Comment Articles

Dross surfaces during silly season

Rupert Goodwins ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 14 Aug 2003 12:25 BST

The one trouble with this notable marriage between commerce and art is that colourful shapes embedded in a clear matrix always remind me of trifle. This is not a bad thing in itself -- I'm sure Intel is happy to be thought of in the same warm, fuzzy way as memories of childhood birthday parties -- but distracts me from highbrow thoughts about the aesthetic impact of wireless. Instead, I have learned to associate the word Centrino with thoughts of whipped cream and feeling slightly nauseous. The solution is for Intel to work with this, and sponsor Ben and Jerry's to create a range of network-centric ice creams. 802 dot L'Heaven, Silly Cone Choc Chip and Twisted Pear flavours spring to mind.

They could call it the Fab Line. D'you want wafers with that?

Blaster Worm
Thanks, Microsoft, for leaving that gaping hole. Cheers, ISPs, for routinely routing that port. Well done, worm writer, for taking advantage. Just what we wanted in the middle of this insane heat is a world full of mad computers.

On the plus side: it could have been a lot worse. It's kept otherwise underemployed computer support people busy, given desperate journalists lots to write about and once again thrown Microsoft's protestations about being security minded into sharp focus.

MS' Wobbly Wheel
Once upon a time, there was a mouse. It had one wheel, and one button. You moved the mouse and clicked the button, and things happened. Then Microsoft came along, and decided that if one button was good, two buttons were better -- then you had to know whether to right-click or left-click; and because most people didn't right-click every software writer thought they could put their own special selection of stuff there. So it got messy. Then Microsoft added a little rubber wheel on top, so you could move, click, and roll -- and if that wasn't enough, you could even click on the wheel, if you could possibly remember what that did.

And now, for a world already growing bulges in their skulls to accommodate the expanded finger control cortex, it's time for lateral displacement. Now the wheel wobbles from side to side, giving the average mouse no fewer than 127 combinations of twist and click.

The Unix family long ago settled for three buttons, on the grounds that if you make something easy to use, it only encourages users. Nice to see Microsoft well ahead of the game on this one.