Lastly, I sincerely doubt that Deutschman's Second Coming helps explain why Microsoft won the PC war against Apple, Sun, IBM, and others. If Gunn thinks otherwise, she should have paid much more attention to the Justice Department's recent foray against Microsoft. And a large part of the blame lies with gullible Windows users. Did John D. Rockefeller enjoy the kind of adulation that Bill Gates receives? Never have so many been so thankful for being reamed so hard.
JAMES LINDLEY
BELLINGHAM
Angela Gunn responds: Gunn—no fan of Microsoft, having spent all Saturday digging MS debris out of her overtaxed hard drive—was paying attention to the DoJ case. She was also paying attention to the revelation last week that Sun and other Silicon Valley companies funded a multimillion-dollar war chest called Project Sherman, which "helped" the DoJ construct the case against Microsoft. As for Jobs' management, she refers you to the latest earnings report, which looks mighty pretty refracted through the cracks of a G4 Cube casing.
Good job, guys and gals ["Life in a tarp town," 10/12]! I just moved back to North Dakota after nine years in the so-called humanitarian city of the world, and it's hard to believe that the forces of evil (Mark Sidran and co.) are still at work beating and harassing the most vulnerable people in our society and the most in need of our collective compassion.
DAN SHIPPEN
BISMARCK, ND
Domains bite
I don't feel sorry for big business, but I do have to contend with my own little itty problems in domain land [Kiss my ASCII, "Supply and shortage," 10/12]. Several years ago I took the .org version of my domain name. The .com and .net versions have since been scooped up by people not likely to relinquish them. Never mind that my domain is the best known/most actively used version. I'm pretty sure I'd have to pay more than $35 each to the other two domain registrants. I can just see what's going to happen when ICANN lets loose the "paltry" half-dozen new top-level domains.
It bites that we can't have 50 new top-level domains? It bites that I have to constantly remind people that MY domain ends in dot ORG. Hey, I did what was right several years ago. I went with the top-level domain I was supposed to. Now I'm in a bind.
Oh, yeah. For just $1,000 I can get xenite.tv. Oorah. I've had a taste of the future already. I think I'd rather stay with the current fiasco than see it multiplied fifty-fold.
MICHAEL MARTINEZ
ALBUQUERQUE
Holy crap! I used to have respect for Geov Parrish, but recently his views have been coming out of right field. Now Parrish comes out as "opposed to abortion" (though not for making it illegal) because he believes "all life, including potential life, is sacred" [Impolitics, "A bitter pill," 10/12]. Did it ever cross his mind that if we take potential life to be sacred then any woman who fails to attempt to become pregnant every time she ovulates is preventing "potential life," and that therefore extremists could equate abstinence with murder??? This may seem ludicrous, yet, in reality, abstinence prevents birth every bit as much as abortion does. If, instead, only fertilized eggs are sacred, then you would think that we would stop spending so much money on finding cures to such minor killers as cancer, heart disease, and AIDS and instead find away to prevent miscarriage, which "kills" approximately 25 percent of those "potential lives" mostly in the first few weeks after conception, often before a woman even realizes she has conceived.
I read the Weekly because I am sick and tired of the stupid and uneducated stances that I see in the major newspapers. Et tu, Weekly?
OWEN S. HAMEL
SEATTLE
Black and white
In his September 21 Impolitics ["Sunrise, sunset,"], Geov Parrish forgot to mention that 40 percent of the crime victims in Seattle identify their suspects as African American or some variation. And 15 percent identify their suspects as Hispanic. At least that was true the last time I made a survey of the West Precinct crime reports.
When I hired on with the Seattle Police Department in '65 patrol officers were required to write one traffic a day. No big deal? I hated writing tickets and soon learned that every traffic stop involving African Americans ended up in an argument. Leave them to the Traffic Division. I almost never stopped a car with a black driver. After I got my 20 years I quit writing traffic tickets.
If I was still writing my column in "The Guardian" I would be proposing a 30-day moratorium on all traffic stops on black people. There are plenty of white tickets out there. Give the city what it wants.
BILL WALD
EVERETT
Grasp pen. Write to Letters Editor, Seattle Weekly, 1008 Western, Ste 300, Seattle, WA 98104; fax to 206-467-4377; or e-mail to letters@seattleweekly.com. Include name, location, and phone number. Letters may be edited.
