I'm tired of well-meaning people and observers not understanding what Mozilla is attempting to do. I'm not angry at their words, but am disappointed that they didn't do more research and ask more questions before writing such critical articles.
Dack asks why I haven't written any Epinions in almost a year. Answer: No time!
Security Issues in HTML-based Email
Email Security Hazards.
Microsoft and Open Source?!
Argh! Now I'm getting spam that tells me I need Flash. Truly pathetic.
Aha! So that explains why my flights last week were cancelled and then delayed.
Escaping from DSL installation hell. I'm thinking of starting a contest to see whose DSL provider is the worst. Make it like a competition, with the provider whose service ranks the worst donating a prize of one year's DSL service for free. Except nobody would enter such a contest...
My utter contempt for anything Microsoft has caused me to avoid linking to Joel Spolsky's writings, until now. I urge you to go and read his latest piece called "Does Issuing Passports Make Microsoft a Country?" And remember it. And tell all your friends, family, coworkers, and even strangers on the street to go and read it. What Microsoft is attempting to do is a very dangerous thing indeed and it needs to be stopped. Long-time readers may remember me inquiring about this Hotmail/Passport cookie thing back in September.
Robert X. Cringely tells us the "real" history of the rise of AOL.
Another trip report from the O'Reilly Open Source Conference last week.
Freshmeat: How To Market Free Software
Phil Suh and I have started a mailing list to discuss Content Management Systems.
Damien says that DSL will be installed this Saturday. This would be Bell Atlantic's, ahem, fifth visit to install DSL since we ordered it in March. I've long given up believing that DSL will actually get installed when they schedule an installation visit.
And God said, "Let there be Cheerios." Doh!
Hey, somebody else finally borrowed my colorscheme switching concept I've been using for about a year now, but implemented it differently. Cool.
I don't know why people are getting so up-in-arms lately about the existance of Echelon, the secret U.S. global surveillance system. In fact, one of the main Echelon hubs was an American military base I went to school at in England when I was a kid. For two decades now I've realized that the base was more than just a typical military communications base, and learned from my childhood friends that the U.S was monitoring almost all communications in Europe. As kids we talked about what our fathers did for a living. While my dad was our teacher (through the DODDS system) my friends' fathers spoke twelve languages and sat at a terminal with headphones all day long. Even then I knew what was going on, but I wasn't all that worried about it. Americans who think that our government hasn't been compiling information about certain segments of the population are sadly mistaken.
Interesting Q&A with Microsoft from ECMA TC39 meetings on 13th July 2000:
Q: Will Microsoft be open sourcing their implementation [of C-Sharp]? A: This is under consideration, but has not been decided. Microsoft has been approached by a number of companies desiring to partner on this. Jim expressed his opinion that he saw it likely that the source to a reference implementation would be made available, but declined to speculate on the licensing details.
A: This is under consideration, but has not been decided. Microsoft has been approached by a number of companies desiring to partner on this. Jim expressed his opinion that he saw it likely that the source to a reference implementation would be made available, but declined to speculate on the licensing details.
Transcript of Trial - Day 6, MPAA v. 2600. [Fascinating read]
So the big news of the day is that I can finally start talking publicly about the computer book I'm co-authoring. Regular readers will remember some veiled references to this project, but most don't know that the book is about Mozilla and the publisher is O'Reilly. I'm really excited about the opportunity to write a book for O'Reilly, even though our timeline is incredibly tight. If we meet all of our deadlines, the book should be out by early Spring, 2001. I am one of four co-authors and am responsible for writing the chapters about user interface design in Mozilla-based applications and also a chapter about using XUL with CSS. I also will be contributing to a couple other chapters. All together, I'm responsible for about 100-125 pages of the book with the final book being about 400-500 pages long. My qualifications to write such a book are the work I've been doing on Alphanumerica's skins/packages, and other Mozilla applications. We're also doing some Mozilla work right now for an unnamed client that should be very big news in a short while.
What the hell? I'm getting emails from attendees of Thunder Lizard's Web Design Conference in Seattle telling me that they got to my site from a "secret resources URL" they got at the conference. Does this seem silly to anyone else? A secret URL? Hmmm.... [Update: Secrets cannot be hidden from the almighty referrer data in my log files.]
A reader sent in some more Thunder Lizard "secret resource" page links:
Meerkat, PHP & XML: An Open Service Case Study and PHP-XML Survey
Slashdot: The Myth of the Borg
Don't forget! This Friday is System Administrator Appreciation Day. Show your love.
