Thursday, September 30, 1999

[[UserLand/Frontier/Samples]]New sample: Simple String Remover. "I needed this script because I wanted to markup the text on the Scripting News home page with categorization strings delimited by double square brackets."

[[UserLand/Frontier/Samples]]Eric Soroos responds with his version of my script which uses Regex. Excellent!

[[Computers/Clones/Dell]]ZDNN: Dell Livid at Analyst Report. "Dell Computer Corp. is livid with an influential computer analyst for issuing a critical report that faults the fast-growing computer maker for allegedly attempting to cover up a series of miscues."

[[Computers/Apple/Macintosh]]Salon: A worm in the Apple? "Quicktime 4.0 is like nothing you've ever seen on a Mac. Has Apple broken its intuitive user interface?"

[[Operating Systems/Linux]][[Operating Systems/Windows]]Linux.Com: Microsoft Fundamentalism vs Linux Spirituality. "Microsoft has been and continues to fight for its survival with FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). It also uses power and control to force compliance. It is a top-down organization, struggling to control and monopolize the avenues of information transfer. Its top down model and insistence maintaining itself as the one and only way, is easily compared to fundamentalism. And what do fundamentalists stoop to when challenged by superior knowledge, technique or insight? You guessed it, FUD."

One man's "spirituality" is another man's FUD. By focusing the spotlight on MS, they blow off independent developers and also the Mac, and Solaris, and basically everything else. Proof that not only are there self-centered jerks in big companies, but also self-centered jerks in the open source community.

[[Engineering/Philosophy/Murphy's Law]]Murphy's Law was born at Edwards Air Force Base, in 1949, as was Stapp's Ironical Paradox -- "The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle." Amen!

[[Weblogs/Developers]] [[XML/News]] XmlHack.Com is "a web site covering essential news, issues, opinions and programming advice from the XML developer community". Welcome!

It's also our newest channel. Schwinnnng!

[[Engineering/Philosophy/Murphy's Law]]Dictionary.Com: "The memetic drift apparent in these mutants clearly demonstrates Murphy's Law acting on itself!" Excellent!

[[Operating Systems/Solaris]] [[Operating Systems/Linux]] OS Opinion: What if Solaris were free? Would Linux survive?

[[Web/Culture/Free Speech Issues]] Matt Dornquast reduces the Third Voice debate to its essence.

[[Web/E-Commerce]] MSNBC: Amazon Repositions. "Starting Thursday, Amazon.com refashions itself into a Web superstore with more than 500,000 new items. Vacation packages, handpainted miniature football stadiums and, yes, even local bookshops will be available on Amazon.com through its new zSHOPS program."

[[Web/Culture/Art]]NY Times: Aesthetics of Plain Old Text. "Using Ascii 'is a flag indicating an attitude that image-making with computers is not merely the technical pursuit of creating the perfect simulation.'"

[[UserLand/Frontier/Customer Support]]We'll extend the "grace period" Frontier pricing for another ten days. This allows us to catch up with questions and work with the credit card service bureau on problems (their service is relatively new and not without glitches) and gives us a bit of breathing room on the Support Associate program.