| Monday
November 25, 2002
BYTE seems to have gone subscription only. At a dollar a month it's not
a lot: I do at least 8,000 words a month, so it's 1/8000 per word in
dollars or 1/80 cent per word just for my stuff; which is hardly exorbitant,
and you get David Em and Moshe Bar and Andy Patrizio and others, plus
features. When people complain about the price I find that a bit odd.
Anyway, I have put in my own subscription (paying for it although
obviously I could get one free). If it doesn't sell enough, I suppose CMP
will close things down. Nikkei BYTE doesn't want any 8 - 10,000 words a
month; they're happy with half that. So is BYTE Turkey and so are the
other overseas magazines; meaning that if CMP Byte folds, I'll be doing
5,000 words a month at most, and that only if enough people pay
for this place. It's a good bit cheaper to subscribe to BYTE. Of
course I won't at all mind if you do both...
I owe everyone a COMDEX report. COMDEX was grim this year, and I
haven't had the heart to write it: we had an "End of COMDEX as We
Knew It" party and I fear that was well named. I have heard
nothing further about the rumors the COMDEX founder Sheldon Adelson would
buy COMDEX back (for $15 million plus $10 million worth of debts, having
sold it for a reported $800 million) and try to revive it. It may be
wishful thinking.
If Sheldon does buy COMDEX back, we may return to having BYTE do
the annual COMDEX awards. Those were highly thought 0f; I am tempted to
say "the coveted BYTE Best of COMDEX Awards".... But so far it's
all only rumor.
The war preparations continue. It looks like war, and it looks as if
the US taxpayers will pay for it. Whether we can then exploit anything to
get some of that revenue back isn't known.
Certainly we have the military means to do it. It will not be cheap in
treasure, nor cheap in Iraqi blood; it will be relatively cheap in
American blood, and so far as I can tell, the armed forces are eager to go
in; and the notion of a war is supported by at least a majority of the
American people. It's not the kind of war this country is used to, but it
ought to be ended soon -- as a war. The aftermath may take a good bit
longer, and my fears are for the consequences to the republic after we
have won. The counter argument is that it will cost us more not to go in
and get this over with: had we stopped Hitler in 1936 we might have spared
the world the blood baths of World War II. It probably wasn't politically
possible to have stopped Germany at the Rhineland: neither France nor
Britain nor the US had the nerve. It is certainly politically possible to
go in and remove Iraq as a power, and end Saddam's abilities to cause mass
destruction or even mischief.
Given how far things have gone, it looks to me as if the war is
inevitable. If so, we will want to be quick and decisive, and establish
bases that we and only we control, so that we are not beholden to anyone
else in the Middle East or the Gulf for support or security. And that, I
think, the administration well understands. I believe that if we do go in,
we will do it right.
And that's important...
See mail for comments.
More puppy pictures later today or tomorrow. And the COMDEX report
should be done today.
At the Wagner Society meeting/party yesterday afternoon, we were told
the story of the only person ever thrown out of the Wagner Society: years
ago the speaker was Father Owen Lee of the Metropolitan Opera Broadcast
quiz show. The host of the Society meeting was startled by a horrible cry
for help: rushing upstairs he found Father Lee fleeing down the stairs,
his clothing in disarray, his clerical collar ripped open and his shirt
ripped. "I am being attack by Grundik!" he cried.
A female guest had become intoxicated and thought it would be fun to
attack Father Lee. She was notified of the cancellation of her membership
by registered mail...
I will have to uninstall Mozilla. It is now
trying to tell me my own web site is a virus, it will not let me use
Internet Explorer to look at my web site, and I keep getting warnings
about viruses. Mozilla is clearly working to keep me from using Internet
Explorer. IE doesn't do that to Mozilla. This was cleared up by using
Mozilla to go to my web site. Once I did that it would let me go there
with Internet Explorer. Until then, Mozilla insisted that any web site
Internet Explorer wanted me to go to was in fact a virus.
This is insanity.
But see below
I have been thinking. If BYTE vanishes, I wonder if I'll continue doing
silly things so you don't have to. It won't be anything like as easy to
get equipment and software if I am just me.
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