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About this site

For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Coming soon: Everything Must Go

The next edition of "Everything Must Go" will be appearing here soon. --Paul

Saturday, August 24, 2002

Mozilla Calendar goes remote
This is good stuff: My favorite Mozilla project, Calendar, now has the capability to store calendar data remotely on a server so that you can subscribe to it via HTTP and FTP from any client and share your scheduling information with other users. Needless to say, I'll be playing with this excellent new feature ASAP. And if this sounds a lot like Apple iCal to you, it should: They're basically the same thing and the data should be totally interchangeable. Naturally, iCal is prettier. For now.

[ Posted at 10:41 AM | Permalink ]

DOOM III
I applaud id Software for focusing on scares, mood, and the single player experience in DOOM III, due next year. But if this interview is any indication, the company is seriously screwing the multiplayer experience, which was perfected in Quake III Arena (and yes, I still play about every day). A few key points: First, the DOOM 3 engine (which will also power Quake IV) supports only FOUR players at a time. This is very bad. They say it's a design choice, not a limitation. Mods can have more players, apparently. Second, you won't be able to join a multiplayer game in progress which is, go figure, reminiscent of the original DOOM. This is also very bad. This also applies to Quake IV. Their answer about this, frankly, is bullshit. I play Quake III online all the time, and they're wrong. Very wrong. The much-ballyhooed Xbox version of DOOM III is not definite. And it won't be as good as the PC version (obviously) if they do it. Finally, the demos they've shown so far (which are amazing, BTW) were shown in 640x480 medium res (!) but they're running 800x600 high res now at id, which must look sick.

[ Posted at 10:35 AM | Permalink ]

Common sense prevails
In an all-too-uncommon backing of common sense, a US District Court refused to uphold British Telecom's supposed patent on hyperlinks, and dismissed a test case BT had launched against Prodigy Communications. If BT had won, of course, the company would have launched thousands of similar cases worldwide, which would have had a devastating effect on the Internet economy. And if you don't have enough reasons to hate BT already, consider this quote from BT Chairman "Sir" Christopher Bland, made when the court case had just started: "The case will go ahead," he said. "Everyone sues all the time in the States, anyway." Yeah, and the real losers get their cases thrown out in the States too. Now go back to being an historical footnote, you dinosaur.

[ Posted at 10:29 AM | Permalink ]

Another difference between Microsoft and Apple...
When Microsoft charges $99 for an OS upgrade, the new product is dramatically different from the one it's replacing. When Apple charges $129 for an OS upgrade, it's a minor point release that fixes problems that shouldn't have been there in the first place and adds features that should have been in the prior OS to begin with. It's hard not to get sarcastic about this, but users jumping from Windows 98/Me/2000 to XP got a lot for their money while OS X users jumping to Jaguar are now getting what they should have had from day one (which was 18 months ago, incidentally). It's a sad state of affairs. Jaguar should have been free or a low-cost (~$20) upgrade.

[ Posted at 10:07 AM | Permalink ]

The real difference between Microsoft and Apple...
...is that Microsoft is big enough to throw project after project against the wall and see what sticks. Apple, meanwhile, is so small that it pretty much has to come up with ideas and only execute on the very best ones. It's debateable which approach will ultimately be more successful. This fall, Apple has a new OS version and a few new interconnectivity apps to brag about. Microsoft has Windows XP SP1, XP Tablet PC Edition (and the new Tablet PC devices), XP Media Center Edition (and the new Media Center PCs), Windows Powered Smart Displays, a new CE .NET version, Windows .NET Server, a new Visual Studio .NET update, a new Windows Messenger version, various new consumer-oriented applications, numerous new PC games and Xbox titles, and so on. I'm probably missing most of what they're doing, to be honest. What's most interesting here is that much of what Microsoft releases this fall will eventually just fail or be rolled into other proudcts (XP Media Center Edition comes to mind) or, in the best tradition of the software giant, simply be pulled along as loss leaders until they're eventually successful. That's what you can do when you rule the world, I guess.

Another related note: Because of the relative sizes of the two companies, Microsoft can afford to do a lot more in-house research, while Apple's best ideas (iPod, various XP-like features in Jaguar) have come from outside the company. That means that Microsoft is innovating a lot more than Apple and a lot more than they're given credit for. It's been this way since at least 1994, and I don't see any serious reversal of the trend this decade, though again we should give Apple credit for only executing on their very best ideas. It makes them look focused and, yes, innovative, when in fact they're just running for their lives. But this kind of situation can often bring out the best in companies, just as it does in people. And I think Apple is now executing on strategy better than ever. It's just that the Microsoft tidal wave is also bigger and faster than ever as well.

[ Posted at 9:52 AM | Permalink ]

Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" ships today
Yippee. Sadly, Jaguar won't do much to reverse Apple's fortunes, but it's a solid release. What I'm really looking forward to, however, is iSync and iCal.

[ Posted at 9:47 AM | Permalink ]

The obvious problem with Linux
It's astonishing that people like this guy are just figuring out that Linux has end user/ease of use issues and then presenting them as some sort of epiphany, as if the information he's relating is somehow surprising. On the other hand, if he's being honest about the reader comments, people are surprised, and that is exactly what's wrong with Linux. And if you think that's bad, see how easy it is to get some Mac noob getting command line UNIX apps running under OS X.

[ Posted at 9:45 AM | Permalink ]

Sunday, August 18, 2002

Mozilla still marches on
Still no 1.1 yet, but the nightly builds now feature new icons and other needed improvements. More importantly, there is now a standalone mail client project, Minotaur, in the works to accompany Phoenix, the standalone browser project. I love it when a plan comes together.

[ Posted at 9:44 PM | Permalink ]