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Ted's Radio Weblog
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Friday, October 31, 2003 |
"Replace and defend. Reading the Longhorn SDK docs is a disorienting experience. Everything's familiar but different. Consider these three examples: ..." From Jon's Radio
Jon cites Joe Hewitt's blog where Joe says:
"This means that Microsoft may be attempting to simultaneously obsolete HTML, CSS, DOM, XUL, SVG, SMIL, Flash, PDF."
Why is Microsoft confusing innovation with obliteration? Read my blog subtitle: Interoperable, competition, working well with others. This is a time for evolution and not revolution. Microsoft's arrogance is astounding.
2:21:23 PM 
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From The Doc Searls Weblog: "Storm of Light. 
NASA's October 2003 Aurora Gallery has some amazing photographs of the aurora show that the current series of solar storms has been putting on. Here's a shot from the USAF Defense Meteorological Satellite Program that shows auroras that are not only brighter than the city lights below them, but blurring the city images as well. If you look at the yellow outlines of state, provincial and Great Lake boundaries, you'll see that the brightest auroras ran in a line from Southern Quebec and Ontario through Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota ó right over the cities of Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Detroit, Milwaukee and Sioux Falls. That was at 0214 UTC on 30 October, or 9:14pm, EST in the U.S. and Canada on 29 October. In other words, the night before last. Since auroras run up to 800 miles high, they are visible up to 1000 miles away or more. Which is why we have sightings as far south as Florida and Texas. Though subsiding, the latest storm is still going on (as of dawn here in Santa Barbara). According to the NOAA POES Auroral Activity Map, there is still intense activity where it's still dark: over the Northern and Yukon Territories of Canada, nearly all of Alaska, the entire northern border of Russia, and the southern reaches of New Zealand and Australia. NASA has a terrific page on Space Weather that includes photos of auroras from space and 9MB movie titled Animiation of CME impact on Earth's magnetosphere. A great watch if you have the bandwidth." [The Doc Searls Weblog]
1:30:59 PM
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Wednesday, October 29, 2003 |
Web Group Backs Microsoft in Patent Suit. "A leading Internet standards-setting organization took the unusual step of urging the director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office to invalidate a software patent." By Steve Lohr. [New York Times: Business]
I'm concerned that Microsoft's decision not to pursue appeals potentially very damaging to the industry and Microsoft's customers.
6:54:25 AM
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Tuesday, October 28, 2003 |
 A friend let me know that my page was throwing a scripting error in Internet Explorer. I hadn't thought of trying that - it works okay in Mozilla and Opera. Here's the dialog box. Notice the editbox on the bottom half? You can't copy the text from the dialog. Why would you? Perhaps you want to log the error. Or post it to a newsgroup seeking help. Or search online for the error. Or send an email to Craig letting him know he, too, has a scripting error. If you don't want to let people edit it, why would you put it in an editbox? Stupid user interface design.
6:33:28 AM
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Monday, October 27, 2003 |
"This week, speaking at a Gartner conference in Orlando, Florida, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said some fascinating things about Linux and about Open Source software in general. And thanks to those remarks and the blinding realization they caused for me, I finally understand exactly why Microsoft doesn't understand Open Source."
Cringely always makes interesting reading. Listen and watch Ballmer's statements here.
12:06:30 PM
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Joe Average User Is In Trouble. Opinion Where's my security blanket? [The Register]
A rare thing, a calm and reasoned opinion piece from The Register. A call to arms for computer professionals to help the computer helpless.
7:19:17 AM
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Amazon Offer Worries Authors. From David K. Kirkpatrick of New York Times: Technology: "Amazon.com has introduced a feature that lets users search for specific words or phrases in a database of the texts of 120,000 books, drawing skepticism from an authors' group. "
Amazon has offered to remove books whose authors do not want to participate. That's even worse. Search on "Visual FoxPro SourceSafe" and you get a list of 48 books on Visual Basic, Visual InterDev, SQL Server, MSDE and even Dreamweaver. Hello? How about a book on SourceSafe? There are three, including my own, and mine has several pages on Visual FoxPro.
I suspect that Amazon hasn't indexed the Hentzenwerke Publishing book, and hence we are sidelined. Indexing 120,000 books means marginalizing the great variety formerly available from Amazon. I am disappointed.
6:44:16 AM
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Sunday, October 26, 2003 |
From Scripting News: "I'm at the Zap Your PRAM conference in Cavendish, PEI. "
That sounds like quite the get-together. Several friends and collegues have kicked around the idea for years that we need to have a conference and not invite attendees, just speakers, or participants. Sounds like what these folks are doing. I'll be interested in how they get the dynamics to work out. It can be difficult when everyone in the group is a Type A extrovert.
