Posts

The Economist has a 50,000 foot view article on the SCO versus Linux battle royale. Darl McBride makes me think ugly thoughts.

Looks like some major changes are on the way for XDoclet. If you’re a Java developer and you haven’t looked at XDoclet, you really should. It’s a code generator that enables you to generate supplementary source (and mapping) files required by various frameworks using Ant and some pseudo-JavaDoc comments in your code. The best thing about XDoclet is that it manages the divide between hand written and generated code in a sensible way. Some generators want to generate the code that really ought to be written by hand by the developer. XDoclet doesn’t have that problem. ...

If you’re interested in the history of World War I, check out firstworldwar.com. It’s an amazing resource written and created by volunteers. I thought for sure that it had to have been produced by the History Channel or some museum.

One of the most insightful things I’ve read lately is that the internal structure of large corporations is functionally equivalent to a miniature version of a Communist state. The more I think about it, the more true I realize it is. (Note that the person wasn’t talking about the idealized small-c communist state, but rather an actual big-c Communist state like those that have actually been implemented.) For more, see this article by Brad DeLong. ...

Generally when I talk about intellectual property here, I discuss its abuses, but the ability to exert rights over the things you create is a cornerstone of our economy and society. I think it’s stupid for BMW to tell Web sites not to use any variation of “Mini Cooper” in their name. They may be legally entitled to do so, but they’re biting the hand that feeds them. On the other hand, I think that Amazon.com’s suing spammers who fraudulently claim an affiliation with their company is perfectly reasonable. ...

Here’s a web page you don’t want to see when you’re looking at taking two trips by plane within the next week or so: hail damaged 737 (via Boing Boing).

One of the reasons why I never post those “I feel your pain” posts about the email worms and viruses that seem to blow up the Internet periodically is that for whatever reason, I seem to be unaffected by them. I didn’t get hundreds of copies of the Sobig virus. In fact, to my knowledge, I didn’t get a single one. I don’t know why that’s the case, but it’s true for me with nearly every email worm. There was one that I got a few copies of, but by and large, none make it to me. Maybe it’s the general cluefulness of the people I correspond with, I’m really not sure. I get plenty of spam, but very few email worms. ...

FeedDemon Beta 1.0b4 is out. By turning on the new “single key reading with spacebar” feature and remapping the keyboard shortcuts, I can read all my news channels using the spacebar, N, and G keys. Update: it looks like the new beta deleted all the channels I had added myself under beta 3. Not good. Next time I’ll back up my subscriptions before updating.

Tim Bray has realized that you could create a massive version of linkedin.com using a clever email virus.

You would have thought it was obvious: French people who eat fat-laden diets stay thinner than Americans because they eat smaller portions than we do. My wife has been telling me for years that people in Europe just don’t eat as much as Americans, and that’s why they’re thinner. The food portions in nearly every American restaurant are absurd. Generally in fine restaurants, you get an appropriate portion of food, but at your typical Chili’s, Applebees, or TGI Fridays, the portions are monstrous. Similarly, it wasn’t that long ago that the amount of food served in a Happy Meal at McDonald’s was what they served to adults. Now, of course, it’s the triple cheese burger with a pound of fries and a bucket of soda. Most people will eat what’s put in front of them, regardless of nationality, and in America we’re experts at putting a heck of a lot of food in front of people. ...