Most Americans also have a car, two TV's, a video game system, a cell phone, a job , and could probably obtain illegal substances without fear of being caught.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that of the online population of Chinese residents (100 million) most of them have TVs, gaming systems, and certainly a cell phone. They also likely have a job and possibly a car. Illegal substances, while rarer, I'm sure still exist and can be obtained w/o too much worry.
While entertaining themselves via the Internet and other means, they are still able to see that their "freedoms" are being entroached and that they need to subvert government "scare tactics". Americans would just shrug and say, "I'm safer now because of tight and constitutionally ignorant controls than I was before 9/11/01."
I wonder at which point Americans will revert to standing up for their rights. Probably when their TV shows are edited even more all in the name of Family First.
I mean they can block a few IP adresses by handpicking them but they cannot go ahead and block the whole internet, can they?
Yes, they could and I'm sure that they would if it wouldn't cause the nation to erupt into civil war.
Some small app ala Google WIFI with rolling IPs (in an encrypted list of course) connecting to dynamic hostnames would be too much of a task for the authorities to bear with.
They would outlaw encryption as evidence of crimes against the state and they would track down encrypted radio signals and arrest (and make examples out of) anyone that was doing it. I'm sure it would eliminate *most* attempts at doing this. Enough that it would be a non-issue.
You are really thinking about this the wrong way, as is expected, because you don't understand what it is like to live under a truly repressive regime. Just wait -- you might -- it's starting here already.
Note to Chinese government...censorship of the Internet is a lost cause, give it up. If you want to be the next economic superpower, you are going to have to deal with dissenting ideas found on the Internet. You'd do better to work out an ongoing public discussion forum on incorporating the best ideas into the public and private sectors instead of trying to censor access.
Yet the majority of Americans would blindly accept limitations on their Constitutional rights in the name of "National Security" or "Terrorism".
It's amazing how differently our two populations behave.
Well, what a insightful commentary - you don't update because you can't find a reason.
It was to point out that Linux has matured to a point where constant development might not be quite as necessary as it used to be and thus people aren't finding a need to run the "latest and greatest". Thus, they aren't as likely to need new features and submit code changes.
There doesn't seem to be much happening out there wrt 2.6.15," said Morton in a mailing list posting. "We're at rc2 [the second release candidate of 2.6.14] and I only have only maybe 100 patches tagged for 2.6.15 at this time. The number of actual major features lined up for 2.6.15 looks relatively small too," he said in a later posting.
Ok, not that much going on w/this kernel, and then we get:
In the same mailing list thread, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux and the maintainer of the development kernel, expressed concerns that the kernel development process may need to be changed to make sure that Morton is not overworked.
So, there isn't much traffic coming through and Morton wants to do even more -mm releases but Linus thinks he might become overworked? I'm confused. Any clarification on this from the list that the article doesn't give?
He suggested this may indicate that the kernel is nearing completion. "Famous last words, but the actual patch volume _has_ to drop off one day," said Morton. "We have to finish this thing one day."
I still haven't even bothered to move to 2.6.x as I have no reason to. I used to update my kernels immediately (and even ran various -AC, etc) but 2.4.x has been so stable for me that I see no reason to bother. Perhaps the reason why traffic is low is because of that?
This seems reasonable, a way to have guaranteed revenue stream and a penalty for people who cancel early.
It's reasonable for people that buy their FIRST Tivo. If the reports that adding an additional Tivo (rebates wouldn't apply as the user would already have existing service and wouldn't be elligible) causes your contract to change, then that's not reasonable.
According to the new service agreement, any TiVo activated after September 6 will require a 12-month commitment. Those who cancel before the end of their contract, or have their contracts terminated by TiVo, will be forced to pay a $150 early termination fee.
Well, with rebates that bring the devices under $50 and their recent radically retarded decisions such as presenting ads to users that bought a Tivo to rid themselves of ads, etc, it's no wonder they are going to these lengths!
I was the first to support Tivo for what their device and service did for my household. I am also the first to complain to Tivo and Slashdot (and various others including my parents who I had originally suggested a Tivo) that their service is no longer worth it.
Good riddance Tivo. While I still use your product (DirecTivo), I'm glad I'm not obligated to fall under any of your contractual and flighty mishaps.
If you have a small cute animal you can ask "What's the weather?" or "Play me a song" and have it follow your commands, that would be on the level of the cell phone, microwave oven, or even television in terms of cultural impact.
