According to Tim O'Reilly, based on book sales data, Java and Javascript are quickly becoming quite popular.
Domainsurfer.com shows that there are over 16,000 domains registered with the word "linux" somewhere in the domain. Wow.
Rasterweb's Road to Linux page is an excellent diary of a Mac user learning the transition to Linux (something I'm going through myself).
Sunworld: Streamlining Content Management
Wow, what an incredible idea. [via rc3.org] It ranks up there with my idea of charging a penny deposit per cigarette that can be reimbursed by turning in your used butts so that people stop flicking them on the ground. It works pretty well for pop cans.
Excellent story about the evils of U-Haul and Richard Stallman.
Geek action figures. [Cool!]
Table of Condiments That Periodically Go Bad
All cognitive circuits are busy. Please click back and try again soon. Have a nice day.
Life of a Programmer. [Believe it or not I've never seen this before.]
Normal updates resume, I hope.
New York Times: Moving 'Open Source' Into the Mainstream to Bridge the Software Gap
Slashdot: Mozilla Theme Builder released
Sorting out the Office-on-Linux rumors
Velocity is a new Java based template engine for Apache that solves many of the problems with Webmacro, including the licensing issue.
Some more information about how Microsoft is moving away from shrink-wrapped software and towards a software-for-rent model.
Recently seen in a referer log: www.fuck-you-for-trying-to-track-me-you-asshole.com. [Heh.]
I sometimes watch TV while I catch up on my email. Today is one of those days. On one of the HBO channels, i just saw the most amazing short film called "Shoes Off!". And I wonder why it's so that such amazing well-made short films get made, but all Hollywood can ever churn out is the same crap every year.
Note: Updates will resume in a few days. I am incredibly busy this week. Thanks.
Hmmm, this is interesting. More news on this soon. Yes, really.
Just got in from JFK (ahem, the all-time worst crappy airport) following what has to be the worst airline experience I have ever had. Five hours of non-stop, drunken, New York-accented, obnoxious, wish-they-would-just-shut-up-already, pack of vacationing middle-class specimens of this fine city and its boroughs, obviously loud and obnoxious because they blew all their cash at the slots in Vegas. Damn, it almost makes me want to start flying first class. Sigh...
It's official. CollabNet has acquired Alphanumerica, my employer. Observant readers will not be surprised given the recent focus on open source software development and news on CamWorld over the past three months. The coolest thing about this is that I get to work such cool people as Leonard, Brian, Frank, Ryan, and Josh.
For some reason, I find it very fitting that Lance Arthur owns the personthing.com domain.
Red Herring: The Fantasy World of Jeff Bezos. OK, it's time to tell some secrets. Many people who have followed my career know that I spent a two-year stint at Borders.com, where we watched as Amazon rode the dot-com rollercoaster. Many people saw through the facade that is Amazon. Many people were absolutely correct when they predicted that Amazon would never survive unless they started to turn a profit. What many people don't know is that Jeff Bezos was a hedge fund manager on Wall Street before founding Amazon. Anyone familiar with hedge funds knows that they are very risky and usually managed by hotshot brokers who care only about the stock -- not necessarily the companies behind the stock -- that make up their hedge fund. So, it makes sense to see these same tactics as one of the core components of Amazon's meteoric stock price during the dot-com bubble expansion. So, if you take that into consideration it makes complete sense when you learn that Amazon actually approached Borders Books and Music sometime in 1996, long before Internet stocks went gold, seeking an acquisition. Yes, it's true. Amazon wanted Borders to buy them out -- all as simply a way to make Jeff Bezos as much money as possible, which when viewed with some perspective, is all that Amazon has ever been about.
The Indrema/CollabNet parternership: An Open Source Run on the Titans of Gaming
Two sites that have been eating up all of my spare time and resulting me working some really long hours have finally gone live. Check them out:
So, I was in a day-long meeting yesterday and the project leader handed out the project plan (created in Microsoft Project) and noticeably present in the schedule was a week-long block of time saying "burning man timeframe." It's the little things like these that keep reminding me that I'm in the Bay Area.
Segfault: Industry Unites Around Vague, Poorly-Defined Vision. Heh, that Leonard, he funny.
I'll be in San Francisco all this week. Let me know if you want to get together for lunch, diner, or invite me to some parties. If you're lucky, you'll get to see me drunk -- always a treat.
Yesterday's WEBDC presentation went very well. I was nervous at first, but loosened right up as soon as the audience started responding to what I was saying. Lots of excellent questions. I was quite surprised at the amount of interaction my particular audience had with me (as the speaker) since most of the presentations at conferences like WEBDC are really dry and technical.
For those who care, my slides and supporting documents are up on the web. [Please note, that a couple of links are broken. I'll be updating these slides later this weekend. Also please note that I realize these slides need more bullet points and less paragraphs of text. When you only have a couple of days to put together a presentation like this, you simply don't have time for revisions. Sigh...]
When I asked some audience members I knew to compare my presentation to others they had seen earlier in the week, they said that mine was good because it "had personality." Cool, whatever that means.
