Andy Ihnatko writes a guest column for InfoWorld that's a great insight into the mind of Mac users and interesting speculation on what we saw, or didn't see, at the recent WWDC keynote.
Leopard's top-secret secrets.
(InfoWorld) – When you watch a Steve Jobs keynote from home, you only get about two-thirds of the value. For one, there's usually complimentary orange juice and danish on the way into the hall. For another, you get to go hyper-nerd obsessive on every observable detail.
From Guy Pardoe's announcement:
The next meeting of the Monadnock Linux User Group (MonadLUG) will be this Thursday, August 10th, 7:00pm, at the SAU 1 Superintendent's Office behind South Meadow School in Peterborough.
For directions and other information, visit
http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Www/MonadLUG
Mark Witham discusses SugarCRM: SugarCRM is a complete CRM and groupware system for businesses of all sizes. Functionality includes sales force automation, marketing campaigns, support cases, project mgmt, calendaring, documents and more. Built on PHP and MySQL.
OSNews points to a ZDNet article, Microsoft: ‘Open Source Is Too Complex’. “Although open-source software can be customized to meet a company’s specific needs, its inherent complexity could dent the profitability of independent software vendors, says Microsoft. “One of the beauties of the open-source model is that you get a lot of flexibility and componentization. The big downside is complexity,” Ryan Gavin, Microsoft’s director of platform strategy, said.”
An ISV has to know what they are getting into, and have sufficient support to deal with the challenges of many platforms. The same is true if you choose to support Windows XP, XP Home, XP Media Center, XP Tablet, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 on standalone, networked, workgroup, domain and Active Directory models. The claim that supporting Linux is more difficult because there’s more than one vendor (all of the majors adhering to the Linux Standards Base) is FUD. If you have to support home users with Windows 95 or do-it-yourselfers with a hand-built Linux kernel, the challenges are the same. Their claim to ISVs that Windows is easier to work with may be easy to claim, but I’d like to see Microsoft prove it. Truth Happens. Unbend the Truth.
Microsoft claims that computer technology is complex, and they are smarter about making those decisions than their customers. If they are not careful, they’ll prove that: the smart customers will leave.
Steve Job's keynote (CORRECTION: from the Spring 2006 MacWorld. Oops!) is available for viewing on the web here. And for those with WAY too much time on their hands, play WWDC Keynote Bingo while you watch:
http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/7/23/4730
Yet another UPDATE: Here’s the WWDC keynote. Sorry for the confusion.
Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley is reporting Windows Fixes to Dominate Patch Day Dozen. “Expect from Microsoft a dozen new security bulletins, with plenty of Windows patches [^] a number of which will be deemed “critical,” on August 8.”
Pencil in some time Tuesday or Wednesday for patching and rebooting.
In Fun with User Access Control in Vista… Argh!!!, Microsoft MVP and Developer Extrodinaire Rick Strahl bemoans:
Vista Security is tight and I can understand the need to lock down the system to some degree. But UAC is nothing short of annoying, so much so that it becomes a totally worthless feature. After using UAC for a few minutes you won't be reading any prompts and blindly prompting every link spawned. This is not security – this is making things worse by giving people a false sense of security… It's relatively straight forward to turn off UAC, but as it turns out this doesn't quite get you all the way where you might expect.
He documents a situation in which the Administrator of the machine is unable to delete a directory. Is this a feature? When a skilled and experienced operator can't find a way to work through a system to repair a problem, there's something deeply wrong. Read Rick's entire post here.
On the DDJ portal, Jon Erikson points out the latest Javascript exploit, a fearsome beast if it's not vaporware. I run with NoScript running as a FireFox plug-in and only enable scripting when I need to. Travelocity does a graceful job of pointing out that they require JavaScript enabled. PG.com does a miserable job, recommending I upgrade my browser to IE4 or Netscape.
Get a clue, web developers. If the client comes to your site without JavaScript enabled, it might not be because he lacks a clue. Don't show them that you lack one.
ZDNet Asia reports “Intel officially closed the books on the Pentium era on Thursday with the Core 2 Duo, its most important product launch in 13 years.” The Core 2 Duo chips will have the special instructions to better support virtualization at near-native speeds, from what I understand. If you're thinking about buying a new machine, the new chips are attractive, though you might want to wait a few months to ensure they actually work in the field.
Is “Core 2 Duo” the best name the marketeers could come up with? Obviously, the Pentium line won't go one to Sextium, Septium, Octium and Nonium, and “Itanium” was about as popular as green kryptonite. AMD isn't doing much better with their Turion, Sempron and Athlon 64 X2 series – which is the good one?
Some analysts are claiming that Intel has cleaned AMD's clock with this latest release of processors. I think it's good to see it's a horse race – all the competitors will try all the harder.
Rasmus Lerdorf presented Getting Rich with PHP5 and included some great sample code in the presentation.
Ed Foster's Gripelog spends the week with a series of articles on software ownership, copyright, licensing, and the chilling decisions being made in US Courts. It's stunning how few rights consumers have against software companies, compared to their rights (and the companies' responsibilities) in other industries like automobiles, food or consumer goods. Do Software Customers Own a Copy?. “When we a buy a book, we all pretty much understand what rights our ownership of that copy gives us. But what about software? Do we even own the copy, or does the inevitable “the software is licensed, not sold” assertion in the license agreement actually deprive us of rights we would otherwise have under copyright law? It's a question that Congress and the courts have failed to clear up, often with gruesome results….”