Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Friday, August 22, 2003

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Mastermind of Java contains an interview of James Gosling: "I do most of my engineering on my PowerBook [...] I find it dramatically more efficient than a desktop system because, on one hand, it has all the power of a full-blown UNIX desktop. On the other hand, I can take it with me because it has all of the laptop stuff. I can work on a airplane, at home, in a corner when I'm sitting in a boring meeting. And it's able to do not just email and browsing, it's got fully-functional, high-end software development tools."

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Sierra Leone players disappear: "Twelve members of Sierra Leone's Under-17 national side go missing in Finland." [BBC News | World | UK Edition]

If I see them (12 athletes are probably easy to spot), I'll let you know.

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PowerMac G5 Specs Impressive: "The PowerMac G5 is not so much about the PowerPC 970 chip at its core as it is about a complete overhaul of the Mac architecture as we've known it for the past five years. By Justin Siemens" (CanadaComputes.com via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

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Love that OS! "As I see it, the only reason that Microsoft is still in business must be IT departments who promote Windows because they know they'd be out of their jobs immediately if they switched to a different, less faulty OS. Or it could also be that users think Windows behaviour is normal and every OS is like this. Which is not true. Believe me, I've wasted more time dealing with the security leaks, strange quirks and complicated setup procedures of Windows than with any other computer-related issue." [The Aardvark Speaks]

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Sobig is biggest virus of all: "The Sobig F Windows virus has set records for the amount of e-mail messages it infected." [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

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Open Letter from SSC President to The SCO Group: "If SCO wants to bring a Linux user to court, Phil Hughes says SCO knows where to find us." [Linux Journal]

This is getting weird -- Comment()
SCO CEO says IBM behind open source attacks: "IBM Corp. has been quietly stage-managing the open source community's response to The SCO Group Inc.'s $3 billion lawsuit over Big Blue's contributions to the Linux source code, SCO's Chief Executive Officer Darl McBride said in an interview at his company's SCO Forum user conference in Las Vegas this week."

It is almost impossible to believe the stupidity of SCO executives. The fight between SCO and the rest of the world is becoming a IT soap opera with a plot too convoluted for anyone to follow.

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Kinds of ignorance: 'Jack Vinson has dug up an interesting Taxonomy of Ignorance. "The purpose is to increase awareness of both knowledge and ignorance that help shape decision processes." [...] Being aware of our own ignorance is immensely useful. This reminds me of that Ig Nobel-prize winning paper, Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.' [Seb's Open Research]

Slogan for Microsoft to get users to update their systems -- Comment()
Slashdot: "Where do you want to go today?!?! Federal prison?!?! If not, upgrade now!"

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Biotech Taps Ocean for Answers: "Scientists at Bell Laboratories say an ocean sponge grows thin glass fibers capable of transmitting light at least as well as fiber optics cables do. Materials scientists hope to take lessons from the glassy sponge to improve manufacturing methods." [Wired News]

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RSS Discovery Sucks: 'After spending most of the day on the problem of "how to find the RSS feed (if there is one) given a URL" I've come to the conclusion the it's a pain in the ass. I have a much better appreciation for the pain that aggregators developers have been thru. And that includes Feedster, Technorati, and others who have the same (or similar) problems. Ugh...' [Jeremy Zawodny's blog]

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Great day to be a Mac user: "First there was MSBlaster. Now there is Sobig.F. The only difference from my angle is that I got a few bounced messages (from infected cpu's that sent email in my name)." [I <3 Mena]

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I have a dream: Forty years on: "On August 28 1963, Martin Luther King delivered his famous speech. Gary Younge explains why it is as important now as it was then." [Guardian Unlimited]