Category Archives: General Tech Stuff

Here’s a great user interface. One wonders how it could be productively applied to computers.

This is neat: a site that allows you to register the GPS coordinates of your web server so you can locate other nearby sites. Try it by clicking:

Followup: I discovered my evil twin, a fellow Mac lover who’s actually (shudder) an Oracle DBA, just up the road in Detroit. Of course, since he and I both left out the minus sign in our longitude tag, we both show up in Southwest Asia. Guess I’d better fix that (my companion site is correct, so it has many more neighbors).

My friend Bob Thompson had an interesting post last week that set me to thinking. He complained about the relative difficulty and clunkiness of CD burning under Linux, compared to Windows. Predictably, he got feedback from a Linux person, taking issue with his comments. Bob went on to say:

Mr. Dobbins is very smart, very skilled, and very experienced with Linux. He is, in fact, an expert. He’s also a good guy, always willing to help, and a true proponent of Linux. But, drawing an analogy, Roland has a rotary-wing pilot’s license, and I have only a normal driver’s license. I’m driving around in an old junker, and am interested in upgrading to a better car. Roland, meanwhile, is singing the praises of helicopters.
I don’t doubt that the view from a helicopter is better, or that it can get me where I want to go faster and easier. But I don’t want to invest the time and effort necessary to get a rotary-wing pilot’s license. I just want to continue using my regular old driver’s license, but in a better car. I want to be able to sit down in the new car, and have all the controls and instruments in more or less the same locations that I’m used to. I want to be able to turn the key, put the new car in gear, and drive off. I don’t want to have to build the engine from parts, or to assemble the new car before I use it.

This is a great analogy (of course, Bob’s a professional writer— I expect no less.) However, he didn’t take it to its logical conclusion: cars are general-purpose vehicles that can use a widely deployed infrastructure of gas stations, roads, repair shops, and auto parts stores. Helicopters require more infrastructure; the infrastructure is simultaneously much more complex and much less widely distributed. While it’s certainly true that helicopters can do things that cars cannot, it’s also true that the cost of doing these things (in both equipment and time) is high. The science-fiction writers of the 1940s and 1950s confidently predicted that we’d all have personal helicopters to get around in, but most of us don’t. Why not? Entry barriers: cost, time, and infrastructure.
On the desktop, the parallel is pretty clear. The Linux-copter suffers from the same three barriers. “Cost” might seem like an odd barrier, since Linux doesn’t cost anything. However, there is a cost associated with using it, one that Mac users will immediately recognize: the cost of not being able to do stuff. Want to run your small business’ accounting on Linux? Too bad. Want to manage your dental office? Sorry. Games for the kids? Forget it.
The “time” barrier is more subtle, but just as real. The question I like to ask about OSes that seek to supplant Windows on the desktop is “can my mom use it?” She’s a smart lady, but she doesn’t have any interest in being a helicopter pilot; she just wants to use her computer for email, digital photos, and the like. She can do that easily with Windows or Mac OS X without investing a great deal of time to learn how. a) she doesn’t have time to learn how to make Linux do what she wants and b) if she did, she would spend it doing something she actually enjoys. In fact, I don’t have time to maintain a desktop Linux machine for her, and I’m a (student) helicopter pilot!
The Linux-copter can do things that an ordinary Windows-mobile can’t: it can operate without payment to Microsoft, it can be made to run on all sorts of bizarre hardware, it can be limitlessly reconfigured. However, getting it to do so is an adventure, sort of like building your own kit helicopter), and that doesn’t seem likely to change dramatically in the next two to three years.

According to this article, IBM is busy working on stackable, interchangable, redundant computer storage systems that snap together like Legos and store terabytes of data, with redundancy inside each “brick” as well as between “bricks”. I want one (even the water-cooling requirement doesn’t put me off).

I have several Windows 2000 Advanced Server machines here. All of them have Terminal Services installed; that way, I can log into them without having to have a separate (or shared) keyboard and monitor for each box. On hurricane, my primary work machine, I’ve been wanting to enable the Windows offline files feature, which I use on my laptops. However, the tab that’s supposed to let you enable them never showed up. I chalked this up to a “feature” of Advanced Server, until last week, when hurricane suddenly began telling me that my file server was offline and that it was using locally cached files. That told me that the offline files feature (which Microsoft internally calles CSC, for client-side caching) was somehow turned on.
Much research ensued, with the result that I finally found the answer to why CSC wouldn’t work: it’s disabled on machines running Terminal Services. Since I installed TS when I installed the OS, I never got any UI warnings. However, after I removed TS, I could turn on CSC on hurricane. I let it synchronize and turned it off again. I now have to decide: do I want the convenience of Terminal Services, or the guaranteed data availability of CSC?

