Categories
Browsers

Good-bye Netscape

In the golden age of the Internet, Netscape was the darling, the poster child for the Dot Com Boom. My first server-side development effort was based in Netscape’s LiveWire technology, which eventually went on to become the Netscape Application Server. My second book I wrote was on Netscape’s JavaScript.

My interest in RDF started because of the use of RDF within the early implementations of Mozilla. I defended Mozilla when others criticized it. I pushed back at the drive for standards when people used this to question Mozilla’s direction.

A member of the Mozilla team, a Netscape employee, made a trip to a hotel I was staying at for a conference to leave me a T-Shirt as a thank you for my support.

Mozilla will stay but Netscape is gone. This is the true end of the Dot Com era. This is when we know that not only is the roller coaster ride finished, but the roller coaster itself has been closed down for being a little too fast, and a bit too scary.

mozillat.jpg

Categories
Diversity

Girl-ick-ism

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Halley has two new posts on girlism, related to the release of Charlie’s Angels 2 and Legally Blonde 2, and both are wide of the mark.

In the first she writes:

In both movies, the younger women call on a network of their girlfriends to save the day. In both movies the older feminist woman falters by turning her back on her friends and colleagues. If Girlism is about anything, it’s about women getting their power from loving their women friends and loving men.

I have no idea from where Halley gets her understanding of feminism. She’s not that much younger than me to forget that it wasn’t that long ago that women had to fight to enter any profession, and in doing so, opened the doors for those that followed. Women helping other women isn’t as much a matter of ‘hanging with the girls’, as it is attempting to make a difference – alone or with a group.

A little history in the suffragette movement might be in order right now. In merry old England, the women that marched shoulder to shoulder united in a sisterhood that transcended social class; they used to be arrested, put into jail, and force fed when they went on hunger strikes – all because they did not want to be treated as property.

Perhaps that’s why it took three girly girls to take out one old tough feminist broad, Demi Moore, in Charlie’s Angels 2 – the younger generation doesn’t really know what hardship is.

Then there’s the issue of loving men. In Halley’s second post, she writes about the Alpha Male:

He doesn’t mind her being a big wig lawyer downtown in a big law firm.

Well, isn’t that just precious – today’s Alpha Male doesn’t mind when the little woman becomes a Real Time Lawyer. Maybe the truth is he doesn’t seem to mind, but he’s really frustrated; so he spends 10,000 to shoot a naked woman, as she runs like an animal from paintball guns that shoot the pellots at 200MPH.

(I also have to wonder what lesbians think of Halley’s posts – after all, they don’t love men, not in the way that Halley uses the term. Perhaps they don’t count in this new ‘girlism’ thing. Lucky them.)

Halley’s girlism is just that, for girls only. Cute babes with nice little bods who love to baby talk their Alpha Male, kicking a bad guy and presenting a legal brief by day, sex kittens by night. The rest of us need not apply.

Categories
Books

Cut the wires

I’ve spent too much time in technology recently, but after the work on the server today, I can take a break. Not too long a break because I have promised essays, for poets and other mad, bad, sad people.

Loren started a review of Catch 22, and I wonder whether to add my own thoughts as he moves along. It’s been years since I’ve read the book and I told myself at the time, “This is it. I’m glad I read it. I won’t read it again.” However, to effectively comment, I do need to read it again.

In his initial reading, Loren didn’t care for the book. Being in Vietnam at the time, his reaction is not surprising. Even now, after he’s learned to respect the work, he writes, …it’s obviously not an easy novel to read.

It’s funny, or perhaps it’s not, but books that have a social conscious can either trip us up as we read past, laying us out face first in the stirred up dust at their feet; or their words can pad softly in on little kitten feet, like Carl Sagan’s fog. I found To Kill a Mockingbird to be one of the quiet ones, and can read it again and again.

Catch 22, though. It forces you, who sits in comfortable chair and lays in comfortable bed, to get into the mind and the world of hell created when paper generals shout out, “Bring ‘em on!”

Reading Catch 22 again. Hmm. Will I make it to the library tomorrow? And if so, will I find the book on the shelves? I couldn’t find Catcher in the Rye last time I looked. Maybe I’ll be lucky this time. Oh, No! Wait! That’s wrong!

Would you believe… I’ll be lucky this time?

Categories
Weblogging

Your edit does not make my edit

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I wanted to commiserate with Mark Pilgrim. It must feel that he’s being bombarded right about now because of recent edit watch activities. I feel sympathy for Mark, but I still don’t agree with blindly tracking other people’s edits. Not for punitive reasons.

However, having said this, I see no harm in copying what another person writes if you’re responding to it in comments or in your weblog. After all, if each of us has the right to make edits, each of us also has the right not to make edits.

As an example, if I write something, and you respond to it, just because I edit my posting doesn’t mean you have to edit yours. If I ever delete a posting, note that I never delete the individual file, so your link won’t go dead. I figured that’s the price I pay for not being more careful with what I write.

Categories
Weblogging

Emailing a weblogger

There are few things more irritating then to always get your spam email, but to not get other email you’re expecting; you don’t know if there’s something wrong with your email system, the other person’s email system, or they’re just too busy to respond.

My email program put an email from one person I had expected a response from last week into the junk email folder, for no reason I can understand. I didn’t discover it until tonight when I was looking for another email from another person in response to a question. Which I didn’t find.

If I have learned one thing in my 2+ years of weblogging – if you want to get a response from a weblogger, ask the question in their comments. Otherwise, between spam filters and erratic email systems, as well as limited weblogger time and attention, you might as well send paper planes into the void for all the response you’ll get.

I hope I never get so busy, or so rude, that I don’t respond to emails, even if it’s only to acknowledge that I’ve received them. If you don’t hear from me, always assume the email is lost and resend it.