The "U" Word : Other

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

jdzions — Sat, 14 Feb 2004 01:43:00 GMT

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

jdzions — Sat, 14 Feb 2004 00:58:00 GMT

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.

How do you keep a web surfer busy for hours?

jdzions — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 23:25:00 GMT

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

Verbal vs. written style

jdzions — Sat, 07 Feb 2004 00:55:00 GMT

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?

Microsoft Research releases source code to "Allegiance" MORPG game

jdzions — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 20:12:00 GMT

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.

OSnews likes SFU 3.5! Bush & Clinton kiss and make up! Details and film at Eleven!

jdzions — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 07:21:00 GMT

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.

Another techno toy to buy - gotta getta SPOT watch

jdzions — Sun, 18 Jan 2004 06:42:00 GMT

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.

SFU 3.5 Announcement Causes Epidemic Of Rampant Paranoia

jdzions — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:36:00 GMT

Like most technogeeks, I have a lot of pride in the work I do. So much pride that I like to listen in on other people talking about what I've built. Sure, I'm looking for praise; I've got the outsized ego that long-time Unix guys get. But I'm also looking for stuff we can do better next time, features we missed, bugs we didn't catch. Those missing features probably appear on my own list, but my priorities may not match those of real customers; I look for that stuff, too.

The downside to reading comments: my dentist and my doctor get annoyed. My dentist tells me that, if I don't stop grinding my teeth, he's going to have to replace my molars. My doctor has told me I have to reduce my bloodpressure in a big way, and he doesn't like the looks of that throbbing vein in my neck.

I looked at the coverage on geek.com. The article and analysis themselves were pretty fair and even-handed. Then I started reading comments.

“Same ol' thing. MS gives away stuff to stiffle competition. Years later they'll charge everyone twice as much for it after they crush everyone else.”

Oooo-kay. We're competing with a product whose cost-of-acquisition is zero (linux), and we're doing it by dropping the price of competing technology to... zero. How can we “crush the competition” if we're charging the same thing they are?

Look at it another way. SFU adds a bunch of capabilities to Windows; it's an add-on pack of APIs and tools. Windows still costs the same thing it did yesterday. Windows competes with RedHat and SuSE, and now does so on a more-even footing: there's now a significantly larger overlap in identical APIs, utilities, and behavior between the operating systems. Makes apples-to-apples comparisons easier. RedHat runs Unix apps; hey, Windows does, too. Windows runs Windows apps; with Wine or some other (freeware - hey, they're trying to crush the competition!) software, RedHat runs some Windows apps, too. Which platform runs more apps? Which runs them better? Which does so at a better total cost of ownership? Which provides more value to your organization? That is competition.

Bring it on.

This comment kills me. “A friend of mine knows the girl that writes this, yes "THE GIRL". From what I understand there is one girl that pretty much maintains this entire package.”

Yeah. Right. Like Microsoft ever shipped a product with a single developer. The product team has a couple dozen people on it. Both genders, even.

I'm not going to talk about the ones that were downright offensive. I'm just going to go brush my teeth and try to save what's left of my molars.

Xbox can play Media Center PC content? Now I gotta buy a Media Center PC...

jdzions — Sat, 10 Jan 2004 02:25:00 GMT

Stan Spotts turned me on to the Xbox Media Center Extender Kit. This sucker will let you use an Xbox (up to five of them!) to watch video content recorded on a Media Center PC.

Now, I've avoided the Media Center PC until now. I rolled my own PVR at home; I started with a Happaugue PVR250 but abandoned it last year in favor of an ATI All-In-Wonder 8500 DV. I've been happy with that, but I really wanted a solution to play back what I'd captured on the TV in the family room. (My PVR system is a noisy beast with five hard drives and four fans; it lives one floor down from the TV. :-)

I'd looked at the Prismiq MediaPlayer, but it got enough bad consumer reviews that I wasn't gonna plunk down $250. There's the SoundBlaster Wireless Music widget, but that's the same price and only does audio.

XMCEK is exactly what I want. No new box in the living room. Only problem is, I have to buy a Media Center PC. I like playing with technology; I build my PCs from parts, and I like it that way. I like being able to burn honest-to-gosh DVDs from the video I capture using my homebrew PVR. And I don't want to pay the profit overhead implied by a fully packaged Media Center PC.

Sigh. Maybe I'll just keep waiting.

Unixfolks Anonymous

jdzions — Sat, 10 Jan 2004 01:00:00 GMT

Me: Hi, my name is Jason, and I'm a Unix guy.

Crowd: HI, JASON!

Me: I started using Unix a long time ago, more than 20 years now. I started out real easy, real slow; Unix version 7 on a PDP-11. But the next year, there was some new hot stuff on the street - they called it BSD, and most folks had a VAX to use it, so that's what I stepped up to. Did some playing around with an early precursor, version 6; a Unix kernel so small one person could actually hold the entire thing in his or her head.

Most people experiment with that sort of thing during their University days, then grow out of it. Not me. I loved it so much, I got into the business. I went to work at Hewlett-Packard and worked on their Unix, HP-UX (good thing Dave Packard lost the coin toss with Bill Hewlett, eh?); if one Unix system gave someone a buzz, networking lots of systems together could give'em a heck of a head rush, so that's what I did. Did some TCP/IP implementation work, some formal network standards stuff (ISO, IEEE, X/Open and Open Group), some network management.

Then I went to HaL Computer Systems in Austin, TX. Spent 2 1/2 years there. Whoa. Bad trip. Working at HaL, was, well, a four-letter word beginning and ending with the same letters as the company name. I learned some stuff:

If you have to live in Texas, Austin is the place to live.
I do not have to live in Texas.

Round about that time (1995) I ran into a friend of mine (also a Unix guy), who turned me on to this completely new thing - the POSIX subsystem inside WinNT. Now, I'd used NT off and on for a couple of years, mostly for a change of pace. I could tell there were some cool things about it, but I had such a major Unix habit I couldn't imagine just switching. When this friend gave me the chance to combine the two - make something useful out of that POSIX thing running on NT - I jumped at it. He and I and a couple other guys founded a company.

Softway Systems built a product called OpenNT, which was an enhanced version of the POSIX subsystem Microsoft had shipped in NT 3.x and 4.0. We shipped five versions of the product in the four years of our existence; changed the name to Interix, too.

Then we got acquired by Microsoft in September 1999. A Unix guy, inside Microsoft. I figured we few Softway Systems survivors would be lonely, huddling in a dark corner of a parking garage trading shell scripts and arcane API calls when the Win32 Police weren't looking. It wasn't nearly that bad. Kinda fun, even.

MS rolled the technology out as Microsoft Interix 2.2, then combined it with their existing NFS client/server product, shipping Services For Unix 3.0 in May of 2002. In January 2003, the LinuxWorld trade show named SFU 3.0 “Best Integration Product 2003”. (Can you just imagine what the typical Linux-head at the show must have thought about that?) We're rolling out SFU 3.5 at LinuxWorld this month.

Since SFU 3.0 shipped, I've been working on the Microsoft Solution for Unix Migration. “There's no one so gung-ho Windows as a reformed Unix user” may have been the thinking, but that's too-simple-minded a way of looking at things. I still see myself as a Unix guy. My mission at Softway Systems was “Make Windows safe for Unix people”; that what I do today. And I still love it.