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Ted's Radio Weblog
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Friday, February 28, 2003 |
Yet another FoxPro Wiki posting. I rewrote the RSS generator (up to version 0.2) to parse the text of the web page, de-HTML-ize it, and pass it to the news aggregators as a description. There's still more to do, including a timestamp and author information, but progress continues. SteveSawyer. Steve Sawyer is a VisualFoxPro Developer, living in Metro Detroit, Michigan. He is currently a contributing editor for AdvisorPublications FoxProAdvisor, former editor of the monthly Tips column. He has recently completed (with JimBooth) EffectiveTechniques... from [FoxForum Wiki]
7:41:21 PM 
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 Only the third day since December it's been above freezing, and the local cardinal takes advantage of a puddle for a well-deserved birdbath. I can't wait 'til spring, either!
12:50:15 PM
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Thursday, February 27, 2003 |
So, just to see if I could make this RSS thing work, I manually added a second item to the XML file, an article that hadn't really changed, just to see if I could get it to show up in my Radio Userland New Aggregator automatically. And show up it did.
Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
9:08:21 PM
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Fox Rocks! I've managed to set up an XML page that lets me subscribe to the FoxForum Wiki as if it supplied the RSS natively. This is just a proof-of-concept at this point, and not a working subscription I can pass around to others, but stay tuned, it's coming. The first topic I picked happened to be a Spanish one, and the description's a bit scant at this point, but for a version 0.2, I'm pleased to be getting bits! Here's the link:
LeerdatosdeunASPyenviarloaXML. LeerdatosdeunASPyenviarloaXML [FoxForum Wiki]
7:28:30 PM
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 Fred Rogers, a pal, mentor and teacher to many of us in the 50's through the 90's, has passed away. He will be missed.
8:39:28 AM
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Wednesday, February 26, 2003 |
The FoxPro Wiki also has a topic on the VFP license, here, where Jim Nelson seems to really launch into a diatribe with "marketing gimmick," "sneak changes," "unsuspecting community." I agree with his point, although perhaps not with his vitriolic reaction.
Ultimately, this is a failure of the management of the FoxPro group to recognize that they were introducing a change to the product's licensing, and a failure to alert their customers to the change. It didn't need to be this traumatic. It simply needed to be presented in the correct light. Or, even better, the license change could have been reconsidered and rejected.
1:08:43 PM
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Without announcing it, Microsoft changed the licensing requirements for Visual FoxPro 8.0 so that older versions of Visual FoxPro must be removed. These requirements apparently only apply to the "upgrade" version of VFP 8.0.
PCConnection lists the VFP 7.0* (NOTE: not the new 8.0 product) Upgrade at $239.95, a bargain for the most powerful Windows development environment, richest IDE, fastest single-tier database engine and best development community of any package in WinTelLand. The full version is listed at $517.35, a $277.40 premium over the upgrade product. Looked at the other way, an existing owner gets a 53.6% discount off of the full price for buying an upgrade. In 7.0 and before, this was a reward for having purchased the earlier package. In 8.0, I'm not so sure.
Section 11.1 of the VFP 8.0 End-User Licensing Agreement (EULA) states:
"11.1 Upgrades. To use a version of the Software identified as an upgrade, you must first be licensed for the software identified by Microsoft as eligible for the upgrade. After upgrading, you may no longer use the software that formed the basis for your upgrade eligibility."
While that requirement may be appropriate for personal productivity packages, it is completely inappropriate for a development system. Applications developed with earlier versions must be supported with those earlier versions until it is practical and economically feasible, if ever, to upgrade to the latest runtime modules. In many cases, it is not feasible to upgrade tens, hundreds or thousands of machines to a later version. Older version of development environments must be maintained until all clients have been updated. For developers and consultants who are taking on new work, it is not at all unusual to come across a new client who is two or three versions behind in their systems.
The issue here is not a couple hundred bucks. It is a question of truthfulness and trustworthiness. A change this significant to the EULA cannot be buried in section 11.1 of a long and incomprehensible document. As significant change in licensing ought to be made public, explained to the community, debated, flamed, and eventually accepted. We VFP developer fans are almost always referred to as a "rabid" lot, and paying a couple of extra hours of billable time for the correct version, and to keep our product alive, is not an unreasonable price to pay for what I still consider one of the best products ever on the PC platform.