I realize that cute females are scarce amongst the Slashdot crowd but come on!;-)
The government can arrest individuals and no one has to be notified and those individuals may have no rights including not disclosing to anyone else why they were arrested. They can then be held without bail for an indefinite amount of time.
Not only that, but now the government can hold IP hostage for an indefinite amount of time too.
Is the Internet going to get shut down now too because the government has "State Secrets" on there too and all the terrorists congregate there?
A massive 61% don't understand the difference between gigabytes, kilobytes and megabytes and as a result have sent e-mails with huge attachments that have blocked clients' systems.
And a massive 99% of people don't need to understand that. Mail servers should be designed to ignore e-mails of a larger size than they can handle. It's not up to the users to understand KB, MB, GB, mail server loads, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, SSH, whatever.
Their understand lies in doing their jobs effectively, whatever that may be. When my doctor refers to medical jargon I may not know what it means and may be confused (I'm generally well versed in my particular conditions) so do you really expect them to understand what the jargon in your field is?
I think under the recent circumstances it reasonable for a police officer to stop someone and ask them what their purpose is, and assuming its done in a non-discrimatory manner to ask to look through your concealed possessions.
I guess it depends on where you live. To me, no officer has any business asking me what I'm doing if I'm not obviously doing something that warrants his suspicions. Then again, I'm a true American and not one of these post-9/11 dickheads that is scared to fly, drive, or cross the street without first thinking about possible terrorist activities.
When I'm asked by officers, "what are you doing?" My favorite reply is, "minding my own business, and you?" Obviously, when I'm temporarily detained for a traffic violation I'm more friendly because it will likely benefit me in the end. When an officer is invading your personal space for their own possible gains they deserve nothing more than your scorn.
It's only a nightmare because there are free alternatives that do exactly what their software already does (and sometimes good enough to replace it for home users). But! Microsoft would *love* to host web-based application services (i.e. Office). It would enable them even greater control over the end-users and piracy and ends a lot of media creation and distribution costs.
They can still hold their stranglehold on the OS market but they could also gain tighter and higher profits on their software.
Will Google Office/Phone/Internet/Talk/Browser/etc take the OS market from Mircosoft? Who knows. But it could happen. If it doesn't, Microsoft better make damn sure that they are building the OS to be the best it can be to keep people from switching to GoogleOS and Apps.
This free website, that you're not paying for, isn't up to your standards? I'm so dreadfully sorry.
I suggest that you take a look here. I *was* paying but I now refuse to pay for something that is no longer worth paying for. Perhaps if they begin to heed the warnings of so many other ex-subscribers then I will go back. Until then, I'll continue to complain. It's our only choice.
Perhaps you haven't seen Current TV yet... Not only do they allow viewer content submissions, allow "pod" viewing on their website, and have a radically different approach to showing their content, they are also apparently heavily backed by Google.
Now, none of that is really that important. What *is* important, IMHO, is how Current TV does advertising. They don't seem to be having a lot of commercials in your standard sense (they do have some -- but I guess because they are mostly submissions they don't need as much revenue to pay $1m/episode salaries) they do have integrated commercial content (i.e. a "pod" about Pioneer's latest in-dash navigation system which uses XM traffic data to reroute you).
I am sometime mesmerized by Current TV and sit there watching repeated content because it's *that* interesting. I don't particularly care for the blatant advertising "pods" but they are sometimes interesting the first time through.
That's where GNU radio comes in. The hardware is so simple and generic it cannot be outlawed without something draconian like outlawing all unlicensed receivers of any RF spectrum. All the hard stuff is done in software. I've seen demos where they can decode HDTV with it. Quite impressive.
Cool, a project that has been dead since 2004 and that will be killed by any modern iterations of HDTV signal. You think that the broadcasters and content providers are going to spend all that money to protect their stuff and they aren't going to do everything in their power to make the DRM ever-changing to thwart the hacker community? Hah!
More importantly, the only thing the content providers will do is destory television. Once someone uses a TiVO, they change their lifestyle because of it. I, for example, cannot imagine ever again watching TV on somebody else's schedule. People won't go back to the way things were.
People have already proven that they will do whatever it takes to watch TV. They *love* TV. Remember, the majority of people do not use DVRs and if they had to choose between not being able to use their DVR to see a show and having to fuck w/their schedule to make sure they saw it live -- they'd fuck w/their schedule.
But consider that in five years your Tivo is going to have the same usability and fewer features, while the free PVR will get easier to set up and use, will have more features, and above all will still be Free.
