"Home is where the Frito Pie leaks." -- StinkyLulu



The Sewers Of Paris, Las Vegas Dept. - There's a good article about urban tunnel exploration in this week's Las Vegas City Life (via slashdot). During its heyday the SWPG posse poked around in some of Albuquerque's tunnels, but in our part of town the major drainage channels were open-air concrete numbers so we spent more time in those, racing our cars around. We called it Ditching and I think I wrote about it for the Countlegger.

Along the same lines, late one night when we were killing time driving around the newly-remodeled airport, vson decided to poke the nose of his Honda CRX though the automatic doors and into the main terminal. (This was part of an ongoing demonstration of how easily the car could fit into small spaces, under pedestrian walkways and the like. Paging Dr. Freud!) If you're looking for an illustration of how life in this country has changed since then, consider that this simple act of goofy teenage fun would now be an opportunity for any nearby Federal agents to get all Ruby Ridge on your sorry ass.






Sudden Insight Dept. - Why is Microsoft suddenly opening the FUDgates when it comes to Open Source? Sure, the competitive pressures generated by OSS have something to do with it, but it occurred to us at work today that there's something else at play. When OSS was mostly generated by small groups of individuals, it was possible for Microsoft to swipe code at will; even if the theft were somehow discovered and provable, no individual could ever hope to throw enough lawyers MS's way to litigate against them successfully. Now that companies like IBM are actually open-sourcing parts of their code, and are presumably ready willing and able to haul offending companies into court for violating the licenses on that code, Microsoft might actually face viable legal challenges for stealing Open Source software. Who knows if it's really what's going on, but it sounds plausible doesn't it?