News to me, a loyal WordPress user: there is a companion bulletin board software that apparently started back in December 2004. I’ll have to give bbPress a try as I am really tired of my existing bulletin board software.

After five beta’s and a final release candidate, Internet Explorer 7 has launched. Grab your own copy and test, but understand that like all prior IE Browsers, it will replace your version of IE6. That is problematic for developers as we now need to keep two machines running side by side, one for IE6 that is still in most common use, and one for IE7 as it will become more and more common. When Vista launches around the first of the year, it will expand even more in use as it is the native browser with Windows Vista.

With Detroit up five runs in the 6th inning, Sean Casey at bat and … boom they show him batting in slow motion and you can actually see his calf muscle give out. It hurts me to watch it. Baseball is boring until this time of year when the games actually matter, don’t you think?

Good news update: They are calling it a spasm. It looked like something more significant to me. They claim they are icing it and he may be back in a day or a few days. It looked much worse than that to me. It looked like the old lampshade rolling up injury from a torn achilles to me, but hopefully these pictures told the wrong story.

It’s never been more obvious how much the hardware and software industries go out of their way to drive each others business. Pricing for Vista has been released and the standalone copies of Vista that you can purchase in any PC shop are so expensive that the vast majority will go with the OEM version that comes with new PC’s after Vista’s release. In other words, if you want to get Vista at a reasonable price, you have to buy a new PC. So Microsoft greases the hardware vendors, and in exchange, they (hopefully) will push Windows to new users.

I’m wondering if this relationship is symbiotic or parasitic. It occurs to me that if the DOJ and EU wants to even the playing field for competition, they should probably consider abolishing the OEM license. If that happened, Microsoft would be forced to compete on price across the range of their products.

After all, their OS monopoly appears to have amassed primarily from OEM sales.

On the subject of Vista, in addition to the high price of non OEM versions, you can now expect more stringent piracy checks as well. Apparently in the enterprise you are supposed to have your own licensing server running, but what happens if that server fails? Time will tell I guess.

This article that Google may apparently sell adwords to a competitor of a particular company. That doesn’t bother me. As a consumer, if I type in some company name I would be delighted to be offered alternatives from competitors so that I can make an informed choice. What is interesting is that the article alleges the plaintiff in that suit believes that Google fails to disclose sold search results! Now I have always believed just the opposite is true. I see sponsored links and they are clearly disclosed as near as I can figure. I would like to know if there is any substance to this allegation.

But I would sure like to try one. My kids have had the chance to ride one, but I was busy at the time and missed my opportunity. I find the whole issue of the “recall” a bit funny. Every computer controlled device has driver upgrades (no pun intended) and this is all that they are doing now. It still looks to be an amazing bit of technology and I still think it will change how people do things in years to come. The only thing that shocked me is that there are less than 25,000 units out there, meaning that few corporate accounts are buying large chunks of them it would seem. It seems the logical vehicle to replace golf carts in larger warehouses and the like.

When an executive leaves your company and you are a significant enterprise, how long should it take you to remove a page stating that person works for you? Good luck to Ms. Baskin where ever life may take her.