Regular readers of this blog will know that my background is primarily in the Microsoft development world, with the odd foray into Java (and more recently, experiments with Ruby and Processing). So when Microsoft announces some new tool or framework, I'll pay attention and see what's up.

Right now, there's a good deal of hype and excitement around Silverlight... which sounds great to me in theory, but in practice has been largely a disappointment.

And I saw that as a user, not a developer. I can't even think about using it for development at this point because, frankly... it simply doesn't run for me as a casual web user.

Rich Ziade nails some of the issues in his post from Friday, called "Microsoft-Centered Design":

So I'm perusing the various blog posts that have streamed out of the MIX 08 conference and some interesting talks are available online. So I head on over to the MIX 08 site to view some sessions and I run into this:  [image of the "You need Silverlight" placeholder] ..  Yep, I need to download Real Player, I mean Silverlight to watch these videos. Silverlight, for the less enlightened, is Microsoft's foray into streaming video, rich media and rich apps on the Web (aka Microsoft's Flash).

I agree with Rich's premise that Silverlight apps (or at least the demos we've seen so far) don't really provide much reason to use it over Flash -- a time-tested, well-supported platform for rich web apps.

But I find the problem with Silverlight to go even deeper:  For me, it simply doesn't work.

I use Firefox as my browser... and despite lots of examples and statements about Silverlight being not only cross-browser, but also cross-platform, I can't get it to run in Firefox. On any machine I've tried. To date, that's five machines. All of them are running similar setups:

• The most recent production version of Firefox (currently 2.0.0.12), with extensions:
• del.icio.us Bookmarks (for quick access to my bookmarks)
• Firebug (for debugging and development)
• Flashblock  (to block Flash content from loading until/unless I want to see it)
• Google Toolbar  (because... well... because it's the Google toolbar)
• Remember the Milk for Gmail   (because seeing my tasks right next to email rocks)
• Tab Mix Plus  (because I want to choose how/when/where new tabs are opened in Firefox)
• IE Tab (see below)

Note that what I'm NOT running is the NoScript extension, which reportedly causes problems for Silverlight in Firefox.

I can't tell you how many times on these machines I've gone to download the various versions of Silverlight and see if maybe... just maybe... THIS TIME will be different. So far, no joy.

The issue isn't made any easier by the various versions floating around... Silverlight 1.0, Silverlight 1.1 Alpha, some sort of refresh/CTP version for 1.1, and now Silverlight 2.0 as of Mix08. This thing's been around for just a year now and there are already more SKUs of Silverlight than there are of Windows XP.

Of course, things do appear to work fine in IE7. But I don't want to run IE7 as my browser. I've got Firefox and its extensions tweaked to be exactly the way I like it.

The only way I'm able to get Silverlight content to run inside of a Firefox window currently is via the "IE Tab" extension -- which loads the IE rendering engine inside of a Firefox tab. In doing that, though, I lose the integration with the rest of Firefox. And it's only cosmetically different from having two browsers open to begin with. I don't want that.

I would like this to work. I really would. So far, it seems that the newer Silverlight 2.0 will run inside of Firefox -- however, the vast majority of the Silverlight content out there (which, as Rich points out, could be provided in Flash without losing any functionality) is NOT targeting Silverlight 2.0. It seems to mostly be in 1.0 or 1.1.

So until Microsoft gets this working correctly in Firefox, I find myself having to make a decision every time I come across that drives-me-up-a-wall "Get Microsoft Silverlight" badge -- do I really care enough about this content to deal with the frustration and go outside my normal workflow to view it?

More often than not, the answer is "no," which is a shame because there are some interesting videos out there in Silverlight format (the screenshot above is from Jon Udell's Perspectives video audio interview on MS Robotics).

As a developer, the notion of using XAML to build applications that can be run via Silverlight as well as via a WPF rich client sounds really cool. But how can I get excited about a new developer platform that's completely broken for me as a user?

Update: In the comments, Jon Udell clarified that the Perspectives link above is audio and not video and I've since downloaded the MP3 version. The "Get Silverlight" badge made it look like a video to me and seeing that badge repeatedly without being able to get it working in Firefox prompted the post. Thanks, Jon!

Technorati Tags: silverlight , mix08 , firefox , microsoft , web development

Five months it's taken to get to this point... but it looks like I can finally say that the Xbox 360 DRM issues I've complained about in the past are currently resolved. First, a brief summary.

