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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, April 19, 2003

About this blog, 2003 edition
Hey there. Apparently people are reading this all of a sudden, so maybe I should explain what the heck this site is all about and why I maintain it. I started "blogging" in September 2001, about a year and a half ago, though I really never intended for this to be anything more than private documentation. I write for a Windows-oriented news publication called Windows & .NET Magazine and am fairly well-known in the Windows world. However, I'm not just interested in Windows, and spend a lot of time using and evaluating Mac OS X, Linux, Mozilla, and various other non-Microsoft systems. This blog basically documents this non-Windows work, again, for my own use. I throw the occassional (often ranting) opinion piece up here as well, generally the ones that aren't appropriate for my work-related sites. I'm not interested in holding back here, or sparing anyone idiotic my wrath, so if you're one of the Gene Steinbergs of the world, stay away. You are hurting people, and I'm going to explain why here. Anyway, as I explained in one of my first posts, this blog was inspired by Neil Stephenson's excellent In the Beginning Was the Command Line. After a decade of using and evangelizing the Macintosh, Stephenson turned to Linux and its command-line oriented user interface for a variety of reasons that are wonderfully described in the book. I agree with most of Stephenson's assertions in this book, and recommend it highly. And in case the entire Microsoft empire comes crumpling to its knees, I'll be ready to move onto the Next Big Thing. Heck, I think I'm ready anyway.

In any event. I'm not sure what else to say. People ask me about my hardware. I have two Macintosh systems, a 2003 iMac 17-inch (1 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB hard drive) and a 2001 iBook (500 MHz, 640 MB RAM, 40 GB hard drive), both running Mac OS X 10.2.5, which I use to test Cupertino's best software (and let's not forget my beloved iPod). I also maintain at least one Linux box (a 600 MHz Gateway Solo 3350 notebook with 256 MB of RAM and a 20 GB hard drive), in addition to various Linux virtual machines I run from my main Windows desktop using Connectix Virtual PC 6.x (which is excellent). Currently, I'm running (and recommend) Red Hat Linux 9. I have several other PCs and notebooks at home as well, which I use in my Windows work. I have a Media Center PC hooked up to my main TV as a DVR, with which I have a love/hate relationship.

I'm also working on a few books at the moment, the most important of which is an update to George Beekman's excellent Computer Confluence, which is aimed at the educational market.

This is all very exciting, isn't it? If you're looking for the short version, I guess you could say I'm like Jerry Pournelle ... without the insanity, science fiction writing, or money. Or something. The opinions expressed here, naturally, are my own.

[ Posted at 9:04 AM | Permalink ]

Thursday, April 17, 2003

DOOM III this year
It can't come soon enough for me, but Wired has a nice preview of DOOM III.

[ Posted at 1:05 AM | Permalink ]

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

Apple, its fans, and revisionist history
Apple Computer and, to an even great extent, its fans routinely rewrite history in order to make Apple look like more of an innovator than it is. One recent example is Apple's digital hub strategy, which Apple fans will tell you was ripped off by Microsoft. However, as readers of WinInfo know, Microsoft actually announced its connected home strategy days BEFORE Steve Jobs announced the digital hub at MacWorld SFO 2001. This simple fact doesn't stop crazed Apple fans from trying to change history by misreporting the events that lead both Microsoft and Apple to embrace digital media and home networking, but whatever: The point here is that Apple copies Microsoft and other companies more often than it leads.

The ultimate example of this, however, is the Macintosh itself, which was very clearly "influenced" by the various products at Xerox PARC. How this happened has been clearly documented. And yet, in recent days, there's been an attempt to discredit this fact, and make it seem like the Mac and its GUI software was somehow a design inspiration from Steve Jobs and others at Apple. It all started when John Markoff wrote an article for the New York Times that correctly documents how Apple stole ideas from Xerox. This brought the revisionists out of the woodwork, including lead revisionist (and major jackass) Jef Raskin, who likes to take credit for the original Mac development for himself (Raskin was indeed the first person working on the Mac, which under his tutelage was a character-driven computer like the Apple II. Do the math).

Anyway, on MacInTouch this week, some clueless readers actually responded to Markoff's article with statements like, "The Lisa project was well underway by the time the Xerox visit [by Jobs and other Apple employees] ... clouding the true extent of the innovation within Apple which was independent of any contact with Xerox... in fact, some accounts of the meeting claim that the Xerox people were greatly impressed with developments at Apple, rather than the other way round." Ah yes. The problem with this reasoning, of course, is that it's untrue. Also, it turns out that this particular poster got his facts from ... yup, Jef Raskin.

