December 2003 Blog Posts
Yet another interesting Python thing to investigate. It's an "event driven networking framework." There are links to other interesting projects consuming Twisted and written in Python. There's even a TCP/IP load balancer written in Python. I was mistaken to position Python as a client side technology.
Just bought this book for my holiday reading. It's still nicer to flip through a real book than read documentation online. You just can't beat the UI!
It's convenient they can blame Sun but of course they need to push everyone to upgrade to Windows XP. It brings in revenue, simplifies support and XP is definitely more friendlier for users. Still, it's a pretty aggressive move considering some products are less than four years old.
I've recently discovered the world of Python. I started looking at it after I discovered the Chandler project was using it to essentially clone Microsoft Outlook and read a rave about it by Eric Raymond entitled Why Python? I also discovered a cool project called SchoolTool also using it. This has got me curious about other recent languages like Ruby but Python looks like it's ready to take off.
It seems to be the language of choice for the Open Source community writing rich clients. It's completely open source (unlike Java) and it's much more productive than that old standby, C++. There...
Nice ramble by Ray Ozzie. Essentially the power of WinFS is the generation of open and common object persistence schema's. Rather than the vision of shared components, we're back to shared data. I particularly agree with the "rich getting richer" - fat client is coming back with a vengence.
Interesting speculation whether JP Morgan manipulated the Microsoft stock price to it's advantage last month.
Since I'm on the topic of bugs, I solved another bug today. All of a sudden, the right click and "Open in New Window" feature of Internet Explorer (v6 sp1) started failing. The current window would just lock up and eventually time-out. I also found I couldn't launch Windows Update. Very annoying since I use this feature constantly.
Anyway, I fumbled around for a while. Lavasoft's Ad-aware v6 gave me a clean bill of health but I eventually decided to install and run an antivirus check. Yes, I admit I don't normally run antivirus software. I find it causes more trouble...
Just found a rather insidious bug on Jenny's laptop. She upgraded to MSN Messenger 6.1 build 203 and then couldn't sign-in. Well, she would be signed-in for about half a second and then she would get automatically sign-ed out again. Weird. I could sign-in without any problems with my account but her account would fail. A quick reinstall didn't solve the problem.
I searched around the Internet and didn't find much help. I uninstalled MSN Messenger, deleted all the MSN data and I even trawled the Windows registry killing MSN entries. Then I reinstalled and we got the exact same behaviour. I could...
You know a question that's always been in the back of my mind is "Why is annual growth such an imperative at a company like Microsoft?" Every year, new sales targets get set higher and higher. Big speeches get made by the executives (I've seen many). Managers exhort their direct reports to make the numbers. People sacrifice their home/work balance to meet the new objectives for their performance reviews.
Why?
Why can't the growth targets be scaled back and investors just given dividends? Obviously Microsoft isn't a growth stock. If there was zero growth and a big dividend, the stock price would remain stable....
Looks like another bid by Microsoft to come to terms with Open Source:
"We want to convey that Microsoft is open for business when it comes to IP licensing. In the past, we readily admit that our IP approach was much more closely held and less structured."
Or maybe desperation to open new sources of revenue.
Sadly, my MSDN Universal subscription has expired. All Microsoft Consultants got it. It's like closing the very last door before leaving the building. It's too bad there isn't any real Microsoft Alumni programme (except for MSA in Seattle). It would be nice to keep the drip feed of technology going (not that I don't have enough technologies floating around here!). Technology addiction may one day be recognised as a real concern.
I participated in this blogging survey and the results are now back. Quite interesting. There may be some broad conclusions you can draw from the results but there probably needs to be an analysis of the categories of bloggers out there rather than thinking of us as a single homogenous community. It's an interesting thought to use bloggers as a PR channel. Quite a risky approach for a company but it could pay off really well. It's probably most suitable for complex products that aren't easily summed up in a soundbite.
Cool concept for a computer product sold by Antelope Technologies. A tiny modular computer core which you plug into either a rugged handheld device or a desktop device.
"The iSuppli study points to further growth in 2004, with PC shipments likely to see a 14.3 percent rise and revenue a 14.8 percent increase." The recovery is always around the corner but hope is eternal. Maybe tech stocks will show a bit of life.
Fascinating way to organize and navigate a website. Click in the box and try it out. Make sure you've got the sound turned on. The short blurbs associated with each flying image are great. It's kind of like "infotainment". Too bad each image isn't a small video. You could take this concept a long way. Cool.
The nominee's for the twelve different categories of the BAFTA Interactive Awards have been announced. Find out the winners on February 19th. I gotta spend sometime going through them. I usually get myself a new computer game around Christmas and this is a good short list.