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Ted's Radio Weblog
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Wednesday, April 30, 2003 |
Web Services Poster Boys
"This news is a bit old, but we just discovered it, so it's news to us. The good people over at ZapThink have created this nifty poster of XML and Web services standards. It was distributed in a magazine a while back, but you can also download a PDF version."
ZapThink via the CapeScience Blog.
8:02:05 PM 
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Chris Double has the posts here and an awesome screenshot of Radio Userland running under Wine.
6:56:43 PM
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Livingston sees Microsoft bringing the imprimatur of legitimacy to RSS in his monthly column. It's a bit ironic to see Microsoft coming around at this point. It was originally a Netscape standard. It might have become more popular sooner if their air supply hadn't been cut off.
1:42:29 PM
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After a two-year self-imposed hiatius, I've published an article in the FoxTalk technical journal, entitled "VFP Automates OpenOffice.org." Unfortunately, it wasn't chosen as a free sample for the month, so you'll need to subscribe to the magazine to read it. I'm looking forward to opportunities to dig in deeper to the object model and ship commercial solutions based on automation of the OpenOffice.org engine.
It's an honor to be listed on FoxTalks "World's Best Authors" pages.
A friend pointed out that's it's not just a two-year hiatus from published articles, it's also the end of a ten-year stretch since my last FoxTalk article.
10:20:33 AM
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Ed Foster wrote many seminal columns in his Gripe Line column at InfoWorld over the past 11 years. Now, he's off on his own, creating a new website/blog/web publication at http://www.gripe2ed.com. One of his first columns is on the Visual (not Virtual, Ed, at least not yet!) FoxPro End User License controversies.
While he focuses on the primary problem of Visual FoxPro runtimes being tied to the Windows platforms, the other issues of restricting distribution to Microsoft's new Installer technologies, and the slipstreamed requirements for upgraders to remove previous versions of the application (both summarized and linked here) are not discussed.
9:22:29 AM
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The launch of VFP 8.0 prompted a story in Application Development Trends magazine, "
Visual FoxPro 8.0: The venerable database tool gets a makeover." I'm not sure if I agree with the "makeover" concept, as it wasn't aging and crufty before, only continuing to improve. But I suppose that's not as interesting a story. "Still kicking butt" might have been my preferred phrase. Ah, well, let's not complain too much. Any PR is good PR, and the article is pretty well-done, factual and upbeat. From Application Development Trends magazine.
8:27:11 AM
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Cory Doctorow, author of the incredible "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," covers the recent O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference on his blog, starting here. Do check out the links, also, for more extensive notes.
8:16:43 AM
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Tuesday, April 29, 2003 |
Had an exciting trip back from the Essential Fox Conference. KC to Milwaukee went quickly, but the Milwaukee to Boston flight suffered passenger compartment depressurization at crusing altitude, with an exciting rapid descent, oxygen masks dropping from the ceilings, and a long slow and low return to Milwaukee. Had to wait until my friends who got to sleep in (the bums!) took their late flights from KC to bring me a plane to return to Boston. Glad to be home. Glad to return to earth, gently. Much to be thankful for. Good reminder.
8:11:48 PM
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Monday, April 28, 2003 |
It's enlightening reading and listening to people who aren't invested in one side of the argument or the other explain what they are hearing in the controversy over Visual FoxPro's End User License restrictions on developing and deploying solutions on Linux and other non-Microsoft platforms. Dan Shafer shares his view in "Microsoft Trying to Kill Wine on Linux?." Interesting point of view.
9:05:07 AM
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Sunday, April 27, 2003 |
Why social software now?. "A small brouhaha is brewhaha-ing over whether "social software" is mere hype. (See Frank Paynter, for example.) After all, the category is about as broad as "software for people" and includes technology as old as holding hands. And yet it's the thing I came away from the O'Reilly Conference most excited about. First, I consider social software actually to be emergent social software. That narrows the field to software that enables groups to form and organize themselves. Yes, it's still broad but at least it's not coextensive with any software that has a user interface. Second, it doesn't much matter..." Reposted from Joho the Blog
7:39:30 PM
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Kent Beck of Three Rivers Instituteput on the keynote at Essential Fox at 8 AM this morning in Kansas City. Great stuff.
Machine A makes parts for Machine B. To increase the productivity/predictability of Machine B, cache an inventory of parts between them. Output/throughput of B increases as inventory increases. Quality control and predictability goes down as inventory delays delivery of parts from A to B.
First hour on the dynamics of process.
Second hour on how Extreme Programming addresses the issues:
- Sit Together
- Stories
- Quarterly Plans
- Weekly Plans
- Customer Tests
- Up-to-date Estimates
- Pair programming
- Refactoring
- Sustainable Pace
- Continuous Integration
- Test-Driven Development
10:30:41 AM
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Saturday, April 26, 2003 |
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Friday, April 25, 2003 |
A post on the GotDotNet web site, at http://gotdotnet.com/team/vfp/vfp_eula_runtime.txt:
Visual FoxPro was designed and tested for use in creating
applications that run on the Microsoft Windows platform; the
same applies to the components that are provided to
developers for redistribution with Visual FoxPro-based
applications. If a developer wishes to distribute the Visual
FoxPro runtime with an application, the runtime may only
operate in conjunction with a Microsoft Windows platform. As
with any contract, you should seek your own legal counselís
advice when interpreting your rights and obligations under
the Visual FoxPro End User License Agreement.
The URL has been posted at the Universal Thread with the following:
Ken Levy Posts VFP EULA Info April 26, 2003 11:26
From KenLevy: "I have been asked to post the following information on a few VFP community sites. I will not be commenting further on this issue. Thanks. Ken Levy, Visual FoxPro Product Manager, Microsoft"
11:34:18 PM
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Half the attendees were new this year, of 240 attendees.
