dsandler.org/wp

World Domination HOWTO

After years of complaints about unfair use of their dominant market
position to establish new, de facto standards out of
closed protocols and formats, Microsoft seemed to turn over a
new leaf. “We’ll stop using private, undocumented protocols; we’ll
codevelop SOAP, a human-readable meta-protocol, and use it as the heart
of our .NET initiative. That way, you can read the messages
our .NET apps are passing between one another, and develop your own
replacement for one of those apps if you like. See, no lock-in!”

“Oh, by the way. We had a patent pending
covering an almost identical technology, also named SOAP. Yeah, we had
started this project, and killed it, before the
public SOAP initiative ever got off the ground. But, given the patent
system the way it is, we pretty much have license to sue your ass for even
thinking about interoperating with our apps. Better luck next time.”

Don’t change a thing, we love the
emo-fest!

Erin’s started a section on her site for the wonderful
world of Alias
(summary available; synopses for the new season forthcoming).

MacUpdate seems to have
discovered that Message 1.3.0 is
out. Please note that because of this font-rendering bug in 10.2,
you need to be using OS X v10.2.1 or later (or, 10.1.5 or
earlier).

Articles about the PalmSource
open house event that took place yesterday at the new Sunnyvale campus:

OSNews.com: Report from
PalmSource’s OpenHouse Day, by Eugenia Loli-Queru
TheRegister.co.uk: Nagel, Sakoman
map Palm’s future by Andrew Orlowski

I did not attend. But I heard stories about the chocolate
fountain, which just sounds too bizarre (and circa-2000) to contemplate.
My friend Ingrid, however, had no trouble contemplating it:

From: ingrid
To: dan & erin

[…]

Thought of chocolate fountain most of last night and today. Had
super gooey brownie chased with milk this aft finally, and I gargled
the milk slightly for a fountain effect. I miss that sort of bizarre
excess! Hearing about it put a smile on my face.

Apparently the Houston
Galleria Apple Store opening was kind of a bust. [link source: Marek Behr, Rice MEMS]

IKEA: Unböring. [site]