Monday, October 27, 2003

Cringely: How Microsoft's Misunderstanding of Open Source Hurts Us All "This week, speaking at a Gartner conference in Orlando, Florida, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said some fascinating things about Linux and about Open Source software in general. And thanks to those remarks and the blinding realization they caused for me, I finally understand exactly why Microsoft doesn't understand Open Source." Cringely always makes interesting reading. Listen and watch Ballmer's statements here. 12:06:30 PM    comment []

Protecting the home computer user from themselves Joe Average User Is In Trouble. Opinion Where's my security blanket? [The Register] A rare thing, a calm and reasoned opinion piece from The Register. A call to arms for computer professionals to help the computer helpless. 7:19:17 AM    comment []

NYT: Amazon Offer Worries Authors (but not all for the same reason) Amazon Offer Worries Authors. From David K. Kirkpatrick of New York Times: Technology: "Amazon.com has introduced a feature that lets users search for specific words or phrases in a database of the texts of 120,000 books, drawing skepticism from an authors' group. " Amazon has offered to remove books whose authors do not want to participate. That's even worse. Search on "Visual FoxPro SourceSafe" and you get a list of 48 books on Visual Basic, Visual InterDev, SQL Server, MSDE and even Dreamweaver. Hello? How about a book on SourceSafe? There are three, including my own, and mine has several pages on Visual FoxPro. I suspect that Amazon hasn't indexed the Hentzenwerke Publishing book, and hence we are sidelined. Indexing 120,000 books means marginalizing the great variety formerly available from Amazon. I am disappointed. 6:44:16 AM    comment []

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