Judgement Versus Rules
In recent years, in a variety of contexts, Americans are favoring rules and rigid criteria systems over systems that require humans to exercise judgement and discretion. This has effects on many industries, including my own: software security.
Bad News for Giving Birth at Reston Hospital
If you are at all interested in having a say in how your baby is born, it's a good idea to have your baby born somewhere other than Reston Hospital. There are quite a few reasons, but basically they are very interventionist (meaning they like to do medical things even when your birth is normal and low risk) and they are not very open to parents who want to make decisions. Here's a mixture of fact and opinion.
Christmas is evil, we’re all going to Hell
I just found a web page that has some pretty rediculous arguments about Christmas and why it is not Christian and should be avoided by every Christian. In fact, to read this moron's argument, it violates every one of the 10 commandments. Utterly ludicrous. I won't improve the guy's Google page rank by linking to him, but I'll provide the URL. I have a short list of rebuttals and then I'll quit.
Vista is the “hardest to pirate yet”
So ZDNet has a story about Microsoft fighting piracy of Windows Vista. The final quote is "Vista is the hardest system to pirate that we have yet released." I it. It's classic Microsoft myopia.
British Airways: It doesn’t get any worse
British Airways wasn't able to deliver one of my suitcases at the same time they delivered me from London to Washington DC. While that's not extraordinary, and they seem to have a plan in place to cope with that, their customer service is abyssmal. You just can not get worse customer service.