Leonard over at crummy.com has posted some pictures from the Open Source Conference last week. A bit of research turns up the fact that Leonard was just hired by Collab.Net. Hmmm, Leonard's the second person I know in recent weeks that's been hired by them. Leonard is also one of the guys who runs segfault.org. Interesting.
This pseudo-XML file is an excellent and funny example of the extensibility of the XML syntax. [found at Eatonweb]
It's like fighting a damn uphill battle. I get at least three emails a week from people asking to link to their webcams because they think CamWorld is a web site about webcams. Jeez, are you people really that stupid? How hard is it to figure out that this site is called CamWorld because it's created and maintained by a guy named Cam? Sigh...
11-19-1863: The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation
Over the weekend I also met the guy who invented the Geocities pop-up and scrolling "g". He swore me to secrecy, I cannot tell you his name.
Wouldn't it be funny to print out huge signs that says "God Hates Flash" and "Flash is Evil" and then picket the front of the building where FlashForward2000 conference is being held this week in New York? Heh.
Microsoft PR: Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz. We like to announce meaningless press releases. Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz. Can you count the buzzwords? Bzz, bzzz, bzzz...
Excellent Salon.com article on Advotago. Unfortunately, too much press around a cool service/site/community will eventually kill it, as happened with Slashdot, which is now mostly a bunch of freaking idiots flaming each other.
Upside: Linux answers call of Net telephony
Linux closing in on Microsoft market share, study says
Ha ha! This is great. The geniuses over at CBS.com inadvertantly created a way for people to figure out who the last survivor is on the stupid Survivor show. What a bunch of idiots. Ha ha.
I was going to write a short piece tonight talking about the WaSP "Open Letter to Netscape" but then I read Chris Nelson's rebuttal at MozillaZine, and he says it so much better. Frankly, I'm disappointed that WaSP felt they needed to write and publish such a piece. Didn't they think about the harm they might be doing? As Chris says, what exactly are their goals for writing such a piece? I know some of these WaSP people, and know that their intentions are good, but I wonder. When the WaSP was created and announced, I sent an email asking to join. I never received a response. I joined the mailing list for a short while, but the signal-to-noise ratio was far too high, so I unsubscribed. As responsible citizens in the web design and development industries, did the WaSP even inquire with Netscape about when they were going to release Netscape 6? Did they ask the Mozilla team when Mozilla 1.0 is going to be out? Or did they make a bunch of assumptions about Netscape's browser plans and then proceed to write a scathing, but uninformed letter, chastizing Netscape for their drawn-out development process?
These Macromedia Flash market penetration figures seem a little hard to believe. I'm concerned that the future of the web is going to be a three-way race between Microsoft .NET, Macromedia Flash, and Mozilla. For instance, Macromedia has yet to announce player support for Netscape 6 and Mozilla. Have they? Keep in mind that Flash is a closed platform, it's just the file format that is open.
Great news! Nielsen/NetRatings is reporting that more women now surf the web than men in the United States.
Pride and Prejudice: The Platform War Comes to the Web. [found at mrbarrett.com]
I'm writing this on the plane (SF to NYC) while I watch Mission To Mars (extremely crappy movie, BTW). The coolest thing about United Airlines is that they give free headphones and their newer planes have little flatscreen TVs in each seatback. You can also listen to the cockpit and air traffic tower radio conversations through one of the audio channels (Cool! Maybe that's just the geek in me...).
WebZine2000 on Saturday was fun. I went in not knowing what to expect and came back with a head full of ideas after talking to some of the most intriguing people and artists working on the web today. I met the woman who is evangelizing skipping as a form of exercise complete with a web site and a funky outfit. I met fellow New Yorker Philip Kaplan of fuckedcompany.com, who is currently making the bookmark lists of some pretty powerful people in the media world. Most of the Pyra gang was there including Derek Powazek talking about sfstories.com and fray.com.
The panel I was on was a blast, complete with a drag queen and microphones for everyone. I talked about weblogs a bit, and also told the story about how I was fired from my job several years ago because of my personal web site. Peoples' reactions were enthusuastically positive and supportive of just about everyone's ideas, initiatives, web sites, and funky ideas. All in all, a great time with excellent discussions, performance art (smashing a typewriter with a bat), and funky swag.
