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I was perusing one of my favorite bloggers, Doc Searls, this morning, over at his SuitWatch space, and stumbled across this little tidbit. Doc says that about half the total attendance at the ApacheCon last week carried OS X laptops. I don't know if Doc is given to hyperbole (though I'd say not from my past reading of his stuff) but if that's even half correct, it's astounding. (If you're interested in his overall take on ApacheCon, click here.)

It's funny. This week I have been sort of noodling about whether I should figure out how to move my computing life into a totally non-proprietary model (for intellectual consistency). My son-in-law, Jeff Soulé, sort of scratched his head and asked, "Why would you want to do that when you're running a BSD machine already?" Speaking, of course, of the fact that Darwin, the heart of OS X, is an Open Source OS built on a BSD kernel.

Now along comes ApacheCon and the attendees seem to be fairly screaming that OS X -- and perhaps the native Darwin/X11 underbelly -- is the way to go.

I love this kind of convergence.

Here are my picks for Week 12 of the NFL season. I have two modest upsets in the mix, picking the Cowboys to upend the Panthers in Dallas and the Bills to surprise the visiting Colts. My "iffiest" game this week is the Niners-Packers. Favre has been getting weaker as the season progresses and the Niners have gotten sharper each week. But he's still #4 and it's still Lambeau. As much as the Niners looked like the salad days teams last week and pretty decent the week before, I don't think they can sustain that. Hope I'm wrong.

I'm two games behind the only ESPN.com pundit with a better record right now. I gained a game on him last week.

• Cowboys over Panthers
• Vikings over Lions
• Colts over Bills
• Jets over Jaguars
• Patriots over Texans
• Eagles over Saints
• Browns over Steelers
• Seahawks over Ravens
• Packers over 49ers
• Broncos over Bears
• Rams over Cardinals
• Bengals over Chargers
• Chiefs over Raiders
• Titans over Falcons
• Dolphins over Redskins
• Bucs over Giants

Environmental defender and attorney Bobby Kennedy Jr. tells a Salon.com interviewer that the Bush Regime's wholesale dismantling of our environmental infrastructure will kill tens of thousands of Americans.

"...[J]ust a couple weeks ago, the Bush administration abandoned the new source performance standards (that regulate industrial pollution), which means that the amount of junk in our air is actually going to increase. The National Academy of Sciences predicts that 30,000 Americans a year will die because of the Bush decision. And that's just one of the impacts," Kennedy says.

The story presents a sordid view of how the Bush Regime, having taken $40 million from polluting lobbyists, is dismantling wholesale programs that have been built -- largely with bipartisan support -- since Earth Day 1970. In many cases, it is abandoning laws Bush promised to support during his candidacy. But the mainstream news media, owned now by the same corporate interests and beholden to them for their profits, turn a blind eye. Only about 4% of TV news air time is devoted to issues of environmental regulation.

Rob Enderle, who doesn't respect Linux and doesn't like Apple all that much, has a marginally interesting piece on how Linux and Apple should behave in the face of the coming new OS release from Microsoft, dubbed Longhorn.

While I find much of what Enderle has to say these days kind of trite and not very well thought-out (he writes positively of the Microsoft monoculture, e.g.), this piece has a couple of gems worth noting.

For example, he says, " Apple will have some serious problems because the Apple hardware platform will not be able to create customer demand comparable to what Linux could do. To generate that kind of demand, Apple will need to either move to Intel, or get significant help from its hardware partner, IBM. IBM won't help broadly unless both the IBM PC business unit and IBM Microelectronics cooperate...."

I agree. But I think that if Apple does what I suggest (of course I think I have a better idea; why publish if you don't think that's so?) and re-positions itself as a world-class OS designer and developer embracing open standards and moving hardware to second place, it can forge a strong strategic alliance with IBM in this space and have major impact.

