Jefflog

If you haven’t heard the news, Microsoft has recently been ordered by a judge to include Sun’s Java run-time within copies of Windows. Personally, I’m split on this issue. The libertarian in me says that Microsoft shouldn’t be forced to carry another vendor’s product. But then, take this sample quote taken during the period of the anti-trust proceedings:

JIM LEHRER: Do you think you’re being punished for being successful?

JEFF RAIKES: We certainly think that it’s ironic that in America, where freedom and the opportunity to focus in on building better products for customers is resulting in an action by regulators, who are basically saying that Windows should be less functional…Those are the kinds of issues that go at the heart of this case and why we feel very strongly that ultimately when we have our day in court, we will prove out that what we’re doing is best for the customer. (source)

(emphasis mine). If they’re so concerned about making their operating system more functional and doing what’s best for the customer, wouldn’t they want to bundle Java, which millions of web pages and many thousands of applications use, instead of appealing the verdict?

Yeah, I think we really know who Microsoft is looking out for. (I’ll give you a hint: it’s not you and me!)

Merry Christmas, everyone! It’s snowing here, a good three to six inches the weatherman says.

Despite my small Christmas tree this year, I’d love to do what this Oregonian did next year.

I’ve had a harder time getting into the Christmas spirit this year. Probably because I haven’t been going to church lately (I know, shame on me), so the excitement of advent hasn’t been imbued into me. Also, my wife and I decided to put off gift giving until after Christmas, so we’re not out rushing with everyone else out there to go shopping. Okay, actually, I decided I wasn’t buying gifts until after Christmas, and Hong was okay with that. Partly, it’s my rebellion against the over-commercialization of Christmas, following the likes of the Buy Nothing Day campaign and the guy displaying a crucifix of Santa Claus in his front yard. (A crucifix of the Easter Bunny would be far more appropriate.)

At least this year, we’ve got a Christmas tree, albeit a small one at only 18 inches tall. We’re not really sure yet what we’re doing for Christmas this year; probably just staying at home watching DVDs from Netflix.

Lately, I’ve been getting back into doing some programming in ‘C’. It’s a language I’ve hardly touched since my C++ class in college (and believe me, that’s a long time ago), and my recollection of it was being very unwieldy, having to deal with pointers and the like. Turns out, I’ve become a more sophisticated programmer in that time, and I’m not having as hard of a time with the pointers as I remember. It’s actually quite fun, to be honest. malloc()s are still problematic for me, though; after working with such nice languages like Perl, Java, and C#, I get core dumps all over the place in my programs because I don’t always allocate memory properly.

Google just released the beta of their shopping search robot Froogle, and all I can say is, WOW. It really makes searching for things online a breeze, and unlike sites like My Simon and PriceWatch, they seem to be able to index the entire web, not just what people have paid them to list.

What I want to know is: how do they seem to be able to determine what the product image is on a given page? It’s eerily accurate. I am in awe over the talent of their engineers.

Ever wonder where the items confiscated at the airport security checkout go? Probably to this Goodwill store and others like it.

Faced with the prospect of spending another boring Thanksgiving in Indianapolis, Hong and I took a road-trip to boring St. Louis. We learned a couple of things:

1. Nearly all restaurants are closed on Thanksgiving, even Chinese restaurants. We didn’t have any problem finding open restaurants in Seattle’s Chinatown two years ago, but I guess Chinese restaurants in suburbia work differently. We ended up eating at Cracker Barrel for lunch and Denny’s for dinner.
2. If you wait to travel on Thanksgiving Day itself, traffic is really, really light. Highly recommended.
3. Unless you like looking at large, metal vats containing beer, avoid the Anheuser-Busch tour in St. Louis. There’s not much to see, and they just keep harping on the “quality” and “tradition” of Budweiser. (Note: they never said anything about their other 25 or so brands of beer, like Bud Light and Michelob.)

One of the goals we had in St. Louis was to try to find a Chinese buffet restaurant we had heard about from people in Indianapolis.
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Last night, I rode my bike in the snow for the very first time. It wasn’t a heavy snow or anything, and certainly not enough to make the ground icy, but it was a first. Then this morning, I rode my bike in the coldest temperature yet, 18 degrees. These next three months in Indiana are going to be rough.

I discovered the International Children’s Library on-line today. It’s a repository of about 200 titles at the moment, and browsable through a Java application, making it accessible to all platforms. It’s got a pretty neat way of displaying an overview of the books on the “shelf” and zooming in for a more detailed look. Beware, though; you’ll want a broadband connection to access it, for it would be far too slow over a modem. (Even better would probably be to have them on CD-ROM or DVD-ROM.)