the case against .NET

Toshiba has introduced a new “VACF” display option on its Tecra M3 series of business notebooks.
The VACF (Viewing Angle Control Filter) feature may be turned on or off as needed. When enabled, it limits display readability, allowing the screen to be viewed only by someone sitting directly in front of the computer. Anyone [...]

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In recent years, Sony has acquired a reputation for marring its usually cute products with at least one cripplingly stupid design flaw. Most notoriously this included an audio player which wouldn’t play MP3 files.
The most common fault with Sony’s products is the inclusion of a MemoryStick slot of some form (there seem to be [...]

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Opera recently made their browser free for a couple of days as part of their 10-year anniversary party. At the time, I said I hoped they could find a way to make it free permanently, so it stood a chance of being taken seriously.
This has now happened! Opera 8.50 is completely free, and [...]

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Since Apple introduced the first Macintosh computer in the mid eighties, there’s been no significant change to the way people interact directly with PCs: the mouse/keyboard/menu interface has hardly evolved at all in over 20 years. When you consider the other advances in computing in the same period, this seems fairly remarkable.
I’ve been convinced [...]

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.NET brings rich class libraries, garbage collection, code portability (at least nominally), and a few other benefits. But we’ve had most of this for years: .NET is a minor evolutionary step on from what already existed in Java, Delphi and other development systems. It doesn’t bring anything new that’s of real consequence.
What would [...]

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Microsoft is currently staging its PDC in Los Angeles. To say I’m underwhelmed would be an understatement.
PDC stands for Professional Developers Conference (sic), but most of the news seems to be about a cute new toolbar design for Microsoft Office. If this is a developers’ conference, where’s the information about how to use [...]

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Following the previous post, and in the spirit of full disclosure, a few notes on my own experiences of software activation and DRM.
I’ve never yet had problems with product activation (but I’m grateful to Jeff Duntemann for his advice not to upgrade to the latest Acrobat version - I too remain happy with version 4.0).
I [...]

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Jeff Duntemann has a great post on the foolishness of Product Activation.
Activation is to software as DRM is to the music industry. Both serve more to alienate existing customers than to deter pirates. In fact, both can turn today’s loyal customer into tomorrow’s pirate.
Say you buy Acrobat and find it won’t run because you have [...]

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