The Freaky Friday edition (it must be freaky if I’m wearing a dress, jewelry and nice shoes to work on a Friday…):
There’s no reason to put up with tired Windows with the high cost and terrible quality (usability, speed, security name your criteria) because you can get a Mac or install Linux and get all of the productivity tools you need on the network, to which everybody has access everyplace they want to work. The days of emailing Word documents around to attempt to collaborate are over. The way that people work is changing, and today’s desktop software gets in the way of collaboration. In two years nobody will be bothering with it anymore. And don’t even get me started on Sharepoint and the rest of Microsoft’s collaboration “tools” that they’re tacking on to the outside of their old, brittle applications. The new services are organized around collaboration and can do much, much more of what people actually need to do. Game over.
Chuck articulates one of the more frustrating aspects I’ve experienced as a web person who moved into the desktop software arena. In my mind, the operative word in the phrase “computer-supported collaborative work” is supported, and (most) desktop software makes this difficult if not impossible. I believe people’s expectations for desktop clients has been changed by their experiences on the web, and desktop developers who continue to ignore this fact may be in for a hard fall.
Black communities must speak out, says Blair:
In respect of knife and gun gangs, the laws need to be significantly toughened.
“There needs to be an intensive police focus on these groups. The ringleaders need to be identified and taken out of circulation; if very young, as some are, put in secure accommodation.
He went on: “The black community - the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law-abiding people horrified at what is happening - need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids.
“But we won’t stop this by pretending it isn’t young black kids doing it.”
Either Blair has stones the size of Mount Olympus, or he’s drunk on Lame Duck juice. At what point can someone from outside a community safely criticize elements within that community without fear of redress?
The Republic of T. addresses The Procreation Imperative. There’s far too much good stuff there to pull out a brief quote, but this entry made me think about the way that celibacy is only presented (suggested? forced?) as an option to lesbians and gay men. I’m reminded of a recent interview with ex-Gay Charlene Cothran in which she doesn’t actually come out and say that she’s no longer a lesbian. Cothran instead chooses to embrace celibacy (at this stage in her life). I’m also reminded of the US Department of Defense “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy - a person can be gay in the military, but the only punishable offense is commiting “homsexual acts”. And let’s not forget the countless ministers who say that they could accept LGBT folks in their congregations as long as they didn’t “act gay”. Sure, the religious right pushes abstinence education, but abstinence and celibacy are not the same thing, nor is it expected that heterosexuals will/should continue to abstain from sex once they are in committed, church-approved relationships.
