Udo Schroeter's Blog

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2008-03-10T15:47:00.001+01:00

Just in case you're still subscribed to this feed or stumble across this address, please move on over to http://thasmudyan.creativepark.net, there are tons of new content it's being updated regularly. Sort of.

Mac OS X Killed My Folder!

2007-01-29T17:27:00.000+01:00

Until now I didn't realize the behavior of OS X when copying a folder to a location that already contains a folder with the same name actually results in the complete and irrevocable annihilation of the original folder's contents! How stupid is that? Even the Unix "cp" command isn't that dumb! Heck, even Windows isn't that dumb!

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<Software> <Apple> <Mac> <OS X> | Technorati: Software, Apple, Mac, OS X

The Top 10 Lies of Web 2.0

2006-11-18T20:07:00.000+01:00

Dan Fost has composed the Top 10 Lies Of Web 2.0:

1. We learned our lesson last time. And we're going to cash out before this bubble pops.

2. This is not a bubble. Hot parties, overheated PR pitches, and five or six dozen social networking sites are just healthy indicators of a new boom.

3. It's all about community and sharing. But we told our venture capitalists that our exit strategy will make them rich. (Corollary: But you have to know someone to get into our conference/party.)

4. Online advertising will pay for everything. As if click fraud is any kind of a threat.

5. These sites are so easy, my mother could use them. And they're so geeky, she has no interest in even trying.

6. The analysts are trustworthy now. Like the one who said MySpace will be worth $15 billion in a few years -- or was that the one who said Amazon was worth $400 a share? Whoops, I'm mixing my bubbles.

7. There's no glut of social networks -- young people are always up for trying something new. And we're happy to share in the 17 percent of them who aren't glued to MySpace.

8. Our site is still in Beta. And it won't be out of Beta until we figure out how to make money from it, or sell it to Google, whichever comes first. (Paraphrased from Ivor Tossell's piece in Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper.)

9. We're different from all those other sites. But we have a silly name, open APIs, some flashy Ajax technology, and other features just like the rest of them. (Thanks again to Tossell.)

10. We look forward to working with our new partners at Google. Take the money, hand over the keys and step aside. Larry and Sergey are driving your bus now.

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<Web2.0> <Bubble> | Technorati: Web2.0, Bubble

Anthropocentric Quantum Mechanics

2006-11-18T20:04:00.000+01:00

One of my favorite "private stuff" bloggers, Jeff Harell, didn't get the girl because he wasn't funny enough - written in a very Butterfly Effect kind of way. We all know how it feels.

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<Dating> <Kismet> <Reflection> | Technorati: Dating, Kismet, Reflection

Transparent Udo

2006-11-18T19:59:00.000+01:00

People keep asking me about the amount of information I put on my blog's sidebar, especially regarding my phone number and my calendar. Once a friend told me he searched for a particular event on the net and my calendar came up!

First of all: yes, I know that information is out there. It's intentional. I've yet to experience anything negative because of it. My calender enables friends to subscribe to my schedule and it makes planning for work appointments easier. Of course, not all my stuff gets published there, but certainly most of it. The same logic applies to my cell number or email address, it makes it so much easier for people to reach me and not once has that information been abused.

Of course, all that may change one day, but I hope that's a long time ahead.

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<Privacy> <Blog> <Calendar> | Technorati: Privacy, Blog, Calendar

Agrreg8

2006-11-18T19:57:00.000+01:00

Microsoft launched its aggreg8 service, a social networking and aggregator site for "IT professionals". I'm just trying it out right now, drop by and join the (Un)Conferences working group if you like!

The verdict so far: nice idea, but the site definitely lacks polish, the interface is a little unwieldy and it doesn't feel that "social-networky" somehow. But I'll wait a few days to see if it sticks...

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<Microsoft> <Aggreg8> <Networking> | Technorati: Microsoft, Aggreg8, Networking

List Of Faux Pax Pas

2006-11-18T19:56:00.000+01:00

I'm having fun with Wikipedia's list of national Faux Pas (Is that even a plural form? Damn I need to learn basic French soon!). After enjoying the more exoting countries, I was somewhat surprised by many of the German no-nos. Look at the sheer size of that list, it's even longer than Japan's! I take it many of those "rules" are taken from "Knigge", the standard book on appropriate behavior, which has only a casual relationship with cultural truth. Here's the full list, with comments according to my own perception:

Germans tend to be more reserved than e.g. Americans. [...] True, but that's not something most Germans are particularly proud of...

Shaking hands and saying "Guten Morgen", "Guten Tag" or "Guten Abend" (good morning, good afternoon, good evening) or, less formal, "Hallo" (hello) is the conventional salutation. [...] True!

If the name of a person is known, it is expected to be added to a salutation ("Guten Tag, Herr/Frau ...") (Good day, Mr./Mrs. ...). [...] In my experience unnecessary frequent mentionings of one's full name is as often done in rude contexts as not.

It is becoming increasingly uncommon to refer to an adolescent unmarried female as "Fräulein" (=meaning "Miss") True, it is considered sexist to use that title.

As is the case in many languages featuring a T-V distinction, addressing someone with the familiar second person pronoun ("Du") when they should be addressed with the formal form ("Sie") is inappropriate. True, however, the familiar ("Du") pronoun is becoming more common, even among business partners and is especially common in use for people under, say, 30.

Addressing someone by their first name without mutual agreement is considered overly familiar. True, but it depends on the sort of people you're around and on the type of social event. E.g., people talking to one another at a party or club don't ever address each other formally, it would be considered rude to be unnecessarily.

Be wary of touching someone who is not an intimate or close friend, or a business partner/customer you got to know very well. It may be considered inadequate. While I believe there is no culture where excessive touching goes over very well, I also think Germans are not exactly picky in that respect.

Asking an unfamiliar woman for her weight or age (especially if she appears older than yourself) is rude. Yeah, but how many times have you stopped strangers on the street to ask their weight and age recently?

Opening a door that someone has closed for privacy without knocking or otherwise seeking permission is considered rude and an invasion of privacy. I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. If somebody wants to be alone, isn't it always rude to disregard that wish?

It is good manners to greet strangers entering a waiting room, and when sharing tables, and to say goodbye. It is not customary to greet strangers on the street. In some situations the greeting is optional, like when entering an elevator. That's a Seinfeldian dilemma, I don't think there's anything special to Germany in this one.

The tapping of one's index finger on the side of their head, or the waving of one's hand from left to right in front of their face (palm of the hand towards the face) are both considered offensive gestures. [...] In some cases, especially regarding police officers or judges, the offense may be fined. The severity of this offense has lessened to some extent in the last decades. Well, it's a general gesture indicating that something's wrong with somebody's head (not necessarily the person in front of you, though). I wouldn't worry about offensiveness, even my grandma does it and she's 96.

Giving s.o. the finger is a major offense. Duh, you mean, like, in every other country in the world?

It is not common in Germany to talk about someone's income or financial situation or, in particular, to boast about it. True. Then again, for me, like most Germans, not thinking about income at all is probably a good way to keep our blood pressure down. If someone is doing really great financially, I'm usually happy for them.

Allthough discussing political topics is not generally frowned upon, people normally don't tell their voting decision with regard to elections being held by secret ballot. Asking for it is considered very nosy and intrusive. True to a degree, but man, Germans love talking about politics!

Displaying a swastika and other Nazi symbols as well as certain Nazi-gestures is illegal in Germany and considered extremely rude and will be fined. True, Nazi symbology is not covered by Free Speech in Germany.

It can be considered rude to mention or refer to Nazi Germany during normal conversation, unless the topic was started/offered by a German. [...] I don't think that's true. If you have questions regarding this topic, most Germans would prefer you ask them straight away, instead of speculating wildly.

Smokers and non-smokers are to mutually respect each other. Smoking in non-smoking areas is considered to be very rude. [...] True!

It is generally considered impolite to begin eating one's dinner before the hostess or eldest lady have been seated, everyone seated has been served, and before wishing each other "Guten Appetit" (lit.: good appetite). True, but of course it doesn't matter in informal contexts (though it can be considered a nice touch even then).

It is considered rude to take the last bit of a dish without asking if any other person would like to have some, or taking a second portion while other people have not finished their first. To a degree, but that's fading tradition.

When eating, use a knife and fork. Normally the fork is held in the left hand throughout the meal, but the North American custom of holding a fork in the right hand and switching will be overlooked provided a knife is held at all times. The North American custom of eating with just a fork is considered bad table manners. True, but only in formal settings.

Letting one or both hands rest under the table or on your lap during eating is considered bad table manners, as is resting your ellbow on the table. Place your wrist or forearm on the table. Wow, I didn't know that one...

During a meal, crossing your cutlery on the plate means that you are taking a break, but have not finished eating. If you are finished, place you knife and fork parallelly on the plate. Most people don't observe that ritual anymore, especially the first part.

If you served yourself, or had the opportunity to tell the serving person to stop serving you (so, almost always except in a restaurant), it is considered rude to not finish your plate. I guess if you loaded up huge amounts and don't finish, it's considered wasteful. Other than that, I wouldn't worry about this one.

Noticeable smacking or slurping is considered bad manners, not to mention belching or farting. Yup, true.

It is considered impolite to not cover your mouth and nose when sneezing, coughing or yawning. Turn away from people when blowing your nose. The general idea is to not spray other people with fluids and germs... so: true!

When clinking glasses you are supposed to look into the person's eyes who you are toasting. Not doing so results in seven years of bad luck (or, more specifically, bad sex). I never heard of that one, but then again... no bad sex, so I must have observed this one ;-)

Putting your glass down on the table after clinking glasses (and before drinking) is considered rude in some parts of Germany. This is completely new to me!

Tip at the restaurant is typically 1-5% of the bill, depending on the customer's satisfaction with the service. Not leaving any tip is considered rude if the service was satisfactory, but not uncommon if the service was bad (service is always included in the price of the meal). [...] True!

In the workplace, you are expected to bring cake or buy lunch for colleagues when it is your birthday, or when you are leaving the company. Your colleagues may collect money for a shared gift for you on your birthday/when you are leaving. "Expected" is way too strong, but it's considered a nice gesture.

Placing a phone call to somebody after 10 p.m. (22:00) should be avoided, unless by previous appointment or calling a friend. [...] Don't call people to discuss business in their spare time, except when it's important. Is there any country where people love to get phone calls at 3 in the morning?

Furthermore, between approximately 8 p.m. and 8.15 p.m (20:00 - 20:15) do not call anyone who you think might be interested in watching the news on television, as the prime time daily news are broadcast at that time. LOL, I guess this is a remnant of the 60s where we only had 1.5 TV channels and 1.5 news reports once a day. You can safely ignore this rule.

Unthoughtful driving on the Autobahn is regarded as rude. [...] True! But then again, everybody's rude on the Autobahn, you don't want to stick out, do you?

Public display of affection, such as holding hands or kissing in public places and public events, is commonly accepted and widely spread, but may be considered inappropriate in certain surroundings (workplace, church, high class restaurants, etc.) True to a degree, but come on, restaurants? Don't worry about that!

Especially in the north of Germany, using a candle to light a cigarette is said to kill a fisherman. The reason for this is that in former times fishermen earned their living during wintertime by producing matches. WTF? OK, now they're just making it up!

Opening an umbrella indoors or not closing your umbrella before stepping inside a building, even if there is more than enough room for it open, is considered to bring bad luck by some people. What's with all this bad luck nonsense? I never heard about that one, but on the other hand, I don't use umbrellas!

All in all you could say in Germany you can get away with anything that's considered OK in the States, UK and France. If you want to be liked, be what's internationally considered to be "nice" and try not to think about rules too much. Germany is not a very polite and observant country. We're rude, direct, and cold. Just like the local weather.

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<FauxPas> <Culture> | Technorati: FauxPas, Culture

Elvish Esperanto

2006-11-18T19:54:00.000+01:00

Via BoingBoing: Tuomo Sipola, who creates languages in his spare time, created a common fantasy tongue which I think is pretty cool in a very geeky sort of way:

1. Phonology
1.1 Consonants

Consonants include plosives p, t, c and b, d, g and fricatives f, þ, s and h.

Laterals l ja r are very common as are nasals m and n of which n becomes velar before a velar consonant.

All consonants can be word-final.

Allowed consonant clusters at the beginning of a word are pr, tr, cr, dr and gr. Word-final and middle clusters (includeing the afore mentioned) are ld, lt, lþ, rd, rt, rþ, nd, nt, nþ, cs, nc ja ng.
1.2 Vowels

A, e, i, o ja u are vowels. A and e are the most common of them.

All the vowels except e may be word-final.

Allowed vowel clusters: ai, ei, oi, ui, au, ou, ia, ie and io.
1.3 Stress

Stress is initial but some speakers stress the penultimate.

Go read the article for the entire shebang. I'll remember this one the next time I'm writing a new fantasy name generator! :-)

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<Elvish> <RPG> <Fantasy> <Linguistics> | Technorati: Elvish, RPG, Fantasy, Linguistics

How to fix shows like Lost.

2006-11-18T19:48:00.000+01:00

Adam Sternbergh is running an article on what's wrong with shows like Lost. His point is mainly that it's a mistake to make a puzzle/mystery series open ended, and he's correct. But it's more than that.

I still remember the first Lost episodes, the atmoshere of the show alone was impressive and compelling. it was around the second season that I slowly realized some of the strange stuff was never going to be explained properly. And most times the stuff that is being explained leaves the viewer wishing it hadn't been.

Unlike Adam, I don't think the problem is open-endedness, though. It's more the fact that most of the time TV writers simply don't know what they're doing. That's right, most of the time they just make stuff up that looks cool at first glance but they don't have the capacity to integrate all that crap into a story that makes sense and is compelling at the same time.

I can't believe after the gods-know-how-many years of television history people still are not onto the fact that writers and producers are just winging it, barely thinking ahead from episode to episode, with just some very vague idea as to the general development of the story. And just like that, last episode's leftover trash becomes the hook for next week's episode.

It might be heresy to say it, but Lost writers also suffer from story cowardice just as many other shows' creative staff. Cowardice is the reason why very cool scenarios are easily implied all the time, whereas the actual story line revelations are often trivial and boring. This is very unrewarding for viewers, but somehow nobody in Hollywood cares enough to provide that kind of quality.

I understand that you want to keep a show on air as long as possible. But if you do that you still have to set definite end points for major mystery arcs. After one arc is completed, you have to build up another story that can stand on its own feet - instead of trying to bring this year's season to life by infusing it with re-interpreted leftovers from last year. Yes, you may lose viewers if the series changes over time, but if the new concepts work, you'll also gain new fans.

Dear writers: how about that? Don't make shows about one single idea that has to be protected from change. Instead, make it fun and rewarding to watch that change. Don't try to hang on to ratings by copying yourself, viewers will notice. Gamble. Innovate. But above all: invest some time into thinking through the complete story arc and make sure it doesn't suck.

Meaning is not something you can stitch on as an afterthought in the last 10 minutes of the season finale before your show gets inexplicably cancelled.

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<Lost> <TV> <Show> <Entertainment> | Technorati: Lost, TV, Show, Entertainment

Open Source Is Not a Verb

2006-11-05T17:14:00.000+01:00

It's OSNews rehash day at Udo's Techblog. Bill Weinberg is running an article on NewsForge attacking the use of "open source" as a verb. Articles that have phrases like "I am a linguist by training" as their opening sentence, then go on to attack and deride a horrifying trend of neologisms before finally closing with some instructions on how language should be used properly, have a 99% statistical hogwash probability in my book.

I had these discussions with friends many times. Language is a living, rapidly changing system. You don't like certain phrases? Fine, don't use them. You're never going to be able to prescribe where the proper route of language development goes. It's a decision made by all of us, or even small groups of us, to use a certain phrase or not. That's how language evolved for the past thousands of years, by the way.

Linguists somehow seem to think that language is static, or finished. It's not. And they don't get to decide what's wrong and what's correct. True, language evolution has seen a tremendous speedup in the last decades, but that doesn't mean the end times are near. It's just a side effect of a faster, more ubiquitous and more global communication behavior.

Also, in case you haven't noticed, most colloquialisms are invented and abandoned constantly without any harm to society. I remember, when I started school, me and my friends would invent new words and catchphrases all the time. We still do that. As is everybody else. Some of these trends make it into larger circulation. Some of them will stay around, most won't.

The beauty of it is that language is constantly being enriched, not lessened by these developments, because new words and phrases are effectively added to the repertoire not necessarily at the expense of "old" forms and sayings. (Which is also, I believe, an advantage we gained as we made progress in information technology.)

Language is, thankfully, not designed by committee.

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<OpenSource> <Software> <Linguistics> | Technorati: OpenSource, Software, Linguistics

Fatal SQL Injection

2006-11-03T17:31:00.000+01:00

Joel is running a short reminder for the old SQL injection bug - a disastrous bug many web applications are riddled with. Now what I don't understand is the sheer number of those vulnerabilities. I'm not against using SQL in code per se, but why don't people encapsulate more database read and write operations using arrays or similar vectors?