12:00:00 PM
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So, this weekend I've got some time to spare and dedicated it to restoring my Linux laptop to life. I foolishly tried to update to RedHat 9 from 8 without considering the limitations of a 6 Gb hard drive with 2 Gb already dedicated to another OS. I was surprised that RedHat crashed the machine, rather than gracefully declined, but it left the machine a mess, with two hard drive partitions full to overflowing, and an OS that would boot and then lock up attempting to start X Windows.
My first urge was to just blow away everything and start again. However, that really isn't the way to learn anything. Instead, I took it as a learning experience. What if a client had a locked-up or corrupted machine, but needed to recover some precious files? Looked at in this light, I hadn't encountered a problem, but rather an educational opportunity.
I used a Knoppix 3.3 CD to boot into a working Linux OS, and then followed the Repair FAQ on the Knoppix site to clean some space off each partition. I also used the RedHat 9 CDs in "repair" mode to clear off still more files, test the file systems for integrity, and get the system to restart.
There were a number of problems with my last set of installs, and I set off to fix them. First, I got a few of the basic services restarted. I reconfigured the networking software to use the docking station's ethernet rather than the wireless card. Once I was satisfied that was working properly, I reconfigured TCP/IP for a static address and programmed the router to allow minimal services to be exposed to the outside world - port 8080 for Apache and 23 for SSH. Over Apache, I'm running Twiki, a wiki written in Perl, and I use port 23 for a secure tunnel for shell work and also to run a remote graphical session via VNC.
Next, I tried to set up Samba, and ran into some problems. The RedHat Network insists the latest Samba for my distribution is 2.2.7-5.8.0, while I had somehow installed a 2.2.8a on the system, I suspect by downloading the wrong version directly from the Samba site. The installer wanted the Redhat 8 CDs, which I had given away, so BitTorrent to the rescue, and I was able to download and burn a new set of disks from rpmfind.net. Uninstalling the wrong version and finally getting the correct version installed was an education in the Redhat Package Manager (RPM) command line, but I am up and running.
Today, the goal is to configure MySQL and the MyODBC software so that I can read and write MySQL data from my Windows workstation. Onward and upward!
10:08:28 AM
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I've been encountering a couple of problems with my Radio Userland blogging software, and I've changed a few things in hopes of fixing them:
1) Posts were not appearing in a timely manner. I had switched to the three-button "Post", "Post and Publish", "Publish" format, and it appears that some articles I _thought_ I published never appeared. Could be operator error, could be software problems.
2) Graphical stuff was all messed up. This probably isn't me. The graphical editor in Mozilla is still flaky - displaying the cursor in one place and having keystrokes appear in another, mangling HTML and adding spurious break tags. Back to plain old text.
Let me know if you see improvement or not. Of course, if you aren't seeing posts, how do you know they are not supposed to be there? Ask me.
8:24:21 AM
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What a great lead-in line to an article:
"The most powerful piece of software inside Microsoft may be the $40 application from a tiny vendor called Userland that Robert Scoble uses to write his weblog."
The article, by Ed Cone in Baseline, goes on to describe the potential power of blogging for businesses. A good read, but a great opening. It certainly snagged me.
8:19:54 AM
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Saturday, October 25, 2003 |
It sounds pretty obvious, but after you've gotten the machine installed
and flubbed around with it for a while ("Look, Mozilla is pretty cool!
Check out OpenOffice.org!") the next thing to do is... figure out what
to do next. Everyone has their top priority... a print server, a file
server, a web server, a database server, an office workstation, a
kiosk, a router, a firewall. There a million different configurations
and permutations and combinations you can figure out for your new
machine. Pick one. Take your time and research it and configure it and
try it out. In the process you'll learn lots about the command shells,
the security model, the different ways of packaging and installing
software. Here's what I've tried so far:
And, not all of these experiements have to occur on the Linux box
alone. My MySQL experiments used the Linuxbox as the database server
and VFP on a Windows laptop. One of the several Perl and Twiki
installations I've made was also on a Windows server, using the CygWin DLL to provide command-line equivalents for RCS functionality in Windows.
1:27:45 PM
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Thursday, October 23, 2003 |
 I got to meet Kerry Neitz at the Great Lakes Great Database Workshop
and he's a charming, intelligent and extremely shy guy who was brave
enough to stand up in front of 200 Fox developers and share his story.