Dori points out that Amazon has the very cool Ericsson T68i phone on sale for a whopping $24.99– that’s $250 off the regular price. I ordered one of these for my wife on Monday, with one-day express shipping. Did it ship Monday? No. Did it ship Tuesday? Nope. It finally shipped late yesterday, so it should arrive today.
I wanted to write a long rant about how ordering from Amazon has become frustrating because of their bizarre shipping date prediction algorithm; you order an item that says “usually ships in 1-2 days” but– whether you use Super Saver shipping or not– it takes longer. However, this is nonproductive in two ways: it takes time away from making license plates, and it may discourage people from using my Amazon affiliate link. So, never mind.

Big news: the Wall Street Journal has discovered that automatic profiling algorithms sometimes don’t work! Oh, the horror! This story, which has been making the rounds like wildfire (apparently driven by the Beavis-and-Butthead-like meme that calling a straight person gay is high humor) points out that TiVo’s “suggestions” feature sometimes gets things wrong.
Any parent could have pointed this out, of course. Our TiVo is permanently confused by being asked to record three distinctly different sets of shows:

• Stuff I like (including Alias and 24); formerly including The X-Files and The Simpsons
• Arlene’s favorites (ranging from Boston Public and Smallville to Simply Quilting)
• Shows we tape for the kids (including Sesame Street, Liberty’s Kids, and Justice League)
• Occasional events, usually church-related, like the 1940 biopic about Brigham Young or the semi-annual General Conference broadcasts.

Fortunately, with liberal use of the thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons, we’ve been able to weed out most of its bad decisions (like recording the Weather Channel and NASA Channel, which we often have on as background noise). This sometimes backfires, though:

Mr. Karlsson, 26, says he “pre-emptively” found all the religious shows in his TV listings and used the “thumbs down” button on his remote control to tell TiVo he has no interest in them. (Giving three thumbs down is the best way to block a program.) After that, his TiVo recorded movies about creepy homicides. “They all have titles like ‘Murder on Skeleton Isle,’ ” says the computer system administrator in Cambridge, Mass.

What happens when programming langauges get together?

For a conference focused on connectivity, it’s been hard to come by. Last night and this morning, the in-room Internet at the hotel has been down, and my desktop phone was broken to boot.
Yesterday afternoon, John and I went over to the convention center so I could register and pick up my AT&T phone. The phone had sporadic trouble connecting to AT&T’s GPRS service, but we got that fixed. My initial experience with it has been good, although I’m a little disappointed at how few web sites have layouts that are usable on PocketPCs– I thought given MS’ mad market share push that more sites would be trying. I’m now equipped with two phones, two MEC speaker shirts, and a variety of tchotkes from the product hall. More to follow!
There are some interesting products on display on the show floor. All of the security products are conveniently grouped into a security ghetto, which makes finding them easy. Authenex has an cool USB token that allows two-factor authentication with ISA Server. CipherTrust is here with their IronMail device, and FaceTime has their IM security products out too.
As a bonus, I had a good talk with one of the reps from Groove. He explained away some of the gripes I’ve been having and demonstrated a few features that I didn’t know Groove had.
After my two session rehearsals, I went to the reception sponsored by the fine folks at Simpler-Webb. I saw lots of people I know, and met some I didn’t– a very congenial group! Today’s agenda involves breakfast (eventually, when the restaurant opens); the first session (for me, anyway; I never bother with the keynotes) is at 1300 PDT. Y’all are all welcome to call my AT&T phone at 714-306 7913.

I was going to write regular MEC updates and post them here, so I included a link to this site from this week’s UPDATE newsletter. Unfortunately, Penton’s editorial policy doesn’t allow links to outside sites. I guess they were afraid I’d link to a weird cult page or something. So, I’m still going to post updates, but they’ll only be here. Tell your friends! (Don’t forget to check out the book cover, too.)

Ken Bereskin, VP at Apple, maintains a blog where he explains a different Mac OS X feature every day. Good stuff.

Two pieces of good news on the book front. First, the book now has a cover design (which I cannot post until my DSL provider does some tweaking on their end)! Bear in mind that this is only a draft, so Microsoft might change it at any time. Second, Microsoft Press is going to pass out two draft chapters to all 5,000+ MEC attendees. I’m hoping that will generate some good word-of-mouth buzz. Now, back to writing…

AT&T Wireless is sponsoring a promotion called “Geek for a Week” at the 2002 MEC. The deal is that if you sign up, and if they pick you, you get to use one of their spiffy new PocketPC Phone Edition phones. I was fortunate enough to be selected for this, so I’ll be picking up the unit on Monday after I arrive in Anaheim. I’ll be reporting on the phone, and on how it stacks up to my venerable Kyocera Smartphone, from the MEC.

Today is the last day for Speakeasy‘s DSL promotion— buy a DSL line, get a free Xbox or Playstation2.

Office XP Service Pack 2 has been released. It contains a whole pile of bug fixes for Outlook. It’s available from Microsoft’s Office update page.