Before Gulf War I George HW Bush said that protecting Kuwait was in our vital national interest. What was that vital national interest? What is the vital national interest that had US troops in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc before 9/11?

We already only get a small amount of oil that is actually shipped from the Middle East. However, since oil is a global commodity interruption in the flow from any of the major exporters would have global consequences, as we've seen whenever there's been a hint of conflict in the Middle East.

Free Software had first mover advantage over the big brother social network sites but it didn't innovate fast enough. Remember blogs? What happened? The community couldn't agree on standards for providing advanced social applications that people wanted, so the walled gardens sprang up that provided them. Seriously, remember the years of dumb ass bickering over RSS or Atom?

I personally am very sad that large parts of the social experience online are now within wall gardens, I see it as AOL's revenge from the grave. It says something about the limits of open processes that hopefully the Free Software movement and others can learn from.

... "I resemble that remark!"

latency

Hmm, International Paper is announcing earnings on April 30th. One would have to guess that those earnings will be higher than previously predicted as these checks have just started rolling in.