Fray Day 4 is September 22 in San Francisco. This is something I'm going to try and make it to, but I need to schedule the time off and buy a plane ticket. Maybe I'll take a week or two and also travel to L.A. to visit some old friends.
Much thanks to my new friend Candice for introducing me to Sliders in the Castro district. Yummy cheap hamburgers!
Book Update: So, my coworker (and co-author) David met with our book editors last week during the O'Reilly conference. The publisher is very enthusiastic about our book outline and sees our book as just the first in a series of books they want to publish. This is awesome!
Oh yeah, I also met Sarah Bunting from tomatonation.com. Sarah is an extraordinarily gifted writer who publishes lots of sarcastic/funny essays on her web site every week. I'm going to try and have lunch with her next week in New York.
I am continually amazed at the reach of my web site. It seems that every conference or web get-together I go to I run across another fan or regular reader of CamWorld. What's interesting to note is that my audience is really wide, wider than I ever expected. For instance, I had people at both the O'Reilly conference and WebZine2000 come up to me wanting to shake my hand and thank me for keeping such a great site up and running so regularly. These two audiences are so differnet it's not even fair to compare them. The only link between the two is the web. I experienced this very same thing at SXSW back in March, which is another whole audience altogether. At WebZine2000 I claimed that I knew who my audience was, but now I am having second thoughts. I thought I knew who was reading CamWorld but recent experiences have proven that I really don't. It's a fascinating thing to think about, especially since we're told by the experts that our sites should cater them. Maybe that's just for commercial sites, though and shouldn't apply to the artistic kinds of sites I saw at WebZine2000.
What kind of bothered me at WebZine2000 was that everyone was desperately seeking outside funding, venture capital and/or advertising to help support their site. I found this kind of odd considering that I've turned down advertising offers on CamWorld several times. Every time, my reason was that CamWorld was a personal web site and that advertising might corrupt the message. When advertising and/or money become more important to you than your web site, maybe you should re-think your site's purpose.
This is different, though for sites like Salon.com which only exist because of advertising. Any time a web site needs to start paying for content in order to continue, than maybe the advertising model should be considered. It's been proven again and again that the paid subscription model does not work on the web. And the voluntary paymnet model doesn't work either ("...everything on the web is free, right?"). The only model that really works then is the micropayment model where you pay for how much content on the web you read. Systems like payPal are already being set up to accommodate this model, so the only thing left to do is educate the web users and the web builders about how it works. Ideally, we'd want the control of these funds to be at the ISP level so that you pay your five bucks a month or whatever along with your Internet access. Your ISP can then coordinate with the PayPal using web sites to keep track of what IP numbers have associated PayPal accounts. If there is a match, then the site allows access. If not, then it denies it. The only catch here is that ISPs become the point of monetary control on the web, and that's historically something they don't want. This may be changing with the mergers and acquisitions in the ISP market. It's entirely feasible in a few years that there will only be 2 or 4 ISPs nationwide that will control over 90% of the Internet acceess market.
Oh cool! New York taxis are accepting credit cards now.
Lots of healthy discussion at discuss.userland.com about Dave Winer's comments about my Open Source conference report. Be sure to read the whole thread. There are plenty of valid points made by people from different persectives and points of view. In short, form your own opinion and don't let someone else decide it for you.
So the conference is over. Today I go back to San Francisco for a day of work, then to a get-toether for a bunch of ex-Borders.com folks, then on Saturday to WebZine2000 where I'm sure I'll meet even more people. Expect a report on this as well.
The one underlying theme I noticed at the OSS conference was the fact that open source software development is alive and well. There is certainly no shortage of developers with ideas, business people with plans, and venture capitalists with funding to take some of these initiatives to the next level. Lots of big companies sent representatives to scope out the world of OSS. I saw people from Amazon, Sun, HP, IBM, Intel, Dell, and many more. I also saw people from companies made up of a couple of guys in a garage with nothing but an idea. The massive amounts of useless swag was noticably absent, but of the swag I did see and collect most of it was pretty good. The O'Reilly miniature etch-a-sketches and beer coasters are the best.
Open source software has proven that it can be the best of breed in pretty much any market it moves into, and I think we'll see that this is true as more and more OSS projects come into fruition; mainly Jabber, Mozilla, and XML-RPC. This can only be a good thing for the end user, the average computer user, and yes even the power-user developer.