However, failing to be in licensing compliance can be an offense justifying termination for some employees. Failing to be in license compliance can result in a huge fine, possibly crippling a business, from the BSA. Changing the licensing terms without properly notifying their customer base is a violation of trust between customer and vendor.
Microsoft ought to be ashamed of trying to "sneak this in under the radar," and needs to make all efforts to clarify what their licensing policies are, what has changed from version to version, and what their customers need to do to stay in compliance.
I send money to vendors when they provide me with new and updated products that make my job the enjoyable profession that it is. I trust them to support me as I support them. Microsoft has failed to live up to this basic principle of commerce, and needs to make amends.
* (Prices for VFP 8.0 do not seem to be available on retail sites I've searched. A search of mySimon.com shows PC Mall listing VFP 8.0 for $607.99 and eCost.com for $563.92, but both appear to be the full product.)
8:40:09 AM
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Tuesday, February 25, 2003 |
Craig Bentson reports on a fatal phrase in the EULA for the upgrade version of Visual FoxPro 8.0, which requires the uninstallation of previous versions of the software. I am supporting clients in Visual FoxPro 6.0 and 7.0, and have no intention of removing my ability to support my clients and make a living.
Garrett has the section of the EULA on his web page as well. I would never have considered that getting an upgrade discount from a vendor disqualified me from using an earlier version. With other software, such as an office package or photo editing software, I suppose I wouldn't need to. But a development system is different. You develop and compile and distribute your applications on different versions to your customers, and you have to continue to use that version to support the customer until it is feasible to update all customers to the most recent version. In some cases, like one former client of mine with a VFP 5.0 application on 28,000 desktops, there has to be a pretty strong reason to do that, as the cost of deploying a new application and new runtimes is not small.
Where's the sense in this? The upgrade discount is supposed to be a "reward for loyalty," a motivator to get existing customers (the vast majority of VFP purchasers, I expect) to purchase the upgrade, and quickly, as the discount is often available only for a limited time. Anyone who has developed in previous versions is likely to need to maintain them for some time, in order to support deployed applications. The only people who could qualify for the upgrade price savings are either those who have never deployed an application, or those who choose to ignore the EULA.
7:17:05 PM
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Monday, February 24, 2003 |
I'm a regular reader of Certified Professional magazine, having passed 17 Microsoft certification exams in order to get my MCSE once and my MCSD three times (I'm done, btw, but that's another story for another day). "Em C. Pea" is the pseudonym of the back-page columnist, always the hot spot in a magazine, and it's been occupied for a couple of years now by a pretty snappy writer, one who didn't hesitate to give Microsoft a good lashing when it deserved it. No more. While she claims to have a cold this issue, I suspect the rah-rah attitude is much more likely a symptom of personality replacement. Whether caused by a staff rotation or a ouster at the behest of some unnamed evil force, this is not the same writer (Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence, I've been told). Too bad. One of my first tirades in the industry press more than a decade ago was a protest of the rumored canning of Robert X. Cringely, the person, not the InfoWorld ™ and RXC (tpnt™) went to to much larger things. I hope the Auntie Em ghost writer can have similar good fortunes.
9:15:25 PM
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 David Weinberger writes "I had my 15 minutes and no one told me until they were over Dept.. In its monthly list of "Wired, Tired and Expired," the new issue of Wired lists "loosely joined" as tired. ("Evolved" is wired and "tightly coupled" is expired.) I believe that according to the terms of the Geneva Convention on Lost Luggage, I am therefore entitled to claim that "Small Pieces Loosely Joined" must have been at some point implicitly wired. Right? Woohoo [by implication]!..." from Joho the Blog. I just finished reading SPLJ last night, my first pass through it. I look forward to reading it again.
2:36:49 PM
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Sunday, February 23, 2003 |
SJ Mercury: From Demo: 10 technologies to watch. Of the 60 companies invited, I picked 10 I think are poised to change the way we interact with technology in the next three years or so -- either because their product itself was so impressive, or because their idea is sure to inspire others in the industry to pursue similar goals. [Tomalak's Realm]
7:14:34 PM
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Saturday, February 22, 2003 |
God's been logging his experiment -- what a hack. Please skip if easily offended by heresy or blasphemy.