VFP Road to Visual FoxPro 8.0
- Base it on wish list customer feedbvack
- Add new runtime features - end users
- Enhance SQL Server connectivitity
- Increase .NET interoperability
- Maintain backward compatibility
Goals - Overview
- Better smart / rich client (85% are desktop apps)
- Improved Distributed client (XML .NET, SQL Server connectibity)
- Improved Developer Productivity (new base classes, error handling)
- Increase Discoverability (navigation, documentation) - Task Pane, ToolBox
New News Item: VFP 8.0 Localization -
- VFP 8.0 Runtime Distribution Files
German, Spanish, French, Russioan, Korean, Chinese
- VFP 8.0 Development Version - English
- This week: added the documentation to the Localization Kit.
Productivity Enhancement
- - Taskpane
- - Toolbox
- - Empty Classs
- - Add Property() an RemoveProperty()
- - Collection Classs
- - Structured Error Handling - TRY/CATCH/FINALLY
- - Event Binding - BINDEVENT() and RAISEEVENT()
Productivity Enhancements
- GetFile() dialog
- Auto-increment
- Table designer
- View Designer
- Child Member subclassing
- VCX support for more classes
- Many new features for Grid Control
- Code References Tool
New Report Writer Features
Page x of Y (many more)
XMLAdaptor
- Beyond XMLtoCursor/CursorToXML
- Hierarchical XML support
- Multiple VFP data cursors to XML
- XML to multuiple VFP data cursors
- XML diffgrams
- VFP data cursors, table, DBC
- ADO.NET compatible
- XMLTable and XML Field classes
- Full control of XSDschema used
- XML: The Universal Language
{Multi-language video showing Havier, and three other members of the development team explaining multiple data strategies in Russian, Hindu and Spanish - cute, but he had to explain it}
Cursor Adaptor Class
- Similar to DataAdaptor in ADO.NET
- -ADO/OLEDB
- -ODBC
- -Native VFP cursors
- -XML and XML Web Services
- Programmable events
- Stored procedures control
New Data Features
- DataEnvironement Subclassings
- DataEnvironment Builder
- CursorAdaptor Class
- CursorAdaptor Builder
- XMLAdaptor class
- Form BindControls property
- Enhanced VFP OLE DB Provider
- VFP 8.0 and VS.NET interoperability
VFP 8.0 XML Web Services
- OLEDB
- ASP.NET
- WinForm
- Phone
- Pocket PC
- Tablet PC
VFP 8.0 Performance
Loop of 10,000 instantiations of a custom object
in VFP 7.0: 24.5 seconds
in VFP 8.0: 0.45 seconds
Demo of FoxPro 8.0
- Toolbox
VFP 8.0 Features - laundry list of 14 bullet points in teeny fonts on features
VFP 8.0 and .NET
- Works well with VS.NET
- Greatly enhanced XML Support
- XML Web service
- ADO.NET
- VFP OLE DB Provider
- ASP.NET web forms
- .NET Windows forms
- Visual FoxPro Toolkit for .NET
- VFP and .net teams work together
VS .NET 2003 - released yesterday
(9 bullet points)
- smart devices
- web devices
- .NET Framework 1.1
- Deploying to Windows Server 2003
- Easy migration from existing .NET Framework 1.0 appliacations
- new managed data provides
Visual Studio Tools for Office
Extends .NET development to Office 2003
Developers using Visual Studeo 2003 can write code to run in Word and Excel
VFP Website - what's new
- http://msdn.microsoft.com/vfoxpro
- Coming soon: New VFP 8.0 Evaluation Guide
- Consistency with related product sites
- Updated VFP OLE DB Provider
- VFP 8.0 samples, slides and tutorials
- New VFP 8.0 Whitepapers
- Task Pane, Toolbox, TabletPC
Biggest news week on the MSDN site, with the VS.NET release, VFP 8.0 is the top headline
Demo: MSDN VFP web site, GotDotNet, VFoxPro, Community Site
Video: Eric Rudder video endorsement (http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/vfp/)
Ken met with Eric on Monday and talked about features for Europa
- New feature list/preview
- - Background compile in the current line
- - Dockable User Forms
- - Anchor properties for controls
- - Word-Wrap for CheckBox captions
- - Array limit large that 65K
- - Command Button Picture Spacing/Position
- - Intellisense available in memo fields
- - SELECT: >9 Joins, Multiple Nested Queries
- - More designer hooks for extensibility
- - Significant enhancements to Report Writer!!! (Appluase)
Demo: Line-by-line compile,
Anchor Properties let forms size "naturally" as expected in a form. 16 options vertical and horizontal for each control, Checkbox caption wrapping
Summary and Call to Action
- Great new features in VFP 8.0
- VFP 8/.0 works great with SQL Server
- VFP 8.0 works great with VS .NET
- Commitment to VFP and community
- VFP 8.0 8.0 is the emost stable version ever
- MSDN Subscriptions for professionals
- Be active in FoxPro communtiy
- Talk about VFP 8.0!!!
(Applause)
9:20:02 PM
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Wireless at last! Bravo to the folks at Vision Data Systems for getting the computer cafe and wireless access up and running at the Essential Fox Conference.
2:55:56 PM
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West Wind Client Tools 4.35 release. West Wind Technologies has released an update to its client side Internet and tools product the West Wind Client Tools. The product includes all the Internet functionality of wwIPStuff (HTTP, SMTP/POP3, Sockets, FTP) as well as a light weight business object, SQL Server, Web data access, XML and a host of utility classes. This update fixes a few minor bugs and adds a few convenience properties that improves accessing the various objects. The documentation has also been updated for many of the over 20 classes and tools included in this toolkit. [FoxCentral.Net]
2:23:13 PM
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Thursday, April 24, 2003 |
Off to the Essential Fox Conference. Finally got a chance to show my "Graphing with VFP" in front of a live audience last night at the Boston FoxPro User Group and I've got the chance to make a few tweaks before I go on Saturday.
6:35:29 AM
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Wednesday, April 23, 2003 |
Great bunch of activity on SlashDot. Always interesting to hear from the most vocal - not necessarily the most well-informed, but interesting nonetheless. My favorite comment:
VFP is unique among MS products in that regard. VB had a faithful following, but it was always too big and too loud and too contaminated by weekend "programmers" to have an effect over the company. VFP folks - they're the Mujahedin of Microsoft users.