• In August, my Xbox 360 died and needed to be sent in for repair.
• In October, I got a replacement console (different serial number), which Microsoft sent in lieu of having me wait for my original console to be repaired. Plug the hard drive in and it looked like we were good to go.
• In early November, we realized that other profiles on the console (for my wife and older daughter) couldn't play the Xbox Live Arcade games we purchased. They were stuck in trial mode... further, my profile (with which the games were originally purchased) could only play them when logged in. I called the 800 support number and was told that they needed to "re-associate" my console's serial number with the licenses for those games -- and that it would take 2 to 4 weeks. I was (and still am) stunned that it wasn't a quick, 10-minute fix but didn't have any choice. So I waited.
• Around the holidays in December, it still hadn't been fixed so I called again. This time, I was told that it would be fixed but that there was NO timeframe at all provided. "Hopefully soon" was all the support person would tell me... that is, until he hung up on me. This was the low point, as the Xbox Live service was offline a LOT over the holidays, which meant that NOBODY in the house could access those games.
• In January, I emailed Major Nelson about it (as he requested people do in a thread on the Xbox forums). No response. Oh, and to apologize for all that downtime over the holidays, Microsoft gave away a free Xbox Live Arcade game. Ironic, huh?

A few days ago, I checked back in on a MASSIVE thread over in the Xbox forums. As of this post, the thread's up to 150 pages - PAGES! There were posts that kept track of who had been hosed by this issue for the longest period of time. Lots of people were in the same boat as I am, waiting several months. But over a period of a few days, some of those people were reporting that they had suddenly been able to access their Xbox Live content. They simply had to re-download it to their console (which re-fetches the license info), after which it worked as it finally works as it should have all along. That re-download step is something I've done just about every week since August - it's what the support techs said "should" resolve the issue. Until this week, it didn't.

As of Thursday, though.... it looks like it's working as it should. And an 8-year old little girl can FINALLY get back to her quest for Marble Blast Ultra achievements. A hardworking housewife can wind down in the evening with a little Bejeweled.

Throughout this saga, it became clear that this was a big problem for a LOT of people. If the failure rate for the 360 is truly 16%, then that's nearly 3 million consoles that have failed (based on Wikipedia's figure of 17.7 consoles sold). Even if you assume that just a third of those has ever been used to purchase Xbox Live content (Arcade games, TV shows, movies, etc), then that's almost A MILLION people who could be affected by this problem. Clearly, this is a major failure on the part of Microsoft.

How SHOULD it be handled? Ideally, the content wouldn't be DRM'd at all. My opinion is that DRM punishes the people who want to do the right thing, while the IP thieves are always going to find some workaround.

But if being DRM-free isn't an option, then it should be handled the way it's handled on my iPod. I can choose to "De-Authorize" my iTunes music on my computer and my iPod. If I get a new computer or iPod, I simply Deauthorize the DRM'd content on the old device and that frees it up to be played on the new one. If a hard drive on a computer fails, or an iPod simply dies, and you don't have the ability to Deauthorize that device in advance -- well, a quick email/call to Apple resolves it IN MINUTES as they re-set the authorized playback devices for you.

Ideally, that should have been done right away when Microsoft sent me a replacement console. By the time it showed up in October, my content should already have been associated with the new ID. Worst case, it should have been handled quickly when I noticed it and called in November. Apple can do it... and they're not even a database company.

Jeff Atwood wrote about the issue earlier this month, when he realized that the DRM content he'd purchased on an Xbox 360 at his office couldn't be used on the Xbox 360 that he bought at home. To get access to the content he'd already paid for, Jeff opted to purchase it again -- to the tune of $140 worth of content. I disagree with his solution, as I think it punishes someone who's simply trying to do the right thing... but a guy with a Rock Band addiction might be forgiven for overpaying to get his fix.

The "Official Xbox Magazine" site named this issue the Number One thing for Microsoft to address in its 2008 New Years resolutions. Couldn't agree more.

Consumer advocate site "The Consumerist" posted an item on it this month as well, detailing the story of "Kevin." This guy has apparently been told by an escalation tech at Microsoft that he can "hopefully" expect it to be resolved "some time in 2008"! Unreal.

And there are no shortage of individual blogs detailing similar stories.

