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“I am sorry for the length of my letter, but I had not the time to write a short one.” (Blaise Pascal)

Another thing Eric Raymond said: The greatest moments in life aren’t those where the universe confirms a belief you’ve always held. The greatest moments are when you realize that something you’ve alwa…

Just to stir up emotions, I’ll sometimes suggest that Denmark drop Danish as official language, and instead adopt English. It usually works. People get mad.

The idea isn’t as stupid as it sounds, act…

Went to the post office the other day to send a large letter to the US. The poor post office worker had to literally fill up the entire envelope with stamps, about 15 of them. Each and every stamp had…

Heard Eric Raymond give a talk today. One interesting point: “People will hold on to their property, as long as the benefit of owning that property outweighs the cost of defending it.” (Quoted loosely…

It’s hard not to see a parallel between the mental shift that September 11 implied, and the mental shift that’s been going on in the computing business for a year or two: It used to be that you could …

Lots of people are busy whining about Microsoft being the big, evil monopolist, and if it wasn’t because they forced their software down our throats, they wouldn’t be where they are today.

The fact i…

“Commercial” is often used as an invective, to mean that something’s bad taste, stupid, or wrong. At least in my country. But the people that do that, tends to forget that things that sell ultimately …

Ask Bjørn Hansen sent me a link to this Entrepreneurial Deathtraps speech. Not bad to be aware of these traps. I’ve definitely seen quite a bit of them in action in various places I’ve been involved w…

Why is it that software specifications are always written so horribly? In fact, almost all technical writing is bad: Documentation, RFPs, proposals, you name it.

Sure, the really talented writers wou…