Saturday, April 01, 2000
if i had more free time, i would watch the majority (close to all actually) of the netcasts on dr. dobb's technetcast site.
hehe, the sku11s...
Redmond (AP) -- The software industry was rocked today by the revelation that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had been secretly sheltering persecuted Free Software programmers within the company's various business divisions. Ballmer, with the help of a sympathetic aide, had kept a list of programmers he knew to be writing code for open source operating systems such as Linux and FreeBSD, and had sought to place them in obscure positions in the company where they could work unmolested.
One midlevel executive, who asked not to be identified, said "We're all shocked. Apparently Steve was placing workers in divisions he knew we'd pay little attention to -- places like Quality Control, the Macintosh Products Division -- those sorts of places." It is now believed that between 1994 and 1997, Ballmer had attempted to place most free software workers within the Internet Explorer division. With most of Microsoft concentrated on the Microsoft Network (MSN), the release of IE as a freely downloadable program was to be merely a prelude to the release of the IE source code itself.
However, others executives including Gates became suspicious of Ballmer's motives, and in 1998 a new policy was implemented for Internet Explorer. From then on, IE was to become part of the Windows 98 operating system itself, and many of Ballmer's workers were scattered to other divisions.
Ballmer's motivations and his scheme were exposed last week, when during a board meeting he proposed opening the source code to Windows 2000 as a means of placating the Justice Department in its lawsuit against Microsoft. It is now believed that the promotion of Ballmer to CEO was engineered by Gates to lure him out into the open. Microsoft's other board members yesterday voted unanimously for Ballmer's removal as CEO of the corporation.
As he left the Redmond campus this morning, a weeping Ballmer expressed regret that he did not do more. Pointing to his Rolex watch, a teary-eyed Ballmer said "You see this! This could have paid for a few more device drivers!" Referring to his Porsche sports car, he said "And this! This could have paid for a whole new window manager!"
Reaction within the free software community has been one of shock. Reached at his Cambridge, Massachussetts home, open source advocate Richard M. Stallman expressed gratitude that Ballmer had sheltered Free Software programmers within Microsoft, but still held reservations about his prominent role within the corporation. Nevertheless, on Monday, Stallman will propose changing the GNU Public License to declare Ballmer a "Righteous Closed Source Worker", the highest honor that can be bestowed upon someone who is not Free Software programmer.
for those who missed the /. post earlier this morning (hmm, like 3am, in swedish chef talk):non-consensual http user tracking using caches
here's an interesting cnn article about typos in emails / online. you will note of course, that i'm one of those non-capitalizing people. (via ooine)
l33t.freshmeat.net is just plain hilarious
"itz juzt kewl," said phr34k0r, one of the l33t.freshmeat.net beta testers, "2 th1nk 1'll be d0wnl04d1ng WaR3z frm the same s1t3 uzed bY p30pl3 wh0 n0 h0w 2 c0de in C."
In addition to hosting warez and the latest exploits, l33t.freshmeat.net will provide tutorials to help visitors sharpen essential skript kiddie skills. Works in progress include "Best arguments to give to tar when unpacking your r00t kit", "Which DOS commands will work on the Unix server you've 0wn3d", and "Why seeing a wall that includes your name, address, and phone number is a bad thing".
check out the awesome new mentalplex feature at google.
Friday, March 31, 2000
tim's visit to mp3.com hq is certainly interesting. who knew they used mysql.
mp3.com's interst in xml, building an api, and forward thinking makes me think that maybe they are the right ones to take some huge steps in the music industry (re: previous post).
i've been thinking recently about how messed up the whole napster thing is. the record industry really brought it on themselves, but as usual the artists are getting screwed. i think that the ideal solution would be to create a large account system where samples could be listened to (or the whole song even) and then purchased with one click (f u amazon), hooked up to a micropayment system. the details like price, pricing system, etc. would still have to be nailed out.
i for one would be more than willing to shell out 25-50 cents to d/l a song and have a copy on the server as well as access to all the song info etc. also, even if it was available streamed for free, i would pay a fee to be able to create my own libraries / playlists, and stream them from anywhere a la the mp3.com's beam-it service. hook this kind of thing to your wireless device (in addition to the pc) and i think you'd have a killer app that would more than make up for money lost from freebees (and also result in a more equitable system for both artists and listeners).