Understand - I'm pretty much a Microsoft guy. A fairly happy Windows user. A very happy Windows Home Server user (gotta blog that experience still). A .NET developer. A development manager using Microsoft tools (by choice). I know there are lots of horror stories out there and no shortage of anti-MS vitriol, but most of the time, I'm pretty happy with things.

It's unbelievable to me that this issue has allowed to get so big... and that the frontline support technicians aren't able to resolve the problem during a quick phone call.

Now that it's fixed, let's hope the replacement console isn't in the 1-in-6 that will fail the way my first one was. In the meantime, if you need someone to beat up on in Guitar Hero III, my gamertag is OneLeftyFoot.

Technorati Tags: xbox 360 , xbox live , drm , oxm , codinghorror , major nelson , consumerist , customer service , itunes

An item on TechCrunch this morning pointed me at the official Google blog, where David Drummond (Google Senior VP and Chief Legal Officer) commented on the Microsoft bid for Yahoo. I think it's fair to say that a Google corporate officer blogging on a Google property (Blogger) constitutes their "official" response.

For an official response, it's pretty idiotic. For starters, Drummond twice refers to the letter sent to Yahoo's board by Steve Ballmer as a "hostile bid". Hmm. Is this a hostile bid? A hostile takeover? Let's look at that.

The president of one company sends an open letter to the board of another company, offering to buy that company at a significant mark-up over its current share price. Doesn't seem terribly hostile to me. But I'm no lawyer, so let's go see how others define "hostile" bids for acquisition...

Had Drummond used his own company's search engine's "Define: " syntax, he'd have found this:

Note the key element in there: without the approval of the target corporation's board. What was Ballmer's letter to Yahoo, if not a proposal for the board to consider? Had he searched Wikipedia, he'd have seen this:

A takeover which goes against the wishes of the target company's management and board of directors. opposite of friendly takeover.

... but that topic (Hostile Takeover) links to the "Takeover" topic. A key portion of that (from the Friendly and Hostile Takeovers section within the topic) is [my emphasis]:

When a bidder makes an offer for another company, it will usually inform the board of the target beforehand. If the board feels that the offer is such that the shareholders will be best served by accepting, it will recommend the offer be accepted by the shareholders. A takeover would be considered "hostile" if (1) the board rejects the offer, but the bidder continues to pursue it, or (2) if the bidder makes the offer without informing the board beforehand.

Seems to me that neither of those conditions were met. On (2), the bidder (Ballmer on behalf of Microsoft) did inform the board beforehand. And until/unless Yahoo's board rejects the offer and Microsoft continues to pursue, then condition (1) won't be met either.

Drummond's not totally alone, though... it seems that some in the media are also joining the bandwagon. ABC News has a story that refers to the bid as "hostile" several times... and quotes Kara Swisher as saying "Yahoo had been rebuffing Microsoft's overtures for the past year"... and "You don't tend to try to do a hostile takeover in the Internet space because people just leave," Swisher said. "So it's very unusual Microsoft is attacking Yahoo in this way." "Attacking"? Hyperbole much?

However, Swisher's perspective on the matter is hardly without bias. Just three weeks ago, she was writing that there was no way that Microsoft would acquire Yahoo. She called rumors of Microsoft looking at Yahoo "a tad ridiculous" and, when referring to discussions between former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel and Steve Ballmer, she has this to say [my emphasis]:

It never happened then and will not now.

So how do you get from "it never happened then and won't now" to "they've been rebuffing overtures for the past year"? Then again, I suppose telling ABC News that she frankly doesn't know and was completely off the mark just three short weeks ago isn't the shortest route to a juicy soundbite.

For their part, Yahoo makes it clear in their own official response (published late Friday) that they're reviewing the "unsolicited" bid. Not much else they can see for now, I suppose.

Earlier today, Brad Smith, Microsoft's chief counsel, posted a response to Google's statement. It's a fairly short statement, with the investment relations boilerplate being longer than the statement itself, but these numbers are worth noting:

According to published reports, Google currently has more than 65 percent search query share in the U.S. and more than 85 percent in Europe. Microsoft and Yahoo! on the other hand have roughly 30 percent combined in the U.S. and approximately 10 percent combined in Europe.

It would be nice to know which "published reports" he refers to, but certainly Google's domination in search query share can't be argued. They're a verb at this point (and for good reason... Google's search does rock!).