Take, for example, PHP:


function DB_GetDataSet($tablename, $keyvalue, $keyname = null, $fields = '*')
{
  $result = array();
  if ($keyvalue != '' && $keyvalue != '0')
  {
    if ($keyname == null)
    {
      $keynames = DB_GetKeys($tablename);
      $keyname = $keynames[0];
    }

    $rs = mysql_query('SELECT '.$fields.' FROM '.$tablename.' WHERE '.$keyname.'="'.
      mysql_escape_string($keyvalue).'";')
      or $DBERR = mysql_error().'{ '.$query.' }';

    if ($line = mysql_fetch_array($rs, MYSQL_ASSOC))
    {
      $result = $line;
      mysql_free_result($rs);
    }
    else
      $result = array();
  }
  return $result;
}

?>

It's equally easy to make a wrap for writing and selecting and using these kind of light-weight wrapper functions you don't just make your code more secure, you also abstract database access in general making it easier to support different kinds of database software, besides you minimize other bugs that might not be security-related. Why are people still slugging it out with manually assembled statements, when in 99% of the cases a simple, safe procedure call would suffice?

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<SQL> <Web> <Development> <Software> <Joel> | Technorati: SQL, Web, Development, Software, Joel

Gmail Mobile Java App

2006-11-03T17:17:00.000+01:00

Yup, just one post earlier I was complaining about how dependent we have become on software services and now, I'll jump straight to promoting the newest Google gadget: as MobileCrunch reports, there is a downloadable Java app available to bring Gmail support to your phone.

This is great, because the retared web browser that came with my V3 won't load the WAP interface. I just tried the install link (http://gmail.com/app) and everything worked magically. Now, this is a step in the right direction but overall I still miss my cheap iMode phone. Unlike the Gmail-enabled V3, my iMode phone was always "online" and it was able to constantly monitor my email accounts for anything interesting, in that regard it worked just like SMS.

With the Gmail app, you still have to manually click refresh to check for new mail, the app has to stay open (that means no other phone functions are available at that time), and once you closed the app it reloads the inbox contents for ages. This is bad news for people who have to pay for bandwidth on their crappy WAP connections (like, erm, me for example).

But, its a nice app. When I remember all the times I've been on the road without my Tablet (which features a UMTS/GPRS card) and I nearly died because I could check my emails... this is going to be better!

Yeah, I know, it's probably time for a Blackberry already...

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<Gmail> <Java> <Mobile> <Software> | Technorati: Gmail, Java, Mobile, Software

Microsoft Max Cancelled

2006-11-03T17:16:00.000+01:00

Maybe I've been living under a stone or something for the last days, but I didn't hear anything on Microsoft end-of-lifing its Max beta product. As found on the Max Blog:

Starting today, we will be disabling all downloads from our website. In the next week, we will be shutting down the Max services and our team forums. At that time, you will no longer be able to sign in to Max or share lists of photos with your friends. You will still be able to read news and browse the lists you�ve already shared and received.

We look forward to delighting you in the future!

OK one thing, you don't put a beta out there, create tons of marketing buzz (however "grassroots" it might have been) and then cancel out on your users like that. And don't give me crap about how this was supposed to happen all along and how it was just an "experiment" and how everybody's now better off for the "experience". Removing software from existence like that is not a move that instills trust. At the very least, they could have kept the downloads online and archived the forums. What they should have done is:
- publish the source for the benefit of all you WPF programmers out there
- open up the API for content providers
- build a community around this thing

I probably have no valid reason to rant, since I'm not a Max user, but this is the type of thing that makes me increasingly weary of being dependent on a large company like Microsoft. And while we're at it, depending on Google feels much better right now, because they have a much better track record with users. But for how long?

This is a general problem with the software-as-a-service idea. Services get cancelled, or otherwise interrupted and the end user is completely left in the dark - at worst, without the possibility of recovering any of their data.

Services have slowly crept into my life:
- Google Mail for private mails
- Hosted Google Mail for company mails
- Google Calendar
- Flickr for photos
- Blogger
- Bloglines
- Windows Software Update

...and I'm sure, there are more. Who will host our data ten years from now? How much control will we have over it? Maybe it's time to put more emphasis on the quality of the migration tools a service provides.

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<Max> <Microsoft> <WPF> <Software> | Technorati: Max, Microsoft, WPF, Software

Today's Life Lession: Never Call Support

2006-10-24T09:47:00.000+02:00

By now I really should know better, but I opened a support ticket with one of our hosting providers. Since we only host about 100 MB of data, but the quota function reports a whopping 600 MB, I thought I'd enquire about this. There could be plenty of technical reasons for this, maybe the minimum storage unit per file is pretty large. Or there could be a bug in the quota system. I was just curious.

Inevitably, to every helpdesk ticket, there comes a response that makes you regret you even bothered to ask. In my case, it was a simple, condescending sentence stating that all the files stored on the webspace count against the reported disk usage. Duh. Of course, Mr. Helpdesk didn't even bother to check any facts or really think about the issue.

And this is the standard reaction I get from any support hotline. So I hereby make a holy vow: never to call or write to any helpdesk regarding anything that isn't immediately catastrophic, and even then I make sure I have tons of proof that it's their problem - also, possibly, legal support...

Boy Scouts Get MPAA Brainwashing, Copyright Merit Patch

2006-10-22T08:56:00.001+02:00

It seems every day there would be something very interesting, or depending on your point of view, disturbing to report on the U.S. "establishment"'s quest to reach ever-new lows. While I don't normally post politics here, I'll make an exception because copyright is an issue that concerns everyone. Cory Doctorow reports:

The Los Angeles Council of the Boy Scouts of America will offer rewards to Scouts who absorb a brainwashing regime written by the MPAA. The merit ~~badge~~ patch in "respecting copyright" will almost certainly not include any training on fair use, anything about the fact that the film industry is located in Hollywood because that was a safe-enough distance from Tom Edison that the its founders could infringe his patents with impunity; that record players, radios and VCRs were considered pirate technology until the law changed to accommodate them; or that the entertainment industry enriches itself without regard for creators, who are routinely sodomized through non-negotiable contracts and abusive royalty practices. I'm sure it won't mention the anti-competitive censorship masquerading as the Hollywood "rating" system, or the way that the studio cartel's copyright term extensions have doomed the majority of creative works to orphaned oblivion, since they remain in copyright, but have no visible owner and can't be brought back into circulation.

Yeah, I happen to think copyright is an important legal concept. But in the same way that, say, the idea of protecting citizens from terrorism is a good thing in theory, copyright is in the process of being made into a legal backdoor that provides a frivolous expansion of certain people's means to play the justice system like it was their personal toy.

On a more personal level, I find it disturbing how rightwing special interest groups in the US somehow manage to squeeze their agenda into institutions that should be politically and religiously neutral.

Then again, probably because I'm German, I've always been very suspicious about the concept of boyscouts. I don't know, maybe its the uniform or something, but they always remind me of an infamous organization that operated in Germany a few decades ago - its goal was also to instill the country's youth with "proper" values. On a rational level I know that the connection with Hitler Youth is horribly unfair and false, but it's a mental association I've never been able to ignore completely.

Testing The Democracy Player

2006-10-19T12:55:00.000+02:00

I finally got around to try out Democracy a few nights ago, and it's a good video player. I like the idea that some codecs are integrated right into the platform, so you can play MPEG4, for example, without going through the usual platform-specific struggle.

The Pros
Demcracy has a pretty nice design that's also actually usable. The way the user interface is structured, it should appeal to a large mass of users, ranging from casual to expert computer literacy.

It's also very easy to subscribe and download videos. The videos are grouped in channels (which are actually RSS feeds) and presented as short and appealing entries for the user to click on and download.

The preinstalled feeds are a good mix: some digital rights stuff, actual grassroots politics (as you would expect), some news, some entertainment - and a link to what I believe is the first porn site I actually like!

The Cons
For something called "Democracy", the software actually has little user participation mechanisms. You can't vote on videos, you can't discuss or comment on them, you can't respond to a topic with your own videos - there aren't even topics or tags or any kind of meaningful "web 2.0" search and relationship provisions. Surely it would have been possible to do at least some of those things without cluttering the UI too much?

The download behavior is just horrifying. If you auto-download channel content, there is no way to influence the number of simultaneous downloads (at least none that I could find in the very terse settings dialog). For example, I started with 4 downloads, the next time I looked 7 files were in the process of being downloaded - with no option to either delay a single download or limit the stuff that was going on.

The download behavior is even worse than that of Firefox (with its placebo "pause/resume" function that never ever works), but just like using Firefox you're pretty much screwed when you're downloading stuff with democracy over an unreliable connection. Some files get resumed after a download stop, but most don't. Some files suddenly appear twice or even thrice in the download list at the same time. Some files just hang in there, nothing ever happens to them, the only option the UI provides is to cancel the download, find the file in its channel and re-order it.

There is no way to mark a single file for auto-download. You click on it and it just starts, regardless if you already have 10 auto-downloading files in there clogging your connection.

Now the worst thing: the player has a hefty memory footprint of about 200 MB, but the separate downloader just runs amok, you literally can't leave it running for more than an our. In that time, it manages to consume about two times the downloaded amount of memory and, like a cancerous growth, it never stops multiplying until the system is dead!

Well, over time I have seen many people on the web claiming the Firefox/Thunderbird memory hole doesn't exist - but it does. And we can expect likewise from Democracy, I'm sure. But this is it, the single worst flaw of Democracy...

Top WoW Guild Leader Quits

2006-10-19T11:56:00.000+02:00

There is a very depressing guest blog account on Soul Kerfuffle describing an obsessive WoW gamer's life and the lives of his online friends - you have to read the article, but here are some choice quotes:

Blizzard created a game that you simply can not win. Not only that, the only way to "get better" is to play more and more. In order to progress, you have to farm your little heart out in one way or another[...]

Funny, I never thought the objective was to "win". I realize that there are many different motivations for playing the game, but where is the fun in farming your heart out? It seems to me that the game by nature attracts people who are especially susceptible to becoming obsessed with mindless and repetitive tasks that carry only extremely short-term social or status-related rewards which they nevertheless consider to be more important than anything else, probably because it's way easier to farm loot than to get your life in order.

And what do you do after these mighty dungeons fall before you and your friend's wrath? Go back the next week (not sooner, Blizzard made sure you can only raid the best instances once a week) and do it again (imagine if Alexander the Great had to push across the Middle East every damn week).

Yeah right. Again, you don't have to do it like that, it's only that the game doesn't specifically prevent you from playing it like that. To be fair, that behavior might even be encouraged a little bit by the way current MMOs are designed. (Incidentally, and completely unrelated to all this social drama, this is why I think next-generation MMOs should be completely dynamic, allowing each player to experience a story that is unique to his character and thereby also empowering roleplay-type players to have a real sense of accomplishment, not the fake kind that comes from grinding victory out of pre-scripted and ridiculously repeatable events.)

I know of children and spouses being forced to play and grind for their parents, threats of divorce, rampant neglect, failing grades in school, and thousands of dollars spent on "outsourcing" foreign help. For what, you ask? Honor. The desire to be the best for at least one week. To get the best loot in the game. What do these "heroes" receive? Why, cheers and accolades of course as they parade along in their new shiny gear... which is obsolete the first time they step into one of the premier instances. The accomplishment and sacrifice itself are meaningless a few days later.

Well, to put it bluntly: if you're a sociopath, you're probably not fit to play any game. The behavior described sounds more like an advanced stage of gambling addiction, only people don't play with money but with their time and energy instead. An interesting parallel with any addictive illness is that the behavior continues even though disproportionally small rewards and inappropriately big risks should prevent it. This is because addiction has nothing to do with intelligence or logical thinking - it's a self-perpetuating autodestructive behavioral pattern.

We may be tempted to think this is about WoW or even online gaming in general. And yes, the design of those games encourages players to put in lots of time and commitment for which they get a sense of advancement that is constantly reinforced by the social aspect of MMOs. But online games don't create people with mental problems, they just attract them. Like all potentially (psycho-)addictive things, they don't cause the illness - they just catalyze its emergence.

In the end, as with many things in life, the actual object of our obsessions is not to blame for the effect it exerts on us. The object itself just provided a mechanism to release a behavior that has perhaps been waiting to get out for a long time. Whatever the trigger may be: genetic predisposition, or when our lives suddenly take a catastrophic turn, or maybe just a sense of emptyness and isolation - unresolved issues always find a way to express themselves.

Scary Moments

2006-10-17T14:38:00.000+02:00

Hey, I don't know why I keep posting this personal stuff...

Today I was riding the elevator to my office, when I realized that it was going to the sub basement (I didn't even realize we had one before). When the doors opened, it was completely dark outside and a young woman wearing white doctor's clothes appeared from out of nowhere. She actually screamed in surprise as she saw me standing in the elevator, then composed herself and stepped in.

Well, I know I'm not precisely the cutest guy around, but could someone tell me whether I look that scary when I stand in lowlight conditions in an elevator, holding on to half a ton of chinese takeout food? And what the fuck is going on in our sub basement?

The Nietzsche Family Circus

2006-10-16T00:41:00.000+02:00

In case you (like me) think your life needs more Nietzsche quotes, perhaps presented randomly, fortune cookie style, alongside retro b/w comics, The Nietzsche Family Circus might be just what you're looking for!

Incomplete

2006-10-15T21:47:00.000+02:00

One evening, about three weeks ago, I went outside, it was already pitch black when I jogged across the fields adjacent to my house. No, this isn't the post where I tell you how I was abducted by aliens. But there was something there, waiting for me. It was a stone, about seven inches high, sticking out of the grass. I didn't see it, tripped on it and several of the small tendons in my right foot snapped or were overstretched. Getting back home with just one usable foot was quite an adventure, since I was stranded there in the middle of nowhere!

Well, it's going to be quite a while until I'll walk normally again. I feel reminded of my anatomy class back at university, wondering how fucked-up my foot must look from the inside? Funny, I've had a few far more serious and painful injuries in my time, but somehow this has really gotten to me. I even have dreams about being able to walking normally again! My friends keep arguing that I'm too impatient.

I also keep thinking about a good friend of mine who is pregnant right now. Finally I understand why the human race would have gone extinct a long time ago if it were men who had to incubate our offspring. Normally, I'm pretty tough, but I'm pretty sure I'd have died already if I had to go through with the kind of stuff my friend has to suffer!

How is this going to be once I get older? Getting more fragile and becoming sick more often? I'm going to be one of those grumpy old guys who scream at the nurse all the time. It's funny if you consider how I didn't become an medical practitioner mainly because I couldn't stand dealing with sickness and death on a daily basis...

Fixing Juice

2006-10-03T18:32:00.000+02:00

David Troesch asked me to post this fix to the debilitating Juice bug I talked about:

Your article was one of few search results that seemed to be referencing a similar problem that I was having. With some experimentation, I was able to get juice working again. I'm sure the problem is a unicode character getting inserted into a podcasts file name (or description) that is then verified by juice when it opens and it causes the unicode function to puke (maybe from an old/buggy version of the python unicode function?).

The Fix (I'm sure you noticed uninstall/reinstall of Juice doesn't fix it - why is because the info in the location below isn't cleaned by the uninstall routine): Goto the directory %Userprofile%\Application Data\ipodder\ (type that into the address bar of a windows explorer window or run box and it'll take you to the right place)

Rename the file ipodder.db

This (I believe) is the saved database of existing in your library and files in it. Not exactly sure what else it's used for.

Then open juice, and it should open with no errors. (If there are errors still, try renaming the history.db file under the history subdirectory in the same location.) It'll re-create an empty database file and rebuild what's needed. The feed names will look a little weird till you get juice to grab the data from the feed and it corrects itself. Watch out as well, on the 2nd launch of Juice, it'll try and re-download a bunch of stuff that was already downloaded.

Thanks David! :-)

Happy Birthday Funda

2006-10-01T01:54:00.000+02:00

Happy birthday Funda, wherever you are.
(I still miss you.)

Another New Year's Promise

2006-09-28T10:04:00.000+02:00

I need to post more often and more regularly :-)

Happy Birthday Udo

2006-09-25T15:46:00.000+02:00

Happy birthday to me / Happy birthday to me / Happy birthday dear Udo / Happy birthday to me !

...and I gotta say the last 31 years were very nice, so here's to another few!

Originally I wanted to post this very cool birthday poem about the sun but then I realized that certain people might read certain things into that... well - no more ambiguity! My new life year's promise! I promise to be clearer! And I've been told I'm too nice. No more niceness! And no more unrealistic ideas. Yeah. I'll let you know how that worked out...

:-)

Have a nice day!