3:35:56 PM
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I know I've been using only one-tenth of the power of Radio (didn't I say that here?), but life intrudes when you'd rather be having fun exploring a new tool. However, I took some time today and found this link which explains how to create a blogroll. Please stand by while the column on the left changes every few minutes while I mess with this...
1:44:38 PM
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Friday, February 21, 2003 |
OSNews has the link to BusinesWeek's article, headlined A "Perfect Marriage" for Microsoft?, subtitled, "Redmond's Tim McDonough says Mac lovers have no need to fret over the giant's purchase of the cross-platform franchise from Connectix"
OTOH, this Yahoo! story claims the purchase is all about virtualization, perhaps something like the VMWare product. I've seen the quote the Microsoft's server base is still 35% Windows NT 4.0, so if they can use this product to pull along those clients, that has clear advantages.
Investmesnts in the Apple market did not make sense to me.
4:14:03 PM
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Thursday, February 20, 2003 |
An interesting survey, reported by ComputerWorld, conducted by Evans Data Corporation found that 40% of developers preferred MSDN. A plurality, not a majority. I wonder what the other choices were, and how a "non-program" like the Open Source Bazaar, can even be represented in such a survey. Truth in disclosure: I am an MSDN Universal subscriber, as well as a registered Oracle, Java, and IBM Developer. Personally, I prefer Google. Survey: Developers choose Microsoft's MSDN as top developer program. An Evans Data survey finds that more than twice as many developers selected Microsoft's program as best overall than selected any other program.
9:11:01 PM
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Dan Gillmor explains the latest FCC "compromise" that actually is a near-total victory for the incumbent telcos. Want to guess who the big losers are? Got a mirror handy? Writes Dan: Spinning this as a victory for any party but the regional Bell monopolies is a big mistake. Competition for tomorrow's data access just took an enormous hit.... link from Joho the Blog
9:00:08 PM
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In this New York Times piece, "A Theory on Corporate Greed," the academics are still battling out whether CEOs driven purely by stock-ticker prices are a bad thing. If the "Irrational Exhuberence" of the 90's tell us anything, I think that was the lesson to be learned.
8:40:24 PM
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Microsoft touted the Plato (Multi-dimensional analysis or 'cube') technology, as well as the scriptable Data Transformation Services, as key features of the SQL Server 7 product. Now, CNET News.com is reporting that "Ruling threatens developers' wallets. In a ruling that could force royalty fees on some developers working with Microsoft's SQL Server 7 software, a judge says the software maker can't sublicense another company's patents to SQL Server customers." Microsoft is going to get squeezed here and be forced to pay up for its developers, or the product is in big trouble.
5:49:55 PM
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"Although my computer engineering students believe in binary, I believe that luck and magic control computers." Graham K. Rogers relates his harrowing tale of computer repair. We have all been there.
9:15:36 AM
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Many of us looking to start to learn Linux are asking which distribution is for me. Here's a report of one users' experiences with trying out the modern distros: Choosing Between the Big Linux Distros on OSNews
8:44:35 AM
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Wednesday, February 19, 2003 |
To my great surprise, there are _comments_ to stuff I've posted. I haven't even bothered to check, since I've been talking to myself (luckily, I'm good at self-entertaining). Now I'll have to remember to look. Dave Winer pointed out here that some means of finding out there are comments on your stories would be a good feature. Unfortunately, it looks like the comment thread on that posting ended up in the bit bucket. I think there was a more recent thread on this, but I haven't found it yet...
9:10:39 PM
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I'm not grokking what makes Dan Bricklin's SMB proposal such a Good Thing. XML is nearly always a Good Thing, easy to produce, consume and transport. But how does this provide much more value than a vCard or vCard-RDF on your website? So, we each put a little smbmeta.xml file on our websites, and then register with whoever's collecting business cards? Then, they can publish our site, if it meets their criteria. (SMB, by the way, is Small and Medium Businesses, in this case, not System Message Block). The aggregation issue is a new one, encouraging registrars to develop online directories.
The second question is why the smbmeta.xml has to be tied to a domain name? If you're really talking about small businesses, paying for a domain name doesn't make a lot of sense. Take "Rusty's General Store" in downtown Contoocook as an example. It's a one-woman shop selling pet supplies, food, grain, bird seed, and various related products. A web site? They have a phone. An answering machine was a new addition recently. But a web site is a questionable investment at best, even a business-card sized one. I like the idea of being able to submit an SMB metafile, or vCard-RDF, or equivalent, to get my favorite pet store a little extra business, but I don't see where the tie-in between domain and directories necessarily applies.
