Saturday, 27 July 2002

Ebay to save the world How auction sites like Ebay turn retail economics on its ear for the betterment of just about everybody [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson] The reduction in friction in the market place will increase the speed of transaction cycles. It will reduce the economic rent paid to inefficient command and control structures required by the previous un-wired world. But will it actually eliminate the current recession? An underlying problem that is causing the current recession is that there is a lack of indicators as to what people like myself should be creating, such that other people out there would buy them. That is a problem that eBay can't currently solve. The real problem with software is that it takes a long time to build, say a word processor. You have to predict a long way ahead of a opportunity to be able to build the team to produce the required code. Even software-as-service still has probematic lead times in places. Maybe this is where the well connected, err blog addicted, will be able to predict the future. 10:55:43 PM

Onion Peeling The Onion | Grad Student Deconstructs Take-Out Menu [Daypop Top 40] Gotta love The Onion. I pity the people for whom this is reality. Scary. 10:48:19 PM

Switching Switch Different [Slashdot] More switch parodies. Will they ever stop? :) 10:46:55 PM

Black Sabbath, sort of Entertainment: Black Sabbath Songs Recorded in Latin. 02:02 ET - AP [NewsBlip.com] Truly wrong. I mean, truly. 10:30:48 PM

Why Windows programs cost Why Charge?. SpamAssassin Pro. "for MS Outlook 2000/XP is built on the most popular and successful anti-spam filtering software available: SpamAssassin." ($19.95) [evhead] I find this a little annoying. Why is it that free software on unix has to become pay software for the PC world? Not only that, this is an open source project that anyone can work on. Does anyone who work on it get a cut of money that is made? How does this work exactly? [life - listed chronologically] Why charge for ms windows software? I'll give you a hint, to develop for anything on windows costs. First you have to buy development tools. Then you get to buy MSDN subscriptions. Then you buy the information relating to anything you wish to integrate with - in this case Outlook. Developing for windows costs a fortune. Developing on Linux costs only time and bandwidth charges. Now you can understand why taking software from Linux to Windows transforms it from open source to commercial ware. That, and the market will pay. 1:49:11 PM

Lack of Evidence JIRA Advocacy. Maybe I'm a little slow here - but I can't find the bollocks'ing anywhere on InstaPundit. Do you mean offer Blogger a free JIRA license? Interesting. [rebelutionary] Maybe my mind is making it up, but I am reasonably sure over the post month InstaPundit has made a few remarks about Blogger / Blogger Pro getting less stable, not more, as time went on. When I get some time I will go back through Mr Reynolds archives and see if I can actually dig up enough evidence to support my intuitions on this one. 1:45:37 PM

Jobs? What jobs Java Skills Shortage Set for 50% by 2003. Java Developers Journal is reporting that there is a big shortage of skilled Java developers. If that is the case then why have the recruiters been missing from the local JUG meetings for the last 12 months? [Blogging Roller] I wish I could get a job that consists of plotting some points on graph paper and then making wildly unsubstantiated projections. The truth, as stated in the article, is that most companies have gone in to freeze frame, killing all development. I applied for a java job, with the usual requirements for servlets, jdbc, yadda yadda, and the recruiter, after having me in for an interview, and promising "he would get back to me the next day" thence failed to return calls, emails, etc. Time to develop our own stuff, and then when they discover that they need these new tools, charge like the light brigade. 12:52:20 AM

Dirty Deeds Low Budget Films Just as Good. In a post-Sept. 11 world, films from small production companies are given greater notice. At Siggraph 2002's computer animation festival, the word is that the low budget pieces can be just as compelling as their blockbuster Hollywood counterparts. By Michael Stroud. [Wired News] The one thing that I want in a movie is good writing. Some suspense. A plot twist. Some real characters, with real emotions, and real reasons. No contrived plots. Speaking of well writen stories, we went and saw Dirty Deeds tonight. Damn good story. Probably has too many Aussie references for the yanks in the audience. I tell ya, these guys went to town to recreate sydney from '69. The cars, the clothes, the music. And the story was a rippa yarn. Go see it. :) 12:12:15 AM

iCRAP iPAQ is 'tainted brand' - Kewney. Save the Jornada! [The Register] I didn't know that the iPAQ's were crap. Looks like Compaq have been doing their best to piss customers off. HP will not be pleased now that they know they have gone and bought a whole shitload of customer resentment. 12:04:48 AM

It's dead Jim Telefonica abandons Germany as 3G hopes collapse. Fire Sale? [The Register] Are the telco's going to admit we don't particularly want to pay lots of money to surf the internet from our phone? (I mean, who would honestly want to watch pr0n on a mobile? :) 12:02:36 AM

© Copyright 2002 Brett Morgan.

[Macro error: Can't call the script because the name "nextDayLink" hasn't been defined.]