January 25, 2003

Grok Headline matches for January 25, 2003

January 28, 2003

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

Binary Search Debugging

Something we had done since the last release of CityDesk somehow caused our publish times to increase by about 100%; on a particular large site we use for stress testing it had gone from about a minute to about two minutes.

The first thing I tried was a profiler: Compuware DevPartner Studio. Indeed this showed me where a lot of bottlenecks are; that data will be useful to speed up our publish times even more, but I really wanted to find the specific bug that I thought we had introduced which was slowing us down.

The next thing I tried was a method I learned from Gabi at Juno: the old binary search method. Before we started work on this release, publishing took 1'04". Today it takes 1'57". So I started checking out old versions of the source from CVS by date, rebuilding, and timing how long publishing took with each day's build. Here's what I found:

As of May 1: 1'57"
As of April 1: 1'05"
As of April 15: 1'05"
As of April 22: 1'06"
As of April 26: 1'58"
As of April 24: 1'05"
As of April 25: 1'05"

Aha! Now all I had to do was run WinDiff to compare the source tree from April 25th and April 26th, and I discovered four things that were changed that day, one of which was a function that DevPartner had told me was kind of slow, anyway. Within minutes I found the culprit -- that function was originally written to cache its results because it's often called with the same inputs, and I had inadvertently changed the cache key in one place and not another, so we were getting 100% misses instead of 99% hits. Solved! Total elapsed time to find this bug: about an hour. If your source code is much bigger than CityDesk, builds and checkouts may be slow. This is as good a reason as any to keep all your old daily builds around.

New Zeitgeist - January 2003

New Zeitgeist - January 2003 02/19/2003 11:12 PM
The January 2003 Google Zeitgeist is now up. Topics include the superbowl, Joe Millionaire, LOTR, Picasso, and the Simpsons. (Thanks, Reg!)...

weekend2 (5 January 2003)

weekend2 (5 January 2003) 01/05/2003 05:13 PM
[weekend edition ii] ::: Life everlasting for dead designs We all have a favorite “design that got away.” Filter 9’s new Comp Graveyard (“a final resting place

swablr (1 January 2003)

swablr (1 January 2003) 01/03/2003 12:47 AM
[7 pm] !!!!!

The January 2003 issue if php|a will be
free!

The January 2003 issue if php|a will be
free! 12/27/2002 10:18 AM
From secure code to the Win32 API, we are giving away a free copy to all our readers!

Release Digest: KDE, January 20, 2003

Release Digest: KDE, January 20, 2003 01/21/2003 01:43 AM
This holiday weekend's KDE apps: KDiff3 0.93, mplayerplug-in 0.30, KricketScoreboard 0.4, Realrekord 0.9, Port Scanner 2.0, imgSeek 0.5.2, MySQL Control Center 0.8.8, Kile 1.32, KMovisto 0.4.0, PDF Importer for KOffice 0.4, Konversation 0.8, QHacc :: KHacc 1.4.1, QHacc 2.6.1, KTuring 0.4, LibChipCard :: KDE 0.7.1, RTLab :: Interval Monitor 0.46, RTLab :: AV VA Pace 0.67, RTLab :: Real-Time Analog Input/Analog Output 0.11, RTLab 0.64.5, KDiff3 0.93, mplayerplug-in 0.30, Gambas 0.43, Kuake 0.2.1, LibChipCard :: KDE 0.7.2, Linux Drawing Viewer 0.99e, KSambaPlugin 0.4.2, mplayerplug-in 0.32, knoda 0.5.6, Ermixer 0.8, and Kuake 0.2.

return (4–5 January 2003)

return (4–5 January 2003) 01/04/2003 04:08 PM
[weekend edition] ::: Once that melancholy little guitar tune from Unforgiven gets stuck in your head, it stays stuck there. Things could be worse. It could

Release Digest: KDE, January 23, 2003

Release Digest: KDE, January 23, 2003 01/24/2003 01:10 AM
Today's KDE apps: mplayerplug-in 0.33, NVClock 0.6.1, Direct Connect 4 Linux 0.2.3, MySQL Control Center 0.8.9, KTris 0.0.5, and KImg2mpg 1.0RC2.

Tim Blair: QUOTES OF 2003 - JANUARY

Tim Blair: QUOTES OF 2003 - JANUARY 12/25/2003 05:34 AM
list of quotes for 2003 .. Fucktard Hall of Shame .. the year in quotes

timblair.spleenville.com/archives/005498.php
track this site | 5 links

Linux Advisory Watch - January 9th 2003

Linux Advisory Watch - January 9th 2003 01/09/2004 09:52 PM

Linux Advisory Watch - January 31st 2003

Linux Advisory Watch - January 31st 2003 02/03/2003 10:14 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 kdeutils, noffle, dhcp3, tomcat3, courier, mysql, fetchmail, vim, webalizer, postgresql, and cvs. The distributors include Debian, Guardian Digital's EnGarde ...

