February 05, 2003

Grok Headline matches for February 05, 2003

February 03, 2003

February 03, 2003 03/11/2003 09:44 AM

New Column

I just got the March copy of the Programmer's Paradise catalog, which contains the first installment of my new column, a review of VMware, on page 11. “By the twentieth time I'd installed Windows 2000, I could do it in my sleep, even though I don't know a word of Chinese.” The only way to read the column is to get the catalog, which you can do for free here.

I've already written the next two columns for the catalog: a review of ERwin and an article about user interface design. Also in the pipeline: reviews of LeadTools, Camtasia Studio, and DevPartner Studio. Unlike most software reviewers who write for the magazines, who spend just enough time with a the product to get 750 words worth, I plan to review things that we actually use on a daily basis here at Fog Creek and talk about how we use them.

Commoditize Your Complements

Remember when I wrote that “smart companies try to commoditize their products’ complements?” We decided to take some of our own advice, here, so as of today, FogBUGZ can be run on top of MySQL, which is free, in addition to Microsoft SQL Server, which is expensive.

We also support two more source code control systems: CVSNT and Visual SourceSafe.

February 28, 2003

February 28, 2003 03/11/2003 09:44 AM

The social scientist Ray Oldenburg talks about how humans need a third place, besides work and home, to meet with friends, have a beer, discuss the events of the day, and enjoy some human interaction. Coffee shops, bars, hair salons, beer gardens, pool halls, clubs, and other hangouts are as vital as factories, schools and apartments ["The Great Good Place", 1989]. But capitalist society has been eroding those third places, and society is left impoverished. In "Bowling Alone," Robert Putnam brings forth, in riveting and well-documented detail, reams of evidence that American society has all but lost its third places. Over the last 25 years, Americans "belong to fewer organizations that meet, know our neighbors less, meet with friends less frequently, and even socialize with our families less often." [2000] For too many people, life consists of going to work, then going home and watching TV. Work-TV-Sleep-Work-TV-Sleep. It seems to me that the phenomenon is far more acute among software developers, especially in places like Silicon Valley and the suburbs of Seattle. People graduate from college, move across country to a new place where they don't know anyone, and end up working 12 hour days basically out of loneliness.

So it's no surprise that so many programmers, desperate for a little human contact, flock to online communities - chat rooms, discussion forums, open source projects, and Ultima Online. In creating community software, we are, to some extent, trying to create a third place. And like any other architecture project, the design decisions we make are crucial. Make a bar too loud, and people won't be able to have conversations. That makes for a very different kind of place than a coffee shop. Make a coffee shop without very many chairs, as Starbucks does, and people will carry their coffee back to their lonely rooms, instead of staying around and socializing like they do in the fantasy TV coffeehouse of "Friends," a program we watch because an ersatz third place is less painful than none at all.

In software, as in architecture, design decisions are just as important to the type of community that develops or fails to develop. When you make something easy, people do it more often. When you make something hard, people do it less often. In this way you can gently encourage people to behave in certain ways which determine the character and quality of the community. Will it feel friendly? Is there thick conversation, a European salon full of intellectuals with interesting ideas? Or is the place deserted, with a few dirty advertising leaflets lying around on the floor that nobody has bothered to pick up?

— Excerpted from my latest article, “Building Communities with Software,” which will only be sent to email subscribers. Please subscribe now to receive the article, which will be sent out on Monday morning.

February 25, 2003

February 25, 2003 03/11/2003 09:44 AM

The discussion forum for this site generates a lot of questions and commentary. As I said when I launched it, it's a bit of an experiment. Although it may seem simple, there are a lot of subtle design decisions and magic-behind-the-scenes in hopes of improving the quality of discussion that takes place there. So far, it has mostly worked.

