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A little perspective for EU Antitrust regulators

As you may or may not have heard, Microsoft is due in European court in June to defend itself for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. Opera started the suit, claiming that IE “harmed the web” and demanded that IE be unbundled. Since then Google and Mozilla have jumped on the gravy train, and who can blame them?

But it’s pure bullshit. An operating system has to come with a browser. I don’t think anybody is seriously suggesting that MS should not bundle a browser with Windows (although that would be a great “fuck you” in its own right). So what are we really saying here? They should bundle a competitors’ product?

Nevermind that Microsoft has a legitimate case about google becoming a de-facto search monopoly if virtually any other browser is bundled (Firefox, Opera, and Chrome all use Google as the default search engine). What on Earth makes the EU think they can force Microsoft to bundle a competitors’ product?

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McSorley’s Irish Black Lager

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Atta boy, Roger

So Roger Federer upended Nadal on Clay to win the Madrid Open, his first title since October. I’ve been pulling for him since the last couple of heart breaking wins Nadal has pulled out against him in major opens. For some reason Federer just falls apart against Nadal all the time, so it’s good to see him pull one through.

I sure wish the two best players in the world were a bit more evenly matched. It’s sad to see Federer kick so much ass and then just lose his cool completely against Nadal.

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Really? A Hybrid?

My dad’s 98 Expedition is about at the end of its useful life. He’s well into the 100ks and it’s about time for a new vehicle. My dad really felt the sting recently when gas was up over $4.00/gallon. The listed mileage for his truck is 12 city / 16 highway – and that’s before the EPA raised the standards and before he put a bill of miles on it. If you’re filling a 24 gallon tank every week, well, you do the math.

Long story short, my dad is now looking into buying a midsize SUV. He needs something capable of hauling our boat and some occasional lumber. No problem, shouldn’t be tough to find a midsize SUV that beats the Expedition for fuel economy right? Except my dad doesn’t want to stop there. He wants to buy a hybrid midsize SUV. Specifically, he wants to buy a Toyota Highlander Hybrid.

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If I ever lose my arm…

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Uhm… Hello? World?

I guess this is the first post here now, woooohooo. As you can see I’m making a lot of changes on epalla. The most noticeable being the giant blue rainbow on the right side of the site (and the new template in general). This is still very much a work in progress; hopefully I’ll have it up and running beautifully by the end of the weekend.

As you can see there are a few big things missing. It is my experience that most of you who still visit the site occasionally do so for the links in the digg widget. It’s gone right now but never fear! It will be back, I think. In the meantime if you can’t live without those digg links (hah) you can get to them here.

To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of digg anymore. Most of the same stuff comes on reddit earlier and the discussion has some real substance to go with the one-liners. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop going to digg completely, but don’t be surprised if it’s a reddit widget this time around and not a digg one.

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