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Saturday, August 23, 2003 |
The End of E-Mail?. This has been a hellish week for users of e-mail, thanks to an ugly combination consisting of a conscience-less worm-writer, users' gullability and yet another demonstration of Microsoft's preference for profits over user security. To say that it could have been worse, however true that is, doesn't make what happened any more okay.
What will come from this crisis? Dan goes on to talk about the dangers of monocultures, Microsoft's responibility (and liability), and to wonder whether this signals the beginning of the end for e-mail and the transition to something more resistant to these problems, spam, and so on.
2:59:05 PM 
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Franken bests Fox. Judge calls conservative network case against comedian "wholly without merit" -- and says it could lose "fair and balanced" trademark. [Salon Headlines]
11:50:17 AM
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Joel:
August 22, 2003.
Raymond Chen has been running a series of interesting articles about the history of Windows and its API. Ever wonder why the time zone map no longer highlights the zone you're in? Or what the BEAR35, BUNNY73, and PIGLET12 functions are named after? Or why you turn off your computer by clicking "start"? I've bookmarked his site.
In particular, “The secret life of GetWindowText” should be required reading for anyone trying to understand API lockin. Describing one aspect of this simple and fundamental part of the Windows API takes a couple of pages. And then notice the kicker:
The documentation simplifies this as "GetWindowText() cannot retrieve text from a window from another application."
As Raymond says, “the documentation tries to explain its complexity with small words, which is great if you don't understand long words, but it also means that you're not getting the full story.” (Actually, Raymond, the documentation does tell the whole story, look closer.)
Anyway, the complexity behind such a simple function is a classic example of an abstraction leaking. And more importantly, it's one of the reasons it's so dang hard to write API emulation layers, like, say, WINE... because getting 100% compatibility means emulating all these bizarre internal complexities perfectly, even when they're not completely documented or the documentation doesn't really describe what happens in every scenario.
8:58:15 AM
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BTW, the SoBig virus sounds like the tricks Coble and Berman were trying to make legal for the music industry last year. Imagine if the law had passed. [Scripting News]
8:44:42 AM
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Senator Speier, Take a Bow. It took four years of fighting with the banking industry and powerful lobbyists, but California State Sen. Jackie Speier finally got her bill passed to limit the sharing of personal financial information. She speaks about the travail and her future plans with Katie Dean. [Wired News]
7:08:14 AM
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