InstaRPG: Free Bare Minimum Pen&Paper Ruleset

2006-09-20T03:07:00.000+02:00

I know there are still geeks out there who play good old pen&paper roleplaying games with their friends, myself included. For this, I have created a barebones ruleset, mainly intended for oneshot adventure sessions that rely heavily on the GM's discretion and player creativity.

This ruleset is called InstaRPG, it is purposely simplistic and comes with a minimum set of rules that could possibly work and still allow for rich gameplay. The rules have also been optimized for quick gaming, especially in combat mode. It has been tested for contemporary settings, but it should also work for fantasy and sci-fi settings.

You can download the Creative Commons-licensed InstaRPG here:
insta-rpg1-2.pdf
insta-rpg1-2.odt

As always, your feedback would be much appreciated!

Cite CMS: Our First Open Source Release

2006-09-20T02:07:00.000+02:00

We just released our first true open source product, the Trionic Cite website content management system on SourceForge. It is a PHP-based simple CMS that comes with its own installer and is designed to be easily usable and customizable.

Up until now we installed our software on our clients' servers ourselves, so supplying a ready-cooked package for general consumption is certainly a different experience. This is why we need more people to test this release (which is not intended for production use yet). Undoubtedly, we screwed at least 10 things up, so let us know!

You can download Trionic Cite from the SF web page at:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/cite/

Have fun, and send comments to cite@trionic.de!

SmallWorld, Step 1: Introduction and Terrain

2006-09-20T02:05:00.000+02:00

Creating a very simple dynamic MO-something
After talking at length about (the absence of) truly dynamic environments in multiplayer games, I've decided to play with a little proof of concept application. The goal here is to experiment with a few points, not to create a real game (who's got time for that, right?). I apologize if this tutorial seems very obvious and very basic at first, but let's do it nice and slow so we're all on the same page, hm-kay?

Design choices
I wanted to use ubiquitous development tools so readers can try things out on their own. The obvious choice for a client here is the browser. While not exactly known as a platform for breathtaking 3D games, it's easy to program against and everybody's already got one. With that, it is pretty clear that we're talking about a web application here, so I went with PHP on the server side. This is undoubtedly not an ideal choice, since some tasks are going to require asynchronous communications - something that neither the browser nor PHP are good at. Still, these tools should get the development time to an absolute minimum, even if there are some nasty tradeoffs on the road ahead. Then again, this is just a proof of concept, riiiight?

Let's get started then
First, we'll need a terrain model. That's the most basic level of existence in an online world, the petri dish on which everything is supposed to grow. And when I say grow, I mean that literally, since we're doing a dynamic world: instead of having lots of statically designed content our goal is to simulate as much as possible!

There are several types of terrain that are suitable for a simulation. The most basic scenario is a flat map of squares, where a square represents the smallest possible environment unit - like for example a square foot of ground, or any other arbitrary unit. Of course the flat map has some serious shortcomings when it comes to the representation of spatial terrain, because it can not be used to construct true 3-dimensional structures. This is what vector-based environments are good for. Vector data, however, is notoriously difficult to access meaningfully when your goal is to do some environmental simulation. For the sake of simplicity, we'll be using the flat map approach here, because
- it's laughably simple to do environmental simulations with flat maps
- our client is going to be a web browser anyway
- we can get some things done instead of wasting time on complicated transformations

Now when I say "flat map" that doesn't mean there can be no height associated with each square, in fact height will be one of our basic terrain properties.

Fractal Terrain
Fractal algorithms are great for mass production of raw data that is supposed to look natural (and they look that way because such algorithms actually resemble pretty closely what goes on in many natural systems). Also, fractal algorithms are very easy to implement. To generate a height map, we will use a simple diamon-square algorithm, which works like this: suppose we have two points on a map, say p1 and p5, where the elevation of each has been determined by a random number. Let's call the range of this random number r1. The line between those two points in space is the slope of the terrain:

To make a realistic landscape out of those rough data points, we'll interpolate the elevation halfway between p1 and p5, let's call that new point p3. Since it lies halfway between p1 and p5, its height would be the average of p1 and p5. Now, we add some more random variation to this value by adding or subtracting another random value. To make for a realistically scoped effect, the range of this random number should be less than r1. If we want to make real smooth slopes, we can take half r1 for the range. So, we calculated p3 as: (p1+p5)/2 + r2

We can repeat this process as often as we like to make the resulting terrain as fine-grained as possible. But, there is a reason why I called those points p1, p3, and p5. Since we are essentially generating a terrain map of squares which have a fixed size, it only makes sense to drill down as deep as the size of an individual square. Keep in mind that if we were generating vector data, we would not be having this "problem". According to the chosen naming convention, our example just needs one further iteration: this time, we will calculate the values of new points called p2 and p4 which lie halfway between p1, p2 and p3, p5 respectively. By now you know the drill:

As you see, this algorithm is fairly easy to implement. In the example code, I implemented this generator function in lib/terrain.php: makeTerrainMap(). Of course, it could be done much simpler and faster and whatnot, but the code is easy to understand and modify. There, we did it: now we have generated the basic stage for our little critters!

Resources:
Source code: Step 1
http://www.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de/fgweb/Preprints/fg02003.pdf
http://www.gameprogrammer.com/fractal.html

Coming up next: what's that green stuff growing on our map!

It's A Small World

2006-09-14T01:07:00.000+02:00

About two years ago I began a series called "Thoughts On Dynamic MMORPGs", because I thought that today's pre-generated content is not an optimal way to go if you want people to experience a real artificial world, such as a typical MMO setting:

Thoughts On Dynamic MMORPG Games - Part I
Thoughts On Dynamic MMORPG Games - Part II
Thoughts On Dynamic MMORPG Games - Part III
Thoughts On Dynamic MMORPG Games - Part IV
Thoughts On Dynamic MMORPG Games - Part V

Two years later, lots of new MMOs have seen the light of day, most famously World of Warcraft of course. But the concept has not changed at all. Still, every single online world is a static map with fixed properties. Still, every player consumes the same content as everybody else. Still, there is no mechanism for a character to influence the ecosystem surrounding her in any permanent, meaningful way.

Sure, Second Life solved the content problem to a degree with its purely user-generated model, but then again Second Life is not an adventure game, it's a virtual exhibition and social interaction site.

The reason why I stopped doing the Thoughts series was, besides getting buried at work, this was getting to theoretical for me. I didn't want to pile idea on idea on idea without ever knowing whether this could actually work in practice.

So, I've been kicking around the idea of a proof-of-concept project for a while now. Obviously, I'll never have the time to do a full fledged MMO thingy in my spare time. But what I probably can do is throw a few lines of code together to try out some ideas and that's exactly what we're going to do now. I'll examine a few of the dynamic world concepts we talked about and put out some easy to follow code examples for it.

Thus, stay tuned for the new MMO series I have dubbed "Small World", a public lab experiment for dynamic MMO ideas!

The Dilbert Peace Plan

2006-09-12T17:25:00.000+02:00

Scott Adams presents to us (tongue in cheek as always) the Dilbert Peace Plan for the middle east, which basically goes like this:

On paper, Israel deeds all of its lands to Jordan � a relatively friendly Muslim country � and leases the land back for eternity. That way, Muslims satisfy their religious requirement that land once belonging (in their opinion) to Muslims, always belongs to Muslims.

In this plan, Israel would pay some manageable �rent� for all of the land it occupies, including the settlements. Think of it like a shop owner paying protection money to the local Mafia. It�s repugnant, but it works. And it�s cheaper than permanent war.

And we're all invited to discuss why this won't work.

OK Scott, if this doesn't work it's not going to be because the plan is absurd. It's creative, and as noted, absurdity is not a valid counterpoint when it comes to Middle East politics. I allege it won't work because the DPP doesn't solve the problem in the first place.

1. Israel as a country is very afraid of losing its hard-earned independence and sovereignity, and rightly so. When we recognize that the act of actually possessing the Holy Land is so important to the Palestinians we also have to see that Israel has the exact same claim. Nothing illustrates this point better than Jerusalem. Israel would never make a concession like that, and giving up ownership is not a small one. Also, Israel will never concede the point that the land belonged to the Palestinians in the first place.

2. A lease agreement only works if both parties recognize the other as a legal entity, a stable legal climate would be necessary. For such a thing you'd need parties who actually honor treaties and agreements, something neither Israel nor the Palestinians are particularly good at. Right now, if such a lease contract would exist, it would only serve as a further legitimization for Hamas to obliterate Israel.

3. When you dig down deeper into this morass, you'll see that in the end this is all about symbolism, power and control. The proposed lease agreement doesn't change the fact that both parties are claiming the same piece of land and don't want the others within ten lightyears of their homes. This is about hate. The proposed treaty only makes the question of actual ownership of the Holy Land more ambigous. Israelis would argue that renting the Holy Land was certainly not what God had in mind when he promised it to them. Palestinians on the other hand would spit out repeatedly in disgust over this very Jewish-sounding money-juggling maneuver that doesn't give them back any land at all.

4. The plan doesn't contain any incentive for peace and stability. And really, how do you make a peace plan with a terrorist organization like Hamas that gets unlimited funding from all over the Arab world? And what incentive can you give a sponsored government that has "absolute sole right" tattoed on their forheads by the western media whatever they do?

5. What about Jerusalem and other ultra-holy sites? Who gets to own them? Who gets to live and visit there? One of the core values of the Isreali state is control over Jerusalem.

The DPP doesn't solve the initial problem of religious animosity. Apart from the fact that neither side has any incentive to agree to such a treaty (and much less honor it) it does nothing to alleviate the hate that has accumulated over the past decades.

To be fair, the timing is not ideal for any kind of peaceful solution. With islamist extremism on the rise all over the world, and while Isreal's american-derived foreign policy is really only good for producing more terrorists, the chances for a viable Israel/Palestine peace are very slim. Many reasonable people on both sides have been committed to the peace process for decades and with nothing to show for it except maybe their own tragic death.

Religious and racial hate cannot be solved by logical arguments or treaties, because the entire problem is deeply rooted in emotion and absurdity. It is a place of the human mind that literally can't be reached by factual information nor by humanitarian pleas. The love towards God obsoletes the love between people.

There have to be other solutions besides Israel handing over its lunch money to Hamas while sitting crouched in the corner like an emo girl at a BDSM party silently crying "please stop hitting me".

StartupCulture: Looking For IT Startups

2006-08-14T16:21:00.000+02:00

OK, I'M back from the geek retreat, and it's been great! Anyway, talking to geeks for days, gives you ideas... So one thing I'm going to do next is a project called StartupCulture, which is going to be a video blog about European IT startups. I'm going to interview entrepreneurs, software developers and business angels about many facts of their life and what it's like to run a startup company.

Please let me know if you'd like to be interviewed for this, just drop me a quick mail to udo.schroeter@gmail.com!

So what's the format going to be? Each company or person will get their own movie, which will have a length of approx. 15 to 30 minutes. It's going to be available for free download on the soon-to-be-announced vloggy website.

So basically, I'll be traveling around and point the camera towards people whom I believe to be interesting... It's gonna be fun!

Tags: <Startup> <IT> <Software> <Entrepreneur> | Technorati: Startup, IT, Software, Entrepreneur

Stevenote

2006-08-08T20:33:00.000+02:00

I'm just watching the WWDC keynote (it's sort of weird: I don't have any cell reception up here, but WiFi is great). Anyway, lots of cool stuff, as always but it seems like the "big bang" is missing. Lots of refinement for Mac OS which is quite refined already and of course the new Mac Pro (which I've been waiting for some months, I guess I'll get one now). Anyway, Jobs seemed kind of strung out to me, am I hallucinating? Of course he was still great, but it just seemed like he was stressed out or something.

RSS Query?

2006-08-08T19:30:00.000+02:00

This is an idea I've been kicking around for some time after we implemented something similar for a client's huge and chaotic intranet landscape. So here's from the department of lets-do-more-with-RSS:

RSS is a great data format. It succeeded because it is easy to implement on all platforms, and its real strength lies in its ubiquity. So RSS works very well as a delivery format. But at this point RSS is somewhat held back by the default delivery mechanism. Usually, a subscriber periodically pulls an RSS file off an HTTP server. Typically that file contains a fixed amount of items, the server's developer just makes an arbitrary decision to put the latest X changed items into the file and that's what you get on the client side.

What if it were possible to use RSS to deliver content actively queried by the client application?

Imagine you could export your entire blog in one stroke by issuing an RSS query like "give me all items in the database".

Imagine you could filter your RSS subscription by using a query like "give me the last 5 items tagged as apple".

Imagine you could update your reader more efficiently by using a query like "give me all items changed since the last time I checked".

What do you think? Is there a market need for this? I believe there is and it would be easy to implement with most of the systems already out there. Let's take a look at how such an RSS Query standard might be done. We need just a few very basic

query types that also have to be easy to implement on the server side. They are really just search criteria.

Filtering by date. This is easy. Just specify the start and end date as a range of time for the items you're interested in. To make it even more flexible, you might also want to specify whether you're interested in the publishing date or the last-modified time stamp on systems where that sort of thing is possible. So a date query might look like this:

http://myserver/rss?pubDate_from=20060401&pubDate_to=20060606

Filtering by text matching. This is also pretty easy to implement. We just want to match strings in the XML nodes. We could probably also go for regular expressions but the security risk for the serve would probably be to high. For a useful match feature it might also be important to be able to exclude certain strings from the search result as well. So a text query might look like this:

http://myserver/rss?description_match=apple&description_nomatch=microsoft

Specifying range parameters. Range parameters are important to avoid the necessity of sending and consuming huge amounts of data all at once. However, being able to specify ranges like this also requires additional metadata feedback from the server, namely the total amount of items available. So here is what it would like like if you wanted to query for items numbered 10 to 20:

http://myserver/rss?items_from=10&items_count=10

At the same time, the server would have to send back the total amount of items so the client knows what to do next. So we might want to include that under the channel node in RSS, as that's where already loads of metadata are located. But there can be many channels in a feed and since the query result can also conceivably cover many channels, it might be better to include that in the rss root node as attributes. Any way, this might confuse some validators but not as much as including an entirely new type of node on the same level as the channels:

<rss version="2.0" resultcount="192">

Capabilities and discovery. It's also a good idea to include some mechanism to tell the client about our server's capabilities. Since we already introduced a metadata feedback mechanism into the rss root node (see above), we might as well use a similar attribute to announce the extend of the RSS Query implementation on the server like this:

<rss version="2.0" capabilities="query,timequery,textmatch,ranges">

In the above case, the server announced that it supports RSS Query in general, allows for the selection of items by time range, it supports text matches and ranged output of results.

Combining things. Of course, the real power comes from the possibility of combining the above mentioned search criteria to get pretty much any kind of resultset you would want.

Let me know what you think of this.

Juice... Not So Good

2006-08-04T10:29:00.000+02:00

I have to admit that until about a month ago my podcast subscription behavior consisted of a daily ritual download using Firefox with the Bloglines site. Of course, that got to tedious so got Juice (formerly iPodder), the podcast synchronizer.

At least, in theory that's what it does. In practice, there are lots of half-downloaded files on my harddrive that never get resumed, last week Juice lost my subscriptions, and now it crashes with a badly designed error message right after startup. I don't even want to check out the logfile, this stuff is supposed to just work. How enormous can an error be in a podsyncer so it can't repair itself?

Any ideas?

Testing Google Mail For Our Domain

2006-08-03T16:30:00.000+02:00

Email - how we've been doing it
We were never really happy with our email solutions. First, we had a simple POP/SMTP setup. It worked quite well but information was confined to the actual workstation computer where the user had their account. It was hard to backup reliably and you couldn't access other people's email without going over to their PC and do it manually.

Then we got IMAP, which was better because it stored all emails on the server. The server, however, was a constant configuration and reliability nightmare. Also, we couldn't suck emails for offsite usage off a POP account. It was all very clumsy.

So after the IMAP server exploded anyway, we switched back to POP. Then my PC's hard disk crashed, taking with it the only data that were not secured on our servers: my email!

Save us, noble Gmail!
I have very high hopes for a company-wide Gmail solution. It supports POP for archival and offline purposes, comes with an easy to configure web interface and will take away our reliability and backup concerns. I've been using Gmail for all my private stuff for ages, so it's only the next logical step!

Gmail for domains
With the new "business Gmail" we can now use Google Mail for our entire staff, under our own domain name. The free account plan supports up to 25 users, so with our entire team of 5 people that gives us a lot of space to grow.

1. The Invitation
After signing up, I got a nice invitation for the beta test. It gives an overview of the next necessary steps and provides a login link for the admin console which I had to create using the credentials of my "private" Gmail account:

2. MX records
After creating the admin account for the whole domain, the next step is to setup our domain's MX records so all mail traffic goes through Google's servers.

For this, the domains DNS records have to be manipulated. Most major providers have a web interface for this. We use DomainFactory for most of our hosting, and they have a kickass web interface for everything you could ever want to do with a webspace. If you don't have access to your domain's DNS records, you can always ask your hosting provider to change them for you.

