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Sunday, July 07, 2002 |
Happy Birthday from Bill Gates
Ok, this time I've had it. I have been a Microsoft user and developer since Windows 2.0. I have always defended Microsoft. Since the coming of NT which I started with in 1993, I had stable OS for the most part and railed aggainst the hordes moaning constant reboots and blue screens. Stability was especially good in Win2K and then XP. Lately, however, something has been getting mucked up in XP at the driver level (which is the only level really Ring 0 that could) and I have been getting blue screens. Also Norton SystemWorks 2002 hosed my system! So I tried the "recovery" console. Yah right. Can only copy in the windows directory! Tried all sorts of stuff. End of story. Machine re-paved. I lost everything after every attempt to get my data off.
The thing is that I was need a new machine. This is only a 700Mhz and I do a lot of high-end .NET work and such. And it was going to be a laptop. I had every inclination to buy a Mac Titanium PowerBook. Then I relented to my business needs and advice. I would have Office but to my clients, I need to do a lot of VS.NET and VSIP stuff. I settled on a high-end WinBook. I am so pissed right now that I am almost certain I will cancel the order and buy the Mac. This is just stupid. I am so sick of having flakiness and instability. I want something that just works!!!!! [Sam Gentile's Radio Weblog]
8:10:43 PM 
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This is a sample chapter from O'Reilly latest book "ASP.NET in a Nutshell" by Andrew Duthie and Rob McDonald. This chapter discusses employing ASP.NET user controls and custom server controls for reuse and employing custom server controls for extensibility.
[Sam Gentile's Radio Weblog]
8:06:05 PM
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Thank you Roger!. Sam Gentile lost his Radio Userland data in a hard drive crash, leaving him with the HTML files associated with his weblog (and his categories) but none of the data in weblogData.root, the database where a weblog is stored in Radio Userland.
I'm going to scrape the HTML files for his entries using Java and rebuild weblogData.root, probably by creating an XML version of his entire site as an intermediate step. Does anyone know of any Radio Userland verbs or third-party tools that will post weblog entries to the past? [Workbench]
What a very nice thing to do! Thank you Roger! It is so nice to see this in the community.
[Sam Gentile's Radio Weblog]
8:04:36 PM
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destinationKM.com: Five reasons people don't tell what they know.
Quote: " There are many reasons why people are reluctant to share what they know. They are busy and don't have time to share. They forget to share. They don't want the additional work and responsibility that goes with sharing. They are assigned to projects they feel are unworthy of their contribution (a derisive term for is WOMBAT--waste of money, brains and time). But, as common as these conditions may be, they were not the responses I found most often in my research.
Here are the top five reasons why people don't tell what they know" [Serious Instructional Technology]
7:58:46 PM
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eLearn Magazine: In-Depth Tutorials: Learning Objects. Quote: "It's hard not to fall in love with the notion of reusable learning objects. The idea of a world filled with little self-contained lessons that you can assemble into any course you can think of seems so...well...cool. How could you not want something like that? Unfortunately, after five years of struggling with the challenge of finding that world, I have come to the conclusion that I am simply not smart enough to lead the way to the Promised Land of e-learning, where milk and honey flow from the earth and learning objects can be plucked like ripe fruit from fig trees." [Serious Instructional Technology]
7:57:02 PM
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School Center: Products. Quote: "The School Center Program provides the online tools specifically designed to maintain and update your District, and/or School Website. With its specialized components, School Center is designed to create an effective Internet environment, rich in educational potential."
Comment: Anyone familiar with it? How about RedDot, Fatwire, Stellent? [Serious Instructional Technology]
7:54:53 PM
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BLKBRD-L - Permissions and Protection.
There've been a couple of interesting threads on Blackboard recently, one about Permissions and one about Protection of quizzes. The Permissions one raised issues about FERPA, including the idea that student contributions should not be copied from one course/semester to another because other students might see it. From an educational perspective this seems so counter-intuitive. Audience is why people write. Perhaps if they're notified upfront, it's not an issue.
