Scoble speculates about Google and Silverlight:
” I can see Microsoft coming at Google with a raft of stuff built on top of Silverlight. For end users at home it’ll look slicker, feel better, and have far better video quality than anything Google can throw at Windows users with YouTube/Flash/etc. “
Robert, Silverlight is the best thing that could ever happen to Google: It validates and empowers their vision of the web as the new application platform. Google doesn’t care whether you run IE or Firefox to check your mail, watch videos, or click on adwords.
Google will fully embrace Silverlight across the board, while continuing to support other technolgies. That’s what they’re doing now: they support old browsers, they take advantage of AJAX, they have native Windows and Mac apps and they use flash. They’ll use whatever technology gets the job done. Good for them, and good for all of us.
Miguel de Icaza is excited about porting Silverlight to Linux:
“In fact, am kind of happy that Microsoft did not do the port themselves as implementing this sounds incredibly fun and interesting.”
Following Martin Varsavsky’s lead, I’ve started using Twitter, not to keep track of what I’m doing (which seems very boring), but to track random thoughts and ideas. Visit twitter.com/mikesax or subscribe to the rss feed.
The fact that the Virginia Tech killer sent a media packet to NBC makes it very clear that getting media attention was at least part of the motive.
So why are the news networks rewarding these crimes by giving this guy a forum? The answer is obviously ratings and money.
Yes, I believe that the public has the right to have access to this information, but this should be treated as evidence, not propaganda. Will these news directors feel in any way responsible when copy-cat crimes start happening?
My op-ed piece about Open Source vs. Commercial Software has been published by Oregon Business Magazine.
/n Software has built a very interesting new product called “RSSbus“. It does two things:
- RSSbus turns business data (FedEx tracking, file system info, SQL data, Amazon, QuickBooks info etc.) into RSS feeds.
- It lets you combine and process these feeds into new feeds that do exactly what you want.
The result is something very powerful, open and simple. Because it’s all based on RSS, the integration possibilities with existing applications and websites are endless. Here’s a video and the free desktop version.
John Backus was the B in BNF and leader of the team that invented Fortran, the first high-level computer language. He received the Turing Award and the National Medal of Science. He died a few days ago in his home in Ashland, Oregon at age 82.
I met John about two years ago and we got to know each other pretty well. Except, it wasn’t until I read his obituary in the New York Times that I realized he was a computer science legend. Over the years I’ve spent countless hours looking over Backus-Naur Form specifications for different languages, and only today did I realize that the Backus in BNF referred to John’s last name.
However great a computer scientist John was, he was an even more stellar human being. I loved how he looked at the world, including himself. He helped me realize a few things about life that will stay with me for as long as I live. I love you John, and I’ll miss you.
There has been some controversy over books. Google is scanning and indexing everything they can get their hands on, Microsoft is only scanning works with expired copyright or works it obtained permission for.
Dave Winer has posted some very thoughtful comments about the issue.
Google is playing of the Fair Use card and it reminds me of Napster. We used to have a some very reasonable fair use conventions before Napster came along, claiming that massive copying was all just fair use.
The end result was an intense and very effective lobbying effort by the recording industry that significantly increased the restrictions on music. Google’s attitude risks putting us in the same bind with the printed word, which would be a very tragic outcome.
