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Funny as shit Mr. Bad's Things to say when you're losing a technical argument. Right as rain The latest DaveNet. I don't mean to be such an Amen Corner here, but jeez, it's Sunday, so why not? Dave talks about integrity without defining it much. So I'll give it a go. It's what you can trust. The solid stuff in another human being. The truth behind the expression. The expression required by truth. Geologists speak of "competent rock." That's rock that's been together for a few dozens or hundreds of millions of years. You can trust it, build on it, and build with it. The rest you can pound into soil, quarry for gravel or whatever. It's not Truth, it's yesterday's newspaper. We're building the next world on our own integrity, and it's something you can only see when you look somebody's words right in the eyes. By the way, the problem almost always with Journalism is the need to tell a story. Too much of what's happening doesn't fit the format. Stories are about conflict. You need a problem. Something to keep you tuned in, turning pages, looking toward an outcome. Only problems and conflicts will do. No stories start with happily ever after. The right place for outcomes is always later. Too often what's coming out right now is the continuing end, the continuing beginning, or both. The story's over, or hasn't begun. Great example: Linux vs. Whatever. Linux is a great story in the server "space" because it's a game. Will Linux beat NT/2000? Will it cut into Sun's business? Never mind that everybody's business is increasing. Let's make it into a fight. On the desktop it's no contest, but still interesting because Linux fits the underdog mold. It gets to play David to Microsoft's Goliath. There's always a David. Before Linus, it was Marc Andreessen. Before Marc it was Steve Jobs. But where Linux is really kicking butt is where nobody cares whose butt gets kicked. That's the embedded space, which happens to constitute most of the known computing world. But in the wide open spaces of technology, embedded processing is dark matter. It's the 30 chips that call no attention to themselves in your Ford, and the little operating systems (where required) that tell those chips how to drive this brake or that fuel injector. Want to take any device in the world and put it on the Net? Want to do it easily, without a whole lot of new engineering, and with an OS that's cheap, close to real time and small enough to fit in an 8 meg flash with room to spare for lots of other code? You have one easy choice: LInux. Which is why Linux is soaking into everything. But it's not a story. Nobody appears to be losing. There's no Goliath holding the fort against an invading horde. There's just a lot of engineers designing in new parts with a handy OS that nobody owns. Lot of truth going on. That's the real story.
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