Happy Birthday, Chip

30 years ago, 108 kilohertz.

Virtual Keyboard

Funny, how, a couple weeks ago, I was telling Vicki about a similar concept I had in mind. Although, I was envisioning tactile sensors on every fingers. This is even better.

Blog by Mail

I've just implemented a way for readers to easily email pointers to stories and articles from this blog.

Man Approached Cockpit Despite Ban

The short version:

"Stop!"
Handcuffed on the ground.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just wanted to go to the bathroom."
Not a terrorist.
"No way, he's Navajo -- Native American -- from this country. We were here before all you people."

The solution: Always pack a few extra tena pads.

Overprotected

"I don't need nobody
Tellin' me just what I wanna
What I what what I'm gonna
Do about my destiny…"

745,744 copies in a week. Not too shabby.

Xbox Launch

"Part of that strategy has been devoted to making the point that Xbox is the most powerful video game console ever, with a hard drive, broadband Internet connection port and DVD playback capability."

Geez Louise, that is so uncharacteristic for Microsoft. But I have to admit that Broadband Internet connection port definitely sounds better than Ethernet port.

Xcube… GameBox… I really don't get what all the excitement is all about. I must be too square.

On November 15, 1777 The Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation, precursor to the U.S. Constitution.

Happy Birthday, Seattle

"The women sat on a log and wept when the 22-member Denny Party landed on Alki Beach 150 years ago in the pouring rain."

As a matter of fact, it is still pouring…

Flood Warning

"The Weather Service is warning of flooding on the Skokomish River in Mason County. Flooding is typical there in winter rains."

UltraEdit

I've been using TextPad as a quick text editor for quite a while now. Unfortunately, the lack of features is increasingly becoming painfully obvious, especially when compared with my editor of choice, jEdit. After browsing the web for recommendations, I decided to give UltraEdit a try… So far, so good.

Mac OS X 10.1.1

I've updated my PowerBook. For some reason, iTunes refused to automatically launch on startup after the update. Everything went back to normal once I ran XOptimize and fsck.

The following was posted to the Java-Dev mailing list:

Java Developers, I just wanted to let you know that Apple has just made update 10.1.1 available via the Software Update mechanism. This is relevant to Java developers and users because it includes the fix for theString.equals() bug that was reported on this list in the past. It is exactly the same fix that was also provided via ADC, so there should be no difference in behavior between the two versions. You must have installed the Security Update for 10.1 to see this update, so install that first if you haven't already. We'll update our Java release notes as soon as possible to reflect these changes. It will also include information for how to programmatically determine that this fix is installed on any system in question. For those who've been waiting for this to be made available to end users, we thank you for your patience. Allen Denison Java Product Manager Apple

DiskOnKey

 Pretty nifty.

On November 14, 1998 Carmen Electra and Dennis Rodman were married in Las Vegas, Nevada.

RedHat 7.2

The upgrade went very smoothly, a few hurdles here and there. Things like BIND requiring a new configuration file, etc.

Downsized

My friend Kent is looking for a new position. You might want to check his résumé.

Apple: a Year Late, $100 Too Much

Amen!

Be Palm

I'm still puzzled by the whole deal. I guess we'll have to wait and see what Palm actually does with it.

10.1

I'm not the only one after all.

Larry vs. Bill

"We don't want people to migrate from Microsoft e-mail. We want people to throw out Microsoft Exchange for a server that works." -- Not a bad idea.

On November 13, 1775 During the American Revolution, U.S. forces captured Montreal.

Bright and Early

Got up at dawn (literally), took a shower, got some work done. I have an appointment with my hairstylist in a little bit and will be heading out to lunch later on.

Damage Control

Major spin control attempt stemming from yesterday's article. "Maya is far from dead on the Mac. The launch of the application is evidence of the commitment Mac users have for the product." Pardon my French, but doesn't that spell BS?

iPod

My feelings exactly, except that "There are bulkier, cheaper alternatives that hold nearly as much music, and work with Windows machines besides." is not quite accurate. As mentioned before, there is at least one unit which holds a lot more music and is right about the same size.

How Microsoft invented open source, by Billg

"the reason that you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines, and the bios of that should be open to everybody to use, and all the extensibility should be there."

Every great leader (or not so great…) rewrites history to his/her liking.

Five years ago: Sun shines on Microsoft's Java Gallery

On November 9, 1998 A federal judge in New York approved the richest antitrust settlement in U.S. history. A leading brokerage firm was ordered to pay $1.03 billion to investors who had sued over the price rigging of Nasdaq stocks.

Doomed Maya

As much as I hate to admin it, the author may have a valid point… or two. I was in the room when Jobs and Alias|Wavefront made the original announcement (WWDC 2000) and I clearly recall pondering over the exact same issues back then.

Eclipsed

Sounds like IBM's SWT might give Swing a good run for the money.

I discovered a long time ago that designing a truly native UI in Java, without mixing Swing and AWT components, was close to impossible. A native set of widgets would definitely be more than welcome.

Britney Flashes

She's no Cinderella, anymore.

On November 8, 2000 The Secure Digital Music Initiative announced that two of its proposed technologies did not survive being attacked as part of the "Hack SDMI" challenge.

Brit People Rock

People magazine has a review of Britney new self-titled album (released today). They pretty much liked it except for Her feeble cover of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts' 1982 hit "I Love Rock 'n' Roll".

It kinda makes you wonder how good of a music critic Chuck Arnold really is, considering he doesn't even know that the song was actually written and recorded by an obscure 70's English band called The Arrows.

Anybody's a critic nowadays. Nobody goes to critic school anymore. <wink>

Still Needs Tuning

iTunes 2 is quite nice. I really like the new crossfade playback and sound enhancer features. The equalizer is nice too. Too bad they kept most of the annoying bugs.

For examples:

• Double clicking a mp3 file in the Finder automatically plays it, but the next songs are played in alphabetical orders instead of shuffled. The shuffle button simple becomes ineffective. At least until the player is stopped and a different song is highlighted/selected.
• The Full Screen visual mode often closes and/or repositions the Finder's application palette and opened windows. Quite annoying.

And, of course, there still isn't an option to have songs played automatically upon launching… Maybe next version.

Anybody's a QA engineer nowadays. Nobody goes to QA school anymore. <wink2>

10.1

I've finally upgraded my PowerBook. The Finder is indeed quite zippier. The JVM implementation appears to be more compatible, and JARs are now double-clickable.

Applications still take forever and a day to launch. Someone obviously believes I have nothing better to do than staring at bouncing icons.

For some reason, they also expect me to scroll down a list of 1,042 songs in order to select "You Shook Me All Night Long". There simply isn't a way to type-ahead in any of the file open dialog boxes.

I guess "scroll, scroll, scroll again and scroll some more…" is Steve's idea of productivity.

I must think different.

Teaser

On November 6, 1975 The Sex Pistols made their live debut at St. Martin's School of Art in London.