So you’ve probably already heard that Steve Ballmer is taking over for Bill Gates as CEO of Microsoft. The article characterizes this move as stunning, but I can’t say that it surprises me at all. Ballmer has been minding the till since he was named President of the company awhile back, I doubt this will change the way things work at Microsoft at all. Bill Gates still ultimately calls the shots with his big chunk of stock and seat as chairman of the board, anyway.

QuickTime is an evil program. First, it takes over the file associations for every multimedia-ish file type on your computer. (Hello, Apple, I just want to play QuickTime movies.) Then, it hits you with a nag box constantly when you go to pages that use those media types. And finally, it’s constantly nagging me to download new upgrades for the software. What a pain in the neck! Is there some rule stating that if you want to build clients for streaming content, you have to be totally obnoxious?

According to this week’s status report, Mozilla is very close to beta release. M12 (the most recent release) is looking pretty good, although lots of work is still needed.

There’s an incredible cover story over at Salon today. They’re reporting that US government indirectly paid TV networks to incorporate anti-drug themes into their programming. In fact, government staffers actually reviewed and signed off on scripts before the networks got their kickback. The payment was delivered by giving advertising time that the government had paid a discount rate for back to the networks so that they could sell it to advertisers paying full price.

Sometimes poor technology journalism really drives me nuts. Take this News.com story about Red Hat’s new CTO for example. It contains this brilliant sentence: “Because Linux is such a technology-focused product, chief technology officers at Linux companies typically wield a great deal of influence over product direction and strategy.” Aren’t all software products, especially operating systems, techology focused? The writer also places the word “compiler” in quotation marks, as though that’s just a name that he made up for that type of software. Can you imagine reading a sentence that reads: “Microsoft develops “word processor” software”?

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that states can’t sell driver’s license information to marketers. Needless to say, I’m very glad that getting personal identification (something you’re required to have to function in society) doesn’t expose me to having my name sold to every junk mail company on the block.

Excuse me while I stop for a moment to mock Steve Perlman wildly for naming his new venture after a company from an Ayn Rand book. We now continue with our regularly scheduled programming.

One thing I never understood was the difference between configuration management and version control in software development. Now that I’ve read the FAQ for the comp.software.config-mgm newsgroup, I do.

The New York Times reports that CBS used digital technology to insert a fake billboard into their live coverage of New Years eve in Times Square. They covered up real Budweiser and NBC billboards with a digitally created CBS billboard and inserted it into the live feed. As far as I’m concerned, inserting fake stuff into news video is an ethical no-no. I think that when you see Dan Rather broadcasting live from an event, it’s reasonable to expect that the stuff you see on camera is real. Perhaps they could solve this problem by just superimposing the phrase, “Some of this stuff is fake” on the bottom of the screen. That should clear things up.

Raymond Scott was one of those composers whose music infuses popular culture without ever attaining recognition. Despite the fact that Scott was widely influential, his music is best remembered today as the backdrop for Bugs Bunny cartoons. Definitely listen to the song Powerhouse, and check out this brief biography.