Listics

Scoble posts on a scurrilous taunt from Winer.

Dave Winer, yesterday, theorized that fewer students were choosing to major in computer science because of Microsoft’s industry dominance.

I love him dearly but that Dave Winer is such a troll. His musings were based on a New York Times article that based some assumptions on the CRA annual survey current results of which have not yet been made public. Regardless, extrapolating from this data source tells you little about the number of people prepared to enter the workforce in the IT industry. If you do look closely at recent data, they’re not that bad, BUT… they don’t meet the Gates/Balmer stated goal of reducing US salaries to levels found in the offshore workforce. That goal can be achieved, they think, by encouraging an over-supply of techs in the field.

So Dave’s musings notwithstanding, it has yet to be demonstrated that there is actually a problem here. Are there too few students entering the discipline of Computer Science? I doubt it. I especially doubt it if you look at “degree production” world-wide. Does a short-fall of CS graduates in the US force jobs offshore? Not those jobs. Does a CS degree prepare one for the wonderful world of entrepreneurship and technical innovation? NOT! This whole thing is a non-issue and it’s based on Winer’s typically dyspeptic view of Microsoft. Thanks Dave! Thanks for sharing!

…about Howard Stern’s problems anyway. Still, anything that moves more media onto the net and helps tear down the corporate mass mnedia concentration is fine with me.

Dave Winer, a fellow at Harvard University Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society is taking up a collection for a wine and cheese party to be held mid-April in Cambridge. Dave says,

The sessions start at 8AM, and conclude at 5PM. We will have a party, sponsored by Adam Curry and myself. Remember the cost to attend is $0. If you want to make a contribution so we can have refreshments … we will welcome that.

I don’t think I’ll be able to be there, but I intend to send him a nice gouda.

Elaine saw it and writes about it here. Billmon didn’t see it and writes about it here.

I’m not into serious S&M so I won’t be seeing it. Now if it had a good plot or an inspiring story line, I could excuse the violence, but what I get is that it’s the same old bullshit with very wet special effects.

Back when this turkey was in production people were calling it the “Jesus Chain Saw Massacre.” Gotta like that title, but I never go to the chain saw movies either.

From Slate:

I know, it sounds like a Monty Python movie. You’re thinking there must be something to The Passion of the Christ besides watching a man tortured to death, right? Actually, no: This is a two-hour-and-six-minute snuff movie—The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre

Working on some kind of oriental calendar, Mike Sanders recently posted his New Year predictions. I’ll reproduce them in bold below with my derisive, snorting, belittling comments and exclamations of amazement that one person could be so ignorant, so narrow, and so perverse. What a schmuck.

1) George Bush will win re-election and will garner 53% of the popular vote.
Colonel Sanders assumes that an election will be permitted during the period of martial law that the dreadfully grotesque hunchbacked Cheney, wearing a Dick Nixon mask and clumping around like Richard III, will declare after he has arrested Laura and the Bushettes and clapped them in irons next to his Whitman Memorial plaque in the UT tower — all this following the untimely death of daddy Prez in a Nascar accident when they allow him to take a few practice laps in a modified racer with a governor and training wheels. Oops. Holy Bananas Bush man! You’re not supposed to drive those things into walls.

A better prediction would be that Dita Beard will somehow turn up in the Lincoln bedroom and be caught on a cell phone camera going down on Laura Bush while the chimp faced Prez looks on, stroking it, but this will not deter the 29% of voters comprising the unholy alliance oif a right-wing Israeli lobby with the Mel Gibson propelled Christian extremists from voting for him as long he doesn’t get any on the rug in the oval office.

2) Atom will replace RSS as the feed format of choice.
Even a hopelessly ignorant bullshit artist can get one out of six correct.

3) There will be many positive signs of Emergent Democracy in the Middle East.
The panel of independent experts isn’t exactly sure what part of the middle-east Mr. Sanders is talking about. Nor could they come to agreement on what an “Emergent Democracy” would look like. Perhaps it would look like Egypt before the assassination of Sadat? Perhaps it would look like Lebanon before the Israeli policy of pre-emptive strikes turned the lush Mediterranean garden spot into a killing ground for fanatical paranoid Israeli storm troopers in the 70’s. Maybe that’s where George Walker B. got his strategeric ideas for world peace and global domination! Would an emergent middle eastern democracy look like the Jordanian constitutional monarchy? No? Maybe it would look like Jordan looked before the country was depressed by the influx of Palestinian refugees driven out of their Israeli homeland? Maybe the only hope for peace and emergent democracy in the middle east is to neutralize both Syria and Israel and send in UN peacekeeping forces, while opening up an international war crimes tribunal fror the prosecution of Ariel Sharon and all who serve him. What kind of smug arrogant prick would make an assertion regarding “emergent democracy” in the middle east. Those countries were democratic while you were still shitting yellow Sanders, and they’ve only been knocked out of plumb by the destabilizing influence of a paranoid population of displaced persons who suffered so horribly in Europe during World War II that they should never have been allowed to emigrate without years of therapy.

