Peter Coffee

During lunch at the International Python Developers Conference this month, I found myself at a table with several application developers who work for medical service providers. We were talking about handheld devices, following that mornings announcement that a version of the Python scripting language was now running on Palm OS. I suggested that it was […]

When the Napster online file-sharing service was ordered March 5 to block the exchange of copyrighted material, a Los Angeles radio station called me to ask what people would do next. The interviewer seemed to expect a list of other music-sharing Web sites, but the essence of my answer was that digital music is now […]

Announcing the formation of the Python Software Foundation, the inventor of the popular Python scripting language welcomed this month more than 300 attendees to the Ninth International Python Conference in Long Beach, Calif. The foundation “starts life with a nice collection of intellectual property,” said Python progenitor and conference chairman Guido van Rossum in his […]

Food gets eaten. Machines wear out. Software lasts forever. Unlike other commodities, which get consumed (directly or indirectly) in the course of producing other goods, software—at some point—becomes good enough to keep. (I realize this is speculative, but work with me. It could happen.) What could frighten a software developer more than satisfied buyers, once […]

In the early days of air travel, danger and glamour went hand in hand with the novelty of the experience. But as jet-set exclusivity turned to tourist-class ubiquity, passengers came to take safety for granted. So, too, must the security of e-business transactions cease to be a high-profile customer concern; only then will the online […]

Go to any coders convocation, such as this months International Conference for Java Development in New York, where I gave a keynote address, and the textbooks table is guaranteed to have a crowd. Programmers read. Search the Amazon. com site for books that relate to Java, and you—ll find 1,398 matches—at least, as of the […]

About 2 inches long, this chunk of plastic looks as if it came from a Cracker Jack box, but its actually the remote control that comes as standard equipment with an Olympus C-3030Z digital camera. Apart from its practical value (no more rushing to get into a group photo before the timer fires), its a […]

Earth, like the larger planets, has a complex system of rings. Being blessed with intelligent life (or at least, complex, tool-using life), Earth didnt need natural processes to create those ornaments: Earths rings are man-made litter. Legacy software, especially the vast installed base of DOS-era code thats been carried along to Windows 9x, reminds me […]

On a recent episode of “NYPD Blue,” a harried detective tried to look up a telephone number by tapping a stylus on a handheld PDA. “Ill take a hammer to this thing before Easter,” he muttered. Such is the fate of too many efforts to introduce mobile work force automation. The difference between what sounds […]

Its fatal to fall behind the leading edge of it, just as it would be fatal not to know about overnight delivery. Both atoms and bits have to get there when theyre needed, just to keep you in the game. Thats why a halfhearted IT budget isnt a cost-cutting gambit; its a postdated suicide note. […]