Behind the grief, whispers about politics. The popular incumbent was fighting a tough reelection battle, and both parties wonder how his death will change the balance of power in the Democrat-controlled Senate. [Salon.com]

DivX DVD Players Arrive. division21 writes “Geeks rejoice — DivX Enabled DVD Players finally surface! (With all the goodies: MP3, SVCD, etc.) I remember when MP3 compatability … [Slashdot]

Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. WallsRSolid writes “Microsoft just finished a week-long series of lectures and demos at my university, and the product that really stole the show was the … [Slashdot]

Big Brother Lifetime Award Goes To Microsoft. D4C5CE writes “Microsoft’s ceaseless “success” in bringing instability, insecurity and breaches of privacy as well as a deplorable lack of open standards to … [Slashdot]
What’s intresting here is that microsoft didn’t win any actual awards, (probably becuase there isn’t any actual active bad behavior). They created the lifetime achievement for Microsoft for not using enough standards, older products being crash and virus prone and what they thought Microsoft might do in the future. What sorta crap is that? If you have a current complaint speak it. If there are future concerns call attention to it. However at some point let the past be a place to draw lessons from, not vile.

France Is Set to Offer U.N. Its Own Resolution on Iraq. In a bold diplomatic challenge to the U.S., France announced on Saturday that it may formally introduce its own resolution on disarming Iraq. By Elaine Sciolino. [New York Times: Politics]

When Just One Gun Is Enough. These days, it is increasingly difficult to figure out who is a terrorist or what that even means. By Jeffrey Gettleman. [New York Times: Politics]

Connecting people to XML. … [Jon’s Radio]
Jon wishes for an XML DHTML edit interface and a better XML editing/document story for outlook.

Sun pitches for leadership in war against .NET. IBM just tactical and reactive… [The Register]

I’m reading Matt Mower‘s and Don Park’s response to Larry Lessig on the OSAF/Future of Software topic. The apocalyptic question has been raised. Will the free software movement eventually kill off all commercial mass market software? My guess is no, but I don’t have an argument why. Here are a few trends:

• Free software has a lot of trouble dealing with Intellectual Property
  • Examples
    • RedHat and MP3 patents
    • DVD encryption
    • Software Patents?
  • Mitigating factors:
    • Popularize a free clone
    • Easier to ignore IP altogether
• Free software hasn’t had enough success at building complex pieces of software (and next to no success at complex software that isn’t cloned from elsewhere)
  • Examples:
    • desktop still isn’t done right
    • Exchange killer?
  • Mitigating Factors:
    • Can do it with enough time and no moving target (office file formats/desktop)
• Microsoft and other commercial software companies have not adequately made the desktop an attractive place to write software for
  • Examples
    • Web site interfaces instead of rich client interfaces
    • Viruses, Worms, security issues
    • Nats
  • Mitigating Factors:
    • Company Line: Soap and .Net Frameworks
    • Being Offline
    • extensibility, privacy, nickled and dimed to death

Hmm… My perspective skew is showing especially in the last one. I should add “Microsoft sucking all the oxygen from the market” based on the different angry blogs I’ve read, but it’s never felt creditable to me.

Tax debate spin control
Brad DeLong takes out the scalpel and fillets Sen. Chuck Grassley’s letter to the editor of the New York Times defending the fairness of the Bush tax cuts (the first sentences below are Grassley; italics is DeLong reading the mind of the letter-writer):

Some observers claim that 40 percent of last year’s tax cuts went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s official, unbiased source, says the top 1 percent will receive 27 percent of the income tax cuts [see how I snuck “income tax” into this sentence? All but the most alert one percent of readers will believe that I am claiming that the 40 percent number is flat-out wrong. *Snort*!]

[Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comment]