I'd prefer more of a parallel to the Fedaykin, but I'll take it as a compliment, anyway.
382 comments on the main thread, 32 of them at level 4 or better.
220 on the followup thread with 14 of them at level 4 or better.
9:16:14 AM
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Tuesday, April 22, 2003 |
This is the second of these warnings about XP slowdowns I've seen. The first involved Service Pack 1 for Windows XP, and I passed it on the group at the Windows Server UG meeting earlier this month. This one is a Windows Update patch. Latest Windows XP patch can slow down PCs. Users report delays in launching applications [InfoWorld: Top News]
8:29:10 PM
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Opinions are like bellybuttons: everyone's got one. From a site called vbRAD (didn't VB used to be a language? - rimshot!), comes a piece called: Why Linux Sucks as a Desktop OS via OSNews
5:37:15 PM
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Here's a great idea! After losing many hours having inspectors poke through bags filled with power supplies, hubs, cables, etc., and losing a precious pocketknife when the airline refused to let me check my bags, here's a solution to rid yourself of the hassle. Finding Opportunity in Baggage Woes. "Working as long-haul bellhops, companies are picking up and delivering bags. Unencumbered passengers fly alone." By Joe Sharkey at the New York Times: Business
11:07:49 AM
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From Catching up with Wine on Slashdot
Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday April 22, @09:08AM
from the now-isn't-that-strange dept.
An anonymous reader writes "TransGaming's announcement of the availability of WineX 3.0 got a lot of pixel dust, but that wasn't the only recent news about WINE. The Microsoft monopoly also reached out to touch the project when Whil Hentzen, a leading proponent of Visual FoxPro (VFP) development on Linux, was contacted by an Microsoft manager and told it was a violation of the VFP EULA to run it on Linux." I guess thats one way to stop emulation. update Oh well, its a dupe. Whatever, it gives people something to complain about I guess ;)
Go, Taco, Go!
It is a duplicate posting, but it does point to a new article on the subject from Joe Barr over at LinuxWorld.
10:26:48 AM
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From FoxCentral.Net: CoDe Magazine Focus: Visual FoxPro 8.0. "This special edition of CoDe Magazine focusing entirely on Visual FoxPro 8.0 which was significantly subsidized by Microsoft. This 72 page issue of CoDe Magazine contains detailed articles on Visual FoxPro 8.0 to complement upcoming technical whitepapers and content coming soon to the MSDN Library and the http://msdn.microsoft.com/vfoxpro Visual FoxPro Web site. The content is technical resources for developers who are evaluating or using Visual FoxPro 8.0. And all the articles are online at http://code-magazine.com/focus."
Hmm. I was surprised when I heard that a "special edition" of CoDE magazine was being issued, and that it was subsidized by Microsoft. While I know the authors, editor and publisher personally, and have no doubt about their personal integrity, the idea of creating a magazine that looks like your regular edition but is in fact paid for by one of your largest advertisers has to bring out questions of journalistic conflict-of-interest. In addition, I find it strange that Microsoft chose this one magazine, and did not fund similar rollout editions of the competition, FoxTalk or FoxPro Advisor. I'm looking forward to the magazine and how they addressed these issues.
10:09:11 AM
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Monday, April 21, 2003 |
Seems someone posted the news that Whil's got a new page about the FoxPro EULA problem (mirrored here in case it's still unavailable) and it got SlashDotted and promptly taken off the air. Looks like it is back now.
9:01:55 PM
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E. F. Codd and C. J. Date are responsible for much of the popularization of the relational database, arguably one of the most powerful tools for modeling data on a computer.
Here is his obituary from the Mercury News.
4:46:25 PM
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From FoxCentral.Net: Visual FoxPro 8.0 Featured on Microsoft PressPass. A detailed press announcement called New Microsoft Visual FoxPro 8.0 Driven By Customer Feedback has been posted on Microsoft PressPass and submitted to journalists world-wide for education on Microsoft's release of Visual FoxPro 8.0. The article contains quotes from Eric Rudder (senior vice president of the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division at Microsoft), Brian Jones (vice president of DPRA Inc.), and a brief case study of an award winning Visual FoxPro application.
3:20:53 PM
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From FoxCentral.Net: Visual FoxPro Web Site Updated. "The Microsoft Visual FoxPro Web site has been updated with new information and links for Visual FoxPro 8.0. There are weekly updates planned for the Visual FoxPro Web site and next month the following is just some of the content added for Visual FoxPro 8.0: New Evaluation Guide, new whitepapers, new sample downloads, updated free downloadable VFP 8.0 OLE DB provider with small enhancements from the version included in Visual FoxPro 8.0, and more. Refer to http://msdn.microsoft.com/vfoxpro for more details. "
3:20:07 PM
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The ongoing difficulties with interpreting the Visual FoxPro EULA have brought forth clearly the problems with End User Licensing Agreements and the rights of consumers.
Last week, as part of installing a new cable modem, the technician needed to install software on my machine to activate the modem (I ensured he did remove it afterwards). As part of the install, a great big page of 4 point legalese popped up, to which he just clicked "Agree" and continued. Now, who is obligated to that license? Not me. I never touched the machine. Not him, the license was probably addressed to the owner of the box. However, I am probably liable for it, and I've got a lot less money to hire lawyers to debate it than the cable company does.
In the two most recent versions of Visual FoxPro, a number of the rules have changed, and I am sure most VFP developers are not aware of the rule changes:
- An upgrade now (in VFP8) requires that you uninstall the previous version of the software, nonsense to developer who need to support their customers. Link here, here and here.
- VFP8 (and 7 as well, I believe) can only be distributed using their MSM files and the Microsoft Installer technology. This is a limit by license, and not a technological hurdle. Many developers install their applications by dragging and dropping a few DLLs and registering a few of them. This, and technology that competes with the Microsoft Installer technology, appears to be improper.
- Microsoft runtime DLLs must run "in conjunction:" with the Microsoft Windows platform. I'm not sure what that means. On top of? On a machine with the OS installed (dual boot?)? Whil Hentzen's taken the point postion on this question (as I blogged here and is waiting on an answer...
