Posts

I try not to crib links from Slashdot, because I assume everyone reads it, but I never pass up a good piece of BSD related news. OpenBSD 2.6 has been released. Even people who aren’t into the operating system will want one of the ultra-cool T-shirts. I made an interesting observation today. I accumulate papers on my desk until I spill some sugared beverage on them. Then, everything that got tainted is thrown out. That’s my system of organization. Looking at my desk right now, I see that I really need to spill some Coke. ...

I try to avoid the meta stuff as much as possible, but I’d like to send my best wishes to Jesse James Garrett, who has put his uniformly excellent weblog on indefinite hiatus. Good luck, Jesse. Lovers of computer science history and nostalgia will find the story of John Lions and his banned set of books on the original Unix source code fasciniting. His comments on the source code, reprinted in 1996, are available at Amazon.com under the title Lions’ Commentary on Unix : With Source Code. ...

One wonders what, exactly, these guys are going to do to rescue online merchants. I’d love to see the silver bullets they’re going to use to fix electronic commerce sites between now and Christmas. A bunch of lawyers have used the Findings of Fact as a launching pad for filing class action suits against Microsoft. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I do think that Microsoft has harmed the computer industry, and thus has harmed consumers, but I don’t think that they’ve done that harm by overcharging consumers for Windows. ...

Believe it or not, there’s software that will keep your cat from walking on your keyboard. Webmasters who are dissatisfied with Analog may find Webalizer interesting. I’m pretty fond of Analog, but I’m going to give Webalizer a try anyway. It makes pie charts! You knew it had to happen at some point. Some fine folks have transformed the Parker Brothers classic Monopoly into an anti-Microsoft satire. Click on the various properties to get to the funny stuff. ...

How do you like your pork? Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska , who conveniently serves as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, seems to prefer it buffet style. The Republicans who run Congress (you know, the ones who are ostensibly for “smaller government”) are set to absolutely smash their own pork record set in 1997. Dan Bricklin has some interesting comments on the Findings of Fact. Most interesting to me are his observations that the Judge bought a lot of the stuff Microsoft says in the trade press, instead of the arguments they made in court. Smart judge. ...

gamasutra.com is a resource for people who are in the business of creating computer games. The LA Times has an article today about how some homeless people are benefitting from access to the Internet. Wired News has an extensive wrapup of all the things people have been saying about Transmeta over time, so if you haven’t been keeping up with the rumors, you can catch up all at once by reading the article. Unfortunately, nothing new is presented. (By the way, the whole Transmeta thing reminds me of an episode of “Northern Exposure” I saw where everyone in town obsessed over the contents of an intriguing package.) ...

The current issue of SunWorld has an introductory article on the grep utilities for Unix. grep is used to find strings matching a certain pattern within a text file. The best thing about the article is that it provides a good introduction to regular expressions, the pattern matching language for Unix that’s been added to the search and replace functions of many text editors. Maynard Keynes would love this: people in Oregon aren’t allowed to pump their own gas. The article mentions that New Jersey also has a prohibition on self service gas stations. (I bought gas in New Jersey once, and the gas station was indeed full service, but I didn’t think anything of it. One thing I did notice though was that late at night, you couldn’t find an open gas station anywhere in the stupid state.) ...

Palm scored a huge licensing coup by signing up Sony to make Palm OS devices. www.transmeta.com. This web page is here. Steve Champeon sent me a handy tip on how to get a bit more info than is presented on the home page. First Philips, now Everex. Another Windows CE licensee is bailing out. Today Salon compares and contrasts Fox’s “Greed” and ABC’s “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” I’ve watched every episode of Millionaire even though Regis Philbin drives me nuts. I’ve never watched “Greed” under the assumption that it’s a derivative piece of crap. I hate it when the networks try to get in the ballgame with weak shows modelled after popular shows on other networks. Joyce Millman’s article validates my decision not to watch in a big way. ...

The Microsoft TechNet search doesn’t work with Netscape Communicator 4.7. That sucks. This month, the Mother Jones cover story, Quake Nation, discusses the effects of ultraviolent computer games on kids. Unfortunately, the article isn’t online. I’ll have to pick it up at the airport this weekend or something. Howard Kurtz’s media column at the Washington Post covers a Matt Drudge “censorship” incident that ended with his leaving the Fox studio and refusing to tape his TV show after the network refused to let him show a picture of a fetus on the air. ...

I saw a mention at linkwatcher that there’s actually content at perlxml.com these days. I’ve been subscribed to the perl-xml mailing list for months, and I’ve been eager to actually make use of this stuff, but I just haven’t found the time or motivation to really dig into it. Does anyone know of any sites that are using Perl to transform XML-based content into HTML and publish it right now? Today, Salon is running a point/counterpoint on the Oprah book club, in honor of her receiving a special medal from the National Book Awards. My take on Oprah’s book club is this: Oprah exposes millions of people who otherwise would have never picked up a trade paperback or set foot in Barnes & Noble to pretty good works by underappreciated writers every month. The worst things the author of the con article can say are that some of the novels aren’t up to his literary standards, and that the vast majority of the people who buy book club books don’t go on to buy lots of other books. To which I say that the book club isn’t aimed for snobs like him, and that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. ...