Monthly Archives: December 2005  Making Friends  It's harder
than making lemonade without lemons  A friend of mine once
worked for the EPA where he was privy to the meetings and
conversations they had with companies, experts, and special
interests. He summed up those meetings like this (paraphrasing):
The environmentalists would come in and say, "You need to end X
now," where "X" is any issue you can think of. "We want the EPA
to stop 100% of X immediately and assess huge fines to anyone
who doesn't comply.  The companies would come in and say, "We
know that the EPA has tough decisions to make, but it would
really help us if you would let us do 5% more of X."  If you
were the EPA and those were the arguments presented, whose side
would you choose?  How to make friends (when you would otherwise
be enemies)  The first time I really got angry at the digital
freedom movement (groups like the Creative Commons, EFF, EPIC,
etc.) was when Cory Doctorow spoke at Microsoft. This speech was
given to MS Research in 2004