Just to save you some time, and give me something to write about, here’s an aggregate summary of the news that caught my attention over the weekend. Some may be news to you, some may not. Click "read more" to see the list.
The most immediately arresting and almost instantaneouly dismissed story of the weekend was Slashdot’s report that Microsoft’s Anti-Spyware was detecting Firefox as a threat. Not only is this a pretty ridiculous idea, but my PC at work runs both MS Antispyware and Firefox and, though the spyware definitions are up to date, it fails conspicuously to identify Firefox as malware. Chalk one up for anti-MS paranoia. I, on the other hand, still maintain that Microsoft bought Giant Antispyware because it was about to begin detecting Internet Explorer as a threat, but what do I know?
Also, Bill Gates has reported that he believes American High Schools are obsolete. Wow. Do you mean to say that the average eighteen year old is totally unprepared to enter society? We never would have guessed!
John Dvorak told us, last week, how to kill Linux. Some writers at Linux World kindly responded that yes, this was a good try, but that Linux did not intend to die so easily. The response is an interesting read, highlighting many of the common misconceptions that the IT world persists in holding regarding Linux, and the GPL.
And, in entertainment news, white ninja comics continues to be a work of staggering intellectual power and emotional force. It’s also weird, and frequently hilarious.
Breaches into T-Mobil’s database were apparently the fault of a long unpatched security hole. The jury is still out on whether or not Google’s new toolbar is evil or not.
And, sadly, one of the leads in the creation of the first Macintosh interface, Jef Raskin, has died at 61. Though most of us did not know him by name, certainly all of us have benefited, directly or indirectly, by that contribution to personal computing.
Does anyone enjoy this sort of post? If I get any sort of response, maybe I’ll do something like this each Monday. We’ll see.
