Monday, April 14, 2003

Trip down memory lane: coding a Java applet today When I first starting using Sun's Java beta development kit (7 years ago? time flies!), a lot of Java development was applets that run embedded in web browsers. Usually, my Java work is server side - I don't even do JFC GUI aspplications very often anymore. SOOoooo, it feels odd today to be dealing with applets again. I am using the most excellent TouchGraph Open Source code base for some visualization work for my upcoming KBportal product. 1:43:32 PM

Apple's new Safari web browser: sweet! For those of you fortunate enough to use Mac OS X, by all means get the newest beta version of Safari released today! Apple added tabbed browsing - very cool. Safari is based on the Open Source KDE Konqueror code base. Note: truth in reporting: I own Apple Computer stock 12:54:31 PM

Iraq: "to the victors go the spoils", but! Halliburton is not a wholly US company! My wife just had Fox News n TV (I don't like Fox News - one of the worst news outlets in the US, in my opinion). A commentator, when asked why Dick Cheney's old company Halliburton (he is still getting "deferred" payments from Hallibutron, by the way) got a no-competition contract to rebuild Iraq, said "to the victors, go the spoils". OK, I don't have anything against giving the rebuilding contracts to American companies, but, Halliburton is not an American Company! According to PBS news, Halliburton is at least partially registered off shore. To be precise, has 58 subsidiary companies that they have are registered offshore to avoid paying US taxes. I say, give American companies business from the US government, and not companies who avoid paying US taxes. It is interesting to note that President Clinton, while making it easier for companies to register offshore to avoid taxes (and this work has been enthusiastically been carried forward by the Bush administration) at the same time made it more difficult for individuals to expatriate to avoid US taxes. I am going to make a point of voting for polititions (and there are a lot of them) who vote against letting companies skip out on paying their fair share of taxes. We pay taxes, so why shouldn't large corporations? 12:45:58 PM

Arafat not happy with proposed cabinet? F*ck him I don't believe that this guy scored a Nobel Peace Prize. It is time, I think, for the Palestinians to give up the idea of repatriation in Israel, and to accept the Palestinian State that just about the entire world wants them to have. I think the question is: would politicians like Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon have any political constituancy if there was peace in the Middle East? I think not. 8:18:04 AM

New VisualWorks Smalltalk release I am happily experimenting with the new VisualWorks Smalltalk release. Even though I mostly do Java professionally (that is what people will pay me for), I am a long time user of Lisp and Smalltalk. Here is a link for a free non-commercial version of VisualWorks Smalltalk. Here is a link for a free non-commercial version of Xanalys LispWorks. I also have a free web book that is an introduction to Common Lisp programming on my web site. 7:37:57 AM

What's up? Kenneth Lay still has not been indicted! Even with our sour economic situation, I am still in the US stock market. Personally, I think that it is extremely important to aggresively prosecute company officials who may have broken the law and cost investors huge sums of money. The always interesting Katherine Austin Fitts has an interesting background in government and has written a series of essays about Enron: Part I Part II If you are either a US or foreign stock investor, or if you care about the health of our economy, read what Catherine says and pass these links on to your friends and family. BTW, the large corporation owned mainstream news media has not informed the public about Ken Lay - I heard this on PBS news (just one more reason to support PBS - otherwise it is difficult to hear news that large corporations do not want you to hear). 7:13:00 AM

© Copyright 2003 Mark Watson. Last update: 9/16/03; 7:36:02 AM.