B!X reports:

Meanwhile, in the glorious American south, they are beating people for not saying the Pledge:

A federal appeals court heard arguments Friday on whether an Alabama school system had the right to discipline a student who stood silently with his fist raised rather than recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

The student, Michael Holloman, a high school senior from Parrish, Ala., who has since graduated, was spanked three times with a wooden paddle and given a written reprimand.

Bending over for your principles.

It's time to release my offlineToggle script. It seems to be running without incident and working as designed.

Briefly, offlineToggle is a script that when run will install itself as a schedule. It will poll the net connection every minute and if the net connection on you machine is off or down the it will toggle the 'Work Offline' and 'Upstreaming' status. When the connection comes back it will active these again.

Get it at my Public Scripts.

Should be a core feature.

[Blue Sky Radio]

... Almost all of us mumble through the words of the pledge and they have no meaning what so ever for us. Even if we tear up (post 911) when we say them, it is simply an emotional response and we are not really mentally assenting to what the words mean.

Patriotism is more than simple emotional blubbering or bluster. It is a clinging to basic, fundamental beliefs. It is standing up for something, which is worth standing up for. But what are we standing for? Sadly, I don't think we could even begin to agree.

Who am I?

Who are we?

The deep, important questions each generation must ask and answer.

That conversation, with many voices, recursive, evolving, open, is part of the answer.

I picked up a copy of The Good Citizen's Handbook : A Guide to Proper Behavior, a novelty collection of real guidance from government, civics, and scouting handbooks of the 1920s—1960s.   Most of it comes off as cornball. Penmanship. Proper respect for authority. Cleanliness. The artifacts of a rising middle class.

But there is much truth and value in this too.

It isn't cynical.

It includes miniature copies of the Bill of Rights, advice on family, being a good neighbor.

I'm gonna have to read this little gem cover to cover and give it a good ponder.

Surgical Diversions writes:

This is a test of my callback to user.radio.callbacks.postItem. I got tired of the extra whitespace when I didn't have a title listed for the post. Ya, I'm being overly picky. I should just put a title in. Well, after trying to futz with the #itemTemplate I decided that a small fix to the callback would be easier. Boy was I right. Simple 3 line sciprt.

on noTitle (adrpost) {
if not defined (adrpost^.title) {
adrpost^.title = "No Title"}}

Subsequently, this post should have the title, "No Title", inserted automatically. No more titleless posts.

a few days later...

OK, I fiddled with the untitled post macro to make it use the first sentence as the title of the post. If anyone wants the callback let me know. Actually here it is.

on untitledPost (adrpost) {
  if not defined (adrpost^.title) {
    adrpost^.title = string(string.firstSentence (adrpost^.text))}}

Simple changes. Callbacks are great!

Should be a menu preference. [Blue Sky Radio]

So many islands, so little time reports:

Rosemary Clooney dies at 74. Rosemary Clooney, the crooner who costarred with Bing Crosby in ‘White Christmas,’ has died at the age of 74. [MSNBC]

It has always been hard for me to reconcile the beautiful lady in "White Christmas" with the very LARGE lady in the moo-moo doing the paper towel commercials. Oh well, her voice was always beautiful.

[obituaries a la blog ]

I've tried it and it feels like a natural, spatial counterpart to outlining. In addition to hierarchy, mindmaps show distance, the relationship among leaves on different branches,  clearly. Part of the data visualization theme, but on a personal level. Seeing your own thoughts. Very kloglike.

Now if the nodes could be linked to blog posts...

This above all, to thy cell phone be true.

GMSV mentioned...

Improved testing infrastructure. Kills bugs dead. A new study conducted by The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) concludes that software bugs cost the U.S. economy an estimated $59.9 billion per year. The study, which also found that more than half of that cost is passed on to software users, notes that an estimated $22.2 billion in bug-related losses could be eliminated by developing an improved testing infrastructure that provides earlier and more effective identification and removal of software defects.

Which prompts me to ask:

What proportion of worldwide defects can be blamed on the top 10 software companies?

What proportion on Fortune 500 and US Government in-house developers?

What 3 things can we all do in 2002 to improve software quality?

How can we push some of these costs back to the developers, creating better incentives for quality?

Any chance for "Truth in Packaged Software"? 

Third party software quality audits? (A new life for Arthur Andersen?) 

Is it time to nationalize Rational Software?

The Stencil Group's newsletter has some great observations by Brent Sleeper about the maturing of enterprise software.

Novell's acquisition of SilverStream reflects both companies recognition that boxes like application development, deployment, and integration reflect arbitrary (and outdated) distinctions between product categories, and "companies of a certain size" can no longer afford to focus on just one of these. To put it bluntly, providing a "platform" has become an all-or-nothing business proposition.

Another case of buyers recognizing high transaction and interaction costs.