interesting flash version of star wars - star dudes. the chewie is awesome.
well, i've been playing around w/ the new ns (leaked) beta. it's pretty cool. still has most of the mozilla interface, i'm guessing they're working on converting it by next week, but who knows. everything works fine pretty much (except for all those ie optimized pages that is). the png support is also really excellent.
nothing like seeing this as the HTTP_USER_AGENT:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; N; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; m14) Netscape6/6.0b1
two comments. the interface hookups, while better than the milestone releases are still a bit messed up (copy works from the edit menu, but not the right click menu) and it's interesting that the ns6 beta is based off of m14 (not m15).
Thursday, March 30, 2000
lord british is outta there. seems like a smart move after the clusterfuck that was ultima ix
nope, not ever. ;-P
for those who don't closely follow movie rumors / news, aicn has some exclusive hollow man footage (stuff that was too graphic and cut from the trailer).
also according to aicn, looks like lucas and kasden will be stopping by sometime soon.
i hope that someone's storing the dna for these endangered species for a time when we can clone them and start repopulating. it would be a shame to lack the foresight to do that when the technology is right around the corner (well, technically here already)...
ahh, gw bush, dan quayle of the 21st century. man that's some good stuff. lol funny.
last night i looked through tvguide and pbs but couldn't find code rush on any of the 3 la pbs channels. doh. independent confirmation on /. and haughey.com. i thought it was just me, but i guess not. blech.
i promise not to ever blog about popularity, elitism, incestuous linking and internecine metametametastuff... again that is (yay for brad, whom i didn't meet at sxsw, but then again, i'm just not the outgoing kinda guy that some other ppl are).
Wednesday, March 29, 2000
this interview guide came in real useful. i'm glad i read it over this morning. thanks goes to cam.
The World Wide Web A CERN invention you are familiar with. [WD]-l
the scratch it 1.1 scratch simulator is pretty cool, although i know i saw one w/ a better (more abstracted) interface elsewhere on the web - the interface was actually a lot like that dj arcade game.
ERwin certainly does look like a cool database dev tool. i wonder where the up and coming open source equivalent is...
i'm getting links confused since so many sites that i read are now purple. ok, just two, but bear with me, i'm easily confused. oh, this was another purple site i totally forgot about but where i was not knowing where i got links from...
definitely time to start closing out browser windows. ie5 definitely starts pooping out at around 37...
so you've decided to be evil... (step 1, shamelessly steal links, bwahahaha)
Tuesday, March 28, 2000
ask jeeves can be pretty hilarious.
i've been playing around with some of the newer photoshop brushes. i never really had an urge before. it's no painter, but it's not bad.
Monday, March 27, 2000
"blog off beeeeeeeeeeotch!!!!" - gregory fleischer
doh. found my student id which i thought i lost under my keyboard - of course, this is months after getting my new one. shades of my palm fiasco...
whoa, check it out XBlog is written in XML w/ XSLT transforms. groovy.
on a similary note, dave baron has an xml page w/ css formatting.
ie5 for mac is now out. microsoft has achieved full standards support for HTML 4.0, CSS 1.0, DOM 1.0 HTML, XLM, and PNG. congratulations. if you're viewing this site with ns4 on mac, d/l ie5!
well, rapier (windows ce v3) certainly does look better than wyvern. i don't think i'll be switching from palmos anytime soon though.
although it looks sorta stupid, the s3 tablet has some neat features. i think i'd buy one if it wasn't too expensive.
hmm, a welsh hacker filches Bill Gates' credit card number (among others) by hacking 9 e-commerce websites to try to raise awareness of insecurity. so he gets caught after sending the nfo to NBCi, and we still don't get the names of the companies that were broken into. wtf?
Sunday, March 26, 2000
the all music guide seems to have way more info on electronic music than the ubl.
at webword, xml: what you need to know. recently, the stuff i've been spending time reading up on: xml, xul / mozilla, and all that jazz. of course, trying to get some sleep in between that and all the work that i've fallen behind in.
since the oscars are over, i will now dedicate myself to cleaning and then clearing items off my todo list.