MS-DOS, RIP

More Geek News: I’ve only just learned of the ‘death’ of MS-DOS, the operating system which led the PC into the 21st Century; most known for its signature welcome; “C:\>”. This Obituary is done tongue in cheek, but it’s a significant milestone in computing. Whether it’s a mercy killing or a brutal murder, depends onm the success of Windows XP; and that’s up for discussion right now…

Who says you need to upgrade?

I was reminded of the two myths of buying software today: a) you get what you pay for and b) you have to have the latest version with all the latest features.
I’ve been threatening to write some software for my Palm handheld to help me in my struggle against the aisle layouts at our local Action supermarket. I’m always backtracking and mising stuff: I could be through there in 10 minutes if I had my act together!
I remembered a friend of mine who’d researched the layout of his local store and produced a paper printout he’d developed which conveniently listed all the week’s needed items in a nice report. I envied that, but had to go one better. I found ShopList, which is pretty neat, for two reasons. 1. It’s cheap. (It’s Free). 2. It works well. It doesn’t try to do everything, just what I needed. Most impressive, is that it seems to be bug free after its second revision, and hasn’t been updated since early 1998. I wish I could write code like that. It has pride of place at the BONWAG Palm Software List.

The Way We Were

I’ve been waiting for someone to come up with this; the old ‘Alexa’ service has been archiving sites since the year dot (actually, 1996), as part of a backup to their web-search functions. Now, they’re allowing us to dig through the archives, and sure enough, some of the earliest BONWAGs are there in all their glory – back as far as February 1999 (It was actually born in 1994). How nice that someone bothered to take a copy :-) ! You can have a look at any site and see how many copies have been kept. Like this one. Scary.

Flight Security; what's next?

First, Qantas has to remove all icing powder from their inflight snacks because of Anthrax ‘concerns’. There are some novel (and inconsistent) security measures being enacted on the airlines in the wake of the September 11 attacks, which I can vouch for. Apparently, this guy was prevented getting on a plane because of the books he was reading: twice. One of them was a Harry Potter book, which is similar to my experience on the planes over there: Harry Potter was the book I was reading on the way to and from the USA in September. Full story here

Taking our oval-shaped ball and going home

October 25: The source of some discussion in our house – the ‘International Rules‘ Series between Ireland and Australia – has ended with Ireland in posession of the trophy. Let the gloating begin, Ivan.
It’s a hybrid (read: mutant) game which is never played anywhere in the world aside from this competition; a strange combination of Aussie Rules and Gaelic Football. I don’t watch Gaelic football much, so I only notice the differences with AFL, which are chiefly that there’s a soccer goal at each end with its own points value (no nets in AFL), and a round ball (AFL has an oval ball). I don’t think anyone, anywhere really understands the scoring system.
It’s equivalent to getting Tennis and Badminton players together and pretending it means anything significant. It’s ‘gas craic’ (good fun), mainly for the constant debating about the rules and how much they differ from either of the sports it’s based on. No wonder players take to belting the shite out of each other in frustration. Less wonder that the refs get a little tetchy as well.
Nonetheless, it has the important catchphrase peppering the marketing hype: “International Pride Is On The Line”.
What I don’t get is the current discussion in Australia about whether we’re going to be continuing this competition any more. Wha… just because we can’t win more than we lose? Are we that petty?
Anyway. Congratulations to Ireland. Let the ragging begin.

... and then there's Kostya

We’ve had the best and worst of sport this week; and both extremes have come out of a sport I hate: Boxing.
I don’t think I need to add any more petrol to the blaze Anthony Mundine lit at his own feet by commenting on the September 11 tragedies on The Today Show. Poor him. Quoted out of context, he says. Asked to comment on Australia sending troops that day (he’s a muslim), he said
“I really feel that it’s not our problem. They call it an act of terrorism but if you understand the religion and our way of life it’s not about terrorism, it’s about fighting for God’s laws and America’s brought it upon themselves (for) what they’ve done in history and so on.”
Yeah. I can see how the media have twisted his words.
Some lessons: a nice wrapup of other athletes who’ve burned their own toes. This article from The Age expresses everything I think much better than I’m able.
Then, you have fellow boxer Kostya Tszyu refusing to buy into the whole hype cycle around boxing for the sake of his own kids.
“I don’t hate Zab (his opponent). Why should I say I don’t like him if I do like him? To make sales go higher? I don’t care about this. We are two sportsmen, we are two human beings, we have life after this. How can I teach my kids to respect others?”
Great to see a sportsman with perspective and integrity.
Now, whose head would you rather punch in?

Non-metal Magnets: Go Figure

As if the world wasn’t crazy enough at the moment, a team of scientists in Russia have (allegedly) disproven one of the first things you learnt in science; that magnets are made of metal. They even say it on Play School, for Pete’s sake. This report has me questioning whether anything I learnt in school is really true.