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I'm in the middle of an open-source project to implement Disposable Phone Numbers to complement my current long list of disposable email addresses. Just like the email addresses, all the phone numbers will point to the same destination, but I can turn them on and off as desired. There are also some commercial services that offer this capability.

I'm also implementing Stop Rude Calls to act as a captcha for incoming calls, but that's a longer-term project.

• Its evolutionary: the web browser platform and programming methods have been continually evolving to support richer and richer client side applications (AJAX a great example). Parakey takes the rich client evolutionary process in the browser to its obvious next big step: the browser becomes the desktop (hey Spectrum editors: not the underlying OS!) Why is this great? Your PC OS has to run only one application, instead of 10 or 20 or so. Everything happens within the browser. You don't give a flip what OS is running on the client - the "webtop" abstracts it away, as if it were just the engine under the hood of your car. Hmmm - would I want to pay for Windoze Vista (or OSX) if the only thing I'm going to do is run a full screen browser on it 100% of the time? Maybe there is a free OS alternative out there that could do the job very well and not cost a cent?
• The KISS Principle is obviously driving Parakey innovation. That much is very clear from the Spectrum article. And the participatory internet feeds on simplicity as the differentiator between winners and losers in the application space. So I'm gonna say it now... its totally Web 2.0 (sorry Blake - I means this in the most technically positive light)... techies cringe, investors rejoice!... :-)
• Its disruptive. Windows - OS X - KDE - GNOME, etc... they are all amazing technical achievements. How necessary will they be in the years to come? Why do we need an OS/GUI/Session Manager/whateverthehellyoucallit that can become so complex it makes me think of a 1ft thick Swiss Army Knife? The browser-as-the-desktop model I hope will cause the KISS model to reign supreme in next generation human/computer interface design. (OK - kudos to the Gnome/Ubuntu crowd - they do get it - for proving that simplicity is better for the masses)
  
• Blake's philosophy seems to fit for the, oh... 90%-95% or so of people in the world that only need to use computers to accomplish some basic things like communicating and sharing content. Sure the browser-as-the-desktop model doesn't work for someone who lives in Photoshop for example.
  

It's a bit of a pain having to go to challenge/response...

I'm sure it is, for everyone else you're making filter your mail for you. Challenge-response system users are psychopaths.

I'll use AC's post to share my thoughts. I'm not trying to blindly defend Firefox, but give it a more reasonable judgment:

The new theme is too bulky, inconsistent on different platforms, and inferior to the highly refined and very user friendly theme of 1.5 (this is despite late efforts by Mozilla to spruce up the icon set and improve consistency)

Well, a matter of opinion I'd say. While I agree the new theme might not look as good on a classic-style Windows, I do enjoy the new tabs, and IMO they outweight any possible disadvantages of the new theme (only one I can think of is the new reload button, which looks weird; the new look of the address and search bars is also nice, and happen to fit into my overall theme). For the average user, on a mostly-default Windows XP look, the theme should still fit; for all others, odds are they have enough knowledge to change the theme on their own. But then again, this is just a matter of opinion, so just because I like it is not a reason to consider the author "wrong".

Antiphishing technology is both weak (blacklist based) and a potential privacy problem. The privacy issues are raised because Firefox 2.0 Antiphishing Features employ an engine previously released by Google, which has been shown to potentially cause privacy risks.

What alternative to blacklisting would you suggest? This is a serious question; while I see the problem with blacklisting (and I'm sure there will be hundreds of scam cases around the world which won't be blacklisted in time -- hell, which won't be blacklisted at all), I don't know how effective other methods are. Giving a false positive is particularly dangerous, and whitelisting every single bank in the whole world is impractical.

Now about the security risks: you haven't done your research before saying it, have you? Options->Security (we'll get to the options dialog soon). By default, the system works by using both blacklists and a couple white-listed addresses, locally. Firefox automatically downloads updates to those lists.