So now it'll turn into a war of the words... cue the rhetoric and grab your popcorn. Should be an interesting ride.

Technorati Tags: google , microsoft , yahoo , acquisition , techcrunch

Eric Sink has a blog post about his experience in trying to get pricing information out of a vendor whose products he was looking into. Their prices weren't listed on the web site (strike 1), so he had to fill out a web form to request a price. The response he got back was a request for his phone number so that a salesperson could call him (strike 2). Specifically, they wanted to talk about his application and how he planned to use their product (strike 3).

I've run into this several times with development tools and components and it typically tells me one key thing about the vendor involved... you want to jack up the price based on my ability to pay. More succinctly, you want to find out my "price sensitivity" which is just a fancy way of saying, "What it's worth to you?"

That tells me the vendor isn't sure what their product is worth in the market. And that they don't think my time is worth much either (not to be an ass, but I'd like to avoid 30-minute phone calls when the topic could be covered in a 3-sentence email). Finally, it says that you (the vendor) want to dictate to me (the customer) the nature of our relationship.

"How I plan to use your product?" -- What if I'm a rich, whacked out philanthropist who buys software component licenses, reads the Quick-Start Guides to my kids at night, and wants to use your install media as the basis for my Chinese throwing star? What's the price then?

My experience with this is typically in dealing with the vendors that make UI components and other development tools. Doesn't matter if you're talking about Java, .NET, or anything else. One vendor I dealt with recently didn't have any pricing on their web site. Instead, you have to contact a salesperson via email and request a price. The response back was along the lines of this (paraphrased, but not by much):

Before I can give you a price, I really need to find out more about your product and your company. We like to look at ourselves as not just a tools vendor, but also as a partner in your business. Knowing more about the pricing of your products and services will help us craft a relationship that benefits you and ensures that you get the most out of our product.

Pretty amazing, huh? In truth, the conversation was more about him asking me questions than me asking him about licensing their product. He wanted to know how many licenses to our products are sold each year. How many end-users does that represent? What's the pricing of our product? What do our sales forecasts look like?

It's probably worth noting here that the vendor I'm referring to makes exactly one development tool -- a UI component for .NET. And I tried to explain it as simply as I could -- "Look, we already license UI tools from companies X, Y, and Z. I can go to their web site and immediately see how much I have to pay per-developer for their tools, and what the deployment licensing is for those tools (royalty-free distribution, named users, etc)."

But trying to get that information from this vendor was nearly impossible. In the end, I ended up on the phone with the president of their North American business, playing a game of 20-Questions. All so he can make an educated guess at how much I might be willing to pay for the use of his product.

By the way, when I finally got a proposed price (after multiple emails and a long phone call), it was about 8-10x what we were willing to pay to license the component. So much for the analysis of our price sensitivity... We went another direction.

Now, I don't even bother. If I go to a site and can't find any sort of pricing information, I move on.

Technorati tags: development tools, pricing, software, marketing

Last week, I posted a couple items on the continuing saga of trying to get our Xbox Live Arcade content working as it did before our console went out for repair. The major issue is that the defective console was exchanged for a working console, but the new one obviously has a new serial number (console ID). Content downloaded from Xbox Live Marketplace is tied to this ID, so our use is restricted on the new console. And has been for seven weeks now.

My previous rants on this focused on the fact that the profiles for my wife and daughter aren't able to play the many games that we purchased. When they go to those games, they're stuck in "trial" mode despite the fact that we've paid for them and they've got saved games, achievements, and so on.

An additional side-effect that I didn't mention is that MY profile (the one that purchased the games) can only play those games when I'm signed into Xbox Live. Normally, this wouldn't be such a problem since my profile logs into XBL automatically when I sign in.

This week, however, the Xbox Live service has had some serious stability issues. Many sites have reported the state of the service as it goes up for a while, goes back down, or is otherwise stuck in a gray area of "intermittent issues". Those issues continue even now as I write this (the screenshot above is about a minute old).

So not only can my wife and daughter not play these games via their profile, but now nobody in our house can play them at all -- using any profile.

