Category: Web, Tech & Design

“Red Hat To Drop Linux !”
That’s the title i just read at LinuxWorld. Truly shocking don’t you think.
I just found myself lost for a moment, thinking: if a linux company drops linux, what the hell is it gonna do then ? Sell potatoes ??
Well, no, they’re gonna sell linux.

Ok ok, here’s the story, Red Hat are going to stop releasing their standard Red Hat Linux and supporting it, and instead will only focus on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
A logical step (for them), as that’s where they’re gonna be making more profit, BUT a bad step in my opinion.
Red Hat is the No.1 Linux distro, and if they discontinue their standard linux line, which is the most popular among users, and stop supporting it so quickly, linux might be losing all those users who believed in it and made the move from windows to linux, plus it’s not gonna sound good at all for people who were considering linux as a stable solution.

Oh well, i guess it’s just another example of a dumb decision taken after a long useless managerial meeting.

I can just imagine the guys at Microsoft toasting to this dumb move, lol…

So Napster 2 is finally out…
Yes, So ?? What’s the big deal ?
I mean what made the first Napster so great and famous was the idea of downloading music for free, but now that you have to pay it’s just like any other music service. They just have a better known brand, i guess.

I like the idea of prepaid cards though, it’s a cool step forward and should win them more downloads from teenagers who don’t have credit cards and who are some of the biggest music consumers.

Anyway, i think it’s annoying how many pay music services are popping up, why don’t they just consolidate their efforts into one good music service, when they know that in the end of the day that’s what they’ll end up doing through costly mergers and acquisitions.

It seems like my ColdFusion custom tag CF_Query2XML is still alive and is still of some use to some people as i just got an email from CFXtras.com informing me of a new sale.

This is a custom tag i wrote in CF when ColdFusion was still in version 4.5, and XML was still the new hot kid on the block and support for it was still minimal in all the languages available at the time, and the whole idea was to make it easy to generate well-structured XML from any query.
So basically using this tag, you query your database, pass the query on to the CF tag and it generates your XML for you, as easy as can be 😉

Another interesting tag i wrote is CF_Crypt which is an encryption/decryption tag i’ve used a lot, and which solves the problems that used to happen when using the built-in CF encrypt/decrypt functions.

So, the new version of Oracle Database is ready, and guess what, they’re calling it Oracle 10g.

Now, after Oracle 7, we got Oracle 8i and then Oracle 9i, and we figured out the “i” was for internet, and that they were marketing their database as the best database for the internet and e-business, but now the “i” is gone, and we have a “g”, so what does that stand for ?

Well, it actually stands for “Grid”, and it mirrors the direction in which Oracle are taking their flagship database product, Grid Computing.
Oracle are selling this database as the scaling self-managing self-fixing self-everything grid-computing resource-optimizing database.

I guess a lot of people will be happy with this new release, as for me i’m not that much into Oracle, last time i used it in a project it was at the Oracle 7 stage, and i just played around with Oracle 9i for a while.

I’m personally looking forward to another database release, the long awaited SQL Server 2004 code-named Yukon.

I know this must have been blogged like crazy everywhere, and that there’s no one on earth who doesn’t know this already, but i thought i’d just piss you off and tell you again anyway 😛

Because of a lawsuit Microsoft lost, there will be some changes in the next version of IE.
In the future version of Internet Explorer, currently due out early next year, the browser will prompt visitors to confirm that they want to execute each active content item on a page (Flash, ActiveX, …etc. anything using the object/embed tags) which is a big pain in the neck (and a bunch of other places too, believe me).

However, there are several straightforward ways to update web pages so that the prompt no longer appears.

For more info: click here.

A new report by Perseus has some interesting blogosphere statistics:

– Number of blogs online: 4.12 Million
– Abandoned blogs (updated less than once every two months): 66%
– Blogs updated once a day: 1.2%
– Active blogs (as defined as those which are updated more than once every two months) are updated on average every 14 days.
– 1.09 million blogs were one-day wonders, with no postings on subsequent days.
– Blogs are currently the province of the young, with 92.4% of blogs created by people under the age of 30.

For more click here.

Well, it’s been a rumour that has gone on and off for ages, and just recently i re-heard it from someone who barely has anything to do with IT, and everytime it turns out to be a load of crap.

But i was just thinking, what if Microsoft really does acquire Macromedia ?
What would happen to all the goodies we got used to from Macromedia ?

Here is what i think would happen to the various Macromedia products:

– ColdFusion: This would be discontinued of course, the best they could do for it is to make a CF.NET language that is supported in the ASP.NET framework.
– JRun: This too would be discontinued, and instead of it J# would be promoted for the ASP.NET framework.
– Flash: This would go on of course and become even more developer oriented.
– Director: This too would stay, although MS could start thinking why have both Flash & Director, why not make them one product that works for both purposes, and instead of ActionScript & Lingo you

Doesn’t anyone else think that Scott McNealy (CEO of SUN) & SUN have become so incredibly pathetic ?

It’s like they don’t know what to do anymore, they’re running all over the place like a mad man looking for anything that thay can shine at when it’s so obvious this SUN has burned itself into a black hole.

One day they’re the server people and they’re talking about the N1 initiative, and the other day they’re the software people and they’re pushing Java and branding it, the next day they’re the anti-microsoft people coming out with the ultimate solution for our lives to go on with their linux-based Java Desktop System and crappy StarOffice, the day after they think Microsoft’s strategy is good and they imitate them in a number of ways, and the sad story goes on and on and on.

Everyday i go to tech news websites and see more and more of this sad tragedy, and i can’t help but think: PATHETIC !!!

I just hope someone at SUN wakes up and gets them focused again, so that they can go back to what they once were, not necessarily the “dot in .com” days, but some of the good old days.