- On the flip side, it looks like the IDE can be installed on non-Microsoft Windows platforms, a loophole I expect to be closed soon. Running VFP on Wine is here , here and here.
- Finally, the ultimate question: is any of this enforceable? Can Microsoft tie their applications to their platform? Are EULAs and click-through licenses legal?
This is not what I get paid by my clients to figure out, although perhaps it must be, for the duration. I suppose clients need to be just as careful to follow the terms of OSI licenses as well.
1:57:31 PM
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Visual Studio 6 EULA. First Post: Since there seems to be a lot of concern over the changes to Microsoft's EULA, especially in regard to added restrictions on runtime distributables, I've posted the EULA from Visual Studio 6.0, of which VFP 6.0 was a part, and thus governs VFP 6.0 usage. Note that there are no restrictions on distributing royalty-free runtimes to non-Windows platforms. You may draw your own conclusions about the reasons such restrictions were added in later releases.
END-USER LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR MICROSOFT SOFTWARE ... from OpenTech Recent Topics
1:44:38 PM
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I'm sure there's a story here. A very few boxes of VFP 8.0 were autographed by the development and support team (I have a treasured VFP 3.0 box). I wonder if there was a "spare" or if there were some hard feelings. In any case, someone on eBay got a good deal! 
12:57:40 PM
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 Just joined the Social Software Alliance. Sorry I won't make their BOF session in Santa Clara at the EmergingTech conference, but hope to keep tags on what's happening online. The wiki is running "Nice Little Wiki" from SocialText.com, and , well, it's a nice little wiki - some great features.
10:51:22 AM
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Sunday, April 20, 2003 |
 Just last week, the snow finally melted away in a few days, and we're digging out the flower beds from under their protective covers of leaves. The first flowers of the season, bluets, are sticking their buds out. Ah, spring!
11:55:16 AM
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What Washington Did While the War Was on TV. "While Humvees sped toward Baghdad, the machinery of the federal government plodded along at home, churning out laws, executive orders and court decisions that passed relatively unnoticed by a public fixated on the war.
It might come as news that Congress, in creating a national kidnapping alert system, altered how federal criminal sentences are handed down. Or that the House voted anew for Arctic oil drilling. The Supreme Court issued an important decision on liability limits; the Environmental Protection Agency made a decision environmentalists liked. And nine Democratic presidential candidates held their first cattle call." By Carl Hulse, in the New York Times: NYT HomePage
10:05:31 AM
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Saturday, April 19, 2003 |
Reconfiguring the office HP OfficeJet with the wicked-cool JetDirect ethernet print server. Initially we set it up as DHCP but now realize it needs a fixed IP address, otherwise no one can find it. So, had to dredge around in the Windows Registry and .ini files. Crashed and burned the program along the way, and it's reboot time. Before they disappear off the radar screen, a couple quick links:
9:32:09 AM
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BusinessWeek Blowout on Wi-Fi. BusinessWeek devotes huge section to Wi-Fi: BusinessWeek devoted a whole host of articles to the subject of Wi-Fi, most circling around hot spots and cellular. One of the most succinct and excellent comments on the relationship of 3G cellular to Wi-Fi was in an interview with Nicholas Negroponte: If you give me broadband...[2-5 Mbp+]...I cannot really use it without devoting my fullest attention (which means my hands and eyes, not just my ears)...many of the issues that face cell-phone operators aren't present (like hand-off). The problem is different. There really is room to cohabitate. Exactly! Oddly, Andy Reinhardt's commentary in the same section ignores that critical difference. Wi-Fi can provide a virtual desktop experience: you can act not too far off from being in your office. 3G, even in its best possible incarnation in the next zero to two years, will be a slow data interchange format for making quick email retrievals and spooling, or for queuing data through slow pull (i.e., grab my email over the next 30 minutes as I drive to my destination). Some other good remarks-- A T-Mobile exec on how Wi-Fi and cell differs: With cell phones we had to give people devices to use it. Here [with Wi-Fi], people already have the devices. We just give them new areas where they can log on.... [Wi-Fi Networking News]
8:21:26 AM
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Friday, April 18, 2003 |
Andrew works for IBM and is one of the key developers on the Samba project, the Linux/UNIX software for providing and consuming SMB (Windows) shares on a network. In this interview on the IBM developerWorks site, he talks about the need for a pretty significant rewrite. Interesting stuff. Link courtesy of OSNews
1:05:14 PM
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Thursday, April 17, 2003 |
ExtremeTech features an article entitled "
Build-It: Save Money with a Linux Media Jukebox" by Dave Salvator that described a home audio-video central server. The 80 Gb hard drive is probably too small for someone with lots of audio and video to store, but the concept is great. Whil Hentzen suggested in an editorial last year that he wanted one of these machines in his basement to store all his A/V, and then the ability to call up the album of DVD of his choice in whatever room of the house he happened to be in.
9:38:09 AM
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A Wine emulator specially configured for DirectX games like EverQuest was released in version 3.0. My son would try it out, but I have such lame video an Uber-Gamer like him would be put off. Winex 3.0 Released from Slashdot
9:33:56 AM
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Rats. During the first operation of my newly-installed intranet Twiki, I got the following message:
During save of file TWiki.TWikiPreferences an error was found by the version control system. Please notify your TWiki administrator.
/usr/bin/ci -q -l -m'none' -t-none -w'guest' /var/www/twiki/data/TWiki/TWikiPreferences.txt 2>&1
ci: /var/www/twiki/data/TWiki/TWikiPreferences.txt,v: Permission denied
Go back in your browser and save your changes locally.
Attempts to resolve the problem with perl, chmod and chown only compounded the problem until the Twiki wouldn't even recognize its own configuration. Time to walk away and try it again another time. Sheesh.
9:31:37 AM
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Wednesday, April 16, 2003 |
Craig writes that "CrysDev is another step closer today. I reviewed the galley sheets and sent my changes back. The book should be at the printer this week. What I have left to do is collect the sample code and package it up."
Congratulations, Craig! More info here.
