...more recent posts
Lots of talk in the news lately about possible break up scenarios for Microsoft. I haven't been commenting because it all seems like talk at this point. But reading the Times today (that's what I do when I go get my coffee in the morning) it all came together for me. First off, even though I don't try to hide my anti-micorosoft bias, I am not in favor of the government getting involved in breaking them up. I rarely favor any sort of government intervention in any situation. The less Washington does the better. Still, I think Microsoft makes bad products. And not so much because I have some insight into how the code is written (I've never seen any of it) but because I disagree with their whole philosophy of producing computer products. Anyway, my dream would be for Microsoft to lose marketshare because consumers educate themselves enough to learn how it is that Microsoft is holding the whole computer/internet revolution back. In other words, they should lose on their own merits. Fat chance, I know, but the marketplace is the proper regulatory mechanism. As long as people insist on buying Windows, we all get what we deserve (i.e., buggy, virus prone, unsecure software.) So, my thought today was that the government CAN actually play an important role in all this. But not by trying to control Microsoft's actions through legislation and court actions. Instead, what I think should happen is that the government should review Microsoft and their products, and if they come to the conclusion (as Judge Jackson appears to be doing) that Microsoft is not making the best products if you take the health of the industry as a whole as your context, then the U.S. government should stop all of its arms from buying Microsoft products. To employ one of my least favorite terms: they should use their position as a "bully pulpit" to help educate users about the problems with these products. An example of this is the US army switching from NT based servers to Apple servers after a rash of security problems. Since the switch - no more problems. If all branches of the government dumped all Microsoft products (with maybe a yearly review of Microsoft, giving them the chance to change their ways) this would go much further to correcting the problems then just breaking them up into 2 or 3 (or even 5) seperate (monopolistic) companies. The government should lead by example, not by legislation. Corel actually sued the government a few months ago because they were buying Microsoft Word without any review of competing products (which is required by law for all government contracts.) This should happen on a much larger scale.
After a few months of quiet (following the not ready for primetime Netscape 6.0 preview release) the Mozilla project is again picking up steam. First up, it look like Activestate will be bringing Perl and Python into the Mozilla development environment. Says ActiveState project leader Dr. David Ascher, "By providing bridges between Perl and Python and the Mozilla framework, we are giving the Perl and Python Open Source projects deep access to the power of Mozilla." Becasue remember, it's not just a browser. In other news, alphanumerica has written code that will allow javascript inside mozilla easy access to local filesystems. They have based this on the very easy to use PHP filesystem functions. All code has of course been released free to the community. They built this input/output system because they needed the functionality to build their mozilla crash recovery system. With this layer installed in Mozilla, the browser will continuously track the state of all open Mozilla windows, and in the event of a program or system wide crash, will be able to restore the state of all windows on reboot. (!) I wonder how much of a speed hit you take for running this? In any case, very cool, and this could be incredibly important as the web morphs from a page based model to an application based model. Who wants to use a web based application (word processor, spreadsheat, ect...) if you lose all your data everytime your browser crashes?
The BBC has this amazing story about the development of a tiny pill with a camera inside. The pill can be swallowed by a patient, and doctors can view the video feed from inside the body. "The researchers believe patients will find the capsule hugely preferable to the current endoscope technology which requires a fibre optic cable to be put up the back passage." I'll say.
Slashdot has a poll today asking how people like their steak. I am pleasantly surprised to find "I don't eat meat" is actually in the lead (25% to 22% for "medium rare.") I knew that junk food and caffeine were staples of the geek diet, but I have never heard anything about vegetarianism. Anyway, in the comments that follow the poll, somebody posted this short sci-fi story vaguely related to the topic. Very amusing. (This post largely stolen from rasterweb.)
testing
testing 123....
this is a test...
IBM announced today their new SOI (Silicon on insulator) chip technology. This is a long sought after step in the ever shrinking chip wars. IBM has clearly established itself as the technological leader. This will not only speed up the speed of chips, but also reduce size, heat dissipation, and energy requirements. We'll see these new chips in large IBM systems first, but the sfgate article (link above) quotes IBM as saying that the new chips "will appear in a portable device this year." Since IBM doesn't make chips for the Wintel world, I've got to think this means Apple. Go IBM. This could not only break through the speed plateau that the G4 seems to be stuck on, but also solve the heat problems with putting these things into the Powerbook. If Apple can ship a +700 mhz g4 powerbook before Jan (especially in a graphite ibook like shell) I doubt they could make enough to satisfy demand.
Slashdot has this link to a german magazine (link is to english translation) which is reporting that the EU is set to lift all export restrictions on encryption software. The U.S. is traditionally against this, and is reportedly upset by the decision.
I'm very interested in the EU, but unsure how to get more information. I guess traveling is one good way. Seems to me like they (the EU government(s)) are much more clued in than the US, but people are always telling me that freedoms are much greater here. I'm not sure, but the Netherlands and Switzerland (to name two) seem much more open. (Although I've never been to either place, so my opinion probably isn't worth much.) Simply comparing the percentage of the population incarcerated between the US and the EU (or Russia, or China, or South Africa) would lead one to believe that either a) US citizens are somehow a priori more likely to commit criminal acts, or b) the US has less freedom. What's the deal?
The folks at Temple ov thee Lemur have built a stripped down web server run on the electircal current generated by potatoes. Nice. Today's picture shows the power supply. Apparently, it takes about a dozen potatoes to run the thing, and they change the potatoes "every few days." You can get served an actual page from the spud server at http://152.78.65.48:2300, but since slashdot is running the story right now you probably won't get through. I remember doing experiments in science class when I was young where we would hook up potatoes to power a tiny lightbulb. I remember wondering why we don't power everything this way since you can just grow the things in the ground (and then eat them when they run out of power,) and I have to admit that I am still wondering the same thing.