Well, believe me when I tell you -- the content providers will start going after the homebrew PVR market next. Whether it will be getting to the TV-in card manufacturers or to Congress -- they will do everything in their power to make sure that *they* control their content regardless of fair-use.
So, in five years, when you claim Tivo will be worthless I expect the home-brew PVR software to be acceptable for a good many people to use but I also expect that there will be built-in hardware limitations that will only be circumvented by those with the ability to create their own hardware solutions that are flag free.
From what I've read, and my correspondence, tivo has resisted as well as they could for as long as they could. I wonder how it must feel at tivo these days when these fucktards start imposing their questionable (unethical) "standards" unilaterally. Sheesh.
So while resisting flagged content they have opened the doors to additional commercials during fast forwarding? Give me a break. I loved my Tivo (and I love my DirecTivo) but there is absolutely no reason that someone should pay ~$14/mo to have to put up w/ads while they are skipping other ones.
You want to throw ads at me? Charge me less money per month. Otherwise, off w/them.
I have mentioned here before that I complained to customer service (quietly and in a friendly tone) that I would NOT continue w/my Tivo service if they went forward with advertising in their fast-forwarding. I was told that it wasn't a matter of "if it was happening but when". While I still use a Tivo through DirecTV I'm not paying $14/mo for it and I find no real issues w/it.
Now, my real problem is WHY are the content providers allowed to flag the media in the first place and why can't I promptly output that data to "VCR" and watch it at my leisure regardless of restrictions that the providers put in place? What about fair use? Does anyone care anymore?
This must happen for search engines to be as easy and timeless as they have been in the past unless the novelty of blogging wears off, but who knows when that will happen.
So, say I'm searching for a local restaurant in Apple Valley, MN. I'm going to likely get a list of some (perhaps all) of them. It's going to include the address and telephone number perhaps and the name. Someone might go there and the food could just absolutely blow. They have just wasted their time and money on something that any number of people may have written about on a "blog".
I frequent plenty of local establishes (both chain and non) and write about my experiences on my website. The top three searches are for local restaurants:
Divinci's Pizza is one of those places that I warn people to ignore due to bad service. Carbone's in Lakeville (they are a local chain and have a couple restaurants around) is one of my favorites and I explain why -- their URL was nearly unfindable if you hadn't been to the restaurant itself and seen it advertised there). Longfellow Grill is another awesome spot that I have been to twice for breakfast and once for dinner. Perhaps they would have found Longfellow Grill's URL or any of the more "well known" restaurant review sites but I really feel that I have given something else out there.
So, if Google decides to throw out my entries and instead only shows them on blogsearch.google.com then what? Those people might not ever find out what a "regular guy" thinks about those places.
Yes Bill, but your site is interesting to an outside observer, and I am sure even more so to those who enjoy the things you do (like your geocaching) and people who know you personally. Plus, it is well written.
I appreciate the kind words.
Slashdot isn't a blog in that it is a conversation. Think about real life. Having converastion is much more interesting than listening to one person drone on and on and on ad infinitum. Most blogs are like the obnoxious person droning on and on.
A good many blogs that I have come across allow for commentary, it's just that most of them are such a small world that there isn't much conversation occuring outside of a small group of people (usually the blogger's friends). Perhaps as they grow, blogs will become more and more conversation and less and less droning. I guess that all depends on the worthiness of the blog itself...
By the way- how is married life?
I have been "married" to her for four years. Our wedding was only us signing a piece of paper and making it official in the eyes of the IRS.
I must admit though, I really do feel like I made the best choice:) Maui was gorgeous;)
I do agree with you. I have thought about starting a blog (or even keeping a journal here or on paper in my desk), I never do, mostly because I can't stand to read my own writing (when on the topic of discussion). If I can't stnad to read it, then I'm not even going to expect anyone else to do so either.
While I agree, and I do have what other consider a blog (I prefer to just refer to it as my website), here we sit looking at each other's commentary on a particular topic.
Slashdot Mirror
Most Americans also have a car, two TV's, a video game system, a cell phone, a job , and could probably obtain illegal substances without fear of being caught.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that of the online population of Chinese residents (100 million) most of them have TVs, gaming systems, and certainly a cell phone. They also likely have a job and possibly a car. Illegal substances, while rarer, I'm sure still exist and can be obtained w/o too much worry.
While entertaining themselves via the Internet and other means, they are still able to see that their "freedoms" are being entroached and that they need to subvert government "scare tactics". Americans would just shrug and say, "I'm safer now because of tight and constitutionally ignorant controls than I was before 9/11/01."
