doofusdan

Technical Debt

2011-10-13T08:37:00.000-07:00

I saw a great Steve McConnell (author of the crucial book Code Complete) webcast on Technical Debt and wanted to get these links published: blog post, webcast replay. The webcast replay has a link to a slide deck you can download - just register for the webcast.Highly recommended.Here's Steve's opening blurb:

The term technical debt was coined by Ward Cunningham to describe the obligation that a software organization incurs when it chooses a design or construction approach that's expedient in the short term but that increases complexity and is more costly in the long term.Ward didn't develop the metaphor in very much depth. The few other people who have discussed technical debt seem to use the metaphor mainly to communicate the concept to technical staff. I agree that it's a useful metaphor for communicating with technical staff, but I'm more interested in the metaphor's incredibly rich ability to explain a critical technical concept to non-technical project stakeholders.

#OccupySesameStreet

2011-10-08T16:06:00.000-07:00

99% of da wurldz cookeez r eatn by 1% of da wurldz monsterz. OM NOM NOM NOM.

Learn to be a better troubleshooter

2011-10-08T00:12:00.000-07:00

The very best technical talents often have massive troubleshooting chops. But troubleshooting isn't inherently a technical skill; it's a set of tools to achieve clear thinking and knowledge.

This is science!

For your consideration: the clearest expositions of technical troubleshooting strategies and tactics since Sun Tzu did it for war.

In no particular order, here are links and a few choice excerpts.

ESR, the ninja-slicing, recursive-software-naming, Free Software advocate who is a key figure in the culture of open-source, wrote one of the foundational documents of hackerdom. As of this writing, it's at version 3.7, last updated December 2010. The beauty of it is, in telling you how to ask questions the smart way, it also teaches you troubleshooting.

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Eric Steven Raymond
Be precise and informative about your problem
Describe the symptoms of your problem or bug carefully and clearly.
Describe the environment in which it occurs (machine, OS, application, whatever). Provide your vendor's distribution and release level (e.g.: â€œFedora Core 7â€, â€œSlackware 9.1â€, etc.).
Describe the research you did to try and understand the problem before you asked the question.
Describe the diagnostic steps you took to try and pin down the problem yourself before you asked the question.
Describe any possibly relevant recent changes in your computer or software configuration.
If at all possible, provide a way to reproduce the problem in a controlled environment.
Do the best you can to anticipate the questions a hacker will ask, and answer them in advance in your request for help.

Giving hackers the ability to reproduce the problem in a controlled environment is especially important if you are reporting something you think is a bug in code. When you do this, your odds of getting a useful answer and the speed with which you are likely to get that answer both improve tremendously.

ESR also says:

Simon Tatham has written an excellent essay entitled How to Report Bugs Effectively. I strongly recommend that you read it.

I agree! Check it out:

The first aim of a bug report is to let the programmer see the failure with their own eyes. If you can't be with them to make it fail in front of them, give them detailed instructions so that they can make it fail for themselves.
In case the first aim doesn't succeed, and the programmer can't see it failing themselves, the second aim of a bug report is to describe what went wrong. Describe everything in detail. State what you saw, and also state what you expected to see. Write down the error messages, especially if they have numbers in.
When your computer does something unexpected, freeze. Do nothing until you're calm, and don't do anything that you think might be dangerous.
By all means try to diagnose the fault yourself if you think you can, but if you do, you should still report the symptoms as well.
Be ready to provide extra information if the programmer needs it. If they didn't need it, they wouldn't be asking for it. They aren't being deliberately awkward. Have version numbers at your fingertips, because they will probably be needed.
Write clearly. Say what you mean, and make sure it can't be misinterpreted.
Above all, be precise. Programmers like precision.

But the first place I send people when I want them to understand what I'd like to get as a good bug report is Joel Spolsky's story of Jane, the very, very good software tester.

It's pretty easy to remember the rule for a good bug report. Every good bug report needs exactly three things.

Steps to reproduce,
What you expected to see, and
What you saw instead.
Seems easy, right? Maybe not. As a programmer, people regularly assign me bugs where they left out one piece or another.
If you don't tell me how to repro the bug, I probably will have no idea what you are talking about. "The program crashed and left a smelly turd-like object on the desk." That's nice, honey. I can't do anything about it unless you tell me what you were doing.

If you don't specify what you expected to see, I may not understand why this is a bug. The splash screen has blood on it. So what? I cut my fingers when I was coding it. What did you expect? Ah, you say that the spec required no blood! Now I understand why you consider this a bug.
Part three. What you saw instead. If you don't tell me this, I don't know what the bug is. That one is kind of obvious.

Check out this book: Are Your Lights On: How to find out what the problem really is, by Gause and Weinberg. They wrote the book on requirements, too.

Here's some random guy's 2 minute video review of it:

KB555375 might be Microsoft's best KB article of all time - but by all means, if you know a better one, say so in the comments.

Microsoft Support Knowledgebase Article ID: 555375 - Last Review: July 22, 2005 - Revision: 1.0
How to ask a question

Author: Daniel Petri MVP
Good examples of questions will include information from most of the following categories: - What are you trying to do?- Why are you trying to do it?- What did you try already, why, and what was the result of your actions?- What was the exact error message that you received?- How long have you been experiencing this problem?- Have you searched the relevant forum/newsgroup archives?- Have you searched for any tools or KB articles or any other resources?- Have you recently installed or uninstalled any software or hardware?- What changes were made to the system between the time everything last worked and when you noticed the problem? Don't let us assume, tell us right at the beginning.

In fact, if you know of ANY other top-notch sources of troubleshooting wisdom, put a link in the comments!

There's one I'm trying to find that I had as a mousepad - it was about 10 troubleshooting tips - one of them was something like "Problems don't just go away on their own. If you haven't fixed the problem, the problem isn't fixed." Anybody know what that's from?

(I'll try to fix the formatting on this post later, ok?)

Client software installation methods as children's toys

2011-09-02T01:12:00.000-07:00

Hey, kids - it's time for everyone's favorite IT game: torture the analogy! Ready to play? Yay!

Imagine you get a brand-new employer-issued, Windows computer. It's fresh and pristine, and working great. It's got Office, and a web browser (well, let's be honest - it has Internet Explorer). It can do basic stuff.

But it doesn't have the software you need to do the parts of your job that make it different from every other job that involves sitting in front of a computer.

You've got to put that software on top of your fresh, pristine computer.

It's like a little kid in a room that's white from the shag carpet to the velour wallpaper.

Think of the different ways you can get your software on this computer as different toys that kid could have in their hand.

Manual install from media or download from vendor : marker

Packaged installers (automated install) : pencil

Terminal Services / Citrix XenApp (née Metaframe) : ViewMaster

App-V / Thinstall (app isolation) : Colorforms

I always did like Colorforms.

An incomplete history of source code version control from SCCS to Mercurial

2011-08-12T21:18:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, in the 1970s, there was SCCS. It was big on PDP-11's and the like.

Then came RCS, which could do version control for individual files, but not for entire projects.

Finally, CVS arrived in the 1980s and people said "ok, finally we have something that can be credibly called source code version control."

And people used CVS for a good long while. And it was way better than not having version control.

But there were some problems.

Turns out that giving multiple people the ability to travel through time and alter the history of incredibly complicated documents with complex interdepencies can have a few wrinkles to it. Who woulda thunk it?

So, once we all survived Y2k, SVN was created, to be pretty much just like CVS, but working correctly.

Whole teams could work on projects, and fork, and branch, and all sorts of lovely things, all out of a central repository. A rich ecosystem built on SVN; IDEs integrated SVN functionality; issue tracking systems linked in so that commit messages could update the status of bugs; and vice versa. And not only is it well understood how to operate the software, even the business processes around code management using SVN are well understood and documented - for example, a very pragmatic book about it.

And that went pretty darned well for a good long while. Talk about mature!

But then Linus came along and started an open source project with thousands of contributors all around the world. Mind-bogglingly large scaling issues here. In fact, it had to be distributed - there couldn't be a single central store. And this just exceeded SVN's capabilities.

So Linus created Git. And lo, Git is mighty. It can handle just about everything you can imagine. It's used by nearly everyone who operates at that scale, and all the open-source hackers who want free hosting at places like Google Code and Github. The best practices are mature.

So, here's the state of play these days:

SCCS and RCS are legacy software, like COBOL - still plays a valuable role, but generally not chosen for any new implementations.

There are old CVS implementations out there, often cursed at by the poor programmers who haven't been able to convince their management to upgrade to SVN. CVS is kind of the Internet Explorer 6 of version control systems these days.

Most enterprises have at least SVN (or some commercial equivalents, like the version control built into Visual Studio) and it's hard to think of an IDE with version control support that doesn't support SVN.

Many modern IDEs have added native support for GIT; tons of tech companies are using it. Including some folks who are pretty hard-core.

And there's an incredibly elegant system called Mercurial (Hg). Many people like to compare and contrast Git and Mercurial.

So, here we are, with Subversion, Git and Mercurial as obvious choices to select from, whether you're an open source project looking for free hosting on Google Code, a one person iPhone developer, or a Fortune 500 company.

If you care, here are links to my delicious tags for:

Version Control

Subversion
Git

Mercurial

(Did you notice I only discussed open source version control systems? Yeah. I said it was incomplete.)

Architecture & The Book of Five Rings

2011-08-12T20:26:00.000-07:00

Miyamoto Musashi's The Book of Five Rings is a classic text of the martial arts, written in 17th century Japan. I'm reading Thomas Cleary's excellent translation.

Cleary argues that Musashi intended his work to apply not just to fighting, but to every endeavor of life. I'm certainly seeing the applicability to IT architecture:

The carpenter is used as a metaphor in reference to the notion of a house. We speak of aristocratic houses, military houses, houses of the arts; we speak of a house collapsing or a house continuing; and we speak of such and such a tradition, style, or "house." Since we use the expression "house," therefore, I have employed the way of the master carpenter as a metaphor.

The world of carpenter is written with characters meaning "great skill" or "master plan." Since the science of martial arts involves great skill and master planning, I am writing about it in terms of comparison with carpentry.

If you want to learn the science of martial arts, meditate on this book; let the teacher be the needle, let the student be the thread, and practice unremittingly.

Likening the Science of Martial Arts to Carpentry

As the master carpenter is the overall organizer and director of the carpenters, it is the duty of the master carpenter to understand the regulations of the country, find out the iregulations of the locality, and attend ot the regulations of the master carpenter's own establishment.

The master capenter, knowing the measurements and designs of all sorts of structures, employs people to build houses. In this respect, the master carpenter is the same as the master warrior.

When sorting out timber for building a house, that which is straight, free from knots, and of good appearance can be used for front pillars. That which has some knots but is straight and strong ca be used for rear pillars. That which is somewhat weak yet has no knots and looks good is variously used for door sills, lintels, doors, and screens. That which is knotted and crookend but nevertheless strong is used thoughtfully in consiration of the strneght of the various members of the house. Then the house will last a long time.

Even knotted, crooked, and weak timber can be made into scaffolding, and later used for firewood.

As the master carpenter directs the journeymen, he knows their various levels of skill and gives them appropriate tasks. Some are assigned to the flooring, some to the doors and screens, some to the sills, lintels and ceilings, and so on. He has the unskilled set out floor joists, and gets those even less skilled to carve wedges. When the master carpenter exercises discernment in the assignment of jobs, the work progresses smoothly.

Efficiency and smooth progress, prudence in all matters, recognizing true courage, recognizing different levels of morale, instilling confidence, and realizing what can and cannot be reasonably expected — such are the matters on the mind of the master carpenter. The principle of martial arts is like this.

You can include IT under that metaphor just as easily as martial arts.

The Science of Martial Arts

Speaking in terms of carpentry, soldiers sharpen their own tools, make various useful implements, and keep them in their utility boxes. Receiving instructions from a master carpenter, they hew pillars and beams with adzes, shave flors and shelving with planes, even carve openwork and bas relief. Making sure themeasurements are correct, they see to all the necessary tasks in an efficient manner; this is the rule for carpentry. When one has develop practical knowledge of all the skills of the craft, eventually one can become a master carpenter oneself.

An essential habit for carpenters is to have sharp tools and keep them whetted. Is is up to the carpenter to use these tools masterfully, even making such things as miniature shrines, bookshelves, tables, lamp stands, cutting boards, and pot covers. Being a soldier is like this. This should be given careful reflection.

Necessary accomplishments of a carpenter are avoiding crookedness, getting joints to fit together, skillful planing, avoiding abrasion, and seeing that there is no subsequent warping.

If you want to learn this science, then take everything I write to heart and think it over carefully.

Consumerization of Enterprise IT Goes Both Ways

2011-02-25T17:59:00.000-08:00

Lots of talk recently about the consumerization of IT and the end of the IT department.

I am wrapping up two launches of consumerized IT services in the enterprise right now, and have been talking about this professionally for years. Here's what I have to tell you about it:

It goes both ways.