3. Setup
Next, some basic config infomation had to be enteres, like whom to contact in case anything goes wrong and such things. Also very cool: you can swap out the Gmail logo for your own company logo! Features such as the web-based GTalk client and catch-all can also be configured, just like you would expect for a business solution.

4. Creating users
In typical Google fashion, they made it very easy and reasonable to enter all your users and email accounts. For large numbers of users there is also a "Bulk account update" feature, very nice! Gmail allows you to have multiple email addresses connected to a single user account. It's great that they offer a mailing list feature, we're going to need that for our internal dev-list.

5. Using the webmail client
The webmail client looks exactly like the "normal" Gmail interface, nice and simple. There is one thing I'm missing right away though: there is no sharing mechanism between the accounts of a domain. Right now, if I want sven@trionic.net to read a message, I'll have to forward it to him. Likewise, when I'm on the road, Sven can't really access my Inbox. Some type of sharing feature would have been really useful, maybe coupled to Labels?

That's it for now, not much of a review since the setup is so damn simple a drunken monkey could do it. Now I'm waiting for the MX records to update (takes about 24h) and then we can actually start testing this thing...

Tags: <Gmail> <Business> <Google> <Test> | Technorati: Gmail, Business, Google, Test

Disadvantages of PHP Hosting?

2006-08-03T03:47:00.000+02:00

I really, really hate FUD and misinformation campaigns. Like the prime example on webhostinginformation.net called the "Disadvantages of PHP Hosting" (I'm not going to link to this, but you can find it easily if you want). These "facts" both amuse and anger me at the same time. They are amusing for the sheer effort and creativity that went into those campaigns. But when I hear potential customers repeating those lines to me in a meeting, the funs abruptly stops. There are many things wrong with PHP, but those are not them:

First, since PHP is based in Unix, this means that you will not be able to use Windows developed applications on your site. If you are interested in using Active Server Pages or .ASP, you will not be able to run them on a PHP host.
PHP is a framework that is available for a number of operating systems and servers, not just Unix. The language itself is platform neutral, except when you explicitly want to use platform API or program calls (which for standard web development happens very infrequently). Since PHP will run on a Windows server, but ASP won't run on a Unix server, the whole point is little more than a very unclever piece of manifested stupidity.

The article then goes on and on about how the .NET framework won't run on Unix, how difficult to administrate Unix is, and how time consuming all of it is going to be for those not familiar with this language (huh? Unix is a language?)

Next up, PHP is being accused of having many security problems, citing - case in point - a dumb default setting that PHP had back when it was two major version numbers lower than it is today. Well.

If you have sensitive data and are concerned about security holes in PHP, you will need to consult your webhosting company ahead of time to make sure that your site will be as secure as possible. [...] If you are not familiar with how to take steps to make sure that your PHP code is secure, you may be better served by selecting a Windows based hosting company.
I guess we're now basically talking about SQL injection attacks and other problems that come from developers not being able to understand their own code. This is about as inherent to PHP as the use of variables. Every language suffers from these pitfalls, even *gasp* ASP.

If you look at their text real hard and squint your eye a bit, you can just see a friendly marketing guy from Microsoft in the background handing over some hard cash for this brilliant "Get Your Facts Straight" piece. Evidently, both the marketing guy and this lame excuse for a webhosting expert don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about. Now, what makes it really sad is: it doesn't matter how little real information is in there, as long as there are enough PHBs buying the story - hook, line and sinker.

Tags: <FUD> <PHP> <Hosting> <Facts> <Software> | Technorati: FUD, PHP, Hosting, Facts, Software

Kathy Sierra Is Not a BlogHer

2006-08-03T03:14:00.000+02:00

Kathy Sierra, of the Creating Passionate Users blog, and also the "Head First" hero(ine), says she's not a BlogHer and seems puzzled as to the gender barriers and strange groupings that still exist today:

I am "one who blogs" (among many other things). I happen to be a woman. But I am NOT a blogHer, and my male co-author is not a blogHim.

I write code. But I am NOT a programmHer.

I write tech books. But I am NOT a writeHer.

I ride horses. But I am NOT a rideHer. (sounds vaguely sexual... never mind)

I am NOT a skiHer or a skateboardHer or a runHer.

I work on ecological causes, but I am NOT an enviHERmental activist.

And I am NOT typing this on my computeHer (even if it is, I must say, a sexy-yet-adorable black MacBook)

These are my passions, but they reflect the part of me that is about horses, running, skiing, skating, the environment, writing, or creating. If I relabel them to reflect my gender, I believe both (my gender and the labeled thing) are diminished by the "Her" qualifier.

This is just my opinion, and I'm not an expert on women's issues or gender studies or sociology.
But I know quite a lot about being a woman in technology.

I kinda like that. On a related note, I believe the traditional identification with gender roles is on the rise again. Sadly. But that's what I've been seeing on the net and even when I look at some of my friends...

Tags: <BlogHer> <Blogging> | Technorati: BlogHer, Blogging

Microsoft: More People Do More... Stuff

2006-08-03T01:38:00.000+02:00

Mini-Microsoft is reporting that MS gained 10000 (4000 in Redmond alone) more employees this fiscal year. Wasn't there supposed to be a hiring stop?

Somehow I don't think those can all be smart and creative developers. Now what happens when you add 16% more people to an already immobilized organization that has recently been experiencing serious problems delivering on its promises, followed by some massive executive brain shrinkage? Think about the old PM adage that adding more people to a late project will only make it even later... one can only guess what that means for entire late corporations!

Judging from the outside, the disparity between all the cool little projects MS developers seem to be doing on one side and looking at what MS actually delivers to its customers is just... sad. Maybe Microsoft would be better off if it would break itself up into hundreds of very small units so everybody can once again focus on innovation and follow-through. And fire at least half the managers in the process.

Tags: <Microsoft> <Hiring> <Performance> <> | Technorati: Microsoft, Hiring, Performance,

Shadow Falls: Wolf or Coyote?

2006-08-02T22:40:00.000+02:00

Yeah, I'm late, just catching up with a lot of podcasts, but I finally listened to the first episode of Shadow Falls, PodShow's very own self-produced mystery drama series. The production quality and everything is just great and it was very entertaining to listen to. Only sometimes the voice acting is so grotesquely overdone I couldn't decide whether it was meant to be a satire or a drama... But on the plus side check out the theme song, it's awesome!

And while we're talking PodShow: the new PodShow+ has many very cool ideas that really make it fun for listeners to browse and subscribe. The design could use some work, though, but that doesn't take away much from the experience.

And they released an SDK so people can roll their own gadgets for their personal pages, which is quite geek-friendly. NOT SO geek-friendly is the fact that there is no mechanism to actually upload your gadget to PodShow's server, so it's a manual process where you just submit your module via email to some PodShow guys. You can probably guess the rest: if you submit something there, you don't ever hear from it again. Straight to /dev/null

Oh and Adam: I'm a Folder/Showerer! Hehe...

Tags: <Podcast> <Podshow> <Curry> | Technorati: Podcast, Podshow, Curry

The Shivah

2006-08-02T16:10:00.000+02:00

Game designer Dave Gilbert released a very cool retro game called "The Shivah" and it's available as a free download on his website. In this "maniac mansion/space quest/leisure larry" type game you play a broke and grumpy rabbi who has to solve a murder case. It's totally addictive and of course full of hilarious yiddish!

Sadly that reminds me how I took Hebrew in high school, but that was a dozen years ago and now I can't remember a single word. *sigh* But then again, I took Arabic as well of which I also remember nothing at all (but that was only for one year and I kinda got sidetracked during that time). And ancient greek and latin were my first foreign languages. All gone... total memory wipe. This is what happens if you don't use it!

Tags: <Retro> <Roleplay> <Game> <Software> | Technorati: Retro, Roleplay, Game, Software

New Monster Serial By David Wellington

2006-08-02T15:58:00.000+02:00

The guy who created the "Monster" zombie trilogy and other cool stories just started working on a new project: Frostbite, another serial novel, available of course chapter by chapter on his website as he writes it.

So far I really enjoyed everything he wrote and it's great that he publishes his stuff online before it goes to print. In related news, radical rightwing blogger and troubled technologist Jeff Harrell started a serial tale called "Untitled" recently, and it's very well written.

Go and check both of them out, it's worth it!

Tags: <Frostbite> <Novel> <Writing> <Story> | Technorati: Frostbite, Novel, Writing, Story

Vista's Chronic Lateness

2006-08-02T13:26:00.000+02:00

Sometimes I wonder what the tech pundits are going to complain about once Vista ships - ah, I got it, missing features! Well, it hasn't shipped yet, and meanwhile even people like Robert McLaws from LonghornBlogs chime in saying Vista's not ready and probably won't be for a bit longer.

Here's what I don't understand. For me, as a simple developer, Windows XP is still a great client OS. Right now, it does everything I need it to do to get things done. With the .NET 2.0 framework and cool releases such as the Avalon er... WPF framework there is still a lot to work with here. OK, I'll admit that I'm a bit of a Linux guy when it comes to servers, but as a desktop OS, XP still rules. Granted, Mac OSX looks pretty neat, but it only runs on Macs and it gets a bit on my nerves after a while when I'm working on my Mac.

Anyway, it's not like I desparately need a new OS from Microsoft right now because everything is so unbearable. What I do like, however, are cool new features. A fully hardware accelerated desktop sounds nice, a more robust multitasking environment, a rich new filesystem that makes metadata available across applications, better file and data management, XML interfaces all around (e.g. RSS support), an object-oriented shell (finally something even better than the Unix shell after all those decades!), a better registry, virtual folders - all things I'm looking forward to.

Sadly, many of them are not actually going to be in Vista, but I'm optimistic they will come in the near future. There are also a few things I'm not looking forward to: overreaching DRM built into the OS, "trustworthy computing" initiatives that slowly but consistently take all control away from the owner, the notion that eventually everything will be a service, slowness and inefficiency that comes from code bloat and needlessly complex design choices.

In these regards I believe I'm a fairly normal computer user. Now, why do people at Microsoft and a huge number of outsiders both feel the overpowering urge to rush the next Windows out the door?

Microsoft will get to feel a lot of pressure both from Linux/KDE and Mac OS X, that's a fact. XP is still somewhat ahead, but both competitors are getting cooler features by the day. Apple has proven itself to be especially agile and seems to have a very good feeling for what their customers want. Linux/KDE is also moving ahead in unexpected places, works quite well for standard office stuff (but doing anything out of the ordinary is still a lengthy and painful learning process for the user). All in all, competitors are gaining ground because they appear fresh, nimble and cool.

Microsoft on the other hand needs a strobe light to make it appear like it's moving. From the outside it seems as if they are caught up in a huge net of marketing, legal considerations, "partnerships" and corporate politics.

I'm just wondering if we'll be sitting here in a few years wondering why MS didn't out-cool its competitors back then with Vista even though it had vastly more programmers and resources than the rest of the world. Is it inevitable that size kills innovation? Is there really a way to manage 70000 employees and billions of customers efficiently at all?

Tags: <Microsoft> <Windows> <Vista> <Longhorn> | Technorati: Microsoft, Windows, Vista, Longhorn

Open Call For Funding

2006-08-01T13:09:00.000+02:00

When I talked about the difficulty of European startups and the difference to American startups last week, it was an account told from personal experience, as you might have guessed.

Today, I stumbled upon another interesting take on the VentureBlog that essentially confirms what my experience has been like for the past months.

That doesn't mean European startups are generally worse off, it's just certain types of companies are not well liked here. For example small dingy web startups, like ours. For example, I spent the last weeks talking to half a dozen VC guys in Germany. The conversation usually goes like this:

VC: So do you have a product?
Startup: Yes, look, here.
VC: Now please explain how this will make us at least 5 million Euros in the first year.
Startup: Well, it can't promise you that much in the first year, but we believe we can grow steadily to a decent size.
VC: *groan* OK guys, you're done here. NEXT!

It is interesting to note that Angel Investors are probably better suited for this type of funding. Angels come with several advantages, they are essentially single rich people who can support your company not only with money but also with contacts and business advice on a much more human level than VCs can.

There is just one catch: you have to find one! For a dingy little web startup from Germany that means you're looking for a rich guy who has experience with this industry and who is willing to pick you over all the other "surefire" hightech and biotech startups.

If you were an Angel Investor and two companies want you to adopt them, who would you prefer? The sleek marketing professional with his Armani suit and 5kg of glossy brochures in his suitcase? Or the geeky guy with a few crazy ideas who just parked his old Fiat next to your Ferrari? Exactly.

Of course, it's a cultural thing. From what I hear, in places like Silicon Valley the climate is generally more underdog friendly. But culture also means the business environment is different. From my experience, in Germany there are generally two completely separate business networks. There is one for the wealthy, established and polished companies - and then there is the other where everybody else piles up. The two seldomly connect and that's kind of toxic, because that means there is a boatload of gifted but utterly uninfluential people at the bottom of our business culture who never get the chance to realize their potential.

So let's break this cycle! Dingy little web startups from Europe, unite! Around here, business is always done with an aura of secrecy, maybe it's time to change that.

My name is Udo Schroeter, and I'm the CEO of a dingy little web startup. We specialize in web applications that take the place of classical desktop software. We already have a web content management system and are currently in the early stages of working on a web database that could replace MS Access. We are four experienced geeks with all kinds of ideas for making the web a better place. Realizing these ideas takes time, which is why we need funding and resources. If you're interested (or know someone who might be) in building a cool little company with us, drop me a line at: udo.schroeter@gmail.com

Tags: <Startup> <Business> <Funding> <Europe> <VC> <Investors> | Technorati: Startup, Business, Funding, Europe, VC, Investors

Zero Taste

2006-07-31T23:28:00.000+02:00

Every time the Coca Cola Company does anything to Coke (a.k.a. the sacred cow) people start rioting in the streets. Well, that said, Coke Zero really has zero taste! And if you're wondering why the blogosphere is suddenly filled with complaining Germans, that's because (as usual) Germany is years behind the rest of the world when it comes to the introduction of new products...

Tags: <Coke> <Zero> <Cola> <Light> <Taste> | Technorati: Coke, Zero, Cola, Light, Taste

Owner Of The Bug The World Talks About

2006-07-31T22:49:00.000+02:00

As you may have heard, Vista's speech recognition sort of broke down during a recent public presentation, and we all know what that means in the age of YouTube! Of course, this has the blogosphere gloating and many feel reminded of the fateful day back when BillG demoed Windows98 which promptly ended in a BSOD. I also seem to vaguely remember a more recent MS demo with Bill where all sorts of things went wrong (was it the Consumer Electronics Show? I can't remember)

Anyway, Larry Osterman, one of my favorite MS bloggers has fessed up! In his blog entry, he explains a little more about the bug and - most importantly - that it's now being fixed... :-)

I know how it feels to be responsible for a bug that pops up in the middle of an important demo, just not quite on the same scale of course!

Tags: <Microsoft> <Bug> <Speech> <Presentation> | Technorati: Microsoft, Bug, Speech, Presentation

Startups Happen In Clusters, USA

2006-07-27T00:53:00.000+02:00

Via Loic Le Meur's Blog: Why Startups Condense in America by Paul Graham.

It's a good read. Paul Graham makes the following points (printed bold) and I'll just take the liberty of adding a few thoughts to each one - mainly to look at it from a European perspective:

The US Allows Immigration.
Yes, but so do other countries, and yet they don't compare. Besides, it's not exactly easy to immigrate to the US these days.

The US Is a Rich Country.
True, but so are many EU countries and Japan for example. Though there are many tech startups in those countries, they are generally biotech or something with engineering. Software and web related innovation is led by the USA almost exclusively. Why?

The US Is Not (Yet) a Police State.
That's only partly true, judging from the outside, an American police state is in the making but sorely lacking when it comes to execution [no pun intended]. Seriously though, it is nice if you don't have to fear for your life on a daily basis.

American Universities Are Better.
Maybe they are, if only because they seem to be more open, agile and flexible. European universities are very uh... old school for example, to the point where they are repelling for and repelled by extraordinary people who just don't fit in. Also, attending University is comparatively short termed in the USA, meaning people get to do their jobs much earlier.

You Can Fire People in America.
That's a very good point. Also, there are less insane taxes and other work-related laws.

In America Work Is Less Identified with Employment.
Yes, it is important for employment to shift from a paternalistic model to simply an "economic exchange". But also, judging from the big picture here in Germany, European people should be more concerned with doing their actual jobs. It is really hard to find employees who care. There are so many people who are in a work-related persistent vegetative state, just living for the paycheck, it makes me want to puke sometimes (especially when I see what they get as salary).

America Is Not Too Fussy.
Great point, agreed!

