Doing JavaScript the Right Way

Here is an excellent post on doing JavaScript the right way in HTML pages: maintain clean markup and separate JavaScript code from it.

Google Compared with eBay

Alta Vista founder Louis Monier left eBay to join Google quoting the differences in culture. "To play with radically new stuff" sounds very tempting.

Poor Man's OO DB?

Or maybe it's wise man's OODB: Berkely DB Java Edition 2.0 released.

Insanely-greatness: Where Does It Come From?

Need some inspiration today? Read Steve Jobs' Standford commencement speech. I have always been facinated by this man and his creations. Macintosh as it is today is pretty much the fruit of this single man.

Where does insanely-greatness come from anyway? According to Jobs, it comes from doing your life's passion day in and day out. What is your passion?

The Chinese Are Really Coming

When I came to the U.S. 15 years ago, I was keenly aware of the fact that I came from a developing country. We know that developing country has been developing fast. Who would have imagined the best PC (ThinkPad) would not only be made in China (not to difficult to guess that) but also Chinese branded (Lenovo)? Now come the other stories of Haier bidding for Maytag, CNOOC bidding for Unocal, etc. Some people even have good theories of why this is happening.

Time changes.

Real Value of Open Source

I am quoting here what Tim Leung quotes Wladawsky-Berger (Vice president, Technical Strategy and Innovation, IBM):

I know that there are a lot of people who spend a lot of time worrying about that they key to open source is to look at the source code of software. Trust me, that is really boring. If I tell you that you can now spend your Saturday night looking at the source code of AIX, boy I hope you don't get excited, because then we have a real problem. The real value of open source software is that allows communities to work together and solve problems.

This is very true. The greatest value of open source that I have experienced is we (either individuals or communities) can solve problem very quickly because we can understand what's really going on with a debugger in hand. When we know that, a solution is usually very easy to find. In comparison, the alternative of fighting somebody's technical support organization to get a new certified jar or DLL is not appealing at all, to say the least.

Apple and IBM, What Really Happened?

There are some reports of what really happened between Apple and IBM. If the reason cited (Apple cannot pay the price IBM wants to take the PowerPC roadmap further while making a profit) is true, it's really a sad story. Volume beats everything. Look at Dell vs. Mac (i.e. ugly vs. beautiful). Look at Intel vs. PowerPC. What's left as an Intel alternative? MIPS is niche. SPARC is niche. Apparently only AMD.

Nevertheless, Mac on Intel is a good thing. I look forward to the time when all my home computing needs can be satistified by one Mac running Mac OS X, Windows and Linux on the same machine at the same time. I am thrilled at the thought of owning my first piece of beautiful PC hardware in about a year.

Mac on Intel!

Yes, Mac on Intel! My comment? No time for it. But this is the most interesting I have read so far.