If you want to consumerize enterprise IT, your enterprise has to act like a retail consumer.

The product works the way it works, and that’s that. You can complain about it on Twitter, but you’re not going to have it change features and functionality to suit your every whim - or even to meet mandatory business requirements.

It is what it is. If you can live with that, you can have it!

The problem comes when enterprises can’t live with that. They DO have mandatory requirements, and the consumer stuff (and many enterprise COTS packages) just doesn’t meet them out of the box.

If such enterprises want to consumerize their IT services, then they are going to have to either accept not meeting their requirements for every system, or change their policies to match what is achievable off-the-shelf.

In the meantime, their employees are hacking work.

How to easily load and read .CBR files from your computer onto your iPad

2010-11-08T01:03:00.000-08:00

Install Stanza and Dropbox on your iPad. Set up a free Dropbox account.

Upload the .CBR to your Dropbox folder from your computer.

Open it in Dropbox app on your iPad. Dropbox will say it can't display the file, never fear.

Do "Open in Stanza." (This takes a minute or two. It's still quicker than other methods.)

Done.

Yes, there are other ways to do it (copy through iTunes, use Stanza's server, etc) but this is quick and easy, even for non-geeks.

Me, side-by-side with Douglas Adams

2009-09-09T12:38:00.001-07:00

Me, side-by-side with Douglas Adams
Originally uploaded by fullerbecker

What happens if you search the iTunes store for Towel?

You find Douglas Adams, and you find me!

Use Outlook 2007 to make collaborating between organizations easier – share your free/busy times

2009-08-03T10:42:00.001-07:00

Folks who use Outlook and Exchange together are used to being able to use Outlook's free/busy times to tell when other people in their organization are available to meet. But what happens when a vendor or business partner from outside your organization is trying to find a time to meet with you?

Typically for me, it used to be: find a bunch of available times; write them down and email them to the vendor; then the vendor checks on their end with the folks they need to bring and picks one, but by then, I've been scheduled for three more meetings and that free time isn't free any longer – so like they say on the shampoo bottle, "lather, rinse, repeat." What a waste of time!

With Outlook 2007* there's a better way!

Dear vendor, you can see my calendar at this link: https://calendars.office.microsoft.com/en-us/pubcal/viewer.aspx?path=%2fpubcalstorage%2fdnlhhqlz1065262%2fBecker_Dan_Calendar.ics Please schedule the meeting for a time I'm available.

[Go ahead and click that link – you'll see my actual availability!]

How did I do that?

Outlook 2007 makes it very easy to share your calendar online with people outside your company, using Outlook 2007.

Interested? Well good! Microsoft has written up just what you need to do to make it happen: Publish a calendar on Office Online

I strongly suggest you use the option to publish Availability only to minimize the risk of information disclosure.

You can also choose whether to share your calendar information only with specific people, or just publish it for the whole Internet to see. (I'm sure you can guess which is the more secure approach – but you will have to make the calculation about convenience vs. security of your schedule. Since I've blogged, twittered, etc. for quite a while, I'm obviously somewhat comfortable with the Internet knowing quite a bit about me. Your tolerance for that may differ.)

If you want to restrict access to your calendar to only invited people, you need to sign up for a Windows Live ID account.

I hope this tip will make collaborating across organizational boundaries a bit easier for you.

*Yes, you used to be able to do this with earlier versions of Outlook back when Microsoft ran a public free/busy server – but that was shut down years ago. But this one works 'out of the box' with Outlook just by following the instructions, no need to install any extra software.** Easy-peasy!

**And yes, there are a gazillion other ways to do this, and using Outlook and Exchange is SOOOOO 20^th century, get with the web2.0 wave, blah blah blah. Ok, if you know that already, then this blog post is not for you! It's for folks who still need to use Outlook & Exchange but also need to collaborate outside their organizational boundaries.

Now Firefox 3.5 compatible: Seattle Public Library LibX Edition

2009-07-02T11:40:00.000-07:00

LibX is an open-source project that creates browser extensions that give you one-click access to the online card catalog from your own library. See a book you're interested in on Amazon, or anywhere on the Internet for that matter? LibX makes checking to see whether it's available via your library - and if so, reserving it - as easy as pie!

But a LibX "edition" needs to be set up for each library. And the great folks behind LibX have made it easy to do that! So a while back, I made a Seattle Public Library LibX edition.

And now it's updated for Firefox 3.5 compatibility.

If you have already installed the Seattle Public Library edition of LibX, the next time you launch Firefox, it should automatically prompt you that an update is available to install.

Otherwise, go ahead and install Seattle Public Library LibX now! (There is a version for Internet Explorer, too. Sorry, there's no LibX for Chrome or Safari.)

And if you are reading this but don't get your books from SPL, check to see if there is a LibX edition for your library. If there isn't, you should make one with LibX Edition Builder! It's a great way for geeks to support their local library.

Even with @comcastcares, Comcast Triple Play is not a basket you should put all your connectivity eggs in

2009-06-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

@comcastcares For 3rd weekday in a row, cannot call toll free #'s "all circuits are busy". Getting ready to cancel. Pls help!10:06 AM Jun 2nd from web

ComcastBonnie@doofusdan the all circuits busy thing is a regional issue they're trying to hash out :/9:31 AM Jun 2nd from web in reply to doofusdan

Comcast isn't delivering on the fundamentals of having the dial tone actually work, or having Internet access. And that's what I want from a telephone and Internet service provider: dial tone and Internet. And that is what Comcast hasn't been able to deliver to me lately.

Based on my experience, I recommend that if you are looking at Comcast Triple Play, don't. They aren't reliable enough to use for both ISP and telco. If you use Comcast for one, use another provider for the other. That way when Comcast's service is down you can at least use the other one.

I think it's great that Comcast has folks on twitter trying to help out. They've helped me before. But I'd prefer not to need to ask for help at all - I just want my phone & ISP to work. Is that too much to ask? For Comcast apparently it is.

Here's an email I'm sending to them. I hope this will help get my problem resolved now but I really do not want to stay as a pure Comcast customer any longer. And I recommend you don't do so either.

Typo occurred, too

2009-05-20T00:35:00.001-07:00

Typo occurred, too
Originally uploaded by fullerbecker

Can you be a little more specific?

This Old Space Telescope

2009-05-16T12:07:00.000-07:00

Watching the Hubble repairs live is at once fascinating, restful, and inspiring. And boring. But great to be watching with a quiet house and a cuppa coffee to wake up gently on a beautiful Saturday before starting a day that promises to end in happy exhaustion.

(I'm watching on UW2.TV as I write this, it's one of my favorite TV stations and it carries lots of NASA.TV. There are a gazillion places to see it - just search for STS-125 spacewalk - I'm watching the third one right now)

From the mission description:

...pieces of those instruments have failed in past years – not the entire instrument, but specific pieces inside of them. The crew will replace only the pieces that have failed.

But those instruments were never designed to be repaired in space. In fact, they were specifically designed not to come apart.

“When we first looked at it, we were going ‘well, maybe, maybe not,’” Ceccacci said.

Since then, the team has come up with a plan for the work that Ceccacci believes will be very successful. But it won’t be easy – the repair of the spectrograph, for instance, requires the spacewalkers to remove more than 100 screws to access a computer card they will pull out and replace.

The Hubble Space Telescope is seen in March 2002 with its new solar arrays after the completion of STS-109, the third Hubble servicing mission. Image: NASA

Hubble is going to be replaced, and this is the last maintenance Hubble will receive. Scott Berkun perceptively describes the importance of giving up the old to make way for the new.

They know that in order to build whatever will replace the Hubble, they have to let go of Hubble, even if that means letting it die, so they can have the funds and resources to invest in the next thing (It’s called the Webb telescope and it’s made from Beryllium - sounds like Star Trek).

More on the Webb Telescope's mirror from Technology Review. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope site is authoritative.

Great software writing can be Mercurial

2009-05-15T00:04:00.000-07:00

Cross-pollination works. For example, I think infrastructure groups can usefully adopt several developer tools and mindsets. (I've talked about this before.) One of these is automated build & test systems. Another one - and the necessary foundation for automated builds - is revision/version control.

And I'm usually interested in comparing different approaches to solving a problem I'm familiar with. I find seeing the differences in the approaches gives me a better understanding of the underlying problem; it helps to abstract what is perhaps an implementation artifact and what is inherent to the domain.

So when I spotted on TouchCode's Google Code wiki that Google Code is now supporting yet another version control system, Mercurial, I was intrigued enough to go learn more about Mercurial, how it differs from and tries to improve upon Subversion and Git.

Did I mention that I'm easily distracted by bright, shiny knowledge? There's a rule I follow strictly: when I am playing, I'm allowed to shoot off into completely random digressions if I want to!

Conveniently, Mercurial: The Definitive Guide is available online, Free. Thanks, Bryan O'Sullivan!

What a delightful surprise to see it looks like the makings of a good software book, too! From the Preface:

Technical storytelling
A few years ago, when I wanted to explain why I believed that distributed revision control is important, the field was then so new that there was almost no published literature to refer people to.

Although at that time I spent some time working on the internals of Mercurial itself, I switched to writing this book because that seemed like the most effective way to help the software to reach a wide audience, along with the idea that revision control ought to be distributed in nature. I publish the book online under a liberal license for the same reason: to get the word out.

There's a familiar rhythm to a good software book that closely resembles telling a story: What is this thing? Why does it matter? How will it help me? How do I use it? In this book, I try to answer those questions for distributed revision control in general, and for Mercurial in particular.

And right off the bat, a great explanation that I'm going to point lots of people to in the future:

Why use revision control?
There are a number of reasons why you or your team might want to use an automated revision control tool for a project.
It will track the history and evolution of your project, so you don't have to. For every change, you'll have a log of who made it; why they made it; when they made it; and what the change was.

When you're working with other people, revision control software makes it easier for you to collaborate. For example, when people more or less simultaneously make potentially incompatible changes, the software will help you to identify and resolve those conflicts.

It can help you to recover from mistakes. If you make a change that later turns out to be in error, you can revert to an earlier version of one or more files. In fact, a really good revision control tool will even help you to efficiently figure out exactly when a problem was introduced (see the section called “Finding the source of a bug” for details).
It will help you to work simultaneously on, and manage the drift between, multiple versions of your project.
Most of these reasons are equally valid—at least in theory—whether you're working on a project by yourself, or with a hundred other people.

All cool so far, right? But check out what Bryan did - this is so self-referential, I just love it to pieces:

About the Example Code
This book takes an unusual approach to code samples. Every example is “live”—each one is actually the result of a shell script that executes the Mercurial commands you see. Every time an image of the book is built from its sources, all the example scripts are automatically run, and their current results compared against their expected results.

The advantage of this approach is that the examples are always accurate; they describe exactly the behavior of the version of Mercurial that's mentioned at the front of the book. If I update the version of Mercurial that I'm documenting, and the output of some command changes, the build fails.

Anyway, I'm still reading, and I think I may well give Hg a shot for my next project.

An actual reason to install iPhone OS 3 while it's in beta

2009-05-09T10:45:00.001-07:00

App Store submissions are now being reviewed on iPhone OS 3.0
Originally uploaded by fullerbecker

Apple says "App Store submissions are now being reviewed on iPhone OS 3.0" so of course I'd really best test it myself before submitting, eh?

(No, I'm not anywhere near finished yet - I've only had about 1 hr to spend on it since the class.)

Warning kids - I would not be doing this if I didn't have alternate devices and full backup of my iTunes library available in case of beta FAIL.

Instantwatcher.com: a great way to find stuff to Watch Instantly on Netflix

2009-05-08T23:49:00.000-07:00

instantwatcher.com - Movies and TV to Watch Instantly on Netflix:

"Who is this website for?

It's for Netflix users who want to traverse and explore Netflix's catalog of streaming titles more efficiently and painlessly. All the information and cross-links on this website are limited to Watch Instantly titles so you don't have to waste time sifting through a bunch of DVD-only titles to find the ones that you can start watching right away.

You can also play or queue these titles directly from this website.

Can I use this website for free?

Yes. But you do have to have a Netflix membership to make full use of this website."

HP Mini 2140 is much better netbook with Windows 7 than with XP

2009-05-08T00:28:00.000-07:00

"Windows 7 is the next version of the Windows client operating system. This version incorporates hundreds of improvements based on your feedback"

And it shows.

I recommend the Windows 7 Release Candidate, as long as you're cool with RTFM'ing. Go read the Windows 7 Release Candidate FAQ, then download & install.

XP to Windows 7 netbook upgrade? Windows Easy Transfer: Netbook Fail

2009-05-01T13:21:00.001-07:00

XP to Windows 7 netbook upgrade? Windows Easy Transfer: Netbook Fail
Originally uploaded by fullerbecker

So - MS hopes netbook users will upgrade from XP to Win7. But you can't do an in-place upgrade from XP to Win7; if you want to preserve your files & settings you need to use Easy Transfer. But Easy Transfer won't run on a resolution < 800x600. Many netbooks do not meet this - for example my HP Mini is 1024x576.Conclusion: Win7 Netbook fail.Suggestion: MS update EasyTransfer so it does not require 800x600 to function - it will not even execute. Let us netbook users live with a compromised interface but don't fail entirely.