The book, "FoxTales," available from Hentzenwerke Publishing,
is an expansion on that story. I finished the book today, and enjoyed
it thoroughly. If you were a participant in the Fox world in those days
(1988-1992), you should enjoy the book as well.
9:56:50 PM
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Apple's Knowledge Navigator revisited. 
"During my session at BloggerCon I referred to Apple's famous Knowledge Navigator concept video. I first saw that video in 1988. Today I tracked down a copy and watched it again. It stands the test of time rather well!
..." [Jon's Radio]
The DynaBook demo was truly a vision at a time when color CRTs were a
novelty in the business world: a flat panel with sound and color and
animation, touch screen drag-and-drop and small memory cartridges with
large capacities. So much of the hardware has come true, and so little
of the software functionality is available! It seems we have once again
underestimated the complexity and resources required for software
development.
9:49:05 PM
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CNET News.com - Front Door carries the story that "PC sales bolster Microsoft profits. The software giant reports earnings that narrowly topped Wall Street expectations as sales rose 6 percent from a year ago. " Not a surprise to those of us who follow Microsoft. What was surprising was the breakdown of sales across Microsoft's seven divisions and the fact the CNET reported it without any analysis of what, if anything, those numbers meant. Perhaps a picture would have helped...
 This one, perhaps, that would have shown that revenues were flat in client (Windows) and Information Worker (Office) divisions - no surprise with a flat economy and little innovation. That Server bumped up by 15% surprises me, Can anyone explain that one? And it's pretty obvious, in the big picture, those are the three that matter. In the smaller divisions, though, there's where the growth is: Mobile up an astounding 88%, Home nearly 20% and MSN 15%. Business Solutions also turned in a respectable 21%. Too bad these weren't standalone companies: their returns would have been better than the 4.9% overall increase in sales. But then again, would the sales have occurred without the backing of Microsoft?
7:22:43 PM
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Remember the weekly Microsoft Security Bulletins that Microsoft
announced would be reduced to one per month to relieve the burden on
adminstrators? That lasted three weeks. In my inbox this morning are
two messages, titled "REVISED: Microsoft Windows Security Bulletin
Summary for October 2003" and "REVISED: Microsoft Exchange Server
Security Bulletin Summary for October 2003" Each bulletin is a complete
reprint of the original, with a paragraph tacked on the front
explaining that one of the items in each bulletin has changed
significantly, and to see that particular item for details.
Well, it's better than not telling us at all, but the format could be better. I'd prefer individual security bulletins.
9:19:47 AM
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OSNews Editor Eugenia Loli-Queru posts this buying guide on OS News. It starts:
Admit it, you do want to own a Mac.
But for some specific reasons --mostly higher prices, especially out of
US-- most of the people don't take the big decision to try out Macs.
Yesterday Apple released brand new iBooks and updated eMacs, which in
conjuction to the existing G4 PowerMacs, come in very affordable
prices. Dive in to see some simple feature comparisons between Mac
models and prices, which can help you make the big step towards Mac OS
X. The time is right, prices are right, feature-set is right too and
Christmas is coming soon!
Apple Buying Guide: Is it Time to Own a Mac?
7:00:20 AM
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Tuesday, October 21, 2003 |
Doc Searls has an interesting post, as always, on his web site entitled Intelligent agency "Buzz is on the phone, quoting something Feedster's Scott Johnson said over dinner in Boston last night, about the RSS+aggregator-enabled blog world. What Scott said (Buzz says) was,
The people I read are my intelligent agents.
Context... Remember the "intelligent agents" scare from a few years back? (Wonder how much VC money got wasted on that one?) Never happened. (Not in a big way, anyhow. Are you using one now? I mean, in addition to the ones you read in your aggregator? See what I mean?)
Now, thanks to RSS, it's happening.
Makes me think back to Doug Engelbart's thinking about augmenting human intelligence, and how the best augmentation in fact comes from other connected human beings." from The Doc Searls Weblog
10:50:06 AM
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Sunday, October 19, 2003 |
Perhaps switching off the Microsoft OS is not possible for you right
now, or you can't afford a second machine to mess with. There are still
alternatives. On my main development machine, a Windows XP Professional
machine, Mozilla is my default
browser. Mozilla is more than just a browser, it's an internet
application development environment, with HTML markup editors and
javascript debuggers. And OpenOffice.org
is my default office suite, with built-in word processing, spreadsheets
and presentation packages competitive with any of the commercial
suites. I used the OpenOffice.org Write and Impress packages at the
recent Great Lakes Great Database Workshop conference to present my white papers and slides, without any problems.