4) Microsoft will realize that their current software strategy is headed for disaster and will make some significant moves.
Wrongo Mr. Oracle. This prediction is based on the ridiculous assumption that the MS software strategy is heading for disaster. How foolish. Can you spell Longhorn? Can you spell ROI?

5) The passing of Arafat will signal a change away from the Palestinian’s current embrace of terrorism.
Do you have friends among the Mossad assassination squads Sanders, or do you think a little Israeli bank robbery is going to drive Arafat over the edge. This isn’t a prediction. It’s a callous bet in a dead pool, and I can only reply, “Your mama…”.

6) Blogging will continue to diverge into the Broadcast-Blogging of the heavy hitters and the CB-Blogging of the rest.
Among the reams of meaningless statements written every day by pin headed morons who are comfortable warming their tiny craniums in the nether reaches of their own rectums, this is just another one… not particularly remarkable. Or, as the man said, “Of course the dog can talk, but what does it have to say?”

Dave Winer is an “Onjer.” He writes in an online journal, or “Onj.” Don’t confuse this Onjer with the pumpkin chucker that’s pronounced the same way. And certainly the persian jack-ass has NOTHING to do with the construction of this new term for online journaling. I know that Dave likes to think of himself as a “blogger,” but… well, take a look. NO CAT PICTURES. The dude is an Onjer, pure and simple.

I’ve reclassified the old “Sucking up to Dave Winer” posts and assembled them in this new category. It became obvious to me that sucking up to Dave could be a lifetime pursuit (he’s so tall! what a bright young man! I understand the ladies think he’s a knock-out!) But as I examined the motivations for posting in the category, it seemed to me that I was always moved to post when Dave had written something unutterably stupid, self-serving, false, or otherwise awful. At these times, I tried unsuccessfully to put forth the good vibes necessary to somehow mend the fabric of the space-time continuum torn by the howling of the thousand demon monkeys that inhabit the human shell we think of as Dave.

I give up. Every day I will continue to pay Dave the compliment of reading his Onj. Dave gets up early and writes about things that interest me. But the effort of sucking up is just too much for me to bear. I’m not good at it, and I find that for every step forward (for example complimenting Dave on how tall he is) I usually take two steps back (for example calling him on a lie or misrepresentation).

There’s a lot in Dave’s Onj that is worth reading and there’s a lot that is noise. The noisy stuff may from time to time appear linked in this category. But the category doesn’t have to be limited to Dave, it’s just that he has such a rich vein of noise to mine!

But bottom line here, a personal note to the big guy… Dave, I love you ya big lug. As the premier Onjer of all time, I know you’re open to a few simple criticisms from a humble blogger like me. The next time we meet I hope we can shake hands, look into each other’s eyes take a deep breath and simply say “Namaste.”

“All worldly pursuits have but the one unavoidable end, which is sorrow: acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births, in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisition and heaping up, and building, and meeting; and faithful to the commands of an eminent guru, set about realizing the Truth (which has no birth or death).”

- Milarepa

The White House resident co-opted a typical right-wing Tennessee blogger and the bleating Judas Goat in Cambridge, Mass. is touting it like it’s some kind of journalistic coup instead of a crass and obvious act of media manipulation. Dave, you schmuck. The winos in DC can’t get within 20 blocks of the White House without a thorough background check and you think this was some kind of serendipitous event? Are you some kind of vapid Pollyanna, or are you a cynically manipulative suck-up hoping to parlay your fellowship into a blogger-laureate position in the second Bush administration?

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* Judas goat: The stockyards use such a goat to lead the sheep to slaughter. Without the aid of a Judas goat, the sheep would mill around endlessly in the pen and would not enter or traverse the chute to the slaughter house. The Judas goat, mingling with the sheep, is trained to lead them out of the pen and down the chute to the slaughterhouse. And at the last second, the Judas goat is allowed to escape by a side-gate while the sheep go to their appointed end.