Linux Advisory Watch - January 17th 2003

Linux Advisory Watch - January 17th 2003 01/17/2003 05:27 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 wget, xpdf, openldap, libmcrypt, impsql, bugzilla, mod_php, cups, dhcpd, kde, leafnode, libpng, postgresql, mysql, vim, and ethereal. The distributors include ...

Linux Advisory Watch - January 24th 2003

Linux Advisory Watch - January 24th 2003 01/24/2003 06:24 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 wget, xpdf, openldap, libmcrypt, impsql, bugzilla, mod_php, cups, dhcpd, kde, leafnode, libpng, postgresql, mysql, vim, and ethereal. The distributors include ...

This Week on perl5-porters (29 December
2003 / 4 January 2004)

This Week on perl5-porters (29 December
2003 / 4 January 2004) 01/05/2004 02:50 PM
At the turn of the year, and in accordance with the grand schedule of things, occurred a code freeze for perl 5.8.3. Read below for the rest of the discussion that took place on perl5-porters.

"Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: December 28, 2003 - January
03, 2004 Archives"

"Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: December 28, 2003 - January
03, 2004 Archives" 12/31/2003 03:51 AM

Google Update January 2003 - The Super
Bowl Update

Google Update January 2003 - The Super
Bowl Update 01/26/2003 03:56 AM
The Google January 2003 update is underway.

This Week in Perl 6, January 03 -
January 11, 2005

This Week in Perl 6, January 03 -
January 11, 2005 02/01/2005 09:34 PM
Matt Fowles summarizes the Perl 6 mailing lists with bugfixes, multimensional data structures, and a new syntax engine.

"Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: January 04, 2004 - January 10,
2004 Archives"

"Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: January 04, 2004 - January 10,
2004 Archives" 01/07/2004 06:08 PM

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: January 18, 2004 - January 24,
2004 Archives

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: January 18, 2004 - January 24,
2004 Archives 01/22/2004 07:16 AM
talking points interviews george soros. also, josh is already up in new hamphire on his reader funded venture .. TPM has a good interview with George Soros .. interviews

talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_01_18.html#00245 4
track this site | 7 links

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: January 11, 2004 - January 17,
2004 Archives

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: January 11, 2004 - January 17,
2004 Archives 01/16/2004 01:04 PM
Joshua Micah Marshall has published Clark’s testimony .. Transcript of Clark's testimony to congress on Iraq .. getting unfairly drudged .. invented quotes

talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_01_11.html#002415
track this site | 6 links

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: January 02, 2005 - January 08,
2005 Archives

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: January 02, 2005 - January 08,
2005 Archives 01/03/2005 10:00 AM
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: January 02, 2005 - January 08, 2005 Archives .. pile of droppings

talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_02.php#004327< br />track this site | 3 links

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: January 25, 2004 - January 31,
2004 Archives

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: January 25, 2004 - January 31,
2004 Archives 01/26/2004 04:12 PM
BREAKING: Kerry couldn't get laid at St. Paul's! .. Josh Marshall

talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_01_25.html#002490< br />track this site | 4 links

Comdex Las Vegas 2003 Focuses On Windows
Server 2003 For Business Productivity

Comdex Las Vegas 2003 Focuses On Windows
Server 2003 For Business Productivity 11/06/2003 06:13 PM
COMDEX Nov 6 2003 4:17PM ET

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: October 26, 2003 - November
01, 2003 Archives

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah
Marshall: October 26, 2003 - November
01, 2003 Archives 10/28/2003 11:07 PM
The White Sheet Republicans are At It Again in Kentucky! 10/28 .. attempts at voter suppression .. more than enough money .. Josh Marshall reports .. asked for donations .. This is very ugly .. all over

talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2003_10_26.html#002131
track this site | 13 links

COMDEX Las Vegas 2003, Apachecon 2003
Offering Reciprocal Invitations To
Open-Source Attendees

COMDEX Las Vegas 2003, Apachecon 2003
Offering Reciprocal Invitations To
Open-Source Attendees 10/30/2003 11:47 PM
COMDEX Oct 25 2003 0:10AM ET

COMDEX Las Vegas 2003 Media Preview
Panel To Take Place At The Aladdin Hotel
Sunday, November 16, 2003

COMDEX Las Vegas 2003 Media Preview
Panel To Take Place At The Aladdin Hotel
Sunday, November 16, 2003 11/04/2003 05:19 AM
COMDEX Nov 4 2003 3:59AM ET

Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Windows
Server 2003 Speed Love Connections For
the Web's Premier Dating Site

Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Windows
Server 2003 Speed Love Connections For
the Web's Premier Dating Site 02/12/2004 06:11 PM
In Internet time, you really can hurry love. And thanks to Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET 2003 and Windows Server™ 2003, millions of Match.com users will see just how fast cupid's virtual arrow can travel this Valentine's Day.

