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 Saturday, December 27, 2003
Happy Holiday's and best wishes for a great 2004! 9:56:33 AM 
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Monday, August 19, 2002
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Despite Apple's recent successes and their "switch" campaign, is there any rational reason to purchase a Macintosh? I did some comparison shopping recently, only to discover that Apple's Power Mac's are about 30-50% more expensive than a comparable X86 system. Its hard to tell what is comparable, so I may be wrong, but there seems to be no shortage of $1200 systems in the X86 world that come loaded with big disks, gobs of memory, CD/DVD burners, a fast processor, and on. The lowest end Power Mac, on the other hand, is priced at about $1700.00, and the options are skimpy by comparison.
So, why did I just buy a Power Mac? Was it Steve's famous "reality distortion field?" Next month, when I get my new X86 PC at work, I'll have two modern systems to use on a regular basis and will be able to do some comparisons. Stay tuned. 10:34:22 PM
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Just for kicks, I ran More 3.1 on my new PowerMac today. OS 9.2 within OS X 10.2, aka Jaguar. Since its well known that More 3.1 runs under OS 9.2, this is no great revelation, but it is comforting to see once again that well written software can stand the test of time. Where I work, this kind of software is known as "stiffware." And its meant as a high compliment in a world where most software efforts fail. I love the way More greets its users in the "About More" dialog. "Good Evening," it says, somehow knowing that 10:30 PM is night time. Good software doesn't have to be complex, but its likely that most good software, like good writing goes through many iterations before its ready for prime time.
Now, OSX 10.2 has a worthy successor to the outlining feature in More. Bundled with my Powermac is a package named Omni Outliner. Outliner has at least one feature that More did not have: multi-column outlines. Similar to In-Control, which is also now stiffware, and continues to run under OS 9.2. 10:25:27 PM
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Thursday, August 8, 2002
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Do any of you read Scientific American? Do any of you aspire to write for Scientific American? If so, you may be interested in this brief story about their treatment of Forrest Mims III.
Can we rely upon Scientific American to be objective? Read this critique of a recent article of theirs. 1:59:27 PM
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Sunday, July 14, 2002
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Does anyone remember Forrest Mims' III? I remember the "Engineer Notebooks" he authored for Radio Shack. When I was unable to learn a new concept, especially with respect to the transistor, I could count on the clarity, and simplicity of his approach to help me through.
He also wrote for Scientific American years ago. 2:37:20 PM
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Friday, July 5, 2002
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What do you think about vouchers for education? Should parents and guardians be given the freedom to direct some if not all of their education tax dollars to the school of their choice? What if the school of their choice offers religious instruction?
Its a great topic for the media because its so controversial. Our local paper, The Arizona Republic for example, has been running at least one op-ed piece a day on the topic for the past week or so.
This one by Ricardo Pimentel defies the laws of reason and common sense, but it is thought provoking and will likely result in many letters to the editor which may be how Mr. Pimentel is measured!
He suggests that if we open up education to choice, we should open up other governement services to choice as well. For example, if the state spends $5,000 per capita on roads and other transportation infrastructure, why not send every one in the state a check for $5,000 to spend as they please. Mr. Pimentel has his eye on a new Audi. Maybe I'd use my check as a downpayment for a new 350Z.
This is pure nonsense, and Mr. Pimentel knows it. But he's trying to equate the building of roads with the raising of children. In both cases, as Mr. Pimentel sees it, its the government's duty to build roads AND to educate children as they see fit. Voucher programs in his eyes, only dilute the governments ability to carry out thier charter in either arena.
I have friends that refuse to engage in this debate. They ask where did the government get the authority to compel children to attend (government) school in the first place. And, where did they get the authority to tax all of us to pay for it?
I'm not sure where those questions might lead, but I do worry about children that are stuck in school systems that do not care enough about our children to hire teachers that have expertise in the subjects they have been hired to teach.
Did you know that in Texas, Florida, and Washington DC, prospective teachers are only required to score in the 20th percentile of the subject matter proficiency tests that they are given? This is the result of school systems and the corresponding teacher's colleges that place more value on HOW to teach rather than on WHAT to teach. 5:34:03 PM
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The Z car is back! Next month, Nissan will resume production of its original sports car, the 240Z. Only now, its called the 350Z.
Today's Wall Street Journal has a nice review of the car, but access requires a paid subscription to the online edition. Starting prices are low... only mid 20's for a fairly refined sports car. Expect dealers to mark this up given that Nissan won't be building too many. I suspect they brought the car back to encourage people to visit the showroom. The hope is that people will go to their local dealer to see the 350Z, and walk out with an Altima or some other vanilla car that Nissan sells by the boatloads. 5:14:51 PM
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I just doubled the RAM on my 400MHz iMac and its made all the difference with OSX performance. Granted, performance on this machine is mediocre at best, but Apple could have done more to allow folks like me to tune OSX virtual memory parameters. I can understand that faced with the choice to ship OSX or spend more time creating utilities for memory management, Apple made the right decision, but why little to no guidance from Apple regarding this glaring ommision?
I upgraded to 384MB, by the way.
Neal Pearson has written a nice article about OSX VM tuning for folks who are curious about how to take advantage of this inherent feature in Unix. 4:53:12 PM
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Saturday, May 25, 2002
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House of Representatives recently voted against a parent friendly proposal regarding parental rights. The proposal, HB2392, would require the Arizona Department of Education to produce a list of education rights to address the concern that many, if not most, parents don't really know what their rights are!
Here's an excerpt from Len Munsil's CAP website.
"These rights, all of which come directly from existing Arizona Title 15 education statutes or rules adopted by the State Board of Education, include the following:
The right to participate in school councils and parental satisfaction surveys.
The right to receive special education services, school report cards, parental involvement information.
The right to English Immersion Waivers
The right to review textbooks, courses of study and test results.
The right to select phonics reading instruction.
The right to opt-out of sex education curriculums, AIDS/HIV education curriculums and child immunizations requirements.
The right to home school children.
The right to access the State's failing schools tutoring fund. "
The opponents to this proposal felt that compliance would incur additional costs on an already strapped school system. Those in favor were only asking that this information be provided to parents in the form of a 1 page flyer that could be efficiently distributed by the schools.
If the schools truly want to encourage greater parental involvement, why would they oppose this proposal? I bet many parents would take the opportunity to review materials or want access to the tutoring fund. Hmmmm.... 11:19:00 AM
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Monday, May 6, 2002
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To emphasize that Apple is promoting open protocols, see Zero Conf for information about Apple's new Rendezvous technology that supports dynamic discovery of system resources and more tangible things like play list sharing between iTunes users.
I wonder how Tibco feels about Apple using the tradename for thier proprietary messaging product for something that plays in a very similar space called "middleware." 7:42:47 PM
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Today, Apple introduced OS X 10.2 at its World Wide Developer's Conference. Code named Jaguar, 10.2 features a number of open P2P protocols and services that sound very interesting. I'm looking for some docs on Apple's developer site that detail these new technologies and if I find any, I will post here. While I'm at it, can someone explain to me why people like to share playlists? Unless they are also sharing the associated MP3's, I don't get it. And we all know that sharing MP3's is a no-no. 7:34:48 PM
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