Pro-blogger and — going by his pic — apparent 1950’s be-bop Sax player — Wassup Kiddo — Tim Bray, who purports to be the Sun Microsystems Tech director. That what he says anyway.
It’s Not Dangerous — I love reading this stuff. A simplistic look at the world, lots of self-promotion and a rationale as to why everyone should blog. A few examples follow here:
Bloggers are better-informed than non-bloggers. Knowing more is a career advantage.
Knowing more also means you’re more likely to hear about interesting jobs coming open.
Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people.
And my little wood box has a pretty yellow pencil.
That said if you want to read the rather profane (even more typical of bloggers) retort to this “blogging will save the world” pitch, then jump right to the rude and cynical (also mean-spirited and angry) Ghosts Machine blog (you’ve been warned) authored by the mysterious Wenzit Du. I do believe that this is the future of discourse that the bloggers are so proud of. Sigh. My problem is that I agree with the Ghosts Machine on this issue so I have to be nice (I think).
via A. Orlowski
How many rules am I breaking?
Reports to : Juan Soto « » MDE / SW CTO / SLE
John Loiacono
Jonathan Schwartz
Scott McNealy
His peers are all over the world. No direct reports, though.
Titles are optional and he doesn’t have one.
With all these acronyms, how informative would it be anyway?
Ah, MDE = Market Development Engineering, Juan Soto – Senior Director. So Bray could be Technical Director of MDE.
That only took me 20 minutes to figure out. Aren’t intranets wonderful.
Ok, I just read the fine print and I really shouldn’t have done that.
Please strike-through the text at your earliest convenience, John.
3. CONFIDENTIALITY OF SUN INFORMATION
3.1 You may obtain direct access via the Website to certain confidential information of Sun and its suppliers, including without limitation technical, contractual, product, program, pricing, marketing and other valuable information that should reasonably be understood as confidential (“Confidential Information”). You must hold Confidential Information in strict confidence. Title to Confidential Information remains with Sun and its suppliers.
3.2 Your obligations regarding Confidential Information expire five (5) years after the date of disclosure. Upon termination of the Terms or Sun’s written request, You must cease use of Confidential Information and return or destroy it.
3.3 The Terms impose no obligation upon You with respect to Confidential Information that You can establish by legally sufficient evidence: (a) You possessed prior to Your receipt from Sun, without an obligation to maintain its confidentiality; (b) is or becomes generally known to the public through no act or omission by You, or otherwise without violation of the Terms; (c) You obtained from a third party who had the right to disclose it, without an obligation to keep such information confidential; (d) You independently developed without the use of Confidential Information and without the participation of individuals who have had access to it, or (e) in response to a valid order by a court or other governmental body, as otherwise required by law, or as necessary to establish the rights of either party under these Terms and as disclosed after prior notice to Sun adequate to afford Sun the opportunity to object to the disclosure.
When you said you agree with him on this issue, I assume you meant “blogging will save the world”.
While such a statement sounds like a big exaggeration, I don’t think it actually is an exaggeration. Blogging and forums and the internet in general has significantly increased the quantity and quality of the discourse in the world.
I would say the body of significantly aware individuals that are capable of seeing the intricacies of issues and events is startling. Go 15 years ago, where and how could such education and quality discourse occur?
Hey John, your blog fails to display correctly on every browser I try except for IE on Windows. Which kind of sucks.
I’m definitely of the rock & roll generation albeit with a white beard.
On the three points you cite, the second and third seem self-evidently true and we have lots of empirical evidence for the first; it shouldn’t be surprising that when you start writing, people start writing back, and you learn things. Which is to say, I guess I’m missing your point; care to amplify?
Blogging and forums and the internet in general has significantly increased the quantity and quality of the discourse in the world.
Not when we we’re expected to read and absorb crap like this from Tim Bray, whoever this guy is.
From this fawning piece of corporate lick-ass prose, the only thing he can see the “intricacies” of is his own arsehole, and saving his own career. It has loser written all over it.
Tim, My point? Is there one? I just liked the others guy going off the deep end and your pic.
I use Firefox (as do most of my readers) and nobody has trouble seeing this blog. Only Safari seems problematic. So I assume you are on a Mac. IE works, but has issues. That said there are numerous other issues since I have PHP and HTML mixed with a lot of orphans here and there that I would normally go in to fix. BUT I’m working on a complete redesgn and not too enthused by the prospect of fixing a design that will be completely discarded.
ANd I have very few complaints except from Safari users and I can’t figure out the problem there since I do not have a Mac.
I suppose I could have cited “Tower of Power” rather than be-bop.
I use six browsers across Mac and Windows every day, and the only browser that screws up is Apple Safari.
I’m guessing Bray is a Mac guy using Safari, and he hasn’t bothered to test the site with any other browser. He does look like a young Captain Beefheart, which I’m also guessing, is the look he’s going for.
Shame he’s such a terrible writer. He could be an actor with those hangdog eyes.