Month: January 2000

The last Peanuts comic strip brought a tear to my eye…

Interview: CmdrTaco and Hemos Tell All
The slashdot guys get interviewed. The question of “practicing what you preach” is brought up. Basicly the code that runs slashdot is released but it is a very old version. CmdrTaco mentions having more important things to do with their time than clean up code for release. Problem guys, release it even if the code sucks. Maybe some of that time that is taken up fixing bugs would leave if others could attack the bugs, kinda a big plus to sharing the source. It isn’t about being perfect, just do it. Posted comment on slashdot “Not to be a jerk about it, but perhaps if the process were more open, there’d be someone who would write the install scripts and whatnot for you. Making huge projects manageable is part of what open source is all about, isn’t it?”
BTW: engel you were right yesterday. I just like to argue when NT is giving me fits 🙂

Interview: Steve Wozniak Unbound
Woz sounds like one great guy. The interview is almost as inetresting as the man himself.

“Consider the situation of two trauma surgeons arriving at an accident scene. The patient is bleeding profusely. If surgeons were like programmers, they’d leave the patient to bleed out in order to have a really satisfying argument over the merits of two different kinds of tourniquet.”
found at Philip Greenspun‘s Vignette StoryServer review

It is scary how true that statement is between friends who are programmers, now imagine what it is like amongst enemies.
Another highlight…

“What most people need is someone to tell them what to do. It is cheaper and better to adopt a false religion than to remain a skeptical atheist, seeking after truth oneself. Of course, it is better and cheaper still to adopt a reasonable religion.”

Software developer personality types “Orphans Preferred” in Gamasutra.

PlayBoy has a Linux article by Gillian Miss April 1996 and president of Black Dragon Inc..

More highlights form MacworldExpo
Jobs offers a peek at Mac OS X

Live Coverage – Macworld SF 2000
“OS X will be completely open source, like the popular Linux operating system”
Woooo, this would be incredible. I’m still waiting to see the keynote address to hear the details for myself.

How Stuff Works!
Looks like a great informational site. Lots of stuff.

LWN: A test of shrink-wrap licensing

“All the analyses I’ve seen of the DVD DeCSS hearing have missed a key event: this is the first widely-publicized case where somebody has tried to enforce a “shrink-wrap” license. Corporate lawyers until now have avoided testing such licenses in court because they would risk having a judge declare for all to hear that shrink-wrap licenses aren’t worth the pixels they’re printed on.”

My bet is that the DVD industry bring the suit will do everything in their power to keep the “shrink-wrap” liscense out of the case. If a court invalidated “shrink-wrap” liscenses the commercial software industry would bet screwed.