Here's the bug report I'm going to file on Connect, but MS wants me to use the Feedback tool from the machine having the problem, so I'm going to write it up here until the Win7 upgrade finishes....

See www.flickr.com/photos/76217291@N00/3492360092/

Repro: take a netbook running Windows XP. (In my case, a HP Mini 2140 with 1024x576 display.) Attempt to upgrade to Windows 7 RC1. Launch install. Attempt in-place upgrade.

Expected(but not the bug I'm reporting here): in-place upgrade from XP to Win7 works. (Yes, I know that's not a supported scenario. But it's still a big gap for Win7. Sure the folks who've upgraded to Vista will upgrade to Win7, but the folks who've stayed on XP will want to upgrade too.)

Actual (but not the bug i'm reporting here): Dialog appears ; in-place upgrade not supported for XP to Win7. Dialog explains that to preserve settings & files, need to run Windows Easy Transfer.

Repro (now we get to the bug I'm reporting) download, install and run Windows Easy Transfer for XP.

Expected: Easy Transfer launches, collects data and packages it up, then says "done" and I'm ready to upgrade to Win7 with my data ready to bring over to my future Win7 user profile.

Actual:

1. Easy Transfer installs, but does not automatically launch or even offer to launch when installation is complete. Should at least offer to launch when installation is complete.

2. - (this is the key issue that this feedback item is about!) When Easy Transfer launches, it refuses to run on the Netbook display of 1024x576 because it does not meet minimum resolution requirement of 800x600. Easy Transfer should allow execution with part of the UI cut off, or adjust size so it fits on a typical Netbook display. Refusing to execute at all is not good - netbook users will follow all the instructions, and end up at a dead end. Better to have a compromised UX than none at all. Best to fix the UI constraints for XP Easy Transfer so it can be run on netbooks.

Can't Directly Upgrade XP to Windows 7; use Easy Transfer

2009-05-01T13:20:00.001-07:00

Can't Directly Upgrade XP to Windows 7; use Easy Transfer
Originally uploaded by fullerbecker

There's no in-place upgrade for XP to Win7. You'll need to use Windows Easy Transfer for your files & settings, and get ready to reinstall all your apps.

Now, you can still install Win7 on a PC running XP; it's just going to be a clean install of Windows into a new directory so you have a fresh user profile with nothing preserved in it.

You can jump through the WIndows Easy Transfer hoops to bring your files & settings back. But get ready to reinstall all your apps.

And if you have a netbook, check out the next picture in this set for a very unpleasant surprise!

If you love your users, set them free: Blogger import/export

2009-04-10T23:42:00.000-07:00

This is one reason I'm really happy to keep using Blogger as my blog platform: I'm free to leave any time and take my content with me.

Blogger in Draft: import export: "This summer, we launched Import / Export on Blogger in Draft. The feature lets you export all of your posts and comments into a single, Atom-formatted XML file for easy backup. You can then import the posts back into Blogger, either into an existing blog or into a new one."

Moldova, Twitter and Nothing Under the Sun is New

2009-04-10T23:30:00.000-07:00

First off, and most important: hooray for citizens of Moldova defending their democracy and freedom. In all sincerity - good luck with that, folks!

Lots of coverage right now about how Twitter was used to route around attempts at government censorship:

Nation & World | Twitter heard as media ignore Moldova unrest | Seattle Times Newspaper: "Television stations around the world on Tuesday aired images of the violent protest, with the Parliament building and Voronin's offices on fire.

But in Moldova, where press freedoms are weak, state television chose to broadcast a soap opera and another station showed images of dance routines.

So the pro-European protesters turned to Twitter and the Internet to keep in touch.

'We sent messages on Twitter, but didn't expect 15,000 people to join in. At the most we expected 1,000,'"

So, there's two things going on here; nothing new under the sun.

First, there's a new communications technology that's used where other established ones failed, in newsworthy circumstances. In this case, Moldovans used Twitter to spread news and organize protests, and that gets some things accomplished.

Second it gets noticed by people who are interested in the new communications technology, and they say "look what great stuff people are doing with this tech we are fans of! this reinforces our belief that the tech is great!"

But that's OK. Good stuff is good stuff.

If you like this stuff, this is a great piece to go further with these ideas:

Moldova's Twitter revolution is NOT a myth | Net Effect: "As someone who started the 'Moldova's Twitter revolution' meme, I think I owe the world another essay. No, no, I am not going to renounce the meme -- quite the opposite, I'd like to step up the debate."

John Carmack on iPhone development: Wolfenstein 3D Classic

2009-03-25T00:43:00.000-07:00

I always enjoy reading a good Carmack tale of software development. One of these should go in Joel Spolsky's next Best Software Writing collections.

[NB: By the way I'm talking about the Carmack who is a videogame developer (You've heard of Doom? Quake?) not Carnac the Magnificent or Cormac the author. Cormac is, like Carnac, also magnificent, but not with a capital M.]

Here, John talks about bringing Wolfenstein 3D to iPhone.

Wolfenstein 3D Classic:

Rather than having a big confrontation over the issue, I told them to just send the project to me and I would do it myself. Cass Everitt had been doing some personal work on the iPhone, so he helped me get everything set up for local iPhone development here, which is a lot more tortuous than you would expect from an Apple product. As usual, my off the cuff estimate of "Two days!" was optimistic, but I did get it done in four, and the game is definitely more pleasant at 8x the frame rate.
And I had fun doing it.
....this was the first time I had taken full responsibility for an entire product in a very long time.

This next bit is a realization that more app designers need to have. It's all about what the user wants to do. Don't make me sit for your program to load. Fer cryin' out loud, Sidekick taught us this lesson! (No, THIS SideKick, not THAT Sidekick.)

There is definitely something to be said for a game that loads in a few seconds, with automatic save of your position when you exit. I did a lot of testing by playing the game, exiting to take notes in the iPhone notepad, then restarting Wolf to resume playing. Not having to skip through animated logos at the start is nice. We got this pretty much by accident with the very small and simple nature of Wolf, but I think it is worth specifically optimizing for in future titles.

Apple's interface guidelines do practically beg developers to take this perspective, not just as a feature to implement, but as a design philosophy.

Perhaps the best quote of the article is the last line:

...I do expect Classic Doom to come fairly soon for the iPhone.

Gnothi Seauton

2009-03-15T12:59:00.000-07:00

The Oracle said Know Thyself.

Polonius said basically the same thing.

I really appreciate this take on it from Roger Ailes:

Another critical point: once you reach a comfortable, successful level of communications, you never have to change it, no matter what the situation or circumstances or the size of the audience. I define an audience as anyone other than yourself.

Whether there's one person or a thousand people listening to you, or if you're on television and there are millions watching [or if you're posting on the Internet and no one is watching - Dan] the essential principles hold true. The key element is that you not change or adapt your essential "self" to different audiences or different mediums. The thing that most confuses people trying to learn to be good communicators is the idea that somehow they have to act differently when giving an after-dinner speech than they would while being interviewed on television or for a job, or while conducting a staff meeting. They think they have to act all these different ways and nobody's given them the script to do this. Remember: You are the message, and once you can "play yourself" successfully, you'll never have to worry again.

Roger Ailes, in case that name is just vaguely ringing a bell, certainly has a track record of communicating effectively. These days he's blogging too, of course.

And I see Poor Richard muses (no, not that Poor Richard)

No need to reach for the stars, either, because when you know and are true to yourself, the stars are inside you. Love to cook and invent your own recipes, like Silence? So you’re not the next Emeril or Rachael Ray. Maybe you’ll end up giving the occasional lecture on garden-fresh cooking, as Silence does, to small but enthusiastic audiences. Maybe you’ll end up publishing a cookbook. Maybe you’ll just continue to delight family and friends with your creations. Whatever the end result, it’s the joy of cooking and creating the dishes that’s the real deal. Anything else is extra.

Bonus link: The Internet says The Oracle may have heard it (stolen it?) from Egyptians.

Maxim: The act of building forces one to clarify

2009-03-09T00:20:00.000-07:00

From The Practice of Programming:

It's hard to design a program completely and then build it; constructing real programs involves iteration and experimentation. The act of building forces one to clarify decisions that had previously been glossed over....As much as possible, start with something simple and evolve it as experience dictates.

I'd like to be in the beta of alpha

2009-03-08T23:42:00.000-07:00

Now THIS is cool. It may not yet be flying cars and my own personal robot, but it's getting there - the future is getting closer every day.

Stephen Wolfram writes:

Some might say that Mathematica and A New Kind of Science are ambitious projects.

But in recent years I’ve been hard at work on a still more ambitious project—called Wolfram|Alpha.

And I’m excited to say that in just two months it’s going to be going live.

Mathematica has been a great success in very broadly handling all kinds of formal technical systems and knowledge.

But what about everything else? What about all other systematic knowledge? All the methods and models, and data, that exists?

Fifty years ago, when computers were young, people assumed that they’d quickly be able to handle all these kinds of things.

And that one would be able to ask a computer any factual question, and have it compute the answer.

But it didn’t work out that way. Computers have been able to do many remarkable and unexpected things. But not that.

I’d always thought, though, that eventually it should be possible. And a few years ago, I realized that I was finally in a position to try to do it.

Excited? Me? Yes!

So naturally I've signed up for the beta of alpha.

It'll go live in May 2009 at http://www.wolframalpha.com/

@kindlejunkie saved me via @twitter when @amazon's #Kindle #iPhone app didn't like me

2009-03-07T00:20:00.000-08:00

Herein find the heartwarming tale of how the twitterverse saved me from the terrible fate of not being able to try out the Kindle iPhone app.

I cannot login - it says "no internet connection, please check your wifi or cellular data network and try again"

However I *do* have internet connectivity - and in fact if I change the PW to something wrong, the app correctly reports "Invalid email or password".

(I proved I had internet connectivity by uploading the screenshots on the spot with Pixelpipe app store link.)

What to do? Contacted amazon tech support with a detailed writeup & screenshots, but just got "can we talk to you live" and troubleshoot - great, not a known issue. I don't want to debug this, I want to play with it! :-(

But I was twittering about this, and out of the blue Julia Taylor aka @kindlejunkie started giving me suggestions:

@doofusdan Change your amazon.com p/w. Make the first character a lower-case letter. The rest can be upper/lower, special or numbers.
from Tweetie in reply to doofusdan

Didn't do the trick though. I tried with another Amazon account (one I only use for things I'm going to expense for work, it doesn't get much use) but apparently Amazon decided that my iPhone was tied to the first Amazon account now. Drat. But @kindlejunkie was not giving up yet!

@doofusdan Read something somewhere about "&" in registered to name causing same error. Does that apply to you?
from Tweetie in reply to doofusdan

@kindlejunkie OMG! We DO have an & in our name! Holy cow is this just an escaped character bug? Those wacky amazon Perl hackers... :-)
from twhirl in reply to kindlejunkie

Our account name is in the form of His & Hers Lastname. I changed the name on our amazon.com account by going to Your Account - Account settings - Change Name, E-mail Address, or Password. I changed it from "His & Hers" to "His and Hers" and:

@kindlejunkie the & in our registered to name WAS the cause of the @amazon #kindle #iPhone app login fail! changing the"&"to "and" fixed it!
from twhirl in reply to kindlejunkie

Poof! Instant Kindle iPhone app success!

So, my very sincere thanks to Julia the @kindlejunkie!

Behold the awesome power of the twitterverse!

(And note this is another case study that the aforementioned powers work even for people who don't have thousands of followers....)

2009-02-28T15:46:00.000-08:00

I realize this post is not fully baked. I've got some obvious flaws in my reasoning. But my boys are home and I want to play with them, so I'm done thinking about this for now.

If only there was a place where people would come and, for absolutely free, point out every flaw in your reasoning.

Oh, wait - I know a place like that! Good. Here you go, you million-monkey-strong critics - tell me what I'm missing!

Microsoft is getting closer in parts of Windows 7.
But there are other parts of Windows that are hopelessly crufty in both underlying tech and in UX. Often times I suspect the crap UX is built right into the functional code, and fixing the former would require completely rewriting the latter because they're co-mingled code.
(I haven't examined the source, I could be totally full of crap. But fer cryin' out loud look at the name of this blog. Do you think I take myself all that seriously?)
Now Microsoft has been, for several years, realizing that they have to fix the architecture of their code in order to deal with their UX.
Simon Guest has been big in this.
But I also think of the UW CSE Colloquia talk I saw a few years back, where an analysis of Windows' codebase was done, and the resulting spaghetti pile of circular dependencies was finally seen for what it was: hopeless. This led to a renewed effort at making Windows more modular, which ended up headinng towards MinWin and Server Core.
The Exchange team deserves big credit here; Exchange 2007 was really much more cleanly modular with its implementation of server roles. But Exchange didn't just go modular; they also went with PowerShell - AFAIK, they were the first major production use for PowerShell, and they really proved the case in the real world by making life easier on Exchange admins and providing a more powerful set of tools - and enabling people to make their own tooling much better & more easily. (Yes, yes, I KNOW *nix admins have that that for ages. Quiet. That's not the point here.)
So the importance of PowerShell is that if you architect the code so it's cleanly modular, with a regular API for other parts of the system to interact with it, you can ALSO have the UX layer with flexibility to change - and either iteratively evolve towards improvements, or even try something completely different, WITHOUT FEAR of breaking the whole thing.
Having the capability doesn't mean success is inevitable. But it sure means success is more possible than it was before the capability was there.