The protection thread focused on quizzes. A number of people think the same way as Manfred Kuechler:
"truly protecting an 'online exam' is impossible, unless additional access restrictions are put in place like:
-- access to these pages is possible from supervised labs only with restricted availability of software (e.g., only MS IE but not NS 4.7x
-- so that David's trick will work), hardware (no printers), and Internet connections (no chance to 'send' pages to third sites)
-- each individual exam is randomly generated as a sample from a very large pool of questions
My bottom line is: Assessments taken at home are great for learning and individual feedback, but grades and/or licensing decisions should not based on such assessments since it is impossible to rule out "creative use" aka cheating."
I can see the licensing thing, but if grades are the product of triangulation of numerous data points, I don't see why assessments shouldn't be part of that picture. [Serious Instructional Technology]
7:53:09 PM
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Storyspace - Using Hypertext in the Classroom. Quote: "The National University of Singapore created its University Scholars Programme to help produce graduates who are literate in a broad range of intellectual disciplines and particularly sensitive to the commonalities, differences, and connections among those disciplines. In small seminars, students learn how to read, write, and speak clearly, effectively, and critically. To achieve these objectives, I have used a hypertext writing tool called Storyspace; in this article, I assess the advantages of this tool in my work and outline the features that make it a valuable resource for teaching and learning."
Comment: One of a number of interesting Technology Source articles. Boy, does this bring back memories. I wonder how Storyspace has changed since 1994? [Serious Instructional Technology]
7:50:39 PM
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Book Excerpt: Beginning Java 2 SDK, Pt. 2. Creating and using constructors is the key topic of this excerpt. You can use the default constructor, create your own, or, with the help of method overloading, create multiple unique constructors for the same Java class. From Wrox Press. 0701 [WebReference News]
7:44:43 PM
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This looks very useful if you use categories in Radio. [jenett.radio]
7:42:10 PM
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Copyright and Open Source In my professional readi .... Copyright and Open Source In my professional reading recently, two books complemented each other very strongly. I have just finished Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity by Siva Vaidhyanathan an historical overview of the extension of protection to greater areas. Like mint in my garden, vast areas are now covered, too much for the public good. We should not use the term "Intellectual Property" since that is using the language of those with the greatest interest in protection their personal interests. Information policy, is a good alternative, or information monopoly, to use the terminology of Jefferson who opposed all copyright. This expansion of protection has hindered the progress of the arts and sciences, reversing the intention of copyright as understood by the founding fathers. Some fascinating ideas and history I had not been aware of.
The next book I have begun to read, The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary by Eric S. Raymond tells the story of the Open Source movement. This seems like an example and solution to the problems outlined in Vaidhyanathan. The protection of computing source code has led to bloated office suites, unstable platforms and slow development. Compare hardware advances with software advances to see how protection has affected the industry. The Open Source movement has arisen to bring innovation, and user communities back into software. Librarians will agree with much in this movement. Intellectual freedom, for example, is important to both communities. There is even some intersection of the library and Open Source community (it can only benefit both) at oss4lib
Both books are worth reading and considering. Reading one after the other provides a concrete example of the historical and abstract treatment of the other.
get_comment_link(78585543) Add a comment [Catalogablog]
7:31:19 PM
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Mimeo lands $6.5 million financing.
Mimeo Lands $6.5 Million Financing
Here's a link to some quick coverage. Guess this means investors feel we've got ourselves a good product here. I know I certainly do! ;) Congratulations to my fellow employees who have worked hard and sacrificed during these tough times.
