Off Topic: Shawn Dodd's WeblogTechnology + Public PolicyMiller Says Not To Worry, Royalty-Free License Available- February 20, 2003 Today Jim Miller had this to say on a Rotor listserv sponsored by the University of Pisa. "As one of the inventors on that patent as well as the person heading up the standardization efforts for the CLI, I'd like to explain why I've never felt the two are in conflict. ... Microsoft (and our co-sponsors, Intel and Hewlett-Packard) went beyond RAND and have agreed that our patents essential to implementing C and CLI will be available on a 'royalty-free and...http://staff.develop.com/jasonw/weblog/2003/02/19.html#a157 Evil DRM in TurboTax- February 18, 2003 Turbo Tax DRM "The latest version of TurboTax is laden with DRM software ... as reported at Extreme Tech." Slashdot.org I didn't want to quote the entire Slashdot post, as it contains technical inaccuracies. The gist is that TurboTax has copy-protection that recklessly writes to your hard drive's boot track, breaking multi-boot systems -- all without asking the user. There's no excuse for a tax preparation program to write to the boot track. Not for any reason. ..http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/16/1549232&tid=185 Under a Bushel- February 11, 2003 An update to my earlier post about Michael Fagan's Google Ultimate Interface: Michael wrote to point out that his interface does, in fact, support "Linux only" searches. I just didn't look closely. From an interaction design standpoint, I think Google does a good job of exposing complex functionality without overwhelming new users. But they are sometimes guilty of hiding their light under a bushel (so to speak). Mr. Fagan's search interface makes sure that light shines...http://radio.weblogs.com/0107099/2003/02/11.html#a474 BitTorrent Killed the TV Star- February 9, 2003 bittorrent and rss. Since first posting about it, I've been thinking more and more lately about the possibilities of combining rss enclosures and bittorrent ad-hoc p2p networking. The more I analyze the setup the more I like it.Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog Oh, it's a great idea. I'm all for it. It will do for TV what the Web did for publishing: lower the barrier to entry to enable everybody to do it. (A $200 Walmart computer, a $40mo cable modem and a $50yr subscription to..http://live.curry.com/2003/02/08.html#a3048 Sun Knows Java Has Serious Problems- February 9, 2003 Even Sun Can't Use Java "It turns out that Sun does not eat its own dog food. Specifically, this internal memo from Sun strongly suggests that Java should not be used for Sun's internal projects." Slashdot.org Oh, man, for years I've been complaining about Java's virtual memory usage, saying that the Java VM's memory allocation behavior is pathologically bad. See the memo's point 2, "The JRE is very large." This memo should not be seen as an indictment of Sun. This sort of internal..http://www.internalmemos.com/memos/memodetails.php?memo_id=1321 Just Some Static IPs and an SLA, Thanks- February 7, 2003 James Kempf and Rob Austein: The Rise of the Middle and the Future of End to End: Reflections on the Evolution of the Internet Architecture. "Because an ISP delivers a commodity service, the profit margins on basic bandwidth provision for a best effort service bit pipe, together with the email and Web access services that are typically bundled with bit pipe service, are fairly low." OTOH, providing pure IP connectivity can itself be a source of differentiation if no one else offers it. Hack the.http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-iab-e2e-futures-00.txt Portable File Servers- February 7, 2003 Ooooh ooooh hot product alert. According to Gordon Mohr, Sony is coming out with a 20GB hand-held WiFi file server. Think about it. Hehe. Hey that's awesome. Scripting News Don't buy one until you can discern what sort of DRM is built in. There's no doubt in my mind we'll carry around hundreds of megabytes of wireless storage in the future. But I won't be carrying around anything that limits my freedom to use digital media in all the ways the Constitution guarantees. As ad-hoc..http://scriptingnews.userland.com/backissues/2003/02/06#When:8:52:11PM Are You Hardcore- February 3, 2003 Ultimate Google Interface. The Google Ultimate Interface -- by Fagan Finder. This is an attempt at integrating all of Google's various search facilities. JohnLawlor.com Dude, check out the "keyboard" down at the bottom. JavaScript that's actually useful Who'da thunkit If you are seriously hardcore about searching Google, this could turn out to be very useful for you. At first glance, the only thing it lacks is a "Linux Only" option.http://radio.weblogs.com/0113942/2003/02/01.html#a1035 |