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Ted's Radio Weblog
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Tuesday, August 31, 2004 |
Paul McNett blogs "Kill Your CapsLock Key For Freedom!"
2:45:04 PM 
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Monday, August 30, 2004 |
 Dave Winer blogs his reaction to the Allchin memo:
BTW, "Hard core" means "death march." It's the same trap that Apple fell into with Copland.
The devteam was always in death march mode, when one impossible ship
date was missed, they scheduled it for another impossible date. When
you ask a Microsoft person to say what Longhorn is supposed to do, you
get rambly hand-wavy words that mean nothing. A product with a purpose
has a two-sentence description that gets everyone so excited they can't
wait. Longhorn isn't designed to solve anyone's problems. I think they
all know it, but they can't say it out loud because they've all drunk
the Kool Aid on this.
4:35:19 PM
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Microsoft announced Friday afternoon that "Longhorn," the
next-generation Windows, was losing the feature code-named "WinFS" that
was to provide speedy searching and intelligent cross-linking of all
documents the machine had seen. In addition, Microsoft announced that
two of the other touted features, "Avalon," a new graphical sub-system,
and "Indigo," a communications sub-system, would be available for
Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 machines in the same timeframe as
the estimated release of "Longhorn," currently 2006 for the client and
2007 for the server. Sounds like "slipping is a feature."
The media has gone wild with speculation, of course. Mary Jo Foley must have put in overtime to post all these articles. A supposed memo from Jim Allchin is chilling in its NewSpeak terminology.
What does that mean for us? For most Windows developers, it should mean
two years of peaceful stabilization of the platform before the next
round of chaos, and a good long time to consider alternatives. If
Avalon changes everything on the graphical layer, is DotNet WinForms
dead? WinFS, which Microsoft insists never stood for "File System"
could be replaced by a half-dozen good third-party tools.
Microsoft needs to take a long, hard look at this, and realize that
"Operating System" no longer means "a way to tie people into all of our
software." They need to stop adding things to their operating system,
and start removing things until nothing is left but the core, and sell
add-on features like searchable databases and graphical UIs to
the people who need them as *products* and not as features. Sure, it's
easier to sell one SKU than many. The Operating System should provide
the facilities for the computer to operate, read, write and
communicate, and offer open and documented APIs through which the
appropriate tools can be added to provide features above the OS level.
Andrew MacNeill sees this as a good thing, "gutting" Longhorn, and Robert Scoble says
"Longhorn wasn't aimed at the sweet spot of the market anymore and our
customers were telling us to go in a different direction." It will be
interesting to hear what direction that is.
4:33:52 PM
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Sunday, August 29, 2004 |
Bruce Schneier, in a recent essay in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
The DHS's incessant warnings against any and every possible method of terrorist attack has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with politics.
Link via Dan Gillmor's eJournal
2:08:09 PM
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Wednesday, August 25, 2004 |
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Tuesday, August 24, 2004 |
Christof Wollenhaupt (nee' Lange), a Microsoft FoxPro MVP and co-author of FoxPro Advisor's Ask Advisor column (which I also used to write for) posts a very thorough article on "Security in FoxPro (protecting application and data)." This is well worth reading, and ought to be part of the VFP documentation and website.
9:05:49 AM
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Monday, August 23, 2004 |
Useit.Com: Informational Articles Must Ask For the Order.
"Numerous companies are now producing informative websites that are
rich in content and thin in commercial messages. This is good, because
users are more interested in facts than hype. Unfortunately, many of
these sites are so focused on providing information that they lose the
sale." Link via Tomalak's Realm
6:13:20 AM
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Friday, August 20, 2004 |
Despite some glitches and Microsoft delaying the rollout for a week,
Service Pack 2 is on its way to all Windows XP users via Windows
Update. Many large installations have turned off or disabled the update
out of concern for the many programs Microsoft has documented as not working
or needing updates in order to work with SP2. Firewalls, VPNs and SQL
Server based applications seem to be the primary casualties. FoxPro
applications using DBF-based data appear to be unaffected.
Microsoft is enabling the firewall by default, a reversal of their
earlier configuration. While it is a step in the right direction, the
firewall is still far too weak to be the sole line of defense for a
machine attaching directly to the internet. The firewall included with
Microsoft XP doesn't deserve the name. A
firewall is an internal structure in a building that is designed to
stop fires from spreading by imposing a solid barrier. In the Windows
XP case, this firewall is one-sided, blocking some traffic from
ourside, but letting anything exit from inside. So, if your machine
develops a problem and starts broadcasting SMTP spam, or calls the
mothership and transmits your last tax return, there's nothing in the
XP firewall to prevent it. That's dumb. Look for better solutions
elsewhere.
If you are connecting directly to the internet, or take your machine on
the road and connect to foreign networks, look at a software firewall
like Kerio or ZoneAlarmPro. I notice that grisoft.com is promoting a nice package of their excellent AVG anti-virus software with Kerio for USD $55. Worth looking into.
4:26:59 PM
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Thursday, August 19, 2004 |
Dan Gillmor's eJournal notes "Important Copyright Ruling Favors Freedom. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has upheld the Grokster decision,
in which a peer-to-peer file-sharing service was ruled not to be
violating copyright law. In that decision, a federal judge ruled,
essentially, that a product that has legitimate uses can't be deemed
illegal because some people use it for unlawful purposes.
