The "U" Word

So I just got a Creative Zen Touch

2004-07-29T03:03:00Z

This 20GB hard-drive-based MP3/WMA player looks cool, nice in the hand, has pretty reasonable controls... and has some odd software with some weird quirks.

I can't get the Creative software to find the 6GB of music already living on my laptop. Although I've pointed the MediaSource tool at the top level directory of my music repository, it doesn't see anything.
The Creative folks decided not to make the Zen appear to Windows as a hard disk. I suppose it's because they didn't want to implement a standard filesystem internally. That was a mistake; near as I can tell, the Zen treats the hard disk as if it were a single directory. Each track must be uniquely named by the song title, which is a real problem if you have two or more tracks with exactly the same title (in my case, there are two tracks called “Sunday“ on the soundtrack to Sunday in the Park with George).

I'm going to LA for a 4-day weekend; I'll see how it works for me during that. I'm pairing it with a pair of Bose QuietComfort 2 noise-cancelling headphones (which I adore for air travel); the sound quality should be at least as good as that generated by the Dell C610 laptop I currently use.

NetBSD adds support for SFU/Interix to its Packages tools

2004-03-14T21:36:00Z

See this OSNews.com report. The cool thing - over time, more and more packages can be easily downloaded, built and installed for SFU with one simple command.

New, bigger disks for my homebrew PVR

2004-03-11T01:03:00Z

The wizards at Hitachi have announced a 400GB 7200RPM SATA hard drive. This C|Net article explains why you want one.

I want four, attached to a SATA RAID-5 card. That'll give me 1.2TB of redundant storage, allowing me to capture an entire year's worth of NASCAR Nextel Cup races as well as the other televised flotsam and jetsam that randomly attracts my attention. (oooh, shiny! :-)

Back in the day, people spoke of terabyte databases as if they were glowing, golden room-sized blobs of unobtainium. Now, any geek with less than $2k can put 1.2TB (1.6TB if you don't care about redundancy) into a full-tower PC.

Migrating to Linux is far more expensive than expected

2004-02-18T23:42:00Z

Just read an article about the experience the City of Munich is having in migrating from Windows to Linux. Apparently, the migration project has run into some serious snags and cost overruns in the areas of secuity, compatibility, and stability. They're also getting hit harder than they expected for training costs.

The city council is demanding an investigation, since they were promised “cheaper”. Apparently some people have forgotten that even during the final project bid process the Windows solution was known to be less costly, since Microsoft apparently dropped trou' on pricing.

My guess (based on personal experience with Unix, Linux, Windows, and watching dozens of customers try to migrate in both directions) is that, when the project is completed, the City of Munich will discover that the project cost more money with Linux than it would have with Windows even at the original bid before discounting. The cost of becoming ones own operating system development and application testing shop is huge and on-going, to the extent that there isn't enough calendar time to amortize and recover the expense.

(And I so enjoyed reading the comments attached to the article, too. Everything from Linux fanboy flamage to “Microsoft is still evil” flamage to “The playing field still isn't level” whining to... )

An end to stupidity - the solution to the Crimson Room puzzle

2004-02-14T01:43:00Z

I have been enlightened. Herewith is the solution to the Crimson Room puzzle, but it's been “rot13”ized.

(What's that, you say? rot-13? That means each letter has been replaced with the letter 13 characters later in the alphabet. A is replaced with N; Z is replaced with M; etc. For UNIX users, this is translated easily with the “tr” command, to wit:

tr [a-mn-zA-MN-Z] [n-za-mN-ZA-M] < sourcefile > destfile

If you don't have UNIX, install SFU, save this text, then do the rot13 thing.)

And if you want to watch a lot of other people struggle, see here and here.

Here are the instructions.