I really don't understand how hosed up the back-end of the Xbox Live service must be that re-associating purchased content with a new console ID would take more than SEVEN WEEKS. Especially given that this is something that has to be done not only for the thousands of consoles being exchanged during repair work, but also for customers who would like to upgrade to an Xbox Elite. Retailers should have a bright orange sticker on the front of Xbox Elite boxes warning that any previously-purchased content will be unavailable for an undetermined, but non-trivial, period of time.

The whole experience has left a really bad taste in my mouth when it comes to the Xbox 360. I enjoy the console and have had a lot of fun. But at this point, turning it on just reminds me of the frustration that I don't have everything I've paid for.

I also mentioned last week that Xbox Live's public face, Major Nelson, posted in the support forums that anyone having these DRM licensing issues with an exchanged console should contact him. So I did. No response. He has put up a post acknowledging the downtime, though.

Technorati Tags: xbox 360 , xbox live , xbla , microsoft , major nelson , support , DRM

Wow... the more I look into this Xbox Live Marketplace DRM issue, the more I find that it's a HUGE problem. There are a ton of stories out there of people who simply don't have what they paid for. It happens in two scenarios:

1. People who, like me, had to send a console in for repair and received a different console as a replacement.

2. People who have purchased a newer Xbox or Xbox Elite for either the HDMI port or the larger hard drive.

In both cases, the problem I detailed yesterday occurs -- you can't access your Xbox Live Arcade titles (or other Marketplace content) without being signed into Xbox Live. Further, other profiles on your console can't access the content as they could before the repair/replacement.

This is made worse by the fact that Xbox Live suffered a pretty big outage over the weekend... so anyone in this situation couldn't access their XBLM content at all. Even to play in offline, single-player mode.

And while there are lots of people reporting the problem, what I haven't run across yet is anyone who says the problem was correctly resolved and that they've been made whole again by Microsoft.

Some links for your reading pleasure:

• This thread in the Xbox.com forums is now at 118 pages with hundreds in the same boat... not 118 posts. PAGES.
• Ars Technica did a writeup about this issue for those considering upgrading to the Xbox Elite.
• A good analysis of the problem here by videogame blogger Matt Brett.
• Someone even created an entire blog called "The Broken Xbox Live Marketplace". It's not been updated in a while, but there's some good info here.
• Major Nelson writes earlier this month in the forum that replacement consoles SHOULD have had licenses transferred automatically... and that anyone who's licenses weren't transferred should contact him. I have... stay tuned.
• The Digital Gamer independent gaming blog has their own tale of woe.
• This guy on Windows Live Spaces has sworn off XBLM content altogether due to the issue... and points to an online petition.

I'd love to hear an honest, open explanation for why this issue is proving so difficult and time-consuming for Microsoft to resolve.

Technorati Tags: xbox live , xbox 360 , support , microsoft , xbox , major nelson , DRM

I try to be patient and understand when a company occasionally drops the ball. I really do. Especially a company like Microsoft, whose ecosystem I've worked in as a developer for much of my career. I generally support their initiatives... but problems with the Xbox 360 -- and now DRM issues with a console back from repair -- have just boiled over.

And crappy support was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

Begin Rant...

Back in September, my console died. It suffered all the same symptoms as a Red Ring of Death failure -- except the red rings. So when I sent it in, I got the privilege of paying $99 for the repair. After roughly a month, I get a console back from them and a letter explaining that, in order to expedite things, this is a different console than the one I sent in. So as of late October, I've got a new/refurbed console that's under warranty for a year. My hard drive's plugged in, so I can see all our profiles and game data. We're set.

Or so I thought.

The problem occurs when my wife or daughter sign into their profile on the console and all of our Xbox Live Arcade games are in "Trial" mode. That's about 15-16 games purchased with Microsoft Points over the last year or so. If I sign into MY profile, the games are in "Full" mode (because my profile was the one that purchased them), but nobody else in the family can play them -- or even access their existing achievements and progress.

I tinker around with deleting and re-downloading the games, but nothing works. So on 11/10, I call Xbox support and open a support ticket. The person I ended up speaking with (Ella, a supervisor) explained that because I was sent a different console, the serial number doesn't match. So the console's DRM system thinks that my wife and daughter's profiles are being used elsewhere and won't authenticate the games.

She tells me it'll take 2-4 weeks for them to "re-associate" our downloaded games/videos with the new serial number. (Why on earth this would take 2-4 weeks is left as an exercise for the reader. I can't imagine). Note that they DO already have the new serial number associated with my Xbox Live account -- she could verify it and knew the warranty dates. But once this "re-association" is done, I'll get a phone call notifying me to re-download that content and then the other profiles will get access to that content.

