the art of writing is discovering what you believe
Microsoft patterns & practices
Spot the typo . . .
Now, I was following up the story about Ward Cunningham going to MSFT: one mention linked to the page where I found the, um, non-standard spelling . . . .
Interesting how the tips folks are leaving for him makes it sound so perilous. Any time you join an existing team, there are adjustments to make on both sides, but this sounds like a trial by ordeal more than the usual “getting to know you” period . . .
A couple of mentions of Scotland today . . . .
An honest, if bleak, look at Glasgow
When we went there on our honeymoon ten years ago, we arrived during Mayfest (surprisingly, I can’t find an official website) and all the advertising and promotion proclaimed “Glasgow is Alive!” We found ourselves wondering who they were trying to convince . . . . it seemed like a pretty tough place, even staying in the arty part of town where we were. We found Edinburgh much more congenial . . . .
The Sunday Herald – Scotland’s award-winning independent newspaper
And then there’s this article about some MSFT chieftain who thinks Scotland should be more “wired” so he can work out of his hotel with the same convenience as he works out of his home in the San Juan Islands. Amusing, really, when one considers how strong the opposition to telecommuting is within MSFT. I’ve heard from people who tried to sell both Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates on the idea: no sale. They like to see folks in the office.
In its latest quarterly results, Microsoft said revenue from multi-year contracts dropped $768 million from the previous quarter.
Chief financial officer John Connors admitted that Microsoft’s sales people were so busy helping clients fix their networks that they could not close new deals.
And then I note these seemingly contradictory statements:
“Our traditional revenue streams come from selling our software for use in business, government and individual homes,” says McDowell. If you look at our future, the consumer market offers a gigantic opportunity for us.
McDowell says Microsoft’s past failings are in part due to the company changing its focus from individuals to large enterprises, which have higher security requirements.
Well, which is it? Businesses or consumers as the historical core of their market?
The truth is somewhere in between . . . . I don’t think they have given a rip about where their OS products are used (why else would so many ports and services be enabled?): they don’t look beyond the individual box that the OS runs on. (Aside: if MSFT were a network-aware company, would a company the size of Novell exist? Their whole business was about hooking up Windows PCs . . . )
I tried swapping out the DVD-ROM unit in my 2000 vintage slow-loading iMac this morning: of course, I didn’t discover that the internal cabling in completely different. So, no luck on that. The “take apart” guides I referenced here worked fine: lots of pictures and clear written instructions. I didn’t end up with any leftover parts, and that’s always a good outcome.
Next step is to look for an enclosure for the drive and see how that works. Actually, I’d love to swap the whole unit out for one of the new G4 iMacs, but the budget won’t accomodate that expense right now.
This was all a lot easier than I imagined it would be. For one thing, my issue of being unable to renew my DHCP lease could have been solved with dhclient -r, from a response I got on the FreeBSD-questions mailing list:
The -r flag explicitly releases the current lease, and once the lease has been released, the client exits.
So if it happens again, I can test this (though I’m happy to skip that experience).
A little sleuthing turned up a python app (3412 lines is hard to call a script) that will update my DNS records at ZoneEdit.
So buying a domain from GoDaddy: $7.95/year.
DNS from ZoneEdit: free.
Running my own domain, and being able to see if Google AdSense is worth all the hype: priceless.
In the Capital of the Car, Nature Stakes a Claim
PAUL WEERTZ lives less than 10 minutes from downtown, but the view from his window is anything but urban. On a warm day this fall, the air was ripe with the smell of fresh-cut hay and manure. In the alley behind his house, bales of hay teetered and listed where garbage cans once stood. Chickens scratched in the yard, near a garage that had been turned into a barn. Mr. Weertz drives a Ford — not a sleek sedan but a rebuilt 1960 tractor.
“My sisters and brothers gave me a pig for my birthday,” Mr. Weertz said, referring to his newest barnyard resident. “I am not sure what I am going to do with it.”
After decades of blight, large swathes of Detroit are being reclaimed by nature. Roughly a third of this 139-square-mile city consists of weed-choked lots and dilapidated buildings. Satellite images show an urban core giving way to an urban prairie.
