Month: July 2002

Sun and Apple team up: CNet reports that your favorite non-Microsoft office suite might be coming to an OSX box near you.

“I don’t want to sell StarOffice for OS X,” Siress [Sun’s senior director of desktop marketing solutions] said. “I want Apple to bundle it. I’ll give them the code. I’d love it if I could get the team at Apple to do joint development and they distribute it at no cost–that it’s their product. Nobody makes a product more beautiful on Apple than Apple.”

There is a lot of work ahead of them though.  Staroffice has a look and feel that is consistent across all the platforms that it runs on, something that would likely have to change to appeal to mac users.  Yet another thing to keep tabs on.

Reuters:

“RABAT (Reuters) – Surgeons have managed to stitch back a Moroccan boy’s penis after it was bitten off by a donkey, the official MAP news agency reported Thursday.“

“MAP did not say how the donkey managed to bite off the boy’s penis.”

XML is wonderful, but it’s a bloated beast.  I was curious what efforts have gone into XML compression, and here are some sites I found:

• XMLPPM: XML-Conscious PPM Compression
• XMill: An Efficient Compressor for XML
• Millau: An encoding format for efficient representation and exchange of XML over the Web

I know there are more tools and sites out there, but several of the top google returns redirected to porn sites or companies that had been gobbled up by a company that was then gobbled up.

There are also mod_gzip, an apache module that compresses documents using gzip and decompresses them on the fly.

DMCA Violation: Dan Gillmor reports that Bruce Perens decides not to violate the DMCA after some suggestion from his employer.  That was probably a smart idea, too.

Western Digital announced a 200 gig hard drive the other day.  Now I just have to finish filling up the 40’s I picked up a little while ago…

The shipping gods have smiled upon me.  I recieved Web Services Essentials and Using Samba from Amazon a day before they were supposed to show up.  I am about 30 pages into the web services book, and it is an extremely informative read.

Jikes, the zippyfast Java compiler was released today. New features include a version number of 1.16.

Other things to read when I get home:

The draft Special Publication 800-48, Wireless Network Security: 802.11, Bluetooth, and Handheld Devices [HUGE pdf, beware –Ed] is available for public comment. The document examines the benefits and security risks of 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN), Bluetooth Ad Hoc Networks, and Handheld Devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDA). The document also provides practical guidelines and recommendations for mitigating the risks associated with these technologies.

NIST also lists other publications here.

Switch Different: Rael reports from OSCON with several geeky switch spots.

Chris DiBona chucks Emacs for Vi, David Ascher tries his hand at macho Perl code, Ken Williams runs cooler in boxers, Nat Torkington deserts the camel for the sleek world of Python, and Sarah Burcham switches to Windows XP.

Writer’s block == evil.

The Register is reporting that Windows .net Server RC1 will be available as a free download.

Dan Gillmor posted an article with his thoughts on Yochai Benkler’s paper entitled “Coase’s Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm.” There’s also a discussion on Slashdot about the economics of open source software.

Weblogs and Health: “I started smoking when I was a virgin. So until I quit, on 6/14/02, I had never had sex as a non-smoker. I won’t go into details, but it’s quite a bit better without the cigarettes.” —Dave

From The Elements of Style: omit needless words (rule 13).

You can’t change the world by surfing the web and playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I have tried though. It doesn’t work.

Trafficant gets beamed up: A 420 to 1 vote. Condit was the only person voting in his favor. I’d make fun of Ohio and Youngstown, except I have family from around there. You know you live in a mob town when the resturant down the street gets blown up.

Yesterday was more productive than I had anticipated. I paid some bills, renewed some domains at 000domains, and picked up a new one: mattcroydon.com.

gSoap is a C/C++ SOAP implementation.

Very sad news: Linux Weekly News (LWN) is shutting its virtual doors next week. I’ve considered them a great linux news source for quite some time now, they’ll be missed. Thanks for all the hard work of everyone involved over the years.