And, if you'd like to dip your toes into the water without fully committing to a Linux install, check out Knoppix.
Knoppix is a full Linux distribution that boots and runs from CD,
without writing to your hard drive at all. This is a great way to try
Linux out without messing with your machine, although, of course, you
lose any changes when you shut down your machine. I've heard that
people have gotten their USB storage devices to work with Knoppix to
save documents. Check it out. It's free.
8:06:01 PM
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Microsoft's Integration Strategy Is Costly For Customers, according to this article at Internet Week. It starts:
Microsoft's strategy of increasingly integrating its
server and client products -- as best evidenced by the Office System
line-up which officially launches next week -- means some enterprises
may end up paying 10 to 40 percent more to stay with Redmond's wares, a
recent report from Jupiter Research suggests.
7:59:24 PM
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Information Week has an interesting articled called Staring Down Linux
that has some thoughtful points about how Microsoft plans to play the
game when dealing with customers and partners and Linux. Not
surprisingly, the word uncooperative describes much of their
"strategy." Also, read the embedded surveys on why customers choose
Linux vs. why Microsoft. Pretty interesting stuff.
7:24:15 PM
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So. You heard Whil's keynote (or read Andrew's summary)
and you're ready to take the next step. What to do? Here's how my
experimentation has gone, so far (I've been messing with Linux
part-time for about four years now, btw). First, if there's any way you
can do it, find a separate machine you can experiment on. Invariably,
an install will go awry or some piece of hardware won't work and need
to be swapped out, or you'll just want to blow the whole box away and
start over. If you've got a junker designated for that purpose, it gets
so much easier. It doesn't need to be a state-of-the-art machine,
although of course, speed and memory and power contribute to a better
feeling with all machines. A beater you've retired as a development box
or a $400 eBay special can do the trick nicely.
At TR&A Labs, we've got three machines we're messing with: at the
tr.com web site, a dual PII-333 Dell Workstation is an alternative web
server. In-house, a white box we assembled ourselves runs an Athlon
processor and coffee-stained keyboards and mice on a borrowed
monitor, serving as file server and intranet web and wiki server.
Finally, on the road, a Dell Lattitude PII-366 is the road warrior.
Download the latest ISO files for your favorite distribution, burn CDs,
and try a couple of installs just to see what happens. Once you're
feeling like you're getting it, try installing a spare (but properly
licensed, of course) Windows installation and see if you can get the
machine to dual-boot.
Find a support group. There are many Linux user groups worldwide (check our GLUE: Groups of Lunux Users Everywhere),
and there are many mailing lists and forums for support as well. Don't
ask dumb questions: check the man pages and help, rtfm second, Google
it third, search for likely synonyms, and then ask a question with
sufficient (but not excessive) Who-What-When-Where-How information to
get a good answer. Volunteers on newsgroups don't want to answer the
same question all day long, or a question who's answer is already on
your machine. I've taken several old boxes with non-standard or
relatively unsupported hardware and gotten them running through this
technique. You can, too. Good luck!
7:08:01 PM
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Saturday, October 18, 2003 |
Download October VFUG Newsletter Now.
VFUG (the Virtual FoxPro User Group) just sent out the October issue of
its monthly newsletter to those who have chosen to receive it via
e-mail. Articles in this issue include My Mistake by Les Pinter, Part 7
of Basic Introduction to Office Automation using MS Visual FoxPro by
Matt Jarvis, Help Make Your Old FPW Apps Jump Into the VFP World by
Carl Warner, Wireless Devices, Part 9 by Tom O'Hare, assorted tips that
cover Tracking Updates via Stored Procedure, Remove a Control from a
Grid Column, Quick Way to See the Active Cursor/Table, New VFPSkins
Available, Run Your VFP App as a Service (Shareware Suggestion),
Compile your CONFIG.FPW, Check for an Open File, and even more. As
usual, you can view this monthly newsletter online or download its text
version or all other back issues free at the VFUG site. Not a member?
Join VFUG for free at the site. [FoxCentral]
6:43:27 PM
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AP: "Short people may be shortchanged in salary, status and respect." [Scripting News]
Being $1,578/yr shorter than the average guy, I have certainly found
myself in situations where foolish tall guys intentionally or
unconsciously try to use their height as leverage. It's weird, but true.
6:27:23 PM
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Laura and I spent the morning going to the dump,er, excuse me, transfer station, and then a drive up to Gould Hill Orchards.