America Has a Large Domestic Market.
I would even go one step further and say that not only the market size is almost without comparison worldwide, it's the actual market quality that really makes a difference. There seems to be a general willingness to buy new products and services - meanwhile European countries issue more typical statements like "why would I need that?" and "that's just a fad, I'm not even looking into it".

America Has Venture Funding.
Europe also has venture funding, but again, only for well established companies and people with surefire concepts. Also, no European VC will suport a small company with a few crazy ideas, and they're not even meeting with you if you can't guarantee them at least 5 million EUR earnings in the first year. No wonder, the USA attracts more small web-based startups.

America Has Dynamic Typing for Careers.
Absolutely true. In Europe, you're a when you leave university and sure as hell, you're going to stay that way. Worse yet, if you don't have a uni degree, then you're just a zero.

This really made me think. Seems in Europe we are very efficient at filtering out unconventional people, but we're grooming traditionalists and risk-adverse creative leightweights. And our startup landscape reflects this as well...

Tags: <Startup> <Business> <VC> <USA> <Europe> | Technorati: Startup, Business, VC, USA, Europe

Darwin Now Officially Dead

2006-07-26T15:15:00.000+02:00

On the 25th the Darwin Core Developers finally put out a statement to announce that the open sourced Mac OS X base is shutting down. People who are surprised by this should probably read Why Darwin Failed, an informative essay by Rob Brown, one of the key people there.

There has been much talk about Apple using a fake open source strategy for marketing purposes. While it's probably true that throwing in a bit of open source lingo here and there didn't hurt Apple, it seems clear to me that in the end Apple is just a regular company that uses open source projects where suitable - nothing more nothing less.

They published the source code for projects they used and modified, they spent a moderate amount of energy supporting potentially synergistic projects, and the even recruited some of Darwin's top contributors. For some reason people seemed to think Apple was the next RedHat, disregarding all facts. Well, they're not the next RedHat. But from the looks of it they're not bad open source citizens either.

It was never quite clear to me what the actual use for Darwin was. Apparently, creating a whole open sourced operating system that was supposed to have some compatibility to Mac OS. Was there really ever a market for that? And of course, this being open source, the logical desktop choice would have been KDE anyway, so what exactly was the point of this whole exercise? I also don't get why core developers complained about contributors using Mac OS API calls instead of keeping the environment pure Darwin. What was the justification for Darwin as a standalone solution?

I predict that Apple will continue to use open source code where it makes sense and they will of course continue to produce their own stuff where they can really excel and shine. This is by the way going to be the main trend for open source: software infrastructure. While a Linux desktop will be sufficient for many people, the vast majority of users requires an actual mainstream system like Windows or Mac OS to be productive. But infrastructure components like server and networking technology, data processing, database and programming languages - this is where open source leaks in.

And while we're criticising Apple for not contributing enough, let's spend a moment and think about the millions of "open source" web software businesses that have never done a thing to support the Apache project, PHP, MySQL or Ruby - at all.

Tags: <Darwin> <Apple> <Software> <OSX> <Fink> <OS> <Open Source> | Technorati: Darwin, Apple, Software, OSX, Fink, OS, Open Source

Procedural Synthesis

2006-07-25T16:27:00.000+02:00

I almost missed the cool roundup about Procedural Synthesis on SlashDot a while ago, go check it out!

The concept of generating content (not just graphics) from mathematical models is very powerful. If you think about it, reality is also procedural (not textured or level-designed certainly): everywhere you look you come across fractal processes and cellular automata!

Of course, this got me thinking about my "Dynamic MMO World" idea from a few years back. Still, there seems to be no company that has tried this concept on the market. Computer gaming, especially MMO gaming, is still pretty much a collection of pre-designed static stuff. If for one am still dissatisfied with that.

Wouldn't it be a much better gaming experience if you could actually make an impact on the world you play in? By impact I don't just mean the ability to shape your immediate environment, but also ecological and social ramifications of your avatar's actions. You can't have anything like that as long as every game design company keeps cloning Everquest (and many going broke in the process).

Where are the fresh ideas? Isn't there a game company out there that is made up of a couple of geeks who just want to play in a real world for a change?

Make worlds, not servers! Yo.

Tags: <Procedural> <Gaming> <MMORPG> <Software> <Dynamic> <World> | Technorati: Procedural, Gaming, MMORPG, Software, Dynamic, World

MySpace Down: A Single Tear Slips Slowly Down My Cheek

2006-07-25T15:29:00.000+02:00

MySpace was down over the weekend after what seems to be a massive power outage in the area. (No, seriously, if you haven't been to MySpace in a while, I urge you to click on this link to see a typical example of tastful MySpace design.)

Already, Mary Jo Foley is calling for heads to roll over this huge catastrophe:

MySpace's Latest Outage: More Questions Than Answers
Who's to Blame for Microsoft Customer MySpace's Outage?

Guys, let's keep things in proportion here. While this may have inconvenienced a few people, it's not like google.com went down or anything. There are many things I would consider critical services, but certainly a social networking site is not one of them...

And really, Mary Jo, SQL server failover strategies would have helped only if they had several completely independent data centers all over the world. And even then, there would likely have been glitches and outages, given the data structures required for a site like MySpace, which is kinda like the opposite of a "stateless" and "static" design.

Tags: <MySpace> <Microsoft> <MS> <Foley> <SQL> | Technorati: MySpace, Microsoft, MS, Foley, SQL

Top 10 Dumbest Online Business Ideas

2006-07-25T11:29:00.000+02:00

Neowin links to an entertaining list of dumb business ideas that succeeded.

My favorite is actually the Million Dollor Homepage, because it represents no real value, no product or service is being offered, nothing had to be innovated - and nevertheless some dude managed to scam a lot of companies to buy advertising space just for the heck of it.

The others are not really that dumb, many actually seem pretty smart to me!

Tags: <Technology> <Business> <Online> <Web> | Technorati: Technology, Business, Online, Web

Exercise In Form Filling Futility

2006-07-24T15:16:00.000+02:00

After a few years, I decided to resubscribe to Sony's Everquest - while I don't exactly have much time on my hands to play MMOs extensively, I'd sure like to play something in that area from time to time.

Anyway, there's a free trial that I want to try, sounds like a great idea. But first, I need to sign in to Sony Station. Great, I forgot my username and/or password. To get it back I'd have to remember the correct email address I used years ago. So I set out to create a new account instead.

But not so fast, grasshopper. The registration form looks innocent enough: you have to pick a nickname, a password, and click a checkbox that you have read and understood the TOS (yeah, right).

When I click "submit", I first get the first complaint: the password needs to have at least one number in it. OK, they didn't tell me that upfront, but hey, I'll just tack a number on, twice and hit enter.

But, hey, guess what - Station forgot that I checked the little TOS checkbox, so I'll get another error message. Good, fill in the password again, twice, click the checkbox, hit submit.

BRRRRR. Not so fast. Turns out, that nickname is already taken. For my impertinence, I get punished by having the nickname, password, and TOS fields resetted, again. Try another nickname, fill in the password, twice, click the little checkbox, hit submit.

Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. Ah then, finally after 3 more tries, I succeeded, at last! Come on guys, how hard is it to make your sign-up form friendly and accessible? And why on earth do forgotten password pages always enquire not only your nickname, but needlessly also email address, birth date, and possibly a biometric scan?

Tags: <Web> <Forms> <Usability> <Sony> <Station> <EQ> | Technorati: Web, Forms, Usability, Sony, Station, EQ

Fun With Face Recognition

2006-07-24T11:08:00.000+02:00

Fun link of the day: myheritage.com has a free face recognition service where you can upload your portrait and the server compares it with a celebrity database. Me, seems I'm 75% Jake Gyllenhaal, so that's OK I guess (I really liked Donny Darko). The fun thing is, even if you upload different pictures, the celebrity match for your face stays the same most of the time - it's a really cool algorithm! Now, go match you and your friends, it's great!

Many People Think CSS Is Broken...

2006-07-24T10:54:00.000+02:00

...but no two of them can agree on the WHY. John C. Dvorak thinks the biggest flaw is the concept of cascades. I don't believe that's true. John, imagine if styles didn't cascade, you would have to declare separate, ridicululously redundant styles for all HTML elements. That can't be right. But I have to agree with you on the notion that
a) things designed by comittee generally are much dumber than the dumbest person on the comittee
b) CSS (and web presentation technologies in general) gradually worsen with each generation as "improvements" are added.

Just the other day, I had a discussion with Vamirez about this and he said something to the effect of "screw CSS and any technology that makes simple things unnecessarily hard to do". While we might disagree on the actual details, now that is an opinion I can get behind 100%!

Well, why CSS is broken, according to Udo:

1) Element positioning is broken. Most people think CSS actually solved this problem, and they'd be partially correct in that there was no way of accurately positioning things before CSS at all. However, most layout positioning problems don't originate from the difficulty of defining absolute screen positions in pixels. In fact, most things are rather defined by the relative position they have to each other. And this is where CSS just sucks, especially if it has to work with any browser. Well, that leads us to the next point:

2) It's not really a standard. To be fair, on the web, nothing is (except maybe Flash, but that doesn't count). It's a major pain in the ass to do something that works in all major browsers, especially if it isn't in accordance with the 3 eternal standard web layouts that the CSS creators obviously had in mind when they specified this thing.

3) It's an uninspired spec. Now, I think it's great that using CSS, I can specify relative font sizes as percentages. But why on earth didn't they add other rich compositing options? For example, wouldn't it be cool to be able to use relative colors? Imagine that you'd have to define 2 or three base colors for your webpage and the rest would just be derived automatically from those base colors according to the relative definitions you did on the rest of the elements. Or other layout stuff like gradients and better transparency support. While we're at it: why is there no built-in inheritance model? If we're calling them "classes", why can't they inherit stuff from each other properly? Why did they miss these opportunities?

4) Positioning, revisited: tables bad, divs good. Actually, the most common concept in layouts is some form of grid alignment. In the olden days, we used tables for grid layouts. In XUL, you can use the grid element. In CSS, you're just screwed. Simulating grids in CSS is painful, bug-prone and unnatural. In some ways, grid behavior cannot be simulated at all, without JavaScript tricks. That sucks!

Despite all this, we're still undescribably better off than without CSS. But a guy can dream, right?

Pleasure Units

2006-04-10T22:55:00.000+02:00

Scott Adams has a great piece called Pleasure Unit Theory. That's what I love about the Dilbert blog, I now realize it fills the hole Seinfeld left when it comes to recognizing and packaging the fundamental mechanisms of society. In this case, Pleasure Unit Theory explains why I resort to heavy drug usage whenever things are going badly. My number one drug is unquestionably the deadly delicious Häagen Dasz ice cream, which comes in little buckets with no less than half a litre of sticky, forbidden content in them.

Tags: <Dilbert> <Life> <Work> | Technorati: Dilbert, Life, Work

Blogging Outsiders

2006-04-10T01:23:00.000+02:00

My pal Technaton is disenchanted (German text) by the whole blogging thing:

[this is a rough translation, and I'm also paraphrasing here] I don't have any delusions that I'm a (great) member of this whole [blogging] scene. [...] Although everybody says that blogging is great because it is a channel for freely flowing expression, the reality is quite different: almost nobody just writes for themselves ("just like that"), but almost everybody writes to get more readers.

Yeah, blogging is really great, because there are many useless tools that are supposed to help us in an unspecified manner. Basically, we took the traditional message board idea and turned it into something less useful. Thanks, dear inventor of blogging, you created a whole new market for services!

Not entirely different is this piece by another blogger whom I also like, this time attacking the problem from a more social point of view: (Outside, tapping on fogged-up windows)

Blogging is a social phenomenon, and as such it’s defined by the same rules that govern other social phenomena. And those rules mean that sometimes some of us are left standing out in the cold, tapping on the glass, wishing with all our might that somebody would glance up, see us and invite us in.

I think those posts have more in common than a casual glance suggests. Technaton is right that message boards provide a simple and working mechanism for communication. But blogs are not supposed to replace that. People were blogging before those things were officially called blogs - back then it was called "writing a column" or "having a personal homepage". Then came the whole concept of syndication and that combined with better publication tools created the dimension of the blogosphere as it is today. The component that drives the 'sphere as whole is undoubtedly a social one. I use that term loosely, because I think that subscribing to content is also a basic social interaction, as well as participating in the actual discussion.

So why should anyone blog? YMMV, but I'd probably not write about the same stuff in any other medium. And I'm not writing for "my" readers specifically. I write about the stuff I care about. Even if I'd have zero readers, I'd still write. At the most basic level, a blog is just a book of days. This is my "tech book of days". I have other blogs for other stuff. If anyone reads it, fine. If people like it or hate it, swell!

I realize this statement is a far shot from what most corporate bloggers consider acceptable. They have to "get the word out", show some "transparency", and they have to prove that they're "Web 2.0" people somehow. And that's OK, too. But that doesn't represent most bloggers. As I see it, most are just dudes and dudettes writing stuff down, talking aimlessly among themselves.

Message boards have a different publication mechanism. And that works, too. You can even combine the two and you get something like Channel 9 or SlashDot. They're not obsolete. But blogging is freeform publishing - whereas discussions on message boards are more tightly controlled bursts of discussion, most typically among members of a small (or even closed) community.

That reminds me of two things. First, Technaton, please continue to blog. I believe the essay format suits you well. The other is, I'm sorry I haven't yet posted on your message board ;-)

Tags: <Blog> <Blogging> <Society> <Buzzwords> | Technorati: Blog, Blogging, Society, Buzzwords

YellowTab Bancrupt?

2006-04-10T00:33:00.000+02:00

The company that develops the Zeta operating system, YellowTab may (or may not) be in financial trouble. At this point it's unclear whether it's just the result of a convoluted legal fight with an ex employee or if the German software maker is actually going down. An official press release is going to shed light on the issue in a few days.

It would be a real shame if the rumors were really true. I've met with Bernd Korz in the past, he is a really dedicated developer and overall nice guy. I've also been to yT's headquarters and can attest that those guys have really been working their asses off to turn their vision into a great product. It's not easy, being a little German software company. So let's hope everything works out for Bernd and his team. If it doesn't, I can imagine they'll move on to something else and it's going to be great.

Tags: <Zeta> <BeOS> <Software> <YellowTab> | Technorati: Zeta, BeOS, Software, YellowTab

One Sentence With Vista, Boot Camp, Cringely, And The Mob In It?

2006-04-10T00:13:00.000+02:00

I didn't realize I was unknowingly jumping on the popular bandwagon when I attacked Cringely for making what I perceived as absurd predictions. Turns out, his latest rant on Boot Camp and Windows wasn't so well received in Redmond. This comes at a time when people are suddenly discovering large holes in his credibility. When Scoble joins the chorus, that's pretty much the last straw you need to see the momentum of opinion here.

First, I'd like to re-iterate how much I hate blogs and news articles that contain little besides some awfully over-the-top speculation that is shoved down our throat as fact or at least as well-informed opinion. I doesn't matter if it's Dvorak or Cringely or anybody else. Those pieces are like the blogosphere's equivalent of whiny little children desperately clamoring to get attention. And it works, too. Don't get me wrong, I love a good piece of speculation. But if it's presented as a high-quality piece of punditry, that's anyther matter entirely.

On the other hand, we have this weird mechanism in the blogosphere where we actually reward personal attacks. We value the opinion of people who hate us highly. We are ganging up on people instead of critizing ideas. Is that really the Naked Conversation, how it's supposed to be?

Actually, as his columns go, I've read much worse stuff from Cringely in the last years. Back when everybody was busy nodding and applauding him.

Tags: <Cringely> <Windows> <BootCamp> <Apple> <Vista> <Dvorak> <Mac> | Technorati: Cringely, Windows, BootCamp, Apple, Vista, Dvorak, Mac

Please, World, Prove John C. Dvorak Wrong

2006-04-07T21:35:00.000+02:00

So, erm, guess what - Apple is moving towards Windows afterall. Behold the glorious Boot Camp, entering stage left. Reactions in general have been quite positive. Unquestionably Apple has boosted the perceived value of their shiny MacIntels with this maneuver. But it has also lowered the value of OS X. Let's not kid ourselves here, Boot Camp will eat into the installed base of Mac OS rather than facilitate the migration of Windows users to the Mac platform.

Installing Windows will be the first step every newbie users performs, just because they are already used to the platform, and all their friends have Windows, and because they think this is how a computer is supposed to work. Remember the days when you could order Intel machines with QDOS on them (maybe that's still going on) for people who already got a Windows license? Yeah, Mac OS is going to be the next QDOS. Congratulations. Unless Apple opens up on the other side and ships Mac OS for generic PCs, which is not going to happen.

This may be the start of a trend that completely undermines the value of OS X, a trend that may well end with its extenction, just as John C. Dvorak predicted (the same prediction for which I essentially called him a moron).