The appeals panel's ruling (PDF) makes vital points including these:"The
Copyright Owners urge a re-examination of the law in the light of what
they believe to be proper public policy, expanding exponentially the
reach of the doctrines of contributory and vicarious copyright
infringement. Not only would such a renovation conflict with binding
precedent, it would be unwise. Doubtless, taking that step would
satisfy the Copyright Owners' immediate economic aims. However, it
would also alter general copyright law in profound ways with unknown
ultimate consequences outside the present context.
Further, as we have observed, we live in a quicksilver technological
environment with courts ill-suited to fix the flow of internet
innovation. AT&T Corp. v. City of Portland, 216 F.3d 871, 876 (9th
Cir. 1999). The introduction of new technology is always disruptive to
old markets, and particularly to those copyright owners whose works are
sold through well established distribution mechanisms. Yet, history has
shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in
balancing interests, whether the new technology be a player piano, a
copier, a tape recorder, a video recorder, a personal computer, a
karaoke machine, or an MP3 player. Thus, it is prudent for courts to
exercise caution before restructuring liability theories for the
purpose of addressing specific market abuses, despite their apparent
present magnitude." "This is an important ruling, and let's hope its logic spreads widely.
(Via Michael Geist via Interesting People.) "
4:34:13 PM
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Sunday, August 15, 2004 |
Dan Gillmor's eJournal journals How History Gets Twisted. "A short way into this review of a new book about Microsoft, a Boston Globe correspondent writes:"A
guilty finding was overturned on appeal, and the government settled
with the company, imposing restrictions on its business practices. The
resulting introspection persuaded Gates to stand aside as chief
executive in favor of Steve Ballmer, who would be his partner in
remaking the company." "The number of misstatements in just these two sentences is fairly amazing.
The judge's ruling that Microsoft had repeatedly violated the law
was not overturned. (And there are no "guilty" or "not guilty" findings
in civil antitrust cases to start with; this wasn't a criminal matter,
though it probably should have been.) The appeals court specifically
agreed with Judge Jackson that Microsoft was a serial offender, though
it did back Microsoft's position in a small portion of the charges.
The Bush administration's "settlement" was a cave-in, giving back what it had already won in court.
The "impositions" on Microsoft's business practices are widely
seen outside the company (and probably inside) as next to meaningless,
and certainly haven't had any visible effect on competition in an
industry that Microsoft still controls.
Ballmer became CEO in 2000, before Judge Jackson
ordered the breakup of the company, and long before the appeals court
overruled him.
I bring all this up mainly to point back to the first item -- the
notion that the company was cleared of wrongdoing. This has become
popular "wisdom," and it's incorrect. Every judge that has had to rule
on this has agreed that Microsoft broke the law to maintain its
monopoly.
Let's at least remember that much. "
7:08:00 PM
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Saturday, August 14, 2004 |
Reason: John Perry Barlow 2.0.
"Weíve got two distinct strains of libertarianism, and the
hippie-mystic strain is not engaging in politics, and the Ayn Rand
strain is basically dismantling government in a way that is giving
complete open field running to multinational corporatism."
"I personally think intellectual property is an oxymoron. Physical
objects have a completely different natural economy than intellectual
goods. Itís a tricky thing to try to own something that remains in your
possession even after you give it to many others... Royalties are not
how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large
make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically
harnessed through performance and ticket sales."
Well worth reading.
Link via Hack the Planet
8:37:55 PM
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Friday, August 13, 2004 |
OSNews links to an MIT Technology Review article called "An Alternative to Windows". A great quote: "When I plugged in my Wal-Mart machine and hit the power button, I got a
look at an alternate future that ought to be fueling Pepcid sales among
Microsoft executives."
3:22:22 PM
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Wednesday, August 11, 2004 |
Microsoft released their monthly securty bulletins identifying yet another cross-site scripting error, this time with the beleagured Outlook Web Access (OWA) in Exchange 5.5. OWA has a long history of issues. I don't think that exposing Exchange via an HTML interface is a good idea. SMTP and POP with authentication, SSL, passwords and perhaps VPNs offer a far more secure way for clients to access Exchange remotely. Better yet, find a secure mail server. http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=29234 for more details.
The second email I got was a "re-release" of MS04-020 showing that more products are affected. If you are running INTERIX 2.2 (what's that?), you'll want to review the bulletin at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-020.mspx
9:00:08 AM
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Friday, August 6, 2004 |
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Monday, August 2, 2004 |
A while ago, Laura took on the redesign of one of our sites, http://www.ucoes.com. We thought we'd use a layout similar to the three-paned table layout of http://www.tedroche.com,
but I suggested she try it in CSS rather than with tables, separating
the style from the text and modernizing the page. Little did I know I
was asking for the nearly-unobtainable "Holy Grail" of web layout,
according to glish.com. With the help of that site, and some great pointers from "Creating Liquid Layouts with Negative Margins"
at A List Apart, and a lot of hard work on Laura's part, she came up
with a site design that looks consistently good in IE (our 94% test
case), Mozilla (version 1.7 only, though), FireFox, Safari and Camino.
Unfortunately, the site is not so good in Opera, which seems to refuse
to load the background colors for the left and right panes.
Following her lead, I've started working on the same type of makeover
for the tedroche.com web site. It was only a few hours to get a similar
layout working in FireFox, my preferred browser, but another few hours
of tweaking to get the same look in IE, fiddling with the interplay of
margins, borders and padding, which each browser seems to interpret a
little differently. Of course, that layout then broke in FireFox.
Lather, rinse, repeat. I've almost got it down now. Hope to post a new
website early next week.
1:53:21 PM
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