Just to prove my point about Enderle's often pro-Microsoft blinders, he also says, "Those advantages [for Microsoft in Longhorn 2005] will be development tools (Microsoft remains at its core a development tools company)..." Huh? Check out their financials; they lose beaucoup bucks on development tools, don't bundle them with their systems, support them poorly, and remain far too closed and proprietary. Apple, by contrast, bundles world-class, leading-edge dev tools with its OS, supports them to the hilt, and embraces (and encourages developers to embrace) open standards. Enderle just misses the boat on this point.

Overall, though, a piece worth reading.

I racked up a 13-3 record for Week 11 of the NFL prognostication season, jumping my season total to 108-52, a 67.5% success rate.

I was among a small handful of NFL watchers who picked the u8pset this week of the Chiefs by the upstart Bengals, and even nailed the right reason in advance. On the other hand, the stupid Giants lost to the undeserving Eagles in a game that should have given me a 14-2 mark this week. My other two setbacks were both legitimate upsets as the Texans upended the Bills and the Raiders shocked the Vikes.

As China joins a small but growing tide of nations who are showing preference for non-proprietary software and systems, the question looms: what does this portend for my own personal favorite computer company, Apple?

It's a mixed bag but I think, in the mid-range to long term, largely bad news unless Apple makes one additional strategic move.

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Yesterday, the Peoples Republic of China announced it would buy 1 million Sun boxes with Linux and Java Desktop System (JDS) installed. Overall, the country plans to purchase 100 million computers over the next couple of years, the vast majority of which will not have Microsoft Windows or Office installed.

This is a big win for Sun but a huger win for Open Source and non-proprietary software in general. It comes on the heels of several European and South American countries instituting policies that call for equal or preferential treatment for open software and systems. And there's a "hidden" win in here that not many commentators seem to be mentioning.

If you live in a country whose government is buying non-proprietary systems, one of the big reasons for you not to go that route gets eliminated. You know there will be lots of trained technicians, support people, and a large user base you can rely on for support. And you know that an increasing programmer base will develop so that you'll be able to obtain more and more software and lower and lower price points.

In five years, we may well look back on this nascent trend and decide that it was the beginning of, not the end, but a leveling-off of Microsoft's overly vast influence over and control of the computing space. And that will be a good thing for everyone, including Microsoft.

My San Francisco Giants' Barry Bonds won the National League Most Valuable Player (MVP) award for the sixth time overall and third in a row. Bonds beat out Albert Pujols by a substantial margin, garnering 28 of 32 first-place votes vs. three first-place votes for Pujols. This also marks the fourth consecutive season in which the Giants have featured the league MVP, the first time that has happened in NL history.

By the time the 2004 season opens next April, Bonds may be one of a small number of Giants with two seasons on the same team under his belt. So if the Giants keep winning and contending in the playoffs, it'll be increasingly clear that No. 25 is the primary reason.

For the record, no pro baseball player has ever taken home more than three MVP awards in a career before Bonds. He shares the six-MVP honors with Kareem Abdul Jabar of the NBA and Gordie Howe of the NHL. Only hockey great Wayne Gretzky with nine has more MVP awards in a career in any of the four major pro sports.

Elite company indeed.

I've reached the reluctant conclusion that Panther, for all of its beauty and new features, is a poor upgrade. Apple shouldn't have released it. I do not recommend you install it.

Stuff that worked under Jaguar either doesn't work under Panther or can't be found. Palm doesn't synch. Word no longer prints documents in reverse order unless told not to. Changing Internet prefs reequires you to launch Apple's default programs (Safari for browser default change) whether you want to install and use them or not.

I just discovered Print Center, which worked very well in Jaguar, has allegedly been replaced by the new Print Status Monitor, but that application does not display jobs in process. It is a piece of crap.

I am hearing from dozens of users who have upgraded to Panther and regret it. Reverting is either not possible or extremely painful.

This is just purely shabby work on Apple's part. Too bad. It's going to cost them dearly.

"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." [Motivational Quotes of the Day]

Amen.

According to this article at onlineblog.com, pundits are beginning to notice that getting attention in the blogosphere is best achieved by being hyperbolic and deliberately feisty.

