I’m excited to announce that we’re adopting the icon used in Firefox [via Microsoft Team RSS Blog : Icons: It’s still orange]

Awwww, common, can't we manage a super excited

Dare Obasanjo mulls on the measure of success:

One of the interesting things I've noticed due to the discussion about Yahoo!'s purchase of del.icio.us is how differently success is judged in the post-dotbomb technology startup scene. ....

I tend to agree with Anil Dash, del.icio.us isn't yet a success except for being successful at making the founders and VCs a good return on their investment. If a service can grow to be 5 times as large and still be considered a failure then I think it is safe to say that calling del.icio.us a success is at best premature. [via Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life]

What I felt about the original dotcom boom was that I misunderstood it - it wasn't about creating product, value etc etc it was about selling a business plan, aka Vapour, and then spending the £/$ the plan accrued for you on having a ton of fun. I haven't got any idea what is going on here, I don't know what Yahoo is up to.

Late Friday, the company changed course again and notified ActiveX control vendors, OEM partners and content providers of the coming changes, which will be included in all future releases of Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

 [via Microsoft Bows to Eolas, Revamps IE's Multimedia Handling]

The above article points to the docs...

A white paper detailing the ActiveX changes has been published on the MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network).

All fine and dandy, but nothing on a source I watch - the IE Team Blog. Presumably Scoble is not in the country or he would be very angry and venting his frustration at the failure to use the normal communications methods, i.e. blogs.

My batch files for building software releases suddenly stopped working. More specifically, the sequence that updated version numbers across all the source files in the various components (application versioninfo, Wix sources, cab file inf files etc) using Search & Replace from funduc started hanging - the S&R would run but then fail to auto exit.

It took me a while to work out that this was because I was running the last.fm player. I dunno - it scares the life out of me as to what the player might be doing that would stop an entirely different process from exiting. Ho hum.

Long-term pensions plan is vital says PM.  The government will ensure pensioners are provided for in the future, Tony Blair insisted today. [via 10 Downing Street News]

In 1997 people knew there was a pensions crisis looming in the public sector, people were complacent about the private sector. Elected Councillors and their Officers knew of the problem, Westminster MPs knew of the problem; one can only assume that the media was well aware of the problem as well. In 1997 Tony Blair said the country had one day to save the Country's pensions. 8 years on and we're not much further forward. What a waste.

WTL 7.5 has just been released on Sourceforge - The Windows Template Library (WTL) is a C++ library for developing Windows applications and UI components. It extends ATL (Active Template Library) and provides a set of classes for controls, dialogs, frame windows, GDI objects, and more. - Mike [via MSDN Blogs]

For those still playing in the archaic world of C++ - now just waiting for the VS 2005 DVD to arrive.

But then I'm hardly trying!

For Mr Blunkett it must be the end of his front line political career,

No, no, no the processology on this sort of thing is often a place in Europe...

although that was also said about Peter Mandelson.  [via BBC NEWS | Politics | Why Blunkett was under pressure]

Ah yes.

Three labs are being held: one in the North West of England, one in London and one in Yorkshire & Humber.  [via Innovation Labs]

London is a region? And what are the borders of this region I wonder? Looks like a good idea though if you have a nifty idea for "Beyond the browser" as they call it - a strap line that Zeepe started using a little while ago.

Once in a while, I do a project whose long term implications make me want to cry [via Ben Hammersley: Hot BBC Archive Action]

Yeah well, he said a similar sort of thing about the Backstage project (which has recently, and quite rightly, taken some heavy flak for over-hype). So, here he is over-hyping a database. Possibly a moderately interesting database if you are a BBC output geek but read-only access to a database nevertheless. At least COBOL programmers had the excitement of the occasional update record.

Oh, and the screen-shot is seriously sad (in fact, it makes me want to cry).

Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far.  ...