Later this week I'll write an essay explaining everything, but because it's full of Heisenberg effects, the essay won't appear on this web site, it will only go out via email to email subscribers. You can subscribe here or at the bottom of any page on my site:

Email:

 

Don't worry, you can unsubscribe at any time; every email I send includes a single-click unsubscribe link. I will never sell your email address. Subscribe by Friday to be sure to get the essay. Once again -- the essay will not appear on the web and will be copyright so I'll ask you not to forward the email around. It's an exclusive benefit for email subscribers.

February 14, 2003

February 14, 2003 03/11/2003 09:44 AM

Due to the poor sound quality of the previous CityDesk online demo, I decided to invest in a real studio quality microphone instead of using one of those cheap computer headset/mike combinations.

It took me a while to figure out what I needed. The mike itself is a Shure SM58, probably one of the most popular professional microphones in use today and generally available for about $100.

I bought the Mic from Sam Ash on 48th street, hoping that they would be able to get me the right combination of cables and adapters I needed to plug this thing into a standard sound card. The stoner DJ sales dude sounded very confident but he didn't tell me that I needed a preamp, and he gave me the wrong kind of cables.

If you're trying to do this yourself, here's exactly what I have:

1. the Shure SM58 microphone
2. A basic desk stand. The clip part that connects the mike to the stand comes with the mike.
3. a 3' mic cable (it only needs to reach the preamp). I bought a CBI LowZ Microphone Cable from Zzounds.
4. A preamp. This boosts the level of the microphone to something that is called "Line Level" which is what a computer sound card needs. I got an M-Audio AudioBuddy from Zzounds.
5. To connect the preamp to the sound card, you need a cable with a 1/4" stereo phone jack on one end and a 1/8" stereo "mini" phone jack on the other end. I assembled this out of two cables which I bought at my neighborhood Radio Shack. For some reason the professional music stores like Sam Ash and Zzounds think it is beneath their dignity to stock any parts with 1/8" jacks, but that is what your sound card needs.

The sound quality is really quite a bit better. Here are two MP3s, before (with the computer mike) and after (with the professional mike).

February 04, 2003

February 04, 2003 03/11/2003 09:44 AM
I've moved Joel on Software to a new server, at a colocation facility operated by Peer 1 Network. In the process of finding a new home and getting it up and running I've learned quite a bit about how web hosting works, so I thought I'd describe a bit of it here and in the process provide a glimpse Behind The Scenes.

"February 2003"

"February 2003" 01/03/2004 07:07 PM

Pro News : February 28, 2003

Pro News : February 28, 2003 03/13/2003 10:20 AM
Stop-motion animation app comes to OS X; Group aims to put Mac in home theater; Mask Pro gets X rating; Quark opens a Jaguar-lined kimono; Snowmint updates Budget, unleashes Planner; Ham radio apps get updated; iLink get tweaked; ODBC middleware moves to X; 4D gunning for Apache; Scrapbook apps finetuned; Online training app gets new features

Tuesday, February 25, 2003

Tuesday, February 25, 2003 03/13/2003 10:23 AM
Through the Reeds

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

Wednesday, February 12, 2003 03/13/2003 10:23 AM
How to Make A Man Bloody

CodeBitch : February 24, 2003

CodeBitch : February 24, 2003 03/13/2003 10:20 AM
In which CodeBitch ruminates on the fate of Opera for Mac

Monday, February 10, 2003

Monday, February 10, 2003 03/13/2003 10:23 AM
The true story of Giggle and Boggle.

News : February 27, 2003

News : February 27, 2003 03/13/2003 10:20 AM
The Earthlink (NASDAQ:ELNK) board of directors announced on February 24th that it had authorized an additional $25 million for use in repurchasing its common stock, bringing the total authorization to $50 million.

The Parting Shot : February 28, 2003

The Parting Shot : February 28, 2003 03/13/2003 10:20 AM
Thirty days hath September...

Release Digests: KDE, February 12, 2003

Release Digests: KDE, February 12, 2003 02/13/2003 01:54 AM
Today's KDE apps: Digital Video Recorder 2.7.9.3, KSEG 0.351, KKeyled 0.8.6, Design Recovery Tool 0.2.5, Kile 1.4, KMuddy 0.4.1, KMySQLAdmin 0.6.1, and Kcube 0.55.

