This Steve Gillmor article – an open letter to Bill Gates (or Ray Ozzie) – is a nice sound-bite of a compelling issue, and an interesting suggestion for Microsoft.

I’m a big fan of Dell; I’m typing this surrounded by four Dells, two Windoze machines and two older ones I’ve converted to Linux.

I’ve been purchasing Dells since before they were called Dells (PC Limited/PC Unlimited? I fergit). This is 286 systems through Pentiums to P4s.

For me and others.

Very few issues.

I don’t have the stomach (or time) to get into it now, but – a couple of days ago – I had a system crash that was bad enough for me to tap Dell for help (bad geek!).

Big mistake. I spent, last night, three hours on the phone with Dell to confirm that I would not be charged for the (unspeakably horrible) service I asked for (I fixed the problem myself, no thanks to Dell….) the previous night and took seven or so hours of on hold/no clue service. In other words, it was a lack of support.

Last night, when I was trying to confirm I would not be charged, I gave my e-mail address at least four times, and was told (once) that I would get a confirm e-mail with the “no charge ID,” and was told (twice) that they could not generate a “no charge ID” value, but they’d send this to me, and was told (once, to the only person who seemed to “get it”; my request) he’d send me his info so I could at least tell his supervisor that this dude did something.

Twenty-four hours later, I have no e-mails. Good, bad or ugly.

Simplify:

• I gave Dell money; nothing was resolved after hours of poor support (bulk of hours were five minutes of talk, the “Hmm…can I put you on hold for a minute?” And – twenty minutes later – I hung up due to no response.
• I tried to confirm if I was going to be charged for this lack of resolution; no paper trail.

Dell computers: GOOD.

Dell support: SUCKS.

Blogger is obviously back now (it’s my publishing tool), but was down for at least 12 hours.

No mention of this anywhere; interesting….

Just had a (rare) power outage, just as I was digging into code.

When this happens, one realizes just how one is dependent on the tiny electron.

No computers.

No TV.

No radio.

No wireless phones (cellphones – if charged, of course – are fine).

Power be back! Das is gutte…

Yeah, it’s that exciting…

Today is the fifth anniversary of this blog. First post, May 17, 2001.

Not quite sure what this means or if anyone should care (correx: No, no one should care).

But this is a long time in the blogosphere, and I’m proud of that. Added features, updated the GUI, yet didn’t post as much as I would have liked.

Bring on the next five years!

Do you remember the movie The President’s Analyst, where James Colburn – in this role, a shrink (analyst) – became increasingly unhinged after continuous sessions with the U.S. President?

And his parinoia became real because – as his (unfilmed) sessions with the Prez indicated – there was a Big Brother – but it turned out to be the PHONE COMPANY!!!! How funny! How unrealistic!! How unexpected!!

That was (?) fiction.

Today, it is non-fiction: NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls.

So, all my calls (and this is how it should be read – as in “all YOUR calls”) have been accounted for. Not listened to, but who I/you called when and for how long.

To:

The doctor.

The AIDs clinic.

The shrink.

The escort service.

The abortion clinc.

The grocery store.

The mistress.

The hardware store.

The airline.

The professor of Middle-Eastern studies.

The “Have you ever had that not-so-fresh feeling” hotline.

The “any banal call” you’ve made.

The “any potentially embarrassing call” you’ve made.

ALL captured.

Your phone (and Internet, but that’s sorta a given, to a degree that I don’t agree with) calls are on “record,” and there is no “pause” button.

Paging Geoge Orwell….

At least for now, the “xxx” top-level domain is dead.

This is no surprise – almost everyone thought this was a bad idea, and I’m talking about a whole bunch of folks who you normally don’t see agreeing on things. The federal government, porn producers, anti-porn activists and so on.

All for different reasons, but all against. Weird.

Let’s see if someone tries to raise this issue again in a few years…probably…

Filled up the tank of my car today; it was almost empty.

Damn, I’ll miss that kidney…

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. motorists finally got some relief at the pump as the national retail gasoline price fell for the first time in six weeks, dipping a penny over the last week to $2.91 a gallon, the government said Monday.

— U.S.: First gasoline price drop in 6 weeks

OK, according to CNN, the 10+ gallons I tossed in my Ford “Babe Catcher” Escort is now – as a total – a dime cheaper than last week. Whoo-hoo!

OK, Steve Jobs has shown that he is NOT to be messed with:

• Americans Surrender
• The French (surprise) surrender

Update 5/8/2005: Jobs Beats the Beatles. Certain to be appealed, but still…The (Zen) Man is racking up an impressive legal record recently…

I hate the buzzphrase “Web 2.0” – it’s meaningless, yet it means different things to different folks. Odd.

I title this entry Web 2.0 simply because two events are happening on the Web today that mark a breakthrough of sorts: The runaway success of myspace.com and youtube.com.

Why do these sites amass obscene levels of traffic? Well, Paul Boutin outlines it nicely in his Slate article.

Bottom line? – Simple for the masses. Nothing to install; nothing really new to learn.

This is what I was begging for in my recent What’s Wrong With RSS entry. KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

MySpace and YouTube have done this, and they are getting the PR and traffic.

If Ebay – with its still clunky interface and non-intuitive searches and so on – launched today, it’d probably die a quick death. Now, it’s so ingrained in the masses that it works, but only because it’s already learned. And people hate to learn, so that’s a lesson worth learning.

Build it – and KISS – and they will come.