This week, the Industry Standard is running an article about the business of online gaming.
I’m going to try to put my thoughts together on the findings of fact in the Microsoft case this week, once I’ve had the chance to read the entire document. Really, though, this was all I wanted. I don’t care what the verdict is, or what the remedy is. Just the fact that a theoretically unbiased officer of the court saw exactly what sort of company Microsoft really is, and the damage they’re doing to the computer industry, is enough for me. I’m happy now.
Bruce Epstein read the entire findings of fact document, and created a very nice cheat sheet highlighting the most significant paragraphs. He originally sent it to the Studio B mailing list, and I would have pointed to it in their archive, except that their archive is poorly organized and I couldn’t find it there.
peterme.com has a link that’s too good to pass up, to a history of the GUI. I’d never seen shots of Windows 1.0 and 2.0 before. Man, are they bad. Compare the screen shots of the first color version of the Mac OS to Windows 2.03 from 1987. How did Apple ever blow that lead? Sad, really. Also, this page is missing some of the Sun GUIs, like NeWS and Openlook. There are a lot of other older systems that don’t appear on it as well.
One of the most serious threats to the software industry going forward is the growing number of absurd software patents that are being awarded. For example, a patent was awarded for a technique called ‘windowing’. Windowing assumes that a two digit year is from the 1900’s if the value is greater than some number, and it is from the 2000’s if it is less than that number. I’m sure it will be revoked as prior art in this area arrives in a landslide, but the fact that such a patent was awarded is worrying.
The problem with relying on amateurs to design user interfaces is illustrated clearly by the “ugly” category in the WinAmp skins collection.