http://www.haroldtherebel.com Harold the Rebel's blog: Revealing the world as it is. Thu, 08 May 2008 07:58:58 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en One of the greatest human conflicts does not follow any established political lines. What I'm talking about is the tension between MAKERS and TAKERS. MAKERS are people who come up with new ideas, make new products, and provide genuine services. TAKERS are people who commandeer others' work ... http://www.haroldtherebel.com/2008/05/08/makers-and-takers/ Since I'm on vacation (and I hope you are, too! Happy Holidays!), I decided to write a "normal" blog post. Here goes: Cocaine flavored doughnuts seem to be quite popular in Palo Alto these days. Why? I don't know. It might just be because we've unwittingly become ... http://www.haroldtherebel.com/2007/12/19/a-blog-post/ It seems like everybody and his brother (unless his brother makes web 2.0 sites with rounded corners) is clamoring to use Haskell these days. Mostly because they think it's 31337, but have no idea how it actually works. This eventually devolves into a discussion of trying to figure ... http://www.haroldtherebel.com/2007/12/02/monads-and-schroedingers-cat/ Okay so actually, Phil (my neighborhood crack dealer) mentioned that there are still a couple of tech companies out there. And I mean organizations that actually are results-oriented rather than wasting-peoples'-time-on-stupid-stuff oriented. Yes, I know it's hard to believe. One of better performing (well, before this week's ... http://www.haroldtherebel.com/2007/11/22/death-valley-part-2/ Facebook. Digg. Google. Three companies I've heard way too much about this past week. Oddly enough, those names all have at least three things in common (good things come in threes... yeah right): they're headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, they depend on the social factor (read: the online ... http://www.haroldtherebel.com/2007/11/14/death-valley-part-1/ Friends. Romans. People with half a brain. It's finally happened: Google's opened the floodgates to ubiquitous bad taste, annoyances, and exploits across all social networking platforms, ranging from Ning to MySpace to the Iranian Goat Farmers' Association. If you've been following the tech news lately, you're probably aware that Google ... http://www.haroldtherebel.com/2007/11/03/peer-prescience/ Hi. My name is Harold. I live in Sudan. Or maybe not. It doesn't really matter all that much. What does matter is that far too many stupid companies with stupid ideas are getting far too much funding today from stupid people with access to altogether far too much money. ... http://www.haroldtherebel.com/2007/10/27/the-so-called-web-20/