2003 Political Dot-Comedy Awards - Best
Humor of 2003

2003 Political Dot-Comedy Awards - Best
Humor of 2003 12/26/2003 05:24 AM
Nominate the Internet Weekly for the 2003 Political Dot-Comedy Awards! .. in one or both categories here

politicalhumor.about.com/library/bldotcomedy2003.htm
track this site | 3 links

Office 2003 Critical Update: November
11, 2003

Office 2003 Critical Update: November
11, 2003 11/05/2003 12:11 PM

PHPCon East 2003 - (April 23-25, 2003)

PHPCon East 2003 - (April 23-25, 2003) 02/01/2003 05:58 PM
PHPCon announces PHPCon East 2003 in New York City. This conference features two days of technical learning with speakers such as Rasmus Lerdorf, Michael Radwin, and Jeremy Zawodny. PHPCon East also adds a third, full day of tutorials offering practical, cogent PHP solutions and ideas including: MySQL and PHP; Building and Consuming Web Services with SOAP; Getting Started with PHP; High Performance PHP: Profiling and Benchmarking; and more PHPCon East has discounts for early registration, students, non-profits, and Tutorial/Conference packages. Early Bird Deadline is March 31st. For more program information, visit the PHPCon website.

January 19, 2005

January 19, 2005 02/01/2005 09:36 PM

Seattle is funny. All the local newspapers are running big headlines about how it's raining. I don't get it!

The Joel on Software Lunch in Toronto is coming up soon, at the Movenpick Marche, at BCE Place, at 1:00 PM Friday January 21st, 2005.

January 27, 2005

January 27, 2005 02/01/2005 09:36 PM

Everyone thinks they're hiring the top 1%.

Martin Fowler: “We are still working hard to hire only the very top fraction of software developers (the target is around the top 0.5 to 1%).”

Me: “We get between 100 and 200 [resumes] per opening.”

I remember when I started working for David Shaw he told us they only hired "1 out of 200."

I hear this from almost every software company. "We hire the top 1% or less," they all say.

Could they all be hiring the top 1%? Where are all the other 99%? General Motors?

I had an insight the other day.

Quiz: If you get 200 resumes, and you hire 1 person, are you hiring the top 0.5% of software developers?

"No," you say, "your screening process is unlikely to find the best person out of 200."

Agreed. OK. Let's say you had a magical screening process that actually allowed you to find the "best" person.

"No," you say, "people are good at different things. There's no absolute, forced ranking of developers that makes sense."

Agreed. Let's simplify for the moment and assume that all software developers in the world could be ranked in absolute order of skill, and that you had a magical screening process that found the "best" person from any field.

Now, when you get those 200 resumes, and hire the best person from the top 200, does that mean you're hiring the top 0.5%?

"Maybe."

No. You're not. Think about what happens to the other 199 that you didn't hire.

They go look for another job.

That means, in this horribly simplified universe, that the entire world could consist of 1,000,000 programmers, of whom the worst 199 keep applying for every job and never getting them, but the best 999,801 always get jobs as soon as they apply for one. So every time a job is listed the 199 losers apply, as usual, and one guy from the pool of 999,801 applies, and he gets the job, of course, because he's the best, and now, in this contrived example, every employer thinks they're getting the top 0.5% when they're actually getting the top 99.9801%.

The top 0.5% usually have jobs. They have jobs where they do very well, so their employers pay them lots of money and do whatever it takes to keep them happy. (I know. Oversimplification. Lots of employers try to drive out the good software developers because they complain a lot and demand high salaries. Still.)

Those 200 resumes you got from Craigslist? Those consist of the one guy who happened to be good, but he's only applying for a job because his wife wants to be nearer to her family, and the usual floating population of 199 people who apply for every single job and are qualified for none. And now you think you're being "super selective" but you're not, it's just a statistical fallacy.