Doh. Dan shoots down my argument in his white paper with:
Another lesson learned from the Internet in general is that while the cost to participate should be minimal, it should not be zero, because facilities that can be flooded for free will be. That's why we insist that the file be located at the top of the domain: because domains cost money. The money to pay for a domain name is money a business would spend anyway -- the marginal cost to a legitimate business is in fact zero -- but nonetheless it's a real cost that can help prevent spam.
Okay, I can see that. We do want to stop the flood that would be caused by a free service. And the cost of setting up a simple site on an existing system for a single page "Come visit our store: hours, directions and phone number" web site should be minimal, along with the costs of annual domain registration. To attract anyone other than the geeks, though, the system has to grow to a large enough size that customers are likely to find the directory entry.
And why not vCard? No phone numbers or email addresses, in order to prevent spammers from harvesting the list. Makes sense to me. I'll be interested to see where this proposal goes.
8:39:06 PM
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In trying to answer the question, "What's a Blog?", I ran into this site that looks jam-packed full of information on blogging: software, books and resources. Check it out.
7:33:13 PM
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Garrett Fitzgerald pointed out he's been running his blog since last JulyApril. I added a BloG topic on the FoxPro world's favorite wiki, http://fox.wikis.com.
6:59:21 PM
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Welcome aboard to Craig Berntson, who's started the :FoxBlog: Blogger site on his web site. I think this makes two FoxPro bloggers, counting me. Let me know if you find another one out there.
8:50:41 AM
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Tuesday, February 18, 2003 |
says Dave Farquhar, over at his site. Gee, I think he forgot Stacker. Other than that, he's got just about every "Why I hate Microsoft" item on the list. Pretty well-written, too. For those of you who haven't read the history before, this is a pretty good summary of the anti- side of the equation. I was also amused by his footer line, which read "Thank you for supporting standards, freedom, and competition by using a non-Microsoft browser. This site is dedicated to you and others like you." Why, thanks, Dave.
And, just in case you missed Mark Odell's comment:
The MSBC Superlist of Anti-Microsoft Web Sites
Microsoft's Rise to Power
Why I hate Microsoft
Watching Microsoft Like a Hawk
Boycott Microsoft
Reasons to Avoid Microsoft
The Bad Faith of Microsoft
Microsoft Monopoly
He Who Controls the Bootloader
7:28:25 PM
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Monday, February 17, 2003 |
 Saw the Matthew Broderick - Kristin Chenoweth made-for-TV remake of the 1962 classic Robert Preston - Shirley Jones "The Music Man." A very impressive presentation. Music was good, dancing was well done. My resident music and dance critic enjoyed it. Broderick is no Robert Preston, but did an charming and slightlty different interpretation of the role. Kristin Chenoweth, at all of 4'11" , totally overpowered Broderick in the musical department.
6:05:33 PM
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Sunday, February 16, 2003 |
Submitted my first technical article after a two-year self-imposed hiatus. While I've written a few small web pieces and whitepapers for a dozen conferences or so, (oh, and a book), this was my first article, and I was rusty! Keeping it short, sweet and organized. Eliminating all the extra verbiage but keeping enough transition and organization so the reader could follow. Submitted the first draft to the editor and expect to get back a red-inked-bloodbath. It'll take a while to get into the swing again, but it's good to be writing.
10:13:22 AM
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Another Merger and Acquisition hits the streets. No doubt this will be the most talked-about item today, unless the US invades Iraq:
7:14:53 AM
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Saturday, February 15, 2003 |
Several folks, like Dave Winer and Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog have posted "flash mind reader. I have no idea how this works, but it's tripping me out!" pointing out once again that programmers and math majors Think Different, not necessarily better, but different. I read the test, looked at the table and knew the trick. Sometimes it's no fun knowing how the magic works. Try navigating to "Flash" and select the Flash Mind Reader from here if the link above isn't working.
