A couple of hours ago I found out that Gerry Haran - a friend and work colleague - suffered a fatal heart attack sometime during the Christmas vacation.

Gerry was the head technician in the department and one of the nicest people I have had the privilege to know. My thoughts are with his family at this tragic time.

I still can't believe it.

via HtP - Apple polishes dual-processor, LCD-based desktops

Apple Computer Inc. is expected to sprinkle flat-panel displays and dual-processor configurations across its iMac desktop product line this year.

It'll be interesting to see how many of Jim Roepcke's MWSF 2002 predictions are spot-on come Jan 7th.

E 0.8.10 Download and Install E

This is the first release to build and run on Mac OS X. Many thanks to Chris Hibbert. This was also much less problematic than I would have expected, as Java-on-OS X sees a Unix system (with "/' for file name separators, etc), rather than a Mac system (with ":", etc).

David McCusker returns to the issue of low-level programming and links to Patrick Logan's opinions on Back to Basics and C strings.

The Joel on Software Forum | Pair Programming successes and failures

via HtP - Software model needs overhaul

As the trend toward putting multiple processors on a chip spills into the commercial marketplace, thought leaders say it's time for an even more radical shift, to new software models that reveal, rather than hide, the details of all the hardware resources engineers can now cram into a microprocessor.

Academics rally loudly around this trend, and network processor designers represent a phalanx of revolutionary engineers who have heard the call. But many top commercial microprocessor engineers still resist the painful migration away from today's legacy software aimed at uniprocessor machines.

With a family purchase of a DVD player imminent I really hope that the Netflix.com subscription model - where you can rent as many DVDs as you want for $20 a month with no late fees - as covered in this article gets established in the UK.