Linked List: October 8, 2007

Monday, 8 October 2007

Proxi 1.5 

New version of Griffin’s interesting but sort-of-hard-to-explain macro/system monitoring utility. Check out the Proxi wiki for more info.

Yankees Datsun Bullpen Car 

It’s the pinstripes that make it. (Thanks to Rich Siegel.)

Ten Ways to Make More Humane Open Source Software 

Good analysis of open source software usability by Jono DiCarlo, but it fails to address what I see as the primary problem: finding ways to fund more humane open source software. Mozilla does it with Google affiliate ad revenue from the search bar.

AAPL: 167.89 

Apple stock is up four percent today. As I type this, Apple’s market cap is $146 billion; compare and contrast: Dell ($63 billion), HP ($134 billion), Intel ($149 billion), IBM ($160 billion), Google ($190 billion), Microsoft ($280 billion).

Lately, the correlation between AAPL stock run-ups and actual news regarding Apple is zero. Whereas most of the time there is any actual news — even news that strikes me as unambiguously good news for Apple — the stock goes down.

California Man Sues Apple Over iPhone ‘Bricking’ 

Timothy Smith must have read both of Moltz’s new books.

Michael Tsai on ZFS 

Michael Tsai:

ZFS isn’t ready to be the default Mac OS X filesystem today, but HFS+ is or soon will be a liability, and ZFS is perhaps the best candidate for its eventual replacement.

More From MacJournals on ZFS and Mac OS X 

MacJournals:

Thaler knows his stuff, but in mistaking our disdain for ZFS rumors as “ZFS hate,” he minimizes the real and significant problems that this advanced file system would bring to today’s Macintosh computers. Of course, part of the problem is that the post is an abbreviated argument, not our entire case.

New York Times Report on Google Mobile Phone Project 

Interesting report by Miguel Helft on Google’s mobile phone plans:

While Google has built phone prototypes to test its software and show off its technology to manufacturers, the company is not likely to make the phones itself, according to analysts.

In short, Google is not creating a gadget to rival the iPhone, but rather creating software that will be an alternative to Windows Mobile from Microsoft and other operating systems, which are built into phones sold by many manufacturers. And unlike Microsoft, Google is not expected to charge phone makers a licensing fee for the software.

This sounds smart to me. And it shows why Google has become Microsoft’s first true archrival.

msnbc.com Acquires Newsvine 

Congratulations to Mike Davidson and company. The lesson for other web start-ups is easy: Build something useful, interesting, and different.

Follow-Up on Rentzsch’s Anti-Caps-Lock Investigation 

Ends up the delay is built into the keyboard hardware, so it’s still there even if you remap the Caps Lock key to some other function, such as Control.

ChkTeX on Mac OS X 

Instructions and a BBEdit AppleScript from Ramón M. Figueroa-Centeno for using the ChkTeK syntax checker for LaTeX on Mac OS X.