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Making Windows safe for Unix people since 1995
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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... )
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Send them here. Don't blame me if their weekend disappears.
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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.”
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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.
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Betsy Aoki, the manager of this community site (amongst others), writes that people are surprised that her verbal style is different from the written style of her blog.
Oddly enough, I am often told that my conversational style and written style are almost identical. Some friends have told me they can hear my voice in their head reading the words I've written on paper or in email. (Let's not get into questioning their sanity, okay?) Maybe I use a variety of verbal styles, thus covering all the bases; verbally, I frequently adopt accents or localized speech habits, and I kinda do the same thang when writin', usually fer the same reasons.
At least my written style doesn't drift depending upon where I am, physically. If you drop me in England for a week, by the end of that time my accent and word choices will have begun to drift towards the local dialect, as much as my poor Americanized ears can hear, anyway. Worse yet, the drift is usually unconscious; I have to work at dragging it back to my normal transplanted-Noo-Yawkuh accent.
I wonder, though, if conversational style (leaving content aside for the moment) has a significant impact on the uptake rate for a blog. That is, is the likelihood that a person will subscribe to my RSS feed affected by written conversational style? Is it a negative-impact only (i.e. “lousy writing style, can't understand it, signing off now”) or will people actually read a blog more often because the writing style itself is appealing?
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A couple of years back, Microsoft Research built a game called “Allegiance”. It was a multiplayer on-line RPG set in a rather complex space/colonies/races milieu. Pretty cool, but never really caught on. A hard-core user base evolved, but the game didn't really hit big.
I just saw that Microsoft Research has released the game source code to community. The release is governed by a Shared Source license that prohibits commercial use; that is, you can't take the source, tweak it, build a new game and sell that. But the hard-core gamers who love Allegiance can now build new servers, add extensions, whatever.
That's pretty darn cool.
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The folks at OSnews are not exactly known for being Microsoft-friendly. Some of my colleagues have gone so far as to call them hostile. I wouldn't go that far; they just never, never give MS the benefit of the doubt. That's cool, though.
Then I read this review of SFU. I'm figuring we're due for a serious dope-slapping... and then I see a positive, close to glowing, review. Whoa. Knock me on my butt with a feather.
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As I've been trolling blogspace for posts on the new Services For Unix, I've noticed one question coming up more than any other: “How do I turn on the X Server in this thing?”
There is no X Server in Services For Unix.
“But... How can it be Unix if it doesn't have X?” I hear you cry. (If you haven't cried it yet, go ahead - I'll wait until you're done crying. :-)
I've been at Microsoft for more than four years, now, and I've been intimately involved with the SFU product for that entire time. I know that the SFU team has considered the question “Do we bundle an X Server” every six months, like clockwork, during that entire time. Each time, we reluctantly came to the conclusion that the answer should be “no”.
Let me talk through the analysis that would have applied up until the decision was made to release SFU for free. (As you'll see, that decision simplifies the analysis quite a bit without changing the answer.) There's nothing earth-shattering here; with a year of b-school or five years experience as a professional software developer at a company that makes software as a product, you could predict everything I'm about to “reveal“.
Suppose the SFU team had decided to bundle an X server. The next question to be resolved is “which one”. That devolves into two decisions: Make vs. Buy, and in the latter case, ISV vs. Open Source.
If Microsoft were to license a commercial X Server, it would have to pay a licensing fee to the owner of the software; that's serious money, and they'd have to raise the price of SFU. Remember that SFU cost $99 for a single copy; volume discounts and educational discounts were not insignificant. Commercial X Servers cost a significant fraction of that price; heck, Hummingbird Exceed retails for over $200. The price increase would be large. Moreover, we knew that many of our customers already had licensed a commercial X Server for other purposes; they didn't want or need another one, and would be annoyed to pay for it.
Microsoft could ship a freeware/OSS X server (i.e. XFree86). By putting it in the product, though, the company would be committing to support it, and that's an expensive can of worms. Microsoft wouldn't be adding value to Xfree86 by putting it in SFU; getting XFree86 from elsewhere is precisely as useful to our customers. Sure, the SFU team does bundle gcc, but that particular technology is demanded by many customers and it had to be ported to run under SFU anyway; that is, Microsoft added value to the gcc we built over the one that was availabile prior to our participation. Since we did the port of gcc, we understood the technology well enough to support it. (By the way, the source code for the gcc in the SFU package is, and has always been, available from Microsoft. Details are in the SFU package.)
Microsoft could build one of its own. That's really expensive, and saddles the company with support expenses, and competes with companies that have been good partners to Microsoft in the past. Yes, there are times Microsoft chooses to do that. You can imagine the internal analysis required to support that kind of decision. An X server is not a strategic product for Microsoft, and the company would be adding no value to the product (vs. any other X implementation) by making its own, so piddlin' in someone else's tea would be completely unjustified by any rationale analysis.
With SFU 3.5 being free, the economic choices become even more stark. We could put XFree86 in the package, but people would expect Microsoft to support it (and rightfully so); Microsoft wouldn't be adding any value that way, so there's just no reason to do it.
So what are the alternatives? I've used these three:
- XFree86.
- Hummingbird Exceed. (Best pricing I've seen is from Interop Systems; they repackage Exceed so that it doesn't try to install other networking stuff SFU already has.) Probably the best OpenGL support and performance of any X Server. Certainly the market leader in terms of installed base.
- X-Win32 from Starnet. Lower-cost, good perf, good stability.
There are probably a dozen others. I stick with exceed, but that's because I need to play with Unix OpenGL code from time to time. Your mileage will vary. Try a bunch; find one you like that delivers the best value. Only you can determine what “best value“ means.
Note: The preceding information is given as-is with no warranty.
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On Friday I sat through a one-hour internal talk on the SPOT technology, the new MSN Direct service the company just rolled out, and the first products built to use it - the SPOT watches from Abacus, Fossil and Suunto.
Based on specs, I figured I'd need to get the Suunto; I'm a sailor, so I need something water-resistant and really well-built. But before I plunked down the bucks, I was hoping I could read some reviews, see some photos, that kind of thing. Lo and behold, Brian Johnson just bought one and not only talked about it but also posted photos.
The Suunto watch is recharged through a cable, but it looks like it's an ordinary USB connection on the other side. If it's voltage/current compatible with standard USB, then travelling with one of these suckers becomes much easier; like my cell phone, it just charges from my laptop, no additional wall-wart needed. Slick.
Another toy. I can hold off on the Xbox extender, since I don't have a Media Center PC, but I think I hear the watch calling my name... right now. :-)
Dang it.
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