That shrill, extremist voices are more likely to bring in the punters than moderate, reasoned ones is not a new notion for "old" media. But that, and the hard-nosed drive for pageviews which has always been "a-list" blogging's biggest dirty secret, will still likely disappoint the more idealistic bloggers who hoped their brave new world would nurture a different kind of debate.

Yeah, we harbored such hopes, however briefly and however naively. I suspect I've been guilty of the hyperbole (though never intentionally; I just feel hyperbolic about some of the issues). But I do wish the voices of reason would persist and emerge dominant in his new medium.

What do you suppose are the odds?

Roland Piquepaille talks on his blog about the nifty, intelligent, interactive conference ID badges folks attending a recent gathering experimented with.

When I was at CNET Builder.com and chairing the annual Web developer conferences, we tried to use a much more primitive version of these badges. The company making them, a spinoff of a research group at MIT, floundered before delivering the badges. The ones we had in mind had just five LEDs on them. Attendees would program them on arrival by answering five questions designed to help attendees with common profiles or interests to one another.

The idea was that as you approached a fellow conference-goer, the number of LEDs that would illuminate on your badge told you the degree of likely common interests with the other person.

These are much more elaborate. And while some folks are predictably (and perhaps not entirely illogically) concerned about privacy issues, I think they're cool. They'd solve one of the biggest problems of conferences, where most of the real value lies in the hallway encounters, not in the talking-head sessions.

Hey, maybe Microsoft could use these at a PDC. Alert Scoble!

(Thanks to Slashdot for the pointage.)

In an interview on Salon.com, Amnesty International President William Schultz says the American Left must come up with a plan for dealing with terrorism or become irrelevant. He says that in our zeal to oppose George Bush's illegal War on Iraq, which is not about terror but about oil and greed, the Left risks losing its credibility with voters who remain concerned about terror. They see the Left as "soft on terror," I guess.

In the midst of the interview, Schultz offers a glimpse into the foundations of a Leftist approach to the problem of global terror. "But the issue here is whether or not one country, or a very small group of countries, can, in a hurried fashion, simply ignore international institutions that prop up human rights, along with the many other multilateral enterprises -- not only in the absence of international sanction, but with what appears to have been [direct] opposition."

Precisely.

My proposal is simple.

First, the U.S. ought to do what only it can do: render the United Nations a relevant international body again by paying the back debt we owe it and guaranteeing ongoing funding levels in return for a couple of basic reforms. Briefly, those reforms involve changing the way the Security Council operates and the veto rules associated with it as well as its membership, and broadening the U.N. Charter to include pre-emptive dealing with state-sponsored terrorism.

Second, the newly strengthened U.N. ought to be put in charge of fighting terrorism, which is a global problem both in terms of its staging areas and in terms of its impact. No unilateral action by any nation is ever going to defeat it.

Finally, the U.N. ought to resurrect and re-emphasize the programs that were originally designed to help eradicate the causes of terrorism: poverty, hunger, lack of education, over-population, despair. It is these very programs -- de-funded largely by a right-wing American administration and Congress -- that hold the greatest hope of annihilating global terrorism. People who are not hungry, who are economically safe, and who have hope for the future do not, in the main, become terrorists.

That's a Left-wing agenda for dealing with terrorism that does not rule out the necessity of fighting militarily but which hopes to prevent it and resorts to it only in the last resort and then only multi-nationally.

Now that we are committed to rapid elections in Iraq -- without constitutional safeguards -- what will we do if the country goes Islamist and wants to pattern the regime after Iran? Will we annul the elections? [John Robb's Weblog]

It comes down to who defines democracy. If we do, then an Islamist outcome would be prima facie evidence that the elections were rigged and we'd override the outcome. No question in my mind. If we allow the Iraqis to define what democracy means in their culture, then an Islamist outcome is at least possible if not probable and we'd end up having to live with it.

I do not think we can expect fair and informed democratic elections in Iraq anything like six months from now. The process is wrong. Constitution must come first. Here's my formula proposal:

1. UN assumes role of management and management liaison to formation of interim government
2. Constitution is drafted and enacted
3. Elections are held pursuant to the new constitution

Won't happen that way, but that's how I see it.