Rather than fight this return to nature, Mr. Weertz and other urban farmers have embraced it, gradually converting 15 acres of idle land into more than 40 community gardens and microfarms — some consuming entire blocks.
A year ago, I mentioned a great site that cataloged the reclamation of Detroit by nature, but where that writer laments the waste, the NYTimes article looks at the situation more impartially (or ambivalently).
At the very least, enjoy the irony of this image: an opulent theater, emblematic of a modern cultured society, turned into a makeshift parking garage.
Are we headed for a post-industrial agrarian future, with the ruins of Motor City as our blueprint?
Pentagon Bars Three Nations From Iraq Bids
The Pentagon has barred French, German and Russian companies from competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, saying it was acting to protect “the essential security interests of the United States.”
The directive, issued Friday by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, represents the most substantive retaliation to date by the Bush administration against American allies who opposed its decision to go to war in Iraq.
I dunno, it seems the Iraqis should have a say in this: it’s their country. Haven’t we made enough decisions for them?
Rockin’ on without Microsoft |CNET.com
Sterling Ball of Ernie Ball Strings on dumping the MSFT suite of products:
I don’t think there’s any such thing as free software. I think there’s a cost in implementing all of it. How much of a cost depends on whom you talk to. Microsoft and some analysts will tell you about all the support calls and service problems. That’s hysterical. Have they worked in my office? I can find out how many calls my guys have made to Red Hat, but I’m pretty sure the answer is none or close to it…It just doesn’t crash as much as Windows. And I don’t have to buy new computers every time they come out with a new release and abandon the old one.
Has Microsoft tried to win you back?
Microsoft is a growing business with $49 billion in the bank. What do they care about me? If they cared about me, they wouldn’t have approached me the way they did in the first place…And I’m glad they didn’t try to get me back. I thank them for opening my eyes, because I’m definitely money ahead now and I’m definitely just as productive, and I don’t have any problems communicating with my customers. So thank you, Microsoft.
Interesting article: he points out some of the gaps in Open Source offerings (payroll software for one), but tells a good story debunking the TCO myths that Open Source needs the same or more care and feeding than the Leading Brand.
I didn’t realize the BSA had such a cozy arrangement, RE court costs.
CPT: CoPy TreeHave you ever needed to copy or move a large block of files, maybe many hundreds of megabytes, from one place to another? Or even just a small directory tree, but you wanted it done fast? Then cpt is the program you need.Cpt is written in a POSIX shell dialect that is accepted by the bash shell, Korn shell (88 version), and the *BSD versions of /bin/sh. It only uses common system utilities, and tries to degrade gracefully under pressure during moves, something that mv does not do.
I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks darn useful. And the guy who wrote it is very sharp.
<UPDATE> I just found this in my drafts. The author took his own life: I wish I had published this when I found this application, but I’m glad to do it now.
Internet worms and critical infrastructure | CNET News.com
Let’s be fair. I don’t know that MSBlast caused the blackout. The report doesn’t say that MSBlast caused the blackout. Conventional wisdom is that MSBlast did not cause the blackout. But it’s certainly possible that MSBlast contributed to the blackout. The primary and backup computers that hosted the alarm systems failed at the same time MSBlast was attacking Windows computers on the Internet. What operating system were the alarm computers running? Were they on the Internet? These are interesting questions to know the answer to.
We do know that some companies sustained some quantifiable losses.
And Bill Joy’s recent critiques of Windows as a standalone system turned loose in a networked world makes this all the more maddening: what else is at risk in the name of expedience?
A War of Choice or of Necessity? (washingtonpost.com)
According to Richard Haass, director of policy planning at the State Department until June 2003 and still the Bush administration’s special envoy to Northern Ireland, the administration “did not have to go to war against Iraq, certainly not when we did. There were other options.” Really?
This is not what the administration told us before the war and continues to tell us to this day. On March 20, as he was sending troops into Iraq because the regime of Saddam Hussein allegedly possessed weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al Qaeda, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld told them, “We are at the point at which the risk of not acting is too great to wait longer. As you prepare, know that this war is necessary . . .”