For a break from the seriousness of the moment, you can back up a few weeks in the news to highersource.org is a wonderful parody of the heaven’s gate group. If you’re tired of media distortions, they have a wonderful “body bag” protest button. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

In a strange switch, the Texas legislature seems to be seeing the light before Washington. The Congress and the White House passed the CDA, which will place severe limitations on what people can post on the internet in an attempt to limit a perceived wave of child pornography in the nation’s digital landscape. Beyond minor problems like the Bill of Rights and reviewing every web page created and posted in the US –never mind what to do about those posted overseas– the law seems to preclude posting much legitimate information. Experts believe that medical information related to treating and preventing conditions such as HIV as other STDs would not stand muster under the law. Of course, preliminary rumblings from the Supreme Court’s current review of the law indicate the law will never see usage. Thursday, the Texas legislature instituted a much more sane approach to regulating the net. Internet Service Providers are now required to offer customers free blocking software or face fines. For a group that is regarded by pundits within the state as planted firmly in the backpocket of business, the law borders on Solomonesque in it’s wisdom. C/net’s news.com has more details. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

The tracking firm Dataquest’s latest numbers for market share show a continuing slow slide in Windows market share and an overall rise in the market share held by the MacOS as a whole (including what used to be called cloners). In 1996, Apple by itself was the fifth largest vendor and the MacOS as a whole held 7.8 percent of the personal computer market. A number of surveys show that the share has continued to rise since the beginning of this year. Larry Ellison’s interest in buying Apple seems to have faded for the moment. At the same time, deals and rumors of deals continue to circulate. In the wake of Ellison’s interest in Apple, several large blocks of Apple stock were purchased, lending a certain crazed air to wall street technology pundits as they tried to determine who was behind the buys. The investment-savy Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabi purchased 5 % of Apple shares –about US$115 million– over the last several weeks. In the unsubstantiated department, workstation vendor Sun and Apple may be in talks, either for an outright acquisition, or more likely for Sun to buy Apple’s Newton technology. Newton is, by numerous reviews, the definitive hand-held OS at this point with technology far beyond that offered by the two leading competitors: Windows CE and the US Robotics Pilot. Sun is rumored to be interested in transforming the Newton into the first handheld Java device. In the meantime the speculation has … Continue reading 1997-04-11 →

One of the latest trends in the computer industry is the development of tools that allow people to easily create software that runs on any common platform. The most prominent of these is the computer language JAVA. Corel just released the beta version of Corel Office for Java. At least as important, the product has been certifified to be 100% pure JAVA. That means that the product has been tested to verify sneaky developers didn’t include anything that foils the ability for Corel Office to be used on any platform. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

Our approach has always been one of platform neutrality. In practice, that means that we are are ready to help companies, whether they’re using Windows or Macintosh. Soon, that support will include Linux, a cross-platform implementation of UNIX. Platform atheism is drawing a significant group. To various degrees this group includes Adobe, Corel, Adobe, MicroSoft and yes, even Apple. An interesting article on platform atheism appears on techweb. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

We’ve managed to locate some more information on the possible buyout. Apparently, unlike we suggested in our first report earlier this morning, the buyout is not driven by Jobs, but exclusively by Oracle’s Ellison. According to an article in the San Jose Mercury, Ellison is driving the deal himself. Ellison states that the proposal is merely a “trial balloon” at this point and he’ll make a decision next few weeks. At the end of last year, stories abounded in the online press that Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, was ready to help friend and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs buy the floundering company. That Ellison confirmed the rumour and that his company, Oracle, is the largest database company in the world and the second largest software company did nothing but add steam to the rumours. But, Ellison always professed the buyout would only happen when Jobs gave the green light and after weeks of rumours Jobs told the press that he had no interest in an Apple takeover and had taken Ellison to task over his public offer to help buy Apple. With Jobs proclaiming his lack of interest in buying Apple –backed up by the on-going success of his company Pixar, the animation powerhouse behind Disney’s Toy Story– the rumours disappeared from the online world. The rumours of the rumour’s demise may have been greatly exagerated. The Reuter news service has reported that a group of investors led by Ellison plan a billion dollar buyout of Apple, with a board … Continue reading 1997-03-27 →

We’re planning several products for later this year. The first will be a database/spreadsheet product for the US Robotics Pilot. Our second product will be a database system to integrate publishing across for the web and print. We also plan a freebies page with a range of parts that you might find useful: databases, programs for the Pilot and useful scripts coded in PERL and AppleScript. We’re finishing our testing on the first items for the freeware page and expect to post the first parts of the page at the beginning of April. Stay tuned. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

According to Yahoo Panama and the Czech Republic have announced they will sign the international $500 billion treaty that will remove tariffs in the exploding information technology trade by the year 2000 among developed countries, including the US, EU, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, India and Taiwan. So-called developing nations, including India and Costa Rica will have until 2005 to 2007 to remove tariffs. The deal has been negotiated outside the world trade body, the WTO, but officials plan to incorporate the agreement. Some of the WTO’s power and reach will be tested since the incorporation of the IT deal into the WTO will force countries that did not sign the agreement to abide by its terms. For those of you interested in and supporting the Tibet government-in-exile or in the proposition that expanding what’s been called the electronic townhall, The TibetNet Project is hoping to raise US$35,000 to connect the the Dalai Lama and his government-in-exile to the internet. Many people have watched in wonder in the last few days as MicroSoft stock has been pummelled. The immeadiate cause may be a combintation of the security problems –now mostly fixed– in the sofware giant’s browser and delays in Windows ’97, the next version of the company’s operting system. Since both are short term issues experienced by every software vendor, MicroSoft’s downturn seems a blip to many. But, a combination of trends –WebTV, NetPCs, etc.– seem destined to reduce the vast majority of the computer market to one of component … Continue reading 1997-03-25 →

Losses in the browser wars may be as much a matter of self-inflicted wounds, as anything else. Microsoft has been pummelled by reports that Internet Explorer has two security bugs in the Windows version and one in the Mac OS version. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

Strange Trips… It’s interesting to note that pretty mundane portions of the computer business are grabbing the attention this week. Apparently, the year 2000 is a worse problem for some computers than experts previously thought. If a group of hackers were going to