The idea that hiring a few means you're running low is a bit like the Isaac Asimov classic "Nightfall," in which everyone is taught to believe there are only a few dozen stars and the world goes crazy once every 1,000 years when the reality is revealed by astronomical chance.
At the same time they were pulling this stunt, the "talent" at CNN was making a big deal out of Joe Biden's stupid comments regarding Barack Obama (actually, regarding past black Democratic candidates). You're calling other people the same thing you're guilty of, at the same moment you're guilty of it. Nice.
The winning strategy is a scaled community with full-time analysis of candidates, issues, and other bloggers. The site should be friendly with your party, but not overly-friendly. If the site managers feel free to diss their friends at times, so will others.
It is up to those of us in the Netroots to finish the drill for her, to not only take power but to do something positive with it. She lived and worked in a mass media age. Ours is a micro-media age. Every one of you can be like Molly, every one of you can tell stories and bring people with you. Everyone of us is a newspaper columnist now. For her sake, be a good one.
"Life clearly evolved to store genetic information in a modular form, and to accept useful modules of genetic information from other species."
The only reason for this attitude is they're not thinking. They're going "mine, mine, mine" and forgetting that no one is questioning that the content is theirs. People are just trying to rebroadcast it, have masses of people point to it, and pay them for it.
Ballmer is in over his head. His every move since becoming CEO has been a mistake. The Novell deal. The Zune. The man can't open his mouth without inserting his foot. And his strategic sense lives in a bubble, a bubble Bill Gates created and he's reluctant to pop.
It is just as brain-dead to centralize information today as it was for Stalin to centralize industrial production in the 20th century, or for Spain to centralize capital flows in the 16th century. The danger is not that we're about to be taken over by Fascists. The danger is that we're about to be overtaken by nominal communists, who keep loosening the reins on their people while we keep tightening them on ours.
Before you buy, make sure you can easily handle the payments on a fixed, 30-year note. You don't want that to be more than one-fourth your income. Those are the old rules -- during the housing boom we've had people paying 40-50% of double incomes, and taking out idiot balloon notes. Those days are over. Let the banks foreclose them.
We are all warriors on this medium, and once we understand that, we're halfway home.