A gloriously clear and sunny fall day let us see for miles in all
directions, with beautiful autumn colors everywhere. We took a long
walk in the orchards, but elected to pay for pre-picked apples, a
half-peck of Macouns, a favorite of mine. It's good to be home!
3:08:19 PM
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Thursday, October 16, 2003 |
Seems my DSL did a disappearing trick for a few hours. Down and now back. Sorry for any inconvenience.
6:32:07 PM
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Great Lakes Closing Session: Where Whil's Heading.
"Great but short closing session from Great Lakes: Where To Go."
Andrew MacNeill has a great summary on his blog, linked above. Andrew
says: "You know --- listening to him, it makes a lot of good
sense." Read the entire post at Andrew's blog.
5:05:17 PM
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Microsoft Warns of 4 New Windows Flaws OSNews points to an article on Salon
that makes a few interesting points: Microsoft is going to monthly
security bulletins as some sort of comfort for the plethora of patches
that must be applied. Frankly, I'd rather know now, than the first
Wednesday of the month, when a weakness is discovered. This just
expands the threat window from discovery to closure (assuming the patch
works) from a week to a month.
In one email from Microsoft, titled "Microsoft Exchange Server Security
Bulletin for October 2003," I was warned of the following:
MS03-046, titled "Vulnerability in Exchange Server could allow Arbitrary Code Execution (829436)" allows remote code execution.
MS03-047, "Vulnerability in Exchange Server 5.5 Outlook Web Access
Could Allow Cross-Site Scripting Attack (828489)" also permits remote
code execution.
The second email message was also titled "Microsoft Exchange Server
Security Bulletin for October 2003," but the body of the message
indicated it was really "Microsoft Windows Security Bulletin Summary
for October 2003." This included five new threats for you to evaluate,
mitigate and/or patch:
MS03-041 - Vulnerability in Authenticode Could Allow Remote Code Execution (823182)
MS03-042 - Buffer Overflow in the Windows Troubleshooter ActiveX Control Could Allow Code Execution (826232)
MS03-043 - Buffer Overrun in Messenger Service Could Allow Code Execution (828035)
MS03-044 - Buffer Overflow in Windows Help and Support Center Could lead to System Compromise (825119)
MS03-045 - Buffer Overrun in the ListBox and in the ComboBox Control Could Allow Code Execution (824141)
I'm runing Windows Update on a few machines in the home office here,
and you'll probably want to do the same. It's the 42nd week of the year.
12:21:51 PM
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Wednesday, October 15, 2003 |
The last three sessions of the conference and a closing session closed
the GLGDW conference. I saw Kevin McNeish in the first slot,
demonstrating Pocket PC and .NET interactions. The second slot was
Lauren Clarke with his demo of creating SVG with Visual FoxPro in a
session called "One Thousand Data Points are Worth a Picture." Great
demo with interesting demos, animated cartoons, understandable code and
a clear and humorous speaker. Great stuff.
10:45:58 AM
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Another great day in Milwaukee. Saw more good sessions: Rick Borup on
InnoSetup, Cathy Pountney on File Factories. Missed Predrag Bosnic on
UI Design, but I hear it was a great session. Dan Jurden on SQL Server
UDFs and Paul McNett on Linux Programming Tools. I wrapped up the
sessions by presenting my Software Licensing session at the last time
slot, and finished up well with my best session of the conference.
Conference is well-attended; I'd guess around 200 people, which fills
the facilities here pretty well.
We had a night off from planned events, so Laura and I and Rick Borup enjoyed a dinner at Mader's,
one of the many fine German restaurants in downtown Milwaukee. Finished
off the day with a good can-you-top-this session in the conference
hotel bar with "Oh, yeah? I once worked on software so bad..." All in
all, a great day.
9:06:57 AM
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Monday, October 13, 2003 |
Three sessions down and one to go for me. The "Internet Subscriptions
using VFP and XML" session went really well. The Software Licensing
session was surprisingly short, but I at least folks got to lunch early
and enjoyed themselves. The Linux InstallFest was the surprise of the
conference for me -- the turnout was spectacular. Many successful
installs, many questions answered, much interest generated.
Dinner at the Water Street Brewery with friends was a welcome intermission, too.
3:56:03 PM
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A great first day. Pre-cons in the morning, a brief keynote, three
afternoon sessions, and an evening session featuring the latest
Hentzenwerke book, "Fox Tales" by Kerry Neitz, a memoir of his years at
Fox Software.
