The Register: How Microsoft invented open source, by Billg

The open source movement wouldn't exist without Microsoft, Bill Gates told his company's shareholder meeting earlier this week. Open source is also a follower, not an innovator, and destroys jobs, the economy and world peace (we made that last bit up).

Sigh! Next thing Billy (Liar) will be telling us is that the Internet wouldn't exist without Microsoft! B-}

I think from now I think I will refer ro Microsoft as 'Ambrosia' for reasons which will be apparent from the film Billy Liar. BTW, is this a meme?

Like Seth I think that Doug Baron return to the Userland team is very exciting news.

On a local departmental newsgroup the students and I are currently reminiscing about my idiosyncratic lecturing style and some of my most memorable lectures over the years. One student thinks I am unnaturally pre-occupied with sign extension and the way I try and get the students to remember the 16-bit to 32-bit sign extension that takes place in, for example, the MIPS architecture. Of course, my all-time favourite processor was the M6809 and not just because it had a SEX instruction ;-):

The Motorola 6809, used in the UK's "Dragon 32" personal computer, actually had an official "SEX" instruction; the 6502 in the Apple II with which it competed did not. British hackers thought this made perfect mythic sense; after all, it was commonly observed, you could (on some theoretical level) have sex with a dragon, but you can't have sex with an apple.

There are quite a few other memorable quotes and events that pepper my lectures. Some of which have cropped up in the undergraduate lifetime of the current cohort of students but many others that only past students know about! Hopefully, none of them are reading this now!!

Personal favourites of mine - i.e. the ones I can remember - include:

• Shades of the Dr Strangelove Syndrome from my 'hand-in-pocket' lecturing delivery
• The 'woolly hat' diatribe about plagiarism
• The "I've never met anyone like you in the real world!" heckle
• The 'loss of tooth' lecture
• The 'floods of tears' and the 'low-tech animation' lecture
• The many, many lectures where I go off on a tangent - mainly about Ambrosia and/or the company that advertises its processors using the Blue Man Group
• The 'dance to the mobile phone ringing tone' lecture
• The 'beach wear' lecture
• The 'chin-heads' lecture
• The 'DMA' lecture. Unfortunately DMA in its full form has a very unfortunate spoonerism. You might like to check out The history of spoonerisms to find out how/why.
• and lots more... ;-)

In fact, it's a wonder that my students learn anything at all.

The Register: MS throttles research to conceal SW bugs

Microsoft Security Manager Scott Culp revealed unilateral steps the company has taken to throttle the exchange of vulnerability information relevant to their famously buggy products, clearly in hopes that patches and fixes can be fed to consumers discreetly, without ever realizing they've been at risk to attack.

Frequently asked question: "What is a meme?"

via Scripting News - Weblogging: Another Kind of Website

The Register: Home Office extends online snooping laws

It is looking increasingly likely that The Home Office will award itself the power to gather:

• Your email addresses
• The Web sites you visit
• Details of people you email
• The ISP(s) you use
• Your location according to a mobile phone and other details, if the Government believes it is detecting crime and disorder, protecting public health and safety, collecting tax or there is an issue of national security.

Tom's Hardware Guide CPU Guide: AMD Turns Up The Heat: Athlon XP 1900+ - A New Battle Front: Athlon XP 1900+

Summary:
AMD puts the pedal to the metal! The new Athlon XP 1900+ (clocked at 1600 MHz) pummels the more expensive Intel Pentium 4/2000 in most of our benchmark disciplines. It beats the P4's complicated architecture, proving that it pays to have a good conventional CPU design. In the end, only the results count!

via hbwt - Robot Dog 'Bugs' Inventor

A mechanical bug toy is fighting a robotic dog for more than just space under the Christmas tree this year. The two toys represent rival schools of thought vying for supremacy in the quest for artificial intelligence.

glish.com : CSS layout techniques

The Daily Sucker - Web Pages That Suck -- learn usability and good Web design by looking at bad design

IBM News | $40 million donation of software to open source community

IBM is donating $40 million of software to a new independent open-source community.

The Java-based open source software -- code-named Eclipse -- will enable developers to use software tools from multiple suppliers together, allowing developers to integrate business processes used to create e-business applications, such as those for Web services.

Thanks to Gordon for the heads-up

Hmm! I wonder just how close Dave is to the truth of the Microsoft Settlement in his DaveNet : You're free to think piece. Scary even if it's partially wide of the mark.

A few minutes after receiving an e-mailed announcement of the JISC conference - Constructing a Managed Learning Environment: Tools, tactics and the human experience I booked a place for the Edinburgh event on 26th November. If the booking ID if anything to go by I was the 14th person to book. Looking forward to it. Report and lnks in follow-ups to this thread in the future. I suspect that most of the attendees will be 'suits'.

via Scripting News - Are You A Blogaholic?

52 points is in the 51 through 80 precent (sic)
You are a dedicated weblogger. You post frequently because you enjoy weblogging a lot, yet you still manage to have a social life. You're the best kind of weblogger. Way to go!

Since the Daypop search to find others that took the quiz produced more results than I remembered being reported so I went back to the quiz and didn't answer any of the questions to see if it'd tell me how many took the quiz. So, in the spirit of investigative weblogging...

Your Score: 0 / 100

49 people have taken this silly test so far.

48 people have scored higher than you.

0 people have scored lower than you.

1 people made the same grade as you.

What does this mean?
0 points is in the 0 through 20 precent
I'm not so sure you are a weblogger at all. If you are, you might want to consider finding another hobby since you don't seem to be so into weblogging. Too busy with social life, perhaps?

Not surprisingly the Daypop search for this doesn't yet yield any results. At least until I ping weblogs.com with this posting ;-)