000303.html
Elliote Rusty Harold has joined the Amazon boycott. He said on Tuesday at Cafe au Lait, "For the record, ditching the Amazon links is on my to-do list for Cafe au Lait and Cafe con Leche. I haven't gotten around to it yet, because it's a fairly big project given the way my work flow is implemented. But I do promise to get it done in April if not sooner, assuming Amazon doesn't change their tune by then." [cafe]
From the Non-PC joke department: How Westerners would deal with bank robbers if left alone... [sierra]
The Register - Kevin Mitnick Testifies Before Congress: "Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls, encryption and secure access devices, and it's money wasted because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain: the people who use, administer and account for computer systems that contain protected information." [wide]
NewsMax - NewsMax.com/Zogby Poll: U.S. Shouldn't Defend Taiwan, Israel, South Korea: they "questioned 1,155 Americans last weekend and asked: 'If attacked by another country, should the U.S. help defend militarily, even though it could cost American soldiers their lives, ...'". I'm glad to see these results. Now if we can only convince our government to stay out of foreign wars.
| Country | Defend | Don't Defend |
|---|---|---|
| Taiwan | 31% | 69% |
| Israel | 41% | 59% |
| Kuwait | 29% | 71% |
| South Korea | 28% | 72% |
| Kosovo | 26% | 74% |
IBM claims breakthrough in processor technology: "IBM Microelectronics researchers on Tuesday touted a new technology that they say could eventually enable chip makers to place tens of billions of transistors on a single chip... Intel Corp.'s top performing Pentium III processor, built using 0.18 micron technology, currently features 27 million transistors". Electron-beam lithography is upon us. Yay! [/.]
Dean R. Pannell at a.k.a.dinotrac - Jack Valenti, MPAA, DCMA & DVD: Pigs Get Fed. Will Hogs be Slaughtered? Pt. 1: "'Pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered,' a successful lawyer once told me. You can charge great sums of money, get fabulously rich, and no one will really mind, so long as your partners, clients and customers feel they are getting a reasonable value in return. When you want even more, when you tilt all of the relationships your way, when you bend or break the law and go beyond that which is rightfully yours, those partners, clients and customers will turn like piranha on fresh meat." Good story about DeCSS & DCMA issues. [lt]
Dean R. Pannell at a.k.a.dinotrac - I want my DVD, your honor; Originally published on 1/6. Worth a look if you didn't see it then, or if you just want another laugh. A fictional and very funny account of how the DeCSS hearings should have gone.
Paul Prescod at O'Reilly - Why I Promote Python: "I want to live in a world where most software is written in a decent programming language. Java is decent, and I don't mind it. Therefore I don't begrudge its success. But I consider it a proprietary language surrounded by a re-invent-the-wheel culture. I do not consider Perl decent for reasons that will become clear, and I do hope that Python takes most of its popularity. I refuse to become proficient in "indecent" languages... My primary criteria for decency—whether in programming languages, markup languages, or graphical systems—is scalability. By scalability, I mean two things: the ability to scale from easy to difficult problems and the ability for beginners and experts to be comfortable." I'm with him. Every time I look at Perl I wretch. I try to convince myself to learn it since there seem to be a lot of people out there who find it useful, but every time I try, I notice Python sitting next door, and decide my time would be better spent learning Python. And about that "proprietary language surrounded by a re-invent-the-wheel culture" I will only say that Java doesn't suck, and from a Lisper, that's a compliment. [lt]
Frank Hayes at ComputerWorld - Microsoft and Java: It's over: "Microsoft is finally getting out of the Java business. And that's good news. Really... Pretty soon, if Java doesn't do it right -- well, there won't be Microsoft to blame." [cafe]
"Document Structure Description (DSD) is an XML schema language. A DSD document is a specification of a class of XML documents together with a default mechanism and documentation... The DSD project is being pursued at AT&T Labs Research and at BRICS, University of Aarhus in a non-proprietary fashion." A specification, prototype DSD processor, and XML tutorial are available. Another one for my copious spare time. [meat]