Is this an example of incredibly short-sighted marketing on Apple's part, or will this be remembered as the move of sheer brilliance that drives the mainstream to the Mac? Well, let's just hope Steve and Phil know what they're doing here. Me... I believe software is where it's at. Microsoft understands that. Apple maybe not so much? As exiting as "Apple - the iPod company" or "Apple - your favorite PC vendor" may sound, it's just not the same...

Epitafios

2006-03-28T03:10:00.000+02:00

Hey, I haven't blogged about TV in a while. It would be easy to write about the Galactica season finale, since everyone seems to be doing it right now... For example, I thought the last half hour was a drastically brilliant idea, but it was executed so appallingly bad that I just don't want to talk about it. But, nah!

I just completed the finale of Epitafios, a fairly basic serial killer story in thirteen acts, that - as blogger Andrés Duque puts it - is sort of a mix between Seven and CSI. While it wasn't an innovative blockbuster by any count, watching the story about Bruno the serial killer develop was somehow very captivating for me. Andrés is right of course when he laments the killer's apparent lack of personality. But for me, the series was more about Renzo, the fucked-up grumpy cop, and his friend Laura anyway.

What I liked was the overall feel of the story, the atmosphere. Also, until the 8th episode or so, the killings themselves are very innovative, and gruesomely fascinating. I loved Marina (played by Celia Roth), the profiler cop chick who - get this - regularly plays russian roulette with shady men for money. The whole story has a somewhat supernatural feel to it, without actually being supernatural. Well, except for Marina who apparently cannot die by gunshot wounds, which was quite a nice touch. I absolutely loved how fucked up everyone was.

What was not to like? I felt the story lost steam around mid-season. Maybe a more vicious or creative Bruno character would have helped. Maybe having just one villain in the piece was ultimately not quite enough, even if he was clearly much better at this than all the cops and other characters combined. The ending feels kind of stitched on as an afterthought. Without any kind of natural story flow, Bruno singlehandedly abducts Laura and thus ends the whole thing.

Then again, not having a happy ending kind of saved the finale. My only gripe is that not every last one of them died. I also think more could have been done with Marina. But even so it was traumatic and horrible, in a good way! The last scene showing Renzo standing in the sunshine at the grave, holding a gun to his head nevertheless was a strong ending for a story that could have been made more engaging in the final stretches.

Now go and watch it!

That Vista Thing

2006-03-27T13:00:00.000+02:00

While Scoble is bravely fighting against the stupid rumor mills about that ridiculous 60% code rewrite for Vista, I think they should probably be spending time on different things that actually have an impact. I know, reading crap about your favorite product on the internet is hurtful. But then linking to it and throwing a hissy fit is not going to help much. People on all sides should spend more energy on discussing Vista's features and Microsoft's relationship with its users than creating and responding to absurd "inside" information. Yes, making absurd claims gets you street cred in the blogger community. We all know that. But maybe it's time to stop catering to people who are just being controversial to get noticed. (Why oh why do I get the feeling of history repeating itself, didn't we have this "productive conversatin vs. egomaniacal flame wars" discussion on bulletin boards and forums just a few years ago? How ...quaint!)

Ship early, ship often
With so many years between major Windows releases, the "ship early, ship often" paradigma is clearly not Microsoft's favorite right now. There are pros and cons to this. Apple, for instance, releases OS upgrades at a very fast rate in comparison. Thus, user expectations never run that high, and in the end, people are often surprised (in a good way) even by small upgrades and tweaks. Vista, on the other hand, has generated tremendously high expectations with a long release cycle and all the hype around it. The sad thing is, it doesn't matter how good a product it actually is, Vista is never going to live up to those expectations. Yes, they are that high. Bottom line: MS doesn't know how to play the expectations game (remember the latest Ballmer non-event, anyone?). If they were going to have a development cycle that long, they should have been consistent, instead of backpedaling later and cutting features like crazy. When developing a product, do either "ship early, ship often" xor do "we'll ship when it's ready". Don't do both in a half-assed way.

Vista Appeal
There are lots of reasons why people are dissatisfied with Windows. There also are a lot of reasons why Windows is still the leading OS on the desktop. Both of these factors are bad news for Vista. Right now, Vista's biggest competitor is the installed base of XP. XP does a lot of the things people care about. XP is going to be usable and sufficient for a long time still. It will run today's and most of tomorrow's applications just fine. It's a work horse that's easy to configure and it doesn't get in the user's way of getting her stuff done.

Right now, I don't feel the same about Vista. Speaking from a typical user's point of view, I don't know much, but what I do know isn't that appealing:

Vista is a DRM'd operating system to the core, users will get crippled functionality - why, it's brought to you by the same people who believe Fair Use should be outlawed.
The system requirements will be quite high. The fact that most of those newly required CPU cycles actually go to a presentation layer that does not provide that much more functionality and doesn't do very well in basic usability scenarios doesn't make me feel very appreciative. However, we don't know yet how this will play out when the OS is released.
The constant trimming and tweaking of the UI so far suggests that it will actually be harder to use than previous versions of windows. That may be especially true for technically minded users. E.g., from what I've seen, the number of clicks required for many tasks has gone way up, compared to XP. Slapping a wizard on all features isn't the solution to your usability problems. It actually makes them worse. Also, I don't want to spend even more time locating advanced features that are buried deep in the UI - and I don't want my computer to keep wise-assing me in a "cute" way.

The Future
The way things are looking right now, Vista will be an economic success, if only because all new PCs are going to come preloaded with it. It's going to be the new standard. Also, it's clear that there are going to be many cool new features in it - as much as it's clear that there will be a load of additional bullshit in there that does nothing more than harassing the user. All in all, things are going to be OK.

But here's the thing: Microsoft could have done so much better. It could have stopped people who are already weary of the alarming trends in DRM and "Trustworthy Computing" from drifting further away. It could have done something to convince developers like myself that they will actually have some kind of control over their computing experience. Right now, Vista is being set up as a forced upgrade that - all in all - will make a lot of people hate Windows even more, but it's still not that far over the edge to make huge droves of them run OS X or KDE.

"Vista, it's the standard, suck it" is not a winning strategy.

Just Call It CRAP

2006-03-27T12:10:00.000+02:00

Instant classic: David Berlind from ZDNet coined a cute new acronym for DRM: Content, Restriction, Annulment and Protection, or CRAP for short:

CRAP stands for Content, Restriction, Annulment and Protection. It's my catchy buzz-phrase for a technology that's really called DRM. Now DRM technically stands for Digital Rights Management, and it's a rather cancerous technology that technology vendors are actually building into most of the products that we're buying today.

Via Miguel de Icaza's excellent blog - why didn't MS hire him when they had the chance? Oh, never mind...

It's a really, really bad hack.

2006-03-23T14:20:00.000+01:00

Just one last one, before I go: there's a real piece of gold in the ever-entertaining stream of bad code on the Daily WTF:

/* This is bad. Reaaly bad. It's a really, really bad hack. If you're an employee of
* Intertrode Communication, then I'm really, really sorry that you have to maintain
* this. I was honestly planning on removing this tomorrow, but I've been known to
* forget things like this. It happens.
*
* So here's the thing. I can't seem to figure out why the AccountId variable isn't
* set. I've looked and looked, but I gotta leave now. Anyway, I've found that I can
* just grab the AccountID from the debugging logs. I suppose that to fix it, you'd
* have to locate where it's clearing out the ID.
*
* Again, I'm sorry.
*/

Trionic Cite

2006-03-23T13:43:00.000+01:00

I'd like you to know what we've been working on for the last few weeks and months: our team has been developing a web content management system called Cite. It's a pretty simple and flexible system that helps people implementing and managing their websites. We believe we have found a good way to address the needs of site operators who want a system that integrates a blogging engine and the more "traditional" tree-like website administration.

Obviously there is still a lot of work to do, but I'd like to invite you to take Cite for a test drive and let me know what you think of it! At this point, user feedback is the most important factor for us.

In other news, I'm off to Italy for the weekend now, and I'm not taking my laptop with me! It's going to be interesting to see whether I'll survive without net access for two days :-) Fortunately, I'll still have my cell phone so I haven't gone completely luddite yet!

Windows XP Running on the Mac

2006-03-23T12:29:00.000+01:00

Apparently, loading up your Intel-based Mac with Windows XP is all the rage these days. Am I the only one who's not getting it? Without the OSX operating system, those new Macs are just Core Duo/Solo units with a fancy BIOS, aren't they? Also, depending on who you ask, your Mac may melt, not melt, explode, or launch off into space when running Windows...

Thanks for the image, Technaton, the original can be found at mathcaddy.com!

Using Blogger? No MSN Search Box for You!

2006-03-17T11:15:00.000+01:00

Channel 9 regular rjdohnert got a take-down email from Google because he put an MSN search box in his Blogger template:

I just checked my e-mail and I got a mail from Google this afternoon. Seems they are kinda ticked that I have an MSN Search box on my blogspot page and they are asking that I remove it. They say its a violation of their Terms of Service yet nowhere in their terms of service does it say its not permitted for me to do such. Looks like another thing to handle in the morning.

So much for not being evil? Or can anyone think of a technical reason for this?

As always when something like this comes up with any service or product, people instantly say: why don't you just switch to . Granted, the cost of switching apps is getting lower and lower. In case of Blogger, however, it is considerable because you can't just export your posts and import them somewhere else.

Tags: <Google> <MSN> <Channel9> | Technorati: Google, MSN, Channel9

OO Polymorphism Explained with Orifices

2006-03-16T17:04:00.000+01:00

My first NSFW (not safe for work) link, but I couldn't pass this up:

The problem with most computer science texts is the examples aren't interesting. Polymorphism isn't really hard to understand, but the examples are usually boring or difficult to understand. This is an alternative text which attempts to use a problem space that's already familiar to the college student to make the concepts of programming simple.

...Kuro5hin's balsamic vinigga explains the object oriented paradigma of polymorphism using childish high school speak for identifiers in the code. On the other hand, if you're already reading The BileBlog this style is probably not new to you!

Tags: <Software> <Development> <OO> <Polymorphism> | Technorati: Software, Development, OO, Polymorphism

Geez, Get a Decent Computer

2006-03-16T11:07:00.000+01:00

Bill Gates publicly mocks the (in)famous 100$ hand-cranked computer Google and MIT (among others) are trying to make available for ~~third world~~ developing countries:

"If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type,"

He's not incorrect, however. You can't help wondering about the thing's capabilities. How did we get the idea that people in developing countries don't need proper displays, memory, or data storage? On the other hand, it seems that Bill would be more upset by the fact that it doesn't run Windows, eh.

Tags: <Bill Gates> <PC> <Technology> <Google> | Technorati: Bill Gates, PC, Technology, Google

How to Survive a Robot Uprising

2006-03-16T01:52:00.000+01:00

I'll definitely go and buy this book: How to Survive a Robot Uprising, especially after seing Daniel H. Wilson on Google Video. Shame about the part about how to treat laser wounds, though. So, yeah, I guess you should be suspicious if your robot frequently talks about human killing and makes repeated stabbing movements afterall.

In any case, I guess the inevitable robot uprising is going to contain much less Cylons than people think. But whatever it's going to be, our new overlords will probably be living on the internet...

(The cute little robot on the right was taken from =s0mat-)

Tags: <Robots> <Galactica> <Killswitch> | Technorati: Robots, Galactica, Killswitch

Double Helix Nebula

2006-03-16T01:21:00.000+01:00

I admit that I'm a total sucker for deep space imagery, especially nebula. Yahoo has a blurp about the first time anyone photographed a DNA-like double spiral nebula formation.

"We know the galactic center has a strong magnetic field that is highly ordered and that the magnetic field lines are oriented perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy," Morris said. "If you take these magnetic field lines and twist them at their base, that sends what is called a torsional wave up the magnetic field lines.

Pretty neat, right?

Tags: <Space> <Nebula> | Technorati: Space, Nebula

ICQ - Again

2006-03-16T00:46:00.000+01:00

I've quitted and then re-installed ICQ over and over again for many years now. It has a horrible, clunky user interface. It takes ages to navigate to the functions you want. But somehow, I always gravitate back for one reason or another. MSN's contacts list sucks, Skype is OK but I only know 2 people who are using it, and Yahoo Messenger is a general pox in the ass. I'd be doing IRC, but honestly, I think its time is over.

ICQ it is, then! Plus, they have some cool toys to play around with. For example, there's Instant Match, where you can secretly give any of your friends an affection rating. And should someone on your contacts list feel the same about you, both parties get notified by the system and live happily ever after! Because you know. Learning that your friend has secretly being in love with you for a decade or something is really what everybody wants to know. (Well if they don't tell you to your face, maybe there's a good reason for that?) Maybe we could also have a similar feature for hate-based relationships. I'd call it The Festivus Match or something...

Tags: <ICQ> <Chat> <Festivus> <Geeklove> | Technorati: ICQ, Chat, Festivus, Geeklove

Blogging Roundup

2006-03-15T13:34:00.000+01:00

In about one month, I'll have been blogging for two years now. This is kind of the time to look back and reflect just a little. I think there is no blogging mistake known to man that I didn't commit, but hey, all in all it's been quite a fun ride. Also, there have been a few lessons along the way: (man, I seem to love bullet points today)

Blog often, get noticed, stay informed. Yeah, I didn't exactly follow that rule, but maybe it would have been a good idea.
Write for yourself first, think about "your audience" later. I'm not sure this is a good lesson to follow, but lately as a reader I've been getting sick of mass-output blogs that exist only to attract attention and traffic, they've been the least useful to read in my experience.
You're not going to be one of The Club. Unless you're famous or put massive resources and connections behind your blog. Most people don't blog to get famous, they blog to write about the stuff they care about. I can't say if blogging is worth it if you've got only, say, one reader. It certainly is for me.
Don't go begging for links. This I have never done, but once in a while I get some dubious requests. Don't get me wrong, I love it if you drop me a mail and say "hey, I've written this cool article, check it out!", but just asking for links is pretty much useless.
Taking a break is OK. This one is probably not supported by many bloggers, the trend is to be always available and on top of things, otherweise you'll be forgotten faster than a technorati listing. But if you're like me, chances are, there'll be periods where you don't have the time or energy to blog properly. So don't, it's OK. Unless blogging is your job, it's perfectly OK to let it all go for a while.
We'll all be blogging one day. Blogging is perfect to get your opinion out there, to organize your thoughts, to stay in touch with your friends. I'd love to live in a world where everyone is blogging, so I promote it to my friends (less of 5% of whom are actually doing it).

So, here's to another two years! ;-)

Tags: <Blog> <Rants> | Technorati: Blog, Rants

The Complete Elimination Of The Filesystem

2006-03-15T12:31:00.000+01:00

The consensus seems to be that filesystems should soon be nothing more than an atavism, a footnote in the history of the dark ages of computing:

The average user can't handle hierarchical structures
Tree structures are not memorable
Filesystem UIs are cumbersome and unproductive
Thinking up filenames and folder names is beyond many users
People don't think in tree structures

Ease of use vs. dumbing it down
On the other hand, I don't think that we should try to build computing around "real world" metaphors at all costs. People often say that UI design needs to try harder to "get" the user, not the other way around - which is true up to a point. Let's not forget that the computer is a tool in its own right, so you will need skills to use it properly, you will have to invest time and effort to learn. Creating UIs that make people with no computing experience productive is desirable. But making this the primary UI paradigm is going to take a whole lot of effectiveness and power out of the PC platform.

A popular example of this is probably the Microsoft Office UI. It has gotten to the point where I'm looking for a way to switch off all the nice little assistants and auto-correction functions, because - while they may be great for, say 6 year olds writing a letter to their grandma - they are a constant harassment for users who know what they're doing. The UI thinks it knows more about my tasks than I do...

So what about the filesystem?
Maybe as a developer I'm biased, but the filesystem tree is actually pretty useful. It compartmentalizes information. It shows you where your stuff is and gives you the ability to group similar stuff in categories. That said, it's also obvious that the tree doesn't represent the whole truth, we've known this for a long time now. While the late Jef Raskin wants us to eliminate the pesky filesystem once and for all, it's probably time to think more about how the hell we are going to find all the little pieces of information we're churning out on a daily basis, ever again?

Obviously, search queries and rich metadata are the answer to this problem but nobody has cared to implement it properly until recently. Yeah, there's been BeOS, but honestly, who's running BeOS right now (except maybe these guys)? And while we're at it: Microsoft had the opportunity to get this right ages ago, but all we got was this annoying dog!

Tags: <Software> <Filesystem> <Raskin> | Technorati: Software, Filesystem, Raskin

Will Apple Switch To Windows?

2006-02-22T15:31:00.000+01:00

PC Magazine's top pundit, John C. Dvorak, muses about Apple ditching Mac OS X in favor of Windows. A theory that has about as much merit as the stuff that usually comes from Cringely. Like the typical Cringely Theory, it is somewhat outrageous, insubstantial, and a little bit braindead - but it also has an eerie realistic feeling to it. So it's like a Hieronymus Bosch painting with quotes of Dilbert's Pointy Haired Boss as subtitles.

