Journal: News & Comment

Techie good and bad

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Good

Google buys Blogger - Google, in general, seems to get it, so I'm more optimistic about Blogger (which needed the money, bandwidth, server muscle, and expertise) than about Virtual PC (see below).

Inventors of the Global Positioning System and kidney dialysis get big awards - Although GPS became widespread much more recently, it saves lives just as surely as kidney dialysis and other artifical organ techniques. Both technologies are now so ingrained that few of us think about who might have invented them.

Dave Barry answers questions on Slashdot - Funny. [UPDATE: Actually, I just read the whole thing, and it wasn't that funny. Not compared to his column or weblog. Sorry.]

Bad

Microsoft buys Virtual PC - Although Microsoft has an interest in selling Windows licenses to Mac users -- and only a small proportion of Virtual PC users are likely to run Linux, I'd guess -- I just have a bad feeling about this one. Connectix has always been a lean and mean company. Microsoft hasn't been lean in a long time.

Twelve-digit phone numbers - Even with speed-dial and phone-number synchronization, a lot of us still like to keep important phone numbers in our brains. Twelve digits is probably over the limit of what most people can reasonably remember reliably. The result, if it goes ahead? Wrong Number City. Maybe we should move to something other than an arbitrary string of numbers, like, oh, I dunno, e-mail addresses?

Knowing about the virulent "Slammer" Internet data worm, but not telling everyone in advance - Bad Symantec. Bad.

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