Tuesday, August 27, 2002

A New Model for AOL May Influence Cable's Future. A recent agreement between AOL Time Warner and Comcast may represent an important technological transition point in the cable TV business. By Seth Schiesel. [New York Times: Technology] I worked for AT&T Labs until April 2000. Some years before, when the flame war over access between AOL and the cable companies was hottest, I wrote a memo proposing an auditing-based scheme like this, which I asked my manager to send to relevant people. It probably disappeared into the corporate void, as many other ideas generated at the labs back then, regardless of merit. It's amusing and irritating at the same time that it took this long and this decline in the market valuations of both sides for the obvious compromise to emerge. 7:50:06 PM

Happy Mac Becomes an Icon of the Past. Without fanfare, Apple Computer has retired the smiley-face computer screen logo that has been an emblem since the introduction of the Macintosh computer. By John Markoff. [New York Times: Technology] I'm amazed at the volume of whining this generated. I've been using Macs since 1985, and it hardly registered when I upgraded my machines to 10.2 Sunday. What registered is that 10.2 is faster and does quite a few things better. I don't follow Windows discussions, but I keep wondering about the complaining about minutiae I see in Linux and Mac discussions. Are there really that many people who bother about such stuff, or is it all a bot conspiracy? 7:42:35 PM

Hush-Hush Hooray, Says NYC. The cell-phone industry is laughing at a bill by a New York City councilman that would prohibit the use of cell phones in most public places. But it's gaining momentum. By Elisa Batista. [Wired News] Sure it's annoying. But annoying stuff happens in crowded places. We put up with the cost, noise, pollution, and occasional danger of living in the city for what we enjoy: variety of experience, breadth of opportunity. Many annoying things that others do in cities and elsewhere are already ticketable, such as certain kinds of bad driving, but they still happen. Whoever never forgot to switch their phone to silent or never replied to all rather than to sender can vote for this bill. 7:35:12 PM