Revenge of the <T>

This was too funny not to post. Thanks for the link Joseph! Thats the best laugh I have had all day.

BillBlog

Josh Ledgard, one of those Channel 9 hippies ponders whether Bill G. should start a blog in light of the Gizmodo interviews which have been very well received. My answer is absolutely yes. I’m reminded of that image that used to be on Bill’s homepage that showed him layed out on the couch throwing out some light-bulbs (if you have a link throw it in the comments) – I imagine that would literally be what Bill’s blog would be like.

What would be really interesting is to see the kind of dynamic that would cause for the developer teams in Microsoft if they could read what Bill is currently thinking and react. I bet all the competitors would tune in.

MsnSearchRss

I wonder if Google can do this yet. I took a look at Google Labs and the closest thing I could see is Google Alerts which is not quite the same thing (note Google Alerts is no longer part of labs).

SteveJobsAndGod

This one by Hugh made me chuckle.

DefaultInstances

Default Instances

Because you can’t see my face, I’ll narate – disgust and disbelief. Having said that I can see some instances in code conversion where this could bail some people out. But you’d want to refactor your code pretty quickly me thinks.

RoryKiller

I think something like this would send our Rory into a tailspin.

BillGatesPose

I think that sometimes you do things that you will just regret later. Reminds me of a sound-bite Bill once uttered at Comdex about OS/2

DellTabletWish

I really like my Dell laptop, but I want a Tablet PC next time around, but Dell don’t produce one. I would like to have a Dell convertable laptop with a reasonable resolution (my current resolution is 1920×1200, match or better that and you are in business). I wonder if digitiser technology is what is holding them back.

If Dell brought a powerful Tablet PC to market at the same cost as any other laptop (lets face it – they probably could), almost everyone would be running Tablet PC’s overnight. I called a local Toshiba reseller the other day for a quote on the M200’s that everyone is raving about – $4,500! But he was nice and said he would let me have one for $4,200 – get real.

I think Kevin Rollins, Dell CEO should be able to handle this challenge, instead of wasting time putting the boot into Apple.

LakeGeorge

I had reason to drive to Moorebank today. We took the Federal Highway which leads north from Canberra to Sydney. My travelling companion mentioned that Lake George when he arrived in Australia was about one and a half metres deep and that it has completely dried up.

After reading about it on Wikipedia it appears that the water in the lake comes and goes – facninating.

RichardStallman

I was just reading this entry about Richard Stallman visting ANU on Gurkan’s blog. I’ve never seen Richard present before but I can imagine that he would be dynamic and charismatic. Although he is responsible for one of my favorite text editors (emacs) I find that alot of the writings of the man just don’t do it for me – or rather I just can’t figure out the economics.

Richard is one of the few lucky individuals in the IT industry who can survive just by talking and writing, because according to his dogma the software he writes is free, free to use, free to copy and free to change.

In order to feed my family and maintain our standard of living I need to make a wage. I do that by knowing things – about technology – I know how to extract requirements, design software to satisfy those requirements and then build that software based on those requirements. Thats a skill that I have that organisations are willing to pay me for. Because they pay me for it they don’t necessarily want me to give that IP away to others – so the software is not free. Its not free to use (they paid me for it), its not free to copy (I can’t give it away), and since I can’t give it away, no-one else but the organisation I gave it to is going to change it.

As a developer, the only asset I have is the intellectual property that I create. The knowledge that I have are you raw materials and the software I produce is nothing more than a manufactured good. Unless the rest of the world is going to change to an alternative economy I simply cannot afford to give my manufactured goods away for free – especially when my raw materials are so expensive (time to learn).