In case nobody noticed, I haven't posted to the list in a while. It's not that I'm not paying attention. The problem is that every time I look at the list, which is more or less daily, it's a broken record, for the most part. SCOUTED seems to have been a great idea -- it's a good clue that the content will not have anything to do with the middle east or the behavior of a Dutchman. And most are interesting, too.
I've been biting my tongue for weeks about the fact that a certain science fiction writer who lives near San Diego (initials DB) periodically asks me what the list is like these days, wondering if perhaps it's time to re-join. Can't say that I have much positive to report. There seems to be a corollary to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle at work. For example, with regard to mideast, some peoples' positions are clear, but they don't seem to be going anywhere. Well, so much for a physics metaphor. Let's all stop to consider our position and momentum now and then. I think I'm speaking up now because a bad thing happened. As some of you know, many years ago, I was, from time to time, "Robert X. Cringely," writing the gossip column in the back of InfoWorld. I covered for my buddy Mark Stephens, who has leveraged the pseudonym into a small empire with the help of PBS. In January, Mark sent me photos of his newborn twins, with a note that said something like, "49 years of f***ing around finally paid off." Take a look at his column this week for a little perspective: http://www.pbs.org/cringely The short summary is that one of his boys died. In his lap, as he read e-mail. From SIDS. And now he wants us to help him prevent SIDS deaths. On a far lighter note, my cousin, Bob Harris, takes on the all-time Jeopardy champion starting with tomorrow night's show. He's a funny guy, in addition to being frighteningly smart. There are some video clips of him here: http://www.sonypictures.com/tv/shows/jeopardy/mini_sites/masters/contestants .html Was there a point to this posting? I suppose it would be to suggest that those of you who keep posting essentially the SAME DANG STUFF again and again stop and ask yourselves, "Does this discussion NEED to continue?" Get altruistic! "Am I serving anyone else by carrying this further?" So there. Did I NEED to post this? Maybe not. But for durn sure, I'm not going to get into a long argument about it. (And I used to think long was a few days, maybe a week or two.) And one more thing. At long, long last, I managed to download the latest Linux CD images *and* finally (we're talking months) convinced my CD burner to work (shut off DMA, eh?)... so I think I can convert an old laptop to a home for the Dutchman's Brin-l pages. Of course, the laptop refuses to boot from the CDs, but that should be a minor obstacle. And one more, more thing. I am still working on the social network analysis stuff that I posted earlier. I've re-written the whole thing in Python and I'm enhancing some things now. Nick -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] (408) 904-7198
