May 2003 Entries
So Microsoft is continuing to buy its way out of the mess it got into with the monopoly lawsuits. It's the best approach at this stage. I'm sure the company didn't appreciate the public relations nightmare it embraced with the way it fought the case. It wasn't just external but internal as well; you lose employees as well as customers. At this point, Microsoft just wants to repair the damage, cut its losses and move on. The AOL lawsuit (heir to Netscape) was one of the most dangerous lawsuits left so this settlement is very prudent. It's gonna hurt earnings this quarter...
Been investigating how well you can write a rich client UI in Flash. While it seems very good for the rich Internet client, they missed a trick in not supporting calling COM objects. As best as I can tell, there's no way to make a native Win32 call or call a COM object or a .NET component. You can call web services but that's about it. Basically, it's sandboxed unless you want to license the Flash player SDK and write your own remoting gateway. Shame really. Winforms is too low level if you want to write a flashy UI.
Actually one of the main reasons for this componentisation is that you can strip Linux down to a far smaller footprint that any version of Windows. This gives Linux a strong foothold in the device market. The really interesting option with this approach is that Microsoft could go open source with some of the components but still keep the kernal closed source. These options will be critical as the competition with Linux heats up and you can be sure it will.
Hey it's been one month already since leaving Microsoft. Wow, the time goes by quickly. Still feels very unsettling not going to work and not having a regular routine to anchor one's life. Funny how it's still difficult to find all the time I want for various projects - especially the programming ones. I'm happy with progress I've made on a few things. It's a real challenge to stay focused and not waste what time I have or start on new commitments.
Sorry for the lack of postings lately. Got busy and then went on holiday. Back now but the kids are off school this week.
Interesting opinion piece regarding Microsoft support of the SCO/IBM lawsuit over Linux. Of course Microsoft will support anything that injects FUD around Linux. Linux and Open Source in general is Microsofts' nightmare. It's manageable today but it will just get better and better and there is no business model that Microsoft can attack in order to stop it.
Dell is cutting back the stock options they give out by half. Seems like they're hedging their bets against the proposal to expense stock options. Bad news as other companies may follow suit.
Met up with a couple of friends last Friday to discuss our mutual interest in assembling an Entertainment PC. Very cool what the latest ITX format is capable of. Check out the Mini-ITX website and the C136 from Casetronic. These little boxes would definitely sit well in a living room.
There's a new game just out called Rise Of Nations (RON). I downloaded the trial version and just finished trying it out. I'm a long time player of the entire Age Of Empires (AOE) series of games by Ensemble Studios and while RON is done by a different company, it's very, very similiar right down to the hot keys so it's very easy to pick up. The graphic engine is still 2D like AOE rather than 3D like Age of Mythology but it's scope is much broader. In AOM/AOE, there was four ages but RON doubles that to eight ages from...
Drool over this monitor by 9xmedia. This ergotron one is pretty cool too. If you're into multimontor setups, you should also check out ultramon software.
Division lost $190 million during the last quarter. Don't worry though; Microsoft will keep losing money for quite a while but it won't give up. It's just too strategic as a critical beachhold into the living room where the role of the Xbox will expand. Further, it's a market that Microsoft can't afford to just hand over to Sony which now gets about 40% of all it's revenue from Playstation sales.
(sad shaking of my head) - those marketing guys really need better reality checks.
"But Gartner revised its full-year estimates downward for worldwide PC shipments, projecting that they would reach 136.9 million units in 2003, a 6.6 percent increase from 2002." PC shipments are critical to the Microsoft stock price so it doesn't look too good for this year.
No kidding! It's worth watching this debate because it certainly wouldn't be very good for the Microsoft stock price if they were required to expense stock options. Luckily, the debate moves pretty slowly.
This is a quick test to see whether Radio Userland still works after moving it to a different machine. Fingers crossed.
I've upgraded to the latest version of Steinbergs' Cubase and after two hours of mucking about with my Yamaha SW1000XG ASIO drivers it finally decided to work. Not sure what I did but I'll accept it for now! These music sequencers are amazingly functional nowadays and it's going to take me a while to figure it out. That said, I never had Cubase VST figured out either!
Wouldn't it be handy if you could post an XML file that's similiar to an RSS file but indexed all the product reviews you had on your website. This file could then be picked up by search engines which could then aggregate them. This would make it so much easier to find reviews and would be a great way to drive hits to websites. Just need to agree on the XML file format and figure out what to do about a product taxonomy if anything. I guess it wouldn't have to be just products; you could review anything.
Yesterday some new toys arrived; an Acer Travelmate 800 laptop and the Netgear 824M which is an ADSL Modem, firewall, router and wireless access point all rolled up into one little box.
Took me from midnight to 2am mucking about with the Netgear box to get it to do what I want - mostly to do with user confusion! Getting the ADSL connection going was a breeze and it's definitly much better than the Speed Touch USB ADSL modem I was previously using. I'm sure part of the speed improvement is that I no longer have to use Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)...
My ADSL connection was down for a day. Don't go with BT Openworld if you're shopping for ADSL. Check out the ADSL Guide website first and their ratings of UK ISPs.
I've been researching on the 'net for hardware purchases and ran into this very good article "An Autopsy of Dead LCD Pixels" over on Toms Hardware. If you're interested in buying a LCD monitor it's very enlighting how different the policies are between manufacturers. Bottom line is that I quickly narrowed the list of manufactures I would buy from to QDI, Viewsonic, Sony, Eizo, NEC, Formac, Hyundai, Solarism, Iiyama, Hercules, HP, Belinea and LiteOn. Of that list the Iiyama 4332 and the Eizo L565 seem to be the best 17" LCD monitors out there at the moment.
As you might guess from my Writing Code Is Stupid article, I'm quite keen on code generation. I just stumbled up the Code Generation Network. Looks like a good start but not active yet. By all means send me any links and resources on code generation - thinking of putting together a resource page.