Thanks to the book allowance I get from the University of Mauritius, I buy about 10-12 books every year. I just bought those eight (through a very nice guy called Félix Atioune who works for Pearson Education) and I intend to read them by the end of the year – To my students: prepare to hear a lot about refactoring and web applications/architectures in the coming months :-)
Thanks Microsoft… for cheap PCs
While reading Nikolai Bezroukov’s comparison of Linux and Solaris, I came across this part:
“Microsoft indirectly subsidized all Unixes on Intel as the de-facto owner of PC standard: hardware that any Intel based Unix is running on is created by OEMs using the standards that Microsoft license for free to all PC manufactures and the cost of this hardware is mainly determined by the the size of the market created by Microsoft OSes. Plug and play hardware specification is a nice example here. Whether we like Microsoft or not, the simplest and reasonably precise definition of PC always was Microsoft compatible computer.”
I think I must agree with Nikolai… It’s thanks to Microsoft that PCs are now so inexpensive and, at the same time, so powerful.
As from now, each time I boot my PC (I’m using Kubuntu Linux), I’ll spend 1 second thinking of Bill Gates… ;-)
Liverpool is in the FA Cup final
“Chelsea FC,” the Liverpool supporters chanted, “you ain’t got no history.”
Just a quick note to tell you all that Liverpool has just beaten Chelsea 2-1 in the semi-final of the FA Cup (with goals from Riise and Luis Garcia) and that we’ll meet either Middlesbrough or West-Ham in the final.
Poor special one :-)