One of the things that is becoming clear to me is that the values and the basic core beliefs that make me a citizen of the modern West are different enough from those of fundamentalist Islam that there can’t really be a conversation between us. The divide in belief systems may be too wide for us to span…
Al is a lifesaver but not a pacifist. He wrote more about this yesterday.
Picking cotton for Bill. This is about different threat against freedom. Laws that make business easier for big media companies are not always a good thing – and what’s proposed here is outright dangerous.
Here is some good news: MIT will eventually put almost all their course material for free on the web. The site is not operational yet, but there is plenty of material online already. For old times sake I’ll link to Structure and interpretations of Computer programs.
Brian Livingston, writer of several excellent Windows books, says: there will be no XP for me!
Well, maybe MS just didn’t add the right features? 
Good for several laughs. Via Bruce Eckel
Remember I was worrying about Zope the other day? I know Garret can make it work, and Bruce Eckel uses it on his excellent website. On the other hand, these are brilliant and dedicated people. Hmmm… "perserverance furthers", I guess.
Brent Simmons is about to get himself a driver’s license. I am doing that right now, too – but I can’t recommend my school unless you live in Stockholm.
Oh, I forgot to mention: yesterday afternoon the police suspected a bomb in the bus i usually take to work. They stopped it and sealed off the street around the office for a few hours. We had our monthly company meeting that evening – our mailing list linked to the newspapers, as it happened, and added “the back door still works. We won’t cancel if it doesn’t get worse”.
A customer just called and wanted a little more Python work – that always feels good. And my Zope struggles are going better: Squishdot is a very cool Slashdot-clone which didn’t take many minutes to set up. But I’ll update to Zope 2.4.1 soon – why stop just because it works?