rational rants

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Should political postings stay or go? A survey.

I've been blogging for ZD Net for several years, writing for ZD publications for almost 20 years. I've always found readers to be intelligent and thoughtful, which is why I continue to do this while doing other things as "work." My posting, A virus in your genes, think about that,...

Tags: U.S., R&D, Discovery, Blog, Politics, Survey, Creationism, Rational Rants, Research & Development, Blogging, Business Operations, Internet, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2008-09-04

Additional Resources

The future of the book, expanding

I've posted a couple excerpts from the book I am working on, about the future of books and reading. It's a different topic than Rational Rants' mandate, and with so much news and opinion every day to comment on, deserving of its own place and community. So, without further adieu,...

Tags: E-reader, Mitch Ratcliffe

Blog posts 2009-06-15

Anatomy of an attack: <EM>The New York Times</EM> on Solaris

Anatomy of an attack: The New York Times on Solarishmm>> Sun’s Boyle acknowledges that Sun employees participate in OpenSolaris development, but says they do so along with individual and corporate contributors such as Intel. Community registrations in the OpenSolaris community exceed 160,000, far in excess of Sun’s total employee account...

Tags: Operating systems, UNIX, Servers, Murphy, Sun Microsystems Inc., Murph, Sun Solaris, New York Times Co., Microsoft Windows NT, Sun Products

Discussion threads 2008-10-11

SAP CEO: Ballmer should have bought Yahoo

SAP CEO: Ballmer should have bought YahooMS shouldn't be allowed to buy any big companiesThey should get their own house in order first, release worthwhile OS's, and put an end to their sick anti-competitive bullying.The world needs free markets and competition to thrive, not one huge monopoly.The more MS can...

Tags: INTERNET, Kagermann, Microsoft Corp., Yahoo! Inc., SAP AG, Steve Ballmer

Discussion threads 2008-05-05

How much can Internet-powered consumers demand?

I'm thrilled to report that Mitch Ratcliffe right is feeling much better. The author of our Rational Rants blog had some terrifying neck problems, but found relief in the form of an experimental treatment after blogging about it. It's a great example of the...

Tags: Medium, Mitch, Internet, Blogging, Federal Government, Government, Dana Blankenhorn

Blog posts 2008-04-22

OLPC's Negroponte seeks truce with Intel and deal with Microsoft

OLPC's Negroponte seeks truce with Intel and deal with MicrosoftNo one wants a toySo NN's ego finally let him realise that isolating the third world with Linux might be a bad idea. Or more to the point, his potential clients aren't interested in toy pcs. but would rather prepare...

Tags: Linux, Intel Corp., Negroponte, Microsoft Corp., One Laptop Per Child project, truce, Negropronte

Discussion threads 2008-01-09

Why is Vista lame?

Critical reception of Vista is cool, at best. Yet I know Microsoft didn't set out to create a mediocre product. They have a lot of smart, passionate people who really want to create industry leading products. It is just that, on their flagship product, they haven't. Explanations abound, with the...

Tags: Uncategorized

Blog posts 2007-04-19

Rational Rants On-The-Ether: Google's place in the world, with Dan Farber

Dan Farber rang me up to discuss my Rich Skrentas Google dominance posting, my response and follow-up of this morning. You can listen to discussion here.Join the discussion by calling "godsdog" on Skype. Its a social medium, after all, so lets talk.

Tags: Dan Farber, Business &, Technology

Blog posts 2007-01-02

Rational Rants On-The-Ether: godsdog on Skype

2007 will mark a different tack in my blogging/podcasting efforts. For many years, including those preceding the arrival of the "blog," Ive been writing postings (neé columns) about events in the technology and business world, not to mention a lot of political and policy issues. The form feels exhausted...

Tags: Business &, Technology, Skype Technologies S.A.

Blog posts 2006-12-29

A weak of rants

The trouble with ranting about stuff I cant change is that its pointless - Microsofts Windows Genuine Advantage WGA program will, for example, continue to operate to Microsofts genuine advantage whether I froth at the mouth over it or not. There is, nevertheless, more than enough lying and stealing...

Tags: Microsoft Windows, Linux

Blog posts 2006-10-02

Have you seen the ZDNet blog network?

There has been a lot of talk recently about bloggers like Mike Arrington and Om Malik going it alone and building up a network of blog sites. The best example is Mike's "Crunch network" which seems to be doing quite well, covering a wide range of topics. But...

Tags: open source, blog

Blog posts 2006-08-25

Much ado about Writely - this changes very little

The jubilation being expressed by some over Google's acquisition is well-founded but not for the reasons you might think. The concerns about another vector into users' personal data for the all-seeing Google eye are every bit as well-founded. What's wrong - oh so wrong - are the...

Tags: Google Inc.

Blog posts 2006-03-12

Join the Rational Rants Fantasy Baseball League

The Internet is good for something besides blogging and surreptious sex chat. Fantasy baseball thrives hereabouts. I've set up a fantasy baseball league on Yahoo! for readers who want a bit of a challenge. The catch, you have to agree not to draft any of the top 50 players in...

Tags: IBM Corp.

Blog posts 2006-02-27

Are you feeling angry? Log on the Net!

This is not a knock on old media. Really. Even if the supreme irony of David Ignatius' column, From 'Connectedness' to Conflict, is that it is being delivered to most of the world electronically, it is fundamentally flawed in its thinking. Here are a few bits:...

Tags: elite, David Ignatius

Blog posts 2006-02-22

Zillow: Welcome to Whoville, where everyone knows your property value

Zillow: Welcome to Whoville, where everyone knows your property valueNot even closeI looked up my home, and the description was not even right. I owwn a 4 bd 2.5 bath 1.5 story - Zillow's description is 3 bd 3 ba 1 story. I know the public record is...

Tags: data quality, Zillow

Discussion threads 2006-02-10

If the NSA could *really* find terrorists via VoIP intercepts, it might look like this

On his Rational Rants blog, fellow ZDNet Blogger Mitch Ratcliffe writes a post he calls NSA Eavesdropping: Deep Inefficiency."President Bush like to argue for the NSA's warrant-less eavesdropping by saying 'If you're calling al Qaeda, we want to know why,' " Mitch writes. "It was a key argument during ...

Tags: NSA

Blog posts 2006-02-05

What you can expect from a rational ranter

I've never started a new publication, column or blog without setting down some rules for myself about how to deal with errors, omissions and reader feedback that corrects an existing text. Here's what you can expect of me in the coming months and, with fingers crossed hopefully, years:This blog holds...

Tags: Blogging, blog

Blog posts 2006-01-02