Expert Texture
The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson
Archive for October, 2006
October 31, 2006 at 4:20 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
Today I received an email spoofed from our domain. I don’t know if anyone outside the company got it, but others here at Digipede did. It would just be in my “stupid spam tricks” category except it had a ZIP attachment with an executable in it. Virus or spyware, I don’t really care. I didn’t run it.
The email contained this text:
Dear user robert,
You have successfully updated the password of your Digipede account.
If you did not authorize this change or if you need assistance with your account, please contact Digipede customer service at: xxxxxxx@digipede.net
Thank you for using Digipede!
The Digipede Support Team
I left out the correct support address (i.e., support at digipede dot net) above to reduce the efficacy of screen scrapers. So this is either . . .
A highly targeted attack at a couple of us at Digipede. If so, hey spammer: how stupid do you think we are?
or
A more widely distributed virus. In which case it appears that Digipede support accounts have achieved the value and penetration of some other applications, like PayPal. Right?
Tags: Digipede, spam, support, virus
October 30, 2006 at 4:04 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
Yesterday Jamie released TestDriven.NET 2.0. A cool product, it looks like it just keeps getting cooler. Check it out here http://www.testdriven.net.
Tags: .NET, TestDriven.NET
October 25, 2006 at 12:29 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
Last week I wrote in Bug in IE7? that I thought there was a problem viewing this site:
In Firefox and IE6, my horizontal list (menu) works correctly. The picture below shows the “Link Blog” item highlighted and mouse-over.
In IE7, all of the text is crowded together, but the mouse-over regions are in the correct place. Again, the picture below shows in the “Link Blog” item highlighted. Noticed that the highlight is in the same place, but the text is all crowded to the left.
This alone looks like a bug. I don’t see how the text and the highlight can be in two different locations.
It turns out that this is related to the zoom feature. This site looks fine if zoom isn’t used (i.e., at 100%). More or less zoom crowds just the text, but not the mouse-overs.
Must be a bug.
Tags: CSS, Firefox, IE, IE6, IE7, IE7-Bug
October 23, 2006 at 8:24 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Over the last could of weeks, we at Digipede have been preparing to move out of the oh-so outdated VSS into Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (TFS).
This last weekend, we did the whole migration.
My main reason for pushing this change: to make it easier for our team to concurrently develop on multiple branches. This is fairly challenging in VSS due to its limitations.
So far, so good. I’ll let you know more as we start to really use it.
Tags: Digipede, Microsoft, Source-Control, TFS, VS, VSS, VSTS
October 20, 2006 at 1:10 pm · Filed under Web 2.0
Gillmor Gang Smackdown draws a crowd as tech talk gets rowdy at Better Bad News.
I listened to see if my voice of reason made the cut — it didn’t. Rseason doesn’t entertain.
Tags: Calacanis, Gillmor, Gillmor-Gang
October 19, 2006 at 8:27 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
A great game to end a terrific series. I thought the Mets were going to take it with that incredible double play.
That said, I’ll be rooting for the Cardinals in the World Series. They’ll have a hard time against the Tigers if they haven’t cooled off.
Go Cardinals! I’ve been a Tony LaRussa fan since he was with the A’s.
Tags: baseball, MLB, NLCS
October 19, 2006 at 7:16 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Logitech has acquired SlimDevices. Announced here.
SlimDevices will greatly benefit from the greater marketing and manufacturing capabilities of Logitech.
I do have a couple of concerns about the acquisition.
Hardware
Logitech is a consumer electronics company, not an audio(phile) products company.
Looking at the SlimDevices SqueezeBox 3 and their new Transporter, it seems to me they were heading in the direction of mid to high-end product. These products are well-built and solid and sound great (at least the squeezebox does — I haven’t heard a Transporter). Consumer electronics tend to the light-weight, mass-produced, just cheaper.
I hope that Logitech / SlimDevices will continue to build a great product.
Software
I chose SlimDevices because of the open nature of their platform. I just can’t stomach an all-Windows, all iTunes, all anything approach to my music collection. I am just too particular about inane details. The SlimDevices SlimServer did (pretty much) everything I wanted it to do from the get go (not the least of which is native FLAC support). And even better: the entire platform is open.
Logitech has committed to continuing to support the open platform. I hope so.
Tags: audio, FLAC, gadget, Logitech, Squeezebox
October 19, 2006 at 5:52 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Before I report this as a bug, I thought I’d write it up and see if any CSS gurus can help me.
