I ordered half a dozen Canon Powershot S45’s for the store this afternoon.  It looks like a good combination: 4.0 megapixel, 3x optical zoom, nice design, it uses compact flash, compact size.  Full specs are here.  The only downside is that the LCD is in perfect nosegrease-smearing position.  Other than that, I think that it is positioned well.  MSRP is $649, street price will probably be around $549.  We shall see.

Wow, John Poindexter lives in Rockville, Maryland, just off of I-270.  That’s not too long of a drive from my house… [via Rafe Colburn, a.k.a. rc3]

Russ:

As if I don’t get enough grief from my wife over this topic, Erik has an amusing new survey up on his blog.

He’s just lucky that CowboyNeal wasn’t an option…

Tomcat 4.1.16-beta has been released.  Changes (from the freshmeat page):

Performance and reliability enhancements were made. JSP compliance fixes were made.

Today’s high is expected to be “near 30(F).”  Will Cox is experiencing something a little colder:

Set my hot coffee cup down on the roof of my car as I got out. It froze to it.

MacNN:

Apple’s senior vice president of retail Ron Johnson said that Apple had its busiest week ever at its retail stores, with over 365,000 people visiting its 50 stores in the six-day Thanksgiving week, according to Dow Jones Newswires.

ONDotnet has a good tutorial on interfacing data and forms.  There is also an excellent tutorial up on C# Generics in Rotor.  Both are worth a read.

From the underdog-linux-distro department: Rock Linux 1.5.20 is out. [via NewsForge]

DPReview:

Ricoh Japan has announced a new waterproof digital camera, the Caplio 300G. This new model has a 3.34 megapixel CCD (2048 x 1536 max image size) and a three times optical zoom (35-105mm equiv.) F2.6-4.7 lens. The 300G is is not only waterproof but also dustproof, and impact resistant and so should appeal to sporty types.

This looks extremely cool, though I was unable to google a price.  I’ve done some underwater photography over the years, and the design of this camera screams “Snorkel but don’t dive!”  This looks like a great camera to take skiing, to the beach, or snorkeling, but it is probably not going to survive more than 10-15 feet underwater.  You have been warned.

Diego has some thoughts on how to make a Swing application not suck.  After trying Spaces, which feels like a native app, I think you should listen to him.

TheServerSide asks this question:

An interesting editorial piece has been published that is suggesting that JBoss is becoming to the app server what Apache is to the web server. What does the J2EE community think?

O’Reillynet posted an article about using PHP in Project Builder under Mac OSX:

Apple provides a powerful set of developer tools with Mac OS X. Originally developed by NeXT for programmers working with Objective-C, the tools have since evolved for use with a wide range of source languages, including Java, C++, and AppleScript. The Mac OS X developer tools package also includes the system header files and a C compiler, so it is an essential addition for anyone who wants a complete BSD Unix environment. At the heart of Mac OS X’s developer tools is a full-featured text editor and IDE called Project Builder. [via RootPrompt.org]

OSNews reports that Windows .NET Server 2003 RC2 is out:

Windows .NET Server 2003 Release Candidate 2 is released to beta testers. Upgrade or join the Customer Preview Program today and see what’s new.

My friend Roger sent me this link.  It’s a flash file called ‘Recursive.swf.’  It might just hurt your head.

I’ve been sick for the last few days.  I spent this afternoon in bed rather than coding and writing.  I think I’ve been reading too many java.blogs.

Sam Ruby points to an excellent definition of the bikeshed metaphor.  He also offers insight as to how bikeshed discussions are solved at Apache:

The way that these disputes tend to get resolved in Apache is that somebody steps up to the plate and builds the darn thing as best as they can and solicits input in the form of “patches” (tangible suggestions in the form of working code).  The original code provided is generally not important – it tends to get refactored away anyway into oblivion.  What is important is that it focuses discussion into the form of constructive and tangible input.

In this case, I have done exactly that.  List and source.  Patches welcome.

Slashdot reports that there will be a market for desktop 64-bit systems.  As long as pricing for CPU, motherboard, and RAM are what AMD is hinting at, I’ve got two words for ya: Hell Yeah!

Brett Morgan weighs his Zilla in on packet probing:

I forsee a future where all communications, yeah even flippant communications between IM clients, will be secured with ssl or ssh wrapping, just to make sure the damn routers don’t degrade service. I know this is happening at a major Uni that I used to work for, and it took the students all of 2 weeks to figure out what was going on, and ssl tunnel everything.

A very real case of adaption and counter-adaption.

Those music-sharing, movie-trading ssl-tunneling college students!

The New York Times has an article that sheds some light behind the scenes of the myserious Google.  I’ve been known to say phrases like, “Google makes it all better,” or “mmmGoogle,” as well as adding Google to my list of commonly used verbs.  I often have search results from Google before someone is able to finish asking a question.  They track each and every search query, and each is mapped to an IP address.  Does that scare you?  When is the last time you read 1984?

“Google does not comment on the details of legal matters involving Google,” Mr. Brin responded.

Infoworld reports:

A GROUP OF six digital still camera makers and printer vendors, including Sony and Hewlett-Packard, have jointly proposed a new industry standard that allows images recorded by a digital still camera to be printed out without using a computer, they announced on Monday.

The DPS standard — which is a name, not an acronym — is being proposed by Canon, Sony, HP, Fuji Photo Film Co., Olympus Optical Co., and Seiko Epson.

An almost identical story is available at CNet.