(if you're here because Doc sent you, you want this post. Thanks)

Grrrrrrrr

This has GOT to make you seethe. Heather B. Hamilton - no, I've no idea who she is - just got canned by the company she worked for - as one of her "colleagues" took exception to what she was writing in her Blog.

Full story here, presented in Righteous Angrycolour.

Heather asks:

1. Should I lose my job over what I have written on my personal website, especially if I have made sure not to mention specific places, persons, or events by name?

Don't get me started. The obvious, obvious answer is obviously too obviously obvious to even state.

Heather lives in LA, California, USA - which means that she's not only theoretically free to say, think, write whatever the hell she wants to, but she's actually protected by the most fundamental principles of the laws of her country in doing so - right?

I've no idea what she posted, but the content is completely irrelevant anyway. She may have written something her boss and perhaps other work "mates" don’t like (or, at least, don’t agree with or understand) - but she has an unconditional constitutional right to write whatever she thinks

There's a core democratic principle at stake here. Voltaire: “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.” In firing Heather, her boss has just violated one of the central tenets of Western democracy and, surely, broken the law.

She asks:

3. What recourse do I have?

Er...sue the snot out of them?

Seriously. For all I know, Heather may not be able to do this without legal aid. She may, for any number of reasons, not want to do it. But one thing's fer sure: she's out of work right now, I'm not. I've just signed up for a PayPal account. Just as soon it's set up, assuming I can figure out how to work it, I'm launching a Heather B. Hamilton Defence Fund.

Whatever donations I'm able to drum up from within the blogging community or elsewhere - I'll make sure they get to Heather, to use as she sees fit.

Again - I have no idea who this woman is, but if she's got the appetite for it, she deserves to nail them. And if not, well maybe we can at least buy her a case of Diet Coke, or something...

BTW, if you already have a PayPal account, and want to help - email me: michaelocc@SPAMTRAPsympatico.ca

(Edit out the SPAMTRAP thing, doofus...)

Or if you want the "bill me later" option - send me your pledges now, to the above address, and I'll come chase you down once I've jumped through the PayPal account verification loop.

There's steam whistling out of my ears over this one.

Oh no.

Comic genius Spike Milligan dies aged 83 after long illness

Oh Spike...I'm so sorry.

I grew up reading, and loving, Milligan. My brothers and I used to act out the Goon Show scripts for my parents from behind the louvre doors in our living room. All through childhood I read, watched and listened to so much Milligan that I came to feel he was almost one of the family - he even looked like a couple of my uncles. And now I'm all growed up and reading "Silly Verse for Kids" to my own children.

I can still rhyme off long chunks of his poetry, and still have fits of giggles over passages in the books. Sheesh - reading "Puckoon" even gave me one of my earliest remembered sexual experiences (you'd have to read it to know what I mean).

Reuters has a good piece about him, here.

As does the Beeb, here.

The world's just not as funny as it was yesterday.

Bye, Spike.

¥ irritation

Slightly depressing discussion yesterday with a friend who cuts code for a very smart and entirely admirable application software company. They were riding high for a while back there, but are now having to work way harder even to maintain their position. That Red Queen thing again.

The thing that tipped me off and had me grinding the gears late into the night was my mate’s comment that they’re all in a state of hubbub at this damn fine firm, over the rumour that Microsoft might be entering their space. Sheesh.

I’m sure there's a huge wheel of fortune sitting in Bill Gates' office, with the segments marked out into market sectors that MSFT might conceivably think of entering at some point in the future (everything from satellite dishes to lingerie).

Once a month, Bill spins the wheel and, wherever it lands, Redmond's fearsome Market Freezing department goes to work.

All they have to do is put out enough low level buzz about the vaguest possibility that they might, just maybe, if they feel like it have some speculative half-formed designs on the market in question. That's usually enough to put a high percentage of CIOs and other CXOs into catatonic decision paralysis for another few months, allowing the Borg to go back to what it was really interested in in the first place.

It's like plate-spinning. They work their way around the markets applying a little slap to the tail every now again to make sure no one's ever able to get too far advanced in any area they might feel like having a crack at someday, when they get bored futzing around with the Feds. Keep all those plates spinning, and you can keep your competitors or potential competitors so busy trying to figure out WTF you're actually doing, that they end up forgetting what it is they were supposed to be doing in the first place.

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." – Buddha (allegedly)

"Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others." -- Ayn Rand

"It's all bollocks." – Michael

Now here's some Dvorak worth paying attention to.

Used to be my audition piece when I played French Horn. Sheesh...that seems like a long time ago...

AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

I knew something would eventually come along to tip me over the edge and get me blogging again. Had a ton of things going on in the last n months, but that's no real excuse, I know...

Anyway, that legend in his own lunchtime, John C. Dvorak, has finally done it. In a very strange and frankly rather shrill piece at the PC Magazine site, Dvorak tears into both The Cluetrain Manifesto and the whole blogging phenomenon.

Starting from “This 1999 keeper is a book that tells us how the Internet changes everything and tops that statement with every other cliché we've become sick of over the past few years...” he goes on to characterise the authors as cultists likely to respond to any criticism with “you don’t get it”, saying:

“Werner Erhard of EST (the über-cult of the 1970's) used to use this phrase over and over. Tell Erhard that something makes no sense. "You don't get it." Tell him that something is self-contradictory. "You don't get it." Tell him that something is just plain stupid. "You don't get it." This is the level of debate you can expect when cult thinking is present. But, of course, "I don't get it."

Problem.

John C. Dvorak is, by all accounts, one of the most influential and venerable columnists and opinion shapers in the technology universe. His credentials would certainly seem to indicate that he should have a reasonable idea of what he’s talking about.

And yet, he “doesn’t get” The Cluetrain or the Blogging phenom. What’s going on here?

Thanks be to Google, yet again, for helping me dig up the answer.

You see – the core premise of The Cluetrain Manifesto is, as Dvorak states, that the Internet has indeed changed everything. Everything. The subject is marketing and markets in general, but the catalyst for Cluetrain’s 95 theses is certainly the Internet.

Viz: “6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.”

To which, btw, the august Mr. Dvorak’s insightful rebuttal is: “Oh? Like what? IM's? Crummy e-mail? Spam?”

Er...how about eBay? Or Usenet? Or being able to keep in touch with friends and family all round the world, share photos and stories, for practically zero cost? Or meeting and engaging in stimulating, remarkable discussions with people I’d never have known existed without the Internet? (Unless, of course, I’d gotten into the habit of releasing hundreds of helium balloons every day, with snarky comments attached, hoping to meet like-minded souls in far flung lands...) Or eGM? Or Amazon? Or Covisint?

Enough.

It seems Mr. Dvorak doesn’t “get” Cluetrain and doesn’t “get” Blogging because, as the evidence attests, he doesn’t “get” the Internet. Never has and, I’d guess, never will.

Evidence: here he is, in fine form, in his syndicated column “Ask Dvorak” back in '93 as the 'Net was dawning.

Shifting position only slightly as the momentum builds in '94.

OK, it’s a cheap shot, I know – quoting such ancient material. But remember: Dvorak’s the guy who held out for years saying OS/2 would win the battle for the desktop as it was “fundamentally better”. The same guy who also predicted the death of the GUI and once famously bitched about the fact that there was no equivalent for DEL *.* on MacOS. Er, right.

But...striving for at least a veneer of balance, here's some rather more recent sage words from Dvorak Sensei on the nature, value and purpose of the Internet.

Ah yes. It's all about mullets after all.

About time Ziff Davis thought about boiling this one down for glue, perhaps...