In Firefox and IE6, my horizontal list (menu) works correctly. The picture below shows the “Link Blog” item highlighted and mouse-over.
In IE7, all of the text is crowded together, but the mouse-over regions are in the correct place. Again, the picture below shows in the “Link Blog” item highlighted. Noticed that the highlight is in the same place, but the text is all crowded to the left.
This alone looks like a bug. I don’t see how the text and the highlight can be in two different locations.
I have run this through the CSS Validator (here) and the XHTML Validator (here) and sounds nothing I can pin this on. (Note the XHTML Validator reports several errors having to do with individual posts).
So, is this a problem in my site or a bug in IE7?
Tags: CSS, Firefox, IE, IE6, IE7
October 18, 2006 at 6:20 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
There seems to be much interest in the release — I’m getting a lot of people coming to this blog for the answer.
I don’t know if it is true; but, the rumor has it that today, October 18th, is the day.
Update: and it looks like the rumors were correct.
Tags: IE, IE6, IE7, Microsoft
October 16, 2006 at 12:28 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
Nick Bradbury said he’ll support Live Writer natively in the next version. And he did. And this is what it looks like. Cool.
Glenn Slaven has written a handy tool which enables posting to Windows Live Writer from FeedDemon. Glenn, thanks for sharing this!
PS: I’m planning to add native Live Writer support to the next version of FeedDemon.
Source: Post to Live Writer from FeedDemon
Originally published on Mon, 11 Sep 2006 16:01:23 GMT by Nick Bradbury
Tags: feedDemon, Live-Writer
October 15, 2006 at 7:19 pm · Filed under .NET
After I posted WinFx is Dead, I’ve gotten two kinds of comments:
Didn’t you hear that WinFx has been renamed .NET 3.0? What rock have you been hiding under?
Well, yes, I have heard that — my point wasn’t that the name WinFx is dead, it is that the concept of WinFx is dead.
Really, Microsoft has killed the managed Windows API?
What, am I psychic?
I have no idea if Microsoft has killed the managed Windows API. It appears to me that they have. The stated reason for the name change was to clear up confusion in the marketplace. The common belief seems to be that this confusion was that developers didn’t understand how WinFx related to .NET. I believe that the actual confusion was that developers didn’t understand how WinFx (as composed of WCF, WPF, WF, etc.) had anything to do with a managed Windows API.
I am guessing that this name change away from WinFx is indicates that the managed Windows API is dead. John goes further in comment on this post (full comment here):
. . . Microsoft continues to vacilate on this issue. I hear Microsoft execs stand up and proclaim that everything is .NET. Then I see product teams create products without the slightest nod to .NET, using a patchwork of unmanaged code and interfaces dating back to the (early) COM days.
So, Microsoft: you may think that the name change cleared up some confusion. Maybe it did. But as a Microsoft ISV, Gold certified partner, developer, I’ll tell you that I’m confused about how .NET actually fits into the overall product plans.
Tags: .NET, .NET3.0, Microsoft, Windows, WinFx
October 13, 2006 at 6:02 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous, Web 2.0
I was a bit late to checking out Windows Live Writer. The reason: the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin for WordPress. I didn’t see the point in authoring in a tool and then having to edit it in my browser.
Then I found the instructions for how to do the UTW tags from Live Writer: here.
Now I write and post all from Live Writer. Cool.
Tags: Live-Writer, UTW, Wordpress
October 12, 2006 at 11:21 am · Filed under .NET
IE7 is coming out very soon (some say any day). One thing to be aware of: if you need to keep using IE6, don’t install IE7. This isn’t just an issue in the IE7 installer (i.e., IE7 upgrades IE6), but they cannot both be installed on the same machine.
I trust (and Microsoft really hopes) that this doesn’t affect users in a negative way.
My guess is that the only people who really care about the side-by-side issue are developers. Of course, IT managers will care too, but they can keep IE7 from being auto-updated.
My guess is that this due to COM (because IE programmability is all through COM).
Side-by-side COM is anywhere from hard to impossible. One more benefit for a browser built on managed.
Tags: .NET, IE, IE6, IE7, Microsoft
October 10, 2006 at 8:08 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous
Dave got us tickets to the ALCS game in my adopted hometown of Oakland. From left: Lee, me, Dan. Dave is somewhere else.
This picture is of us having fun before the game began to go south. Final: Oakland 1, Detroit 5. I’m not sure which was the worst part: the pitching or the hitting. At least it wasn’t a shutout.