It's a theory that not only makes absolutely no sense whatsoever in light of the fact that Apple already spent insane amounts of money developing a decent OS that actually works, it's also in total disregard of the true source of value in Apple computers. That value just isn't in the hardware, even Apple itself recently began to acknowledge the fact when they made the decision to shell out commodity hardware Made-In-China with expensive metallic fruit emblems tacked on them from now on. While Apple hardware is still neat, and is still high quality, it's hardly where the value lies. There's just so much more that can be done with software alone today, it doesn't make sense for an innovation company to stay away from that.

On the other hand, if Dvorak is right (maybe he's got insider info that us normal folks don't), this move on Apple's part would make sure that its computer business will be irrelevant within a few months. Can you imagine Apple as another Dell? Can you imagine Steve Jobs standing on the stage in San Francisco telling a crowd of enthusiasts that he decided to stop making cool computer stuff, but that he will instead focus on selling songs and manufacturing cool case mods for Wintel PCs?

Yeah, me neither.

Tags: <Apple> <Microsoft> <Windows> <Software> | Technorati: Apple, Microsoft, Windows, Software

John Spencer Died

2005-12-17T01:48:00.000+01:00

Offtopic, I know, but I just read that John Spencer, one of my favourite actors recently, just died of a heart attack. The weird thing is that his West Wing persona also had a heart attack, which is apparently not the only parallel between them. I don't know what to say, except that I'm really going to miss him on the screen. In one of the articles it says that he really enjoyed his job, which I think was more than apparent when you saw him in a scene. Thank you for your great work John, you will be missed!

Tags: <TV> <West Wing> <Spencer> | Technorati: TV, West Wing, Spencer

UI Design And Understanding The User

2005-12-14T12:45:00.000+01:00

Apparently Greg of the Greg's Head UI design blog had a little argument about Gnome usability with Linus Torvalds. Quotes of choice:

Greg: The majority of end-users want a simple printer dialog. In fact most people will just hit the Print button without changing any settings. These users are not 'idiots' they just have better things to do then futz around with printer settings.

Linus: It's a total logical fallacy to think that the intersection of two majorities would still be a majority. It is pretty damn rare, in fact, because these things are absolutely not correlated. And the technical term for somebody who claims to do user interface design and not understand this fact is a "F***ING IDIOT". And this has _nothing_ to do with "technical users". Even totally non-technical users care about something. In fact, it might be their printer, and having a way to set the paper type and resolution by hand.

I think this is interesting, not just because Linus shows how representative for the "majority" of the Linux community he actually is in matters of politeness, but because we rarely get to see the clash of those two extremes in UI design so close together.

Greg states that UI design has to be simple, enabling a fast learning curve, and the main job of the UI is to get out of the user's way - especially if no additional input should be required to perform a task. Linus on the other hand argues that you cannot "dumb down" the UI like that and still expect it to be powerful or even useful. Interestingly, they both have a lot of common ground, because at least they recognize that the job of any UI is to enable the users to kick ass and to behave in a way that conforms well to their expectations.

Of course they're both horribly misled when it comes to actual execution: if you really can't set the behavior of the mouse buttons in Gnome, that's just as bad as the awful clutter in KDE that makes you want to throw up your lunch across the screen while you're searching for a certain function in the UI that could be hidden in about 2 million different dialogs.

But hey, it's not as if Microsoft is any better when it comes to recognizing user expectations. Says Raymond Chen:

But eventually you reach a point where the efforts in convincing people not to do something dangerous outweighs the cost of just making it less dangerous. (Even though this may annoy those who genuinely want to perform that dangerous activity.)

Raymond, if whole generations of users expected to see a calendaring app when they click on the taskbar's clock, it's time to stop thinking about how you can make it harder for them to screw up the system settings - it's time to give them a freaking calendaring app!

Tags: <Software> <Linux> <Microsoft> <*nix> <UI> <Design> | Technorati: Software, Linux, Microsoft, *nix, UI, Design

Clever, Bold Xbox 360 Ad

2005-11-30T08:40:00.000+01:00

There's a hilarious Xbox 360 ad that, sadly, has been canned - but as is customary nowadays, you can of course go and watch a bootlegged version of it on some shady website! (OK, actually it's not quite that shady, but I'm sure there will be legal problems of some sort.) I understand why they can't air it though. It's bold, it's not politically correct, it WILL make certain people very angry. In other words: it's a pretty great ad!

Tags: <Microsoft> <Xbox360> <Xbox> | Technorati: Microsoft, Xbox360, Xbox

Always On vs. Offline Web Functionality

2005-11-26T15:05:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was the first time a client actually had the same thought in that direction. See, our company produces this web-based content management system. It's working great, but this customer told me that he can't use the system to update content on their website just when he has the most time on his hands: while travelling by plane or train. Wouldn't it be nice to have a local version on his laptop that allows him to edit stuff while on the go? Of course, the system would have to synchronize data as soon as a network connection is available, though. So yeah, I'm actually thinking about adding this kind of functionality to our web-based product: a complete, installable "offline" environment with sync capabilities. Only problem is, I still have to get around to implement a ton of regular features, so this will probably have to wait until Christmas or so.

On the bright side, I got a spanking new UMTS/GPRS card for my TabletPC, so I can be always online (at least in theory) now! No more awkward begging for network connectivity at client meetings..!

Tags: <Web2.0> <offline> <Ajax> <Buzzwords> | Technorati: Web2.0, offline, Ajax, Buzzwords

Email: Not Worth It?

2005-11-21T11:43:00.000+01:00

James of Work-related Blogs and News writes about some controversy regarding the fact that email actually makes you less productive (BBC forum). Apparently, Bob Geldof started this at a conference recently. OK, Sir Geldof, here's how it is:

The Phone
I spend a huge percentage of my day on the phone with clients. Phone conversations (and worse: phone conferences) are overall an entirely useless exercise. Yes, it's more personal and it feels more direct, but let's just face the fact that people won't actually remember any of the stuff we've been discussing on the phone. If you depend on phone calls to resolve complex issues, you're screwed. So you have to keep protocols of the conversations that you have to mail out to everyone, just to make sure we're "all on the same page". Phone call content is dodgy, not easily reproducable, and the technology just doesn't scale.

Dead Trees
My office is totally littered with useless letters, bureaucratic crap, and let's not forget: endless, useless specs and meeting protocols that people keep sending or faxing to me - most of which is already outdated when it arrives and soon has to be replaced by another handy 200-page printout of the next version. Paper is not easily searchable, it wastes a lot of time just to administer it, it too doesn't scale well to many participants, and it almost always contains stale information.

Meetings
Don't get me wrong, sometimes having a meeting is a good thing. Especially if well-prepared individuals have a lively discussion, decisions can be made efficiently and quickly. Then, of course, is that other kind of meeting. Ten bored people in a room, quietly wishing for their work day to end already, slowly torturing each other to death. And, as with phone conversations, someone has to actually keep account of the stuff that was discussed, and this has to be sent out to everyone.

Email
It's easy to archive, searchable, can be filtered, topics can easily be scaled to additional people, it doesn't take a lot of time to bring some points across. Everything is documented, for eternity. And the most important aspect: email doesn't interrupt me. The truth is that most of the daily stuff can wait for 1-4 hours until I give it my attention. Interruptions are the single greatest productivity killer I have experienced. They're the source of those "what the **** have I been doing all day" days.

Repeat after me: emails are great, all hail the great email...

Tags: <Email> <Productivity> <Software> | Technorati: Email, Productivity, Software

Followup: What does Web 2.0 have to offer us offline?

2005-11-18T12:36:00.000+01:00

Sue Thomas quotes me and says:

And of course this extends to the fact that you can also only use it (a) when you understand what it is and how it works and (b) you are part of a culture which uses it. At the moment, this group is pretty tiny, and its future size likely to continue to be limited for some dozens if not hundreds of years. I'm one of the most cyber-optimistic people I know, but just occasionally my feet touch the ground, and this is one of those moments :)

Agreed. But consider that this group is pretty much the trend setter here, mainstream will most likely follow - in some form or another.

Has anyone considered this offline thing from a business perspective, by the way?

Tags: <Web2.0> <offline> <Ajax> <Buzzwords> | Technorati: Web2.0, offline, Ajax, Buzzwords

I'm the Ebert of Independent Film!

2005-11-18T11:39:00.000+01:00

Jonathan Woodall sez:

Although your thoughts about Gallows Hallow could be true and a genuine critigue of the film - all you do is share your rants without backing them up with significant examples from the film. Oh, and that cliche, evil vs good movie you make reference to - the Matrix - how much did that movie make??? Yeah, your criticism of Gallow's Hallow makes me want to watch the film, because you obviously are the Ebert of independent film!! (sarcasm intended)

How easy it is to offend people! OK Jonathan, I'm no film critic, either. But in fact, I do want you to go out and watch the movie, any kind of publicity is good publicity, right? See, they were very, very bad cliches and there was no trace of self-irony or re-interpretation of the stereotypical plot points to make it worthwhile for me. You mileage, as they say, may vary. Oh, and I love good vs. evil conflicts. If only the film had one in it!

By the way of being the Ebert, I just wanted to recommend the pseudo documentary series Pure Pwnage. Totally different genre, it's great! And, if you like more laid-back office-based irony, go ahead and watch Coudal Partners - which wasn't all that great overall but certainly entertaining enough.

Tags: <Movies> <Films> <Underground> <Pure Pwnage> | Technorati: Movies, Films, Underground, Pure Pwnage

The Dilbert Blog

2005-10-26T14:17:00.000+02:00

Scott Adams, the creator of "it's-funny-because-it's-true" Dilbert, is blogging! I especially loved the article about the cop and the gun, it's wonderfully american! :-)

Tags: <Blogs> <Dilbert> <Adams> | Technorati: Blogs, Dilbert, Adams

Linux Conspiracy Mash-Up

2005-10-25T00:09:00.000+02:00

This is almost better than watching a rerun of the X Files: apparently, Bill Gates himself invented Linux and then erased all the evidence! It's true if it's on the internet!

I can see it cleary: Steve Jobs as the cigarette-smoking-man, Commander Taco and the Slashdot nerds as the Lone Gunmen, and tadelste can be Special Agent Mulder. I guess, I'll have to be Scully, then.

Tags: <Linux> <Microsoft> <Conspiracy> | Technorati: Linux, Microsoft, Conspiracy

Followup: Buzzwords ...er Web 2.0

2005-10-24T12:14:00.000+02:00

Hey, I found someone I agree with on all this over-the-top Web 2.0 stuff, it's my hero Joel Spolsky:

The term Web 2.0 particularly bugs me. It's not a real concept. It has no meaning. It's a big, vague, nebulous cloud of pure architectural nothingness. When people use the term Web 2.0, I always feel a little bit stupider for the rest of the day.

You're not alone here. That said, I *do* dig web technologies and all the cool stuff you can do with the browser. I believe we're going to see more of these services in the future. And that's why we're going to need better offline capabilities.

Tags: <Web2.0> <Blogs> <Software> <Computers and Internet> | Technorati: Web2.0, Blogs, Software, Computers and Internet

Mossberg Takes DRM Discussion Mainstream

2005-10-20T21:22:00.000+02:00

Via Techdirt: it seems that Walter Mossberg is the first "mainstream" (tech) journalist in a long while to take on DRM with the consumer in mind, where all the others have done little more than quote Bill Gates, RIAA, and probably Disney. Quote of choice (as usual, totally out of context):

Even if you think the record labels and movie studios are stupid and greedy, as many do, that doesn't entitle you to steal their products. If your local supermarket were run by people you didn't like, and charged more than you thought was fair, you wouldn't be entitled to shoplift Cheerios from its shelves.

On the other hand, I believe that consumers should have broad leeway to use legally purchased music and video for personal, noncommercial purposes in any way they want -- as long as they don't engage in mass distribution. They should be able to copy it to as many personal digital devices as they own, convert it to any format those devices require, and play it in whatever locations, at whatever times, they choose.

Well, it's a start. Maybe people do begin to recognize that broad and strict artificial limitations on content won't be the much hoped-for windfall for media companies as they envision it to be.

On the other hand, consumers are considerably sheep-like: Chances are for example, if they cannot view their videos anywhere and anyway they like, they just assume that it's a technical limitation and live with it. This again will later drive sales of devices that are DRM-approved and "enabled", so BillG's big media circus gets publicly lauded in the second round yet again, this time for selectively allowing certain ways of content use back into the mix - plus a nice fee to go with it.

"Of course it plays in Windows" indeed. Is this the future?

Tags:

The Advertising Agency

2005-10-20T20:34:00.000+02:00

Time for a quick endorsement: I really love The Advertising Agency blog! It's a well-written dilbertesque outlook on the daily screw-ups of an unnamed marketing company. there is hardly a post in there that doesn't remind me of a scene I had to witness myself at least once before.

Tag: <Blog> | Technorati: Blog

PSA: Blogging Engine / Fixes

2005-10-20T20:12:00.000+02:00

Search
Now that I'll be switching to another blogging software soon, I finally fixed the search on this blog! Fulltext search is officially working again.

Comments
I'm thinking of switching off the comments again, but not sure yet. Thing is, there is literally one real comment on all 150 or so entries. The rest is spam. It's tedious to delete it. I dunno what I'm waiting for. Maybe it's the faint hope that someone will some day actually read this stuff and give me a good verbal spanking for the crap I wrote. Is it really worth the trouble?

New Engine
It's not that I hate the old engine. I use CheesyBlog, which is a cool little program in its own right. It allowed me to customize and tweak everything, which - apart from not having been hacked once yet - is probably its single best property. But since we are currently developing a web content management system at my new company, it's probably time to eat our own dogfood soon.

Here's what I'm looking for in my next blog engine:
- import all old entries and metadata
- better tracking of real referrers
- comment moderation and spam protection
- function that automatically registers when other bloggers write about an article of mine (maybe I'll get that info from Technorati somehow) (and: yes, I have indeed heard about Trackback, I just don't like it)
- better content editing

Integration with company site?
Who knows, maybe I'll eat my words and integrate my blog with my company site anyway... Yeah, maybe not.

Let's see!

PS: I'm not doing the Scoble thing and switch to another URL, or even worse: several URLs. I think I agreed with him back in the time when he said something like "never change your URL". Then again, I don't have the luxury of losing a few thousand readers here and there while still being relevant, either... :-)

Tags: <PSA> <Blog> | Technorati: PSA, Blog

Underground Films: Gallows Hollow

2005-10-20T19:39:00.000+02:00

There's this cool indie film site where you can actually watch movies online: http://www.undergroundfilm.org, so I went and watched Gallows Hollow - it's definetely worth mentioning this movie (even though totally offtopic). I have seen many strange undergrund short films in my time... Man, this is probably the worst movie I've ever seen (OK, maybe just the worst I've seen in a while)!

I mean it's cringeworthy, head-repeatedly-on-table-bashingly bad - in that respect maybe not entirely unlike like the last Apprentice episode. It's mind-numbingly clichee'd, it's badly filmed, the acting is the absolute worst, and the editing is just ...not good. Wow, that was really entertaining! Thank you, dear Gallows Hollow people, for making me laugh like this :-)

I hope they make a sequel, how about Gallows Hollow - "Return Of The Gutter Girl" or Gallows Hollow - "Do You Believe In Evil? I Mean TRUE!!!1! Evil, Mr. Anderson?" or something...

Tag: <TV> | Technorati: TV

Top Ten Blog Design Mistakes

2005-10-19T20:24:00.000+02:00

Via Jeff Atwood: the official top ten blog design mistakes, brought to you by a person of authority (in this case, Jakob Nielsen who, incidentally, sells expensive ebooks on how to remedy such mistakes):

No Author Biographies

No Author Photo

Nondescript Posting Titles

Links Don't Say Where They Go

Classic Hits are Buried

The Calendar is the Only Navigation

Irregular Publishing Frequency

Mixing Topics

Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss

Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

I know I pretty much violate all of them. Yes, that makes this site something of a badly-done non-blog. But hey, at least I added a picture of my ugly noggin, so unsuspecting visitors have something to run screaming from when they come in droves via Google, on their holy quests for handy things like "linux sucks" or "vegetable porn" or whatever phase I'm ranked highly for today.

Tags: <Blog> <Design> | Technorati: Blog, Design

Buzzwords 2.0: Let's Talk About Momentum

2005-10-19T01:01:00.000+02:00

Web 2.0 Or: "That's great but how can I use this offline?"

I'm not really sure where it came from, but if there's one thing we've learned not to underestimate it's the Big Mo', right? Maybe it was the Web 2.0 Conference, haven't you heard: it's the place to be right now! Quick, don't miss this opportunity to position your company at the cutting edge of technology!