The most surprising thing of all though, was the number of developers I saw with Apple Powerbooks. People often don't associate Mac users as being developers or programmers, yet their numbers at this conference despite it being exactly the same week as MacWorld tells me that they are still around (Not everyone has migrated to Linux and/or Windows). The Mac users I did talk to all said basically the same thing: Powerbooks have the best hardware, period. Almost all of them said they were Linux users as well.
What's with the spam influx lately? I'm noticing a substantial increase. Is it because everyone is at conferences this weeKk?
Wow. The O'Reilly Open Source Conference is truly amazing. The speakers are excellent. The attendees are intelligent and passionate developers and geeks who "get it" when it comes to open source and the Internet. Tuesday night I had the privelage of meeting Tim O'Reilly over a couple of beers at the Sendmail party. Tim is an incredibly nice guy.
In fact, almost everyone I've talked to so far has been very pleasant. It's almost as if everyone left their attitudes at home. This is one of those conferences where you can accomplish a lot of networking. I've met so many people doing so many extremely cool things that I'm getting really excited again over being part of this industry we've built around the Internet.
The Mozilla sessions and Birds of a Feather (BOF) meetings are simply packed! I cannot believe how much more interest we are seeing in Mozilla development compared to just a couple of months ago. Surprisingly there is very little extended discussion about Microsoft and their .NET initiative. Part of me chalks this up to it being a very open source kind of crowd who learned a long time ago how to live without Microsoft and their products. Another part of me thinks it's because Microsoft is purposely being very vague about the whole concept and people aren't willing to make any bets on it yet.
Funny stuff. Near my hotel there is a new sidewalk with fresh cement. Along with the typical names and graffiti you usually find scrawled into new cement was the word "MySQL." Heh. Only at an open source conference, I suppose.
I finally met lots of the O'ReillyNet folks who have been emailing with me over the past month or two. These people really have it together. Last night at the Eazel party I had an excellent conversation about Mozilla, book writing and journalism with Derrick Story, the managing editor. I also finally met Rael Dornfest and Dave Sims of O'ReillyNet.
I also finally met Phil Suh of Organic. In fact, after the Content Management Systems BOF on Tuesday night, Phil and I spontaneously announced that we are going to create a mailing list to discuss CMS packages, their strenghts, weaknesses, problems, and the frustrations that people are having with them. This is a hot topic, as witnessed by the heated debates/arguments we all enjoyed. I'll post more information about this list when it gets set up next week.
Sightings: I also saw but didn't meet Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, Andy Hertzfeld, and several other luminaries of the open source world.
I also spent some time hanging out with the Jabber guys, many of who flew in for the conference. Since this is one of the only chances they have to work collaboratively in one location, they decked out a hotel room with an ethernet LAN, lots of junk food and soda. I'm truly impressed by the speed in which they are accomplishing their goals. When I last looked at Jabber back in April, it was still pretty rough. Now there are numerous Jabber clients, a robust server architecture, and loads of revolutionary ideas that could possibly forever change the way we communicate and interact online.
Mass High Tech: What we'd really like Microsoft to do
Sun Expected To Make StarOffice Open Source. Alright!
FAQ: Air Travel Tips (or How to Find Really Cheap Tickets).
This page at Living.com is an excellent example of a web technology used well. For browsers that support it, there's some nice DHTML going on when you mouse over a product name and a nice box/frame outlines that product in the picture. Very well done.
Excellent Research: Science and Engineering Indicators. [via Interesting-People.org]
Pulling another all-nighter at work.
I can't tell you how excited I am about opportunities looming on my horizon. Later today I am flying to San Francisco and Monterey, Calif. to spend an entire week talking, hanging out with, and enjoying the company of some of the finest minds in the Open Source Software development industry. This means that I'll miss my favorite conference of all -- MacWorld here in New York City -- but the chance to network, make connections, and learn a lot is worth it. Besides, I've instructed my brother Damien to pick up lots of extra swag (especially Linux distributions for the PowerPC chip) for me, so I won't miss out too much.
I'm going to try and keep this site updated while I'm gone, but I can make no guarantees as my schedule is packed tight. If I do find time, expect some reports (and maybe pictures) from O'Reilly's Open Source conference in Monterey.
I'm also sittiing on a panel at WebZine2000 next Saturday. I'm not sure just what to expect yet. If you'll be there, be sure to track me down and say "hi."
Pulling an all-nighter at work.