I wonder at which point Americans will revert to standing up for their rights. Probably when their TV shows are edited even more all in the name of Family First.
I mean they can block a few IP adresses by handpicking them but they cannot go ahead and block the whole internet, can they?
Yes, they could and I'm sure that they would if it wouldn't cause the nation to erupt into civil war.
Some small app ala Google WIFI with rolling IPs (in an encrypted list of course) connecting to dynamic hostnames would be too much of a task for the authorities to bear with.
They would outlaw encryption as evidence of crimes against the state and they would track down encrypted radio signals and arrest (and make examples out of) anyone that was doing it. I'm sure it would eliminate *most* attempts at doing this. Enough that it would be a non-issue.
You are really thinking about this the wrong way, as is expected, because you don't understand what it is like to live under a truly repressive regime. Just wait -- you might -- it's starting here already.
Note to Chinese government...censorship of the Internet is a lost cause, give it up. If you want to be the next economic superpower, you are going to have to deal with dissenting ideas found on the Internet. You'd do better to work out an ongoing public discussion forum on incorporating the best ideas into the public and private sectors instead of trying to censor access.
Yet the majority of Americans would blindly accept limitations on their Constitutional rights in the name of "National Security" or "Terrorism".
It's amazing how differently our two populations behave.
Well, what a insightful commentary - you don't update because you can't find a reason.
It was to point out that Linux has matured to a point where constant development might not be quite as necessary as it used to be and thus people aren't finding a need to run the "latest and greatest". Thus, they aren't as likely to need new features and submit code changes.
There doesn't seem to be much happening out there wrt 2.6.15," said Morton in a mailing list posting. "We're at rc2 [the second release candidate of 2.6.14] and I only have only maybe 100 patches tagged for 2.6.15 at this time. The number of actual major features lined up for 2.6.15 looks relatively small too," he said in a later posting.
Ok, not that much going on w/this kernel, and then we get:
In the same mailing list thread, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux and the maintainer of the development kernel, expressed concerns that the kernel development process may need to be changed to make sure that Morton is not overworked.
So, there isn't much traffic coming through and Morton wants to do even more -mm releases but Linus thinks he might become overworked? I'm confused. Any clarification on this from the list that the article doesn't give?
He suggested this may indicate that the kernel is nearing completion. "Famous last words, but the actual patch volume _has_ to drop off one day," said Morton. "We have to finish this thing one day."
I still haven't even bothered to move to 2.6.x as I have no reason to. I used to update my kernels immediately (and even ran various -AC, etc) but 2.4.x has been so stable for me that I see no reason to bother. Perhaps the reason why traffic is low is because of that?
So what? They're both small, come in different colours, and have a wheel-driven interface. So does lipstick. And radio-controlled toy cars.
;)
Yeah, but one has to do w/women thus no importance on Slashdot and the other isn't made by Apple. That's what
This seems reasonable, a way to have guaranteed revenue stream and a penalty for people who cancel early.
It's reasonable for people that buy their FIRST Tivo. If the reports that adding an additional Tivo (rebates wouldn't apply as the user would already have existing service and wouldn't be elligible) causes your contract to change, then that's not reasonable.
According to the new service agreement, any TiVo activated after September 6 will require a 12-month commitment. Those who cancel before the end of their contract, or have their contracts terminated by TiVo, will be forced to pay a $150 early termination fee.
Well, with rebates that bring the devices under $50 and their recent radically retarded decisions such as presenting ads to users that bought a Tivo to rid themselves of ads, etc, it's no wonder they are going to these lengths!
I was the first to support Tivo for what their device and service did for my household. I am also the first to complain to Tivo and Slashdot (and various others including my parents who I had originally suggested a Tivo) that their service is no longer worth it.
Good riddance Tivo. While I still use your product (DirecTivo), I'm glad I'm not obligated to fall under any of your contractual and flighty mishaps.
If you have a small cute animal you can ask "What's the weather?" or "Play me a song" and have it follow your commands, that would be on the level of the cell phone, microwave oven, or even television in terms of cultural impact.
;-)
I realize that cute females are scarce amongst the Slashdot crowd but come on!
This rules!
The government can arrest individuals and no one has to be notified and those individuals may have no rights including not disclosing to anyone else why they were arrested. They can then be held without bail for an indefinite amount of time.
Not only that, but now the government can hold IP hostage for an indefinite amount of time too.
