The Triumph and Tragedy of OS/2

Jeremy Reimer:

Why would Microsoft management agree to develop a project designed to eliminate the very cash cow that made them billionaires? Steve Ballmer explained:

“It was what we used to call at the time ‘Riding the Bear.’ You just had to try to stay on the bear’s back, and the bear would twist and turn and try to throw you off, but we were going to stay on the bear, because the bear was the biggest, the most important… you just had to be with the bear, otherwise you would be under the bear.”

History IBM Microsoft OS/2

Printing From iOS Devices

Kirk McElhearn:

It seems like sharing printers to iOS devices should be a no-brainer. Is Apple really not doing this just because of some licensing fees?

I was surprised that David Gelphman didn’t cover this when he was talking about AirPrint.

AirPrint iOS Printing

The String Type Is Broken

Edaqa:

I encourage you to run such tests in your favourite language. If you are doing work with international text it is vital that you understand what your ‘string’ type is actually doing. Once you’ve run this you should reconsider what your “string” type is actually doing for you. In my opinion they’re all broken.

Programming Unicode