Technology Commentary

What must Firefox do to keep the trust of those who want freedom and choice on the web?

Wishing a very pleasant rebranding to all techbros who squatted their web site in an unrelated nation because it made a good pun. On October 3, the British government announced that it was giving up sovereignty over a small tropical atoll in the Indian Ocean known as the Chagos Islands. The islands would be handed over to the neighboring island country of Mauritius, about 1,100 miles off the ...

The service-oriented computing environment (SORCER)[A] is a distributed computing platform implemented in Java. It allows writing network-programs (called "exertions") that operate on wrapped applications (services) to spread across the network. SORCER is often utilized in scenarios similar to those where grids are used (grid computing) in order to run parallel tasks.

Microsoft Bob was a Microsoft software product intended to provide a more user-friendly interface for the Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows NT operating systems, supplanting the Windows Program Manager. The program was released on March 11, 1995, and discontinued in early 1996. Microsoft Bob presented screens showing a house, with rooms that the user could visit containing familiar objects corresponding to computer applications, such as a desk with pen and paper and a checkbook. Clicking on the pen and paper would open the system's word processor.

The Danger Hiptop, also re-branded as the T-Mobile Sidekick, Mobiflip and Sharp Jump, is a GPRS/EDGE/UMTS smartphone that was produced by Danger, Inc. from 2002 to 2010.

Haiku, originally OpenBeOS, is a free and open-source operating system for personal computers. It is a community-driven continuation of BeOS and aims to be binary-compatible with it, but is largely a reimplementation with the exception of certain components like the Deskbar. The Haiku project began in 2001, supported by the nonprofit Haiku Inc., and the operating system remains in beta.

BeOS is a discontinued operating system for personal computers that was developed by Be Inc. It was conceived for the company's BeBox personal computer which was released in 1995. BeOS was designed for multitasking, multithreading, and a graphical user interface. The OS was later sold to OEMs, retail, and directly to users; its last version was released as freeware.

Palm OS is a discontinued mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It was provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management. Later versions of the OS were extended to support smartphones. The software appeared on the company's line of Palm devices while several other licensees have manufactured devices powered by Palm OS.

Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. These systems include the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites and a blitter, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS.

webOS, also known as LG webOS and previously known as Open webOS, HP webOS and Palm webOS, is a Linux kernel-based multitasking operating system for smart devices such as smart TVs that has also been used as a mobile operating system. Initially developed by Palm, Inc., HP made the platform open source, at which point it became Open webOS.

Welcome to Technology Short Take #183! Fall is in the air; the nights and mornings are cooler and the leaves are turning (or have already turned in some areas!). I’ve got a slightly smaller collection of links for you this time around, but I do hope that you’ll find something shared here useful. Enjoy!

If you read my previous article on DOS memory models, you may have dismissed everything I wrote as “legacy cruft from the 1990s that nobody cares about any longer”.  It's time to see how any of that carried over through the 16-bit to 64-bit evolution.

Most of the time, when we develop software or even use software, we play within the safe boundaries of the operating system. We might not know how the network interface welcomes that IP packet, nor ho

Consider the ROI

NoSQL struggles at scale, distributed SQL offers a stronger solution.

Microtext for the Commodore might have been lost forever if not for the sleuthing of Christian Simpson's Retro Recipes.

A key advantage of AI in SDK generation is its ability to handle mundane tasks. But a hybrid model is best, with the dev firmly in charge.

Al and I were talking on the podcast about Dan Maloney’s recent piece on how lead and silver are refined and about the possibility of anyone fully understanding a modern cellphone. This lead to Al …

A cool way to emulate functional programming syntax

I like to home roll abstractions, but commoditize implementations. What I mean by that is a fairly simple rule that has a very powerful effect, but can be tricky to find the right balance.

Helene was Western North Carolina’s Katrina—especially for the counties surrounding Asheville: Buncombe, Mitchell, Henderson, McDowell, Rutherford, Haywood, Yancey, Burke, and some adjacent o…

Back in March I wrote about the Jonathan, a computer Apple worked on in the 1980s that was designed around modularity: In that post, I wrote: My understanding is that the project never made it past the “conversations and mockups” stage. I get why the Jonathan never made it beyond the concept phase, but part [...]

I try to be a friendly citizen of the web. I try to keep my site in good shape. It should load quickly, track nothing beyond your basic server logs, not hassle you about cookies, GDPR or my newsletter. I do have a newsletter but it won't pop up in your face here. I try to stay firmly on the side of friendly and a good experience in how I run this site.

After many, many years of great service, I’m looking to replace Fastlane with plain Shell script files, which I hope will result in faster builds and…less Ruby.

Choosing the right policy agent to handle your authorization is not a simple task - each offers its benefits and has its drawbacks. How to choose? Read here.

I’m hunting for the woman whose use of an early chatbot turned the inventor against his creation.

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