Is the Internet going to get shut down now too because the government has "State Secrets" on there too and all the terrorists congregate there?
Yeah, all those years of school and working as lawyers in the field couldn't prepare them enough.
They have to be "retrained" to start taking money from the "right" people.
I'm speechless. I don't think I really want to live in this country (USA) any more.
That's the worst possible solution -- being speechless I mean.
Experts will be sent to Brazil, India, Russia, Thailand, China and the Middle East and serve a five-year tour of duty, the fact sheet said.
You just *have* love quotes like that. Yay! The War on Drugs and now the War on Software Piracy! Tours of duty, lol!
A massive 61% don't understand the difference between gigabytes, kilobytes and megabytes and as a result have sent e-mails with huge attachments that have blocked clients' systems.
And a massive 99% of people don't need to understand that. Mail servers should be designed to ignore e-mails of a larger size than they can handle. It's not up to the users to understand KB, MB, GB, mail server loads, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, SSH, whatever.
Their understand lies in doing their jobs effectively, whatever that may be. When my doctor refers to medical jargon I may not know what it means and may be confused (I'm generally well versed in my particular conditions) so do you really expect them to understand what the jargon in your field is?
Blah.
I think under the recent circumstances it reasonable for a police officer to stop someone and ask them what their purpose is, and assuming its done in a non-discrimatory manner to ask to look through your concealed possessions.
I guess it depends on where you live. To me, no officer has any business asking me what I'm doing if I'm not obviously doing something that warrants his suspicions. Then again, I'm a true American and not one of these post-9/11 dickheads that is scared to fly, drive, or cross the street without first thinking about possible terrorist activities.
When I'm asked by officers, "what are you doing?" My favorite reply is, "minding my own business, and you?" Obviously, when I'm temporarily detained for a traffic violation I'm more friendly because it will likely benefit me in the end. When an officer is invading your personal space for their own possible gains they deserve nothing more than your scorn.
Sugar Coat = Deception? It's funny, that you would sugar coat it like the US does.
It's only a nightmare because there are free alternatives that do exactly what their software already does (and sometimes good enough to replace it for home users). But! Microsoft would *love* to host web-based application services (i.e. Office). It would enable them even greater control over the end-users and piracy and ends a lot of media creation and distribution costs.
They can still hold their stranglehold on the OS market but they could also gain tighter and higher profits on their software.
Will Google Office/Phone/Internet/Talk/Browser/etc take the OS market from Mircosoft? Who knows. But it could happen. If it doesn't, Microsoft better make damn sure that they are building the OS to be the best it can be to keep people from switching to GoogleOS and Apps.
This free website, that you're not paying for, isn't up to your standards? I'm so dreadfully sorry.
I suggest that you take a look here. I *was* paying but I now refuse to pay for something that is no longer worth paying for. Perhaps if they begin to heed the warnings of so many other ex-subscribers then I will go back. Until then, I'll continue to complain. It's our only choice.
Perhaps you haven't seen Current TV yet... Not only do they allow viewer content submissions, allow "pod" viewing on their website, and have a radically different approach to showing their content, they are also apparently heavily backed by Google.
Now, none of that is really that important. What *is* important, IMHO, is how Current TV does advertising. They don't seem to be having a lot of commercials in your standard sense (they do have some -- but I guess because they are mostly submissions they don't need as much revenue to pay $1m/episode salaries) they do have integrated commercial content (i.e. a "pod" about Pioneer's latest in-dash navigation system which uses XM traffic data to reroute you).
I am sometime mesmerized by Current TV and sit there watching repeated content because it's *that* interesting. I don't particularly care for the blatant advertising "pods" but they are sometimes interesting the first time through.
If you haven't seen Current TV, check it out.
That's where GNU radio comes in. The hardware is so simple and generic it cannot be outlawed without something draconian like outlawing all unlicensed receivers of any RF spectrum. All the hard stuff is done in software. I've seen demos where they can decode HDTV with it. Quite impressive.
Cool, a project that has been dead since 2004 and that will be killed by any modern iterations of HDTV signal. You think that the broadcasters and content providers are going to spend all that money to protect their stuff and they aren't going to do everything in their power to make the DRM ever-changing to thwart the hacker community? Hah!
More importantly, the only thing the content providers will do is destory television. Once someone uses a TiVO, they change their lifestyle because of it. I, for example, cannot imagine ever again watching TV on somebody else's schedule. People won't go back to the way things were.
