An amazing week we’ve had.
The Red Sox surprisingly pounded the Cardinals for their first World
Series win in 86 years.
George Bush gets re-elected and the Republicans gained seats in
Congress.
–

Almost overnight my whole world has changed-and I’m trying to rethink
how to react to the problems I think the US
has in the realm of Global Americanization- the export of Jobs, the
rising national Debt, the war against Terrorism
especially in Iraq, Just Like Saddam said it would be it would be
fought there in the desert.
What’s going on with Osama these days. Osama is still out there,
George, you better capture him-
(please don’t kill him, try him in international court, strip him of
his power and reveal that he is an insane inciter of
wrongful religious interpretation.) We need to stop pissing off
Muslims, and promoting fear of other nationalities in the name of
democracy. We also need Global support and integration of our policies
to align better with our allies and the UN -mend
repugnant stadoffish behavior of our First World America. This means
enacting a higher sense of world responsibility rather than
a them or us attitude. I want to go to other countries and not have to
fear I will be a target.
We need stricter gun control and looser restrictions on freedom of
speech. Repeal the Patriot Act. Give the troops protection.
The US needs to set an example of environmentalism and not be the
largest consumer of expendable non-renewable resources.
Shit, I am thinking too far to the left to be considered a mainstream
American.

Arghh, I have questions about what Bush is up to.

1) What about this huge debt load the US has taken on-how can this be
reversed?
2) How can we secure our US jobs and borders if you offer incentives to
export Jobs away from the US, and offer deals to companies that
use sweatshop labor for pennies on the (Aamerican) dollar?
3) How can all Americans have access to education and health insurance
no matter what
their income level is? There should be no homeless in America.
4) How about making Washington DC the safest city in America?
5) How about NOT ignoring the AIDs crisis around the world, and support
programs which espouse protection on a physical level
and NOT a religious one?

I could go on but my head and my heart hurts from thinking about this
stuff. Liberal activism will still go on. Michael Moore will
still bug the crap out of the conservatives. And Massachusetts will
still be profoundly liberal, and inspirational to those
disenfranchised by this election.
In the awesome book,”In the Shadow of No Towers” by Art Spiegelman
there’s a reference to the other shoe that will drop.
I’m waiting too. Hopefully, George, that shoe won’t drop on you.
Here’s to hope
-benj

Baseball, as an American Sport, is the subject of much love and loss,
angst and excitement, pleasure and pain.
Baseball, the game itself, is as enjoyable to watch as it is to play,
it is unlike any other popular sport, where a team responds
to the actions between two players-one throwing- the other batting- and
separate team support for these two in their moment
relies on the awareness of this play. An extremely democratic game,
where the confrontation between two opposing factions is
face to face-and the Teams must compete to support this confrontation,
much like a candidate and their party support. The game ends
when one side wins – there’s no real time limit on a game- an inning
may be minutes or hours, the pace can be rapid or
leisurely- patience may be tried, opportunities missed, a stolen base
here, a passed ball there, a clean up hitter left to
start the next inning. It is truly a wonderful pastime.
Baseball also gave rise to delicious sports reporting of such emotional
content that it rises above any other American journalistic
endeavor and influences other topical items with allusions to the game
in the coverage of American Politics, War, and Culture.
Our conversations are peppered with comments like “missed the ball”,
“struck out”, “home run”, “on deck”, and “in the bullpen”.
We root for our teams like they are our family. Ecstatic wins and
depressing losses, instances which defy logic, canonization of
a player’s achievement or demonizing failures make great matter for
opinion which may be interpreted as a stunning defeat or
a miraculous win -depending who’s root root rooting for the home team.
These are the facets of the diamond which have made Sports journalism
a lively read, and provides a full spectrum of interpretation
from logistical to the incredible, skill and chance make for an
unpredictable game whatever the statistics might suggest,
a good team can fail, a bad team can succeed in a game and that game
can be all of itself or part of season, it all makes for great
subject matter filled with human drama outside our personal dramas.

So as these Red Sox try to break the curse (it’s not achieved yet), be
certain it will matter not if they win or lose
but how they play the game. For if they win, they will be perceived to
do the same next year, and if they lose,
they will be perceived to try again. And that is what Baseball is all
about and someone will write about it one way or another.

The gigantic data corporation EMC has purchased Dantz and its software
titles like
Retrospect. I find this amusing because for YEARS I’ve wondered why EMC
supported
just about every Windows and Unix platform except Apple’s.

To me, this has been a glaring omission with EMC’s products. I find it
a welcome addition for I once toured the Hopkinton EMC campus where
you could see
every EMC product and thousands of servers and disk storage units and
computers from every major and a lot of minor companies-including
laptops-except Apple.
I mean, jeez, they claimed there was more storage in this one building
than the whole
country of Italy.

A search on supported systems on the EMC technical page had no mention
of Apple at all.

