Yesterday was Windows Refund Day. Of course it was a publicity stunt, and naturally nobody wants to cough up any money to these people, but widespread media coverage indicates that this protest has gone a great job of pointing out how difficult it is to get a computer that doesn’t have Windows installed on it. There are more rumors of Disney purchasing Apple floating around. Ars Technica takes a first look at Mac OS X Server. ...
One thing I love about the hacking community is that it’s wonderfully self-referential. For example, why do all programming books and manuals start with a program that prints “Hello world!”? Because the first example program in C printed “Hello world!”. Similarly, over the years there have been a number of fine papers written about things that are “considered harmful.” Go To Statement Considered Harmful, by Edsger W. Dijkstra, is the one that started it all. ...
Spotted in NTK: AccuWeather X-Forecast. Perl and Christianity? Perl hackers as missionaries? Feed interviews Larry Wall. A transcript of Be CEO Jean-Louis Gassee’s interview with CNNfn’s Digital Jam. JLG talks about the Microsoft antitrust trial, and the absurdity of Microsoft’s pointing to Be as a competitor. The transcription of this interview was quite poor, but JLG was well spoken, as always.
Do you know VerticalNet? Internet investors do … they plowed a lot of cash into its IPO on Thursday. I need to come up with an idea upon which to start a money-losing e-commerce firm in a hurry. Unofficial channels make Netscape’s Netcenter the best customizable portal out there. Someday, after I finish the book, I’ll make an Outraged! Daily Edition channel.
The Register forecasts the calendar for the rest of the Microsoft trial. The Lycos-USA Networks deal seems to have fallen apart, apparently because USA wasn’t willing to pay a premium over Lycos’ already inflated stock price. News.com reports that the DOJ is considering forcing Microsoft to license the source code to Windows as a potential remedy. I’m not sure what that would accomplish. Newsies is a frequently updated Web site which keeps track of full-time journalists who write for the Web on the side. ...
Want proof that people will whine about anything? Buy.com posted a price of $164.40 on some Hitachi 19" monitors that were supposed to sell for $588. Obviously this was a mistake, but word spread around and tons of people ordered them at that price (had I seen the price posted, I would have ordered one). So Buy.com ate the loss and sold the 143 they had in stock for that piddling amount. They’ve refused to fulfill any more orders at that price. What a surpise … Buy.com isn’t going to buy a bunch of monitors and sell them at a loss to appease some people who were trying to cash in on an error. These people obviously knew they were getting the monitors at a price far below what they were worth, and now they’re whining about Buy.com? They’re even putting up protest websites for God’s sake. The story is at News.com. ...
New entry in the journal today. Tabloid.net appears to be back in full force. On Monday, Owen Pike provided his list of the worst columnists in the world. Journalists in the UK and people who are interested in journalists in the UK may find the Fleet Street Forum interesting. Fleet Street Forum was a Compuserve forum until it was given the boot, and it now makes its home on the Web. They’re probably better off for it. Of particular interest is the How to Handle Journalists Anti-FAQ. ...
Do you wonder why companies are always being awarded screwy patents on Internet technologies that you know have been done before? It’s because our patent system seems to be severely broken, at least according to these complaints which were taken from a patent examiners’ message board and sent to the Web Standards mailing list. Attention geography geeks: the 1998 edition of the CIA World Fact Book has been published on the Web. ...
Tabloid.net sues the Florida citrus growers and Dallas ad agency the Richards Group over a talking ham sandwich. Do you trust the recommendations at Amazon.com? How would you feel if you knew that they were selling them? This is common practice in the retail industry, and Amazon.com is a store, not a magazine. [registration required]
Washington Post obituary for Jordan’s King Hussein, one of the true statesmen of the twentieth century. There’s an interesting news site which aggregates the best state news from around the Web at http://www.stateline.org. It is provided by the Pew Center on the States. The Seattle Times reports on another major reorganization at Microsoft. It seems Microsoft will be moving from its product-line based organization to a new structure based on the various types of customers they serve. ...