8:12:37 PM
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"I've long dreamed of using RSS to produce and consume XML content. We're so close. RSS content is HTML, which is almost XHTML,... " says Jon Udell: The Semantic Blog. via Scripting News
The joy of HTML is the simplicity of typing <b> for bold; the curse of HTML is that style and presentation is inseparable and almost indistinguishable from content. The medium is not the message, the content is. I know from writing a couple of screen-scraper HTML-to-RSS feeds, that the separation would be a Good Thing.
Jon's description of feeding XML right into a database and mixing XML and SQL and XPath is pretty intriguing as well. Looking forward to having that access in my database program of choice.
8:06:36 PM
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In a down economy, a $50 million increase in profits over the same quarter last year is not a bad thing. "Microsoft profits up, Intel down slightly. Microsoft beat earnings forecasts but warned of continued decline in corporate IT spending. Intel earnings were slightly down compared to the same period last year." from Computerworld News
Microsoft's press release is here for folks who love to crunch through the details.
1:33:32 PM
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Tuesday, April 15, 2003 |
James R. Regan linked to my Social Software on Meatball Wiki link. Thanks, James. He, in turn, had an interesting article on "Blogs, dialogue and identity building" from Lilia Efimova's site, which in turn leads to the KM Wiki and to Ton Zijlstra's Inter Thoughts. While I was at it, there were interesting side trips to WikiWebPIM, the IAWiki with this great picture of Post_Web Information System Design and Tim O'Reilly and Adam Turoff having a great conversation on developer communities for Open and Closed Source projects.
Obviously, a lot of time and effort has gone into the discussion of "What are blogs?" and "How do they help things?" and "What's The Next Big Thing?"
While blogs may serve, in the day-to-day chronological sense, as a dialogue between peers, a discussion group, the ability to archive them turns them into a knowledge base, although one difficult to search and navigate. A reader can follow, days, weeks or months later, a conversation that may have gone back and forth, but they may step into the conversation in the middle, or lose the final conclusion. A mechanism to summarize and group these related conversations together is needed. Relevance scoring is always welcomed.
8:20:30 PM
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It seems that, since Microsoft is selling everything everywhere (and often hiding behind retailers), it's difficult to come to a consensus on who the average consumer is who was hurt by their monopolistic behaviors. Law can be such a torturously tangled web sometimes. Microsoft has no Class (Action) From Ars Technica
6:28:05 PM
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Here's a followup to my blog of last week where I reported that Microsoft gags MVP and 'Lifetime Achievement Award' winner. Whil posted this message today:
Hi folks,
Hey! Remember me?
Attached is an email I've just sent to Ken Levy and other members of the
Fox team at Microsoft. It pretty well sums up what happened last week, and
should clear up misconceptions on anyone's part. If not, well, ask away.
I'll be gone Thursday and part of Friday in Denver, but will be around the
rest of the time.
I was at a conference last weekend, and heard this great line: "Bill Gates
seems to me to be the type of person you'd invite over for dinner, and he'd
take all of the mashed potatoes for himself." But even better was this one:
"The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed."
We live in pretty interesting times, eh?
Whil
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ken:
Last Wednesday you called me to tell me that the article in FoxTalk about
running VFP on Linux was prohibited by the EULA in both VFP 7 and 8. You
didn't provide additional details, and given that you interrupted me at
dinner, I didn't have the wherewithal to ask you to explain more.
However, I asked you to have someone on MSFT's legal staff confirm this to
me in writing. I did this for two reasons. First, I don't believe that you
have the authority to legally interpret Microsoft's legal documents, nor do
I think you want to try to legally bind Microsoft to a contractual position
while you hold a job as a marketing manager.
Second, given that you were trying to impart critical information that, in
your words, couldn't wait until I got home yesterday (Monday), I wanted to
make sure that I accurately understood what you were saying. It's so easy for a
rushed conversation to generate misunderstandings.
Yet , that's exactly what has happened.
The article discussed how to run VFP on a machine running Linux as a
development environment, and was explicit in reminding the reader that they
would need to have the proper licenses. You stated that this is a violation
of the VFP 7 and 8 EULA. However, in the next 48 hours, you then told both
Ed Leafe and Ted Roche that as long as the licenses were in order, this
activity is indeed permitted by the EULA.
Well, I'm confused. Why did you tell me one thing, and then them something
completely different? Perhaps one of us has misunderstood. Three separate
voice conversations - very easy to happen. But this apparent contradiction
is exactly why I wanted this matter settled explicitly in writing.
To date, I have not received anything. Perhaps my request slipped through
the cracks; perhaps you didn't understand during our rushed conversation
exactly what I was asking for.
As I understood from our abbreviated conversation, you said the activities
described in the article were prohibited. But after reading the EULA a
number of times, I can't see how you come to that conclusion. Nor can a
number of other folks with whom I've talked. To wit:
1. Your statement to me indicates that it was illegal for an individual
to run the development version of VFP 8 on a machine running Linux even
if the developer has a license specifically for that machine. It is our
opinion that this is permissable by the EULA, since hubbub surrounding
the EULA only makes reference to redistribution.
2. The EULA seems to prohibit the distribution of certain Microsoft
components on non-Windows operating systems - specifically, the files listed
in REDIST.TXT, which include the MSMs. However, it is physically possible to
distribute and run an executable created by the VFP project manager in
conjunction with the VFP runtime DLLs, without needing to bother with the
MSMs. Thus it is our opinion that deploying VFP apps to customer
workstations or servers using a developer created EXE and the VFP runtime
DLLs, regardless of the operating system, is legal.
3. In a bigger context, it appears that Microsoft is tying the use of
applications (their developer tools) to their operating system. Given the
legal difficulties that Microsoft has encountered over the years, we don't
believe that this is legal, and thus we don't believe that this is the
intent of the EULA. Rather, we believe that some overzealous, but
inexperienced, legal staffer drafted a poorly worded EULA, intending to
ensure that the appropriate licenses are in place for applications as well
as operating systems.
