Linked List: March 19, 2005

Saturday, 19 March 2005

IE7 Support for CSS to Continue to Suck 

To the surprise of no one.

Brad DeLong: M$FT 

Brad DeLong wonders where Microsoft’s massive R&D budget goes.

Slashdot Converting to XHTML + CSS 

Poor Chris Nandor is working on the code to do it. He’s not kidding.

Bla-Bla List 

Open source re-implementation of Ta-Da List, written in Java. Has inspired a bit of a pissing contest regarding the relative merits of Java + RIFE vs. Ruby + Rails for web app development. Cf. (a) Bla-Bla List developer Geert Bevin, who admits that he undertook the project specifically to prove that Ruby on Rails isn’t all that revolutionary; (b) David Heinemeier Hansson, developer of both the Rails framework and Ta-Da List app, who picks a few (possibly contrived?) examples that make Bla-Bla’s Java code look exceedingly verbose compared to Ta-Da’s Ruby.

Language/framework religion aside, it’s also interesting to note, when comparing the two, that Ta-Da’s UI is Ajax-ish (HTML + JavaScript), whereas Bla-Bla’s is Flash (by way of the Laszlo toolkit). Ta-Da’s UI feels snappier to me, overall, but Bla-Bla’s use of drag-and-drop makes reordering list items much easier than in Ta-Da.

Summer Founders Program 

Paul Graham and a few friends have set up a program to fund new startups over the summer. They’re offering roughly $6,000 per person, and will take care of the paperwork hassles (articles of incorporation, employment agreements, etc.).

Growth of Wireless Internet Opens New Path for Thieves 

New York Times report on how open Wi-Fi access points are helping online criminals cover their tracks.