Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Monday, February 3, 2003

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Switch: " [Mac] OS X is not just less-bad than Windows, it's Good. Yes, Apple also have sleazy marketing weasels, and the salesdrone at the Apple Store in your mall may be the same woeful grade of maladjusted cretin as the one at Best Buy that tries to sell you $49 monster cables for a $59 VCR, but somewhere in California, in the back corner of some office building where they're deciding what should appear on the screen when you click the next button, somebody is asking themselves not only what could appear on the screen that corresponds vaguely with what you nervously hoped you hit the right button to make appear, but what could jump a couple steps forward and startle and delight you."

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Standards muddy 'open' waters: "IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and Nokia are passionate about their "open" mantra in the quest to address interoperability concerns. But the strategy itself is under threat of collapsing under its own weight. [...] While many vendors ascribe to all the right Internet-based open standards, layers of proprietary technology that limit a company's ability to build a genuinely open infrastructure can lurk beneath the surface." [InfoWorld: Top News]

Death Happens, Even To Heros -- Comment()
...radio free beowulf writes: "This morning I read Moon Missions. It hit a nerve on what I've been feeling since I got over the initial shock of yesterday's accident. I will not call it a tragedy, because that word does not describe the event. These people died doing a job they loved, they died quickly, and they died doing a job that they knew could kill them. [...] Yesterday we; once again, had a chance to see how TV distorts reality. [...] Death comes to us all in it's own time. It is the one true, great unknown in our existence. [...] TV would do us better if it simply allowed us to see the truth of it. The problem is none of us want the truth. Instead we seek the hyper-real deaths of TV and the movies. No one moment has so defined my life as being present when my Grandmother passed away. For the first time in my life I came face to face with that scariest of truths, we all die, some of us just do it more publicly then others..."

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E.U. Commission Suggests Permissive Copyright Rule: "The European Commission on Thursday presented a draft directive that punishes copyright infringement for commercial purposes, but leaves the home music downloader untouched, infuriating the entertainment industry." [Slashdot < t e c h n o c u l t u r e ]

Fueling rockets and candles -- Comment()
Light a Candle: "Just because it's a high-tech product doesn't mean it has to be made from high-price material. In 2001 NASA's Ames Research Center began testing a new rocket fuel made from a simple substance likely to be found in any home?candle wax." [Beyond 2000 - Daily Science News]

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The Battle in 64-bit Land, Re-Revisited, and a PPC 970 update: "Paul DeMone just posted the latest entry in his series of articles surveying the 64-bit computing landscape. This article includes more up-to-date analysis on the looming changes that will be brought on by x86-64 and the PPC 970, in addition to a revisit of Power4, SPARC, and other 64-bit contenders. Though the article contains no new info on the PPC 970, it does help to put the chip in the wider (non-Apple) context of 64-bit computing." [Ars Technica]

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Columbia facts: "Steve over at Saltire's got a comprehensive post about Columbia. Lots of interesting information there." (via Cory) [megnut]

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The Edge: "What are the pressing scientific issues for the nation and the world, and what is your advice on how I can begin to deal with them?" [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

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Can Linux and Unix Live Together? "The battle for server OS market share is often posed as a Microsoft vs. Linux contest. That's a neat story, but it's not the full picture. There's another competitor for server OS market share, one that doesn't make as many headlines. It's Unix, and its fortunes are as influenced by Linux' rise as much as Microsoft's -- probably more." [osOpinion]

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Paul Boutin: 'I seem to be blogging this story in the sense coined by Slate's Jack Shafer, but it just keeps going: One of Salon's Letters to the Editor forum members found the Times Herald-Record of Middletown, NY just printed the "demonstrating genuine leadership" form letter for a second time in two weeks today, despite national newspaper and radio coverage of the dustup over it (Declan McCullagh discussed it on NPR, and rumor from the East Coast is the Boston Globe's ombudsman is going to do the same on Monday).'

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Visa Database Being Handed Over To The Cops: "Law enforcement officials across the country will soon have access to a database of 50 million overseas applications for United States visas, including the photographs of 20 million applicants. [...] The database, which will become one of the largest offering images to local law enforcement, is maintained by the State Department and typically provides personal information like the applicant's home address, date of birth and passport number, and the names of relatives..." [On Lisa Rein's Radar]

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Apple In 2013: "Macintosh [...] will be a total information and entertainment appliance, completely at home presenting a widescreen, high definition TV show, film or your favorite computing program." [MacSlash: A daily dose of Macintosh News and Discussion]