I ran into Bryan Boyer at the train station and we talked about Deepleap and various other things. I am continually impressed by the team Lane has put together. These guys are really going somewhere...
I also finally met Michael Sippey (of Stating the Obvious) in person. We've exchanged a number of emails over the years, but I'm glad to say that he's as nice a guy in real life as he is online.
GoodExperience.com: Invest in the Customer Experience, Not a New Name. Mark, it's no use -- you're trying to deal with marketing people in this instance. It's kind of like trying to win an argument with a tree. As much as I admire marketing and advertising people and some of the work they do, I'm continually dismayed at the level of ignorance and stupidity evident in many companies today, especially in the marketing departments. It was probably the marketing department who suggested the name change. It was probably the Powerpoint slideshow that sold it to the CEO and upper management, and it's the customers who end up suffering. If customers had a choice, they'd go elsewhere. Unfortunately, we're all locked into the bad position of being on the shit end of the stick because the telecommunications industry effectively has a legal monopoly on the market. I mean, how freaking long do I have to wait for my DSL? I ordered it in April. It's now August. The DSL line was finally installed last week (after four different technician visits) but is not active because of some kind of mis-configuration error on the DSL ISP's end, and the DSL ISP is swamped with work because Bell Atlantic (ahem, Verizon) workers have been on strike for a week because they refuse to do any work that actually requires them to be polite to the customer, climb a freaking pole, or even just do their freaking jobs. I can't even tell you how many Bell Atlantic (excuse me, Verzion) vans I walk past EVERY day that always have at least one or two technicians just sitting in them, listening to the radio, or just generally slacking off. These people should be installing my DSL, not taking a 6-hour lunch break! Sigh...Don't mind me, I'm just rambling (ranting)...
This totally kicks ass. Go Pink, go Pink, go Pink, go.
MisterHouse is a Perl-based Home Automation program.
Do you still use your Newton? If you do, you'll be interested in these aliminum cases for them.
I'm in a really swanky hotel in Washington D.C. getting ready to go meet someone I lived next door to in England nearly twenty years ago. Tomorrow morning I'm scheduled to speak at WEBDC about information architecture and user interface design. On Monday, I fly to San Francisco on business.
Please excuse any lack of updates over the next week.
Netscape has a Themes Contest for Netscape 6 in which they are looking for some designers to develop some really cool skins for possible inclusion in the final release of Netscape 6. Unfortunately, because we're doing some work for Netscape right now, I'm ineligible. But I have many friends who I can stand behind and walk them through designing a cool theme.
There is an excellent thread this week on CHI-WEB called "Do your designers and IAs get along?" that everyone who is doing IA and user interface work needs to read.
Sigh....Netscape went ahead and released Netscape 6 PR2 today, well before it's ready for primetime, especially the Mac version. I've said as much to several people privately since I've had access to PR2 nightly builds for a couple of weeks now. Why Netscape keeps issuing pre-beta software, and then getting slammed by their users for it being so slow and buggy, is beyond me. At this point the Mac version of Mozilla (M17) is faster than Netscape 6 PR2 [discussion], and since .jar support for Mozilla just landed in the M18 nightlies, I expect a substantial speed increase. The point we all need to take from this is that Mozilla is not Netscape, despite the shared codebase.
Bookmark: Philip Glass' "Symphony No. 5 (Choral) - Requiem, Bardo and Nirmanakaya" at BAM on October 4.
Why were so many protestors (about 400) at the Republican National Convention jailed last week, and then why was bail set so high (upwards of a million dollars)?
Word to the wise: Don't fly United anytime soon. Good thing my United travel voucher is valid for a year.
Stupid journalists. Do a bit more research next time. Here's an Internet.com article [now updated, removing the paragraph from the developer] about Netscape 6, quoting some two-bit web designer who claims that his site doesn't work in Netscape. The problem, it turns out, isn't Netscape 6, but the developer's HTML code. The moron didn't close his HTML table so Netscape didn't render it. So tell me, just how does this relate to Netscape 6 being a buggy browser? Stupid journalists.
You can play Pac Man inside Mozilla now. Cool! [How it works.]
Network World: SOAP won't clean middleware's messy reality
People often email me and ask why I'm so critical about certain things, namely Microsoft and George W. Bush. What it boils down to is that these are my opinions. I am entitled to state them whenever and wherever I want to, and that includes on this web site. If you happen to disagree with my opinions, you are welcome to email me and debate the issues. Or better yet, start your own web site and offer up your opinions.
Regarding Microsoft, I admire the company (but not necessarily their leaders) tremendously, but am very concerned about their business practices - especially their claims of innovation in the high-technology industry. I'm also very concerned about how society will be affected by the whims of Bill Gates and gang. Sometimes their business decisions do far more harm to technology innovation than good. One company simply shouldn't have that much control.
Regarding George W. Bush, well he's just an idiot who's not fit for office. This is my opinion based on what I know, what I've read, and what I've watched on TV. I mean, if he were to come visit my house, sit down for dinner with me and convince me otherwise, then perhaps my opinion would be changed. Until then, my opinions about him are based on how he portrays himself in the media - or perhaps how the media portrays him.