The new Options dialog box is confusing, poorly designed, and illogically hides important features

I agree some important features are missing (especially about tabbed browsing; there should be simple and practical settings to switch between "window mode" and "tab mode"). I also must say I got lost for a couple seconds in the redesign while trying to help a friend to automatically clear the downloads list on shutdown. But still, I'm not sure if it's badly designed: I'm more inclined to think that it was just because I was used to the previous one. (yeah, then you can argue the old one was alright and needed no change, I agree)

There are many reported compatibility issues with the large existing libraries of extensions, themes, and plugins currently avaialble for earlier versions of Firefox. While this can, to some degree, be expected, the loss of this huge user contributed extension base is a non-trivial problem with Firefox 2.0, and could be a deal breaker for some people all by itself

Well, that happens for every Firefox release, and will continue to happen pretty much forever. I sincerely doubt it will get any better with the 3.0 release. I haven't heard of any of those "many" issues; only that most extensions just need a single version bump to work, due to Fx2's relatively small changes overall, and in fact I could bet it will get a lot worse on 3.0, since it will use a new codebase (Gecko 1.9) with several internal changes, probably forcing much more changes on extensions.

The well known memory leak issue, which causes the Firefox browser to consume ever increasing amounts of RAM, eventually leading to sluggish performance and crashes, has been carried over into yet another g

The old flash player had some horrible issues with sound output that actually made firefox suck.

This has been a problem at Ubuntu and I guess others.

I work with a web-based application and usually watching any YouTube video would crash my entire browser session.

This reminds me of 1996.

MS NT Workstation 4.0 Maintaining Limitations
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/articl es/ntwks4_2.html

Licensing Woes and Confusion
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Windows/Article/Articl eID/2776/2776.html

Everyone blows this out of proportion.

Slackware isn't Fedora or Gentoo... It's not okay if the system is untested, unstable, buggy, etc. Besides, 2.4 is just the default, you can select a 2.6 kernel just as easily, during the install.

Kernel developers decided not to even try and keep the mainline 2.6 line stable. So, it's no surprise that distros which want ridiculously stable systems would stay with the 2.4 kernel as long as practical.

So why does nobody have the same complaints about Debian?

You mean ...

Windows services for Unix, aka Interix, aka SFU, aka GNU/Microsoft SFU

SFU utils and libs are based on 4.4BSD-lite. SFU provides the simple POSIX standards (POSIX .1, POSIX.1a, POSIX.2). It does not provide these Specs: realtime (POSIX.4, POSIX.4b), threads (POSIX.4a) However, they do claim to support pthreads.

I recall hearing about Microsoft incorporating a POSIX subsystem, quite a long time ago. I also recall that no one took it seriously, because it was not compatible with most of the win32 api, which meant that you could only run it as a standalone unix machine (essentially), or turn off posix features. This made it effectively useless.

It looks like they still haven't addressed the compatibility issues, but since I have cygwin now -- fortunately -- it's a non-issue. If I ever want to run unix stuff on windows, just fire up cygwin. If I care about it's performance, I'll just install Linux or *BSD.

The idea seems to be that if you are converting from unix to windows, you can start by converting to SFU/Interix or as I like to call it, GNU/Microsoft SFU. Also, inerestingly enough, it doesn't even come with ssh (though a $30 download is available). Scarry.

Sources:
http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2004/01/microso ft_windows_services_for.html
http://www.dnjonline.com/article.aspx?ID=dec04_sfu

Ideally the computer should just know what you want to do and do it for you. The problem is telling the computer what to do. I'm surprised that voice-recognition hasn't progressed further. The Apple OSX voice stuff is pretty cool but not responsive enough to be useable. And all it does is integrate into the window manager. Why would I want to ask the computer to open a window if I just want to ask a question? For instance, say I want to know what time it is. I can't just ask the computer, "Computer, what time is it?" Instead, I have to say, "Computer, open clock" and then read the time. Maybe some feedback would make it better. Communication requires feedback. Maybe the computer could respond, like the XO of a ship responds to the captain: "Make turns for 30 knots" XO: "30 knots, aye"

