Day: November 1, 2002

I’ve been reading about extreme programming over at extremeprogramming.org.  It turns out that I’ve been using some XP ideas and doing some XP stuff without really knowing it.  I was completely wrong about other stuff.  I need to find an article called, “XP: Party of One.”

Brent Simmons is trying to raise user consciousness about RSS bandwidth issues:

But, since I’m working on a new beta, and bandwidth is still an issue, I was thinking of adding another feature—a note on the Info window for a subscription that says whether or not the subscription is bandwidth-friendly.

I personally think it’s a great idea.  I hope this makes it into the next version of NetNewsWire.  Other aggregators take notice.

Update:

Here’s a screenshot.

Especially friendly sites are in blue; especially unfriendly sites are in red.

CNet: $399 Gateway.

OpenBSD 3.2 has hit the streets!  Also of note is the 3.2 release song: Goldflipper.  It’s available in mp3 and ogg format.  Lyrics are here.  The previous two release songs have made it into a few roadtrip mixes of mine… [via OSNews]

Serious Instructional Technology:

Doing tedious, but necessary tasks today, e.g copying some Blackboard courses (5 minutes and counting for just one step right now).

Blackboard is good in many respects, but it ain’t that good.

I can’t say that I enjoyed Blackboard from the user end.  I was a student in a class that used blackboard, and while the idea was great, it seemed buggy and slow all the time.  I’m not sure if that was school or otherwise, but I didn’t like it very much.

Slashdot covers Jaluna-1, a real time operating system recently released as open source under a license derived from the MPL (Mozilla Public License).

Watch out for those computer programmers:

A software programmer at Autotote, the company responsible for the computer systems that collected and processed wagers for Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup thoroughbred racing championships, manipulated software to trigger a winning $3 million payoff for a Baltimore man, company executives said today.

Doc Searls writes about his experiences on the Linux Lunacy cruise.

Phil Wainewright on web services:

People who build web services using tools from the big vendors are tied to deploying on the same vendors’ platforms. And I’m not just talking about Microsoft here. Despite touting the openness of the J2EE architecture and their commitment to open systems and standards, neither IBM nor BEA support any platforms apart from their own if you build web services using their tools.

Mark Pilgrim:

I need a break. Back in a few weeks.