Posts

Dan Gillmor blasts both Microsoft and AOL in his column for their hypocrisy in the instant messaging flap. Salon’s Janelle Brown takes John Dvorak to task for his absolutely repugnant column about the iBook. I didn’t link to his column earlier because I thought it was one of the most insipid and revolting things I’d ever read. PC Week is reporting that Microsoft executive Paul Maritz may retire. Looks like the government is planning to keep an eye on our computer networks for us, in order to protect us from evil intruders. Thanks, but no thanks. ...

Home of the Underdogs is a museum of older computer games that the site maintainer thought never got the acclaim they deserved when they were released. The list includes vintage games like Legacy of the Ancients, Hacker, MULE, and an entire Koei collection. Even if you don’t download any of the creaky games, check out the site for a walk through computer game history. In case you don’t know, Microsoft has entered the instant messaging market, and in order to catch up with the entrenched players, they’re offering interoperability with existing products. AOL is the entrenched player, they’re pissed off, and they’re blocking Microsoft. Right now, Microsoft has successfully made their product, MSN Messenger Service, communicate with AOL Instant Messenger (ICQ support is forthcoming). Of course, the problem is this whole market is filled with slimy companies. AOL is desperately trying to hang on to the market share that they have, and Microsoft is just playing the interoperability game long enough to capture enough of the market to kill everyone else. A pox on both their houses, I say. ...

The version of Perl will be 5.6 (following 5.005). Perl.com has a rundown of the new features. Is Gerald Holmes the next Walter Miller? MSNBC has a story about FreeBSD, and indeed claims that uber-geeks consider it to be cooler than Linux. I don’t know about that, but it is nice to see FreeBSD get some press. I didn’t read the whole story because the page layout and server response times at MSNBC are abysmal. ...

I’m out of town this weekend, so there won’t be any updates until Monday, July 26. Does anyone know what Netscape SmartDownload is and how to get rid of it? Send email.

Steve Jobs didn’t disappoint today in his Macworld Keynote … the consumer portable was unveiled. Enter the iBook. It looks spiffy, but doesn’t have any PC card slots, or an external monitor connector. I imagine it will be a big hit anyway. Allaire announced a new software package called Spectra today, which will bundle content management and electronic commerce functionality. I assume it’s all built on top of Cold Fusion, I haven’t investigated it much yet. The pricing is $7,495. Look out Vignette, et al. They’ve been sneaking content management stuff into Cold Fusion for awhile. ...

Did you know a UN agency was recommending an email tax to help out developing nations? I’m absolutely for helping out developing nations, but what a bad idea. How about a corporate tax? This American Pie “fan site” was actually created by the studio, and is just guerilla marketing for the movie. I’m not sure about how I feel about that. I did see the movie, it was funny. PC World has an article explaining the reasoning behind Microsoft’s sale of Sidewalk to TicketMaster. That’s not really news; Microsoft needed to sell something they had sunk a lot of money into but sucked at. The real news is buried in the article … an analyst made an accurate prediction! Again in the not news category, the analyst was very self-congratulatory about it. ...

Here’s an article from one the local alternative weeklies that compares the architecture of branch banks. It’s pretty humorous, unfortunately the online version doesn’t include the pictures that were in the newspaper itself. This week’s Rapidly Changing Face of Computing points out that 46 states started fiscal year 2000 on July 1, and none reported any major problems. You can come in from the ledge now, Gary. Request: if you’ve implemented an electronic commerce site using BroadVision’s products, I’d love to hear how it worked out. ...

San Jose Mercury News geek-gossip columnist Chris Nolan has been suspended for investing in a company that’s on her beat. The story itself is in the Mercury News, and is very thorough. I imagine that this will blow over, as it should, but it’s nice to see newspapers give at least a nod to ethics anyway. Salon covers Red Hat’s purchase of a Web design studio, and speculates that this is one of the steps in their attempt to chase some of those magical portal-bucks that everyone is after (including Salon). ...

Apple announced the results of another nice quarter yesterday. They turned a profit of over a buck per share, which is really pretty good for a company that was supposed to be dead by now. Macintouch has a quick wrapup of the results. Next week is the big summer MacWorld show. I wonder what will be announced. Salon has an article about Be’s identity crisis. If only you could sustain a profitable business that does nothing more than write and sell an OS that is pleasing to geeks. ...

The XFree86 Font Deuglification Mini HOW-TO provides a solution to a long term problem that I’ve had with Linux.