2009-02-28T15:34:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about the UX (user experience) of Kindle 2. I love the form factor and the idea of it. I love the payment model - buy the thing, and it just comes with an Internet connection, no monthly payment.
And it's so close to xkcd's insight.
But...
...I just couldn't use it for a net tablet. Because the UX isn't there.
A nettablet? Hmm, that'll get shortened to netablet. Are you net-able? net-table? Net table - that's Surface!
As I tweeted:

The more I see of the Kindle2 the more I want a tablet iPhone. C'mon future, get here already!
And when I say "future" I mean "when someone can make one of these things that has as good UX as an Apple v1.0 product"

Maxims: YAGNI: You Ain't Gonna Need It

2009-02-28T00:47:00.000-08:00

It's true. You really ain't gonna need it.

In software engineering, YAGNI, short for 'You Ain't Gonna Need It', suggests to programmers that they should not add functionality until it is necessary. Ron Jeffries writes, "Always implement things when you actually need them, never when you just foresee that you need them." According to those who advocate the YAGNI approach, the temptation to write code that is not necessary at the moment, but might be in the future, has the following disadvantages:
The time spent is taken from adding, testing or improving necessary functionality.
The new features must be debugged, documented, and supported.
Any new feature imposes constraints on what can be done in the future, so an unnecessary feature now may prevent implementing a necessary feature later.
Until the feature is actually needed, it is difficult to fully define what it should do and to test it. If the new feature is not properly defined and tested, it may not work right, even if it eventually is needed.
It leads to code bloat; the software becomes larger and more complicated.
Unless there are specifications and some kind of revision control, the feature may not be known to programmers who could make use of it.
Adding the new feature may suggest other new features. If these new features are implemented as well, this may result in a snowball effect towards creeping featurism.

And if it turns out you do need it after all, don't worry. You'll have plenty of time to do it since you saved so much time not doing that other stuff that isn't needed.

Calling Yagni on that stuff works much better than calling shenanigans!

xkcd: we won the DRM war

2009-02-27T23:20:00.000-08:00

xkcd is right - we won the DRM war. And yet some people just won't be satisfied.

The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time

2009-02-25T22:33:00.000-08:00

I am SO looking forward to getting my plate clear enough to start bringing these in.

The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time:

"All of which is, when you think about it, incredibly weird. Netbooks violate all the laws of the computer hardware business. Traditionally, development trickles down from the high end to the mass market. PC makers target early adopters with new, ultrapowerful features. Years later, those innovations spread to lower-end models.

But Jepsen's design trickled up. In the process of creating a laptop to satisfy the needs of poor people, she revealed something about traditional PC users. They didn't want more out of a laptop—they wanted less."

Maxims: 97 things every software architect should know

2009-02-24T23:09:00.001-08:00

Other people's maxims! Or, as they call them, axioms. (They're synonyms.)

The following are the 97 axioms selected for the book, 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know, which will be published by O'Reilly Media in early 2009. The contents are now being edited for publishing - you can see them here. All edits will be contributed back to the 97 Things web site on this page.

Here are a few random selections to tease you. I have't read all 97 of these yet - in fact i haven't even read all of these links yet - but the maxims themselves are enough for me to repost 'em. And I saw plenty more I like where these came from.

2. Simplify essential complexity; diminish accidental complexity by Neal Ford
3. Chances are your biggest problem isn't technical by Mark Ramm
4. Seek the value in requested capabilities by Einar Landre
9. You're negotiating more often than you think by Michael Nygard
10. Quantify by Keith Braithwaite
18. Simplicity before generality, use before reuse by Kevlin Henney
19. Architects must be hands on by John Davies

So - have YOU got more maxims, axioms, or pointers to other people's deeptechthoughts? Do share! I love this collected & shared wisdom idea. Might just be the basis of civilization....

Maxim: The stuff you want to store will expand; size disks accordingly

2009-02-21T14:05:00.000-08:00

The stuff you have to store will always expand to fill your available storage. You won't go wrong buying as much disk space in your computer as you can afford. There's ALWAYS going to be something more you'll want to have space for.

Related to Max Out Your RAM - eventaully, if the device is upgradeable/expandable, then you may want to consider an upgrade a year or so after purchase to maximize cost/benefit. But if it's sealed (I'm looking at you, iPhone/iPod!) then max out the storage from the get-go.

This posting was inspired by the tragic tale of Duane, who just realized he should've gotten a 64gb SSD in his netbook instead of the 32gb.

This is also related to Keep Your Original Source Files in the Highest Resolution Possible.

The Great Reset

2009-02-17T23:59:00.000-08:00

Behavior Gap says in The Great Reset:

"A recent New York Times headline read:

“Consumers Increase Savings While Spending Less”

That sounds like a GOOD thing doesn’t it?

It used to be that savings and thrift were basic, core, American values. Check out Tom Brokaw’s the Greatest Generation if you can’t remember a time when Americans valued thrift and savings. The media is so focused on “reviving” the economy that it is now seen as a negative sign when saving increases and spending declines. I know the economy as we have known it over the last 10-20 years depended on consumer spending, but the problem was THAT WAS MONEY WE DID NOT HAVE!"

There's a few more paragraphs, I recommend reading it.

Via Seattle Bubble who further comment:

Over the last few decades, we have constructed a sham economy that was not sustainable.

When the pyramid scheme failed (as all such schemes are destined to do eventually), rather than the healthy response of “whoops that was stupid, now let’s rebuild a sustainable, sound economy,” we’re hearing nonsense like “we need to prop up housing prices” and “we need to spur more consumer spending.”

Let’s put a stop to the delusion that things can just magically go back to the way they were when everybody (individuals and corporations alike) was hopped up on leverage. It’s not going to happen, nor should it.

Falling home prices and consumer spending are the necessary medicine that must be taken to return to a fundamentally sound and sustainable economy.

Feature Requests for the next iPhone

2009-02-15T12:40:00.001-08:00

Dear Apple: For the next iPhone, please do the following:

1. Higher-quality camera. The target should be pictures comparable to those I can get from my Canon Powershot SD550. (That's a few years old, shouldn't be too high a bar.) I'm willing to live without zoom or flash, but the optics have to be able to pull in more light (so they can take better pictures in dimmer conditions).

2. A solution for video chat. I don't care if you have two cameras, or two lenses, or whatever - just make it work so I can see the screen and be seen by a video camera.

3. Support expansion storage. (I know that doesn't fit your business model, charging more for higher capacity devices is a HUGE profit center, just like addtional RAM in laptops are for all OEM's, and just like computer accessories like surge protectors and mouse pads are for retailers. I can still dream.)

4. More storage space - I'd like to have 64-128gb please - and faster CPU. (Well, I'll get this one no matter what.)

5. Don't treat your customers like criminals; don't ask for the law to make jailbreaking illegal.

Guidance on Windows Deployments for Business Customers - Windows for your Business - The Windows Blog

2009-02-12T23:57:00.000-08:00

Gavriella Schuster, who leads Product Management for Windows Client, including the Windows OS, the MDOP products, and the client virtualization strategy for Microsoft's commercial customers, provides Guidance on Windows Deployments for Business Customers
on the brand-new Windows for your Business Blog.

Gavriella, welcome to the party! As one of those you're focused on, I'm glad to have the chance to talk. (I should however point out that this blog doesn't represent my employer's yada yada; see disclaimer below.)

I'm glad to see this guidance coming out so clearly. It's really helpful to have Microsoft publicly recommending the same things I'm saying. :-)

For example:

"If you are running Windows 2000 in your environment: Migrate your Windows 2000 PCs to Windows Vista as soon as possible. Extended support for Windows 2000 ends Q2 2010, and as an commerical customer, you may soon find your business’s critical applications are unsupported."

This is exactly what we are doing. And it's precisely and explicitly because of this reason:

Testing and remediating applications on Windows Vista will ease your Windows 7 deployment due to the high degree of compatibility.

So - we'll have Vista for some deployments and upgrades that just have to happen. Gotta get off Win2k before July 2010. (Can't believe I have to say that...)

What I'd like, Gavriella, is to know that since I'm deploying Vista now, I'll be able to do an IN PLACE UPGRADE to Windows 7 on those Vista PC's, and it will be a comparable experience to deploying a service pack upgrade. (Sure, it'll be bigger and the install process will likely take longer - but I don't want it to have to be any more complex than that.) I don't want to have to put my users through another round of USMT, app reinstallation, etc. They have more important things to do!

We know Microsoft is working on an in-place upgrade program for OEM customers. I hope Microsoft is doing the same for Enterprise customers.

Windows 7 Enterprise Edition will have DVD playback (Vista EE doesn't)

2009-02-12T23:40:00.000-08:00

You're saying "So what? Doesn't Vista have DVD playback?"

Yeah, it does - but not Enterprise Edition. When I learned this (back in about 2006) I was baffled.

I told Microsoft that enterprise customers really DO want DVD playback support in Enterprise edition of Windows. (It's not in Vista Enterprise, grr.

This is annoying because now we get to choose between paying an extra fee per user to get native DVD playback support, or having to install the stupid DVD software that comes from the OEM.

And the lovely OEM's have different versions of the packages, each of which will only consent to work on a few of their models - so we have to keep a whole library of DVD playback software and coordinate it with each model. And we can't include it in the core image, so it's a deploy-time addition, which means time waiting for the install to happen. What an annoying waste of time and effort! But not quite annoying enough to justify paying a few bucks per user times tens of thousands of users to those who pay the bills.

Happily, Microsoft listened! And Windows 7 Enterprise WILL include DVD playback. Thank goodness. And thanks for listening, Microsoft.

Windows 7 Enterprise Edition Customer Benefits - Windows for your Business - The Windows Blog: "Windows 7 Enterprise includes all end user features available in Windows 7 Professional, as well as the DVD Playback Codec"

To those of you who say "what do business users need to play DVD's for?" I say "have you ever traveled on business? what kind of jerks would your company be if they didn't even let you watch a friggin' movie on your laptop?"

But more seriously, there are business purposes for this, even without the employee perk of entertainment. Enterprise customers often have videos that are on DVD's that they want people to watch! Crazy, I know, that DVD's could hold stuff other than movies, and that some people in business could get some use from that.... but it happens!

Now, let's see if we can get MS to agree to let us use the DVD playback in Vista for free until they can ship Win7. :-)

Maxims: reading material

2009-02-08T10:07:00.000-08:00

Always bring something to read.

(Back in my day sonny, this was actually something that required conscious effort and planning! To get books, we had to walk 10 miles to the library, barefoot, in the snow, and it was uphill -- both ways!

Now you've got your shiny, always-connected, infinite-reading-supply devices you can bring in your pocket. You kids have it so easy! Hey! Get off my lawn!

Staying secure while surfing - from GoDaddy.com CEO's video blog

2009-02-07T13:47:00.000-08:00

I've been using GoDaddy.com since way before they started advertising on the super bowl - Jerry Pournelle has long vouched for them.

Similarly, I was a fan of Danica Patrick back when all she did in the public eye was drive race cars very quickly. I do snarkily note that even though her website is "enhanced" it doesn't even have her 2008 race results listed on the stat sheet! Little bit o' style over substance in that "enhancement"....then again probably < 1% of visitors to her website are looking for info on her racing career these days. :-)

This is my blog, so I can bury the lede if I darned well feel like it. I don't see any "editor" name listed here, do you? So here's the lede:

This video has a really good presentation of "how to stay safe on the internet" in just a few minutes, in a very engaging and memorable way.

I think it would have a lot more impact than a standard written list of tips or interactive eLearning. Let me know what you think!

Or if you know of other good, engaging, quick user 'safe surfing' and infosec awareness, let me know.

(This is a matter of professional interest for me at present. No, I wouldn't use this very video at work. I'm crazy, but not stupid.)

Of course it IS an internet video from the CEO of GoDaddy's blog - so if tanktops offend you, stay away!

Dan's Maxims: Two of everything, Keep the Source, and Max out your RAM - Eventually

2009-02-01T11:30:00.000-08:00

Always get two chargers.

It's usually easier to just accept the cost of duplication than to attempt synchronization and deduplication. The latter is really hard to get right and the costs of mistakes can be very high. The former is just a matter of storage capacity. I know which I'd rather pay the bill for.