Lbh cvpx hc 2 evatf: 1 snyyf sebz gur phegnva (xrrc bcravat naq pybfvat vg),
1 evat vf ba gur objy arkg gb gur fgrerb

2 xrlf (tbyq naq fvyire): 1 xrl vf ba gur jvaqbj, 1 haqre gur cvyybj

PQ Pnfr: Va gur qenjre, lbh qba'g arrq vg

Cbjre-Pubeq: Hfr gur xrlf gb bcra gur qenjre

Zvfgrel Obk: Hfr gur bgure xrl gb bcra gur qenjre

Beqvanel Xrl: Cyht gur cbjre pubeq vagb PQ cynlre naq bcra gur pq fybg, gurer
vf nabgure xrl

Zrgny Ebq: Yvsg gur cvyybj naq ba gur orq, gurer vf n zrgny ebq

Onggrel: Ba gur sne fvqr bs gur orq

Pnffrgr: Orybj gur qrfx juvpu fhccbegf gur PQ cynlre

Svg gur evatf & zrgny ebq ba gur zvfgrel obk. Bcra zvfgrel obk, svg va
pnffrggr cynlre naq onggrel, cynl gur zbivr

Gur qnapvat zna cbvagf gb n fcbg ba gur fperra. Zbhfr pyvpx gung cbvag.

Bcra gur erpgnathyne fybg. Gur pbqr vf 1994, hfr gur xrl bcra gur fnsr

Lbh trg n fperj qevire va gur fnsr

Hfr gur fperj qevire gb penpx gur qbbe naq tb bhg.

How to feel stupider than everyone else, part 2

2004-02-14T00:58:00Z

So I posted a pointer to a really cool flash-based puzzle which had stumped me for an hour. An hour later (admittedly, only intermittent attention paid to puzzle), four people have already commented that they've solved it.

I like to think I'm a smart guy, but I'm feeling stupider every minute.

"Essentials of Windows for UNIX developers" on-line course goes live!

2004-02-14T00:11:00Z

When discussing with CIOs and IT directors the idea of adding Windows to the set of platforms for which they develop custom line-of-business apps, one of the most common questions I hear is this: “I've got a team of 50 (or 150, or...) UNIX developers who've been doing that for ten years, or more. How can I get them up to speed on building apps for Windows?“ A serious problem, since developers are not fungible resources; even if you could replace a UNIX-skilled dev with an equivalent Windows-skilled dev, that new person wouldn't have the unique knowledge of the application and the business that is required to effectively build the right apps in the right way.

I've been working on answering that question for the last 8 months. Microsoft courseware has traditionally accomplished two tasks: how do you turn a total neophyte into an effective developer, and how do you introduce the latest and greatest features or subtleties to a person who is already an expert in the previous or current version of our products. We've had nothing that addressed the need to take an expert in the same technology on a different platform and bring them up to speed on the appropriate Microsoft products as rapidly and efficiently as possible. That is another facet of the basic question posed.

The newest part of Microsoft's answer is an on-line computer-based training (CBT) course, Learn the Essentials of Windows for UNIX Developers. It's not heavy-weight; a motivated person could plow through it in far less than a day. But it's crammed full of pointers to content on MSDN, Microsoft.com, and other web sites; lots of references to books, articles, etc. It talks about how developing for Windows is different from developing for UNIX, and why those differences exist. History and philosophy of OS architecture as it applies to the differences between UNIX and Windows.

Everything the typical I'll-learn-it-myself UNIX dev needs to start getting his brain wrapped around modern Windows development.

This course is a just-for-devs version of the admin-focused CBT course, Learn the Essentials of Windows for UNIX Administrators.

Check'em out. Find errors? Let me know. Want to quibble about what they say? I'm all ears. Know a friend with lots of UNIX skills who wants to expand her technical horizons? Pass it on.

How do you keep a web surfer busy for hours?

2004-02-13T23:25:00Z

Send them here. Don't blame me if their weekend disappears.

Four new UNIX Solution guides released

2004-02-07T01:24:00Z

Last Friday my team released the last of four guides planned to release by the end of 2003. (Hey, only a one-month slip isn't bad!) That brings the total number of guides in the area of UNIX migration and interop to 8. See the set of links at the left side of the screen to get there.

My manager wrote an internal announcement on this stuff, and he promised me there'd be a press release. So I searched PressPass - nothing there yet. Sigh. It'd be nice to be able to point my Mom at it and say “See? This is what I sweat blood over.”

Microsoft releases Solution Guide for integrating Unix systems with Windows for Authentication and Authorization

2004-02-07T01:02:00Z

As promised two weeks back, we finally got this out the door last week. Sorry I'm so late in letting everyone know; it's been a week of getting myself dug out from a sudden, unexpected trip to Boston and then to New York for LinuxWorld.

Solution Guide for Windows Security and Directory Services for UNIX
Using Active Directory and Kerberos for authentication and identity store in a heterogeneous UNIX and Windows IT environment.