As of yesterday, it's been 6 weeks. SIX.

With a daughter who's out of school for the holidays now, and me taking some time off, this obviously becomes a higher priority -- we'd like to play some games together. So I call today (43 days after the first call) and spent 51 minutes on the phone. The first guy I got put me on hold three times because "his computer was booting up, but thanks for your patience". Once he could pull up my support incident, he had me verify a bunch of information, repeat the whole saga, and then put me on hold a couple more times. Eventually, he transferred me to a supervisor, Edwin.

This is when the fun started. Edwin was a complete information vacuum. All Edwin could tell me was that:

• My support incident is still open (duh)
• The problem isn't resolved (ya think? seriously... he related this to me as if it were news)
• Someone should call me when it does get resolved.

What he couldn't tell me is WHEN it would be resolved. He couldn't tell me if it would be days, weeks, or months. He said that "in special cases, it will take longer than 30 days". Given that it's been much longer than 30 days, I asked what was special about the case. His response was "I don't know. Could be a number of things."

After going round and round with me wanting to talk to someone who COULD answer my question (he couldn't connect me), wanting to know WHEN I could expect some resolution to this (he couldn't provide even a sense of scale), and wanting to know WHY this was a "special" case ("could be anything"), he hung up on me.

That's right... he told me it didn't matter if I "called a thousand times, there was no information" to be had so he went through his "thank you for calling" script and hung up on me.

This is where point out that I wasn't insulting Edwin, using foul language, or anything like that. What I was doing was asking a lot of questions because I want to understand why this is still a pending problem.

Obviously, I'm not the only person having this problem... the 360's failure rate is a joke at this point, so there must be thousands of people in the same boat. An exchanged console with more than one profile that has Xbox Live Marketplace content. In at least one case, Microsoft credited someone the MS Points required to re-purchase the games for those other profiles (this wasn't offered to me -- yes, I'd go that route if it would work). The comments for this post are also motivational reading (sarcasm)... I should point out that I am NOT "Shady515" in those comments -- sounds similar, but that poor guy is on his 11th console and has been waiting for access to his Live content since August. Travis had the problem again a few months after posting that. No shortage of similar horror stories on the web.

An Xbox team member explains the problem (but no solution) on this post... where the comments point to a petition on the issue. The petition is apparently centered around people who own an original 360 and would like to upgrade to an Elite -- but can't take their content with them because it's a new serial number.

The kicker for me to blog it... Tonight, I see a blog post from Major Nelson (Xbox Live guy about town) pimping MS Points as a holiday gift -- because I'm not getting screwed out of the Points I've already purchased?

Like the headline says... ridiculous.

Technorati Tags: xbox 360 , xbox , microsoft , major nelson , support , xbox live , fail

Lesson learned -- all that comes from Mountain View is not gold. Or stable. Or safe.

While I use del.icio.us for 99.47% of my bookmarking needs on the web, there are always a couple dozen or so URLs that I leave in Firefox's local bookmarks file. Examples are for sites that I want on the browser's toolbar, private or internal URLs that aren't public, and bookmarks that have search keywords assigned.

For a while now, I've wanted to sync up my Firefox bookmarks at home with the bookmarks on my office machine. Most of these get used on either machine and it's a hassle to remember to add those bookmarks and search shortcuts in both places.

So when I came across the Google Browser Sync extension, I thought, "this is PERFECT!"  It would sync up not only bookmarks but also settings and any open tabs. That seemed great for those times when I had something open for reading in the office, but didn't get to it. Shut it down on that machine and it would open up on my home machine later.

I installed the extension on both machines, let it sync up, and then merged the bookmarks in both locations. After that, I went through a process last night of cleaning up and re-organizing those local bookmarks. I spent over an hour getting rid of the ones that were old, cleaning out the dupes, and adding more search keywords.

Today, they're gone. On both machines. A couple of folders are completely missing. Nice, huh?

Thankfully, I found a backup of the bookmarks.html file from before I installed the extension... so while I've lost the cleanup work I did last night, I haven't completely lost the original bookmarks.