So today, Bruce Horn, who designed the Mac Finder, set the record straight, however. "I felt Markoff's article was excellent and quite accurate," Bruce says, and he should know. He was at Xerox PARC during the design of the Alto, and at Apple for the Mac. "I do consider that the Mac (and the Lisa before it) is a distinct descendent of the Alto ... Raskin's history is, to put it bluntly, skewed and in places simply incorrect. Iconic displays, popup menus, windows, modeless text editing, direct manipulation user interfaces, etc. were all developed at PARC and SRI well before Raskin ever visited PARC. The Lisa project shifted directions dramatically after Apple visited ... (I was there at that meeting too)... To credit Raskin with these concepts is to fail to credit the original innovators at PARC and SRI, and the people who came from PARC to further their work at Apple." Excellent, and take that, revisionists. And for an interesting historical look at the similarities and differences between PARC's work and Apple's, check out this old article by Horn.

[ Posted at 10:36 AM | Permalink ]

With Microsoft, there is no such thing as failed technology
You know, everyone makes fun of Microsoft Bob, but the simple truth is that the company didn't waste a cent developing that product because the stupid little avatar characters from Bob were reused and enhanced in Microsoft Office, which has about 400 million users, in Windows XP Search, and in Microsoft Agent (and probably in other places I'm unaware of). But Bob isn't the only example of a Microsoft technology that we all a) make fun of but b) use every single day unknowningly. Another obvious example is the Channel Bar, one of the many ill-fated technologies from Internet Explorer 4.0/Windows Shell Update (the others were Active Desktop and one-click HTML-like shell navigation). You don't believe the Channel Bar is dead? Then explain to me what the hell this is, exactly. Unbelievable. Oh, and by the way: This product has over 20 million active users. I'd say the Channel Bar is not only alive and well, but thriving. Anyone care to make fun of any other "failed" Microsoft technology?

[ Posted at 9:54 AM | Permalink ]

Phoenix becomes Firebird, Minotaur becomes Thunderbird
Ending weeks of speculation, Mozilla.org announced this week that it has secured the names Firebird and Thunderbird for its standalone Web browser and email client applications, respectively. The name changes were required because the previous name of the browser, Phoenix, was mired in some sort of legal issue. These name changes come just a few weeks after Mozilla.org essentially admitted that it wasted five years of everyone's lives by developing Mozilla as a massive, all-in-one application suite.

[ Posted at 9:44 AM | Permalink ]

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Test post with BlogApp
Another OS X-based blogger app. BlogApp also appears to offer only posting and publishing, but not blog management, which kind of sucks. Am I the only one on earth that requires this functionality?

[ Posted at 11:25 AM | Permalink ]

Frequency test
I'm checking out a new Mac OS X blogger front-end called Frequency that looks small and fast and, at just $6, it's certainly cheap. A Windows XP version is expected next month as well. UPDATE: Just noticed the major problem with this app. You can only use it to make new posts, not edit existing posts. That stinks because I often noticed a small mistake seconds after I make a post. Ah well.

[ Posted at 10:31 AM | Permalink ]

Monday, April 14, 2003

Fortune: Apple has worst CEO
I think this article (and the accompanying table) speaks for itself.

[ Posted at 11:02 PM | Permalink ]

OS X Column view debuted in Lisa, not NeXTStep
At the awesome Pictorial History of the Apple Desktop Interface, we learn that the Column view in OS X didn't originate in NextStep, as we thought, but was instead first proposed as a UI element in Lisa, the GUI PC that preceded the Mac. Yeah, 20 years ago. Specifically, check out the image next to "December 1980 Prototype," which depicts "browser-like display with individually resizable panes." Sweet. And proof that Jobs' penchant for uncredited idea theft was alive and kicking in the early days.

[ Posted at 6:57 PM | Permalink ]

Safari 1.0 Beta 2 (v73)
It's out and, according to the release notes, "Safari Beta 2 introduces tabbed browsing to conveniently see and switch between multiple web pages in a single window, and AutoFill to instantly fill out web forms and password fields. This update also features increased standards compatibility and improved application stability." What this means to me is that Safari suddenly loads all the pages it used to balk at (MSNBC for example) and it no longer crashes Blogger. Woo. This is now my favorite browser on any platform, replacing Chimera. It's small, fast, and it does tabs. Good stuff.

[ Posted at 10:10 AM | Permalink ]

Sunday, April 13, 2003

Mac vs. PC part 781. Yes, the Mac loses again
Bare Feats is the latest site to pit the fastest (single processor with hyperthreading turned off, incidentally) PC vs. the fastest (dual-processor) Mac. Yeah, the PC kicks ass. Again. I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. Are there really people out there who believe that Macs are faster? More importantly, perhaps: What would happen if the lowly Mac were tested against a dual processor Xeon? Yikes.

[ Posted at 9:59 PM | Permalink ]