Random Brain Dump

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of Mozilla project. I still was with Netscape that faithful day: March 31, 1998. I still remember the big engineering gathering announcing the move. Open source by a commercial software company was pretty much unheard of at the time. The decision to open source the browser code was both controversial. It was a difficult time for Netscape– Microsoft IE was cannibalizing Navigator’s market share and there was no light at the end of the tunnel. By some account, once mighty Navigator’s market share had perilously fallen to 20% at that time– an astounding decline no matter how one looked at it.

Giving away many man-years of commercial code seemed illogical even to me at that time. But an essay by Eric Raymond called “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” became very instrumental in the push toward open source. Raymond’s main point was that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” I remember, the client team had to spend months cleaning up the code. In particular, there were a lot of comments that the public might deem inappropriate. Many people expected the open source community will immediate embrace the code and push it to success. The reality was different. The move was a little too late in saving the company which got bought by AOL later that fall. The move was to salvage the browser. But when the open source community did not become an immediate driving force, some key folks like Jamie Zawinski began to leave the project. Underscoring complexity of the project, it took another 4 years before Mozilla 1.0 saw the light of day.

Ten years later, IE still dominates 80% of the browser market. Given Mozilla’s current market share at 17-18%, Mozilla barely recovers the market share lost it its lifetime. It speaks volume to Microsoft dominance and proves the difficulty of turning the tide. It took some time, Mozilla is emerging as a powerful, innovative and influential project. It relentlessly puts out version of Firefox with one innotive feature after another; by contrast IE has become stagnant. I for one can’t wait to see what the next 10 years Mozilla will bring to the users.

First the Bruins managed to pull another win after a trademark slow start against Western Kentucky. Blowing a 21 point lead, the UCLA guards were particularly ineffective against WKU’s press. In fact, they were just horrible in the 2nd half, repeatedly were pressured to throwing the ball away. The team finally managed to turn in a great end-to-end game against Xavier on Saturday. UCLA simply dominated Xavier to win the west regional and advance to the final four, 3rd straight time.

All #1 seeds made it which is a rarity. Now the real fun begins. At this level of competition, UCLA cannot afford an incomplete game. Any of these final four teams will punish a lackluster effort. UCLA will face Memphis in the semi-final. I’d rank Memphis as the best team in the country. They finished the season with a near perfect record (only 1 loss). The team is big, athletic and deep. UCLA’s defense which has been great all year long, will be key. And UCLA’s Collison will need to command the offense efficiently and open up the floor with his drives.

Let’s bring it on…

Alright! UCLA made it through the first weekend of March Madness.

The Bruins seeded #1 in the West regional and were given a favorable path to reach Final Four, especially with #2 Duke already out. The Bruins kept finding ways to come back and win games this season. But they have a bad habit of slow starts. That worries me– they’re playing with fire!

Barring injuries, they should make it to the final four, knock on wood…  Last year at this time, my friend Joe & I got tickets to watch the regional semi & finals here in HP Pavilion.

Go Bruins!

This Saturday was a beautiful, typical Californian spring day. So we decided to take the kids and spend the day at Oakland Zoo. Kids had a fun sun-filled day and I got to snap a few pictures.

This past weekend I drove the girls to Palo Alto for them to check out some roaming horses on this open pasture. The girls got to feed and pet a few horses, they always enjoy that. I got to snap a few shots, and I enjoyed that.

As today is the next “super Tuesday”, I have some comments on the whole voting process.

I think the American voting system is due for a revamp. The whole process is so long and inefficient.

First, we saw that the presidency can be won without winning the popular vote. That is so damn wrong. Secondly, the way delegates are won differs from state to state. Some states grant partial delegate count, while some go for all-or-nothing. I don’t see the need for delegates anyway, just another level of proxy we can do without.  Then the democrats have these “super-delegates” who vote freely which means their votes don’t necessarily align with the voting public. Plus since they are professional politicians, they can be influenced by special interest groups.

And some super delegates reportedly to be “rethinking” their votes. What? Furthermore some states like Michigan had their delegates wiped out as a penalty for moving their voting dates. Insane! I’d like to see it, along with our tax system, revamped and simplified. At least make it more direct and uniform so a simple man like me can understand.

To promote voting, why not make it more of a direct civic duty and tie it to a tax levy? If you don’t vote, you’re levied with a small tax, say $100. Think about it, most regular joe’s will vote to avoid paying the tax. The rich folks can afford the tax, but they probably already have the motivation to vote for their candidates anyhow. I’ll bet that gets a lot of ballots on a regular basis. 😉

Update: like most other taxes, the levy would work out better as percentage. Something like 0.5% with minimum of $100. Yeah, I think that’ll do…

Sports Illustrated is running some photos of abusive signs from college students. Funny stuffs like this one pictured here…

Okay dude, but who’s keeping the ugly guys out of Indiana? 🙂

I spent more time this weekend on basketball than normal. I started playing hoops again after about 6 months hiatus thanks to bum knee & shoulder. I’m convinced these two long-time injuries will not improve further, so I just strapped on a brace and just went at it. To the injuries added an ankle as I rolled my left ankle going for a steal. Sigh… but at least it’s not too bad and I should be okay for next week. 🙂 The Stanford Recreational center is a great facility with wide & open courts– very enjoyable.

Suzanne took the two girls to Disney on Ice, so I had the Sunday afternoon to myself. So I of spent it in front of the tube catching UCLA & Lakers games. Both were exciting close games and best of all both teams emerged victorious which made my day. A DVR would’ve helped, I had to flip between the channels since the games were aired at the same time. That was a bit annoying!

But, it’s all good…

So, we have a new piece of trivia: “when did Netscape Browser died out?”
Answer: “March 1, 2008”

Looks like 3/1/08 is the official date of demise for Netscape browser when AOL will cease all support for the storied browser. It’s a little fact most people don’t really care about, but it’s rather sad in perspective for a former Netscape employee like me…

Like most folks, I’ve been sitting on the sideline of the format war of HD-DVD vs Blue-ray. It’s finally over with Toshiba’s official defeat yesterday. It’s about time.

So is Blue-ray the best solution for consumers? I guess we can’t know for sure. One thing is clear: this battle wasn’t decided by consumers. There were a lot of dealing and wheeling by the manufacturers and movie studios, even some muddy financial deals between the big companies. There were a lot of stake for Sony & the likes. It wasn’t a pure consumer decision, but one format is obviously better than two for everybody.

The HD-DVD owners got burned, but most of these folks fully understand the risks of being early adopters. I’m usually an early adopters too, but definitely glad I chose to be more prudent this time. Now I can start looking into getting a player and start watching Netflix movies in their full hi-def glory. A PS3 looks like a great deal all suddenly…