We're currently putting the finishing touches on our next-generation offering. I can't actually discuss the details yet, but suffice to say that we listened to what our users wanted, picked a few of the most requested features and that's what we're delivering (soon). [Drew's Blog]
7:24:54 PM
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Inside Yahoo's Personals. The next-door neighbor across the hall (I'll keep him anonymous for now so he doesn't get in trouble for talking to me) from me runs Yahoo's Personals section. (Tagline: "Where millions of singles meet!") We talked yesterday a lot more about what's going on there. Turns out personals is one area where Yahoo is making a lot of money. Let's see. $20 a month subscription fee. Thousands of new subscribers every month. He says that Yahoo is hiring like mad to code new features into the personals pages (since they are making money), but that he's worried that they won't be able to train the newbies fast enough. "When we put code on our server it'll be hit by millions of people immediately. There's no room for mistakes." Another thing he worries about? Prostitutes. Turns out that a fair number of the personal ads are from prostitutes who just want you to pay for sex or want you to visit their porn pages. This pisses off legitimate members who are just trying to meet a normal guy or gal. How do you protect yourself? Well, for one, don't just go for the best looking photos. They tend to have a far higher percentage of prostitutes. He says that once in a while a legitimate "babe" does show up, but that usually those types pull down their pictures after a few hours because they get too many responses. He also says they try to take care of customers who complain about non-legitamate users. He also does a lot of work to try to get rid of them (I won't share his techniques here, but they use both algorithms and human reviews to try to filter out the prostitution and porn rings). The business model? You only pay to respond or to post ads. You can read the ads for free. This is yet another example of why I like living in Silicon Valley. Where else could you meet someone who runs Yahoo's personals? [Scobleizer Radio Weblog]
8:08:04 AM
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Goodmorning and halleluhja!!! We've got a real pressure cooker here folks. If you're a regular of this blogspace then you know I thrive on the mission statement: There are no Secrets, only information you don't yet have. Yesterday I pointed to Janis Ian's essay that clearly states [most] recording contracts would be illegal in any other industry and border on slavery. Last night, while scanning the satellite I saw Rita Cosby on Fox News Channel with an 'exclusive' interview with Michael Jackson. I've been more than underwhelmed by michael in the past, but this time he surprised me. He spoke sternly, with determination and none of the "whoosie" noises he usually makes when speaking publicly. And he was very clear: "The recording companies really, really do conspire against the artists [^] they steal, they cheat, they do everything they can, especially) against the black artists." The Washingtom Post has more Specifically in the FNC footage, Michael called sony records chairman Tommy Mottola a racist. Wow, that'ss pretty heavy, especially for the guy who was married to Mariah Carey. But this does bring up a memory about Tommy Mottola I want to share; a story told by former program director of radio station Z-100 in NY Steve Kingston. Steve was always deep in bed with TM and Polly Anthony from cbs/sony and he often hung out with the sony execs, especially when big names were in town. Total music industry maven this guy. He told me the story how Tommy Mattola drove Michael Jackson around manhattan doing tv and instore appearances for a full day and no matter how much MJ begged and pleaded, TM wouldn't let him stop to use the restroom. Kingston told this story with an uncanny devilish chuckle that it stuck in my memory banks. It was a sinister kind of "gotcha motherfucker" tone. Like a schoolboy sucking up to the schoolyard bully. And that is the curent state of the music business, and it's unravelling quickly. Remember that guys like Mottola work for a record label. That stems from the piece of paper stuck onto vynil records. A paper dragon perhaps I'm gonna walk around the lake and think about wat to expect next. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
8:05:33 AM
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.NET Blogging #85492.
Well, that sort of defeats the whole idea behind content generation and publishing, doesn't it? The whole power of Radio is that it's "desktop publishing". Your server doesn't need to be anything except a dumb HTTP server that supports the GET protocol basically. [Drew's Blog]
Except that my web server already has ASP.net. I get a few hundred hits a day. What do I care? :-) I understand what motivates someone like Dave to make it just require FTP and no active server components. He has a monetary interest in working with the largest crowd possible. Personally, I don't have any such need. I'd rather prefer something powerful and dynamic over something static and flaky, but that's just me. :-) [The .NET Guy]
7:42:59 AM
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Will Radio Fail?.
