The Guys in Redmond are Going to Do What?
The next version of Windows will not be compatible with Windows--nor will it be with any of your existing software! Where do I get such wild ideas? Take a look at Andrew Grygus' Automation Access site, "2003 and Beyond - An extensive look at the current state of the information industry, it's future, and how it will affect your business". This meticulously documented, very long tome (47 pages on my printer) gives a great look at coming trends in IT with some very scary stuff from Microsoft scheduled to come down the pike. You should read this, you should heed this, and if I were a developer, I think I would be switching focus of my efforts to Linux and Mac OS X. I sure am glad that HTML is agnostic. Given a choice between an all-new Office and Windows with Microsoft's increasingly draconian license terms and Red Hat Linux, which is free, more stable and more secure than Windows, and includes two office suites, K-Office and OpenOffice--well, it won't be too tough a choice. I'll even gladly pay the $60 a year for my Red Hat Network subscription. Hmmm... if I'm willing to pay that, maybe I should be buying some Red Hat stock...

Not THIS War!
First, let's get this straight. I am not opposed to war. Oh, I think it's terrible and I think that it would be absolutely wonderful if we could eliminate it as a form of human discourse, but I am not opposed to war. The fact is, there are things worth fighting for and when situations involving those things arise, we should fight. I would not have served in a Navy uniform for 21 years if I did not believe that!

That said, I am opposed to a unilateral, pre-emptive attack on Iraq. I consider pre-emptive war to be immoral--and probably illegal as well. I appreciate all of the arguments in favor of attacking Iraq, and I agree that Saddam Hussein is an evil ogre who more than deserves anything that might happen to him personally. I just can't shake the years of experience that tell me that a pre-emptive attack is aggressive war and therefore not a just war. There are committed career military personnel who think this is mistake, and I just wanted to stand up and be counted among them.