Archive | January, 2003

Rick Strahl: “The two faces of .Net (or how I learned to live with Jeckyll and Hyde)” Word from the front lines of development.

Everything I need to know (that’s “news”) I learned from my News Aggregator – [Ernie the Attorney]. It’s true – the News Aggregator is a wonderful tool for having your bookmarks come to you.

News.com views Apple’s endorsement of 802-11g as “There’s no “a” in Wi-Fi”. Nice shot. The 802-11a standard just got delivered too late. When I was searching for wireless stuff a year ago, the ‘a’ hardware was just coming on the market, while the ‘b’ hardware was a commodity. What did it have to sell? Speed. My internet connection’s only 1.5 mbps, the 11 Mbps of the cheap stuff is adequate. Yes, copying a grunch of stuff from one machine to the other should be done with a more bandwidth. So, when I need to do that, I whip out a CAT5 cable. Or go have lunch. Nothing in ‘a’ was compelling, so it fell by the wayside. 802-11g, otoh, promises backward compatibility and increased speed, win-win. My SOHO network at various times has had network legs of coax, 10 base-T and 100 base-T, whatever I could cobble together cheaply. 802-11g sounds like the winner to me, and Apple’s endorsement helps.

My bad. The new button’s on this machine’s 1.2.1 version of Mozilla as well. Now, I ought to go dig to see if the Save feature I want is in there somewhere, too…

Downloaded and installed the new Mozilla 1.3 Alpha browser today. A nice new feature: a little New button on the tab bar that lets you create a new tab without Ctrl-T or going to the menu. Tabbed browsing is the way to go. I love Opera’s MDI interface, as browsing the web is a multiple-focus thing: one link leads to three others leads to… a whole bunch of windows. Tabbed interfaces are a great way to keep it under control. However, I hope the Moz team will consider a way to save a set of tabs on demand – I’d love the ability to save a “research set” of links all at once. They have the feature on startup to load a set of pages, but Opera’ ability to “save a window set” still has them beat. I love innovation and competition in browsers for real features!!!

SUVs Deemed “Uncool”. Consumers are finding several reasons to rethink these gas guzzlers. [The Motley Fool] SUVs are uncool. For people who transport bricks and tools, they’re cool. A mob of soccer kids, even. But a solo commuter on a highway to work, uncool. It seems like most of the traffic accidents I see in New Hampshire involve difficult road conditions (rain, snow, fog), aggressive driving, high-speed, and SUVs. Three tons and four wheel drive mean nothing to black ice. Good riddance. People who guzzle gas support our dependence on the oil industry, foreign oil, instability of foreign countries, and perhaps terrorism. (Okay, terrorism is a reach, almost as bad as the current administration’s anti-drug commercials. Nobody’s buying them, either.) Not very All-American, is it?

Great article from the Washington Post yesterday on James Yorke, most recent winner of the Japan Prize, for his work on chaos theory. Chaos theory has fascinated me since I first saw Mandelbrot sets, and was reinforced reading James Gleick’s “Chaos.”

Great summary of the Steve show here and, of course, at the Apple site. New toys: a 17″ Powerbook, a 12″ Powerbook, a PowerPoint-Killer for $99, a ripping-fast native browser, new “iLife” branded i* tools, energy, excitement and enthusiasm. I think the faithful will be renewed. Best quotes of the keynote: At Apple, explains Jobs, we like “Innovation” – saw the slide several times – and “We like Open Source,” explaining the khtml origins of their new browser.