Compaq's weekly The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing Technology Journal is worth reading.

I liked the following quote cited in RCFoC for Nov. 13, 2000 - The Changing Faces...

"You'll have at least five jobs after you graduate, four of which haven't been invented yet."

Did I miss a Saturday post? Probably!

[Later] In fact, yes I did. Bummer. Now I have a gap in my calendar for the 18th November.

I would have managed to slip in under the deadline of midnight - since the Conversant server seems to run a minute or so behind my Powerbook's time - but I've noticed that when I have Frontier and/or Radio Userland running in the background my Powerbook becomes unresponsive for 30 seconds or so on the stroke of midnight. So, just as I was about to post the first line of this message as Saturday's contribution midnight struck on my machine and, like Cinderella, it seemed to rush off somewhere else to do someone else's bidding. I guess it's the 24-hour daemon(s) kicking in.

Why I should bother missing a day is an interesting psychological question. Anyhow not much happened today and 11:55pm was the first time I'd logged in - hence the lack of a jotter entry.

The hack furby challenge has been won!

The prize of two hundred and fifty dollars was won by Canadian computer consultant Jeffrey Gibbons, who submitted the winning prototype by Fedex. The design is being published to the public under the terms of the competition, and orders are being taken for a "Hack Furby" kit over the Internet.

"The cash prize is just a token," explained van der Linden, "The real prize is the bragging rights to the accomplishment, and the benefit of sharing it with the world. Computer Science departments can now base their real-time programming courses on this very low-cost equipment."

leJOS: Java based OS for Lego RCX

Like its predecessor (TinyVM), leJOS is a tiny Java (tm) runtime. It functions as replacement firmware for the Lego Mindstorms (tm) RCX, a programmable brick which is part of Lego's Robotics Invention System (tm) (RIS). The RCX contains a Hitachi H8300 processor and 32 Kb of RAM (of which 28 Kb are safe for the firmware to use). We have plans to port leJOS to other small devices.

<muse>Sounds like this would be a cool way to teach embedded systems!</muse>

NME news:

HMV have refused to stock the new single by THE OFFSPRING in the UK after the band decided to give the track away as a free download on their official website

Via San Diego Don's InfoNode news of a well written 'OS X on Intel' rebuttal. FWIW, I think it would be a big mistake for Apple to undermine their own product base - PowerPC Macs - by releasing OS X for IA86.