11:38:50 AM
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Sunday, October 12, 2003 |
Sunday morning, 8:30 AM started the pre-conference sessions. Four sessions all seemed well-attended: Whil Hentzen did an Introduction to Linux, Kevin McNeish an Introduction to .NET, Steve Sawyer a session on client-server, and Dan Jurden a session on integrating Crystal Reports with Visual FoxPro. Opening keynote starts at 12:30 PM. Looking forward to the conference kickoff!
11:37:56 AM
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Friday, October 10, 2003 |
 The wagons are all packed and the horses hitched up, and it's almost time to head to the big city for the trip to Milwaukee for the Great Lakes Great Database Workshop. Y'all take care, and I'll check in as I can.
4:31:09 PM
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Thursday, October 9, 2003 |
What's ahead for databases?.
"PALO ALTO, CALIF. - Is the database still relevant? Panelists at a
Software Development Forum session here Wednesday evening debated this
and other questions pertaining to what will be the role of databases in
the future, chiming in about the elevated role of XML, commoditization,
and open source software." From InfoWorld: Top News.
Short answer: Duh. Yes, databases are still relevant. Several good
points in the article, though: databases should be commodity items at
some level of the decision-making process, although they are not to the
technicians who develop and maintain them, nor to the folks who need
specific features or licensing arrangements.
9:05:32 PM
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Wednesday, October 8, 2003 |
Installed the Visual FoxPro 8.0 Service Pack 1 and all seems well. It
always does... but I'm pretty confident in the stability of this one.
The installation referenced KB824071, but that doesn't seem to have
gone live yet. Perhaps it will supply more details that the README.HTM
supplied with the product. That listed a whole slew of problems that
were fixed.
5:11:39 PM
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Tuesday, October 7, 2003 |
Cool news. Chandler is a new Open Source effort at being the end-all and be-all PIM. I really hope this effort can succeed.
"Chandler Project Gets Big Foundation Grant.
In an amazing coup for the Open Source Applications Foundation -- and
potentially great news for its (we hope) pathbreaking..." [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
8:12:39 PM
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In a move likely to break some existing applications, Microsoft announced changes
to the Internet Explorer programming model, scheduled to be released
with Service Pack 1b for Internet Explorer 6, updating the version
number to 6.01. I suspect this change is in response to losing a lawsuit
from Eolas over their object embedding technologies. There has been a
lot of speculation that Microsoft did not seek other solutions short of
limiting their own products by, for example, buying the company and
their patent, because the change might be more damaging to Microsoft
competitors than to Microsoft themselves. That would be evil.
There
could be many implications of this decision, and each developer will
need to evaluate their own code. Microsoft provides a beta of the
"bits" to test. I'll need to wait until I have a sacrificial machine
from the TR&A labs to test them out. Applications I'm concerned
about right away include those with embedded HTML Help, embedded IE
browsers, and those I've written to spider web sites, including those
with RSS feeds.
Ken Levy, now Visual FoxPro Product Manager,
distributed code to use an embedded IE control as WebExplorerX, when he
was an independent developer and posting his samples to
http://www.classx.com (no longer available but you can find archive
echos at
http://web.archive.org/web/20000511064829/http://www.classx.com/). If
you used some of the WebExplorerX technology, you'll want to retest
with Microsoft's patches. Good luck!
7:42:59 AM
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Monday, October 6, 2003 |
Andrew MacNeill posts a great piece here on
the use of Citrix and VFP. I have several clients doing this, to great
success. "Microsoft's " (not sure who this is) claim that this isn't a
good or popular solution is just plain wrong. Here's Andrew's post:
MS Response to Why Not Promote VFP and Citrix. David
Dee (see post from 9/22) asked MS about promoting VFP by discussing
items with Citrix...As noted in his comments, the response from MS was: We
do not test VFP with Citrix and it is not something we are focused on
as a solution, mainly due to lack of demand. For web (or thin client)
applications with VFP, we are promoting VFP with ASP.NET using VFP 8.0
with Visual Studio .NET 2003 and that is working well, and most
companies we talk to who need web front ends to VFP applications are
using or considering ASP.NET with VFP combined. Thanks for your
feedback. Huh?!?! - Until such
time as Desktop apps are killed off completely (don't see that
happening anytime soon), I actually prefer to recommend Citrix or
Terminal Server based solutions than purely Web-based. Maybe
David's problem was actually using the term "Citrix" instead of the
more "MS-friendly" Terminal Server. VFP continually gets updated in
service releases to better support Terminal Server applications(recall
the NOBITMAP setting in SP3 for VFP 6). In fact, in one newsgroup, one
of the fastest suggested ways to build a "mobile" app for the PocketPC
was NOT to use SQL Server for PocketPC, etc but rather to build a
Terminal Server (read: CITRIX-like) application and connect to it using
the PocketPC's Terminal Server client. The only caution was "keep your
screens really small". It's
the "MS response" that really hurts the community. Promoting VFP with
ASP.Net is great for all those bleeding edge developers (and yes, I
know it hurts to say it but for most people ASP.Net is still a little
too bleeding edge for many companies - note that not even MS bCentral
allows SOAP access on their .Net services - wonder why not?). The
fact is that EVERY developer needs to be told of workable solutions.