So now the big question is: How long will Dantz still support Macs?

I don’t know the answer to this question. We all know that there are
rabid Apple haters out there.
I project a conspiracy theory here: EMC is a major Republican
supporter, Al Gore is on the board
of Apple. It would conceivably be possible that EMC would want Apple
products to go away.

Another realm of possibility is that the Small to Medium Business
Server market is moving toward
Apple’s Xserve, which is an excellent product for a fantastic price
point WAY less than
any other major manufacturer’s offering (Anyone considering a new
server for their group
should consider this option- a stand alone G5 XServe with a 1000 user
licenses costs 4000$ or less).

And EMC is struggling in this market, not really sure how to deal with
smaller companies. Personally,
I think it’s the sales folk at EMC who can’t grasp why the smaller
markets would go to some other vendor.
It’s a culture thing- In the computing world there are two types of
“Professional” sales folk.
One is the Grey Suited Sales drone with briefcases and Dell laptops who
only regard you if you have
considerable cash $$$ to spend on. The other is the Lacrosse shirt and
blue-jeans folk who will sit down and
whittle away their product to your budget. EMC tends to be the former.
I suspect it’s their Banking and
Insurance clients that have insinuated this type into the Sales culture.

Apple could get by without Dantz (I have for years), but they would
need their own backup product
or partner with someone (Like Mike Bombich of Carbon Copy Cloner) to
make an Apple enterprise
Backup Program meaningful (and I don’t mean .Mac Backup). How about
Veritas? After some needling of tech support a couple years ago, they
did put up OS X support (since they already had bsd support), and now I
suspect OSX is fully qualified at this point. (I’ve not researched
this…) There are others in the market, mostly
small potatoes and Unix front ends to ditto and psync.

Meanwhile, what happens next remains to be seen. Is this a gentle move
into a smaller market for EMC or
a Microsoft-like gobble, chew, expel type move to diminish competition?

If I add a picture to my email?

Hey blog readers,
Here’s a complaint about the excessive use of technology in the world.

1) Your computer sucks! Microsoft, Apple and a TON of these open
source code monkeys
are needlessly crowding your pc with with CRAP. And they make you pay
for it whether
you realize it or not. Where is the persistant data? Where is the
Common user interface?
Why do the GEEKS out there promote speed over functionality?

2) Cell Phones Suck! I hate it when I get called by someone “on the
road” and the phone clicks off
in an underpass. Or when a lone cell phone rings (in some obnoxious pop
tune or a horrendeous
synthesized classical piece) and you have to guess which button to
push. Where is the voice
interface on these things? And what’s with the cameras? Convergence
devices without a decent
interface (and that means very little button pushing) are DOOMED. Don’t
buy one until
it complies with known standards. Even worse is video phones. Is it me
or do communications
companies have too many marketing idiots promoting dispeptic products.
A phone/palm/camera/MP3
player is absolutely too much stuff to put into a handheld device. They
are complicated, transitional
items which upon purchase are immediately outddated. Beside all the
interface crap you need
to go through to deliver your own info to yourself. WTF?

3) SUV’s Suck. Why are we wasting gas driving SUV’s? Holy mutha load,
If we didn’t depend on FOREIGN OIL
we wouldn’t be wasting Tax Dollars blowing up Iraq. The auto industry
should be ASHAMED at their
gross negligence for the environment, and should be building super
economical transport.
Those waste Billions could have actually rebuilt the public school
infra-structure, provide food for
starving Americans, provide Jobs for the unemployed, Why the US allows
corporate entities to build up a bottom
line while outsourcing to foreign workers on the cheap, enjoying tax
freedoms, and basically trading your
future for their their personal enjoyment.

4) Break Up the HUGE MONOPOLIES. Ok, I thought my phone rates would go
down when the industry got
deregulated. Nope. Hey I thought my cable bill would go down when they
deregulated the cable industry.
Nope. How about air transport, is it any cheaper, is it more secure, is
it efficient? nope.
While I’m on this subject you note that you have FEWER choices in all
these things now than you did 10 years ago.
This is progress?

5) The industry of American Democracy has to change. The USA needs to
adopt a 30 hour work week, a higher minimum wage, longer vacation
allowances, national health insurance, gender free marriage rights, the
right to food (no hungry families),
the right to shelter (no Homeless), the right to mental health
supervision. We have to change our prison system as well-
and develop a US Conservation service -like a peacetime army- to
preserve our land and the intrinsic economic power it holds
to benefit ourselves. Our reliance on cheap trade (again, for the
bottom line) serves only to weaken what should be a self-sufficient
economy.

6) Stop paying politicians. From the President on down, there should be
no such thing as a Career Politician.

-ok enough for today
-O

http://www.macupdate.com/mommy/macsurferx.xml

Ode to blog

I want to know if this works.. if it does
Hooray!