I've been using Radio as long as Brad has (or pretty close to it), and I haven't had any problems with the functionality it provides. I think Brad is trying to get Radio to do too much ;-) [Justin Rudd's Radio Weblog]
The frustrating thing is that I haven't changed anything. But I've been watching the blogs, and a few other people are having problems, too. Not many, but enough for me to know that it's not isolated to me. But even if it was isolated to me, how long can I put up empty pages and RSS feed (my wife noticed my "Rants" RSS was empty today) before I have to revolt and use something else?
The good news is that for the vast majority of people (it seems, anyway) there won't be any problems. No consolation to me or the few others, but also no reason for any mass exodus away from Radio. [The .NET Guy]
7:40:49 AM
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I Am Not My Blog. Are You?.
No, this isn't some tricky statement. I was reading Gretchen's blog this past week where she went to town on someone who presumed to know her because he read her blog. She brought up the point that he couldn't possibly know her from reading her blog, and I have to agree. I don't hold back on any of my opinions here (as I'm sure is plainly evident in the rants), but it's also not the whole picture. It's little snippets of words, attitude and emotion that seep out (or boil over) during the day, but it's just a tiny, tiny piece of who I am. Even reading my personal pages doesn't really given you the whole picture, either.
Would it be feasible -- and interesting -- for someone to completely chronicle their life into their blog? [The .NET Guy]
7:38:53 AM
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Yes, You Must.
Student Paddled For Refusing to Recite Pledge of Allegiance. In Alabama, a student stood silently with his fist raised rather than recite the Pledge of Allegiance. As punishment, the boy was spanked three times with a wooden paddle and given a written reprimand. The school board policy requires students to say the pledge and salute the flag during the day's first class and to sit through "prayer requests" and a moment of silence. The rest of the story is here. [kuro5hin.org]
People were wondering whether the Pledge was required in some places. Here you go... a modern tale. When I was in school, it was required of us as well (stand, hand on heart, say the pledge). Corporal punishment was already on-the-outs, but you'd certainly get a trip to the principal's office. [The .NET Guy]
7:37:52 AM
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Dynamic Languages.
Dynamic Languages
...I spent a few hours playing around with the Squeak smalltalk environment... The initial impression is just of a really weird and klunky environment, but if you take the time to explore it really is very cool.... I also really see why people who use Smalltalk tend to get addicted to it and why they bitch about Java. Of course I still wonder how useful it is for real applications... [Bright Eyed Mister Zen]
I have not used Squeak for a couple of years. Back then it could be used on some "real applications" but I would not have bet much money on it.
OTOH the commercial Smalltalks are every bit as good as Squeak, and better. They've been used for all kinds of real applications.
The problem with Smalltalk and Lisp is the Java-like languages are 80% as good but they have orders of magnitude more developer support. And so there is a ton of software available for them.
Rather than use a stand-alone Smalltalk or Lisp system, my choice these days is to use a couple different Scheme implementations in the Java environment. (Slowly being moved to dotNET as well.)
SISC is the better performing, and yet a full implementation of Scheme, and so is the better "application" language. JScheme has the simplest integration with Java and so is the better "scripting" language.
The advantages of a simple dynamic language combined with the functionality of the most popular programming platforms. [Patrick Logan's Radio Weblog]
7:28:43 AM
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Software, India, Java.
Software, India, Java
"The large number of programmers is one reason for the low wages. In Bangalore, home to more than 1,000 software companies, you can hire a young programmer of Sun's Java language for around $200 a month--less than a tenth of what a U.S. counterpart would cost."
"There is an abundance of skills in Microsoft technologies. Because of this, the price at which you can hire the skills is lower..." [Patrick Logan's Radio Weblog]
7:27:24 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Mark Oeltjenbruns.
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