Citrix and Terminal Servers represent GREAT Solutions for companies who
have remote needs and WORKING desktop applications. VFP is not only
ideally suited in these environments - it kicks serious butt when it
comes to performance! Why? Because the application actually runs
LOCALLY instead of being on a network. Other reasons to consider Citrix/Terminal Server solutions:
1. It's easier to support - you can shadow other users, and easily disconnect users when connected.
2. Single point of access - easier to track errors, provide updates and more.
3. Single type of workstation - easier to manage. Hell, even better than trying to deal with multiple browsers
4.
You can FIND many companies willing to HOST TS servers for you - yes,
they may charge for it but will provide 24/7/365 uptime with various
guarantees (check out http://www.meganetserve.com) If
you have never considered using Terminal Server as a remote solution
for your apps, I strongly recommend it. AND it's getting easier and
better. Don't be fooled by Microsoft's response - VFP does work well
under Citrix and is always being improved to work better because of it.
(just don't mention Citrix in the same breath ) Andrew MacNeill [Andrew MacNeill - AKSEL Solutions]
10:05:11 AM
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Ever needed to run an X application under Windows? WiredX looks like a pretty slick solution, running it in a Java applet within a browser.
7:51:38 AM
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Sunday, October 5, 2003 |
Police Subdue a Tiger in Harlem Apartment.
"A police sniper rappelled down the side of a Harlem apartment building
on Saturday and fired tranquilizer darts through a fifth-floor window
to subdue a 350-pound Bengal tiger." By Alan Feuer and Jason George. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]
Only in New York. Unquestionably the best line in the article:
"If he had escaped it would have been a very bad thing," [Dr. Robert A. Cook, head veterinarian at the Bronx Zoo]... said.
Well, yeah.
7:16:31 PM
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Week 40, security bulletin 40. Right on schedule, like European trains.
This is a *CRITICAL* security patch that Microsoft recommends
installing for all owners of IE 5.01, 5.5 and 6.0. Earlier versions are
no longer supported.
3:09:02 PM
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According to Mythography, "in Greek mythology, Charybdis was a deadly whirlpool personified as a female monster."
A great fear for web surfers is that site you start surfing, and you
can't get out. Just one more picture. Just one more link. Just one more
entry.
So went my Sunday, at a site that Laura found, describing the joys of
moving into and
rehabbing a Chicago bungalow, filled with the treasures and...
interesting items of earlier residents. Very entertaining reading.
Don't
start reading unless you have some time to spare.
3:06:30 PM
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Oops, Dave Barry Does It Again
agdv writes "After the success of his first article
providing the phone number of the American Teleservices Association,
and the ensuing reaction by said organization, columnist Dave Barry
attacks again, providing the ATA's new phone number. Read all about it! (the number is 317-816-9336, long distance charges may apply)."
[Slashdot]
11:17:05 AM
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An interesting argument about music sharing, or stealing, depending on
your viewpoint. For the record, I buy the music I enjoy. But I listen
to music I haven't bought. On the radio. Live. On a loaned CD. Or on
MP3s. Many artists find success by giving away their music, or some of
it, on the internet, and making money from concerts and selling CDs
themselves. The system for promotion of "pop" music is missing huge
opportunities.
As a copyright owner, I don't like to think that people gain benefit
from my hard work without me receiving compensation. On the other hand,
those who never see my work don't know it's there. And it seems that,
at least for some, letting your works be found out there leads to
profits. It's worked for Janis Ian, and for Baen Books. It's surely not
a black and white issue.
"Where Nobody Knows You're a Music Thief.
What's remarkable about the controversy over music sharing is not how
many people are involved, but rather their fervent rationalizing. By
Daniel Akst. [New York Times: Technology]"
11:00:41 AM
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Scoble: "Why does Microsoft need to do everything?" [Scripting News]
Well, Robert, I think it's about money. Microsoft does everything in
hopes that some of those things will make money. Games, MSN, digital
photos, mice, PocketPCs, music, digitial photos and more. What is it
that Microsoft won't do for money?