I'm exaggerating a lot, but the point is, when you select 1 out of 200 applicants, the other 199 don't give up and go into plumbing (although I wish they would... plumbers are impossible to find). They apply again somewhere else, and contribute to some other employer's self-delusions about how selective they are.

In fact, one thing I have noticed is that the people who I consider to be good software developers barely ever apply for jobs at all. I know lots of great people who took a summer internship on a whim and then got permanent offers. They only ever applied for one or two jobs in their lives.

On the other hand there are people out there who appear to be applying to every job on Monster.com. I'm not kidding. They spam their resume to hundreds or thousands of employers. A lot of times I can see this because there are actually hundreds of "job" aliases in the "To:" line of their email. (Some evil part of me wants to "reply-to-all" the rejection note I send them, but I usually overcome the urge).

It's pretty clear to me that just because you're hiring the top 0.5% of all applicants for a job, doesn't mean you're hiring the top 0.5% of all software developers. You could be hiring from the top 10% or the top 50% or the top 99% and it would still look, to you, like you're rejecting 199 for every 1 that you hire.

By the way, it's because of this phenomenon—the fact that many of the great people are never on the job market—that we are so aggressive about hiring summer interns. This may be the last time these kids ever show up on the open market. In fact we hunt down the smart CS students and individually beg them to apply for an internship with us, because if you wait around to see who sends you a resume, you're already missing out.

January 20, 2004

January 20, 2004 01/22/2004 02:10 AM

I will be speaking on the subject of Designing Applications with the User in Mind at UC Davis on January 29th. The speech is free and open to the public so if you're in the Davis/Sacramento area please come.

UC Davis
Thursday, January 29, 2004
10 - 11:30am
at the University Club (map )

 

January 27, 2004

January 27, 2004 01/27/2004 01:43 PM

Reminders:

• Thursday morning I'll be giving a free lecture at UC Davis
• Friday evening,  7:30 PM, I'll be meeting up with a huge group of Joel on Software folks at Au Coquelet Cafe, 2000 University Ave. at Milvia, in Berkeley, California. If anybody is nearby please go in and warn the manager we're coming; I got about 45 rsvps.
• Not in California? I'm working on a Fog Creek open house in New York Real Soon Now.
• Anywhere else? Join our Meetup group and hang out with other Joel on Software readers in your city on Wednesday, February 18th. So far 28 cities in the world have hit critical mass (5). The London group is already up to 29 members!

In the meantime entertain yourself with some of Rory Blyth's inspired comix.

This one's a riot: "Ooooooh! I know! We could print out the data, scan it in, and then paste the image into Excel!".

And some disclaimers:

• The remark yesterday in tiny print could not possibly be homophobic, because I'm gay and thus granted automatic diplomatic immunity from all charges of homophobia.
• Putting spaces in front of commas is really not that bad, but I stand by my claim that it's not very professional looking, and, merely as a point of information, at least on the resumes I get, this particular error occurs on 37% of cover letters from people with Indian names and 0% of the cover letters of people without Indian names.
• Anyway talking about punctuation is really, really boring, so please let's stop.
• There's nothing like 100,000 incoming links from Slashdot to uncover those rare people without a sense of humor... but you can't tell people, "no, it's a joke, you just didn't get it" because the one thing common among all people without a sense of humor is that they inevitably think they have a very good sense of humor; your joke just wasn't funny.

In the spirit of the escalator

The number one best way to get someone to look at your resume closely: come across as a human being, not a list of jobs and programming languages. Tell me a little story. "I've spend the last three weeks looking for a job at a real software company, but all I can find are cheezy web design shops looking for slave labor." Or, "We yanked our son out of high school and brought him to Virginia. I am not going to move again until he is out of high school, even if I have to go work at Radio Shack or become a Wal*Mart greeter." (These are slightly modified quotes from two real people.)

These are both great. You know why? Because I can't read them without thinking of these people as human beings. And now the dynamic has changed. I like you. I care about you. I like the fact that you want to work in a real software company. I wanted to work in a real software company so much I started one. I like the fact that you care more about your teenage son than your career.

I just can't care about "C/C++/Perl/ASP" in the same way.

So, maybe you won't be qualified for the job, but it's just a lot harder for me to dismiss you out of hand.

January 17, 2004

January 17, 2004 01/17/2004 10:59 PM

Meetup.com organizes regularly scheduled Joel on Software reader meetings in 640 cities around the world on the third Wednesday of every month. The next one is coming up on January 21st.

I'm not sure exactly how it works... I think that as soon as they get 5 members confirmed in a particular city, the meetup is officially on, otherwise it's automatically cancelled.