12:34:07 PM
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New Issue of JOHO. A new issue of my free newsletter is out. Here's what's in it The Internet is not a thing: It's an agreement. And there's a big difference. I've been thinking about the end of the Internet. No, not its collapse, but as in the"End-to-End" (E2E) argument, put definitively by David P. Reed, J.H. Saltzer, and D.D. Clark and in their seminal article, End-to-End Arguments in System Design. The concept is simple: whenever possible, services should not be built into a network but should be allowed to arise at the network's ends. For example, it's a good thing the Internet designers... [Joho the Blog]
12:19:27 PM
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Damn, this is impressive - David Weinberger, whose poetic/philosophical descriptions of the Internet are without peer, has written an amazing cybercitizen's rant. I'm posting this mostly so that I preserve the link and can go back to read it again, but the rest of you are free to follow the link too. [Ernie the Attorney]
12:18:49 PM
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Friday, February 14, 2003 |
The Microsoft buzzwords are "Simple" and "Easy." I don't know how they do it, but every member of the sales collective seems to come out with the same phrases at the same time. Maybe it's just corporate communication, but it feels more like... hivemind *shiver*. "Simple" and "Easy" came out of every sales flack's mouth last month, over and over.
I'm just trying to read the documentation on Indexing Services. I tried the msdn.microsoft.com site but it's giving a "Server error 500-013: Too Many Users. Internet Information Server" - nice that they plug their product as they show their inability to scale to enterprise heights.
Fine, I'll install the Platform SDK on my local machine. No go. An error comes up in Mozilla stating that I have to have IE 5 or later. I do - this is a Win2KPro box with IE 5.5 on it. Ah, but it's not the *default* browser, perhaps? Since Microsoft is telling us that IE is an integral part of the operating system, couldn't they have the brains to invoke it directly instead of invoking the default browser they can't use? Simple? No. Easy? No. Sloppy? Yup.
Explorer, Tools, Folder Options, File Types. Change HTM and HTML files to point to IE. Run the installer. Works fine. Change it back. What a pain. Simple and Easy. Sheesh.
3:41:27 PM
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When showing off Visual FoxPro working with Open Source tools last weekend, there were concerns voiced by the attendees:
- Who provides the support?
- How do I chose the right tool?
- Who fixes the bugs?
- Learning all that *stuff* looks hard.
It's about choice, freedom and responsibility.
- You provide the support to your customers; that's what you've always done. You get your support through newsgroups, associates, and paying experts who know more than you. That's where you get your support now, right? How many times have you gotten support - how many times have your even bothered to ask - from BigCompany's 800 number?
- How do you choose your tools now? Now you get to shop around a little; read reviews, experiment, pilot test. It's what you've always done, isn't it?
- Anyone can fix the bugs if everyone has access to the source code. Chances are, someone will. Usually pretty quickly. Usually better than you can. And there's a peer review process that tells you the fix is good and right and proper. Isn't that better than what you have now?
- Learning is hard, but if you don't enjoy that, the computer field is probably not the place for you to be. I'm exhilarated when learning a new tool; yes, I curse and stay up too late and drink too much caffiene and sweat bullets when the deadline approaches, but the thrill of getting "Hello, World" to work in yet another language/application/platform is worth it to me. And don't tell me that the latest thing you learned from BigCo was any easier!
3:33:53 PM
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You're thinking, well, if you don't like it, why do you live there? The usual story: a girl, a romance, a plan. Seemed like a good idea at the time. The girl is long gone, the romance soured, the plan failed. But, there's a kid finishing college and a house that needs a lot of work to be marketable. After that? Chesapeake Bay sounds interesting: ocean, temperate climate, East Coast. We'll see.
9:06:02 AM
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Thursday, February 13, 2003 |
Microsoft devotees speak out. The software giant is gleaning some of its best advice from the 1,300 consultants, dealers and enthusiasts the company honored this week in Redmond, Wash. By Joe Wilcox, Staff Writer, CNET News.com. It will be interesting to hear from bloggers like Robert Scoble later on this week on what they heard from the MVP Summit.
8:20:55 PM
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At our FoxPro retreat last weekend, I brought a spare laptop with Twiki installed for group collaboration. Geeks and Gurus supplied the WAP and 56k POTS dial-up router. Presto! Instant network. With this device, it looks like we can leave a lot of stuff at home... Sony's Wi-Fi equipped pocket Web server: GadgetWatch identifies (and offers an English explanation of) a Wi-Fi-enabled portable fileserver! Nifty. 70,000 yen. Pointer from [80211b News]
7:10:45 PM
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... but really cold. The forecast for northern New Hampshire is thirty degrees below zero this evening. That's Fahrenheit, mercury. None of this wimpy windchill stuff. Brrr!