Release Digest: KDE, February 14, 2003

Release Digest: KDE, February 14, 2003 02/14/2003 08:43 PM
Today's KDE apps: Licq 1.2.4, KSteak 0.9.3, PerlQt 3.006, Gwenview 0.16.2, KMySQLAdmin 0.6.2, KPilot 4.3.7, Kcube 0.61, krename 2.5.2, and KnetmonApplet 0.6.7.

The Parting Shot : February 21, 2003

The Parting Shot : February 21, 2003 03/13/2003 10:20 AM
Connectix releases Version 7

Archives | February 23-March 1 2003 |
Yourish.com

Archives | February 23-March 1 2003 |
Yourish.com 03/14/2003 12:58 PM
International Eat an Animal for PETA Day, .. Meryl Yourish .. Meryl

track this site | 7 links

Linux Advisory Watch - February 7th 2003

Linux Advisory Watch - February 7th 2003 02/07/2003 08:39 AM
- by Benjamin D. Thomas - Linux Advisory Watch is a comprehensive newsletter that outlines the security vulnerabilities that have been announced throughout the week. It includes pointers to updated packages and descriptions of each vulnerability. This week, advisories were released for cvs, mcrypt, slocate, qt-dcgui, bladeenc, cim, mysql, kernel, kerberos, php, OpenLDAP, windowmaker, xpdf. The distributors include Caldera, Conectiva, FreeBSD, ...

CBS News | U.S. Presses For Decision On
Iraq | February 25, 2003 14:12:43

CBS News | U.S. Presses For Decision On
Iraq | February 25, 2003 14:12:43 03/13/2003 10:25 AM

Linux Advisory Watch - February 28th,
2003

Linux Advisory Watch - February 28th,
2003 03/11/2003 01:22 AM
- By Benjamin D. Thomas - This week, advisories were released for slocate, nanog, tcpdump, kde, openssl, WebTool, syncookie, webmin, acupsd, tightvnc, vnc, vte, hypermail, libmcrypt, openldap, mysql, postgresql, initscripts, krb5, lynx, and shadow-utils. The distributors include Conectiva, Debian, Guardian Digital's EnGarde Secure Linux, Gentoo, Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, and Trustix.

Linux Advisory Watch - February 21st,
2003

Linux Advisory Watch - February 21st,
2003 02/21/2003 07:28 AM
- By Benjamin D. Thomas Linux Advisory Watch is a comprehensive newsletter that outlines the security vulnerabilities that have been announced throughout the week. It includes pointers to updated packages and descriptions of each vulnerability. This week, advisories were released for mod_dav, w3m, cups, php, mysql, openssl, mailman, syslinux, nethack, bitchx, util-linux, apcupdb, pam, shadow-utils, and imp. The distributors include ...

CBS News | Transcript: Saddam Hussein
Interview, Pt. 1 | February 26,
2003 20:31:07

CBS News | Transcript: Saddam Hussein
Interview, Pt. 1 | February 26,
2003 20:31:07 04/11/2005 03:50 AM
CBS News Transcript: Saddam Hussein Interview, Pt. 1 February 26, 2003 19:23:27 .. an interview with Dan Rather on CBS .. Complete transcript is here .. interviewed

cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/26/60II/main542151.shtml
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Update Fever! February / March 2003
Google Update finally arrives

Update Fever! February / March 2003
Google Update finally arrives 03/11/2003 01:22 AM
The long awaited, eagerly anticipated February, 2003 Google update finally arrives in March. The early returns say that the pre-update jitters were unwarranted.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: February 15, 2004 - February
21, 2004 Archives

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: February 15, 2004 - February
21, 2004 Archives 02/17/2004 12:57 PM
This is the arsonist in your house telling you that stranger outside with the hose can't be trusted .. Democratswould threaten fiscal health .. ever .. Heh

talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_02_15.html#002565
track this site | 5 links