People have already proven that they will do whatever it takes to watch TV. They *love* TV. Remember, the majority of people do not use DVRs and if they had to choose between not being able to use their DVR to see a show and having to fuck w/their schedule to make sure they saw it live -- they'd fuck w/their schedule.
But consider that in five years your Tivo is going to have the same usability and fewer features, while the free PVR will get easier to set up and use, will have more features, and above all will still be Free.
Well, believe me when I tell you -- the content providers will start going after the homebrew PVR market next. Whether it will be getting to the TV-in card manufacturers or to Congress -- they will do everything in their power to make sure that *they* control their content regardless of fair-use.
So, in five years, when you claim Tivo will be worthless I expect the home-brew PVR software to be acceptable for a good many people to use but I also expect that there will be built-in hardware limitations that will only be circumvented by those with the ability to create their own hardware solutions that are flag free.
Scary, I know -- welcome to Corporate America.
From what I've read, and my correspondence, tivo has resisted as well as they could for as long as they could. I wonder how it must feel at tivo these days when these fucktards start imposing their questionable (unethical) "standards" unilaterally. Sheesh.
So while resisting flagged content they have opened the doors to additional commercials during fast forwarding? Give me a break. I loved my Tivo (and I love my DirecTivo) but there is absolutely no reason that someone should pay ~$14/mo to have to put up w/ads while they are skipping other ones.
You want to throw ads at me? Charge me less money per month. Otherwise, off w/them.
I have mentioned here before that I complained to customer service (quietly and in a friendly tone) that I would NOT continue w/my Tivo service if they went forward with advertising in their fast-forwarding. I was told that it wasn't a matter of "if it was happening but when". While I still use a Tivo through DirecTV I'm not paying $14/mo for it and I find no real issues w/it.
Now, my real problem is WHY are the content providers allowed to flag the media in the first place and why can't I promptly output that data to "VCR" and watch it at my leisure regardless of restrictions that the providers put in place? What about fair use? Does anyone care anymore?
This must happen for search engines to be as easy and timeless as they have been in the past unless the novelty of blogging wears off, but who knows when that will happen.
So, say I'm searching for a local restaurant in Apple Valley, MN. I'm going to likely get a list of some (perhaps all) of them. It's going to include the address and telephone number perhaps and the name. Someone might go there and the food could just absolutely blow. They have just wasted their time and money on something that any number of people may have written about on a "blog".
I frequent plenty of local establishes (both chain and non) and write about my experiences on my website. The top three searches are for local restaurants:
1 17 3.78% divinci's pizza
2 15 3.33% carbone's pizza
3 15 3.33% longfellow grill minneapolis
Divinci's Pizza is one of those places that I warn people to ignore due to bad service. Carbone's in Lakeville (they are a local chain and have a couple restaurants around) is one of my favorites and I explain why -- their URL was nearly unfindable if you hadn't been to the restaurant itself and seen it advertised there). Longfellow Grill is another awesome spot that I have been to twice for breakfast and once for dinner. Perhaps they would have found Longfellow Grill's URL or any of the more "well known" restaurant review sites but I really feel that I have given something else out there.
So, if Google decides to throw out my entries and instead only shows them on blogsearch.google.com then what? Those people might not ever find out what a "regular guy" thinks about those places.
Boo.
Yes Bill, but your site is interesting to an outside observer, and I am sure even more so to those who enjoy the things you do (like your geocaching) and people who know you personally. Plus, it is well written.
:) Maui was gorgeous ;)
I appreciate the kind words.
Slashdot isn't a blog in that it is a conversation. Think about real life. Having converastion is much more interesting than listening to one person drone on and on and on ad infinitum. Most blogs are like the obnoxious person droning on and on.
A good many blogs that I have come across allow for commentary, it's just that most of them are such a small world that there isn't much conversation occuring outside of a small group of people (usually the blogger's friends). Perhaps as they grow, blogs will become more and more conversation and less and less droning. I guess that all depends on the worthiness of the blog itself...
By the way- how is married life?
I have been "married" to her for four years. Our wedding was only us signing a piece of paper and making it official in the eyes of the IRS.
I must admit though, I really do feel like I made the best choice
I do agree with you. I have thought about starting a blog (or even keeping a journal here or on paper in my desk), I never do, mostly because I can't stand to read my own writing (when on the topic of discussion). If I can't stnad to read it, then I'm not even going to expect anyone else to do so either.
While I agree, and I do have what other consider a blog (I prefer to just refer to it as my website), here we sit looking at each other's commentary on a particular topic.