Meetup.com was created by my fellow New Yorker, Scott "Fries With That?" Heiferman, who also founded i-traffic.com (now a part of agency.com).

January 19, 2004

January 19, 2004 01/19/2004 02:02 PM

SysAdmin Week

After a bit of a scare discovering that a few of our critical files were not getting backed up, and with various system administration things starting to cross from annoying into the category of downright emergencies, I am going to spend a few days focused on improving our network infrastructure.

All of our backups are done to hard drives, not tapes. It's not that much more expensive than tape, and it's a lot more convenient. For example all our workstations and laptops are backed up using Veritas NetBackup Pro which creates hard-drive based backups on a server. Anyone can browse the last 5 versions of any file on their hard drive and instantly restore it; if a complete system is lost NetBackup does "bare metal restore", and, the part I like best -- if two people have the same file it is only stored once. This saves gigs and gigs of space because almost every machine here has the same OS files, the same development environment, the same full text of MSDN, etc. Servers are backed up over the Internet using Dantz Retrospect, also to a hard drive at a different location. Retrospect has the advantage of supporting "open file backup" on SQL Server databases, backing them up while they're running. As far as I can tell, this relies on an underlying feature of Windows 2000 which allows you to make virtually instantaneous, atomic copies of any open file (Windows does this using "Copy on Write," where the file is simply marked as being "copied," the copy itself doesn't take place until one copy is written to, and then only on a sector-by-sector basis). Dantz has the disadvantage of some architectural decisions that reflect it's Macintosh heritage which do not really make sense... for example, rather than the traditional Windows server model of having two apps -- an invisible service and a management console which controls that service -- there's just one app. This means you can only run one management console and if you lose it (e.g. someone else is running it in a different session) you can't get in, requiring drastic process killing or rebooting. And the number of new concepts you need to learn to set up simple server backups is astonishing... it took me way too long to get things set up and then it took several weeks of occasional tinkering to get it to work, and even then it seems to get flaky and decide it doesn't want to backup and doesn't want to tell anyone that it doesn't want to backup, so I have a weekly scheduled task to kick the sucker. Somewhat frustrating but I have no experience with other server backup products and suspect the others are just as bad.

I just woke up to the fact that we were paying about $6/GB for disk storage on Dell SCSI RAID arrays, and for backup media I don't need SCSI and I don't need RAID, so I'm going to try a LaCie Big Disk Drive connected to the backup server over USB 2.0 which is about $1.20/GB.

Meetup

So far there are 136 people registered at Meetup.com. London, Toronto, and Dublin have passed the threshold of 5 members for meetings to actually be held. I was thinking it might be fun to pick the city with the most people on this list for my next vacation.

 

January 12, 2004

January 12, 2004 01/16/2004 11:27 AM

The Montréal Dinner will be held at Marché Mövenpick, 1 Place Ville-Marie, near St. Catherine & University, downtown, on Thursday, January 15th, 2004, at 7:30 PM.

The Berkeley Dinner will be at 7:30, on January 30th, 2004. Tentatively scheduled at Au Coquelet Cafe, 2000 University Ave. at Milvia.

January 26, 2004

January 26, 2004 01/26/2004 03:31 AM

“Please do not use cover letters that you copied out of a book. If you write ‘I understand the position also requires a candidate who is team- and detail-oriented, works well under pressure, and is able to deal with people in departments throughout the firm’ then at best people will think you're a bullshit artist and at worst they will think that you were not born with the part of the brain that allows you to form your own thoughts and ideas.”

Getting Your Résumé Read

G5 Xserve in January?

G5 Xserve in January? 12/30/2003 11:10 PM
According to Appleinsider, pre-production PowerPC G5 based Xserves have successfully undergone quality assurance testing earlier this week. Applein...
Grok Description matches for January 25, 2003
GrokA matches for January 25, 2003

Windows 2000 box that hangs during boot

Windows 2000 box that hangs during boot 12/29/2004 10:02 AM
From the "my weblog as my personal mailinglist" department: I have a laptop where we just installed Windows 2000. Shortly after installing it, it started hanging during boot. It gets about 60% through the "Starting up ..." screen and then stops. It boots fine in "Safe Mode with Networking". I used that to upgrade it to SP4 and whatever other updates Microsoft wanted it to get. What to do? How can I figure out what makes it hang? I'd just...