Erm, yeah, so what is Web 2.0, exactly? Well, there is some discussion about that, so it's probably safer to define by exclusion: (let me paraphrase here) whatever modern gunk you think Web 2.0 is about, that is not Web 2.0. I like those recursive definitions, you know, simply because of the geek appeal.

So, what we're left with - after all this recursive exclusion - is probably a mixture of something between web technology evolution and the effects of universal adoption. (It's easy to forget the days when the web wasn't omnipresent, but I was there. I think.) From all this comes some renewed interest in things you can do with the web browser, which, as some people only recently discovered, is probably humankind's most advanced application framework right now. And rightfully so.

Label this Web 2.0, or whatever, it's just great to see it work. But there is an obvious drawback. It doesn't matter how great a web app is, you can obviously only use it while you're online. I know, it seems trivial, because aren't we always online? Doesn't that come with the Human 2.0 toolkit? No! We're not always online! Everytime I'm riding a plane (=they really frown on wireless usage), to being abroad (=no matter what they say, roaming fees can actually kill you if you have a weak heart), to bad connectivity (=try visiting aunt Martha at the ranch some time, and good luck with your GMail account).

For me, it's clear that we're going to need some local capabilities for this great platform. And I don't think complex JavaScript wizardry is going to be at the heart of that. What I believe we need is some sort standardized local server package where you can install "offline" web apps that sync to an online service once you're connected. The reasoning goes like this:

One of the cool things about web apps is that you don't need to install anything. It's great because you can drop by from anywhere anytime and access your stuff. The price you pay is that you need to be online for that. That's why your run-off-the-mill desktop apps aren't dead yet, even though they need to be installed locally (sometimes painfully so). We still use desktop apps mainly because of offline considerations, because of latency problems, and also bandwidth considerations.

Then again, we have this super application framework, the browser plus webserver plus database (hey, how about BWD?), and we're not using it for the desktop scenario at all. Even though it has all these interface capabilities and it's very productive for developers to creat applications with. I believe many online services could easily spawn an offline component that uses a large part of the code base, so it's also cost effective.

What do we need for this? Of course, people would need to download a runtime environment, just like Java or .NET. Let's say that includes some customized version of Apache, then throw in MySQL, PHP, Perl, Ruby, some lightweight Servlet Container. It would also need a safe mechanism for people to install and remove those offline web apps. The configuration would have to ensure that apps are compartmentized and need special permission to access anything but their own files. Let's take a wild guess here, that will be an installer file with about 20 to 30 MB. Doesn't sound unfeasible!

So why aren't we doing it? This solution would easily solve all the problems we currently have with online web apps (connectivity, latency, bandwidth), and we could still use this great technology framework. Well, the answer is probably again: momentum. It's clear that Microsoft and Apple don't want you to lose focus on classic desktop apps, because it undermines their operating system strategy. And I don't believe open source guys would exactly rejoice at this idea, either (because, you know, "we had this years ago", "if i want an app I just compile some source", "my linux machine already has this 'runtime' you speak of", lalalalala, and the ever-popular "hey, what's wrong with using csh/tcsh/bash?").

But give it momentum, and consumer demand makes it a reality!

Tags: <Web2.0> <Software> <Rants> | Technorati: Web2.0, Software, Rants

One more thing: TV over Internet...

2005-10-17T21:19:00.000+02:00

I've watched the fabulous Apple Special Event, too. It's about freaking time that someone offers those TV shows on the net. I don't think that much people would be downloading them illegally if there was a chance to actually go online and purchase an episode with the guaranteed quality and reliability that comes from such a distribution service. But alas, the very very small step that Apple took in that direction may already be in the process of being countered by the usual big media trolls that guard the well-known intellectual property bridges.

That said, the iTunes offer is a step in the right direction, but it still sucks. Right now, I can go to BitTorrent and download a non-DRM'ed episode that has, about, a million times better quality than the same one on iTunes. I mean 320x200 pixels? Come on! I haven't really tried it, but I guess the service is regionally restricted, too, so I bet I can't download the latest Lost ep from Europe, can I?

Here's something for the ABC partner who got so angry about the deal: create an online service that doesn't suck, and save your business in the process! If I could download an episode for 2-3$ from anywhere in the world, with HD quality, in an open format, at the time of the actual airing, I'd gladly do it. Forget advertising revenue! Advertising sucks - it sucks for networks, it sucks for the viewers, and it sucks for the companies who are placing the ads! You don't need advertising! Get the money directly from the viewers! I'm begging you, please take my money! Why won't anybody take it?

Tags: <TV> <Apple> | Technorati: TV, Apple

If Microsoft Never Existed...

2005-10-17T20:26:00.000+02:00

Via Download Squad's Marc Perton: Loyd Case at ExtremeTech paints an interesting picture of a world without MS in it: a dystopian nightmare in which PCs are still running CP/M, Apple's 15% market share has made it so complacent that its software barely functions, and software makers are still charging $1,000 for office suites featuring non-graphical versions of WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3.

Well, that's entertaining but not very realistic. NO WAY we'd still be using text mode console interfaces without Microsoft's historic intervention! Of course it's true that MS' biggest accomplishment is probably the unification of worldwide IT infrastructure and technology, though. And of course, that created a very interesting mass market dynamic that drove the feature count up and prices down. But where would we be without it?

There have been countless companies that couldn't get their products into the mainstream, simply because there wasn't enough space left to breathe and expand. Had Bill Gates never made that fateful deal with IBM, we would probably have a lot more of those early players around. That means while the overall quality and performance of software and hardware would be firmly below today's level, there'd still be lots of innovative companies providing us with ...erm... interesting products.

Common software like word processors would probably not look like we're used to, right, but that's not to say the guys at Apple, HP, or even Commodore (remember?) wouldn't have some kick-ass features ready for us. The market would be very segmented, yes, but that doesn't mean there'd be no pressure for quality and performance.

Interestingly, I believe both IBM and Open Source software would be exactly where they are today, regardless of any Redmond activity. IBM was just screwed by the fact that they had no sense or understanding what omnipresent, cheap Microcomputers could do. And OS, well, maybe we'd have a few VERY strange window managers instead of KDE, but as far as the server-side is concerned I seriously cannot see anything (neither feature-wise nor customer adoption-related) that would have gone much differently.

Tags: <Microsoft> <Blog> | Technorati: Microsoft, Blog

Development Nightmares

2005-10-17T19:55:00.000+02:00

If there's one recent article that resonated deeply within my soul, it's probably Joel's piece called "Set You Priorities". One of the juice bits:

Custom development is that murky world where a customer tells you what to build, and you say, "are you sure?" and they say yes, and you make an absolutely beautiful spec, and say, "is this what you want?" and they say yes, and you make them sign the spec in indelible ink, nay, blood, and they do, and then you build that thing they signed off on, promptly, precisely and exactly, and they see it and they are horrified and shocked, and you spend the rest of the week reading up on whether your E&O insurance is going to cover the legal fees for the lawsuit you've gotten yourself into or merely the settlement cost. Or, if you're really lucky, the customer will smile wanly and put your code in a drawer and never use it again and never call you back.

Well, that one pretty much sums up the last two years at my company, before I decided to turn things around. No more custom development! Well, at least not that much ever again!

Tags: <Software> <Development> | Technorati: Software, Development

PSA: La[g|ck] Of Blog

2005-10-17T19:51:00.000+02:00

I've been pretty busy lately and as I'm sure you have guessed, blogging wasn't at the top of the priorities list. Yeah, technically speaking, you can do it by setting aside just a jew minutes per day to actually write stuff down - but you still need to be in the right mood for that. Anyway, so I've fallen off the wagon (or is it "on the wagon"?) and it's kind of hard to get started up again. So let's try! :-)

Tags: <Blog> <Rants> <PSA> | Technorati: Blog, Rants, PSA

Now: Everybody, Please Focus On This

2005-09-07T03:04:00.000+02:00

Not exactly new, but refreshing: via the [non]billable hour:

A group of Lodge members gathers at some predetermined time and place, usually with computers in tow. After everyone gets set up, the group comes up with a basic game idea. This process is usually limited to a fixed amount of time. The group then sets out to create said game as fast as possible. This can involve code, sound, art, map design, game design, even limited tools development, depending on the makeup of the participants. It requires a fair amount of expertise on the part of each individual, a lot of caffeine, and a huge effort towards teamwork, coordination, and communication.

After a predetermined amount of time has passed (8 hours, 24 hours, even 48 hours) and a large amount of Chinese food has been consumed, game production finally comes to a stop and the group steps back to see what it is they've created -- or failed to create, in some cases.

I love this idea in theory. Don't know how many employees would do this more than once in a long time without seriously freaking out, though. And I don't see this as a valid way to deal with big (customer) problems. If a project is in trouble, chances are death marches or even this Super Deathmarch game are not going to help substantially. I speak from experience when I say that especially software developers shouldn't get too confident in their ability to solve complex problems on a mixture of caffeine and willpower alone. BUT I believe the idea is great for prototyping scenarios, where things like short, creative bursts and group output are important. What do you think?

Tags: <Software> <Collaboraton> <MMORPG> | Technorati: Software, Collaboraton, MMORPG

Plaxo User Experience Update

2005-09-05T23:36:00.000+02:00

As usual, I haven't blogged much because I'm pretty busy. Just a few more notes on Plaxo, which I think is a very cool service. Just... some issues:

No iCal: please, give me something to sync my (non-outlook) calendar. WebDAV/iCal works fine with many clients, although an XML webservice would be a cool target for geeks to experiment with.
Did I mention that a documented XML webservice interface would be cool? You know, not just for the calendar...
The (beta) Plaxo toolbar for Thunderbird is hard to find, I just discovered it by accident.
Throw in a GMail clone and we're all done.
How about groupware functionality in the calendar and task list?

Dear people at Plaxo, if you throw some of these in, I'd gladly pay for the service...

Tags: <Blog> <Plaxo> <Software> | Technorati: Blog, Plaxo, Software

The Blank Slate Experience

2005-09-03T19:24:00.000+02:00

There is an article up on 37 signals about the "out-of-the-box" experience of user interfaces that got me thinking. I must admit that I've never consciously thought about it, but Jason Fried is certainly right here. As software developers we experience a user interface typically in a state where it's half-filled with semi-usable data which normally stems from previous test runs or some automatic test data creation. (Whether this test data is good tool would probably be up for another round of discussion.)

I think it's a good idea to stop once in a while an observe the interface in "extreme" states, one of which is certainly the immediate post-install state. Well it's gotta look shiny and inviting, but are there really any rules or best practices for that?

Tags: <Software> <UI> <Design> | Technorati: Software, UI, Design

Plaxo / GoogleTalk

2005-08-24T15:53:00.000+02:00

I'm test-driving two cool apps: Plaxo and GoogleTalk. Here's what I think so far:

Plaxo
I'm just using the web client, because I'm not an Outlook user. You probably know by now how much I like good web interfaces, and Plaxo certainly has one! There are some things, however, without which PLaxo will never bee really cool:
1. The calendar doesn't have an iCal interface. That means not only can't I import my calendar into Plaxo, it also means I can't subscribe or update via WebDAV. That's a bummer, it would be so cool.
2. You can't subscribe to other people's calendar. There should be a way to make public parts of your calendar visible for friends and coworkers.
3. Also, there's a reason why Microsoft made the PIM and their email software one and the same thing. I don't see that kind of integration at Plaxo. How about XML messaging? It's so easy nowadays to make web apps talk to other apps, why isn't anyone doing it?

GoogleTalk
The first thing you probably notice about GoogleTalk is: there's nobody to talk to. In order to be able to chat, everyone must be a GMail customer. That in itself isn't bad, but it certainly gets a little lonely. I heard there was some kind of gateway functionality to other IMs, but I didn't have any luck trying that out yet. I'll post again as soon as I made my first audio call...

Tags: <Plaxo> <GoogleTalk> <Blog> | Technorati: Plaxo, GoogleTalk, Blog

Programming Language Productivity

2005-08-19T02:24:00.000+02:00

Just yesterday I was starting to re-read the excellent Code Complete, and a point that made me stumble was this little table in one of the early chapters, about how verbose a language is compared to standard C. In a cool twist of randomness, I found out today that Jeff Atwood has come across the same thing! He actually did a comparison between some modern languages by implementing a short commonly used code snippet: reading a file and writing out to screen. This of course, confirmed what we already know, but seldom talk about: with the scripting languages firmly in the lead on terseness, "real" languages like VB.NET and C# trail somewhat behind, but Java's impression is nothing short of appalling here.

Just my two cents: if common and frequently needed functionality takes 15+ lines to implement like that, it is almost never the fault of the language per se. It's the fault of the class library. And that's entirely to blame on the design philosophy of the language.

However, it doesn't mean you can't be productive with Java. Or with C#. It just takes more effort, it's more tedious and error prone. Here is what I do as a developer: when I learn a new language (or do new things in a known language) I first look if there is a specific class or function that does exactly what I need. If I'm using e.g. Java, chances are there is no such function that does it directly. So I'm forced to produce a monstrous code snippet. In Java, that's very likely to be from anywhere between several dozens of lines full of convoluted OO porn, up to a slow and nasty 3rd party library that bloats the project beyond comprehension.

Here's the trick though: once obtained, I wrap the code snippet in a custom function or class. I make sure it can be used over and over again in the entire project. So when I need this functionality again later, I can have it in one (or very few) line(s) of code instead of 15+. This is common practice, right? Wrong!

In fact, that's against common policy at many companies! Those multiple 15+ liners are commonly accepted - and as long as they're properly documented, they're considered straightforward and "clean" implementations. Especially with Java, there is this particular notion of what is clean and what is questionable. And for the love of god, I can't think of any reason for that besides that being possibly the only person who can maintain a certain piece of messed up spaghetti code can be quite an effective unemployment insurance. OK, and probably also some weird programmer machismo thing.

Scene from real life:

Me: Hey look, I wrapped all of our database functions into this one object.
Customer (disgusted): Why the fuck did you do that?
Me: Because we can do anything we need to do with just four different class methods. Doesn't it make sense to implement any given functionality just once?
Customer (disgusted): No, actually that's against our coding conventions! That's not good style!
Me: And I thought that was what programming was all about?
Customer (disgusted): Look, the coding conventions say that you're only allowed to move business logic code into external classes. You on the other hand, mutilated infrastructure code. We don't do that here! There is a reason why Sun made the classes work like they do!
Me: But the resource handling alone was more than 20 lines at each call, duplicated all over the project! WTF?
Customer (disgusted): You clearly have no understanding of real Java, Mister. This is not some script kiddie playground. This is a real language, and we're building a real enterprise application here.
Me: Yeah, listen, I gotta go...
Customer (disgusted): Goodriddance.

[OK, so those last two lines did not actually happen, but you get the point.]

And THAT is why Java is at 15+ lines while Python is at 4 for the same amount of functionality. It's not inherent to the difference between script or compiled language. It's the design philosophy of how class libraries are supposed to work, and the cultural pressure of what a program should look like.

Tags: <Productivity> <Software> <Development> | Technorati: Productivity, Software, Development

Walken For President

2005-08-14T03:58:00.001+02:00

Wow, it seems that Christopher Walken is running for president 2008! How did that slip past me? Anyway, the website is very light on details. The funny thing is, you honestly can't tell whether he's a Republican or a Democrat - but he's in favor of stem cell research, so that doesn't sound too bad for starters. I'll keep watching this, in case anything new comes up. Also, can someone confirm this story? Anyway, if he wants to run 2008 in earnest, he's got to start building this thing up fast and soon... Wouldn't it be cool to have a president originating from an independent party for a change?

Update: reading his site more thoroughly, it becomes clear that he's an independent candidate. Yay, Christopher Walken! Let me know if there's an opening on your campaign staff!

Favorite quote:

It's not too early to be thinking about the future of this country and who's going to lead it. Election after election we're given the "choice" between two unappealing candidates and have no choice but to vote for the one we dislike less.

Tags: <Politics> <Blog> <Walken> <President> <2008> | Technorati: Politics, Blog, Walken, President, 2008

Walken For President

2005-08-14T03:58:00.000+02:00

It's not too early to be thinking about the future of this country and who's going to lead it. Election after election we're given the "choice" between two unappealing candidates and have no choice but to vote for the one we dislike less.

Star Trek Obsession

2005-08-14T01:34:00.000+02:00

You know that our society has regressed significantly when you come to realize that, had Star Trek: The Next Generation been filmed today, it would have been perceived as being an amoral, scandalous piece of unpatriotic, leftist propaganda.

Too much of Star Trek has always reflected trendy leftist political sentiments. [...] With no practitioners, there are no chaplains for the crew--no ministers, no priests, no rabbis, no mullas, no brahmins, no monks, no nuns. The closest thing to religious advice is the tedious psycho-babble of counselor Troi.

Yup, today TNG probably wouldn't have been produced at all...

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