CNN.com - First lady: Turn off TVs on 9/11 - September 8, 2002 "First lady Laura Bush is asking parents to turn off the television on Sept. 11 and instead read to their children and perhaps light a memorial candle." A good plan.

The Onion | Who Will Bring Closure To A Grieving Nation? "One of those average people, Chicago-area homemaker Adrienne Coffey, said she knows exactly where she will be at 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11. ... "I want to share the day with others who are feeling what I'm feeling," Coffey said. "I'm going to be right there in front of the TV."

Business Week Online:Microsoft, Beyond the Office "[Raikes] decided to look far beyond his 40 million core customers in America, folks who work overtime on Powerpoint and Excel. His new Office would reach to anyone who used information, even if they didn't create it. This meant new Microsoft products for such workers as pilots and nurses, factory workers and truck drivers. Microsoft figures there are about 117 million people in this country who fit the bill. It's a bold strategy: To reach new customers, Raikes is pushing Office out of the office."

CNN.com - PlayStation 3 thinks outside the box - September 6, 2002 So how come Sony gets positive press when they do vaporstuff (PS 3 in 2005) and MSFT gets bashed?

Are Weblogs Changing Our Culture? By Kurt Andersen and Andrew Sullivan Interesting blog perspectives

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Wake-up call I'm sure Saddam Hussein et al. appreciate this analysis.

WSJ.com - Massachusetts Probe Into CSFB Finds Pressure on Stock Analysts "The analyst noted that another investment banker "informed me of unwritten rule number one: 'If you can't say something positive, don't say anything at all.' ... unwritten rule number two: 'Why couldn't you just go with the flow of the other analysts, rather than try to be contrarian.' Rule #n+1: be prepared to go to jail when you break laws...

Ray Ozzie's Weblog "Servers and browsers are like two peas in a pod, and the Web has largely run its course. In terms of the value that we can get from our own personal computers and the Internet, however, we're still at the dawn of a new era. An era in which software matters, and architecture matters."

Bill Gates Unveils the Next Wave of Digital Media With Windows Media 9 Series A compelling plan to get Real...

An Alternative to Microsoft Gains Support in High Places "Governments around the world, afraid that Microsoft has become too powerful in critical software markets, have begun working to ensure an alternative.
More than two dozen countries in Asia, Europe and Latin America, including China and Germany, are now encouraging their government agencies to use "open source" software — developed by communities of programmers who distribute the code without charge and donate their labor to cooperatively debug, modify and otherwise improve the software."

Netscape 7.0 Shrivels Under Mozilla's Shadow "The fact that Netscape 7.0 arrives hot on the heels of the similar but superior Mozilla 1.1 only serves to illuminate the small but significant differences between the two: Mozilla is highly customizable and offers a number of user options, while Netscape forces users to accept many features and functions they probably don't want while removing some they probably do."

WSJ.com - Tech Q & A: Sun's McNealy Sees IT Slump As an Opportunity to Reintegrate "The market has changed completely. Two years ago, we were focused entirely on Internet providers, dot-coms, telecommunication firms and financial-services companies. Over 60% of our revenues came from those areas. Now those markets are as good as gone. We've reoriented ourselves and we're now focused on retail, health care, education and government agencies."

Linux: The Revolution on Film I'll watch for this one on DVD; I enjoyed reading both Just for Fun (Torvalds autobiography) and Free as in Freedom (Stallman biography)

Automated System to Do Student Laundry "Warents of college students like to think that it is family ties that bring their children home for visits. But deep down, many suspect that the bags of dirty laundry that students tote with them might be a significant motivation. ... Now students might find that doing laundry on campus is slightly less burdensome, thanks to a new Web-based system for college laundry rooms. Developed by I.B.M. and USA Technologies, the system will start appearing on thousands of machines in several states this fall." IBM PR scores same-day NYT and WSJ for silly college laundry system...

U.S. Cellphone Users Don't Seem to Get Message About Messaging "What if they had pounded the golden spike into the continental railroad and nobody noticed? ... That is essentially what happened in the United States cellular telephone world last spring. Since April it has been possible for the customers of any of the major United States cellular carriers to send one another short text messages, but most customers still have no idea the service exists. ... But conditions elsewhere are different. Short message service is popular in other parts of the world partly because sending a text message has been less expensive than making a phone call and also because Europe and Asia have lagged behind the United States in e-mail and instant messaging."

WSJ.com - Technology: IBM's 'Smart' Laundry System Lets College Students Keep Tabs on Wash "College campuses have long since wired their dorms and libraries. Now some are going even further: Cyberlaundry. ... International Business Machines Corp. hopes a new system of smart, wired washers and dryers will instill a little efficiency in the college dormitory laundry room, letting students keep tabs on their laundry from anywhere they can access the Internet -- their dorm rooms, the library, or even a cell phone."

Microsoft 'patches' tear at computer users' good will "The bigger problem for most computer users is the sheer number of flaws coming from Microsoft. Each time one is found, Microsoft issues a software "patch" that it recommends be downloaded and installed. Last year, Microsoft issued 60 patches. On occasion, it has had to issue patches for the patches themselves."

O'Reilly Network: J2EE Open Source [September 01, 2002] "Fleury points out that JBoss provides an affordable way for developers on a budget to use J2EE, and notes that without this alternative they'll likely switch to .NET. McNeally points out that open source J2EE servers pull the rug out from under Sun's Java revenue model. The fact is that other than licensing revenue Sun has no way to make real money off of Java. That's something Sun doesn't need, and the viability of the Java platform without Sun is a very open question. I don't think it's safe to assume that IBM and BEA and the like would be able or willing to take up the load. For Sun, losing the low end (where they can't sell servers anyway) to .NET would not be the worst thing that could happen. Which theoretically implies that it could lose it to JBoss just as easily, if not for the fact that JBoss will continue creeping up towards the high-end."

O'Reilly Network: "Lessig in Three Seconds or Less" -Update [September 01, 2002] Cute

Telecom Wreck Provides an Opening for AT&T "Although AT&T is not the monopoly it once was, the company may soon find itself at the top of the telecommunications pyramid again. After nearly two decades of deregulation that created new competition in every facet of its business, AT&T is still standing even as several upstart rivals — particularly those in the business of serving businesses — are mired in onerous debt, industry overcapacity or financial scandal."