To repeat my request, and to be explicit about it:
Please have an individual authorized by Microsoft Corporation to speak on
its behalf with respect to legal affairs provide me, in writing, the
following clarifications about the VFP 7 and 8 EULA. The specific questions
for your legal department to answer are:
1. Can an individual developer run Visual FoxPro 8.0 on a machine
exclusively running the Linux operating system, assuming that the
appropriate VFP
license was paid for, for development purposes? (In other words, that a
copy of VFP
was licensed strictly for that machine.)
2. Can an individual deploy VFP apps to customer workstations or servers
that are running Linux using a developer created EXE and the VFP runtime
DLLs (without using Installshield or another mechanism that relies on the
MSMs)?
3. Is the EULA restricting the manner in which the developer creates and
deploys an application for a customer - meaning it prohibits an installation
that bypasses the MSMs?
I do not want you to get stuck in the uncomfortable position of trying to
act as Microsoft's counsel when you do not have the authoritiy to do so. You
certainly don't want to attempt to make legal committments on Microsoft's
behalf! However, I welcome your offer to intercede and make the appropriate
contact with Microsoft legal so that they can put what we can and cannot do
in writing.
As you know, the computing industry is in difficult times, and all
players are doing what they can to make ends meet. Deploying VFP
applications on Linux brings a new standard of application quality to
that platform, and lets Visual FoxPro developers exploit their
advanced skills in new markets. It would be disappointing to find those
skills going to waste. Please help clarify what is and is not allowed.
I need to hear back by Monday, April 21. If I don't, we'll go ahead with
the assumptions that (1) we can run VFP 8 on Linux, and (2) we can deploy
applications on Linux via EXEs and DLLs.
Thanks!
Whil
Fox is Everywhere
Hentzenwerke InterGalactic: http://www.hentzenwerke.com
[Ted notes: some updates in the past two weeks. See these links:
Updated by Ted Roche, 30-April-2003]
6:22:50 PM
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 Dave Winer writes "Robert Scoble just called to say that he's leaving NEC to join Microsoft as technical evangelist for a new product in development. He'll work for Robert Hess, a smart guy I've known for many years. It's a good match, a dream job for Scoble, and Microsoft gets a foot in the blogging world, and enthusiastic evangelism from a true believer. Congratulations to Robert and to his new employer." [from Scripting News]
3:52:54 PM
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Garrett Fitzgerald posted "The Mother of all Demos. A recent Slashdot post calls this "The Mother of all Demos", and I'm inclined to agree. I didn't realize that mouse-based computing was almost as old as I am. "
I'm really pleased to see history sites like this out there. There's very little new under the sun, not even in computing. I explained to a fellow developer recently that I was using "Instant Messaging" and "Chat Rooms" on a GE-635 mainframe back in 1976, and that I was printing a publishing document from a GUI using scalable fonts and Postscript output, in 1988.
Now, has anyone got a good link to Alan Kay's DynaBook videos?
3:51:06 PM
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Monday, April 14, 2003 |
Spent an Internet-less weekend without the cable modem (office functions go through a separate DSL line), but had an ace technician here first thing this morning from Comcast with a replacement for my 3-year-old LANCity cable modem. Spiffy little unit from RCA even has an off/off switch on the front. Up and running in less than an hour!
11:05:52 AM
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Sunday, April 13, 2003 |
From [New York Times: Technology]: Some Search Results Hit Too Close to Home. "With Phonebook, Internet users can type a phone number into the Google search box and the name and address of the person to whom it belongs will appear. By Amy Harmon."
I received an alarmist email about this from a relative last week. Maybe I'm just too close to the technology, but I am not alarmed. I've been doing this for over ten years, first with CD-based databases of names and addresses, for marketing and mailing projects, and then online. Reverse telephone lookup has always been possible, even if you have to read the phonebook to get there. This is what "public information" means - who you are, where you live, your phone number, your interactions with town hall, your statement at public meetings, quotes in the newspaper - these are all searchable.
Is there a worry here that hasn't been here all along?
8:04:28 AM
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Off traveling for the rest of the day, down to Massachusetts, to celebrate Steve's 21st and Dad's 70th birthday.
7:55:30 AM
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Wow. Missed posting anything to the blog, as I spent most of the day troubleshotting our incoming cable modem connection. Half the house was Internet-less, while the other half (on the office DSL) surfed obliviously. Of course, lots of the mail and other items were configured for the downed line, so I spent most of the day trying to get it running. Probably just wet wires after the downpour we had yesterday. A day of troubleshooting, and an inconclusive end.
7:53:03 AM
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Friday, April 11, 2003 |
A little blog tonight. Spent the day at a client two states away. Lots of driving in the rain. Blah.
However, the client is thrilled at the newest features of the application - exporting reports to text, HTML and Excel for viewing on his Pocket PC. Score!
9:34:56 PM
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Son Stephen turns 21 today. Wow.
9:33:33 PM
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Thursday, April 10, 2003 |
Whil Hentzen, Microsoft Support Most Valuable Professional and the first winner of the FoxPro Lifetime Achievement Award, traveled to the West Coast to present "Expanding your VFP Skillset with Linux" to the Bay Area Association of Database Developers, which included a demonstration of Visual FoxPro running under Wine on Linux. He was prevented from making the presentation. Here's what happened:
-----Original Message-----
From: Chet Gardiner
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2003 2:47 AM
To: profox@leafe.com; prolinux@leafe.com
Subject: VFP under Linux - Not
FYI:
I attended the BAADD (Bay Area Association of Database Developers) VFP sig meeting this evening. It was to be something very special since Whil Hentzen was coming in to talk to us about developing with the Fox under Linux.
Whil made some very good points about the growth of Linux and the fact that it soon will be a very viable solution for the desktop for people who don't (or can't afford) microsoft's extortionate policies, practices and prices. I'd have to agree. I had very little problem installing a workable version on one of the machines on my network. For instance, Red Hat 8.0 comes
with a complete office suite, email clients and servers, web server, samba network file service, etc, etc. You can download the images for free and try it out.
