1.	Cool	4.	C00l	7.	Kool	10.	Kewl
2.	Linux	5.	Kool	8.	C00L	11.	Cool
3.	KOOL	6.	Kewl	9.	COOL

Hell Freezes Over

I turn on the tube and what do I see
A whole lotta people cryin' "Don't blame me"
They point their crooked little fingers at everybody else
Spend all their time feelin' sorry for themselves
Victim of this, victim of that
Your momma's too thin; your daddy's too fat

Get over it …

Sun Day

Yesterday was a good day at Sun's TechDays developer conference. Some of the sessions were a little too R-rated for my taste, but still quite informative.

James Gosling

The keynote was non-other than the father of Java himself. He answered questions jolted down by the audience. I wrote some of the good ones down:

Q. When will asserts be available?
A. Asserts will be implemented in JDK 1.4.

Q. What do you think of C#?
A. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Q. What are the top three JSRs to watch?
A. I could not say, but my favorite is Typed Polymorphism (aka. Templates.)

Q. Which IDE do you use?
A. NetBeans and Emacs.

Q. What would you consider to be Java's most compelling feature?
A. Its strong memory integrity model. You just can't smash objects around.

Q. When was the last time you had sex?
A. This is the one and only question I have ever refused to answer, so let me respond in the form of a joke… A retired colonel is asked:

"When was the last time you had sex?"
"1947"
"That's quite a long time, isn't it?"
"What do you mean? It's only 2030"

2Day

Today is bound to be X-rated. Most of the sessions are code camps.

Tech Day

I'm going to be attending Sun's TechDays today and tomorrow in Seattle.

There's really nothing quite as exhilarating as the prospect of spending the day in rooms packed with geeks like me.

Apple on the Radio

The DJs on my favorite radio station are pretty funny… I quote:

"Did you see Apple's new laptop? 5 pounds, titanium… and you still can't open it up when you fly coach."

Today is Pampering Day

First, the car. Oil change, inside cleaning, outside wash.

Second, me. Hair cut, buy new pair of shoes.

I screwed up and forgot to make an appointment with my regular hair stylist (that's what they call themselves nowadays.) I will most likely end up at SuperCuts or some place even scarier.

Whatever happened to the days when I didn't care who (or what) cut my hair?

I Love Java

Brent Simmons beat me to the punch answering Simson Garfinkel's I hate Java article. Brent rightfully points out that Java on the server-side makes sense.

Garfinkel complains about Java's poor performance compared to C/C++ solutions, a moot point when dealing with server-side applications. Granted, the interpreted nature of Java will most likely slow down the processing of the very first sever-side request, but all subsequent requests will be processed by code which has already been converted to bytecode and resides in memory. In other words, without substantial differences from native code. This is nothing new, I was making the exact same point back in 1998.

There are quite a few popular, powerful and reliable Enterprise solutions which are build around Java technologies such as Servlets, JSP, Beans, etc. As a matter of fact JSP-powered sites are popping up all over the place, from Omaha Steaks to the United States Postal Service.

Garfinkel also complains about Corel's inability to complete Office for Java. Don't blame it on Java, Corel hasn't been able to complete anything in a long time. If you're looking for an Office solution look no further than Sun's StarOffice. Just like the other office, it's huge and bulky, but it's also open source.

There's more to Java than some mortgage applet as Garfinkel seems to think. Applets are the tip of the iceberg, and Garfinkel has done as much research on the subject as the captain of the Titanic did.

Macworld Keynote

Live Report from Webcast. My delayed commentary is below.

Mac OS X

Steve showed the new Apple menu, customizable windows toolbars, popup menus in the Dock, as well as improved Fonts panel. OS X will be released on Saturday, March 24 and priced at $129.

PowerMac G4

New Generation of PowerMac G4s, 4 new models, up to 733Mhz, CD-RW standard, AGP 4X, Nvidia graphics card, 5 slots, SuperDrive (CD-RW, DVD-RW) with high-end model. Prices range from $1699 to $3499. Low-end models available now, high-end models in February.

Digital Media Software

iTunes, MP3 recorder, CD ripping made easy, songs library manager with power search capabilities, drag & drop playlists, one-click burn, compatible with portable MP3 players. Internet radio channel selector.

My QuickTime Player crashed…

iTunes is free, available for download today, but only supports new SuperDrive, drivers for other CD-RW to be made available soon. The new SuperDrive can write DVDs, but encoding usually takes 25x longer than the original playback. Using the G4's AltiVec, Apple engineers were able to reduce the encoding time to just 2x.

iDVD, DVD maker software with easy to use GUI. Apple will be selling DVD-R media. 5 pack for $49.95. DVD Studio Pro. Professional DVD authoring tool, part of Final Cut Pro. Available by end of month for $995. PowerBook G4 Titanium 5.3 pounds, 500Mhz G4, 5 hours battery life, 1-inch thick, 15.2 megawide screen, DVD-ROM. $2599-$3499. In production, available by end of month.

End of broadcast

Delayed Commentary

A few hours later.

Mac OS X

They've listened to feedback, good. No ways to turn off or change Aqua, bad.

The new improvements are marginal at best. I didn't see anything that is bound to make Windows users actually want to jump ship. The clear advantage is in now in the OS architecture, not the UI.

I'm really starting to wonder if the Macintosh GUI as it stands today really has any clear advantages over Windows ME or 2k. I've been using Macs since day one, I should be biased, but I've also seen too many Windows users struggling with the Mac OS, finding it confusing and hard to use; just as I felt the first time I used a Windows machine.

Nowadays, I constantly flip-flop between OSs without even thinking about it. I use the OS which provides me the best tools for the task at hand, regardless of the OS specific UI.

Will the OS X UI be any different in the long run? Different, yes, better, I seriously doubt it.

PowerMac G4

Pricing/performance ratio is good but not great. I think I'll wait another round before getting a new desktop Mac. I'll probably end up getting a multiprocessor G4 anyway.

iTunes

I've downloaded it, and am using it right now. I might consider it as replacement for SoundJam MP Plus. Only time will tell.

iDVD

Not my thing, hopefully it'll appeal to others.

DVD Studio Pro

I'm so tired of the Pro label. Real DVD Professionals won't even look at it, they already have extremely powerful and expensive tools. At any rates, not my thing either.

PowerBook G4 Titanium

Say hi! to my next PowerBook. It's not cheaper, but a little thinner and a lot cooler than any of the competition. The fact that'll be able to run OS X doesn't hurt either. If Apple can keep up with the production, they should be able to sell them like pancakes.

Final Thoughts

It wasn't a bad presentation, Steve, but when all is said and done it felt like too little, too late.

Ask me tomorrow and I may have a completely different opinion.