Makes me wonder if I should buy a Mac in a few years. I could run Windows and Mac software full speed on the same box. (Writing the next version of Virtual PC for the Mac should become a lot easier…) It also makes me wonder who will buy a Mac for the next couple …
Author Archives: Jimmy Lin
Speaking of Macs…
The two features I find most interesting about Mac OS X 10.4 (“Tiger”) are not the ones getting the biggest hoopla, Spotlight and Dashboard. I’m more intrigued by improvements aimed at programmers. Core Data helps the developer manage the data within an application. Core Data, along with Cocoa Bindings, promises to make it much easier …
Big week in information technology
It’s been a more eventful week in IT land than I expected. First, Microsoft announced yesterday that the next versions of Office for Windows and Mac OS X will use ZIP-compressed XML file formats as the default. Woohoo! No more brittle binary files. And they’re being smart enough to change the extensions so you can …
Why I think there is a housing bubble in Silicon Valley
Consider this: between 2000 and 2005, housing prices have gone up 46%, or 7.9% per year. But at the same time… The population has gone up only 4%. Rental prices have gone down 16%, or 3.5% per year. Nonfarm payroll employment has dropped 14%, from almost 900,000 to less than 780,000. The ratio of buying …
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The Meaning of Lah
I don’t remember how I came across this, but… Singaporean English, or “Singlish,” has various particles derived from Chinese that are sprinkled throughout conversation, like, “You see my husband’s not at home lah,” or “There’s something here for everyone lah.” Even many Singaporeans can’t explain when they use it, but Mr Brown makes a valiant …
Silicon Valley food
The Mercury News reviews corporate cafeterias across Silicon Valley. By the way, I’ll say from personal experience that IBM Almaden Research Center’s cafeteria is also quite good. (By the way, all opinions expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, IBM.) Shortly after this article appeared, Charlie Ayers, Google’s head chef …
Hong Kong authorities: don’t eat too much dim sum
Say it ain’t so: a Hong Kong government report says that dim sum is high in salt and fat and suggests not eating it too often. It’s not going over too well in Hong Kong.
No more “Long Life Cigarettes”?
Whenever I visited Taiwan, I always found it disconcerting to see “Long Life Cigarettes” being sold in Buddhist temples. Those days may be numbered. A proposed amendment to the Tobacco Hazards Act would, among other things, ban any words or phrases which imply that smoking does not harm health.
Telling it like it is… not
How are a runaway bride, Scott Peterson, Terry Schiavo, Wendy’s chili, and racism related? Only the Bad Reporter knows!
Watching TV makes you smarter?
Steven Johnson argues that over the years, audiences have become much more sophisticated in their TV watching. Today, we have no problem watching shows like “The West Wing,” “E.R.,” and “The Sopranos,” which have multiple subplots weaved throughout several episodes, whereas in the past, most TV shows like “Bonanza” or “Dragnet” would consist of one …