Looking at the question from another angle, perhaps I'd suggest that
Microsoft is obsessive and compulsive about doing everything.
But that's not really the jist of his post. He seems to be implying
that Microsoft won't have a blogging tool, at least not yet. With
Google and AOL already out there with blogging tools, I'm skeptical
that there won't be a response from Microsoft. Time will tell.
10:56:50 AM
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Saturday, October 4, 2003 |
An analysis by Perseus
Development Corporation says that blogs are abandoned at a very high
rate, not surprising for free services. Like many free, cool internet
things, folks with free time, little cash and curiosity (teenagers) are
the primary users -- the scouts of what will be cool later, risking the
equivalent later embarassments of polyester leisure suits. I wouldn't
be surprised if there are similar statistics for free mail servers,
too. Unsurprisingly, Andrew Orlowski of the Register paints this in the
worst light possible.
It's an amusing read, if you don't mind reading slanted, biased and
bitter opinion mixed with the news. He writes well, at least.
9:43:58 AM
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Friday, October 3, 2003 |
My bad, partially. I called the FoxCentral.Net RSS feed as broken. In
fact, it seems to work fine in Internet Explorer, just not in Mozilla.
The line in question is:
<table border="1" style="border-collapse:collapse" bgcolor="#FF0000">
<tr>
<td style="color:white;font-weight:bold;font-size:8pt;cursor:hand"
onclick="window.navigate('foxcentralRssFeed.fc')">RSS</td>
</tr>
</table>
where it is depending on the window.navigate function. Don't know why they just don't make it an anchor tag.
The link for the RSS feed is http://www.foxcentral.net/foxcentralRssFeed.fc if you want to access it directly. The authors will still need to do a little tweaking to get a feed that validates in FeedValidator though the Radio validator thinks it's okay.
10:21:40 AM
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Congratulations to FoxCentral.Net at announcing their new RSS feed.
However, while the authors created the button, the link is not yet
active. I hope they also consider RSS auto-discovery, which will make it far easier for automated search engine bots to discover and register the RSS feed. Here's the announcement:
"FoxCentral.Net available as RSS feed.
FoxCentral.Net can now be loaded into any RSS compliant news feed
reader. Real Simple Syndication (RSS) is becoming a standard format for
Web sites to publish their content using a common simple XML format
that can be aggregated easily in various news feed readers. To access
the RSS feed, visit the FoxCentral.Net site and click on the RSS link
in the sitebar. You can use this URL with any RSS news aggregator. [FoxCentral]"
6:52:47 AM
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Thursday, October 2, 2003 |
Mark your calendar, Essential Fox, the premiere FoxPro conference of
2004, will be held June 4-7, 2004 in Kansas City, Missouri. Learn the
latest on Europa as Ken Levy kicks off the event with the keynote
address. Sessions will include topics covering VFP as well as the
latest techniques in .NET, SQL Server and Methodologies. Read the full
announcement here: Essential Fox 2004 Announced!. Posted at FoxCentral
7:02:56 AM
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Wednesday, October 1, 2003 |
Congratulations to the new and renewed MVPs. I did not receive the
award this year, which is probably all for the best. Here's the post
from the Wiki:
MvpVfp2004.
The MVP Award, which stands for "Most Valuable Professional" is an
annual award given to outstanding members of Microsoft's peer-to-peer
communities. The following list contains all of the names of the
current VFP MVPs who have received awards for ... more at FoxForum Wiki
5:30:04 PM
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Some cool hardware. Definitely a candidate for the next home office upgrade...
Linksys Ships VPN Server.
"Linksys ships the WRV54G, which offers up to 50 VPN connections in an
office: This $230 device could replace much more expensive equipment
for managing VPNs. It handles just the IPsec-over-L2TP method, as far
as I can figure out from the extremely detailed user manual. It looks
like just the ticket for an office that needs robust security without
the complexity of managing a high-end server. This could transform the
cost and politics of VPNs...." [Wi-Fi Networking News]
2:50:48 PM
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A follow-up on the posting from last week: Geer Comments On Firing From @Stake. A great quote:
But Geer isn't convinced. The company said Geer's last day as an
employee was Tuesday, but the announcement wasn't made until Thursday,
the day after the paper was published. Geer went on a conference call
with reporters Wednesday morning and identified himself as an @stake
employee and added that the opinions in the paper were his own and not
the company's.
"The Venn diagram of facts doesn't intersect. The intersection of all of those statements is the null set," Geer said.
From Slashdot
9:04:27 AM | |
