More People Who Hate FIS: All Snowboarders

link (New York Times)

FIS, the most corrupt, incompetent, and contemptible sports governing body I've ever encountered, continues to win friends and influence people in their unique way.

The first few paragraphs of the above-linked NYT article, penned by Mark Higgins:

STRATTON, Vt. — In a sport known for individuality, top professional snowboarders can at least agree on their outrage about a skiing sanctioning body overseeing Olympic qualifying for their sport.

“F.I.S. puts on some of the worst snowboarding events ever,” Mason Aguirre said last week about the International Skiing Federation, known by its French initials.

Kevin Pearce said it was unfortunate “that a ski-driven group is in charge of snowboarding.”

Travis Rice went so far as to say he hated F.I.S.

Jay Freeman Takes on the Apple Monolith

From The Wall Street Journal, March 9:

Jay Freeman, who created Cycorder and is behind the Cydia Store, says he decided to open the store so developers like himself have a way to make money from their efforts. Mr. Freeman, a 27-year-old computer science doctoral student in Santa Barbara, Calif., says he intends to charge developers no more than the commission Apple does for his site's billing services.

A big hurdle the Cydia Store and others face is that the applications they offer typically only work on iPhones that have been modified, or "jailbroken," to allow users to download unauthorized programs.

Apple maintains that jailbreaking an iPhone violates copyright laws. Mr. Freeman says software he created to modify the iPhone has been installed on about 1.7 million iPhones.

link

I know this guy. Vaguely. He was an advisor to my nephew in the Computer Science Department at Cal Santa Barbara. I wish him luck in taking on the Apple monolith.

Talk about David vs Goliath.

Quite a bit more crazy and quixotic than me and Ted poking our sticks in the eye of Swiss Timing. I mean, we do The Hahnenkamm, at Kitzbühel, under Rolex sponsorship. And we make a modest profit doing it. THAT's about as significant a victory over Swiss Timing as one could accomplish in sport without funding it ourselves.

Of course, Jay is a better programmer than I am, so who knows what he's capable of.