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Saturday, November 15, 2003
Las Vagueness 
| | Wardriving from the McCarran airport to Fry's and down the strip to Harmon, then east on Harmon to the Alexis Park, I picked up exactly three wi-fi signals: one (WEP on, so it's closed) from the Boardwark Casino, one called "wireless" at the Fairfield Inn, and one called ApacheCon here at the Alexis Park. Way to go, ApacheCon staff. I am among My People here. |
| | The Alexis Park also has high speed internet inthe rooms. Here's how it performs: |
| | And for an extra buck a day you get an assigned IP address, so you can produce your own room service, so to speak. Nice. |
| | When I was here in Vegas a couple weeks ago, I stayed in the Mandalay Bay, which is a much bigger, newer and, frankly, nicer hotel. But it had no high speed Internet connections in the rooms. And while many of the halls were thick with wi-fi antennas and signals, there was no way to get on. "We're working on that," was the best I could get from the hotel, which has an enormous conference center, so you'd think. |
| | The Alexis Park was positioned originally as a casino-less hotel, and the place to hold nice gatherings during conventions. It's getting a bit run-down (e.g. my room's beat-up TV doesn't work); but all the rooms are still suites, there isn't a slot machine in sight, and as long as I have my connectivity, I'm happy. |
Viva
| | Heading for Apachecon in Las Vegas. See you there. |
Say it ain't Scott
| | At PopTech several years ago, Bob Metcalfe chided David Weinberger and his fellow Cluetrainers for indulging in "the seven worst words on the Net"... You just don't get it, do you? That reproach withstanding, I must say that Scott not only doesn't get it; he's vapidly dismissive of it. |
| | Worse, the essay came right after Daniel Shorr, my formerly favorite radio news analyst, said Kerry & Dean's refusal to take federal matching funds called for a "requiem for campaign finance reform." |
| | I fear that I shall become to NPR what Andrew Sullivan is to the New York Times. |
One more Windows Worry
| | I flunked Statistics, but I kept the books, and studied the subject later when I had a use for it. Especially useful (yes, I worked in PR and advertising) was the classic How to Lie With Statistics. |
| | Notice, however, that the Windows chart scales horizontally up to 80 while the Linux chart only manages to get its concerns up to 40. |
| | I'd point to the article in question, but the InformationWeek home page basically doesn't work on my browser. |
Going positive
| | Let's be direct, and yet anecdotal: I am surrounded by liberals, and always have been. Through this blog, and through my normal course of living, I know a hell of a lot of people who describe themselves, or can reasonably be described, as "liberal." And I don't know one -- really, not one -- for whom "9/11 changed nothing important; it meant relatively little." It was a transformative experience for everybody, regardless of whether they supported the Iraq war or not, and to accuse a group of people of not realizing the gravity of the massacre is a slur bordering on the vile. |
| | Slurrage of the sort Matt decries goes both ways, of course. It's approximately standard in the editorializing game. That's why Dan Ackroyd's "Jane you ignornant slut" was such a funny opening salutation back on the old Saturday Night Live parody of Right/Left arguments on TV. |
| | But something else is happening here in the wide open yet highly populated op-ed spaces of blog journalism. We sense proximity to each other, and involvement. Thanks to syndication, writers know other writers might read them, and know when other writers source their work. The result may not be conversation, but it's not exactly the cannon fire between fortified egos that characterizes old-fashioned print and broadcast editorializing. |
| | It's more likely to be civil, because it's better suited to informing open opinions than to driving closed ones. The blog space is a perfect setting to launch, inform, modify and spread ideas as well as information. It's an efficient and welcoming marketplace for both. |
| | That's why Andrew Sullivan often turns me off. He's a terrific thinker and writer; and he has a far more open mind than Matt's reproach (about one post) by itself suggests. But he seems to address his readers from a pulpit. Nothing wrong with that, of course; just something that seems a bit more suited to the op-ed page than the blog. Of course, op-edding is how Andrew makes his living, and where he comes from as a journalist, even though he's also about the biggest blogger in the barn. |
| | Anyway, I find myself thinking about what Howard Dean is going to do with all those millions that folks are giving him in small amounts. What will his manners be when he buys TV ads? Will he "go negative," which has been pro forma with TV campaign advertising, and which is so effective that it even got Gray Davis elected? I'll betcha most of the folks who give Dean money over the Net don't like negative campain advertising, and would vote against it if Dean (or Joe Trippi) asked them about it. |
A great town to leave
| | Did I mention that Los Angeles is still disgusting? Will I ever get over this? TheFrenchMan loves L.A. because he lives in the L.A. of childhood movies. When he's driving around I imagine he's seeing Chinatown and Sunset Strip and black and white films I haven't heard of. All I see is Tupac's mother, desperate actors and plastic surgery. There are billboards for Botox here forchristsakes. Someone pinch me. |
Soundings
Shine on
| | A solar wind stream is buffeting Earth's magnetic field and causing mild geomagnetic storms. High-latitude sky watchers should remain alert for auroras tonight. |
| | The big sunspots are coming around again, so expect more fireworks. |
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