News You Can Bruise for 2002 July 29

The battle rages on, with Want a better rate than Mr. Jones?

We shall outspend Mr. Jones on the beaches; we shall consume more conspicuously on the landing grounds, we shall borrow at more favorable rates in the fields and in the streets, we shall deduct the interest in the hills; we shall never surrender!

Jason Robbins of Tonight's Episode fame gave a presentation at the O'Reilly conference on Source Access and Commercial Software (and "commercial" is used appropriately there, I think). It had a humorous component which used hypothetical source code from ancient Sumeria to point out that mere source code access is insufficient to reap the benefits of collaboration. He's going to put up a revised copy on tigris.org, but here is a preview.

The guy on the panel from Microsoft's Shared Source initiative, against which (the initiative, not the guy) much of Jason's satire was directed, is also named Jason. Battle of the Jasons!

I'm fairly sure it was unintentional, but the Beetle Bailey strip mentioned herein made me realize just what a badass Sarge is. This is a guy who talks to his dog, who has a separate bed in his quarters for his dog, who dresses his dog in a little Army uniform, and not a peep about it out of his men. Not even behind his back. They don't dare, because he's such a badass.