The most interesting point Whil made was that there was a group of people who really knows database applications (us) who could fit right into the Linux world if we got VFP running under it. They don't need the apps now but soon and there's no other viable 4GL language for Linux and Windows on the near horizon.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Whil got a call this afternoon from a semi-highly placed person from M$ who warned him that he would be in violation of the EULA for VFP if he demonstrated (or ran) VFP on a Linux OS. that he might run into some trouble from their huge stable of lawyers. There has been some discussion of letting M$ know how we feel about this attack on our potential livelihood. I intend to do just that.
I've seen this before, back in the late 70s/early 80s when IBM had 85% of the computing market share.
Chet
2:56:05 PM
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In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me -
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
A paraphrase of the testimony of Pastor Martin Niem[^]ller.
Is it time yet for you to speak out?
10:17:36 AM
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Wednesday, April 9, 2003 |
Different needs and modes require different structures:
- Chat rooms / IM - instant feedback, good for quick answers, no memory, though.
- Email lists - good for current participation, arhives can be difficult to search, thread drift (or mobs) increase signal/noise
- Forums - quick feedback, give-and-take discussion, scrolls off forum (perhaps into archives), searching haphazard
- Blogs - Linking as feedback, organic structure, shallow, chronological structure good for *now*, weak for a thread through time
- Wiki - web structure, deep links in and out, good searching, structure builds over time, poor feedback mechanisms (although email notifications and RSS can enhance)
I've started to discover that too many RSS subscriptions mean that I have to spend too much time reading and sorting, and not enough time left to blog, or even to read everything as it scrolls by. What's needed is better filters to help screen interesting from not, perhaps a rating system to establish the esteem in which various posts are placed, so the news aggregator doesn't just present a single stream of RSS feeds as they happen, but a richer, rated list, weighted either with my preferences or perhaps the Whuffie of Technorati or a similar service. What's popular isn't always of interest to me, but keeping up on what is popular might be.
8:41:34 PM
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There's also this very interesting, heavy-cross-linked wiki posting on Meatball Wiki.
One of the key differentiators that many Social Software advocates are arguing about is the question of the number of participants vs. the value. We have all seen forums "turn nasty" and communities go sour. I've also had the priviledge to belong to long-lasting groups that had decorum as well as numbers CompuServe's FoxForum 1990-1995 hosted as many a 500 messages per day and yet threads were maintained, order was enforced (not by SysOps as much as community activists) and a really powerful social as well as business network was formed. I am not convinced that the software features are as enabling as a few skilled people who serve as Connectors, as Malcolm Gladwell described them in "The Tipping Point."
5:36:49 PM
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New Social Software Products. Social Software Making Progress Dan Gillmor: "The smaller the group, the more immediate value in the relationship. That's one notion behind an emerging phenomenon called ``social software"
Jeremy Allaire writes: "Dan's got some thoughts on the emerging category of "social software", a phrase Clay Shirky has been promoting. Another interesting company solving similar problems --- and one who was just on a panel moderated by Clay, also including SocialText --- is Providence, RI-based Traction Software, who's "enterrprise weblog" software is really a powerful distributed communication and publishing tool for information professionals."
5:28:36 PM
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Steve and I saw Phone Booth yesterday afternoon. Great flick. While the move is short (80 minutes), you don't want to hang on the edge of your chair any longer than that. Colin Farrell has a riveting performance. Great suspense, little blood, no gore.
3:57:24 PM
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Tuesday, April 8, 2003 |
Ed Foster has another of his always informative Gripe Line columns on InfoWorld. In this one, he points out that the Software Assurance portion of the Licensing 6.0 contract most large companies own can be a killer if a division is split off: all future payments (for the life of the contract) come due, and there is no further obligation for upgrades. Ouch!. Microsoft might be open to reducing the cost if you re-up, of course. Read the gory details at the link above.
3:20:17 PM
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Monday, April 7, 2003 |
An interesting article in IT Week titled "Novell Takes Linux Exit; To Drop NetWare?" I was a Novell CNA (Admin not CNE, Engineer) for Novell 3.x, and it was a powerful, scalable network OS. It was absolutely swamped by Windows, though, and seemed to muddle through a number of initiatives that were unclear. Their directory services, though, I hear, are the crown jewel of the company at this point. Not connected with the news in that part of the world, I missed the Cambridge Technology Partners acquisition - those are sharp guys. It will be interesting to see which direction the company takes from here. Thanks to the post on OSNews
8:17:15 PM
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SharePoint shacks up with Office. "Microsoft plans to add its SharePoint business portal software to its Office bundle, as the company looks to broaden the appeal of its desktop software." according to CNET News.com
Intriguing. As I noted some time ago, many developers have been delivering systems using portions of Office for many years. With the Sharepoint services (formerly Microsoft SharePoint Team Services) built into Microsoft (formerly .NET) Server 2003 (formerly 2002), Microsoft may have hit upon a winning combination for ease of enterprise-wide distribution, versioning and tracking. Or, like the Exchange extensions last time and the previous versions of SharePoint, they may be flailing for a problem to fit their solution. I'm having a really hard time figuring out if Microsoft is really coming up with a coordinated plan to provide enterprise-wide services (the new decade of the 2000s, turning-over-the-leaf plan) (vs. the workgroup and desktop applications thay have been shipping) or whether they are just throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks, the plan that got them through the nineties.
7:54:48 PM
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"Social software" is a term I have heard bantered about when talking about blogs and wikis, and I find the term attractive. I am convinced that software that really enhances our abilities to find birds-of-a-feather, create an online community, and find richer ways to interact easily is a category that is up-and-coming. And "social software" seems to be a good name for the category to put it all under.
However, SS may have already suffered too much diliution, excessive GoogleWashing, to effectively communicate any real concepts. Social Software isn't new. If we try to break down SS to a simple core definition, we'll find silly ideas like "the ability of one person to communicate with others," which pretty much describes most of civilization, doesn't it? One of my first experiences with SS was joining online conferences in the Dartmouth College Time-Sharing System (DTSS) back in the mid-70s, where we could type JOIN XYZ from a terminal and be able to communicate with others in a chat room and whisper privately to other individuals. (What, did you think AOL invented this?) That was "Social Software."
Knowing that I'm rarely the first to come up with any idea, I thought I'd search Google for ideas. There's already been a "Social Software Summit," an http://www.social-software.com, and a commerial venture, notes from an iSociety presentation by Clay Shirky, ...
