Almanac: 15 June 2001
By J.D. Hildebrand
Greetings!
On June 15, 1215, King John put his seal to the Magna
Carta at Runnymede, England. The Magna
Carta set important precedents limiting the power of royalty and
safeguarding the liberty of citizens.
Music legend Ella
Fitzgerald died five years ago, on June 15, 1996. If you're not familiar
with her music, check out one of the many recordings she made with trumpeter Louis
Armstrong. Or pick up her renditions of the Cole
Porter songbook. She was a unique talent.
GOOD NEWS FOR JOB SEEKERS. With tech stocks continuing to dwell in the
cellar and dotcoms serving as the butt of jokes on HBO comedy specials, times
can seem pretty bleak. But the news isn't all bad, as James E. Gaskin points out
in this Interactive Week article, "IT
workers buck tough hiring trend."
Gaskin points out that developers, development managers, and other IT workers
should still find it fairly easy to find employment. The needs of corporate IT
departments to boost e-commerce efforts, get on the Web, and keep corporate data
flowing make good jobs easier to find in IT than in most other fields. You might
not get a BMW Z3 as a hiring bonus anymore, but you can expect a fair salary and
a good position.
What can you do to stay employable? Gaskin quotes experts who say employers
are looking for verifiable skills that can make a bottom-line difference. So
learn a language, work through the examples in programming books and magazines,
attend a conference (we recommend BorCon,
the year's best and most focused developers' conference)...do whatever it takes
to ensure that your skills are up-to-date.
Happy interviewing!
IE 6 TO INCLUDE NEW PRIVACY FEATURES. Have you heard of P3P? It's a
new proposed privacy standard from a World Wide Web Consortium working group.
The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project has yielded a spec -- P3P
-- that will apparently be implemented in version 6.0 of Microsoft's Internet
Explorer.
ZDNet's Stefanie Olsen reports: "With P3P, Web surfers can configure
their browsers to automatically determine whether a Web site collects personally
identifiable information, uses that information to create user profiles, or
allows visitors to opt out of the data collection."
Sounds like a pretty handy feature...if it's tied to the capability to screen
sites, or at least alert users, based on the security policies of the Web sites
they are visiting.
Olsen's article is here: "IE
6 beta clamps down on privacy."
CODEBASE FOR KYLIX NOW AVAILABLE. If you've acquired Kylix -- and with
the special low
price that's currently being offered, there's really no excuse not to --
then you're now thinking about add-on tools, libraries, and components.
Most of the major Delphi vendors have updated their components and created
new tools for use with Kylix. Today's announcement is the CodeBase database
library. According to the publisher, Sequiter Software, "CodeBase offers
extremely fast database performance, full-featured database functionality, small
disk/memory footprint requirements, portability, and royalty-free
distribution." CodeBase for Kylix is compatible with -- uses the same API
as -- CodeBase for Windows.
For more information:
WHITHER DESKTOP LINUX? The brouhaha over desktop Linux continues.
(We're for it, just for the record. And we think Kylix will help make it
happen.) Reporters are taking sides on the issue, industry leaders are sounding
off, and readers are responding. It's all very fun and if you read between the
lines there are even a few facts. Here's what's up:
Microsoft
before the earthquake. In this Linux User (UK) article, Eben Moglen
discusses Microsoft's vulnerability to the open-source movement and particularly
to Linux. It's certainly clear that Microsoft takes the Linux threat seriously
these days, though to be honest, Microsoft seems to see Linux as more of a
threat to its server OS business than to desktop Windows.
If
desktop Linux is viable, thank some unlikely spokespeople. A pretty good
wrap-up from ZDNet, including links to previously published articles.
The
campaign against Linux is uphill battle for Microsoft. MSNBC's Lee Gomes
brought this controversy to the attention of a mass audience in this feature
story.
Making
programs like water: free and transparent. The NY Times published this
profile of O'Reilly & Associates CEO Tim O'Reilly. (Note: this Web site
requires free registration.)
Beware
of wolves in agnostic's clothing. This invited editorial from Bruce Perens
appears at ZDNet; it's the latest salvo in an ongoing battle.
That's it for this week. Have a happy Father's Day this weekend...I'll see
you next week.
Keep hacking!
JDH
