Month: March 2004

how to reach JK Rowling?

About Scholastic Software and Intenet Group

This question shows up so much on my search query page, I figured I could help out: if you really want to reach an author, the standard practice is to send it to them, in care of their publisher.

So you could try:

J K Rowling
c/o Scholastic Books
557 Broadway
New York, New York 10012

And make sure you include a stamped, self-addressed envelope (ask about International Reply Coupons at the Post Office, unless you live within the same postal service area as she does): she may be a billionaire, but you don’t want her fumbling for stamps, do you? She’s got two more books to write . . . .

warheads

So I had to run a couple of errands (some beans from Peets and some more effective cough suppressant) which mean listening to some news on the radio. I caught some of “To the point” and was able to hear some commentary on the recent Spanish election. The central argument seems to be that by voting out the Aznar regime, with it’s sympathies to the Bush Doctrine and commitment to troops in Iraq, the people of Spain have essentially voted for terrorists and any regime that is less than firm with them.
Continue reading “warheads”

ennui

I took a couple of days away from the weblog.

I hope my 60 or so subscribers aren’t disappointed.

It’s been hard to find anything worthwhile to comment, or at least in a way that adds anything to the conversation. I read an article about a VP at MSFT who, while trying to convince Warren Buffet in 1997 to buy/bless MSFT stock, mentions that his net worth is several hundred million dollars. From the standpoint of a full-time domestic engineer who only brings in $2 a day in Google AdSense revenue, good for him: don’t we all wish we had a “is a 90%+ margin business.”

And then there’s the warheads thinking their opinion about who should govern Spain trumps the people who live there. What arrogance.

I’m not sure if it’s ennui or dyspepsia . . .

the sacrifices we make in the name of science

CNN.com – Guinness mystery finally solved – Mar 15, 2004:

Scientists said Monday they had finally proved that the dark stout’s creamy bubbles defy expectations and flow down instead of upwards.

“Our group carried out preliminary experiments at a local pub a few years ago, but the results proved inconclusive,” said Dr. Andrew Alexander, from the University of Edinburgh’s School of Chemistry.

I’m not sure I concur: I may have to conduct my own experiments.

yet another RSS feed I’d like to see

Perhaps not as interesting as some others, but as a full-time domestic engineer, it is to me.

I would like to see sale information, new products, specials, and other stuff at my local food emporium(s). Frinstance, I was shopping today, and noticed that my preferred brand of a given product was now available: I had looked in vain for years and there it was. This could be the first week it was there, but how useful would it be to have a list of new products, seasonal produce and seafood, manager’s specials, that kind of thing.

Probably way down the list, especially with the demise of the delivered grocery services (HomeGrocer, WebVan). But I’d use it if it was there.

hey, little government worker, would you like some candy?

Army to Gates: Halt the free software | CNET News.com:

Since the launch of Office 2003 last year, Microsoft has given out tens of thousands of free copies of its flagship software, which retails for about $500, to workers at its biggest customers. The giveaway was expanded to government workers this year, but ethics offices at the Department of the Interior and Department of Defense have said the offers constitute unauthorized gifts and must be returned.

The Department of the Army went a step further, calling on Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates to stop sending the software to Army personnel.

[ . . . ]

A Microsoft representative said giving away the software is a way to let some customers experience new features. “The goal of the program was to give customers a taste of the software and allow them to learn how it might be of use to their organizations in a positive way,” Microsoft spokesman Keith Hodson said.

Although Office has captured more than 90 percent of the market for productivity software, convincing customers to upgrade to the latest versions of Office has become a growing challenge for the company. And upgrades are essential to Microsoft: Office and Windows produce substantially all the company’s profits.

And I’m sure that when government employee Andrew uses the new version to open a document and then sends it to his colleague Betty, she can open it with her older version, right? And then when she uses her “free upgrade” and modifies the file, Claude finds he has to install it, as well, or the project he owes to his boss, Danielle, won’t be finished . . . .

I’ve used the phrase Trojan Horse today, already, haven’t I?

owning your own data/information

cloudy, chance of sun breaks: be careful what you ask for:
John comments:

Microsoft seems to have realized that we keep building database features into applications and layering them on top of the OS. I am no Redmond booster, but a light came on in my head when I saw what could be done by building the database into the OS in the first place.

They have also realized that by letting people keep all their information as files on a disk, the switching cost of moving to another platform is dangerously low. So moving all client data into a proprietary datastore, in the guise of a fast indexed “file system,” could be a trojan horse. This won’t be a file system as we know it, but a database without a backing store (where Zoe is a database/index built on top of the mbox files, WinFS sounds like a database without the underlying files). Creating a new file will mean you’re creating a new database record, and editing an existing one will be updating one.

So all the icons you see in your Windows explorer will be abstractions: where a “file” is actually a record in your filesystem’s allocation table and the inodes that hold the data, you could end up with a a disk that, when removed from a machine, might contain just one “file.” It will be the raw disk space managed by the database/filesystem layer, and otherwise unusable.

Add to this the notion that access to the data will be managed through the .NET architecture — you run a .NET server at your enterprise or pay a fee to MSFT to use one of theirs(!!) — and I think it’s pretty risky.

Contrast this with all the talk about storing all Office application documents in XML — light, open, and human-readable — and I have to wonder which is the real strategy. These are likely being built by different groups — WinFS would be owned by the OS group — which might explain the differing positions.

And of course, we have seen what happened when the broswer got built into the OS: it became moribund and stale. Market forces are a powerful thing, and sometimes the only leverage you have.

Reading the full article might make these points more clear. There may be updates as well: I should take a look myself.