Here is to the A’s playing better in game 2.
Let’s go, A’s.
Tags: ALCS, baseball, MLB
October 9, 2006 at 8:24 am · Filed under .NET
From mdavey: Longhorn “Server Core” doesn’t have .NET? No managed code.
From the referenced article, Server Core Program Manager
(Andrew) Mason says his development team wants to add the .NET Framework to Server Core, but they first need the Framework team to modularize the code so they can add just the essentials.
Another example of the left-hand not being coordinated with the right. I know I’m mixing metaphors, but it has continued to baffle me that it is taking Microsoft so long to adopt managed code.
Now I think I understand why. And the WinFx to .NET 3.0 name change illustrates the point well:
- WinFx was purported to be the new Windows API. This claim, while supported by various parts of Microsoft was never internalized by the product teams.
- This is actually the message that was confusing people. Customers / developers were not asking “what is WinFx?”, as much as they were asking, “where is the new managed Windows API, WinFx?”.
- But there is no managed Windows API. Managed code is not a core part of the OS (and may never be).
- So, to avoid the topic, WinFx gets killed. Not just the name, but the entire idea of a managed Windows API. Sure, the components of WinFx get shifted to .NET 3.0.
I have posted before that I am OK with the name change. I am, but I am not OK with the death of the managed Windows API.
Now (of course) this blog is all my own opinion, but I want to point out that this is purely an outsiders view of what is going on at Microsoft. As far as I know I am completely mistaken and next week Microsoft will announce some new effort to provide a fully managed API. Or not.
Tags: .NET, .NET3.0, Microsoft, Windows, WinFx
October 8, 2006 at 6:30 pm · Filed under Web 2.0
My money was on it being called Contentious Gang — tune it to hear Jason Calacanis get raked over the coals for being charitable (among other things).
October 7, 2006 at 7:03 am · Filed under .NET
It appears that IE7 has been decoupled from Vista. According to the IEBlog, the final release will be in “a few weeks”.
On a couple of occasions, I have requested that IE7 and .NET 3.0 be released when ready (post here) — presumably before Vista. I guess I have gotten part of my wish, though it is really the RTM of .NET 3.0 that I would like to see released.
On a side note: the last I checked IE7 is not dependent on .NET. Unfortunate to say the least. I would like to see managed Browser Helper Objects (BHOs) being easy without requiring COM — that could have gotten IE7 much closer to the Firefox extension model. What will ever drive .NET installs onto XP so that it is, in fact, ubiquitous?
Tags: .NET, .NET3.0, Firefox, IE, IE7, Vista, WinFx
October 5, 2006 at 12:46 pm · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing
Last month, Dan and I wrote the article Scaling SOA with Distributed Computing for Dr. Dobb’s Journal. They posted it on their site today.
We wrote about scaling SOA in general and particularly how and when distributing computes makes sense to move beyond the common approach of network load balancing.
Read it here.
October 5, 2006 at 7:54 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Robert Scoble came to tape it and Dan Farber and Denise Howell have written at some length about the AttentionTrust luncheon yesterday. So I won’t report on it, per se; but, the big news of the event:
- Steve Gillmor is back as the President of the Attention Trust.
- We (i.e., Steve and I) have gifted the GestureBank to the Attention Trust. More on this later.
If you aren’t up on the Attention Trust, this is the important part: the Principles.
October 2, 2006 at 4:47 am · Filed under Attention, Miscellaneous, Web 2.0
On the recent Gillmor Gang (MidTail Gang), you can catch me disagreeing with Jason Calacanis on rollups. He argues that only “loser” entrepreneurs sell their companies into rollups.
I argued that this is simplistic — that sometimes a rollup is the best choice for a company to make. He conceded that in a weak market (and again, if you are a loser), this might be the way to go.
Interesting that Jason articulates his point purely in terms of the entrepreneur: if you are strong, you find a way to win or fail trying.
Failure is a part of being an entrepreneur, but successful companies are made up of more than just the entrepreneur(s).
What about other stakeholders? What if the options are: “fail” or “rollup”? Your employees all get jobs and maybe the investors get to let their money ride.
I think that this will always feel like losing to the entrepreneur. This will never be the grand vision he or she was working towards. But winning and losing is not so black and white.
Am I defending a loser mentality? No, I think I’m just defending pragmatism.
Disclaimer: I have never been a part of a rollup nor am I seeking one out!
Tags: acquisition, Calacanis, Gillmor, Gillmor-Gang, Startup
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