Sunday, July 27, 2003
105936837956505460:: 9:59 PM

So I read in Slashdot today about the new Lindows WebStation. It is a computer which boots from CD, is designed mostly for work on the network, and most notably, has no hard drive. Skimming through the comments, most everyone seemed to be pretty positive on the idea.

What amazed me is that no one mentioned parallels to Sun Microsystems' Network Computer (NC). Anounced in 1996, the NC (which also had no harddrive) was a strategic brilliancy for Sun. Afterall, without hard drives people would need servers to house their data and applications... a market where Sun was strongest. The only flaw in this brilliant idea was that no one wanted an NC (the lack of hard drive being a bad sticking point). By 1998, NCs had become an unmitigated disaster for Sun.

I have a couple possible theories on why no one mentioned the NC. Slashdot commentors either:

a) Have really bad memories
b) Blindly support anything Linux
c) Are all under the age of 18

I'm voting for B, considering all the articles heralding Linux being installed on toasters, and "city X considering Linux". That's all fine and good, but since when do techies give a crap what city governments use? You don't see headlines when Dayton, OH considers using RUMBA on VAX, right?

Friday, July 11, 2003
105791322263019551:: 1:47 AM

Despite my lack of posts recently, a lot of things actually are going on. For one, Cornell sucessfully defended its title in the Robocup2003 competition in Italy. Apparently the field was extremely competitive this year, and we endured a series of nailbiters to take the title (the championship match ended 1-0).

Secondly, the stock plan changed. It's really wierd reading about your company meeting in all these online tech magazines... though I guess that's no more wierd than imagining a hundred million people using your software.

Thirdly, I started to work on a site as a front end for the mix exchange that I've been running with MercuryBonez and DJ Ric. Once I get it nice, I'll post the link.