbitration
<strega42> i also waive any right to a class action suit
<strega42> oh, this thing is *shiny*
<strega42> First Premier Bank
<strega42> Hm.  South Dakota.  I should look up those state regulatory laws, and see if
           there's any fine print about SD residents :-p
<Alaric> according to Deke all the real credit pirates incorporate in SD, because SD
           banking laws practically allow them to seize your marriagable-age daughters as
           collateral
<strega42> Really?  They can have mine!
<paxed> Alaric: s/credit// and you have a lois mcmaster bujold novel in the making
           (probably of the miles-series...) ;)
<paxed> and the daughters would kick butt, of course ;)
<paxed> heck, i'd read that.

In which Intel acts like a spoiled child (again)

In the light of AMD's recent spinning off of its manufacturing capacity as GlobalFoundries, jointly held by AMD and the Abu Dhabi government's Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC holds 55% of the stock to AMD's 45%, but both have equal voting rights), Intel has announced it considers GlobalFoundries to not be a subsidiary of AMD and is threatening to revoke the 2001 Intel-AMD patent cross-licensing agreement.  Speculation is this is an attempt both to box AMD in through litigation (an old and familiar Intel gambit) and to distract attention from recent antitrust battles with the European Commission (for basically bribing a large retailer not to carry AMD devices), Japan, Korea, and the US.

Whatever the motivation, this would be a stupid move for Intel.  Honestly, at this point, Intel probably stands to lose more from losing access to AMD's patents than AMD does from losing access to Intel's, even disregarding the further blemishing of Intel's already tarnished image as a chipmaker that markets with its legal department (though there seems to be little evidence Intel really cares about the latter), as I believe Intel's EMT64 implementation of the AMD64 (aka x86-64) 64-bit extended instruction set is covered by AMD patents that Intel gains rights to under the cross-licensing agreement. Intel would thus lose the ability to legally manufacture AMD64-compatible 64-bit chips, leaving it with only the much-reviled and mostly-moribund Itanium chip in the 64-bit market.

I have only one question . . .

WTF are these people THINKING?

Oh.

Right.

"Network executive."

That's sort of like "Pirate."  Only much, much more stupid.

Uh ... does that even mean anything?  It's worse than "Think Different".

“We spent a lot of time in the ’90s trying to distance the network from science fiction, which is largely why it’s called Sci Fi,” Mr. Brooks said.

Trying to "distance the network from science fiction"?  You DROOLING FUCKTARD.  That's like trying to distance ESPN from sports.  The channel was FOUNDED to be an all-science-fiction channel.