At the intersection between technology and economic policy, John Carroll brings years of experience as a software developer to bear on the latest issues affecting the technology industry.
John Carroll has delivered his opinion on ZDNet since the last millennium. Since May 2008, he is no longer a Microsoft employee. He is currently working at a unified messaging-related startup.
Last week, I responded to some of James Coplien's remarks concerning what customers expect from their software. At the ACCU conference last month, Coplien also talked about the security advantages enjoyed by a distributed, independent development community:Security is a system concern--it is a complex system.
A French court has ruled against copy protection software on DVDs that prevented the plaintiff from copying a DVD of Mulholland Drive into a video tape for "personal use" (which is mildly amusing, as Mulholland Drive is exactly the kind of movie I'd expect would appeal to French tastes).
Molly Wood, senior editor of CNET.com, recently asked why people would bother to upgrade to Longhorn when Avalon and Indigo will be available to WinXP/2003 users, and WinFS has been deferred entirely.
James Coplien said some rather dramatic things at last week's ACCU conference, among them the following: There's a pressure that unless you're one of the first three players in the market you don't have a chance," said Coplien. "Quality is suffering for time--people pay money for the first, not the best.
Charles Cooper explained in a commentary piece last week why Microsoft's upcoming Longhorn operating system is so important for Microsoft to get right. There's a lot of these kinds of articles now, as the technology press in the runup to major software releases serves the same function as the tense music that you heard when David Hasselhoff tried to defuse a bomb in Knight Rider.
South Korea is an interesting country. The nation has gone from a per capita GDP of $87 in the 1950s to $17,580 at purchasing power parity in 2003.
Sometimes one's choice of a comparison gives subtle hints about hidden assumptions. A recent ZDNet article discussing Apple's and Microsoft's upcoming operating systems was probably driven by the fact that both OS vendors plan upgrades in the near future (one much sooner than the other).
SQL Server 2005, now available as a "community technology preview," is an odd beast. For those who believe their databases should be little more than simple data access routines with business logic placed at the "middle tier," the move towards application server technology integrated as part of a database is a Bad Thing.