Out of Cheese

In news that's gone surprisingly

In news that's gone surprisingly unnoticed at news.com and Slashdot, Infoworld reported today that Bruce Perens is leaving HP to concentrate on political work.

This is big news. I'm excited to see a high-profile person from the high-tech community deciding to spend his time concentrating on tech policy. That's what I've been asking for for a while now, and I'm glad to see Perens step up and try his hand at that role.

At the same time, I'm a bit concerned about the some of the policies that Perens is likely to advocate. This week, for example, he took part in a march in San Francisco in support of a bill that's trying to mandate that all software used by the California state government be open source. That's a completely absurd proposal. I sincerely hope that he concentrates on policies that are reasonable and which at least have some chance of success. To do that, he'll have to adopt a degree of moderation that I'm not yet convinced he has.

Sha Sha is on a

Sha Sha is on a blogging rampage! She used to update her page about once in a blue moon, but now she's gone and posted five items in the past week. Wow.

She's also changed her page to be very green in the middle of all of this. The big question: Is there a connection between the color change and the increased blogging frequency? I wonder....

While wandering around at Borders

While wandering around at Borders last week, I found Myth-ion Improbable on the shelves and bought it immediately. It's been quite a few years since Robert Aspirin's last Myth book, and the drought has gone on long enough that the series might be more interesting due to its author's writing troubles than for its plot.

That aside, I was very excited to see a new Myth book. Turns out it's just an OK read, but that's about what I expected. Aspirin really boxed himself into a corner plot-wise with the previous book in the series, so this one unsurprisingly takes place mid-series. It doesn't really have the same style or sense of humor as the previous ones, though. Hopefully he'll be able to return to the quality of the earlier books with the next one in the series, which is apparently due in hardcover next month.

After a year of intermittently

After a year of intermittently trying to find a company selling Keyspan's USB PDA Adapter, I finally found a single one remaining at Small Dog Electronics yesterday and ordered it right away. I haven't HotSync'd my Palm IIIx with a computer since I moved to Washington a year ago because I no longer use any computer that has a serial port. When the adapter shows up I'll finally be able to back up everything I've typed into the Palm in the past year. Yay!