MacCentral: Road to Mac OS X: Unix apps and X. [Found at Axodys]
O'ReillyNet: Transforming Images with ImageMagick
Content Management Systems: Getting From Concept to Reality
Another excellent list of Content Management Systems. Also called Document Management Systems.
Core Competencies in Content Management.
Excellent thread on the failures of large commercial Content Management Systems. [via Have Browser, Will Travel] My bosses think I know everyone on the web. I keep insisting that I don't. What's odd is that I keep running into people online I haven't seen or heard from in many years. For instance, somebody I worked with on my college newspaper replied to the thread mentioned earlier in this post. Everything's connected....
There's a WriteTheWeb thread going about this same topic as well.
NY Times: Building a Better Web With Content Blueprints
Jon Katz: Open Media: Taking Old Fartism Down
Alright. I'm starting to get extremely pissed off at CNN.com. Could someone please give me an email address for someone in charge there. I've got some serious bones to pick with them regarding their email newsletters, which I'm receiving but am unable to subscribe from, despite repeated attempts. If my pleas for help continue to go ignored, I will have no choice to but to start slinging mud in their direction, and I really don't want to do that. Please Note: These are newsletters that I never actually signed up for. I'm guessing they bought my address from one of those cheesy sites that aggregates information about people's interests.]
Luke Tymowski writes:
Microsoft.com doesn't work with their older browsers (i.e. IE 2.0). That is the standard browser on NT 4. So if you've just reinstalled NT 4 from scratch, you can't upgrade to IE 5 without first going to Netscape.com, downloading Netscape, then downloading IE.
Creating Dynamic or Interactive Kiosk Web Sites
Like Pete, I'm also having trouble getting LinuxPPC instaleld on my spare G3. I've asked my brother to pick me up sme alternative distributions at MacWorld next week.
MacCommunist: I love the round mouse (and I hate the rest of you lame-o's). Hmmm....
You too can not raise hogs. This is almost as ridiculous as the patent office.
Apparently, IE 5.5 for Windows has gone gold. It's rather interesting to note that this page isn't viewable in Netscape 4.x. What the hell? Does Microsoft do this on purpose?
Excellent article on SSHand telnet.
Chris Nelson on Microsoft's .NET strategy. How soon before people start thinking that the Internet is Microsoft? This is what Microsoft hopes!
Some quotes:
What we're left with is a situation in which one company controls the evolution of computer technology, while retaining an aura of passivity.
However MS has been incapable of dominating markets where they can't leverage their existing products.
But with 86% of the Internet's users browsing with Microsoft product, I think it's safe to say that Microsoft has a good chance of superimposing their own proprietary systems over the Internet in such a way that the end result will be a majority of users interacting with remote data via proprietary MS systems.
Liquify your mice. All in the name of science, I guess. [Not for the weak-stomached]
Usability as Therapy.
Well, I did it. I forked over the $180 for the Koyaanisqatsi DVD. Now I can't wait to watch this movie again. And again, and again, and again...
Oh, and I found out today I need a root canal. Yuck.
I'm working on a short essay about broadband Internet access and Microsoft's .NET initiative. Must get work done first...
XML.com: XPathScript: An Alternative To XSLT
Drudge: Disney to Merge With Apple and Pixar? Hmmm....that would make MacWorld next week very interesting indeed.
Alphanumerica's Mozilla mailing lists.
Software Licenses and Traditional Copyright Law
Privacy, Security and Trust: a Review of New Zealand Internet Shopping Sites [via Philosophe.com]
Wow. These SGI Reality Center Walls are truly impressive. I want one for my home.
Operating System Sucks-Rules-O-Meter
I never thought I'd say this, but I want more email. I mean, I want to subscribe to more worthwhile mailing lists. You know, the kind with intelligent discussions between people with strong opinions. Lists full of useful information, tidbits, tips and tricks. Send me your recommendations. Please refrain from telling me about lists that have a high volume of clueless idiots. You know what I'm talking about.
Sweet love of the gods!! There is a special Director's Premium Edition DVD release of Koyaanisqatsi being offered by the producers. Only a $180 "contribution." Seems a bit high priced, but considering the used VHS copies of this movie sell for upwards of $100 on eBay, I'm very tempted.
"This costume made of 100% Harlan Ellison hologram mousepads." and other true stories of schwag.
Using Apple's Airport (wireless ethernet) with non-Apple hardware and non-Apple operating systems:
New York City is one giant public bathroom, don'tcha know. The overwhelming smell of urine in the streets tells me so. Taking a piss in the street is kind of like taking a dump in a urinal. You just shouldn't do it.