Security Patch Scripts for Microsoft
Windows NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP

Security Patch Scripts for Microsoft
Windows NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP 08/12/2004 08:48 PM

Transparent Screen Lock for Windows
NT/2000/XP/2003

Transparent Screen Lock for Windows
NT/2000/XP/2003 07/15/2004 08:15 PM

Scientific-Atlanta Surges

Scientific-Atlanta Surges 01/23/2004 09:54 PM
TheStreet.com Jan 24 2004 1:27AM GMT

High-End Surge Propels
Scientific-Atlanta

High-End Surge Propels
Scientific-Atlanta 01/22/2004 07:33 PM
TheStreet.com Jan 22 2004 11:40PM GMT

Scientific-Atlanta Explorer 8300 Review
(Verdict: Need More Info)

Scientific-Atlanta Explorer 8300 Review
(Verdict: Need More Info) 03/19/2005 02:45 AM

The AP has a review of the latest Scientific-Atlanta DVR, the Explorer 8300, available in some Time Warner Cable areas. The two-tuner unit's most unique feature is probably its ability to steam content back over the in-house cable network to up to three other set-top boxes. All in all it sounds pretty promising, but as is standard operating procedure for company-provided DVRs, you should probably hang tight until the guys at AVSForum have had a few months to put the 8300 through its paces.

Also mentioned in the article is that Lawrence, Kansas, is one of the test markets of Diego's Moxi set-top boxes (Sunflower Cable?). I had a chance to play with a prototype a few months back and it was pretty fantastic. I'm looking forward to the reviews from those users. (Thanks, Vic!)

DVRs Can Be Used All Around House [Yahoo]

Update: Reader Jonathon Robinson gives us more info after the jump.

Linksys, Maxtor Team Up For NAS Device

Linksys, Maxtor Team Up For NAS Device 06/15/2004 01:11 PM
Linksys Corp. has developed an intermediary device designed to tie into routers and turn hard drives into network-attached-storage arrays.

I hate this digital video recorder:
Scientific-Atlanta Explorer 8000

I hate this digital video recorder:
Scientific-Atlanta Explorer 8000 08/16/2004 04:02 PM
I can't begin to say how much I despise the Explorer 8000 digital video recorder made by Scientific-Atlanta. That's the system Time-Warner gave us when my wife signed us up for cable service a few weeks ago. I was out of town on the day they were scheduled to install it, so I told my wife to make sure the DVR was real TiVo, because I'd played with a TiVo belonging to my friend, and thought it was just about perfect. The service tech came and told her it was real TiVo. When I got back and saw that the ugly box didn't have a happy bipedal TV set logo on it, I was disappointed, but willing to give it a try. The first thing I noticed was the crappy user interface. Unlike TiVo, there's no audible signal when you press a button. And because it takes a couple of seconds after pressing a button for anything to happen on the screen, I often press the button twice, thinking the first press didn't go through. What happens when you press a button twice is that you see the result on the screen for a split second before it disappears, because the second press cancels the first press. That means I have to press the button a third time, and wait another mini-eternity for something to happen. So many other things suck about the user interface that I can't list them all. But the main UI problems include lack of keyword scheduling, way-too-slow fast-forwarding, no alpha character entry, and the inability to see how many hours of programming are available on the hard drive.

This last flaw hit home when the machine suddenly stopped recording shows. I tried everything I could to get it to work, including rebooting the system and calling Time Warner Cable customer service. They told me that they'd have to replace the unit, which would take five days.

Five days later a service technician came with a new box. I asked him if this problem was common, because Google returns a lot of pages from people who think the Explorer 8000 is a piece of junk. He said the system is fine as long as you didn't store too many shows on it. If you fill up the hard drive, the system freezes up, and there's no way a user can undo it. But how do you know when the disk is close to being full if there's no gage to tell you? The service tech's answer: "don't keep very many shows on the hard drive." That pretty much defeats the purpose of a DVR, doesn't it?

He also warned me not to put anything on top of it, as it was notorious for overheating and seizing up. I told him I was considering TiVo, but he insisted the Explorer 8000 was better than TiVo. How so, I asked? "We will give you a new one if it breaks," he said.

Our second Explorer 8000 is also a piece of junk. Like the first one, it regularly fails to record requested shows. But this one goes even further in its attempt to aggravate me by freezing up while playing back a show, and pixelating and jittering like a lost episode of Max Headroom.

Yesterday I was at Best Buy, and I noticed that 40-hour TiVos were on sale for $50 after rebate. I bought one and set it up. What a difference! If TiVo were a beverage, it'd be a tall glass of Jamaican ginger beer with chipped ice and a lime wedge, while the Explorer 800 would be a paper cup of warm fake lemonade stirred with the finger of a nose-picking six-year-old.

I can't wait to get the Explorer 8000 out of my house. Why did Time Warner make a deal with this company?

