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Slate has an article on Firefox vs. IE. I use Firefox at times and like it very much (tabbed browsing works well) but I'm not ready to move to it 100% but another attack like the Scob thing and I will consider it strongly.
Some interesting notes from a Microsoft attendee at JavaOne.
Chris Sells has a weblog entry about an Edward Tufte lecture he attended.
I saw Mr. Tufte a few years back and it sounds like he is sticking to pretty much the same story he was saying back then: good design is all about communication. I'm a big fan of that concept and the clean, crisp interface has certainly seen a popular resurgence recently. If you read his ideas about conveying task information for projects, you will never want to make a Gantt chart ever again.
The sparklines idea he talks about sounds interesting. External figures are very distracting and having a small display of the time variability of the data seems like a great idea. That would be a great feature in Word or PDF. Get to it Chris!
It looks like Sun has changed the Java naming convention. At least they haven't gone the Microsoft route with Java 2004. Year based names are annoying.
I think it's time for a prickly pear martini.
Interesting thoughts on what our most valuable weapon in the WOT might be. It's a good point - we all need to be paying attention.
This is an interesting piece about think tanks that have written negative pieces about open source and their possible conflicts of interest. Like just about everything invented by man, open source has some plusses and minuses. Although some of these groups definitely sound biased against open source, some of the others make some pretty good points.
The comparison to PM is not really appropriate. PM knew that cigarettes were shown to be harmful in scientific studies and tried to basically promote falsehoods. Closed source vs. open source is much less scientific than that and it would be extremely difficult to scientifically prove any assertions about the harm or benefits of either. It is more of a matter of opininon and last I checked, in the US at least, expressing your opinions is still legal.
p.s. I wish my blog entries were as polished and researched as this one is. Quite a nice piece of work.
This is an interesting move by Microsoft. I wonder if they can prevent a similar reduction in prices in first-world countries? If I were a major MSFT shareholder, this would worry me.
Eric Brynjolfsson has an article on the SAP website about strategies for dealing with information overload in an organization. The theme these strategies is to remove as much of the excessive information burden from people as possible so they can do more "human and intelligent work". In a nutshell, the strategies are:
1. Automate
2. Distribute
3. Equip
4. Focus
Automate means build better information systems with more automation and better quality information (not surprising on the SAP website). Distribute means to get the information to the place where it is needed to get more brains engaged and eliminate managerial bottlenecks. Equip means to hire and train people to equip them to deal with the decisions that are necessary with the increased flow of data. Lastly, focus means to get rid of data that is not relevant to corporate strategy.
You might be able to add one more strategy in there: iterate. Keep evolving on each of these strategies so that the evolution of each is a living program. As with most high-level strategies like this, the real trick is getting them to work in the real world. The additional strategy of iteration might make you more likely to get to where you want to be.
As an avid Economist reader, I was interested to see that their coverage of open source got a strong recommend from a Slashdot poster (well, as strong as anything that is covered by copyright ;-)
The poster did not really get the full story, just the parts where The Economist examines the strengths of open source. What about the discussion of the weaknesses as well? Can open source really foster innovation or is it just doomed to copy commercial products? Can the open source model (or whatever you want to call it) be extended to rivalrous (not purely informational) goods? Can it succeed in fields that don't have the "anyone but Microsoft" motivator?
These are some really bad (but funny in a geeky way) computer jokes. Enjoy!
This AP article on how people are avoiding signing up for sites is pretty funny. If I just want to read a headline from a newspaper, you had better believe they are getting a Mailinator address. I don't mind signing up if I really think I'm going to be interested in the information, but for the most part newspapers don't qualify. Better yet, give me an RSS feed.
Well, not really. But IBM did get a UK innovation award for MQ Series.
This blog entry has a list of what makes a great tester. I agree. Especially with the bit about having a customer-centric viewpoint.
Slate has a piece on oil refineries that comes to the same conclusions I did a few days ago: the price of gasoline is basically our own fault.
Does anyone actually belive that the DOJ or the EU anti-trust authorities would consider allowing this merger to happen? I'm actually a little astonished they even wasted time talking to each other.
AP has a story about the love/hate relationship people have with their mobile phone providers.
In the spirit of Martin Luther, Five Theses that I'd like to nail to the door of my cell provider are:
1. Put the total price of the contract in your advertisement. This should include a best estimate of fees, taxes, levies and tarriffs that I will be charged over the course of the contract. I hate my bill, not because of the total price, but because of all the non-disclosed items that appear on it.
2. Make it work. I don't care much about pictures or texting or any of that. I want my phone to work as a phone first and foremost. To be fair, Verizon (my carrier) is pretty good, but there are lots of places where coverage is advertised but not delivered well (my house for example).
3. Give me the option of a really simple phone. For the most part, I just want to make and recieve calls. Can I get a phone that excels at just that?
4. Get real with the contract durations. Offer me an option to have a 90 or 120 contract option when I'm first signing up. I'll pay for the phone and all of that but I want a reasonable amount of time to kick the tires before signing up for a year or two. The typical 15 day money back doesn't quite do it.
5. Stop charging me $1.50 for directory assistance. Directory assistance is very useful from a cell phone because you often don't have a directory at hand or familiarity with the area. Maybe there could be a tiered service that is strictly automated for a lesser price and then if you can't find what you need there you would pay a higher price to speak to a human being.
I can't believe that the US Patent Office is still granting really stupid patents. After all of the noise and angst surrounding such idiotic patents as one-click shopping and showing hypertext on a computer you would think that they would come to their senses.
Patents serve a valuable purpose by raising the potential rewards from innovation. But, if applied too broadly, they stifle innovation by making it a minefield of legal risk. Let's hope that the US Patent Office and their European counterparts get the balance right soon.