Always keep the original source files in the highest resolution possible. You can always throw out unnecessary pixels as needed for a particular use, but you can never get them back again if you get rid of your originals. And what's unnecssary resolution/detail today will work great.

Max out your RAM - eventually. But don't do it when you buy the computer - wait a year and then buy 3rd party upgrade from a really good RAM manufacturer like Kingston or Crucial. The cost will be 25% of what it would've been to max out the RAM from the OEM. Plus you'll get a nice shiny "whole new computer" feeling just when that first blush is wearing out. (This strategy is optimized for budget-conscious geeks. Businesses and non-geeks should probably use different approaches to system capacity planning. Except businesses that are comprised of budget-conscious geeks.))

high resolution displays, netbooks, iphones

2009-01-31T12:35:00.000-08:00

These are notes that I was going to turn into a full blog post. They've been sitting as draft for a while. Then I just realized: hey, this is my blog. I can just publish notes. So, blah:

ibm 200dpi display prototypes

dpi of laser printers vs dot matrix

(selling inkjets vs dot matrix @ future shop)

solve the netbook tradeoff - small screen size now means not much information tradeoff. but what if you could get 1400x900 res on a 12" netbook?

compare that res to iPhone display and tell me people would have a hard time with that.

pixels = productivity

My Kindle 2.0 wish - "one more thing..."

2009-01-31T12:33:00.000-08:00

Dear Amazon - I hope that at your super secret Feb 9 press conference, you tell us about the next version of the Kindle - and then I want Jeff Bezos to say:

"There's one more thing...

...a Kindle app for iPhone."

I'd love to see some competition with Stanza!

(Did you see that one million people have downloaded Stanza? Yikes!)

Netbook or notebook?

2009-01-31T11:50:00.000-08:00

jkOnTheRun poses a poll question: netbook or notebook?:

"I grab a notebook and head out the door to work quite a bit and it seems that each time I do so I have to give pause and decide what gear to take with me. On the one hand I usually have a netbook to take, small and light and powerful enough to handle most of what I need to do. On the other hand I can grab a full notebook like the MacBook and take it instead."

As I commented there: I go with a netbook if I’m going to be moving around pretty much constantly, AND only need to do writing/note-taking/email/web.

But if I’m doing “heads-down” technical work - getting in the zone and grinding for a few hours straight - I really want a bigger window into my work. I need a powerful system that can run a bunch of specialized tools, maybe a VM or two in addition to the host OS, and let me view a bunch of information all together.

That spells bigger screen, higher resolution (at least 1440×900-ish), plenty of RAM (I prefer 4gb) and disk space to handle those VMs, and a relatively powerful multi-core CPU (Intel Core 2 Duo at least).

So - my perfect scenarios for netbook use are:

1. At a conference. You’re walking all day, moving from room to room, and taking notes, IM’ing or emailing the whole time. A super-light machine that fits in a small bag, has long battery life, super fast sleep/wake, and great mobile connectivity is perfect here. That's a netbook to a T.

2. A short business trip that is mostly f2f meetings and staying on top of email/IM/web communications.

3. Just running out to the coffeeshop, library or whatever for a change of scene.

4. A machine to take home to check email in the morning if I’m not rushing into the office. (This last scenario is pretty much competely unneeded now that I’ve got decent webmail from work.)

I’ve been using proto-netbook-like PC’s back since the PowerBook 100 got closed out at Costco for $900. I’m super excited that this looks like the year they breaks through into the mainstream.

Imagine, the Newton finally made it (iPhone), eBook readers (Kindle, Sony) and now netbooks too. What’s next?

I hope the answer will be Sandbenders.

I do expect we'll start seeing some super-cool tablets in a few years when OLED displays make the display part super-sleek. An HP 2730p tablet form factor but with a display only 3mm thick sure would rock....

Rhapsody can't count, doesn't realize that Firefox 3 IS "Firefox 1.5 or higher"

2009-01-31T11:02:00.000-08:00

I used to be able use Rhapsody on my Mac in earlier v3.0x versions of Firefox, but now it whinges at me:

Still works fine on Safari. But I want my unlimited music in Firefox darn it! It's Saturday morning, the house is quiet, the bills are paid, and I've got a fresh pot of coffee. Let's get this done.

Hmm, let's see if I can repro this problem on another instance of Firefox.
Fire up VMware, boot my old XP VM - it still has Firefox 2 installed, so is a very good test case.
Rhapsody on FF2 works.
(FF2 nags me, as it should, to update to FF3 as FF2 is no longer being patched.) I update to FF3, and...
Rhapsody works.

Ok, so it's not a general problem. What's different about FF3 on my MacBook Pro?

Let me check the user-agent strings from both the XP and Mac instances of FF3. That's usually where apps check to see what browser version you're running check before coplaining about the browser version you're using.

Handily, there's a website www.useragentstring.com for just this purpose.

Oh, Ubiquity threw an extra item into my user-agent string, that seems to have wigged out Rhapsody.

No problem, easy enough to fix that with the incredibly useful User-Agent-Switcher Firefox extension.

And voila Rhapsody works again on Firefox on my Mac.

(PS: did you notice I snuck a lesson on troubleshooting user-agent string problems into this blog post? Can't help it. I'm a bit of a pedant you see....)

A Fail Whale for Getcomo.com

2009-01-29T13:34:00.000-08:00

This post was updated Feb 1 with additional information! See the bottom of the post.

We're upgrading from Live Communications Server 2005 to Office Communications Server 2007. This morning, our valiant OCS admin and the perimeter and network folks got the Edge Servers and the assorted firewalls, proxies and load balancers humming in perfect harmony. I can at long last run CoMo 2007 (Communicator Mobile) in my production environment!

Well, nifty – all I need to do is go download it onto my Windows Mobile phone. What's the URL? Happily I have my real computer with me at the time. Let's see, ah, yes that's right! They set up an easy-to-remember and easy-to-type URL that will take you right to the download. Very nice, especially for Windows Mobile users who have a very hard time of it typing in URLs (and a very difficult time navigating the rest of Microsoft's websites, for that matter). What was that URL again?

Aha, that's it – http://www.getcomo.com/ ! How simple! Great! I'm just minutes away from having enterprise IM in the palm of my hand! (And I just love my enterprise IM!)

Whip out my Moto Q9h, and… hmm, that's funny, the page is blank. No error message or anything, just a blank screen.

Try it from my iPhone. Ah, pocket Safari at least gives me an error message.

Eh? Server cannot be found? That can't be right. Try it from my laptop:

Ok, there's got to be some sort of temporary outage or something. I'll try again at lunch. And…nope.

Hmm, what's up with that?

That's no good! Well maybe we're just not asking the right DNS server. Easywhois, tell me, who does DNS for getcomo.com?

Ok, NS[1-5].MSFT.NET, where should I find http://www.getcomo.com/?

Well there's your problem, ma'am:

So: to Microsoft and the Getcomo.com team, this fail whale's for you!

Get well soon! Feel free to post a comment here when you get this fixed. :-)

Bonus link: the inspiring true story of the Fail Whale.

PS: I did open a case with Microsoft Premier Online. The case confirmation number is SRZ090130000453.

Updated Feb 1: I received the following response from Premier:

"The web page http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/communicator/HA102027021033.aspx says you can download the COMO version R2 from http://www.getcomo.com where R2 is not yet released. Its proposed release date is Feb 3rd but not sure until its released. In the same page on the right had side you have a link to Download the 2007 version of Communicator Mobile. Here is the link to download the COMO 2007. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2EEA3E24-F216-4887-92B0-F37D942E26E0&displaylang=en Please let me know if you have any questions. Have a nice day!"

Excellent! Now, I can just google for "getcomo". First result for "getcomo" is this page, so I can use the download link above! :-)

I guess it turns out that Microsoft was just a little premature posting the original page that says that you can download the R2 client from www.getcomo.com before that website is even available.

So this really shouldn't be a fail whale for www.getcomo.com but instead for whoever updated that web page out of sync with the actual product release. I'm very sympathetic - process problems are all too common. This wasn't a technical mistake or system problem with Microsoft's infrastructure. So by updating this post I hope it sets the record straight.

LibX - Seattle Public Library Edition

2009-01-25T15:45:00.000-08:00

So you're surfing the web, and you see mention of some cool book. You want to see if it's available at the Seattle Public Library. So, you:

Select the title
Copy it
Open a new tab
Go to http://www.spl.org
Paste the title into the search box
Click Go

Oh my goodness, that's WAY too much work! If only there was an easier way!

Fret no more, dear reader. LibX to the rescue! Install Libx Seattle Public Library Edition in your browser, and now your book-hunting life will be as easy as:

Select the title
Right-click and choose "Search Seattle Public Library"

See?

If you use the Seattle Public Library, please try this out and let me know how it works for you!

I've only got title, keyword, and subject search going so far. That's plenty enough to right-click the name of a book in a book review and choose "search Seattle Public Library for [book title]."

In theory LibX editions are auto-updating so if you install now, when I do add ISBN support, you'll get it automagically.

Suggestion: I don't really care for the toolbar that gets added into the browser, and you don't need the toolbar to get the right-click goodness. To hide the browser toolbar:
In Firefox do View - Toolbars and uncheck SPL LibX. Or just hit F9.
In Internet Explorer right-click on the toolbars and uncheck LibXbar

Tip: start trying this before clicking "buy" at Amazon! The money you save could be your own....

Windows 7 beta: 1. Windows Vista Service Pack 2 beta: 0.

2009-01-24T17:10:00.000-08:00

I used VMware Fusion on my MacBook Pro to install Windows7 beta, and it worked great.

Tried the same with Vista Service Pack 2 beta: FAIL.

Related: TechArp says it looks like MS is delaying the release date for SP2 by a month and is planning to add an extra build and iteration to handle a last round of critical bug fixes. This is a good conservative move but I doubt they'd be doing it if SP2 was looking as good as Win7 looks right now.

The actual release candidate build has now been delayed till March. The RTM build of Service Pack 2, which was originally scheduled for April, has been delayed until sometime in Q2, 2009. That means a launch in either May or June, barring any further delays.

Re: Instant Outlining

2009-01-18T11:11:00.000-08:00

Dave Winer, talking about how the team that built Radio 8 was very productive because of their use of Instant Outlining says:

You also had to have a workgroup ready to use it, and that may have been the biggest reason it didn't gain traction. It wasn't hard for us to find individuals who were turned on by the idea, but when they in turn had to convince their co-workers to use the tool, that's when it fell down.

My comment was:

I hope everybody pays attention to this part of it, which Dave you are QUITE right to point out: "You also had to have a workgroup ready to use it".

I'm actually seeing, in the world of enterprise IT, a decent correlation between A+ "gets things done" types (that's a Joel Spolsky reference, not David Allen's GTD) and "eager to try new tools and -- for those that work -- willing and able to adopt and use new tools effectively".

I don't think it's a causal link, and I certainly don't think it is anywhere near a 100% correlation.

But if I was building a team today, I'd be looking for this, in addition to other requirements.

Originally posted as a comment by fullerbecker on Scripting News using Disqus.

Beta 1 is not safe. But it is reasonable.

2009-01-15T23:54:00.000-08:00

In the Windows 7 beta newsgroup, a certain Mike asked:

MikeXXXXXXX wrote:
> How long should people wait until we start testing say, internal house tools
> against Windows 7? Is it safe to assume that if we were to modify our
> applications to work with Beta 1, that they would work with the final
> bug-free?

My response:

It depends.

My experience is, the more of a straight ahead application it is, the
more it does stuff in standard ways and not in some weird legacy
freakish kludgey way, the less likely it's going to be to break.
Lower level stuff (vpn clients, antivirus, various sorts of drivers)
historically seems a more fragile from build to build.

If you're asking safe in terms of "my boss will frown mightily at me
if I waste dozens of people's time, and I'll be first on the list for
the layoffs that are surely coming next quarter" - then NO it isn't
safe to modify your apps for Beta 1.

But if you would get some huge benefit out of having those internal
house tools ready for use on Win7 ASAP, and it wouldn't cost you an
unreasonable amount if you did have to do it over, it's probably
reasonable to go for it.

It all depends on what sorts of risks you're willing to tolerate, and
what kinds of benefits you stand to gain.

And a follow-up:

Do your apps work with Vista? I'd say if an app works with Vista but doesn't work with Windows7, that's a little dicier than if the app doesn't work on either.

That was a little convoluted. If the app works on Vista, and is broken on Win7, then it was something that changed back in Vista that you need to fix for. That code is probably going to remain consistent through the Win7 beta. (I'm just speaking in terms of likelihood and rules of thumb -- this isn't a scientific fact.)

But if it was something that worked in Vista and is only breaking now in Win7, then you're definitely working with some code that's changing. It might be just done with changing, but it was recently in motion and probably hasn't settled down yet.

Schneier on Security: Biometrics

2009-01-13T21:57:00.001-08:00

Schneier on Security: Biometrics

The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is trying to fool the system.

