It looks like my most recent article has made it to the front page of OSNews. As usual, the comments got off to a rocky start with the requisite grouch making half-baked arguments. Other than the political sub-thread he started, the comments have otherwise been very positive.

All in all, I think the coverage is kind of cool. Wouldn't you agree? :)

Edit: Almost forgot! One poster was kind enough to provide a link to this little hack. (And I do mean *little*!) Smitty, I think that one is for you? ;)

In an accidental followup to David Brin's article Why Johnny Can't Code, I share my own experiences with introducing my son to a Commodore 64. The experience convinced me that older machines are just plain better at teaching than modern software and computers. Which would be sad, except that the Commodore 64 is perfectly positioned to make a comeback as an educational toy!

Xerces/C++ isn't difficult to use at all. It was fun to convert stuff to/from XML and get a test message gateway going. I wonder if we'll ever use it?

Well, it looks like Slashdot has a new comment system. If you're a subscriber, you can turn it on by smacking the checkbox at the top of a comments page.

Unfortunately, I give you about 5 minutes before you'll be smacking that checkbox back off. I don't know about anyone else, but I normally browse at +0 Nested. This gives me a clear view of the discussion, and allows me to quickly browse from comment to comment. Anything else (e.g. Threaded mode) tends to require too much clicking.

The problem is that this new scheme is nothing more than uber-threading mode. It allows you to see the highest rated comments, and/or fold up the comment listings of lower-rated comments. Which breaks up the discussion horribly. It might be nicer for people who *like* threaded mode, but for the rest of us it's not particularly useful. Even worse, it doesn't seem to save your changes. So everytime I go to a new story, I have to lower the threshhold to 0! Fixing this problem alone would increase the usablility by 100%.

Basically, it's a nice concept, but I can't seem to take a liking to it. Perhaps if the threading was a little less clunky, I might like it. One thing I hope they *don't* do is make the comments download via AJAX. When I use a laptop, I'll occasionally load a large page of comments and read them on the go. This can be nice for interesting topics that have generated a lot of comments while I wasn't looking.

If anything, I'd like to see the page overflow feature fixed first. The way the overflow works, comments can disappear into the ether if there are a large number of responses to a top level post. To actually see the comments, you need to muck around with the threading/flat/nested settings trying to find a way of displaying the info so that it doesn't overflow.

Final analysis: I love the attempt and I encourage Taco and Pudge to keep trying. Unfortunately, the current version isn't it. What do the rest of you think?

When it comes to Open Source games, it often seems like the selection is limited. Sure, everyone has played Tux Racer and Frozen Bubble, but what comes after that? The answer seems to be "not very much." Still, there are a few diamonds in the rough that have gone unnoticed by the majority of gamers. These are the games that you wish you existed, but are nearly impossible to find. In my latest article, I've collected a list of the top ten games that you've probably never played, but really wish you had.

I've been taking an XML Basic Concepts course all day and I think all those DTD's are frying my brain.

Next stop -- learning the Xerces SAX2 parser. Cool beans! :-)

I've been here for longer than I can remember, but I'd never bothered to pay attention to the Friends/Foes feature until today. Huh.

It seems that I need to pay more attention to my environment. :-)

I may start making journal entries, too. How's that for scary?

After months of work, and several sleepless nights, I have finally moved. All the articles and your comments have been flawlessly imported to the new site. The Blogger.com site will soon redirect to the new site.

Don't think for a minute that my work is done on the new site, though. I have a lot of plans for expanding it. I'll update all ya' all as my plans for world conquest grow nearer.

Peace out.

Today's systems have hundreds of file formats they must support. Wouldn't it be great if we could reduce all the file formats in existence down to a single file format that could be supported across all systems?

My latest three-part article addresses this concept: The Intelligent File Format

If such a concept could be made into a standard, pressure could be put onto Microsoft and other large companies to support the format or lose massive government business. (See the recent pushes for the Open Document Format for a very real example of how this can work.)

I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions.

A common theme that I've noticed in Slashdot stories about China is that no one seems to know China's actual laws about free speech, criticizing the government, or religion. Nearly everyone is surprised when I drag out the Chinese Constitution and show them the rights that the government supposedly guarantees.

While getting +5's for knowing this is a nice racket, I feel that it's far more important to catalog the information in one place so that others can learn and spread understanding of China's abuses.

Thus this weeks article is China: Getting the Facts.

If you find yourself in a discussion about China again, I hope you'll find it a useful resource to direct people to. If some of you feel that it's worthy of a front page Slashdot story, feel free to submit it. :-)

As the price of gas surged past $3.00 a gallon, many consumers began to wake up to more efficient road vehicles such as hybrid cars. These cars reduce your overall costs by requiring less gas at the pump for the same range. Unfortunately, such savings are bound to be only a temporary fix. Oil prices have dropped back down for the moment, but they're still sitting at some of the highest prices in the history of the modern world. To avoid a transportation collapse (which would result in an economic collapse), we need to reduce our dependency on oil. And fast.

This week's article is part of a new series of articles I'm introducing called, "Come Dream With Me." This series is intended to showcase existing technologies that can be used to make our everyday lives better and our futures brighter. All we need to do is develop them.

The current episode is a two parter focused on Stirling Engines in both planes and cars. Let me know what you think. My hope is that everyone will learn a little something that will help them in the future. :-)

Alrighty, then! Now that I've finally got home internet again (which means that I'll soon be replying to many of the emails that I have piled up in my box!) I've put out a new article! This time, you can actually *have* the future I described, today!

Read More!

Don't you love the title, BTW? Buzzwords are fun, whee! (Or maybe I've done just a little too much cold medication. You decide.)

A new article is finally up, asking the question is AJAX actually new?

The latest article is up and running!

Free Books on the Internet
-- or --
How to get a Comp-Sci Education in 30 Days!

Check it out, if you dare...

MWAHAHAHAHA!

...the latest and greatest article is up and running! This week I decided to take some time and tackle the recent article by Sal Cangeloso, where he suggests that Linux needs more consolidation.

Sorry if I've been kind of slow in responding to your posts. I've been a little busy working on some cool stuff for the future. Not that I'm going to give anything away... ;-)