Anyway, be warned... if I'd have taken the time to browse through the Google Groups discussions for this extension, I'd have probably avoided it altogether and perhaps tried FoxMarks instead. But I figured Google's stuff is pretty solid... again, lesson learned. Thank goodness I didn't have it sync passwords and all of my other browser settings.

So... back to that cleanup effort (again).

Technorati Tags: firefox , bookmarks , google browser sync , google

It started several weeks ago. When playing Madden 08, I would occasionally get weird color glitches. It reminded me of the old CRT days when your VGA cable would get loose -- it was as if I was looking at my television through green-colored glasses. "A bug in Madden," I thought, plus a reboot would always fix it. It happened rarely, so no worries.

On Friday, 9/21, a Dashboard Update went out for the 360 and this green-glasses thing happened again. "Uh oh," I thought, "it's not Madden." At the end of the update, the 360 rebooted and I got a black screen. I could hear the startup sound and playing with the controller would result in sounds as I moved around the UI. I just couldn't see anything due to the black screen.

I tried different inputs on the television. No joy. I bought a new video cable to rule that out. No joy. So if it's not the television or the cable -- gotta be the box. What seemed even more bizarre was that I wasn't getting those three red lights -- the Red Ring of Doom.

"That really sucks," I thought, "especially since Halo 3 releases next week... but at least Microsoft extended their warranty." They announced this a while back because so many boxes (especially the initial "launch day" boxes) were having problems due to overheating. Mine was not a launch-day box -- I got it about 4 months after the 360's release. So I'm covered, right?

Poor, naive me. Turns out Microsoft extended the warranty but only if you get the RRoD. In the open letter from Peter Moore (Xbox Head at Microsoft):

...we are announcing  today a three-year warranty that covers any console that displays a three flashing red lights error message.

A box with the symptoms mine was showing -- not covered. Lots of unhappy people on support forums about that issue... including many people who recommend giving the box a thump on the side (reminding me of an old television set we had when I was a kid) or wrapping the box in a towel to overheat it on purpose. I didn't want to do either of those, but I called Xbox Support to see what my options were. No amount of complaining, griping, or asking to speak with a supervisor mattered -- I'd have to pay the $99 repair fee if I wanted it fixed.

So now my Xbox is somewhere between Colorado and Texas in the supplied box that lots of people refer to as "the coffin".

A few things I've learned over the last couple of weeks:

• The $99 fee covers shipping three times. First, they get a box to me (took 7 business days). Then the console goes in the box and heads to Texas (en route now). Finally, the repaired box comes back.
• That fee also re-sets my warranty for another year. I plan on using the crap out of it to put that to the test.
• I may or may not get the same box back, which surprised me. The box I get back may be someone else's refurbished box with a different serial number. As long as it works and doesn't look like a Best Buy floor model, I don't much care either way.
• There are a TON of people who had problems on or near that fateful Friday, 9/21. Two different .NET bloggers I read (Scott Hanselman and Travis Illig) had it happen within a couple weeks. A Google search turns up a TON of problems occurring in late September. I doubt that Microsoft will ever admit that the Dashboard Update caused a problem or is even related. But checking out this thread makes it hard to claim "coincidence".

On the plus side... one of the guys at work has a 360 and hadn't used it for months (the horror!), so he brought his in for me to borrow. This added a few more things to the list of what I've learned:

• There are some very nice people in the world. It's great to have a console to use during this season when a LOT of interesting games are being released (Halo 3, PGR4, Call of Duty 4, Guitar Hero 3, FIFA 08, and more).
• Plugging your hard drive on to the side of someone else's console works like a charm. It was as if I was using my original console, except...
• His console is much, MUCH quieter than mine. When it's at the dashboard, you can barely tell it's on and even with a disc spinning, it's still much quieter than mine ever was. So much so that my wife is in favor of buying a newer one if the repaired console doesn't come back as quiet as this borrowed one. It's THAT noticeable.
• The dashboard update doesn't break every Xbox... his wanted the update as soon as it was turned on and before it could continue. Went through like a champ (though not without me sweating a bit!).

So... I'm sure it will be a couple more weeks before my repair console returns and it'll be interesting to see what's changed. Noise? Serial number? Heat dissipation? Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: xbox 360 , hardware , red ring of doom , microsoft , support , repair

Back in July, I posted about the on-going problems I was having with my Dell Inspiron 9400 laptop. It was just about a year old and was facing its fourth house call by a local Dell tech contractor. In the comments for that post, John B (an employee in Dell's Customer Advocacy group) contacted me to let me know that he agreed -- it was time to call it a lemon and get a system exchange.