Jon Udell: .NET - Bill Gates Has a Dream [Receommended reading from Tim O'Reilly]
My brother the roommate just emailed me and asked me to bring him a Coke. His argument is that I'm closer to the fridge. I emailed him back and told him to get his own damn Coke.
Mini-Rant: There has been a lot of recent attention paid lately to the dot-com company laoyoffs. Ignorant journalists are claiming this is the beginning of the end for the Internet economy and are predicting that we'll all be out of jobs soon. I like to take a more realistic point of view and look at the current shakeout as simply a natural evolution of any new industry. The rampant growth of stupid dot-com businesses in 1998-1999 surely could not have continued, and failures like boo.com and furniture.com are simply indicators of extremely bad management and laughable business plans. And I say, it's about damn time. The companies in this industry that are doing the truly innovative work need to get past the glut of greedy VC-funded and incubator-born Internet industry businesses that are blocking the path to success. In 1998 and 1999 we saw literally hundreds of these companies blow through millions of dollars all in hopeless pursuit of making the biggest splash, becoming the next dot-com brand, and potentially cashing out in an overvalued IPO. So, while these really bad companies fall apart and the talent defects early and often, it's time to start paying attention to the trenches because that's where the future of computing and the future of the Internet lies. Not in the minds of Harvard business school graduates (with no management experience) at cheesy startups, but in the minds and hearts of the people who make the Internet happen.
Apple's Lisa GUI Prototypes (from 1979-1983)
DVDTalk is sponsoring a petition to convince Buena Vista to release the Princess Mononoke DVD with the original Japanese language track with English subtitles. The current plans are to release it with only the English language track.
OK. Sometimes you're the rabbit. Sometimes you're the chicken.
Apparently, the Amiga is alive and well.
I have this poster on my cubicle wall at work. Apparently it's worth $110. Hmmm....
Introduction to XHTML: Differences with HTML 4.0
Wizards of the Coast is planning to open source Dungeons & Dragons, the aging role-playing game. What an interesting concept. This from the people who brought you Pokemon!
Cathedral and the Bizarre is an interesting opinion from a Mac enthusiast about the recent open source movement.
Wow! Check out these browser-based games. It's truly amazing what you can do with Javascript.
Excellent article about the defection of new media publishing companies from the bloated, expensive Content Management Systems currently being used to build and maintain dynamic web sites. [via rc3.org]
Business 2.0: Open Source Policy
Tim O'Reilly: Gated Open Source Communities
I like mikel.org. Great commentary, good links, awesome design. Classy. I'll have to start reading it more often.
Dan is one of the few people I know who actually supports Microsoft in their recent litigations. I think it's great that people are coming out in support of Microsoft, even if their opinions, beliefs and conclusions are different from mine. The important thing to note here is that Dan makes some very good arguments in favor of Microsoft and successfully argues his case. It proves that Dan has given lots of thought to the situation, unlike many of Microsoft critics I've read over the past couple of years. At the same time, I also have reviewed the facts and read all of the various opinions, but have come to the opposite conclusion: Microsoft should not be allowed to continue operating their business in the same manner as they are now. If left alone, they will stifle innovation in the computer technology field for years to come because of their current business practices and ethics.
If you think that Al Gore "invented" the Internet, you'd be wrong. [Found at Backup Brain]
MacWorld: Create a Barrier-Free Web Site
IE 5/Mac Changes How Mac Users See the Web. IE 5/Mac has lots of very intuitive and extremely useful pieces of power-user functionality, as outlined in this article.
Esther Dyson warns Britain of their impending "police state" mentality regarding online privacy and electronic communication.
An interesting use of the DivX technology.
Do the Funky Chicken!
That's a lot of penguins! (202, to be exact)
Alphanumerica, my employer, is sponsoring the Second Mozilla Developer Meeting on August 18, 2000 at Netscape's Campus in Mountain View. This meeting is timed to coincide with LinuxWorld Expo that week in San Jose. If you're intereted in Mozilla, I hope to see you there.
Microsoft's Web Application Stress Tester Tool
Online Book: New Community Networks. This looks like an excellent read. I wish there was a PDF I could print out.
The guys over at 37 Signals have a weblog now: Signal vs. Noise
10.am is an amazingly useful news aggregation service. Loads very fast, with no ads!
