have browser, will travel Jim Roepcke's weblog, since 1999

Virtual PC 5.0.2 is great!

Congratulations and a big thank-you to Connectix for a great VPC5 upgrader. VPC 5.0.2 makes Windows 2000 fly on my PowerBook G3 400. I'm typing this message in IE5/W2K. It feels much faster than it ever did under Mac OS 9... I mean, this is seriously usable. And this is a G3! Imagine the performance on a newish G4? Wow.

Backup Brain

Tom Negrino, on Backup Brain:

That's baloney. There are people from Canada, Britain, Norway and Germany (at least) fighting alonside the Americans in Operation Anaconda, and they've been there for quite a while previous to that.

I don't know the number of people from Canada, but I know there's at least 750 in Afghanistan, probably over a thousand, and well over 2 thousand in total including the naval forces and other operations.

What an insult. What do you expect NATO to do, start detaining people without charges, bomb the shit out of other countries and start throwing out insults towards other countries like "axis of evil" and "evildoers" at every opportunity?

If the USA isn't happy with NATO, and Americans don't appreciate our help, maybe NATO should just kick the USA out rather than wait for their resignation. We don't need that kind of ally either.

PS: I don't think that should happen, it's just a counter-insult. I've heard American colonels and generals stand up and say how much they appreciate the Canadian involvement, that they're doing a great job and are a major asset.

--

Okay, now I read the article Tom's pointing to and I'm even more insulted. America hasn't even declared WAR on anyone... the idea of military alliances isn't to just go take out whatever political regimes you don't like, unless you want the world to be in a perpetual state of mass war.

And that bullshit about America saving Europe in WWII? Fuck off. (not directed at Tom, directed at the USS Clueless guy -- what an appropriate name) It wasn't until Pearl Harbor that America even gave a shit about WWII... Canada and Britain and the rest of Europe was involved in trying to repel the Nazis for over two years before the Americans came in. To say the war was won only because of the USA is enough to make me want to puke, and to say the war wouldn't have been won without them is just as vitriolic.

Bah.

Fink

I'm going to be reading about and learning Fink. Need-to-know.

Time Out Of Mind

Donald Larson has a new web site: Time Out Of Mind

Nice design, Don!

UserLand’s Back-Door Sell

DaveNet: Our Back-Door Sell

I was initially super-duper excited about the Radio Community Server. I still am.. but I had a case of sticker shock when I saw "less than $1K per network per year".

It's no coincidence that the Frontier community re-awakened when a lost-cost option to use the platform re-emerged. Things haven't been this active since 5.0.2b20, the last free version of Frontier... when 5.1 was released and it cost $899, the community collapsed.

If RCS is a back door sell, I think it should support the small guys too... especially since they're going to make it run on a $39.95 product. (What's the point of a low barrier to entry if the 2nd barrier is way higher?)

I have no idea what RCS is going to cost. (UserLand's calling the price $XXX right now.) But... (pundit mode on) I recommend UserLand considers graduated pricing based on the size of the community. For a community that's only 5 people, $40 gets them Radio, and ... $XXX/4 gets them RCS. (the size of a small project team). For 20 people, $XXX/2 (a small/medium size department). For unlimited users, $XXX. (a whole company, community)

I've been thinking of which communities of people (and which leaders of those communities) could benefit from RCS, and letting their communities/fans/followers blog together. The list is huge. Those big communities would be wise to get RCS... even $XXX dirt cheap.

If RCS doesn't get graduated pricing, then I'd defend the price by saying it's worth it for the out-of-the-box experience (assuming it's as easy to get up and running as Radio itself is).

BTW, if RCS was $[0-3]XX, I don't think graduated pricing would be an issue at all.

AttSearchEngine

Macrobyte has finally released the AttSearchEngine. It's a tool for Frontier/Radio developers that enables them to index vast amounts of content... structured content... and not just text. If you're into Frontier, or even just indexing or search engine technology, take a look. It's very extensible.

It's what indexes the content on this site and provides its query services.

This release is hot of the heels of the release of Macrobyte's Formz, which simplifies and abstracts the task of creating, managing and rendering web forms.

These foundational tools are stepping stones to the eventual release fo the full Conversant product. Woohoo!

Sputnik

802.11b Networking News has a brief description of Sputnik, which I must say sounds incredibly cool. When I get back to Canada I'll have to dust off an old PC and set it up.

FrontBase via AppleScript

Stepwise: FrontBase Inc. releases FBAppleScript

Very cool.