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December 24, 2003

Bleed iWhite

Macworld Expo: Christmas for Macheads

Everyone is no doubt caught up in the full swing of the holidays. Presents to give and receive, festivities to attend, and delicious meals to digest.

But for most Mac fans, the real Christmas season starts with Steve Jobs taking to the stage at Macworld Expo on January 6th.

I love my Powerbook, but this is the sort of gushing worshipful Mac fanboy crap that makes me want to puke. It's a computer. It's not a political cause.

Posted by John at 1:22 PM |

December 19, 2003

what's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine

Anil's Daily Links (link reproduced due to lack of permalinks):

gawker media CSS scandal!

I guess you change your mind about "design theft" when another "blog mogul" is the thief. Oh, sorry, "entrepreneur."

Posted by John at 8:18 AM |

December 16, 2003

Please ignore

While I hate to do this, I must. I need to check something.

Posted by John at 2:20 PM | | Comments (1)

December 15, 2003

Do what I want, not what I say

RSS 2.0 Specification

We anticipate possible 2.0.2 or 2.0.3 versions, etc. only for the purpose of clarifying the specification, not for adding new features to the format. Subsequent work should happen in modules, using namespaces, and in completely new syndication formats, with new names.

Scripting News

RSS is definitely good enough and growing at a huge rate. There's still hope that the proponents of Atom will see the wisdom of not forking and building compatibly off the RSS base. And there's hope that users will act in their own interest.

So which is it? Did he really mean that others could create "completely new formats, with completely new names," or did he just put that in there thinking no one would ever actually go ahead with it?

Because as far as I can see the proponent of competition is sure trying to squelch it in this case.

Posted by John at 10:11 AM |

December 12, 2003

Skin trade

Wired News: How Mac OS X Can Shed Its Skin

Mark Rolston, VP of creative at frog design, said the ShapeShifter hobbyist community is at the forefront of what may be the next big thing in computing: skinning the operating system.

"Windows is monolithic. Everyone gets the same style," he said. "You have all these totally different users across the world, and they get the same damn scheme."

The forefront of the next big thing. Wow.
So where does this put the Linux users who have been theming the living daylights out of their X window managers for the past few years?

Oh, wait, they're not "professional designers."

Posted by John at 11:58 AM | | Comments (1)

December 10, 2003

And he says he invented the Internet!

Stop This Train - Who decides this election - you or Al Gore? By William Saletan

Remind me to explain that "endorsement" thing to you sometime, Bill.

Posted by John at 2:47 PM |

Ball of confusion

I've been trying not to waste time writing about DW, but scripting was just too full of nonsense this morning to resist.

Scripting News: 12/10/2003

Robert Scoble, who works at Microsoft, points to an innovation from Sun. Why? "I want to be an authority on the operating system industry," says Scoble. I'm sure there are people at Microsoft who think this is stupid, but it's actually really smart. Create a new media context for yourself. A tent that's big enough to hold people who are interested in your competitors. If your products are superior what have you got to lose? MS people are always whining about the press.

Which is why you often see DW pointing out the innovations in Moveable Type and Blogger, and why in his current job he made sure a wide choice of blogging tools were made available to Harvard students. Physician, heal thyself. And he never ever whines about the press.

We also get:

People who say the campaign is over are assholes. Not a single vote has been cast yet. Dean is out of the running now, he's a slave of the Democratic Party. I'm sure it's even worse than it appears. Looks like Clark is the front-runner for making something sensible happen in this election cycle, although I wouldn't hold my breath.

In another context, this could be pretty sensible, until you realize that behind it is a belief that the campaigns should be run entirely on the Internet, the candidates should be seeking blogger endorsements, and that the campaigns should be adopting that "Ask not what the Internet can do for you" line (which I think cheapens and demeans JFK's original) as the campaign slogan. This is at least as far as I can make out from the vague rants and vituperation from scripting.com wrt the Democratic campaigns.

That's the impression I get from this:

One more time. Any candidate who made an effort to understand the political issues of the Internet could make a difference. Whether they would win or not, whether they beat Dean or Bush is hardly the point. Find out what makes the Internet so great. Take a weekend off from your campaign that isn't working anyway. Then stand up and tell us what you learned. You might be surprised to see your poll numbers start climbing.

Riiiiiiiiight. "I'm not running in the hopes of winning the election, I'm running so that I can get a better sense of the politics of the Internet." OK. "Hi, I'm the lobbyist for the Megalomaniac PAC." Sorry, but I think the internet is one among many important issues, and the upcoming election is too crucial to the country's future to be trivialized in this way. Whether the candidate writes their own blog does not make or break my vote. I mean, step back, already. This is not Nixon blowing 1960 because he failed to understand the nature of television. Blogs have not yet reached sufficient mass to act as the dealbreaker in a national election. Could they in future? Maybe. Not sure.

Posted by John at 11:07 AM | | Comments (1)

December 6, 2003

Remember MT?

BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

I'd like to see a list of what MT is getting and a schedule. Please?

Hear, hear. Aside from the recent trivial mt-send-notify.cgi fix, MT has had no version release since May. 7 months. And that was a maintenance release. I understand TypePad is a paid service getting off the ground. But, if it now takes complete precedence over Movable Type (and is there an announced schedule for MT Pro?) then open source MT and let the already strong developer community take over.

UPDATE: I went and checked further in the news archives, and the last release with new features was 2.6, which in this 1/28 post is described as "just around the corner."
1/28.
So it's been almost a year.

Posted by John at 10:04 AM | | Comments (1)

The old sod

Well, I turned 45 Thursday, and what a present I got. My wife is sending my father and myself to Dublin in June to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday. Having never been overseas I am absolutely stunned. If any of the three of you have suggestions for a week in Ireland, feel free to comment here.

Posted by John at 8:00 AM |

December 2, 2003

The Simpleton Life

Forget the stupidity of news coverage of Michael Jackson distracting the public from more important things.

Overexposure, thy name is Paris "Jes' Folks" Hilton.

Posted by John at 3:06 PM |