While it's nice to see the FCC address the customer service issue, I'm hoping they'll broaden their investigation to include possible anti-competitive practices the Baby Bells are potentially using to curtail the reselling of DSL services from competitors (who are forced to lease lines from the Baby Bells) until they get their collective asses in gear and are able to provide the services themselves. Just a suspicion I have...
You know you're working for a hot startup when you log into the company's dedicated IRC server on a national holiday and there's ten people in the chat room. Another way to look at it: Instead of seeing it as a day off, you see the holiday as an extra day in which to catch up on your work.
Boardwatch: Jabber and Zope, Can Open Source Beat the Most Popular Commercial Products
I'm buying a lot of orange, yellow, and red t-shirts lately. I wonder what this means. I hope it doesn't mean I'm turning into Taylor, because then I would have to shave my head!
Slashdot: Making Money With Open Code, APIs, And Docs
Here's an excellent article about the Xbox graphics capabilities Microsoft is putting their Xbox gaming console. Microsoft recently acquired Bungie, the popular Mac-centric game developer who is working on a game called Halo that promises to revolutionize the gaming console market. It's a safe bet that Halo will be Xbox-only as opposed to Bungie's original plans of simultaneously shipping Mac, PC and PS2 versions. The bad thing about the Xbox is that it's completely proprietary. This is just another example of Microsoft using its muscle and money to push itself into yet another market. With Playstation2 and the Xbox both slated to tear up the gaming console market this Fall/Winter, it will interesting to see how well the Indrema system fares. Indrema is planning a gaming console that is based on open source code and uses Linux as its OS.
Hey, Steven Ivy has a CamBlog. I wonder if I can sue? Heh, just kidding.
Excellent. The FCC is finally getting involved in the DSL situation that's frustrating consumers and businesses around the country.
Philosophe: Testing Without a Formal Test Plan
So, I'm watching teevee and William Shatner just called me a "dog" and told me to "bust a move." What is this world coming to?
Advogato looks like a really interesting site for free software developers. I set up an account just to check it out. It's really an intriguing site, packed full of great developer news and articles, too.
On Saturday night, I saw the movie American Psyco with David Wertheimer. During the opening credits, I saw the name Josh Lucas. I did a double-take as I read this different Josh Lucas' site regularly.
On any given day there are between three and eight million people in the NYC metro area. Yesterday, while in a bookstore in the Upper West Side, I ran into my boss. What are the odds? Maybe the odds are better because about half the city has retreated to the country and vicinity for the holiday weekend.
Oh yeah, my coworkers are building a game in Mozilla. How freaking cool is that?
And my good friend Andrew Woolridge talks about the power of Mozilla's Style Sheets.
Slashdot: How Can I Promote Open Source On The Macintosh?
Freshmeat: Inroads to Free Software Development. An excellent article talking about how to get involved in the Free Software (and in turn, Open Source) development, even if you're not a developer.
MacOS Open Source Software. Excellent. [found at Axodys]
The Thai Open Source Software Center. [via MonkeyFist Daily Churn]
Here's an excellent BusinessWeek article about how investors have punished Covad for moving into xDSL telecommunications markets that effectively lets them compete against their own resellers. This is happening at the Baby Bell level too. I'm almost convinced that my DSL woes [ordered it in March from a Covad reseller, have yet to get a Bell Atlantic person to give me a date when the lines from the pole to the house are going to be upgraded...] are due to Bell Atlantic putting a lesser priority on their reseller's issues [upgrading the lines, switches, etc. that make DSL possible] than their own, since Bell Atlantic also sells DSL as a broadbad service to the home.
I'm convinced that t-shirts and polo shirts need to come in the following sizes: S, M, L XL, XXL, Elephant. Because every time I buy an XL or XXL shirt, I swear it shrinks three sizes. Now, if I bought the Elephant size, at least I know it would fit after a couple of washes. No really, I'm not obscenely fat or anything but I have a large-ish neck and big shoulders. It makes finding dress shirts difficult. It's even worse for my brother: "What do you mean, you don't have any shirts with a size 18 neck?"
DomainNotes.com is an excellent site that tracks news and issues regarding the domain name situation. [Found at Lake Effect]
Usenet II. Interesting.
A four-year-old email from Tim O'Reilly warning us about the issues surrounding Microsoft's WindowsNT 4.0 and its restricted functionality as a web server.
A day of gaming on the home Ethernet LAN. Whee!