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: February 08, 2004 - February
14, 2004 Archives

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: February 08, 2004 - February
14, 2004 Archives 02/10/2004 01:35 PM
sounding evasive, incoherent and out of touch .. Josh Marshall .. said

talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_02_08.html#002539
track this site | 5 links

"Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: February 01, 2004 - February
07, 2004 Archives"

"Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: February 01, 2004 - February
07, 2004 Archives" 02/10/2004 02:52 AM

February 23, 2005

February 23, 2005 03/14/2005 05:44 PM

Phew! and w00t! Last night at about 7:35 FogBugz 4.0 finally went live, on the exact day we planned to ship it quite a few months ago.

 

I have put a lot of other things on hold while we got this major upgrade out the door, so I'll be spending some time in catch-up mode for the next few weeks. And now I'm going to take a nap.

The Large Print Giveth and the Small Print Taketh Away: What we shipped today was FogBugz 4.0 for Windows. The Unix & Mac versions are now in beta and will be shipping Real Soon Now.

February 27, 2004

February 27, 2004 03/06/2004 01:51 AM

I hope you're not all missing the excellent stuff going down on the Ask Joel forum.

On Apress: “ And although they would not put a doggie on the cover of my book as I requested, because a certain other book publisher threatens to sue his competitors when they put anything animal like within 90 feet of their covers, their graphic designer worked overtime to create underground cover art called User Interface Design for Doggies complete with three golden retrievers, which they framed and sent to me. ”

On Microsoft Program Managers: “ So the programmers think they're deciding everything and the program managers think they're deciding everything. How can they both be deciding everything? They can't. Who is really deciding, then? Let me give you a hint. Of the program managers and developers you know, on the whole, who has better people skills? eh? speak up boy, I can't hear you. Duh! Of course it's the program managers. You knew that. Developers couldn't people-skill their way out of a summer intern party at BillG's lakeside mansion. Developers have such weak people skills they can't even imagine what people skills could be used for, other than the purely theoretical concept of getting a theoretical date ("I ... like ... big BUTTS and I can not LIE..."), so it's no wonder they're not even aware of the secret that I can finally reveal today. ”

On Lisp: “And I have the ultimate respect for Paul Graham -- I think there's a good probability that in a year or two we will credit him with being the man who solved spam. But I think that if you try to ignore the fact that millions of programmers around the world have learned lisp and don't prefer to use it, you're in the land of morbid cognitive dissonance. ”

On Big-M Methodologies: “ Everything about RUP, for example, is obsessed with figuriing out what the business objects and business rules are so you can do a payroll system. We do things like add spell checkers to an editor window. ”

On Usable Programming APIs: “Indexes are one based. That's how humans count. Zero-based is better, I agree, but one-based is what humans expect, and the program model must conform to the user model for ease of use.”

On Starting Fog Creek: “ The law firm that was recommended to us was big and famous and wanted a $30,000 retainer just to talk to us. There was a time during dotcom mania where you weren't someone unless your law firm was VLG or MoFo. I was literally told that you had to use VLG or maybe, distant second, MoFo, or I could never convince VCs to invest. "They won't take you seriously if you don't have a serious lawfirm." I snorted up my milk. ”

On teaching your boyfriend C++: “ Forget it! Give up! ...  Teach me about women's shoes and I will feign interest and then promptly forget everything you told me.”

On software pricing: “With software sold in corporations, as soon as your price gets up in the $3000 level, the amount of approval it needs is so absurd that you are not going to sell products without a salesperson making a few visits. Hiring the salesperson, sending them out to make presentations, hotels, airfare -- now it costs $50,000 to get the sale done just in sales closing costs. That's why you see a lot of software products at $100,000 and a lot under $3000, but anywhere in-between and it's impossible to make sales. ”

No PowerMacs in February?

