Round-up
I just wanted to quickly gather up some links to articles I've found interesting of late.
First of all, Claus Valca has some great posts over on Grand Stream Dreams. I want to draw your attention to a link roundup and comments post Claus made a week or so ago because of some interesting stuff he's found around Firefox and the implications of how it pre-fetches content (This Week in Firefox Tips (Tinfoil Hats optional but stylish, towards the bottom of the article).
If you use Firefox this should scare you. If you don't use Firefox you should still be worrying about how your browser of choice does pre-fetching and still feeling a little bit scared. While no-one can possibly argue with the lofty goals behind the FBI scheme discussed, it seems pretty clear to me that there is a lot of scope for some horrible mistakes to be made too. Much like the MP in the UK who thought that spam would stop somehow if only we had our postcodes (aka zip code) incorporated into our email addresses, this is clear proof that when politicians and lawyers try to regulate technology they don't understand you frequently end up with bad law.
Once you're done with that article you may want to check out the more recent one with lots of links and tips for improving Windows XP and Vista performance.
There really is something for everyone on that site, unless of course you own a Mac. In which case John Gruber wants to talk to you about Safari Vs. Firefox and also has some useful tips on manipulating the settings for hidden files in the Mac's HFS+ file system.
Next up is Mr Angry's post on Religion vs. Science in IT and Project Management. I've got to be honest, I've been wanting to write something on this myself for a while and mentioned it to Mr Angry in a blog comment on another article of his that is very much worth reading, and he took the idea and ran with it (with my blessing I hasten to add!). I think he ended up writing an article that says pretty much everything I wanted to, except phrased better. Well worth a read. Even more worth keeping in mind when reading other articles.
Nice to see that Joel Spolsky agrees with me about Microsoft Mesh by the way. Though to be fair that's largely because I was agreeing with him. There's an interesting rebuttal of the anti-mesh sentiments expressed by Joel and I at Ashutosh's blog here. Obviously I don't agree *grin* but it's a well written alternative point of view that deserves consideration. Ashutosh thinks file sync is a big deal, and while I can see it will be useful, it just doesn't excite me somehow.
To me Mesh still sounds like some kind of re-write of Groove to turn it into .mac.net and while those Windows users who are interested deserve a decent coherent implementation of .mac it just doesn't seem amazing to me in the way the initial announcements suggested I ought to find it. Phone me when I can use my iPod touch to get a file off my desktop PC at home and transfer it to my Apple laptop in another office at work.
I also found a link to a funny youtube video on Ashutosh's website. I'm not sure if it's a hoax or not but it's nice to see a Lenovo X300 expose the MacBook Air as a triumph of compromise and style over substance. Thanks for making me chuckle! I still think that knowing me I'd rather have the Apple product if I won the lottery and didn't need to justify my purchases any more, but there is no doubt that the MacBook Air is compromised by a desire to hit a certain size and weight in preference to actually being a good laptop.
Lastly, the Windows Connected blog has a few good articles on Vista and the dislike surrounding it. I guess I have to tread carefully here as I'm hardly a fan myself but there are a few good points in the original article about this on the site. I will say that the author of that article knows about as much about Macs as I do about what it feels like to [insert bombastic statement about doing something really really really really bad here], but their point about Vista bashing becoming a sport is well made. I don't agree with the implication that there are no problems with Vista at all, obviously. That's not been my experience, but things are getting better with Vista it has to be said.
I have to say, if you want to criticise something then try to do so based on facts. In other words: approach it as a science not as a religion (did you see what I did there?). Don't tell me Vista or Mac OSX or Lotus Notes or Live Mesh "sucks". Anyone can have an opinion. Tell me why you have a problem with something. Ok I have to admit I'm far from perfect here myself at times, but I'm promising to try harder on this site from now on.
Of course, daring to even go within 20 miles of Mac OSX with a critical attitude provoked the inevitable reaction, which was addressed in a follow-up post. I mean seriously, what is it with the Apple fanboy crowd? Most of them make me embarrassed to own an iPod, let alone my Mac. I just don't understand it. There's never been a better time to own a Mac and yet still there are armies of idiots out there waiting to go off on any writer that dares to so much as look at an Apple product funny, let alone say something bad. Talk about a persecution complex!
I'm not sure I agree with all of the points raised about either Mac OS X or Vista in either post, but the over-reaching theme of the articles remains true I think.