Also, there is the replacement cost of a laptop battery, they fail after a few years of use. By that time, the new laptops have increased in power and performance, so I tend to want to weigh the cost of a new battery vs just getting a new laptop. New battery, delivered, perhaps less than 15-20% of the cost of a new laptop, but consider this:

1. Toshiba T1910CS, 4 MB of RAM, DOS/Windows 3.1, lots of handy Toshiba utilities, such as Windows 3.1 or DOS floppy disk creator, so you can give everyone a set of DOS or Windows 3.1 installer floppies. Upgraded everything, so it has Internet Explorer and can dial up using the PCMCIA modem, and surf the web. Windows 3.1 did not do that unless upgraded (a lot).
   Cost $999.00, memory upgrade 16MB, total 20 MB, $350.00.
   Screen now almost gone, very dim, and battery is dead. Will run, and you can see the display if you turn off all the room lights. I can run Arachne on it, and some have installed linux, the link above shows that.
   
2. Toshiba 4015CDS, 32 MB RAM standard, upgrade to 160 MB about $50.00 (friend couldn't use the stick).
   Windows 98, 4 GB hard drive. Will run my livecd linux (see screenshots, below) directly from the hard drive, using loadlin and some menu batch files, completely freeing the CDROM Drive. Battery is dead. New one probably over $120.00 delivered. Laptop when new was (gasp) $2100.00. I buried the receipt in a time capsule to be opened in 100 years (just kidding).

One advantage to the 4015CDS is that it can run linux which is easier on the hard drive (and the battery), than Windows 98, now an unsupported OS. PCMCIA modem gives good dial-up performance, usually 48000 bps or higher. Does 800x600x24, display still works good.
Still, considering the cost of the battery, a new laptop might be worth it. Windows XP would be nice to run for music and photo's , but I would not really want to let it out onto the internet. To do that, I'll use my livecd linux, especially when doing online banking and bill paying. I can easily download songs while booted into linux and place them in the XP filesystem, reboot and play them there. I think one can download the Windows Update patches (according to Kyle Rankin) using linux, and then reboot and apply them.

So, new battery technology is long awaited, especially for all kinds of mobile devices, laptops, etc.

If the thing has wifi, I've gotta find me a giant pringles can .

DRM a pipe dream?

Yeah well let's see you get around a welded-on DRM helmet baby!
http://www.oreillynet.com/1540.html

Here is the original:

http://www.informationweek.com/management/showArti cle.jhtml?articleID=192203311&pgno=1

and here is O'Reilly's columnist response:

http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2006/08/who_is_ the_leader_in_ajax_appl.html?CMP=OTC-TY3388567169& ATT=Google+is+not+the+leader+in+Ajax+applications

Um....

http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2005/07/

Maybe you sat down to help grandma sign up for the new Medicare Prescription Drug plan this year? If you and gramps ended up staring at a HTTP 500 response code, you weren't alone. The Medicare website, a mishmash of Microsoft ASP and ASP.NET pages, has been overwhelmed by activity, and, from most reports, is suffering from frequent outages.

I don't know how many saw the site last year (helping a relative enroll in Medicare D, maybe), but it damn near impossible! I can't even imagine someone who is not internet-literate following all everything, the way that it was originally designed (and subsequently changed). But, maybe that was the whole idea.

In other words, all that is needed is a digital TV tuner set top box, not a whole new HDTV.

This is an interesting story of a guy's experience setting up a Tivo to record over the air digital broadcasts:

Digital TV Without The Subscription

I imagine the reason for the restricted frequency range is due to the difficulty of designing an antenna that is reasonably efficient that covers that much spectrum. I know that I have separate antennas for 80M, 40M, 20M and 2M/70cm, and I know that it's tricky to design and build antennas for the higher bands (a full-wave dipole for 3.8GHz would be ~1.5", and dipoles aren't especially suited for higher-frequency work). Sure, you could use a Pringles can, but you'd need several to cover the range of frequencies for true UWB. I don't know of any trapped antenna designs in the GHz range, but that might be something to try...