5:35:23 PM
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Paul McNett has established a site at http://www.openfox.org with the mission to "help Visual FoxPro developers evaulate and integrate various open source products into their solutions." Looking forward to watching the site develop. Paul's had a great deal of influence in getting some issues resolved with Wine so that it will run Visual FoxPro.
12:48:40 PM
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Wednesday, February 12, 2003 |
Next step was to get access to the Linux box on the DSL from my WinXP laptop, and hopefully, secure access from the rest of the world. SSH is the right answer for that, and I set up PuTTY as my SSH client on the WinXP box. Connected in without a problem - pretty slick. The next step was to use VNC to connect graphically (as a newbie, a GUI is easier to fumble around in than a terminal). I'd already set up the VNC server on the Linux box when it was on the same LAN (there's a bit of a glitch with RedHat 8.0 and Gnome with VNC, solved by this message), but now I need a secure way to use it over the Internet (VNC does not encrypt its stream). The VNC site does include instructions for using SSH, but it's not entirely clear how they translate to the PuTTY GUI. The Answers Are Out There. One Google search later, I find the answers at http://freesco.no-ip.org/VNC/, the first of 2030 hits Google provides.
8:01:13 PM
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A few hours of cursing and tweaking and digging around in obscure dialogs got ftp back up and running on the old W2K box on the DSL. Punching the hole in the router was no problem (good tips at http://www.linksysftp.org), nor forwarding to the correct machine. Had Terminal Services running on the server, and finally thought to check ftp properties. Still bound to the old IP address. Doh.
7:48:09 PM
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Chris Pirillo, Mr. LockerGnome, is passing the hat for Doc Searls, who lost a laptop this week. C'mon, throw in a coupla bucks.
7:44:14 PM
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President Abraham Lincoln, carrying the weight of the Civil War on his shoulders, is reputed to have scribbled these words on the back of an envelope. I think these are some of the best words ever written.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as the final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that case for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that this government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg Address
November 19, 1863
Happy Birthday, Mr. President.
5:13:32 PM
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Sounds like Dave had a blast at Harvard Law last night. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it. Notes of the session are here, and Derek Slater has some comments here.
9:15:31 AM
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Tuesday, February 11, 2003 |
DSL was installed, up and running, in 45 minutes this morning, by MCT Telecom's ace lineman, John. Steve and I confirmed it was working and set the DNS entries to update. I've moved the http://www.tedroche.com domain to the new DSL, but need to convert it to the new server. It's currently running on a beater P-166, and needs to be updated. But it works! We installed the Win2K server, a Linux workstation and a WinXP workstation on the network, and have installed WallWatcher on the WinXP box to watch the packets hit the router. A few dozen tries, mainly at port 137, but a hit or two at 1434 (SQL Server) and others as well.
7:23:07 PM
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More Legal Pains for Microsoft. An industry lobbying group tries again to put the brakes on the software giant. [The Motley Fool] The best quote: "It must be nice to sit around filing complaints and impeding market processes all day long. CCIA exists for this very reason." I guess we shouldn't stand in the way of monopolies doing their bundling. There are no market processes impeding a monopoly, and certainly not one previously found guilty of improper business practices. Honestly!
7:16:18 PM
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Monday, February 10, 2003 |
On impulse power this morning, after a weekend-long retreat with a great bunch of guys and girls. Excellent topics, arguments, agreements, presentations, conversations, networking, ad-hocing, meals, drinks, handshakes and hugs. Twiki and wireless made some interesting changes in the meeting; overall a positive I think. Posted pictures for the attendees on a private site this morning, using LViewPro to generate the entire web site with little tweaking. Photo album software is definitely making progress, reducing 60 meg of high-res digital photos to 7 meg, allowing me to fit it in one of the 10 meg slots AT&T-Comcast allows.
12:02:28 PM
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Sunday, February 9, 2003 |
Rough start this morning. Only six of twenty-four attendees were present 15 minutes before start. Scrambling to get the network and wireless up and running, starting 10 minutes late.
8:43:42 AM
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Saturday, February 8, 2003 |
Scoble: "Who wants to make Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer richer without getting rich themselves?" No thanks. [Scripting News] Sorry I can't make it out to Seattle; it sounds like it could be interesting.
