Status-Q

Here's a picture I took today in Windermere in the English Lake District:

Note the implication of the logo. The internet, in all its glory, is represented by a letter 'e'...

Since upgrading my elderly Powerbook to 'Jaguar', the latest version of Apple's operating system, I'm struck once again by an important contrast with Windows. As far as I can remember, every upgrade of Windows I ever did gave you extra features, sometimes even features you wanted, but at the cost of speed.

Mac OS X, perhaps because of its youth, has the wonderful characteristic that every version has been faster than its predecessor, which is especially good if your hardware isn't the latest. This is particularly wholesome because Apple, unlike Microsoft, does make a lot of its money from hardware and so has a vested interest in encouraging you to upgrade.

[Original Link] For anyone who wants to know more about Lessig's background and his upcoming Supreme Court case. A very nice bit of writing by Steven Levy.

"For Microsoft, the proceedings were just business, as Tony Soprano says."

[Original Link] I was looking at some old steam-powered boats recently and noticed how many of them incorporated a little hot-water urn to allow passengers to make nice hot cups of tea.

Perhaps, in contrast, these very neat air-powered cars could also make nice cold fizzy drinks?

[Original Link] "3G is too little too soon, with none of the attributes of a real generational shift. It is still voice-centric at a time when data usage is gaining fast, a conversion that 3G can nowhere near fully accommodate."

Rose & I agreed there could be few things we would like to watch less than hours of analysis and dredging up of old emotions one year on from 9/11.

But almost at the same time we're going to have the only thing that could come close for awfulness: it's 5 years on from the death of Princess Diana. I think the TV can stay firmly switched off for a couple of weeks...

[Original Link] A slightly bizarre article about the aftermath of the Cambridge Lab closure, by Ben Fountain. But it's VNC, Ben, not VCN! It's amazing how many variations there have been on this theme...

[Original Link] A very interesting and important interview cited recently on Slashdot. Nominally about KDE, it covers much larger issues in a compelling and powerful way:.

"...We are steadily heading to a future in which the control of humanity's intellectual property - works of art, multimedia, ideas, writings, etc. - is so vested in software vendor(s) that it is fair to say that the average user of a proprietary desktop will eventually no longer "own", in the traditional sense of the word, his or her own electronic creations. In other words, the products of our creative minds, the very essence of our humanity, are being relentlessly stripped from us.

If you use a proprietary OS to make a video or audio track, or to write a research paper, and save it in one of the default proprietary electronic data formats, you might soon find yourself actually paying someone else run-time and/or license renewal fees just to access your own creations. Not to mention any charges that may apply to distributing copies to others (whether directly or because the recipient must also pay similar runtime or recurring fees to access the data). You tell me, when you have to pay one particular vendor money every time you or someone else views a movie you created, who owns the movie? ..."

[Original Link] Steve Jobs thinks so. But is he building an Apple replacement?