another possible outcome in NI

The DUP are, predictably, refusing to participate in powersharing with Sinn Féin. On one hand, they're claiming that the fact that they (the DUP) got into power means they have a mandate from the people to renegotiate the Good Friday Agreement. On the other hand, they're disregarding the fact that as the third biggest bloc of elected representatives, Sinn Féin have a pretty large mandate to continue with the agreement as is, and combined with the UUP - also pro-Agreement - the anti-Agreement guys are somewhat outnumbered. However. I don't know if the Agreement stipulates that the whole thing falls apart if any one party refuses to participate; certainly, the newspapers are talking about there being no speedy return to powersharing, which suggests that this may be the case. I'd still like to believe that the DUP's majority will ultimately drive the UUP and Sinn Féin closer together. As it stands, though, I think the DUP are simply going to angle for a no-compromise return to direct rule from the UK. They're supposed to be making "positive suggestions" in the House of Commons today - should be interesting to see what they consider "positive".

life imitates art

54 Iraqis killed in Samarra. This is strangely reminiscent of the start of some movie that was on TV last week, the name of which I forget and, well, which I didn't bother watching any more of. A number of soldiers were attacked by unseen gunmen and ended up firing on a crowd in retaliation. Of course, they were civilians in the movie, as opposed to Fedayeen militants.

(no subject)

We don't care who owns the satellites, we want to control them.

wocka wocka wah wah

The best part of The Condom Game is the music over the title screen. Pornorific!

also...

it's nice to see that Neal Stephenson has a glitzier, more informative website than he used to; it's just a pity the new site is a piece of Flash-driven assware.

update: hmm, I'm mistaken. It's HTML. But it feels like all the bad parts of Flash, especially with opening its own window.

RWC redux

This turned up in the flongbox today: Australian W(h)ine

never mind the research

Via Eric (bitpuddle), via Dave, here's Phil: MIT's open courseware site. Neither Dave nor Eric actually comment much on it. For me, as an open source developer, the scariest part of Phil's comment is not the outsourcing, or the fact that "The more sophisticated portion of ocw.mit.edu is a 100 percent Microsoft show", but the reason for the latter fact:

"We read a Gartner Group report that said the Microsoft system was the simplest to use among the commercial vendors and that open-source toolkits weren't worth considering."

Someone commented that a lot of people use Gartner reports to make decisions, and that us whiny people should just get used to it; I find that worrying - whenever I've had to make a technology decision in the past, I've used that sort of thing to inform decisions, not make them outright. And I'd certainly feel a little discomfort at signing over a couple of million based on a single report...