And "Print Your Own Wedding Invitations and Social Invitations," described as "Social Software for MicrosoftÆ Windows tm 95, 98SE, ME, NT,..." oh, dear. Is this "GoodleWashing" or more like Google-dilution? One man's treasure...
Does a meme and its catchy phrase always go separate ways? So the Para-DIG-m and the "step outside the box" are bad jokes, but the concepts remain valid? How can we continue to communicate if our words are constantly diluted?
9:24:48 AM
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Sunday, April 6, 2003 |
Migration: Not for the Faint of Heart is an edtorial response to yesterday's OSNews article on the failings of one person to successfully switch to Linux. As I said, I thought their expectations were too high, and that they failed to consider resources that could help. Posted at OSNews
8:21:12 PM
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Upgraded the intranet server from Red Hat 8.0 "Phoebe" to Red Hat 9.0 "Shrike" yesterday. The slow part was the downloads - each CD takes about an hour over broadband (okay, that's not much to complain about!), but disk 5 had to be downloaded 5 times before I got a clean copy. (Hint: use MD5Sums.exe to test the .iso without going to all the hassle of burning a copy that Linux tells you isn't valid. Hint2: then run "linux mediacheck" on startup to make sure you've got a good copy).
Installation was smooth as silk: boot from the CD, tell it to upgrade the install it finds, confirm you want to upgrade all packages, walk away. Drop by two more times to insert CD 2 and 3 and you are up and running. All settings transferred, all(most) all software running. I say almost, regretably, because it looks like changes to the threading model (a real performance improvement, I hear) break Wine. There's a workaround already, and the Wine folks are hard at work at a solid fix. Details and a good review of RH 9.0 are available here and here:
http://www.gurulabs.com/RedHatLinux9-review.html
http://www.winehq.com/index.php?issue=163#Making%20Wine%20Run%20With%20glibc%202.3
9:49:27 AM
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Here's a sad story, one sure to be used by Linux bashers for more material. The evil side will summarize this as "somewhat clued-in tech writer can't get Linux to work on her machine." The other side might view this as "somwhat clued-in tech writer tries
- Out-of-date distributions,
- On older hardware that was running 95
- Without asking for help from more clued-in Linux help
- Requiring a dual boot, difficult under most OSes.
There were a number of things she could have done differently, such as: search out a Linux User Group for some friendly free advice and perhaps an installfest, bought a new machine with Linux installed, or sought out a friend with more experience.
She probably would not have had a more pleasant experience trying to install Windows XP Home on the machine, either.
The Clueless Newbie's Linux Odyssey from Slashdot
9:29:56 AM
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Saturday, April 5, 2003 |
OS News and Ars Technica both have postings pointing to a Freshmeat Editorial that argues there is too much Free Software. Too much of a good thing? Someone once tried to convince me there was such a thing as too much chocolate. I didn't believe her, either.
10:48:30 AM
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A really chilling tale. Are we really turning into a police state? In A Hotel's Privacy Invasion, Dan Gillmore reports "I will not be staying again at the Ramada New Yorker hotel, the site of the just-ended Computers, Freedom and..." posted atDan Gillmor's eJournal
10:20:39 AM
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Friday, April 4, 2003 |
Hmm. My IBM Thinkpad came configured with the "chooser" application in the Start menu. It must have been one of those helpful little things IBM did to customize my experience. I'll have to thank them, as it has been very handy. Microsoft will Ease Access to Rival Browsers [OSNews]
3:29:56 PM
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The Xerox Alto, precursor to modern PCs, turns 30 this month. How Digital Pioneers Put the 'Personal' in PC's. PALO ALTO, Calif. By John Markoff, on the New York Times: Technology site:
THE modern personal computer came to life three decades ago this month when a group of Xerox engineers projected an image of Cookie Monster from "Sesame Street" onto the screen of an unfinished machine known as the Alto.
8:46:49 AM
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Unfortunately, I do not speak Spanish, but for those lucky folks who do, the Portal Fox web site has an RSS Feed for their FoxPro news and discussion site. Excellent!
8:37:51 AM
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Thursday, April 3, 2003 |
When Steven is on his game, there is no one better. An excellent article on a sophisticated object-oriented design pattern that really shows off the power of OOP and the power of Visual FoxPro to produce incredible solutions:
New article: The Hooks And Anchors Design Pattern. The Hooks and Anchors Design Pattern is an abstract controlling architecture for flexible configurable systems. All object-oriented VFP frameworks can be described as skeletal structures designed for extension. Over time, developers grow their root framework(s) into one or more applications, refining and extending (evolving) their toolset over an extended period of time. In the Hooks and Anchors design pattern, the hook is implemented with a hook object society, which is designed at the outset to fully encapsulate work of the hook method. The hook method, therefore, reduces to a hook operation that delegates program flow to the society of hook objects. The crux is this: since we're talking about VFP here, the Hooks and Anchors society is, of course, natively engineered to be metadata-driven in both composition and execution. [FoxCentral.Net]
12:20:48 PM
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Wednesday, April 2, 2003 |
Jon also reports on his first close-up examination of InfoPath, Microsoft's Office 11 tool for manipulating XML. This is a vast step forward for Microsoft. It will be interesting to see where this tool leads. It looks like you can do better and easier XML manipulation in Office than in Visual Studio.NET. What does that say?
3:02:05 PM
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Ends and Means is all the buzz, as Cluetrain was a few years ago. But is is buzz or is it substance?
2:59:08 PM
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Jon Udell reports on Adam Boswell's presentation at the CTO Forum in Boston yesterday. Is a Service-Oriented Architecture the Next Big Thing?
2:57:57 PM
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... where I will be the guest MC tonight as chairman Rick Zach is off in Redmond, Washington, getting wined and dined by some software company.
Tonight, we'll have a presentation by Microsoft on "Collaborative Servies in Windows Server 2003." More details, directions to the meeting, etc, are available on the group web site at http://www.windowsboston.com/.
2:04:03 PM
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Tuesday, April 1, 2003 |
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