Office Communicator 2007 install error: The file 'eulamsdnrtf' cannot be installed because the file cannot be found in cabinet file 'MsgrCore.cab'

2009-01-12T17:11:00.000-08:00

I couldn't find a clean solution for this error message either via JFGI or by searching the fine MS KB, so for your Googling pleasure:

If you install Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 (MOC 2007) on a machine that already has MOC 2005 installed, when you launch MOC 2007, you may see Windows Installer run to configure MOC and then display this error message:

"The file 'eulamsdnrtf' cannot be installed because the file cannot be found in cabinet file 'MsgrCore.cab'. This could indicate a network error, an error reading from the CD-ROM or a problem with this package."

Restarting will allow MOC 2007 to launch successfully and log in, but when you try to initiate a text chat, you will get the same 'eulamsdnrtf' error.

To fix this:

Quit all instances of Communicator.
Use Add/Remove Programs on W2k/XP (Programs and Features on Vista/Win7) to remove all versions of Communicator.
Then (re)install MOC 2007.

Windows 7 works just great in VMware Fusion

2009-01-10T01:55:00.000-08:00

Specifically, VMware Fusion 2 on a Santa Rosa MacBook Pro that has a 5400rpm 500gb HD and 4gb of RAM.

The VM has 1gb of RAM and 1 CPU allocated to it.

I'm not getting the 'glass' video effects but that doesn't really matter to me at this point.

What have you tried?

2008-12-25T00:07:00.000-08:00

Matt Gemmell rants:

If you’re a developer and you’re about to ask another developer a technical question (on a forum, via email, on a chat channel, or in person), you’d better be ready to answer the question “What have you tried?”

[...]

This isn’t some trick of software engineering; this is the entire process of learning how to do anything at all.

It’s not a secret handed out at institutions of higher education, it’s just how things work: you begin with a lack of understanding about a topic, and a need to solve a problem in that topic area. The honest, sustainable means to doing so is to improve your understanding. This is achieved by:

1. Formulating a question which, when correctly answered, will improve your understanding in some way; then:
2. Attempting to answer it.

Note the second step above.

Yes. PLEASE note the second step. If you can't or won't do that, it's not worth talking to you.

This is a great essay, and like http://justfuckinggoogleit.com it has a self-explantory URL shortcut: http://whathaveyoutried.com/

It's an Ultra-Lounge Christmas

2008-12-24T23:30:00.000-08:00

Click to groove on an Ultra-Lounge Christmas Playlist on Rhapsody.

The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway

2008-11-30T13:42:00.001-08:00

The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway: Voice: AIGA Journal of Design: Writing: AIGA

To answer those questions this essay explores several important histories: of the New York City subway system, transportation signage in the 1960s, Unimark International and, of course, Helvetica. These four strands are woven together, over nine pages, to tell a story that ultimately transcends the simple issue of Helvetica and the subway.

I'm really enjoying this (long!) story. It's a great web essay, very good use of the medium. Lots of detail photo examples and tons of links to explore. Excellent writing, too. And of course, it resonates with my background in design, typography, layout, printing and publishing.

What's that? You don't know about my publishing experience?

Excellent - that serves as a more than sufficient excuse to post autobiographical detail that no one was particularly asking about! That's the whole point of a blog, n'est-ce pas?

I worked several summers at my uncle Jon's educational software & publishing company. Some of the things I spent hot summer days doing included:

learning PageMaker and QuarkXPress from Steve
seeing how Joe operated the printing presses (yes, kids - real printing presses! with ink! and rollers!)
learning PC networking - VINES irrc, then AppleTalk - ("See, Dan, this computer is called a SERVER") from Sharon
learning how to use the other finishing machinery like the folding machine, paper trimmer (aka hydraulic guillotine - massive slicing power!) etc.
becoming a master of manual booklet layout and pagination. (Quick, there's 17 pages of main material, plus a 2 page index, a 1 page table of contents, and a title page. Which two pages from the main material face each other in the center of the 2-up, doublesided booklet? Aren't you glad computers do that for you now?)
owning the Xerox machine's control panel (I actually knew what every single option did and how to use each correctly the first time)
picking and boxing books for orders (mostly for school libraries and reading classes - 32 copies of Huck Finn. 3 of Red Badge of Courage. 17 of Pride and Prejudice.)
using the powered forklift to load the pallets of books we'd wrapped onto the truck. (This forklift/loading dock experience served me well at Future Shop - I always got out of detailing shelves because I'd be on 'truck duty'. As any 6-year-old will tell you, operating the forklift is a lot more fun than putting things away on shelves or hangers.)
Listening to some of my uncle's incredibly extensive and high quality jazz CD collection - with occasional commentary from Steve, himself a jazz trumpeter

Once I got to college, after spending some time with the folks from the college paper (This was during the great USENET alt.* ban, which I'll tell you about some other time) I got involved, first as a reporter covering the mundane stuff like student government meetings. Later I became layout editor -- following in the footsteps of someone who ended up being a major force in modern typography: Chank Diesel (website, blogs, fonts, free fonts)

Yes, he did the Taco Bell font! (It's really called Mister Frisky.)

My designs skills were, suffice to say, not even remotely in the same league.

However, I did have some Desktop Publishing skillz. At the time, they'd been using WordPerfect (the DOS version) to print text in columns, and separately print headlines, and then cut them all out and literally paste them up along with the photos. Those boards would be sent off to the printer, who'd do all the production and printing. I spec'd out a new lab full of fresh Macs (ooh, Quadras!) laser printers and even digital cameras. We moved to a computer-based workflow using DTP software and started producing full page printouts in-house. We still used plenty of Xactos, metal rulers and 3M Spray Mount.

Regardless of the tools used, there was always the craft of getting not just the font selection but even the kerning and leading just right. As a decided non-master, I studied it quite a bit. To this day I remain very appreciative of excellent typography.

I don't live in the future, but I like to visit

2008-11-30T12:20:00.001-08:00

From yet another story about outsourcing comes this great quote from James Macpherson:

It’s not easy being a visionary, he said: “I have essentially been five years ahead of the world for a long time, and that’s a horrible address at which to live because people look at you, you know, like you’re nuts.”

Here's the source for the quote.

Feature Request for Windows: Paste as Plain Text

2008-11-10T21:58:00.000-08:00

Dear Microsoft: please incorporate, as part of Windows core Copy/Paste function, Paste as Plain Text.

Basically, please blatantly copy Steve Miller's PureText, and give the man some props.

Thank you.

That is all.

Tables Turn

2008-11-09T11:42:00.000-08:00

iTunes played this Decibully song for me last night as I was walking to meet Mike and Dori at Barking Dog.

(Listen to Tables Turn on Last.fm or on Rhapsody)

It was still stuck in my head after I got back home, so I went looking for chords or tab since I really like the chord progression and guitar parts. Ended up spending an hour or so last night fumbling towards it.

All I did find online was lyrics, but all the ones I found were garbled, so here they are transcribed correctly, apparently for the first time. (It takes us monkeys a while to get things right, but we get round to it eventually.)

you packed your life up into boxes
and what didn't fit
you carried
and the heavy things, you left

the city loves you it gives you oxygen
and a little space
to be filled
with all the heavy things you make

CHORUS
i'm not wasting
loose change
‘cause i'm changing
falls without wings
i'm not waiting
on tables to turn
‘cause i'm turning
forgive me for all things

the mirror kisses like you once did
at first it's cold
but delicate
then it reflects much more

my focus now is on the closest things
since my glasses broke
someone else should drive
or i might not leave at all

CHORUS

BRIDGE

CHORUS

i'm not disapproving
if you got something to prove
well then prove it

we've got something
nothing else matters now does it
forgive me for all things

TLA's FTW!

2008-10-31T22:30:00.000-07:00

RUP SRS SDS UML. POL STD SOP.

XML RSS RPC.

TCP UDP. IBM ISI.

DOC XLS PPT.

TLA's FTW!

LOL L8R

Specifications are hard; seeing things that are not quite right is easy

2008-10-17T12:31:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about client environments as a system integration problem lately. So I'm reading Fowler on Continuous Integration, prompted in no small part by a bookmark from Ben.

There's a ton of great stuff to think about in this article, and this quote isn't the main point by any means - it's an aside, really - but it's SO TRUE! "We've found that it's very hard to specify what you want in advance
and be correct; people find it much easier to see something that's not
quite right and say how it needs to be changed."

And here's the thing in context - surrounded by lots of other truth.

One of the most difficult parts of software development is making sure that you build the right software. We've found that it's very hard to specify what you want in advance and be correct; people find it much easier to see something that's not quite right and say how it needs to be changed. Agile development processes explicitly expect and take advantage of this part of human behavior.

To help make this work, anyone involved with a software project should be able to get the latest executable and be able to run it: for demonstrations, exploratory testing, or just to see what changed this week.

Doing this is pretty straightforward: make sure there's a well known place where people can find the latest executable. It may be useful to put several executables in such a store. For the very latest you should put the latest executable to pass the commit tests - such an executable should be pretty stable providing the commit suite is reasonably strong.

If you are following a process with well defined iterations, it's usually wise to also put the end of iteration builds there too. Demonstrations, in particular, need software whose features are familiar, so then it's usually worth sacrificing the very latest for something that the demonstrator knows how to operate.

Experiment and Logic: GOOD; Authority, Intimidation, Self-Interest: BAD

2008-10-15T22:14:00.001-07:00

Stumbled across Robert Anton Wilson's website, and found this gem:

I believe that everything admirable in the modern world results form the use of Argument by Experiment together with Argument by Logic (without making an Idol of either), whereas everything heinous and terrible results from the persistence of the older habits of Arguments by Authority, Intimidation, Self-Interest and Legal Precedent, or the various forms of calling the other side sons of bitches.

RAW co-wrote the Illuminatus! trilogy.

Before I give you the link to the page that holds that quote, let me point out that it contains an excerpt from RAW's Wilhelm Reich on Trial in Hell which is quite accurately titled, and co-stars the Marquis de Sade. You've been warned.

Fnord

Lord, I'm Discouraged

2008-10-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not discouraged. I'm actually happy! Happy about this news, at least: The Hold Steady's magnificent classic rock lament/homage "Lord I'm Discouraged" is available on Rhapsody now! (It wasn't the last time I raved about how good it is.)

Go listen.

Lord, I'm Discouraged by The Hold Steady

(Or if you'd rather YouTube than Rhapsody, I gotcha covered there too.)

That guitar solo completely channels rock.

As always, the lyrics kill.

And the chorus builds to a crescendo, and the piano, it sounds like a carnival, and the microphone smells like a beer....

Go listen now. These are the disciples of St. Joe Strummer.

Fix The World: The Power of Goals

2008-09-30T07:46:00.001-07:00

Goals: it's been said before, but it bears repeating.

Setting goals - defining exactly what it is that you want to accomplish - is a tremendously powerful tool for getting the job done.

You can get away with a tacit goal-setting excercise in your subconscious when it's just you doing something, but in my experience I've found it's absolutely critical when you need many people to cooperate in the work to make an explicit statement of where you want to end up.

Bill Gates spoke to the UN General Assembly about progress on the Millennium Development Goals a few days ago. I heard some of it on the radio, and just watched his entire talk (only a few minutes long, I recommend it).

Here's a few key excerpts:

It is crucial to evaluate our performance in both areas, but I also think it’s important at this point to evaluate the goals themselves as a force for change. So here’s my evaluation: I love the Millennium Development Goals. I think they the best idea for focusing the world on fighting global poverty that I’ve ever seen. With all the mountains of measures and studies and reports in the world—these Millennium Development Goals have broken through and grabbed broad attention.
Thanks to these goals, not only UN agencies but the world at large knows the key measures of poverty, hunger, health, and education. Some of the numbers are good and some are not. But the fact that the world is focusing on the numbers is excellent.
It means people see where things are going well, and understand how we can spread those successes. They see where we’re falling short, and they see the need to apply more effort and do things differently.
[...]
There is more power in these goals than we ever imagined. Now that we’ve seen it, we want to work with you to intensify it – and push the day when all people, no matter where they’re born, can live a life filled with health and opportunity.

Yes! Define goals! THEN work to achieve them! Like Bill Gates, I've had the experience of being surprised by just how well this works, and how the benefits of goal-setting are far broader than might be expected.

The greatest bass player of all time

2008-09-23T00:47:00.001-07:00

Jaco | MetaFilter

21 Years ago today Jaco Pastorius died.

Jaco plays with Joni Mitchell.

Jaco plays with Weather Report

Jaco plays The Word of Mouth

Joni Mitchell on Jaco

Pat Metheny on Jaco

And the MeFi crowd has even more links in the comments.

Btw, no disrespect intended to James Jamerson.

Because it works

2008-09-22T23:38:00.001-07:00

Why McCain is going so negative - Jonathan Martin - Politico.com

“Every day not talking about the economy, the war and how to fix a broken system is a victory for McCain,” said John Weaver, a former top strategist to the nominee who left the campaign last year. “They’re going to ride it as long as they can and as long as the mainstream media puts up every ridiculous charge.”

