My bullshit detector …

My bullshit detector is set on high today. Tony Danza, purple monkey dishwasher!

One of the crazier things I’ve written of late, an analogy comparing open-source and proprietary technologies and solutions to that of chewing gum.

Back in November, I wrote about Microsoft’s business practices regarding company acquisitions that end up hurting the software indstry by reducing competition. Andrew Grygus explains in a piece from last winter the Microsoft reasoning behind their $1.1B acquisition of Great Plains Software. [via Doc Searls]

www.enronX.org is a site for ex-Enron employees. [via Tara Calishain]

Still forced to use Outlook email client on the PC? Tired of getting HTML-email? Pissed off that you can’t disable the reading of HTML email? Look no further, here’s a plug-in that strips that email for you. No thanks to Microsoft.

We recruit tigers! Rwwwoooooaarrrr!

The Web app development crowd seems to have discovered Curl. This was a technology I was looking at about eight months ago when I learned that they were considering open sourcing it and were talking with CollabNet. My first impression was favorable, but after realizing it was a technology that relied on a plug-in architecture, I dismissed it as just another fad. The only time a plug-in-based technology is successful is if they make a deal with the browser companies to distribute it (like Macromedia did with the Flash player). And since Microsoft owns 90%+ of that market, I somehow doubt they’re going just let a technology like Curl succeed, especially since it competes with some of the technologies that ship with Internet Explorer.

Open Web Application Security Project. [Warning: Crashes Netscape 4 because of too many nested tables]

Molly Ivins: Enron-gate

I guess publishing a popular web site online for more than five years pays off. Following are some search results rankings:

  • cam” is #1 search result on Google
  • cameron” is #2 search result on Google
  • barrett” is #1 search result on Google
  • cameron” is #1 search result on Yahoo. Beat out Cameron Diaz!
  • barrett” is #1 search result on Yahoo

Posted by Cameron Barrett at December 6, 2001 06:09 PM

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *