According to a recent report from International Institute of Strategic Studies, thinktank,

Iraq has become the new magnet of Al-Qaeda's war against the United States … The US-led war in Iraq has increased the risk to Western interests in Arab countries.

I didn't enjoy reading the editorial, but I found myself nodding my head.  Urgh.

While more than 90% of email I receive is spam — one of the downside of being a blogger — 83% reported by MessageLabs seems too high.  I think the real number is somewhere around 60%.  It's still bad, of course.  The article also noted that porn spams are declining steeply and financial spams are on the rise.

When I woke up yesterday — I am waking up yesterday and going to sleep tomorrow these days — I had this funny mix of DEMO conference and flea market in my head.  What if a DEMO conference could be held every month?  The ideal place for it is in Palo Alto near the Sandhill Road.  Stanford will work as well.  More informal setting would be the little shopping mall on Sandhill there (I forget the name) or Buck's parking lot.

The idea is to let people just come and show/see demos fresh off the oven.  Free for all, fun for all, and maybe a golden opportunity for some.  Quality-wise, I am more in favor of no control because people like seeing crappy stuff along-side the good stuff.  Unpredictability is what makes flea markets interesting.  Anyway, I am just musing along at this point but I think it could be fun for everyone, including the VCs.

Update:

Re comments about DEMO, I like the core concept but execution must be different given that time and resource constraints are vastly different.  We used to have monthly events in the Silicon Valley where people could just show up and demonstrate what they have been worked on.  Over time, those events were replaced by so called 'networking' meetings.  Well, I like 'walking the walk' instead of 'talking the talk'.

If you are not using a news aggregator, you might want to give Bloglines, a server-based news aggregator, a try.  While at it, subscribe to my blog.  You won't see my face next to the posts any more, but maybe you'll like that.  😉

Looks like Marc Fleury, JBoss boss and a world class bacon (?!?), is on the grill again.  He is being accused of praising JBoss and trashing competitors anonymously at well known Java websites like TheServerSide.  What a character he is.  I wouldn't be surprised if he makes an appearance in the next Tarantino movie.

Revisit Funnyside of Open Source for a classic taste of Fleury.

Update:

BileBlog had all the juicy bits on this story which surfaced when TheServerSide forum added a feature that lookups posts by IP address.  Ouch!  It looks like rest of the JBoss gang is into masquerading as well.  I even recognize some of the supposedly bogus characters (underlined):

… Marc Fleury. Who else does the slimy little fleury have hidden away in this too-large-for-one-person personality of his? Why, none other than our friend Arun Patel! Arun, for those of you unfamiliar with TSS, posts incredibly offensive polemics that happen to exactly mirror the unspoken thoughts of a certain JBoss cult. …

So, who else posts from that IP? Well, we have James Hardy. James' posts are often of the 'I'm sane but lets face it, JBoss rule' variety, as opposed to another on that list of deranged psychopaths, Chip Tyler. Chippie here will eagerly pipe in in any number of threads to say how much CDN suck, as well as how every move JBoss makes is intelligent and wise. There are literally dozens of other accounts that show how widespread this behaviour is. The only thing they have in common is a surprising love and admiration for all things JBossy, and disdain and abuse for all things non-JBossy.

Needless to say, Ben Sabrin and the majority of the JBoss folks are all on the trail too. So while it's impossible to actually draw lines between the fakes and their puppetmasters, it's very very easy to spot the group of nefarious rumprangers who have embarked on this laughably incompetent marketing exercise. Having said that, some of the linkages are very clear and easy to follow to individuals who happen to not work in the same turdfactory as the fleurys do. Bill Burke has the highly dubious honour of also being Joe Murray, famous for making noises to the effect of 'Mike Spille doesn't exist!'. Let's see you uuhmm and err your way out of this one Billy! Marc'll have you back in that gimp suit pretty sharpish if you keep being this sloppy.

The saddest part about all this is that the most likely outcome is for these posters to now ensure they use a different IP when posting, to disguise the trail more effectively. I'm sure the very notion of 'gosh, maybe we should let our software do the talking instead of using underhanded tactics like these' is heretical in that camp.

Dave Winer wrote:

It's lame to charge for weblog software based on how many weblogs you make and how many authors there are. A weblog isn't that big a deal.

To me, it's not whether a weblog is a big deal or not.  Importance of a feature is subjective and, in the end, nothing is a big deal.  Besides, making a big deal out of nothing is what marketing is all about.  Remember Seinfeld?

This comment over at Joi Ito's blog regarding the impact of Six Apart's new license hit me hard:

6A essentially fired its old Sales and Marketing staff…

The key lesson here is that you shouldn't be messing with the viral aspect of your product.

Seth Godin is musing about five years from now.  Frankly, I would be happy just with baldness becoming a matter of choice.

Baldness is in my gene and I can now feel the hair follicles hanging on desperately to my head like Indiana Jones.  This climatic scene has been going on too long and I can feel the tragic ending ahead, an avalance of screaming hair follicles.  Aaahhhh~  Maybe I'll go to sleep one stressful day and wake up next morning looking like the Half Dome.

But then baldness could be the perfect excuse to buy a Cobra like my buddy Dave Rogers.

Hmm.  It sort of look like my goldfish.

Sorry.  I was just wondering why there aren't more posts like this which would be more useful to geeks than waka waka about blogging or poo poo about Bush.  To avoid disappointing you altogether, here is a golden rule I learned when I was single:

Don't ask questions that could be answered with a No.

Until she got to know you well enough to make an informed decision about you, stick with the rule and ask other types of questions.  If she gets that twinkle in her eyes, check your wallet to see if you need to make a run to the drug store.  If she gets that pestered look, walk away happy knowing that she wasn't your type after all.  Delusions can be useful when you are single.  😉

If you are a complete loser, stick with the rule until she calls the cop or makes a run for the door.  If you are a persistent bastard, keep at it until she gets a restraining order against you.  If you are a clueless idiot, follow her to Texas and congratulate her for getting a gun license.

If a butterfly in Beijing can destroy Kansas, this post has a good chance of triggering a population explosion.

Update:

The advice worked for Gwai Lo.  Cool cat you are, Gwai Lo.  The letters on the locks say T.L.C., meaning lots of attention, not pressure to make a snap decision on some stranger the girl just laid her eyes on.  Besides, she is a doorway to her social network of girlfriends.  Think long, even longer than your longing.

I met some folks yesterday whom I haven't seen for a long time: Peter Yared, whom I worked with at NetDynamics, and Mike Boich, whom I worked for at Radius.  Peter Yared was CTO of Sun's Liberty division and Mike, founded and headed Radius, Rendition, and Eazel.  He is now a VC at Alta Partners where Robert Simon, a long time friend, also works.

I forgot to take Peter's picture but here is Mike and Robert.

Kimchee~