The entire experience was frustrating and irritating. Not only had Sony put software on my system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall. Worse, most users that stumble across the cloaked files with a RKR scan will cripple their computer if they attempt the obvious step of deleting the cloaked files.

While I believe in the media industry’s right to use copy protection mechanisms to prevent illegal copying, I don’t think that we’ve found the right balance of fair use and copy protection, yet. This is a clear case of Sony taking DRM too far. [via Mark's Sysinternals Blog]

An informative article - its interesting both what they can do and what you can do to find out what they have done. Its very difficult to have secrets.  

O2 agrees to Telefónica takeover.  Update: The mobile operator is recommending shareholders accept an offer worth a total of £17.7bn from the Spanish telco [via ZDNet UK News]

Wow, the days of Telecom Securicor Cellular Radio (more widely known as Cellnet) are long gone. Back then we didn't want too much market share in case the government clobbered us, we had to let Vodaphone breathe. Now, they are too small a fish to survive.

Atlas Pulled....  

Well, unfortunately the Atlas Project has been pulled and will not be released for VS2005 like they told us at PDC.

It is not coming until Orcas now... major let down.

 [via SteelePrice.Net]

I haven't seen this anywhere else and the Atlas Site doesn't seem to mention it - any one have any clue?

David Blunkett.  Asked whom the Prime Minister had consulted on the David Blunkett DNA bioscience breach of Ministerial Code, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) that, as they knew he did not go into the processology of whom the Prime Minister talked... [via Downing Street Says...]

I call this out for two reasons (good day today eh?) - this word processology grabbed my attention and is therefore a good word that should get lots of use. Google for this word and you will find that it seems that it is most often used by the Downing Street Clowns (sorry, spokesman).  I have no real understanding of what it means.

And the second reason - I merely ask - how is Mr D Blunkett still in his job - how did he even get another job in the Cabinet for goodness sake. I blame Mrs Blair - if one is to believe the media (which lets face it is a huge ask) her behaviour might lead others to believe that "helping yourself" is the acceptable face of social democracy or rights with responsibilities (I am responsible for accompanying the PM, therefore I have right to grab some money?). Alternatively, they feel untouchable because they know some dark secrets. Given the dark secrets the media know and don't tell you, ones that ministers know and the media doesn't must be dark indeed.

phil ringnalda says "No matter how popular the place where you saw it is, there's probably someone reading you who didn't see it, and wants to. Don't fear mindless link propogation quite so much, it's part of the value of weblogs."

So, if you haven't seen it, this is useful:

Leak Free Javascript Closures.  If you're confused about how closures in JavaScript cause memory leaks in Internet Explorer, this is for you: Leak Free Javascript Closures. Then, without leakage, you can write code like this: function attach() { var element = document.getElementById("my-element"); element. … [via Sjoerd Visscher's weblog]

I've been running a campaign with myself to watch more UK TV because I've found that I/we are watching too much American stuff; whilst the best of US is really good (Carnivale, Roswell (2nd time round for me and it is just as funny and the kids love it), Lost, Boston Legal, West Wing, Weeds, Scrubs) it can't be healthy can it? I enjoyed Extras and Bleak House looks interesting but other than that I have been really strugglin'. The first series of The Thick of It was OK but the current series (if you can call 3 episodes of 1/2 hour a series) is, err, dreadful. Have media land lost the sense that 'comedy' is meant to be funny? I also saw the first episode of the second series of Bodies. "Hospital-drama" it was not - in the horror genre maybe (and if you viewed it as that quite effective).

I am wondering if I have missed something that would enable me to understand what is going on here. Is it the new vernacula that "challenging" means we descibed something as something else entirely? And there is another theme, both Bodies and The Thick of It are meant, at some level, to reflect the reality of their subject matter. And that is really scary - taking into account the dramtaic exaggeration - are hospitals really like that portrayed, does government really behave in the way described?

And after all of that, I have to watch the X-Factor every Saturday - ah well, at least its from the UK.