This is a pretty interesting item: Bush is likely to be the first president since Herbert Hoover to have presided over a loss of jobs during his term. [John Robb's Weblog]

Interesting but not surprising, eh?

Doc Searls waxes quasi-eloquent this morning on the demeanor of polibloggers (of which I guess I am one at least some of the time) and wonders out loud whether Howard Dean will take the millions of dollars he's taken in from tons of small contributors and "go negative" in his TV advertising.

For years, I've been thinking and writing about the fact that Democratic candidates seem, on the whole, to suffer because of their desire to be accurate and complete. Demos don't do sound bites well. Issues seem to us to be complicated. We don't want to give the public what the public repeatedly tells us it wants: 15- and 30-second problem-solution sets that it can digest alongside a McGriddle while simultaneosly reading USA Today's Reader's Digest Condensed version of the day's events. Republicans, by contrast, see all issues as black-and-white, can clearly and easily describe their take, and don't care if the Great Unwashed get educated or informed as long as they get convinced to vote for the GOP.

I've been around long enough to know that in virtually every election I've watched, mud-slinging starts with the right wing. The left is then faced with the torturous decision to respond in kind or lose the election. Now, I'll grant that's not always the case and I'll even grant it's a bit of a (Republican-style) oversimplification. But I'm reporting it (fairly) as my recollection of my experiences.

So should the Liberals get down in the mud? Should we perhaps even for a change make the mud? Or do we maintain the High Moral Ground where there are few voters and content ourselves with being the Loyal Opposition?

We get mud on us either way.

I'm still an idealist, and would like to be able to vote for one for president of the US. (Routed to Dave/Homilies/Mottos.) [Scripting News]

Dave, I know you know about Dennis Kucinich. This man is a true idealist. He's also real. The only reason he's tagged with the "unelectable" label is because the mainstream media do not want to face the hard glare of his challenge to restoring the former greatness of our country. A greatness that would in less than a generation melt away the anti-American hatred that is not only rampant but becoming dangerously dominant in the world today.

Couldn't you vote for Dennis?

Fast Company: The Wal-Mart You Don't Know. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

The key point Dan makes is about the hidden taxes -- welfare benefits paid to horrendously low-paid Wal-Mart workers and the health insurance deficit their company creates for them -- all of us pay for this company's lower prices and unconscionable profits.

Dan doesn't shop at Wal-Mart. Neither do I. Neither should you.

If you've visited my blog very often, you know that I am a major supporter of Runtime Revolution, a very high level language (VHLL) development environment and scripting language. I'm writing a series of three eBooks about it and have also created an online community around it.

In a discussion on that community's discussion board, I raised the question of cross-platform utility, similar to the one I started here (link on the left under "Featured Items"). Some of the responses have been talking about Java as a cross-platform tool. Not sure I completely agree, but Java clearly has a very large mind share.

As I was contemplating this convergence this evening, it occurred to me that a great place for Revolution to plant a flag (pardon the extended analogy) might be as a kind of control panel or dashboard for Java apps, giving users a cross-platform, easy-to-build GUI that would enable them to control the complex Java apps for which Revoution might not be a great solution.

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The San Francisco Giants, who look headed for another complete face-lift for the second straight season, picked up Minnesota backstop A. J. Pierzynski in a trade that featured Joe Nathan headed for Twin Country.

A. J. is probably a decent acquisition, having hit over .300 for the Twins the past couple of seasons. With Santiago a free agent, the Giants were left with the relatively fresh-faced Yorvit Torrealba behind the plate. I like Torrealba and I hope that A.J.'s arrival doesn't end up signaling Yorvit's departure. I think Torrealba ha long-term serious potential.

But the Giants have to replace a right fielder, a first baseman, a catcher and two pitchers in the off-season and have only about $8 million in cap room to accomplish that feat, so a coup like A. J. was a nice grab for GM Brian Sabean.

It appears that the free agent market this year is glutted and that major talent might be available far less expensively than you might think. $15 million deals won't be that common, says one analyst, and marquee players are on the block for figures like $20 million/yr.