It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I guess even with the number of things going on in the industry, I haven’t been inclined to write much lately. It could be just because I’ve been busy (thankfully). Maybe.

Anyway, here’s a few thoughts about recent events:

– RIAA lawsuits. This seemed to be big news for a while until a 12 year old girl was caught in the mix, prompting a number of companies and organizations to pay her $2000 fine. This can be nothing but bad publicity for the RIAA. Certainly this battle isn’t endearing them to anyone. The best move I’ve seen regarding this was the decrease in the retail price of CDs. The decrease isn’t enough, but it’s a step in the right direction. People won’t bother to download if CDs are priced correctly. Instead of wasting millions of dollars to protect your profits, generate a little consumer happiness with CDs that are priced around $4 each.

– Verisign’s SearchLight. Verisign, who runs the .COM and .NET gTLD servers, has decided that if you request a domain that doesn’t exist, they will return the IP address of their search engine. You can read ICANN’s comments here. From my perspective, this is problematic since Verisign can’t tell from the DNS request whether it’s a web browser, e-mail server, or custom application that’s making the request. This has the potential to wreak havoc on many applications that rely on DNS return the proper message for nonexistent domains. In addition, the management of a gTLD seems to be a public trust; Verisign seems to have violated that.

– Mac development. I noted earlier that I’ve been working on a 15″ PowerBook and thought I’d offer a little update. I’ve since installed Virtual PC and have booted both Windows XP and Linux on it. That means that the Mac is the only machine that runs all three operating systems that I care most about. It’s likely to become my main computer. Hopefully Microsoft will not remove the Linux option from Virtual PC now that they own the company that makes it. (By the way, I really want one of the new 40 GB iPods!)

Other than that, I haven’t been impressed much with the software industry of late. My colleagues tell me that there’s a chance that spending will begin to increase in the IT sector because many companies will begin to need software and hardware upgrades that were shelved for the past three years. This seems right with the increased movement toward service-based companies. IBM, HP, EDS, and others like them will benefit from this. However, the innovations of the dot-com era still seem far in the future. I’m still predicting a total of five to seven years before we truly get out of this funk.

Cheers — jeff

I’ve been getting nailed all day by this new variant of the W32/Sobig.F-mm virus (read about it here). This virus is worse than many others because it not only scans address books and contact lists for e-mail addresses but it also goes through your Internet cache. That means that any infected people out there who have visited my web site are now filling up my mailboxes with junk.

This is simple, folks. Get virus protection. It’s not expensive. Personally I prefer Symantec/Norton Anti-Virus, but I don’t care which one you use, just as long as you use it. There’s really no excuse for this.

Just in case this seems funny, remember that while it’s filling up my inbox, it’s clogging up your dial-up connection. At some point, this problem is going to reach a critical level where the Internet is all but useless. It’s time to start taking some responsibility for your access to the net.

I recently acquired a Mac PowerBook G4 for software development and I have to report that I’m really enjoying the system. As a software developer, I’ve been pleased to have a real development environment — one that works like Un*x — real make files, a full set of typical Un*x tools, and forward slashes. It’s also pleasant to be able to buy a computer system where I don’t have to pay separately for the development environment. It’s all free — just download from the Apple website.

Apple supplies an integrated development environment called Project Builder which is an adequate editor and visual debugger. But underneath that is gcc, so most of what you shake out on a Mac should port well to any other Un*x or Linux system.

My biggest disappointment in the system is the display. I decided to get the 15-inch model. The 17-inch was just too ugly and large to seriously consider carrying around and the 12-inch just didn’t have the resolution. The 15-inch display, while very bright and pleasant looking, is only 1280 x 854. So that means that the display on the Mac is less than that of my IBM ThinkPad, whose 14-inch display has a resolution of 1400 x 1050. I’m also not that happy with the keyboard, which feels a little mushy and small compared to the ThinkPad. But that’s understandable — no one makes keyboards as good as IBM does.

Operationally, I’ve toned down some of the cutesy stuff like bouncing icons and the like. I’m having trouble with the touchpad mouse, but that’s just because I’m used to the IBM eraser cap mouse. I guess I also miss the right mouse button. The PowerBook ships with a single button mouse, traditional for Apple, but “control-mouse click” is usually mapped to the right mouse button on other external pointing devices like the Logitech trackball I use when I’m at my desk.

I’ve been using Safari instead of Internet Explorer and the built-in Mail program. Both work well and in some ways Safari is a better browser than IE. However, I have found a couple of web sites where it fails, most notably with a firewall product that I use.

One of my colleagues made a comparison of Apple to Bang and Olafsen which is pretty fair. Apple’s emphasis on cool design sometimes overtakes the real needs of a machine like this. For example, there is enough real estate in this laptop to put more keys on the keyboard. The display could have a higher resolution. There could be a second mouse button. But that’s not typical Apple — they’d rather have perfectly clean lines instead of more functionality.

But overall, I’m pretty happy with this. There’s nothing like opening up a terminal window and getting a real command shell, not that piece of garbage that opens up on Windows. There’s a good chance that this system will become my primary laptop.