Wow, I keep forgetting that I have lots of foreign readers. [Waves hello to all my European and Asian readers]. I'll try to make a conscious effort to keep these readers in mind when writing my opinions about things happening in America.
To all my Michigan readers: You should try to make it to the Fray Day being held in Grand Rapids the same night as Fray Day 4 in San Francisco. I'm planning on being at the San Francisco gathering. See you there.
Recently I saw on the subway someone reading the Yellow Rat Bastard magazine. And then I saw a British tourist carrying a Yellow Rat Bastard shopping bag.
Seen written on a billboard at the 23rd St. F-line stop in NYC (I added the links):
The F train never runs The F train never comes I just worked 12 hours It's 5:00 A.M. This sucks. I should have walked.
New York City's Great Outdoors. Some observations about the proliferating giant billboards in NYC. [found at cardhouse]
Win a shower with Jesus. Hmmmm....
Whoo, this debate should be good if Bush doesn't chicken out.
This is weird. Either I'm a really observant person or just plain lucky. Tonight markes the third time in a month that I've found money on the street. Last month I found $20 in the gutter on Market Street in San Francisco. And then about two weeks later I found $5 on the floor of the Subway restaurant near my workplace in NYC. And tonight I found another $20 on the street near where I work. A few years back I found about $300 or so on the counter of a gas station in Northern Michigan. That was simply too much money for me to keep so I turned it in.
"The Boy With the Arab Strap" by Belle and Sebastian is currently my favorite song. BTW, I suck at picking good music. Please recommend more like this.
RIP, Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Twenty-seven bucks for a stupid tie-dyed t-shirt is a bit steep. Sheep, I tell ya, sheep.
Eazel has a screenshot of Mozilla embedded into their Linux-based OS.
When I moved to New York, my salary more than doubled. Yet, here I am six months later and I'm still trying to get over that debt hump. And I begin to ask myself, "Where is all that money going?" The truth is, living in New York (and even Brooklyn) is horribly expensive. This article in New York magazine tackles the issue by outlining seven different people, their incomes, and lifestyles. And my own situation is starting to make sense now...
From fool.com comes an excellent article about the average credit card debt an American carries, and gives some tips on how to get out of it. [via SVN]
RedHerring: Bill Gates Unplugged. In an interview, Gates talks [ahem, gets angry] about .NET, developers, standards, and Linux. Whoo-hoo, this is a great interview. Gates really gets riled.
O'ReillyNet: Weekly Open Source Roundtable (audio)
Jupiter-sized planet found orbiting a nearby star.
I don't get it. Almost everyone I know, both online and off, acknowledge that Dubya is a complete, blithering idiot and will probably not vote for him this Fall. Yet, all the polls keep showing that Dubya commands a lead. What's going on? Is the media portraying Dubya for the incapable leader he is? Do people really hate the Democratic party enough to vote this moron into office? I know who I'm voting for this Fall: anyone but Bush. And knowing how the political system in this country works, that's likely to be Al Gore.
IBM DeveloperWorks is sponsoring a contest for entrepreneurs. Interesting.
Linux Today: There is Nothing Wrong with Mozilla
WebTechniques: Building a High-Volume Newsletter Server (and a follow-up)
InfoWorld: Sun decides to break its Star Office suite to make the best open-source omelet
WebReview: Open Source and Originality
Microsoft moving Hotmail to Win2000 servers. I'll bet this causes lots of problems. I just wish they'd automatically filter the spam...
This is not quite yet finalized, but WEBDC has my bio and class description up for next week's conference in Washington D.C. [I'm filling in for another speaker who had to cancel.]
Ha ha, this is funny.
Also from crummy.com comes the eCow generator for all the ASCII-based cow pictures you'll ever need.
I must not be hanging around the right crowds anymore. I just now found Kitschbitch.com. Excellent writing, excellent links. And a Brit as well. Awesome.
Wes pointed me to Jon Udell's excellent "Internet Groupware for Scientific Collaboration." Wow.
Excellent. The W3 has issued a recommendation to make SVG a standard.
InformationWeek: Microsoft's IE 5.5 Fails the Test.
On August 18, I'll be running a session about designing skins for Mozilla during the Second Mozilla Developer Meeting at Netscape's campus in Mountain View.
No wonder Microsoft products are always behind schedule. Heh.
So, my Koyaanisqatsi DVD arrived via FedEx today. I'm sadly disappointed. For $180, I expected that there at least would be a keepcase, and that the keepcase would be signed. Instead, I received a generic square white paper/plastic DVD sleeve signed on the back by the Director, Goddfrey Reggio. And to make matters worse, the DVD isn't even a widescreen edition! While I'm ecstatic to finally own this wonderful movie on DVD, I'm very disappointed that the Institute For Regional Education couldn't spend the extra buck or two to get nice plastic keepcases. I'm going to write them a letter to see if they'll rectify this oversight.