No PowerMacs in February? 02/16/2004 09:30 AM
ThinkSecret updates with a number of small blurbs... the most interesting of which involves some information of PowerMac G5 updates. According to t...

February 17, 2005

February 17, 2005 03/14/2005 05:44 PM

Usability Time! When Microsoft AntiSpyware is running it displays this dialog:

... which looks, to me, like it's telling me that it detected spyware on my system.

Oh, wait! No, that's not it, it's just a lazy programmer who wrote this code:

10 PRINT "DETECTED SPYWARE ON YOUR SYSTEM:"
20 FOR I = 1 TO 1000000000
30 IF SPYWARE(I) THEN PRINT FILENAME(I)
40 NEXT I

I think I get it. It's the heading for a list which has not arrived yet because you're still busy scanning my harddrive searching for spyware which I don't have. The usual programmer mentality ("it's just a list with 0 elements, what's so hard to understand about that?"). Hey guys, next time don't use a message that's only one pixel away from telling me the exact wrong fact about whether or not there's spyware on my system.

So far, it looks like this is a nifty program, and consumers should be happy that Microsoft has announced it will be free, but it really, really would have been nice for us here in the software industry if Microsoft had set a price on this thing just to provide some air cover for the other companies working on spyware removal. This is not a software category where a monopoly monoculture will be a good thing.

Not only that, but I wonder if Microsoft can run an antispyware product without huge conflicts of interest. For example, will they block all the spyware that Real installs on your system? While Real is suing them? Especially when blocking spyware from Real will just give Real more ammunition to use against Microsoft in court? And the next time Microsoft needs a DRM favor from your friendly neighborhood media conglomerate, will the media conglomerate demand exemption from Antispyware removal for their adware in exchange for supporting Windows Media 37.0, with the new brain-zapping feature that prevents you from humming any song unless you bought the performance rights? (A sheet of tinfoil wrapped tightly around your skull is effective against this zapper, I understand.)

I understand that Microsoft wants to help customers who feel like a spyware-free operating system should be your right when you pay for WinXP, but it's a shame that by giving it away free they're likely to wipe out a useful industry and replace it with something that's difficult to trust due to conflicts of interest.

February 16, 2005

February 16, 2005 03/14/2005 05:44 PM
Jamie Zawinski on Groupware: “So I said, narrow the focus. Your ‘use case’ should be, there’s a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?”

February 05, 2005

February 05, 2005 02/05/2005 09:52 PM

It's time for a server upgrade. For two years a single server has hosted the bulk of our sites, including Joel on Software, although a second smaller server has made an appearance. Over the next few weeks there will be a massive upgrade, giving us six top of the line, state of the art servers at the Peer 1 colo downtown.

In the past I would have upgraded the system, installed it all, and written an article about it. And then people would have emailed me to suggest better ways to do things, but it would be too late.

So now for the first time ever, I'm going to publish a "live" article here. So far, I haven't done anything. If you have any better suggestions for how to do things, it's not too late for me to learn from your experience. As we go along, I might have a few questions for my readers who have experience with this stuff.

Colo Expansion Part 1

BenQ P50 in February for $800

BenQ P50 in February for $800 01/06/2005 02:56 PM

BenQ finally showed off the P50 smartphone, with built-in Wi-Fi and GSM/GPRS radios, as well as a 1.3-megapixel camera. The bummer is they are quoting a price of $800—almost twice as much as its main competitor, the Treo 650 (after rebates).

B enQ unveils WLAN smart phone with camera [Infoworld]

"February Stars"

"February Stars" 06/25/2004 10:29 AM

February 20, 2004

February 20, 2004 03/06/2004 01:51 AM

Ask Joel

I'm running out of my own ideas for article topics. I was going to write about how the search for autotrephination on Google only has one result, which is surprising, considering how there's an entire movie on the subject, although I realized most people probably think autotrephination would mean "automatic-drilling-of-holes-in-the-head" when it's perfectly obvious to me that it should mean "drilling-of-holes-in-one's-own-head" but, hey, what does a word mean that has only been used once in the entire history of Google? And what does it mean to say that a word means something if nobody has ever used it? Anyway, I decided that writing about this would be so headache-inducing you all would try to drill a hole in my head so I didn't write anything about it.