Actually, as I had mentioned, there is a way to use Java to program your RCX brick...
Furthermore, Lego has recently resurrected the Mindstorm group of products with NXT
Mindstorms 2.0 continued to be available to education accounts but was discontinued for consumers...

Inasmuch as I can parse your argument at all, you seem to be saying "Most scripting languages compile to bytecodes that are executed by a VM; therefore any language that executes bytecodes on a VM is a scripting language."

Where the hell did you get that from?

I put forth the most common definition of scripting language (interpreted system administration level language) and pointed out that Python does not fit that definition. I put another common definition (embedded application extension language) and pointed out that Python doesn't fit that language.

Then I asked what he meant by scripting language, since neither of the most common definitions would include Python but he called it a scripting language. I offered some guesses at what he might mean. Perhaps he defines scripting language as any dynamically typed language? Perhaps he defines scripting language as anything that doesn't meet some (unspecified) level of optimization? Perhaps he defines scripting language as anything that includes the compiler and VM in the same binary?

Until he actually defines what he means by scripting language, there is no argument. I'm just trying to figure out what he meant, as he isn't using mainstream definitions.

Obviously these categorizations are not "bright line". For instance, perl started as a sysadmin language that was strictly interpreted; it's grown up into a full-fledged byte-compiled language used in a wide array of application domains. So if you're using the most common definition of scripting language, Perl historically fits it. On the other hand, _modern_ Perl is certainly not limited to the implementation and domain that the traditional definition of scripting language implies.

The O'Reilly definition of "agile programming language" at http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2003/04/pyth on_is_an_agile_programming.html is fairly content free. Certainly you can go down all the bullet points and argue that Java and C# qualify just as much as Python and Ruby.

Personally I prefer to use actual CS terms instead of marketing buzzwords--is a language strongly typed (Java, Python, ML) or weakly typed (C, tcl, bash)? Is it statically typed (C, Java, ML) or dynamically typed (Python, Java)? Does it have strong support for functional programming (Lisp, ML)? Does it have support for object orientation? Are functions and classes first-class objects? Does it have closures? Continuations? Hygeniec macros? A security model for untrusted code?

And then you can talk about implementations, though obviously for mature languages there can be many (e.g. gcc compiles C to machine code, while eic interprets C; gcj compiles Java, while the Sun JDK runs bytecode on a VM with some on-the-fly native code generation).

Obviously the guy I was responding to has some subset of language features and/or some subset of implementation details in mind when he calls something a scripting language, but he hasn't specified what they are.

Instructions for booting OSX in the command line here.

Next step: getting NVIDIA and ATI to comply with the law.

My explanation for Steve's sub-par performance can be found on my blog. To sum up? This is just the first sign that Apple's legal troubles (re: the frelled-up stock options) are much worse than they've been letting on.

The OSCON 2006 presentation files are available from the second link in the second sentence on the OSCON 2006 page.

The OSCON 2006 presentation files are available from the second link in the second sentence on the OSCON 2006 page.

Not to rain on this guy's parade, but well duh! If you put up a bi-quad antenna, a circular polarized quad bay or 8 element yagi you would get a better signal. Of course he could have used a pringle can for a 12db gain.

Your point was that adding XForms to browsers breaks the entire web at theoretical level, in a way that's fixable only by chucking XForms and implementing something else instead, but I just demonstrated that was wrong. In both theory and practice, it's possible to add XForms support to a browser and not break the rendering of existing web pages.

So in response you say that IE doesn't implement XForms, a W3C standard, which is true, but true in a different way that's fixable: if IE implemented XForms (or if IE were more modular so that the formsplayer.com plugin was seamless), then it would be a done deal, and there's no theoretical problem.

Here's an interesting piece of opinion from Kurt Cagle, at O'Reilly, about how IE can move forward to XHTML and XForms.
It's based on some one-on-one discussions he had with top Microsoft developers.

http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2006/05/why_xht ml_can_save_internet_ex.html

"PHP just can't cut it"?

Um, care to explain just what in the hell that statement is based on, since the article you linked doesn't even mention PHP? It compares different webservers and cache settings. Differences in programming languages don't even enter into it.

Here's an article on scalability that's actually relevant to PHP, a case study about Digg.

Conclusion:

"It turns out that it really is fast and cheap to develop applications in PHP. Most scaling and performance challenges are almost always related to the data layer, and are common across all language platforms. [...] There is simply no truth to the idea that Java is better than scripting languages at writing scalable web applications. [...] it just isn't true to say that PHP doesn't scale, and with the rise of Web 2.0, sites like Digg, Flickr, and even Jobby are proving that large scale applications can be rapidly built and maintained on-the-cheap, by one or two developers."

OSCON Exhibit Hall passes are free.

I am pretty sure PHP can do more than just web guestbooks. You know, little things, like running Friendster, Yahoo, and GAIA Online. I've also run apps like the OSS Horde/IMP web-based mail front-end with tens of thousands of users. I reuse PHP code all the time. And if you add in some of the code optimizers and server accelerators, you can really make PHP sing.

You also wrote, "Thanks for wasting years of my life and teaching me bad programming habits, PHP." Which bad habits would that be? There are good and bad ways of writing PHP, just like there are with ANY computer language.

Here's what I know of and/or could find for the ones I didn't.

• Aaron Hillegas
• Adam & Tonya Engst
• Amit Singh
• Andrina Kelly
• Andy Ihnatko
• Ben Wilson
• Brent Simmons
• Dan Frakes
• Danny Goodman
• David Pogue
• Drunkenbatman
• John Gruber
• John Siracusa
• Jonathan "Wolf" Rentzsch
• Josh Wisenbaker
• Michael Bartosh
• Mike Breeden
• Nigel Kersten
• Ray Barber
• Ric Ford
• Rich Siegel (Bare Bones SW)
• Rob Griffiths
• Rosyna Keller
• Scott Knaster
• Wil Shipley (Delicious Monster)

Unfortunately, it seems that Slashdot has a limitation on the minimum number of characters per line. So I can't just create a nice, simple list, but instead need a significant amount of text to pad out the list, so that I can make it past the filters being used. But I'm still not there yet... sooner or later I will (20.4 is still too few). I'm probably going to have to type a whole lot of crap in here just to deal with the 25 names that are only a few characters each. (and I tried removing returns from the message, but it didn't seem to help at all)

Here's what I know of and/or could find for the ones I didn't.

• Aaron Hillegas
• Adam & Tonya Engst
• Amit Singh
• Andrina Kelly
• Andy Ihnatko
• Ben Wilson
• Brent Simmons
• Dan Frakes
• Danny Goodman
• David Pogue
• Drunkenbatman
• John Gruber
• John Siracusa
• Jonathan "Wolf" Rentzsch
• Josh Wisenbaker
• Michael Bartosh
• Mike Breeden
• Nigel Kersten
• Ray Barber
• Ric Ford
• Rich Siegel (Bare Bones SW)
• Rob Griffiths
• Rosyna Keller
• Scott Knaster
• Wil Shipley (Delicious Monster)

Unfortunately, it seems that Slashdot has a limitation on the minimum number of characters per line. So I can't just create a nice, simple list, but instead need a significant amount of text to pad out the list, so that I can make it past the filters being used. But I'm still not there yet... sooner or later I will (20.4 is still too few). I'm probably going to have to type a whole lot of crap in here just to deal with the 25 names that are only a few characters each. (and I tried removing returns from the message, but it didn't seem to help at all)

Here's what I know of and/or could find for the ones I didn't.

• Aaron Hillegas
• Adam & Tonya Engst
• Amit Singh
• Andrina Kelly
• Andy Ihnatko
• Ben Wilson
• Brent Simmons
• Dan Frakes
• Danny Goodman
• David Pogue
• Drunkenbatman
• John Gruber
• John Siracusa
• Jonathan "Wolf" Rentzsch
• Josh Wisenbaker
• Michael Bartosh
• Mike Breeden
• Nigel Kersten
• Ray Barber
• Ric Ford
• Rich Siegel (Bare Bones SW)
• Rob Griffiths
• Rosyna Keller
• Scott Knaster
• Wil Shipley (Delicious Monster)

Unfortunately, it seems that Slashdot has a limitation on the minimum number of characters per line. So I can't just create a nice, simple list, but instead need a significant amount of text to pad out the list, so that I can make it past the filters being used. But I'm still not there yet... sooner or later I will (20.4 is still too few). I'm probably going to have to type a whole lot of crap in here just to deal with the 25 names that are only a few characters each. (and I tried removing returns from the message, but it didn't seem to help at all)

What somebody needs to do is to devise a DVD player that can read a file delineating where the objectionable parts are on the particular DVD. Once the bad parts are known to the player the player simply skips them.

Could someone explain to me how a skipped ad, in which the person has absolutely no desire to ever see the ad, buy the product, or otherwise succumb to feminine hygeine products, is any different than walking away during commercials, or can in any way be construed as "lost revenue"?

If you walk away and miss the commercial, theft!!!!

Web-twenty is referring to Web 2.0 which should also be included as a new term.

Here's an interview with someone in the middle of integrating Google Web Toolkit (GWT) with a Spring MVC application. In the interview Michael Podrazik provides some insight and tips for people interested in starting out with GWT.

Why in the world is this moderated as trolling? Taking the parent post's advice, here's a bit more on the author.

Is there a place for fresh thinking and new recommendations in the infamous "network neutrality" debate?

Seth Johnson, David P Reed, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Pamela Samuelson, David Weinberger, Andy Oram and others [including me] have issued a new proposal on designed to "Preserve the Internet Standards for Net Neutrality."

The authors point out that "IP-layer neutrality is not a property of the Internet. It _is_the Internet." Then go on to say that "Providers certainly should be allowed to develop services within their own networks, treating data any way they want. But that's not the Internet."

Explanations are provided for CongressCriters, lawyers and lawmakers and human folks.

Although I don't necessarily agree with the GP that CACert.org is useless or that it renders certificates meaningless, I don't think it's wise to be quite so cavalier about ARP poisoning-based MITM attacks.

It's perhaps not something that's as easily done from half a world away like current phishing schemes, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be employed on any number of semi-public networks. I'm thinking most commercial/residential broadband systems that are shared between clients (cable modem systems). An attacker could gain entrance to the network via a compromised PC, or a WiFi router that's still running with default settings, and then run an attack on other people in the network connected to the same router. (One would hope the network operator would catch on quickly; hopefully when the users noticed the increased lag, but when's the last time you called Comcast to report crappy ping times?) Or any place where a large number of users are connecting to an AP, e.g. municipal wireless, the possibility exists for poisoning. While right now it's probably easier just to send out phony PayPal emails through a zombie PC or open relay, that doesn't mean we should be complacent about other attack vectors. Authentication is an important part of security, and we need to be teaching users about it. (That's one of the reasons why I think easy-to-obtain certs are important.)

Anyway, enough of that rant. More to the point, it's not as though CACert.org doesn't have any trust framework at all: it just lowers the bar for getting the least-trusted variety of certificates. In essence, it makes the certficicates' trust framework more like that used by GPG (or the personal certificates that Thawte used to give out): any Tom, Dick, or Harry can get a basic certificate, and then you can prove your credentials to other trusted members, and upgrade the 'trusted-ness' of your certificate. It's not a total free-for-all.

There's a pretty good discussion of what CACert.org is and isn't over at O'Reilly:
http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2004/06/
(It's a little old, and I'm not sure if some of the procedural info is out of date, however.)

The granddaddy of all consoles does actually have one of the largest active homebrewing scenes.
Just a random selection of links:

http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/user/print/a/4849
http://www.atariage.com/2600/programming/
http://www.alienbill.com/2600/

LISA is of the highest quality (like being back in college for all of the best reasons.) There is also OSCON and check for items of interest on LWN's Events Page.

1. Get this book: Invaluable. Read it, from start to finish. It's that good.
2. Get this other book: also very good.
3. Check out your local Linux/BSD/UNIX user group: google is your friend for this. For instance, NYCBUG is very good if you live in New York City. Also Linux International has got a lot of conference-related announcements.
4. Pick a Linux distribution, any Linux distribution really, and try to find forums and User's group in your area. Then, do the same for another distro. And another. Lather, rinse, repeat.
5. For complete newbies, Linux Questions and The Linux Documentation Project are invaluable places to start. For more advanced advice, check out Unix Guru universe, or the O'Reilly web site.
6. Finally, do check the local university and/or community college to see if they offer some sort of training
   

It's official. The people who are "defining" it don't know either:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2 005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

Meanwhile, competitor Microsoft is making room for 12,000 new employees.

Hmm...

Good suggestion! I would supplement it with the following as well:
1. Episodic Learner Model/An online Lisp tutorial
2. Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation
3. How to Design Programs
4. Practical Common Lisp
5a. The book - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
5b. The movies - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
6. Loving Lisp - the Savvy Programmer's Secret Weapon
7. Common Lisp the Language, 2nd Edition
8. On Lisp
9. common lisp: a web application tutorial for beginners
10. JavaScript: The World's Most Misunderstood Programming Language
11. Free JavaScript Learning Center
12. JavaScript for Scared People
13. JavaScript Closures
14. Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby

= 9J =

There's also a bunch of resources for Open Source Flash, in particular the MTASC open source flash compiler and a new promising language called haxe that can be used for Flash but also AJAX/Javascript and on the Server side. Looks like it will be presented at OSCON 2006, might be interesting to follow.

This one is interesting too:

http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2006/05/macbook _makes_major_leap_forwa.html

A video to show how easy it is to to get to the RAM chips and hard disk.

JP

59 hits.

Groups? - Nada.

Is this old news still true that to do WPA from Airport you must talk to an Airport base station?

In terms of internet infrastructure, Unix *is* more popular than Windows.

On the grand scheme of things, servers and the like, Unix & Unix like operating systems > The combined set of Windows operating systems, marketshare-wise.

Please don't parrot those studies that discuss Redhat v. Windows, Novell v. Windows, AIX v. Windows.

Unix has been around much longer than Windows. Most of the internet's big iron runs on Unix or Unix-like systems. Many of the internet's juiciest targets (largest companies) serve on Unix or Unix-like systems, including Google.

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4177

Desktop Marketshare = Viruses is a popular myth. It belongs where the sun don't shine.

Actually, oracle 10g runs on os X, not just the client, but the full database, and JDeveloper/SQL Developer. Sybase ASE 12.5.3 and SQL Developer are also available. And Sam Pullara from BEA, who has been doing his dev work on a PowerBook for over a year now, has released his notes on how to do it.

I personally bought my first mac as a way to develop on the road without a network connection. I was working in PHP/MySQL/Apache on Linux and using Dreamweaver/Photoshop on a Windows machine at home. The mac replaced both the machines so well, that after a few months, I just stopped using the other machines. Now 3 years later, I only have macs in my home.

BTW, I am studying CompuSci at university, and thus far, no course has required any technology that is not readily available on my PowerBook G4. This platform really is the best of both worlds, easy enough for mom to use, but you can take it as far as you want, it is as powerfull a development machine as anyone could hope for. It has the perfect mix of opensource power and polished commercial apps that are not available on any other platform out there.