Creative Zen Touch Shipping This Month

Creative Zen Touch Shipping This Month 06/10/2004 09:52 AM

You know how we were saying Creative's new Zen Touch hard disk player (the one with the killer 24-hour battery life) was coming out this fall? Greg Anderson found this press release on Creative's site that said it was coming out this month. I'm not a professional dateist or anything (although I did take two semesters of Monthology), but I'm fairly sure that this month is sooner than fall.
Read [Creative]

Related

Creative's 24 Hour Zen Touch Hard Disk Player [Gizmodo]
Pre-Order Creative's Zen Touch for $280 [Gizmodo]

Aton International, Inc. Makes Aton TN
3270 for Windows Mobile Pocket PC Full
Screen Landscape Display Usable on Any
Pocket PC Device

Aton International, Inc. Makes Aton TN
3270 for Windows Mobile Pocket PC Full
Screen Landscape Display Usable on Any
Pocket PC Device 09/07/2004 03:10 AM
New Landscape Display and “On the Fly” Easy Switch Menu Make Aton TN3270 the Outstanding Choice for Low Cost Terminal Emulation Software for Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Pocket PC Phone Edition to Access both Enterprise Data from Mainframes and Web Services in Real Time [PRWEB Sep 7, 2004]

Critical Update for Windows Media Player
(All Versions) for Windows 2000, Windows
XP, and Windows Server 2003 (KB828026)

Critical Update for Windows Media Player
(All Versions) for Windows 2000, Windows
XP, and Windows Server 2003 (KB828026) 02/11/2004 01:19 AM
When a content owner creates an audio or video stream, they can add script commands (such as URL script commands and custom script commands) to be encoded in the stream. When the stream is played back, the script commands can trigger events in an embedded player program, or they can open your browser and then navigate to a Web page. This behavior is by design

A REAL SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH: THE BLUE
ROSE

A REAL SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH: THE BLUE
ROSE 05/24/2004 03:55 PM
Speaking of genetics .. Love .. :

telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/23/nrose23.xml&s Sheet=/news/2004/05/23/ixnewstop.html
track this site | 5 links

Windows Media Player (All Versions) for
Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows
Server 2003 (KB832353)

Windows Media Player (All Versions) for
Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows
Server 2003 (KB832353) 04/22/2004 01:20 AM
After applying the Update for Windows Media Player Script Commands (KB828026), some URL script commands do not fire even though they would be expected to do so. In addition to the URL script command issues, this package addresses an issue with the installer that would cause 100% CPU utilization in certain scenarios.

Atlanta Marketing Company Offers
Internet Marketing Boot Camps

Atlanta Marketing Company Offers
Internet Marketing Boot Camps 08/13/2004 03:15 AM
US Global Marketing Group, an Atlanta marketing company, is now offering Internet marketing boot camps in and around the city of Atlanta. The new Internet marketing boot camps are being offered due to a major increase in demand from both local and national businesses in the region. [PRWEB Aug 13, 2004]

Notes and Tips: Panther Blue G3 Boot
Failure

Notes and Tips: Panther Blue G3 Boot
Failure 06/28/2004 09:54 AM
Some blue G3 Power Macs can't boot from Apple's Panther CD.

More Consumers Reach Out to Touch the
Screen

More Consumers Reach Out to Touch the
Screen 11/17/2003 12:59 AM
New York Times Nov 16 2003 11:52PM ET

Panasonic 65" Plasma Touch Screen

Panasonic 65" Plasma Touch Screen 03/22/2005 04:46 PM

InfoSync World cleans up their CeBIT coverage with a piece on Panasonic's 65" Plasma HDTV with an infrared frame that turns it into an enormous touch screen. Referencing Minority Report far too many times, the reviewer tells us that Panasonic had developed some very specific weather tracking and aerial navigation software to take advantage of the touch capabilities. The great part is that the infrared unit is an independent frame around the television and Panasonic also makes a 42" and 50" model, so retrofitting your existing Plasma shouldn't be too difficult. It's USB-powered and accurate up to 2x2 millimeters. No word on price or availability, but a quick Google search pulled up a German Lycos catalog page with a price of about $5,150 for the 50" model.

Panasonic 65" Touch Screen Plasma TV [InfoSyncWorld]
Catalog Page (German) [LycosDE]

He Pushed the Hot Button of Touch-Screen
Voting

He Pushed the Hot Button of Touch-Screen
Voting 06/15/2004 02:05 AM
California's secretary of state is taking the arcane matter of voting machines and turning it into a hobbyhorse that he could ride to the governor's office.

