I'm tired of hearing that Apple is the be-all-and-end-all of innovation. They steal ideas as much as everyone else. Maybe back in 1984 they clearly led the way in graphical UIs. But since then the innovation has been spread out across the industry: sometimes Apple innovates, sometimes Microsoft innovates, and sometimes someone else innovates. In the end, that doesn't stop Apple from including those other innovations in their OS without attribution. So stop your whining Apple.

Dave Winer's Weblog

What to do when the platform vendor "validates" your product by copying it and announcing it will bundle the copy with the OS. I love what Konfabultor did, kick them in the ass, hard, with their own humor. "Cupertino, start your photocopiers." It's funny because that's what Apple said yesterday to poke Microsoft in the ribs (in a nice way of course). That's often been the lie around Apple, that they invent and Microsoft steals. I like to tell the story of how Mac scripting software came to be. I was in the audience at a Bill Gates speech in the early 80s in Palo Alto where he described a system-level scripting language for a personal computer, connecting various apps, a spreadsheet, word processor, plotting app. I made a note. That's a good idea. A few years later I started work on such a program. Showed it to Apple. Next thing you know, Apple has this great idea. A system-level scripting language for a personal computer, connecting various apps, a spreadsheet...

This is huge news out of Microsoft today. Wow.

Microsoft Announces new Express Products!!

In the TechEd Europe keynote today we officially announced the new Express products that are available to download right now:

 

• Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition (download)
• Visual C# 2005 Express Edition (download)
• Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition (download)
• Visual J# 2005 Express Edition (download)
• Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition (download)
• SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (download) – Note, SQL Express is included as an optional component in the installers of the other Express products. 

 

Thank goodness... I've been waiting for this to happen since GMail and Yahoo increased the acceptable standards for free email account stoage. I have a Hotmail account, and pay $35 Canadian a year for extra storage, and now I can cancel that service...

PCWorld.com - Hotmail Storage Jumps to 250MB

The domino effect Google started in April by announcing plans for a free e-mail service with 1GB of inbox storage continues, with Microsoft promising on Wednesday to boost Hotmail inbox capacity to 250MB from the current 2MB.

Shawn M of Microsoft posted an interesting account of a visit to campus by Dr. Weinberger. I don't know either person, but one of the concepts really struck me as a novel idea.

When it comes to creative works, we are not "consumers," and we are not users. Rather we appropriate creative works, that is, we make them our own. We apply them to our own context. We get them somewhat right or entirely wrong. They become part of us. That's how how we learn and how culture changes. But that means that creators should lose control of their works as quickly as possible. Obviously, creators need to be be paid for their work, but not for every bit of value they create: You shouldn't have to pay me if you re-read my book or lend it to a friend, even though you are getting more value from my book. Tough noogies on me. A pay-per-use system and allowing artists to control their works much past launching them into the world will kill culture. Further, since publishing creates the public [a point I'd made earlier], building an infrastructure designed to allow that type of control will damage the new public of the Web as well as cripple culture. It's a really really really bad idea, so don't do it.

As a creator of creative works (books), I have to understand both sides of the argument. But I would never want to see a pay per use system implemented for books, even though I am sure the technology exists to create such a system. I'm not sure if I totally agree with the point, but it's an interesting point.

I'm sure this next statement is not going to make you fall off your chair. I hate spam. Over the past year, spam has needlessly stolen dozens hours of my time. Even though I have a spam filter installed, I still have to sift through the spam I receive to ensure that no messages I want have been misclassified. It's rare - but it does happen.

So, the question is, how can I avoid spam? Obviously there are people in this world who receive no spam -- how can I become one?

The answer of course, is easy to say and hard to do: if spammers do not have your email address, you won't receive very much spam. So you avoid spam by keeping your email address private.

So, how do you keep your email address private? Actually, over the long term, it's next to impossible. Many popular web sites these days have some type of registration required to use them - New York Times, Blogger, Amazon.com, eBay, Yahoo. This list goes on and on. Every time you register for a web site, the risk of your email address becoming part of some spammers list increases.

If you have ever been part of a Usenet discussion, mailing list, forum, or blog comments, chances are good that your email address has been posted to the web. Spammers have programs that surf the web all day looking for new addresses - called harvesters. There are tons of other ways for spammers to get a hold of your email address, including hacking, random emailing, viruses and worms.

So, given all this, here are a few ideas for avoiding spam for good:

1. Change your email address frequently. Since it takes months for your email address to make its way onto every spammers list, if you changed your email address every 6 months, you would avoid quite a bit of spam without affecting your surfing habits.
2. Have multiple email addresses - one "private" for friends, and another "public" for web sites. This way, you can only change your "public" email address every few months, without harrassing your friends with "my email has changed" messages.
3. Create multiple public email addresses. That way, when one of those public email address gets flooded with spam, its even easier to change your address. And you will also get an idea of which web site gave your email address away to spammers.
4. Install a spam filter. If you can't afford to change your email address, install a good Bayesian spam filter.
5. Use Hotmail. These services seem pretty good at filtering out spam, although you lose some advanced features that modern email readers provide.
6. Use an email reader that only displays plain text, or one that shows HTML with images diabled like Outlook 2003. HTML images are one way spammers use to prove your email address is valid.
7. If you have to post your email address to a mailing list or public web site, obfuscate it. Use (at) instead of "@", (.) or (dot) instead of ".", put spaces in there, or insert obvious spam traps such as NO.SPAM or DIE.SPAMMERS.DIE in the middle of your real email address.

Recently, I wrote a rock paper scissors (RPS) web service and submitted it to a competition in Switzerland. (That sounds more impressive than it actually is...)

First, the good news, in my group I tied for first place with a record of 6 games won and 4 games lost. However, when you take the individual rounds into account, I came fourth in my group -- dead middle out of 7 contestants in Group 1.

http://www.00001001.ch/codeduel/fr/ranks.aspx?grId=0

I was given the user id “noname”.

There were a total of 112 contestants, although some of those appear to be Bots entered into the competition by the organizers to fill out the groups. The top prize was a Tablet PC.

I didn't know this...

TIP: Sharing Message Box Text

Ever seen a message box that you wanted to remember or share? What did you do?

...

When you see the dialog box, instead of copying an image to the clipboard, you can copy the text by simply pressing Ctrl-C. That's right--the standard keyboard shortcut for Copy will cause [the message text] to be placed on the clipboard.