Ian Murdock’s Weblog

Forget the iPhone—I want an iPhone Shuffle!

The LSB/FSG mailing lists are down. We’re aware of the problem and working on getting them back up as soon as possible.

I’ll be at OSCON Wednesday and Thursday this week. I’m putting together my schedule today—drop me a line if you’d like to get together.

I was in Russia last week to speak at Interop Moscow 2006. As an American who’s old enough to remember duck and cover, it was an experience indeed. Growing up, the Kremlin would have been the last place I’d ever thought I’d get a chance to see, that is, if I’d thought about such things back then (most kids don’t, and I was no exception, being too busy thinking about important things like baseball and computers). After the conference, I did get that chance to see the Kremlin and other Moscow sights with fellow speakers Jon “maddog” Hall, Federico Biancuzzi, and Raoul Chiesa.

Speaking of being a kid and computers, I also had the opportunity to meet Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple Computer. I was first introduced to computers when my father replaced his typewriter at work with an Apple II in 1981 or so, thought I might find it interesting, and brought it home to show me. Needless to say, it captured my imagination, first with the games, then with the idea that I could make it do my bidding with a little study and a lot of tinkering, and I’ve been hooked ever since. So, as I had a chance to tell the Woz firsthand, I literally do what I do because of his Apple II.

I took plenty of pictures, but as usual, I don’t like most of them. The ones I don’t end up throwing out will be appearing in my Flickr photostream over the next few days.

Tectonic: “Friedman recalls going to the ATM after the $2 million was deposited and getting a statement. ‘It ran off the edge of the page!’ He then tried to transfer the $2 million from one account to another through the ATM, which the system couldn’t handle. Eventually – with a good queue growing behind him – Friedman moved the money in $500 000 increments. A week later they hired a CFO, who banned them from moving millions of dollars around through the ATM.”

Scott McNealy: “The nice thing about being chairman is I only identify problems. The rest of the team have to solve them.”

Matt Asay: “[B]y not allowing companies to fire employees, France essentially makes it impossible to hire them.”

Dave Winer: “You can view the 60-percent-Vista-rewrite story as something of a software development IQ test. Anyone who believes that it’s conceivable is someone who hasn’t got the most basic clue about how software development works.”

Daniel Griswold: “This will send a chilling signal. It is just assuming that if a company is from the Middle East it is de facto disqualified from investing in the United States, and I think that is a terrible message to send.”

Technorati Tags: flatworld

I dropped my cell phone a few months ago, and it ended up with a large crack across the LCD, which to me became the perfect excuse to finally get that Blackberry I’ve always wanted. However, given the uncertainty about the outcome of NTP v. RIM, I decided to hold off on my purchase till after the hearing last week, which was widely expected to provide some closure one way or the other as to whether RIM would be allowed to continue its service in the U.S. Unfortunately, there was no such closure to be found. So, I have a quick question to those more in the know than I: When the media talks of a “Blackberry shutdown”, I assume they’re just talking about a shutdown of the push email service, not a shutdown of all access to the Blackberry network? In other words, if Blackberry is shutdown, I presume I’d still be able to access the web etc.? Or would my brand new Blackberry become little more than an expensive paperweight?