Not Quite A Touch Screen To Let You Feel
Fabrics Online

Not Quite A Touch Screen To Let You Feel
Fabrics Online 09/10/2004 01:18 PM
One of the problems some people have with buying clothing online is that they can't "feel" the fabric. They can't pick it up, move it around, and see how well it's really made. A student in the UK has designed some software to try to solve this problem, letting users "feel" clothing online. The software tries to make it easier to sense "softness, fullness, smoothness, hairiness, prickliness, drape, thickness, elasticity, rigidity and warmth" of the fabric using some 3D animations. For example, to see "hairiness" it would show a close up, and as the user moved the mouse, you could see how the fibers moved. Of course, if they combined this with a bit of haptics to give some touch feedback, it might seem a lot more useful. Realistically, this is just a bunch of video demonstrations about the fabric.

Touch-Screen Voting Snags Continue

Touch-Screen Voting Snags Continue 11/05/2003 02:29 PM

Touch Screen Voting Trouble in Florida

Touch Screen Voting Trouble in Florida 01/09/2004 09:50 PM

Touch-screen survey gives tenants their
say in Greenwich

Touch-screen survey gives tenants their
say in Greenwich 05/24/2004 04:05 PM
PublicTechnology.net May 24 2004 8:23PM GMT

Ohio Opts to Put Touch Screen Voting on
Hold

Ohio Opts to Put Touch Screen Voting on
Hold 12/03/2003 12:20 PM

Calif. recertifies touch-screen voting
machines

Calif. recertifies touch-screen voting
machines 06/11/2004 02:34 PM
USA Today Jun 11 2004 6:24PM GMT

Sand Dune Ventures, Inc. Launches Touch
Screen Tablet PC

Sand Dune Ventures, Inc. Launches Touch
Screen Tablet PC 06/27/2004 04:54 AM
Sand Dune Ventures, Inc. introduces the Sahara Touch-it Tablet PC, a true touch screen only slate Tablet PC for field sales and service, entertainment, kiosk, healthcare, education, and government mobile computing needs. [PRWEB Jun 27, 2004]

NTSC-J, PAL, and SECAM TV Tuner Hotfix
for DirectX 9.0b on Windows 2000,
Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003
(KB825116)

NTSC-J, PAL, and SECAM TV Tuner Hotfix
for DirectX 9.0b on Windows 2000,
Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003
(KB825116) 11/04/2003 11:37 PM
DirectX 9.0b was released on 7/23/03 to address the MIDI security issue identified in bulletin MS03-030. A small number of non-security fixes were also included in the release. One of these fixes caused several TV Tuner capture card/driver combinations using video formats other than NTSC (NTSC-J, PAL, SECAM) to no longer initialize correctly on Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. Symptoms include loss of capture functionality and potential inability to set/retain device capture settings. This hotfix, documented further in Knowledge Base article 825116, has been issued to correct the flaw. 11-04-03 update: The English hotfix package has been modified to allow patching of all language installations supported by the affected Operating Systems.

Analysis reveals flaws in voting by
touch-screen. One Out of Every 100 Votes
Not Counted! 7/12

Analysis reveals flaws in voting by
touch-screen. One Out of Every 100 Votes
Not Counted! 7/12 07/12/2004 05:29 AM
prompting further questions .. Read article

sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-touchscreens11j ul11,0,305144.story?coll=sfla-news-sfla
track this site | 4 links

Touch Screen Machine Scaring Off Senior
Citizen Election Judges

Touch Screen Machine Scaring Off Senior
Citizen Election Judges 02/13/2004 03:31 AM
Well, here's a completely unexpected consequence of Maryland going to all touchscreen voting systems: the election judges who watch over the voting process, who are mostly senior citizens, are scared off by the high-tech machines. The old voting system, they could handle. However, understanding a touchscreen voting system when many of them are still shying away from computers is too much. And, apparently, it's not easy to find election judges, so when they scare off a good percentage of the usual crowd, there's a definite shortage.

Screen Loupe 2000 v5.5

Screen Loupe 2000 v5.5 01/09/2004 09:58 PM
Screen Loupe is a small utility that displays a magnified view of whatever is beneath the mouse cursor, much like a jeweler's or printer's loupe. You can copy the contents of the Loupe window to the clipboard as well. The captured image can be pasted into any graphics program and most word processors. Screen Loupe's main viewing window can be resized, and an option is included to lock the current view. [Shareware $14.95 426 KB]

Available switch options for Windows XP
and Windows Server 2003 Boot.ini

Available switch options for Windows XP
and Windows Server 2003 Boot.ini 04/24/2004 06:25 PM

January 25, 2003

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