Luckily, I have my readers for topic ideas. A lot of times people email me saying, "I'd love to hear what you think about X." Sometimes, that's enough to motivate me to write a long essay. But more often, my opinion is far too shallow and insipid to justify such an effort, so I dash off a paragraph or two to the email correspondent, or, more often, file away the email in a folder full of things I would love to respond to if we lived on Pluto and the day was 153.4 hours long and humans didn't require that much sleep.

I decided to try out one of Philip Greenspun's ideas -- the Ask Philip Forum. So, without further ado, I have recycled the dreary old "New Yorkers" forum, which was something of a ghost town anyway, into the shiny new Ask Joel Questions forum. There are still some old New York-related topics there. Ignore them. Put the drill away. Thank you.

Linkers

The appropriate person at Microsoft ble w off my request for a linker. The strongest argument he makes is that Microsoft wants to be able to patch security bugs in the CLR after I've shipped my program. This is a valid concern; when a major security hole was found in zlib everybody had to figure out which programs they had that used it and recompile them all. I wasted a day of my life on that particular bug. But it's easily solved by a simple technology of shims or jump tables. Put on your thinking hat and you'll figure out how to make a linker that produces a single executable plus a jump-table that Microsoft can patch when they find a security hole. PS. Apple had this technology in the original Macintosh, 1984.

His other argument about working set size is a decision that should be left to developers. Let me pick the tradeoff I want to make between ease of installation and working set size.

Look, I used to be a program manager at Microsoft, and there's a really strong tendency in that culture to treat customer requests as fun intellectual challenges to be fended off like exercises in debating class. But I've been talking to customers since the days of the Visual Basic 1.0 runtime in 1991 -- thirteen years ago! who have been begging for this problem to be addressed. Jason, why don't you go talk to somebody on the FoxPro team. In the late 80s FoxPro clobbered dBase in the market mainly on the strength of the fact that it compiled standalone executables. FoxPro had a linker. xBase developers pleaded with Ashton-Tate, makers of dBase, to develop or acquire a linker, but Ed Esber, reviled CEO of Ashton-Tate, refused to give them one. Learn from your own history. (Thanks to Rick Chapman for reminding me of history repeating itself.)

ISV's that I talk to agree that this is the #1 weakness of VB1-6 and .Net. I'm forced to conclude that Microsoft has grown so large they are living in a reality-distortion field. I suppose it's not unusual for someone working on a campus with 45 buildings all full of Microsoft employees to lose track of what the outside world is thinking and doing.

OK, anyway, there are third party alternatives. Jitit makes a thing called Thinstall. I haven't tried it. If someone out there wants to write an in-depth technical review of this thing, please contact me and I'll try to get you a review copy.

Elsewhere

Blogs I've been reading lately: Rory, Scoble, Raymond, Phil.

I loved the style, wittiness, humor and erudition of Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby but I can't say I learned much about Ruby. Maybe in the next chapter?

February 28, 2004

February 28, 2004 03/06/2004 01:51 AM

This thread in Ask Joel about offshoring/outsourcing is much better than anything I could have written on the subject myself. Ken sets up the strawman; eloquent readers from around the globe tear it down.

"February 8, 2004 05:18 PM"

"February 8, 2004 05:18 PM" 02/13/2004 02:37 PM

"February 2001"

"February 2001" 06/04/2004 05:03 PM

W3C Talks in February

W3C Talks in February 02/11/2004 01:16 AM
2004-02-10: Browse upcoming W3C appearances and events, also available as an RSS channel. (News archive)
Grok Description matches for February 05, 2003
GrokA matches for February 05, 2003

February 05, 2003

The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: