Alien Implant Removal and Deactivation Method Have you been abducted? Need help removing the implant? X-Files invading your real life? then you need this website.

There's yet another UserLand based non-debate raging about Open Source. it's drawn in so many bloggers that it's high on the Blogdex and Daypop indices. Maybe we should just not rise to UserLand's jibes. They do an amazing job of creating noise as a marketing tool. By responding to it, we're just playing their game. Most of it is just FUD to advance their own position anyway.

And it's about Open source. Inevitably Userland portrays this as some evil idea that is hyped to the max by people who don't understand software development. And that there are no successful Open source projects that matter a damn anyway. So I'm surprised nobody has come back and said that Userland is an Open Source company! Their products ship with the source to the majority of the function freely available. Doesn't that make them Open Source?

Which points up the most irritating part of the whole debate. Open source is not exactly the same as the GPL, which is not exactly the same as free, which is not exactly the same as group development. There are numerous examples of chargeable source. There are numerous examples of open source released under other licenses. Lumping everything into one big bucket that is owned by ESR doesn't advance the debate one whit.

So what's really happening here is an extraordinarily effective marketing campaign from UserLand via weblog. The basic tactic is to start an internal debate on some contentious subject by deliberately taking a provocative position. The moment other people dive in and start commenting, slip in references to your own products and why they're better than the competition. Take a position that says you're on the high moral ground and declare victory. Everybody ends up hating you for it, but who cares, you got the free publicity.

Note that there are no links in this blog entry. I refuse to add to UserLand's success at this by contributing to the Blogdex, Daypop and Google ratings. But if you're really interested, use google to find burningbird, doc searles, Joho, diveintomark.

Netcraft Web Server Survey 1 in 5 web server sites using MS IIS and with SSL installed have been compromised and are definitely vulnerable. You Scared Yet! Getting an SSL certificate is expensive and requires some effort, so these are not just default installed IIS servers.

Osama's bin made to look haggard : We may not have caught him or brought him to justice but, at the cost of thousands of innocent Afghan lives, billions of dollars of US citizens' money and the civil liberties of the Free World, we have got him looking haggard. Terry Jones, on the latest video.

Bah Humbug!

I'd just like to wish my three readers a happy mid-winter festival of indeterminate but mainly Northern European pagan orgin.

What scene from a movie (or several such scenes from different movies) do you regard as really consequential in your life? [thanks, JOHO the Blog] Answer: The final scene of "Two Lane Blacktop". James Taylor is ripping down yet another drag strip in his 55 Chevy Bel Air hotrod. The camera is in the back of the car looking at the back of his head and through the windshield. There's no sound. The film stops and burns up from the middle of his head. Perfick! 

CamWorld: Essays: Online Community Technologies and Concepts Pretty comprehensive rant.

The Bush doctrine is: We are at war not only with the terrorists, but also with those who harbor them. We've got to attack France. Hell Yes! The UK has been at war with France for 1000 years. We'll back up the USA when it invades!

For the irony impaired, that was a joke, right? Or was it just another example of American cultural imperialism?

From the Fast, Cheap and Out of Control desk comes a lovely piece by Cory Doctorow. the coming golden age of Zen acceptance of online unreliability. The close-enough-for-rock-n-roll revolution is a-comin' -- to the streets, comrades! [thanks, bOing bOing].  

"Every once in awhile we collectively need to get our asses kicked to remind us of what is important. We got our asses kicked big time in 2001, in every imaginable way." [thanks, Dotcom Scoop] Tell me about it. Gizzajob. I could do that.

This christmas give the gift that keeps on giving. An online business!

IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ CAREFULLY! : If that does not solve the problem, try banging on the side of your monitor a few times.

Dotcom Scoop: 2001 : The e-commerce winners and losers of 2001. Favourite quote. Microsoft: Nothing can stop the man of steel. If Bill Clinton was teflon, Bill Gates is invisible. Break-up my ass.

TRYING TO GROW the library of applications for Linux, IBM on Tuesday announced a program for developers that makes a server available to them over the Internet. [thanks, Lockergnome Bytes] Um. IBM. Do you think we could have some money please? We've already got a server.  

Psych Central: Dr. GROHOL's Mental Health Page - Psychology of Weblogs : Most weblogs are drivel, banal shit written by angst-ridden teenagers and adults sharing feelings, thoughts, and mind-numbing details about their daily lives that provide little insight into anything or anyone. No Comment!

AutoWiner! I hesitate to give the great dAVE whiNer any more publicity, but for those who read him this site was a hoot.

Design for Community: Essay: Seven sites doing it right Great List.

The Register axes third of staff : The Register will soon appoint a non-executive chairman and a full-time financial officer. After making four redundant and leaving an editorial team of 7.
Does this sound like sense? "The privately owned service is extremely popular, taking around 30% of traffic in the IT sector according to online measurement company Hitwise, and beating services backed by major publishers such as ZDNet, VNU Net and Silicon.com." If I wasn't broke, I'd give them some money.

The reports in this morning papers are beginning to quote the US military as saying things like "The trail has gone cold." "We don't know where Osama is", "We don't know if he's dead or alive". Meanwhile comments are being made about the Elvis Effect. Even if he's really dead, we'll start to hear reports that he's been seen in a supermarket in Boise Idaho. Or Munich. Or Beirut. And we'll never know if they're true or not.

My own feeling is that if /bin/laden ever actually existed, which does seem likely, he just cut his hair, changed his clothes and faded back into the landscape. Even travelling by donkey, he could be in the Steppes or Ulan Bator by now.

But then I started thinking about the film The Usual Suspects. Surely Osama bin Laden IS Keyser Soze "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

When the Berlin wall came down, Gorbachev said something like, "I worry about America. Now they have no demon to fight". And what better demon than a man that doesn't exist, but one who "just needed the will to do what the other guy wouldn't. Who would rather see his family dead than live another day after this."

"A suspected member of the Al Qaeda terrorist network claimed that Islamic militants infiltrated Microsoft and sabotaged the company's Windows XP operating system, according to a source close to Indian police." Link [thanks, bOing bOing] Did MS actually need any help?