Updated: 12/2/2002; 12:19:02 PM.
Patrick Chanezon's Radio Weblog
P@'s links, comments and thoughts
        

Wednesday, November 27, 2002


Valid RSS. This blog is still valid RSS (check the link to verify). We find this amazing since this blog is being used in quite a different way than usual RSS feeds. This page is the blog, we style our RSS XML directly with CSS. Both modern standard browsers and news aggregators can process this blog. There aren't different HTML versions and RSS versions, adding a lot of complexity to the back-end, just one XML file that uses CSS to display in the browser, ignoring the CSS when processed by a news aggregator like Radio Userland or AmphetaDesk. Normally you would design a web page to work in a small number of browsers. This XML page was designed to work also in all RSS browsers, ie. aggregators, which involved serious testing and QA and took us some time, since every change had to be checked whether it breaks something in around a dozen different processors, including all popular RSS aggregators. [Mozquito XForms]
7:20:51 PM      comment []


Mozquito reveals plans on MarkupLanguage.net. Mozquito is launching a competition service to Radio Userland, Blogger and the upcoming Microsoft XDocs called MarkupLanguage.net, built upon the power of XML and enabled thru the Mozquito XForms implementation. Please read the value proposition in PDF. Finally, Mozquito is coming up with something everyone can use and not just XML enthusiasts. [Mozquito XForms]
7:20:40 PM      comment []


Organize your mailing lists as RSS feeds. Subscribed to various mailing lists? Your inbox is a chaos? Can't check every subscribed mailing list in a consistent look and feel over the web? Never had the energy to set up all those mail folders and filtering rules? Wish those folders and filters where active when checking mail from any PC? Those and other problems have forced us to build MarkupLanguage.net. [Mozquito XForms]
7:20:15 PM      comment []


Font flaw foils Solaris security. A hole in the software that handles desktop fonts in Solaris setups could leave workstations and servers based on the Sun operating system open to attack. [CNET News.com]
7:11:13 PM      comment []


AOP and persistence. Everyone and their mother is talking about persistence and Java and headaches and all sorts of issues around this. I'll here try to explain my take on all of this.

...

Hm... I need to test this RDF/SQL mapping idea soon. Talk is cheap, and words are plenty :-) [Random thoughts]


7:09:31 PM      comment []


Digital intelligence.

This hilarious article about TiVo is a good illustration of the power of Digital Video Recorders, and it explains why I think that in one or two lusters, they will have totally replaced VCR's in our living rooms.

Mr. Cohen, 30, has a TiVo that mysteriously assumed he wanted Korean news programs. The Philadelphia lawyer gave thumbs down to anything Korean, and his TiVo got the message. Sort of. "The next day, it recorded the Chinese news," he says.

This is typical TiVo behavior.  Note that there is actually no real harm since shows taped by TiVo on its own initiative have the lowest priorities, and they will be the first deleted if space is needed for your own shows.  But this anecdote brings up an interesting point that is very relevant to our digital lives:  adaptive scoring.

As I mentioned in a past column, I used to use a very smart Usenet reader called Gnus which was one of the first to introduce the notion of dynamic scoring.  In short, this program monitored which articles you read and assigned weights to several criteria.  For example, ten points for the author and two points for the subject.  If a new article is posted with that same subject, it automatically gets a score of 2.  If the same author posts another article (not necessarily in the same thread), this article automatically gets a score of 10.

Dynamic scoring associated with static scoring (where you are the one assigning scores) gives amazingly good results.  The only scheme that can top it is the recommendation algorithm used by Amazon or Netflix, which simply uses the choices of people with similar tastes to make recommendations.  You can't beat that.

I have recently seen a similar attempt for weblogs, where you type in the URL of your own weblog (or of one that you like) and it gives you a list of recommended logs.  Nowhere near the beauty of adaptive scoring, but we are getting there.

[Otaku, Cedric's weblog]
7:09:01 PM      comment []


Sun: We'll hit revenue goals. The server giant says it's on course to hit analysts' revenue targets for its current second quarter--but the picture's not so bright for profit margins and operating expenses. [CNET News.com]
10:54:15 AM      comment []

Jacques Le Marois MandrakeSoft's co-founder leaves the CEO job to an older guy


Linux vendor MandrakeSoft taps new CEO. Francois Banchilhon to take helm [InfoWorld: Top News]

Bancilhon, 54, will replace MandrakeSoft's co-founder, Jacques Le Marois, who will stay on as chairman and president, the company said Monday.

It sounds weird to me: I used to work with Jacques Le Marois at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) in 95-97. We were both consultants in the technology practice, and I liked him well.

Andersen were the first to virtualize the office: you had to book for a desk to plug your laptop everyday, AND charge it to a customer: No customer, no desk. So when you were not working for a customer, either you stayed at home, or you came in a lounge with a few desktops and a great cofee machine.

Needless to say I spent a lot of time in this lounge, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and reading technical books and docs. I met Jacques there a few times, and we spoke about technology: he was passionate about Linux already, while my favorite topics were more collaborative apps, java and ecommerce.

What sounds weird to me is that I consider myself growing mature, but not yet in the maturity of my career: and Jacques did the full cycle in a few years and today he's replaced by a 54 year old seasoned veteran !

I'm not surprised though: MandrakeSoft needs to grow and while a young hot rod visionary can be a good CEO for a small company, you need a more seasoned manager to take it to the next level.

I guess he had an experience a la Marc Andreesen at Netscape, but with no Jim Barksdale to rein in the kids ("you'll be a man, my son!" :-) I hope he had great fun and will rebound to do something else: how boring can it be to be chairman for 30 years ? Even Bill Gates came back to the trenches to become an architect again.


12:10:14 AM Google It!      comment []

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