The negative and often exaggerated or misleading claims being made about Obama and Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, especially those playing on Palin’s gender, are just too irresistible for the process-consumed online and cable news media that now drives the campaign conversation, Weaver said.

“Unless there is a hurricane, they’re going to cover it,” he observed.

2008-09-22T23:18:00.000-07:00

Talking Stocks: "

Over the years I have written about the stock market several times. I thought given the up and downs of the market, now would be a good time to replay some of those posts

(Via Blog Maverick.)

I like what Mark Cuban has to say about stock markets, and his belief that stock prices are much more about buzz than about any underlying financial reality.

I'm not saying I agree completely, but I do like including that way of looking at stock markets.

2008-09-08T20:57:00.000-07:00

Today's links and ideas: "I've been impressed with how thoughtful and competent Obama is. That's why he's got my support. I also think our country is up shit's creek unless we can upgrade our economy, and to do so we need health and education, and that means public spending. It's not as if the Republicans don't believe in public spending, they do -- they just waste the money on destroying communities overseas. I want us to borrow to build strength here at home. I don't see it as a liberal vs conservative thing, rather a smart vs dumb thing. "

(Via Scripting News.)

Everything that Happens Will Happen Today

2008-09-08T00:36:00.000-07:00

David Byrne and Brian Eno's new album isn't available on Rhapsody yet, but that's OK because you can stream the whole thing from their website. Heck you can stream it from my website!

I'm enjoying it quite a lot.

How to never run out of music to listen to

2008-08-16T01:19:00.000-07:00

I finally updated my shortcuts page with links to the music sites I've been using. Now I'll surely be using them even more...

Rhapsody • Last.fm • Pandora • Muxtape • HypeMachine • Critical Metrics • iLike • Internet Archive • Wolfgang's Vault • KEXP • KCRW • Songbird • Paste • Rolling Stone • Monitor Mix

I'm certain there are other great music sites out there I don't know about...what am I missing?

Where do I sign?

2008-08-11T23:16:00.001-07:00

I'd put my John Hancock on this in a second. Endorsed!

Declaration4Independence - Lessig Wiki

But nothing will save Congress. Without fundamental change, the institution will remain despised and increasingly irrelevant. Power will continue to shift—as it has for the past fifty years—to the President and the Court. The core institution of the Framers’ democratic design, the institution that many of them were most proud of, will remain essentially bankrupt.

That’s a strong term. But it predicates well of Congress. If the credit of any public institution is trust and respect, then Congress is, as Websters would define it, “discredited, having forfeited all credit.” Not because of any particular decision, or failed vote. Most couldn’t name one thing Congress did or didn’t do that they object to. Not because anyone believes its Members (or most of its Members) are bribed, or evil people. To the contrary, Congress is filled with souls with an extraordinary commitment to the public. These are good, not evil, people.

Rather, Congress’s “credit” is “forfeit” because of a profoundly deep sense among most that the machine that Congress is is simply bent. Like a rigged slot machine at a casino, or a balance sheet by the Enron accounting department, the vast majority of Americans don’t believe that the answers Congress gives are the right answers for the right reasons. Most believe that they track something else entirely: not sense but dollars.

iPhone Apps I'd like to have

2008-08-09T20:32:00.000-07:00

Nice iPhone UI for SeAttle public library.

Cool Tools blog and the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments

2008-07-30T22:30:00.001-07:00

I love the Cool Tools blog!

This post is just one reason why. (Normally they review tools, not books, but this book is so great - I am SO happy there's a torrent of the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments!)

Cool Tool: Best home chemistry lab book

The very best chemistry experiment book for kids is the legendary and long-out-of-print book, the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments. Published in 1960 during the heyday of home chemistry, it was meant to accompany the millions of chemistry kits that were sold each year to typical American kids. You got real experiments with real chemicals. Not like the so-called chemistry sets today which boldly (and insanely) advertise they contain "No Chemicals!"

Among many other things, the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments told you how to make chlorine gas from bathroom supplies, hydrogen from flashlight battery parts, and rayon from scrap paper, etc. You can see why it was not reprinted in the decades following because of concerns about safety. I used my copy, which is now worth $200 on eBay, to do all the experiments in the book when I was 12, and went on to build a chem lab in my basement. As many kids did.

Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, 1960.

You can get a decent free PDF version of the Golden Book on BitTrorrent.

No, I DIDN'T know that Amazon sold that

2008-07-29T09:19:00.001-07:00

Yet somehow, my life went on.

FCC orders Comcast to stop restricting access to the Internet

2008-07-27T21:49:00.001-07:00

Northwest Progressive Institute Advocate: FCC orders Comcast to stop restricting access to the Internet

Yesterday, in a historic decision, the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to order Comcast to stop restricting its customers' access to the Internet, quit blocking BitTorrent traffic, and require public disclosure of its network management practices. Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein, Michael Copps, and Chairman Kevin Martin voted in favor of finding Comcast in violation of FCC rules.

A little surprised to find myself saying it, but, um, yay FCC? Ahem. Yay FCC!

The Hold Steady!

2008-07-27T01:51:00.001-07:00

Just got back from seeing The Hold Steady at the Capitol Hill Block Party. Great show! The sound wasn't perfect though - I do wish I could see them at First Avenue next week!

Here's a few selected awesome The Hold Steady songs: Dan's The Hold Steady Sampler on Rhapsody

Sadly, Rhapsody does not have Lord, I'm Discouraged (or as I think of it, "Excuses, and half-truths, and fortified wine") which MUST be listened to for the guitar solo, not to mention the heartbreaker story. So here it is on Last.fm.

Part of the joy of The Hold Steady is in the lyrics. Here's an example:

Slapped Actresses

Don’t drop little hints. I don’t want them to guess.
Don’t mention Tampa, they’ll just know all the rest.
Don’t mention bloodshed, don’t tell them it hurts.
Don’t say we saw angels, they’ll take us straight to the church.

Stuck Between Stations

She was a really cool kisser and she wasn’t all that strict of a Christian.
She was a damn good dancer but she wasn’t all that great of a girlfriend.
He likes the warm feeling but he’s tired of all the dehydration.
Most nights are crystal clear but tonight it’s like he’s stuck between stations --
On the radio.

The video for Stuck Between Stations has a laugh-out-loud funny at the end.

A great turn of phrase

2008-07-27T00:40:00.001-07:00

Whether or not you agree, you have to admit this is some cute wordsmithing:

To his supporters Obama isn't just an agent of change - he's the 007 of change!

Well done, Stefan Sirucek!

What a shocker

2008-07-27T00:35:00.001-07:00

File this one under "coming as a surprise to absolutely no one..."

It has long been known that Fox Cable News head Roger Ailes (a former Republican Party official) and other high executives routinely sent memos to the newsrooms instructing them to spin stories in particular ways. And one always suspected that the talking points actually came over from Bush's and Cheney's offices. Now McClellan confirms it.

from Informed Comment: Fox News= W. T.V.

In case you didn't realize how Facebook is going to make money....

2008-07-25T00:28:00.001-07:00

Dan Farber accurately quotes Om's key point:

Om Malik extrapolates from Facebook Connect that Facebook is building a money machine:

You are essentially telling Facebook's proverbial
brain what topics -- blogs or specific posts -- with which you like to
engage. In other words, you just told the system a little bit about
yourself. Now imagine such information coming from dozens of Facebook
Connect partners.

Each service adds a few more data points about you
inside the Facebook brain, which is quite aware of your activities
inside the Facebook ecosystem. The brain can then crunch all that
information and build a fairly accurate image of who you are, what you
like and what might interest you. With all that information at its
disposal, Facebook can build a fairly large cash register.

The cash register is an advertising platform, a follow on to Beacon,
that leverages the social graph and each member as a potential
marketing engine. With all the data and user permissions, ad targeting
could be more precise.

Universe Sandbox!

2008-07-01T05:00:00.001-07:00

I got a chance to play with Universe Sandbox "pre-release" and it's awesome! If you're into seeing how galaxies spin, planets collide, and having other fun with gravity, check out the video.

And if you're running XP or Vista, download it! It's free!

PopArtMachine - free image search, covers Library of Congress collection

2008-06-19T22:24:00.000-07:00

This is neato!

"Pop Art Machine is a CGI library that collects, curates and creates works of art. Our focus is the study of digital printmaking using public image sources as inspiration. Here you will find over 1,000,000 source images and countless finished prints side by side with the methodologies used to create."

As they put it over on boing boing:

"I found the photo via Pop Art Machine, which somehow has linked into the Library of Congress image database. The image search function through Pop Art Machine (I’m not sure what it’s really supposed to be for) is often better than the LOC search page."

Post-keynote thoughts on 3G iPhone

2008-06-09T21:59:00.000-07:00

Mind y0u, I haven't actually seen the keynote yet, just read the coverage on Engadget and MacRumors.

So Mel & I won't be going to get his & hers iPhones tomorrow. We'll have to think of something else to do on my vacation day. (The boys will both be at their respective schools.) We won't even be getting them on July 11 -- we're going to be on vacation and we fly back to Seattle on the 12th, and arrive at Seatac too late to make it to the Apple store before it closes.

A few things are sticking out in my mind:

It's late! Yeah, I know, how can it be late, no date was announced before today - but why did AT&T put a vacation blackout on their stores from mid-June to mid-July if it wasn't supposed to come out now? Until we find out for sure, I'm going to assume the goal was to get it in stores in mid-June, but the date slipped. Still I wonder - what were all those mysterious brown boxes?

No 32gb option: bummer! I had a 30gb iPod, and it wasn't big enough for me - and that wasn't even a video model! I would've gladly paid $499 for a 32gb iPhone 3G. I have an 8gb Sansa e280r now and it's really not enough room for me. (I will probably keep using the Sansa so I can get 'all I can eat' music on Rhapsody To Go, at least for checking out new stuff)

No online purchases: confusing! When I heard they wouldn't go on sale for a while I figured I'd just order online. But they're not for sale on the Apple Store yet! I don't get this one at all. Unless... umm... they don't have much supply? They want to make people go to a brick & mortar store? I wonder if people buy more accessories from Apple if they go to a store vs. online, or they are more likely to also switch from PC to Mac if they go to a store? That's only wacky conspiracy theory though. I really can't think of a valid reason for this. (Ooh, looks like it might have to do with new rules requiring in-store activation -- intended to cut down on people buying iPhones to use on different carriers.)

No videochat: bummer! This would've been sweet for me to use to say hi to Mel & the boys while on business trips.

Price cuts, 3G, GPS and 3rd party software: sweet, sweet sweet!

No update or price cut for iPod Touch: wierd! Who the heck would buy an iPod Touch when an iPhone 3g with the same capacity costs $100 LESS? Yes, it is no longer possible to buy an iPhone 3G and not activate it, but still, something is seriously wrong here. Look at the prices:

8gb iPhone 3G: $199. 8gb iPod Touch: $299

16gb iPhone 3G: $299. 16gb iPod Touch: $399

Normally I'd guess that Apple ran out of iPhone 1.0 stock before they ran out of iPod Touch 1.0 stock - but why not cut the price to move the rest of the stock? This must be seen as yet more evidence that AT&T (in the US at least) is subsidizing the cost of the iPhone 3G.

Neil Gaiman on bipedal animals

2008-06-04T07:19:00.000-07:00

Neil (author/creator of a ton of wonderful things, including Sandman, Stardust, and American Gods) wrote this to go along with a picture he snapped from his kitchen window, and it made me laugh in my coffee cup.

I took this yesterday from the kitchen window. As a small child, I was convinced that all animals walked around on their hind legs when we couldn't see them, and spoke fluent English; sometimes they wore clothes and probably drove really tiny, brightly-coloured cars down hidden streets between the bushes. This raccoon did nothing to disabuse me of the idea:

Stories vs. Statistics: "There may be comfort in numbers, but there is inspiration in story telling"

2008-05-29T23:23:00.000-07:00

So true:

It confirmed something I have suspected. People, particularly in business, crave statistics. They need measurement. They like the confirmation of bar graphs and flow charts.
But what they remember are people's stories. People stories stay with them longer than do pie charts. People's stories inspire others to change, to innovate and to disrupt. There may be comfort in numbers, but there is inspiration in story telling.

(From Shel Israel, of Naked Conversations fame.)

Fix the World.

2008-04-23T21:42:00.000-07:00

I feel so fortunate to live in a town where so many scary-smart people are trying really hard to make the world a better place. They've got lots of good ideas. They believe in what works - prove it! And they believe in the power of working together, sharing ideas and information, and realize what’s important to make sure that power can be used to help make the world a better place.

I’ve started to tag some of these people, places and things: http://del.icio.us/fullerbecker/fixtheworld.

Feel free to subscribe to that tag’s RSS feed and see what I find next.

Tie-dye credit: giina caliente

HP: all mice to be enuchs

2008-04-18T00:25:00.000-07:00

No longer will Hewlett-Packard's mice have balls.