3:34:31 PM
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Tuesday's live session at Harvard will be at 6:30PM at Lewis International Law Center, room 301. Here's a map of the law school campus. Dan Bricklin will be there. Peter Rukavina is coming from Prince Edward Island. This is so cool. As always the Web brings people together like nothing else before it. [Scripting News]
3:26:37 PM
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Blogging live from FoxCon Toledo. This rocks! The great guys at Geeks and Gurus (G2) provided the router and wireless AP, Bob Ruple, the conference coordinator, arranged for POTS dial-out (the only option for the hotel), and I provided a Linux server for a few utilities and a Twiki web site running under Apache. And it all works!
10:39:35 AM
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Friday, February 7, 2003 |
Off to Toledo for a weekend conference. My first encounter with the TSA since last fall. I'm dreading to find out what happens this time. The last time, incompetence and delays by the airline forced me to take my baggage as carry-on, and I had to surrender an heirloom pocketknife or miss the flight. Hope this time goes better!
7:49:05 AM
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Thursday, February 6, 2003 |
Visual FoxPro 8.0 Released to Manufacturing. Here's the press release from Ken Levy, PM for Visual FoxPro. While it mainly reads like a standard Microsoft press release, no doubt created from boilerplate, there are a few clumsy and heavy-handed phrases where Ken obviously went off script. (psst, Ken: F7 will check spelling and grammar.) Ken's no english major, so changes in tense and number often slip by.
"Microsoft currently has no plans to create a service pack" is really meant as good news: the message is that this release is *SOLID*, not that we shouldn't expect support from Microsoft. (VFP developers tend to be a dour lot, always looking for the down side -- I think it's an effect of having been orphaned by various xBase products in the past.) How about "we're confident that this version can be rolled out into production systems, and are not aware of any 'showstopper' bugs which would cause problems. Should those be found, Microsoft will respond promptly." I dunno, the legal beagles probably wouldn't let him say that, either.
Overall, this is good news, as VFP 8 really does contain some great updates. It's certainly better than those products left behind at the 6.x and 7.x version...
10:39:49 AM
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Wednesday, February 5, 2003 |
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Tuesday, February 4, 2003 |
Microsoft: Open source could harm us. The software giant warns that the success of the open-source movement could hurt its sales, potentially forcing the company to cut prices and sacrifice both revenue and profits. By Ian Fried, Staff Writer [CNET News.com]
9:00:33 PM
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Monday, February 3, 2003 |
If you're in Boston, please mark your calendar for Tuesday evening, February 11, 6PM. We're going to do a live version of this weblog in a classroom at Harvard Law School (details to follow). It's open to anyone who has a weblog, not just people from Harvard. I'll start with a few comments, basically the kind of stuff you read here, probably something about how cold it is, and how thin my blood is. Let's figure some things out. How should we do weblogs at Harvard? Will the Red Sox ever win the World Series? How to use the technology in law, medicine, education, government, business. These sessions are always fun, they last about 1.5 hours or so, sometimes not so long, sometimes longer. No one falls asleep. [Scripting News]
9:03:58 PM
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Sunday, February 2, 2003 |
Salon.com has this interesting piece by John Snyder, president of Artist House Records and board member of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences. Perhaps this is a better organization to be listening to than the RIAA...
5:12:05 PM
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A strong opinion piece from Gregg Easterbrook in the print version of Time due out next week. I couldn't disagree more. The Shuttles are costly and unweildy, but they need to keep running until they can be replaced. There have been competing proposals for almost 30 years, and it's time that Congress took the initiative to fund a program to make the U.S. a premiere space-borne nation. The EU, with their Ariane rocket, despite problems, are moving ahead, and the Chinese will soon have an active (and new!) program. We need to be out there. Shut down the shuttle and retire the magnificent and dangerous craft as soon as they are no longer needed.
9:37:34 AM
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Saturday, February 1, 2003 |
Interesting article at Wired on the two competing sides of Sony: hardware vs. entertainment.
5:28:07 PM
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 Lost during the effort to lift mankind from the Earth. Rest in peace.
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds...and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of...wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
'High Flight' by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
"If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."
- Gus Grissom, responding to a reporter, at a press conference for the first manned Apollo mission.
1:48:13 PM
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