I am not an architecture astronaut!

2008-04-05T02:12:00.000-07:00

I'm not.

I just wanted to get that on record.

Thanks, I feel much better now.

Integration - and why you really ought to subscribe to Kim Cameron's Identity Blog

2008-03-30T23:45:00.000-07:00

Found this integration poster by Jeff Bohren on Kim Cameron's Identity blog. Kim's blog is very good stuff, in my "A+ Feeds" folder. If you have some ideas what "identity" means and why its interesting, you should without question be subscribed to Kim's blog. Go read, you'll see.

2008-03-27T23:50:00.000-07:00

Coming soon to Rhapsody, I hope! I can't believe I haven't bought it yet. Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings - Counting Crows: "Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings - Counting Crows"

(Via Counting Crows Discography on Rhapsody Online.)

Yay! Time Machine now works on HD's attached to Airport Extreme Base Station!

2008-03-21T07:52:00.000-07:00

From MacRumors:

After the release of today's Time Machine and Airport update, several readers report that Time Machine now supports backups to USB drives connected to your Airport Extreme basestation. This configuration essentially reproduces the functionality of Apple's Time Capsule product.

Looks like I can now get off the fence of "should I buy a Time Capsule, or can I get Airport Extreme and buy a third party (bigger) external hard drive?"

I want to do the latter, since I'll get:
- More space for my money
- Failure independence - if the wireless function fails, at least I won't lose the storage function. (In my experience, consumer wireless routers have a much shorter MTBF than consumer hard drives.)

Subversion checkout

2008-03-20T21:25:00.000-07:00

Macintosh:Subversion beckerd$ svn checkout https://danproject.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ danproject --username dan.becker
Error validating server certificate for 'https://danproject.googlecode.com:443':
- The certificate is not issued by a trusted authority. Use the
fingerprint to validate the certificate manually!
Certificate information:
- Hostname: *.googlecode.com
- Valid: from Sat, 24 Jun 2006 00:05:41 GMT until Sat, 21 Jun 2008 19:45:36 GMT
- Issuer: Certification Services Division, Thawte Consulting cc, Cape Town, Western Cape, ZA
- Fingerprint: 89:87:5e:ca:0b:03:d2:83:db:7b:3f:20:5d:d0:76:c7:76:6b:cb:b2
(R)eject, accept (t)emporarily or accept (p)ermanently? t
Authentication realm: Google Code Subversion Repository
Password for 'dan.becker':
Checked out revision 4.
Macintosh:Subversion beckerd$

Subversion!

2008-03-13T22:55:00.000-07:00

So, looks like I get to play with Subversion a bit.

I've started reading up on it a bit.

Set up a project on Google Code since that gives me a pre-set-up Subversion repository.

Collected a few subversion bookmarks on del.icio.us. If you know Subversion, take a look; am I missing some really good ones?

Installed Subversion and SvnX on my Mac.

Defeating full-disk encryption with a can of compressed air

2008-02-22T12:15:00.001-08:00

I found this absolutely astounding.

But upon reflection, it makes sense.

From Bruce Schneier's blog

Cold Boot Attacks Against Disk Encryption

Nice piece of research:

We show that disk encryption, the standard approach to protecting sensitive data on laptops, can be defeated by relatively simple methods. We demonstrate our methods by using them to defeat three popular disk encryption products: BitLocker, which comes with Windows Vista; FileVault, which comes with MacOS X; and dm-crypt, which is used with Linux.

[...]

The root of the problem lies in an unexpected property of today's DRAM memories. DRAMs are the main memory chips used to store data while the system is running. Virtually everybody, including experts, will tell you that DRAM contents are lost when you turn off the power. But this isn't so. Our research shows that data in DRAM actually fades out gradually over a period of seconds to minutes, enabling an attacker to read the full contents of memory by cutting power and then rebooting into a malicious operating system.

Interestingly, if you cool the DRAM chips, for example by spraying inverted cans of "canned air" dusting spray on them, the chips will retain their contents for much longer. At these temperatures (around -50 °C) you can remove the chips from the computer and let them sit on the table for ten minutes or more, without appreciable loss of data. Cool the chips in liquid nitrogen (-196 °C) and they hold their state for hours at least, without any power. Just put the chips back into a machine and you can read out their contents.

This is deadly for disk encryption products because they rely on keeping master decryption keys in DRAM. This was thought to be safe because the operating system would keep any malicious programs from accessing the keys in memory, and there was no way to get rid of the operating system without cutting power to the machine, which "everybody knew" would cause the keys to be erased.

Our results show that an attacker can cut power to the computer, then power it back up and boot a malicious operating system (from, say, a thumb drive) that copies the contents of memory. Having done that, the attacker can search through the captured memory contents, find any crypto keys that might be there, and use them to start decrypting hard disk contents. We show very effective methods for finding and extracting keys from memory, even if the contents of memory have faded somewhat (i.e., even if some bits of memory were flipped during the power-off interval). If the attacker is worried that memory will fade too quickly, he can chill the DRAM chips before cutting power.

There seems to be no easy fix for these problems. Fundamentally, disk encryption programs now have nowhere safe to store their keys. Today's Trusted Computing hardware does not seem to help; for example, we can defeat BitLocker despite its use of a Trusted Platform Module.

The paper is here; more info is here. Articles
here.

There is a general security problem illustrated here: it is very difficult to secure data when the attacker has physical control of the machine the data is stored on. I talk about the general problem here, and it's a hard problem.

(By the way, did you know that Bruce Schneier's tears can burn holes through an OpenBSD firewall? Lucky for us, Bruce Schneier never cries.)

You can has cheeseburger, too!

2008-02-20T22:01:00.000-08:00

Sorry. You're getting a whole pile of LOLcats whether you want 'em or not.

moar humorous pics
moar humorous pics
moar humorous pics
moar humorous pics
moar humorous pics
moar humorous pics
moar humorous pics
moar humorous pics
moar humorous pics
moar humorous pics
moar humorous pics

So you want to use Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 on the same machine....

2008-01-24T10:54:00.000-08:00

I'm blogging this so I can find it next time I need it.

Scenario: You have Excel 2003 installed (maybe as part of Office 2003). You want to install Excel 2007, and leave Excel 2003 installed. You want .xlsx files to open in Excel 2007 when you double-click 'em, and you want .xls files to open in Excel 2003.

Solution:

Install Excel 2007 - customize your installation
Upgrade tab: select keep all previous versions installed
File location tab: change from the default path (c:\program files\microsoft office) to a different path (such as c:\program files\microsoft office 2007) This may not be strictly necessary but it makes me feel safer.

Then, do a repair on Office 2003 using Add/Remove Programs control panel (in W2k or XP) or the Programs control panel in Vista.

Alternately, you can run the following commands (from this usenet conversation):

1. Close Excel
2. Windows Start Button|Run, type
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\excel.exe" /unregserver 3. Windows Start Button|Run
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\excel.exe" /regserver
(If you originally installed Office 2003 in a different location you will need to change those commands to reflect the correct path to excel.exe.)

There are some other gotchas to Exchange 2003/2007 coexistence. See my del.icio.us bookmarks for Office 2007 for more.

Even more Best of 2007 Rhapsody playlists

2008-01-12T09:35:00.000-08:00

My friend Ryan is a major music buff, and every year he's put together his favorites as an Advent calendar, with a new song & review each day. 2007 version, 2005 version.

He also Rhapsodized our awesome local radio station's ( KEXP) best of list.

Paste Readers: more best albums of 2007

2008-01-12T09:12:00.000-08:00

Inevitably, readers of Paste magazine wrote in to say "I can't believe you left ______ off your list of top albums of 2007!

Here's what they suggested:

Rilo Kiley - Under The Blacklight

Richard Thompson - Sweet Warrior

The Go! Team - Proof Of Youth

Beirut - Flying Club Cup

Romantica - America

Shout Out Louds - Our Ill Wills

Rickie Lee Jones - The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard

John Doe - A Year In The Wilderness

I'm listening now, and I like what I hear!

Rhapsody Playlist: Paste Readers: more best albums of 2007

Unified Communications & work-life balance: a plea for 'off-duty' mode

2007-12-20T23:48:00.000-08:00

Need a mode for mobile comms devices so that 'work stuff' doesn't bug you.
Email should arrive silently
phone calls from work contacts should go straight to voicemail (maybe with a 'press 1 if it's urgent and you really need to ring through')
IM status should be "off duty" (or "do not disturb" - but that kind of implies working really hard, doesn't it?)

Personal contacts, emails and IM's are allowed through though.

Saying "well, you can sset that up" - doesn't do any good for the vast majority of people who never even LOOK at the settings, much less change any of them. It needs to be a top-level, out of the box config.

Whoever delivers this functionality will be hailed as saviors, antidotes to the always-connected, always-interrupted life of the crackberry toters.

Testing 123

2007-12-14T12:06:00.001-08:00

This is a test post.

The Zen of Using COTS

2007-12-12T10:14:00.001-08:00

One of my rules of thumb for COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) software is: use it the way the designers thought you would. That way you can cruise along the "happy path to success" instead of fighting the system and trying to use it in ways the designers didn't anticipate – encountering bugs and poor usability along the way.

You may have seen this idea writ large in ERP implementations as "adapt the business process to the system instead of vice versa". Think of this as the microscale version.

Or call it the Zen of using COTS.

doofusdan

Technical Debt

#OccupySesameStreet

Learn to be a better troubleshooter

Client software installation methods as children's toys

An incomplete history of source code version control from SCCS to Mercurial

Architecture & The Book of Five Rings

Consumerization of Enterprise IT Goes Both Ways

How to easily load and read .CBR files from your computer onto your iPad

Me, side-by-side with Douglas Adams

Use Outlook 2007 to make collaborating between organizations easier – share your free/busy times

Now Firefox 3.5 compatible: Seattle Public Library LibX Edition

Even with @comcastcares, Comcast Triple Play is not a basket you should put all your connectivity eggs in

Typo occurred, too

This Old Space Telescope

Great software writing can be Mercurial

Technical storytelling

Why use revision control?

About the Example Code

An actual reason to install iPhone OS 3 while it's in beta

Instantwatcher.com: a great way to find stuff to Watch Instantly on Netflix

HP Mini 2140 is much better netbook with Windows 7 than with XP

XP to Windows 7 netbook upgrade? Windows Easy Transfer: Netbook Fail

Can't Directly Upgrade XP to Windows 7; use Easy Transfer

If you love your users, set them free: Blogger import/export

Moldova, Twitter and Nothing Under the Sun is New

John Carmack on iPhone development: Wolfenstein 3D Classic

Gnothi Seauton

Maxim: The act of building forces one to clarify

I'd like to be in the beta of alpha

@kindlejunkie saved me via @twitter when @amazon's #Kindle #iPhone app didn't like me

Maxims: YAGNI: You Ain't Gonna Need It

xkcd: we won the DRM war

The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time

Maxims: 97 things every software architect should know

Maxim: The stuff you want to store will expand; size disks accordingly

The Great Reset

Feature Requests for the next iPhone

Guidance on Windows Deployments for Business Customers - Windows for your Business - The Windows Blog

Windows 7 Enterprise Edition will have DVD playback (Vista EE doesn't)

Maxims: reading material

Staying secure while surfing - from GoDaddy.com CEO's video blog

Dan's Maxims: Two of everything, Keep the Source, and Max out your RAM - Eventually

high resolution displays, netbooks, iphones

My Kindle 2.0 wish - "one more thing..."

Netbook or notebook?

Rhapsody can't count, doesn't realize that Firefox 3 *IS* "Firefox 1.5 or higher"

A Fail Whale for Getcomo.com

LibX - Seattle Public Library Edition

Windows 7 beta: 1. Windows Vista Service Pack 2 beta: 0.

Re: Instant Outlining

Beta 1 is not safe. But it is reasonable.

Schneier on Security: Biometrics

Office Communicator 2007 install error: The file 'eulamsdnrtf' cannot be installed because the file cannot be found in cabinet file 'MsgrCore.cab'

Windows 7 works just great in VMware Fusion

What have you tried?

It's an Ultra-Lounge Christmas

The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway

I don't live in the future, but I like to visit

Feature Request for Windows: Paste as Plain Text

Tables Turn

TLA's FTW!

Specifications are hard; seeing things that are not quite right is easy

Experiment and Logic: GOOD; Authority, Intimidation, Self-Interest: BAD

Lord, I'm Discouraged

Fix The World: The Power of Goals

The greatest bass player of all time

Because it works

Everything that Happens Will Happen Today

How to never run out of music to listen to

Where do I sign?

iPhone Apps I'd like to have

Cool Tools blog and the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments

No, I DIDN'T know that Amazon sold that

FCC orders Comcast to stop restricting access to the Internet

The Hold Steady!

A great turn of phrase

What a shocker

In case you didn't realize how Facebook is going to make money....

Universe Sandbox!

Rhapsody can't count, doesn't realize that Firefox 3 IS "Firefox 1.5 or higher"