I'm happy to update that the process was quick, painless, and couldn't have been easier. I simply emailed John with some details about the system and my contact info (service tag and my home address) so that he could find my record in their support system. Once he confirmed those details, he got in touch to let me know that a new machine would be on my doorstep in a week or two (5-15 business days).

It was just over a week when the new machine arrived. When I opened the box, I was initially thrown off because the new machine didn't look like the old one. The new make was of the newer generation -- an Inspiron 1720. I'm happy to report that the new machine has been running well for several weeks now and I've not had any problems with it.

The new machine arrives in a box with a pre-paid shipping label for the old machine. All the instructions were included for packing and shipping, including the DHL 800 number to have them come pick up the old machine at the house. Piece of cake.

The machine itself wasn't quite a one-for-one swap, but overall I'm quite happy with the way it worked out. Some of the things that vary from this 1720 to the older 9400 I had are:

• The 1720 doesn't have a DVI output. As I never really use the machine with an external display, it's not a big deal to me. If I did need an external panel, this might be a concern.
  
• They (John?) did upgrade the machine to a Core 2 Duo T7300 processor (from plain ol' Core Duo), as well as a drive upgrade to 160GB 7200rpm (the original was an 80GB at 7200rpm). Very nice
  
• It's got five USB ports on it, while the older machine had 6. I rarely use more than two at a time, so this wasn't a big deal to me at all.
  
• The new machine has a bigger keyboard and a full numeric keypad to the right of the main keyboard. As a result, it's got less empty space on the left/right sides of the keyboard than the old machine. The layout of navigation and editing keys is still taking some getting used to (e.g., PgUp, PgDn, Home, End), but overall it's handy to have the numeric keypad. The biggest adjustment has been that the main keyboard isn't centered on the machine... so I offset my hands a bit while I'm using it.
  
• The new machine has an NVidia GeForce 8600M GT video adapter in it. So far, I'm very pleased with the video performance. The older one had an NVidia in it as well, but it was the GeForce GO. I expected the newer machine to have a higher Windows Experience Rating than the old one, but it actually dropped a small amount (due to the graphics card). Then again, I'm using the default driver that Windows Vista put on the machine and haven't checked Dell's support site to see if there's something new and improved available for the 8600. I don't do any gaming or hardcore DirectX/OpenGL stuff on this machine, so the video performance hasn't been an issue.

Getting up and running was mostly straightforward... I did have a bit of a panic when I went to re-pave it, though. As Rick Strahl mentioned on his post about a new Inspiron 1520, the larger capacity SATA drives on these laptops require a special driver. Without it, Vista initially installs just fine but then blue-screens after the final reboot. The first time it did that, I got well and truly panicked!

A quick search on Dell's support forums, though, turned up a couple possible solutions... you could do as Rick did and disable the AHCI mode in the BIOS (putting the drive in plain old ATA mode). It sounds like there's no performance or stability hit either way. The other route, which is the one I took because I was doing the pave anyway, was to download the AHCI driver from Dell and expand it on to a USB thumb drive. Insert that in the machine during the Vista install and then point to it during the step where it asks about third-party SCSI or RAID drivers. Once I did that, all was well.

Interestingly, it sounds like some of the problems Rick had with his NVidia card are similar to the issues I had... while his issues led to instability during WPF development and the inability to use an external panel, mine led to black screens and what seemed like the eventual burnout of the built-in panel.

After searching around quite a bit, there are also reports of issues with those machines being susceptible to static discharge problems. I definitely felt that "tingle" from time to time with the older machine and was using the standard 2-prong AC adapter that Dell ships. Apparently, it's now possible to order a 3-prong adapter if you want it but Dell sounds fairly confident that the 2-prong shouldn't be a problem.

In any case, the newer machine has been ROCK SOLID for the last several weeks of regular use. No instability, the temperature seems to be well within the normal ranges, and it runs very very fast.

Thanks again to John and the rest of the Dell Customer Advocate folks for taking care of me on this.

Doh - that reminds me... I need to make sure the extended warranty I paid for was transferred to this newer machine! Off to that support site again... :)

Technorati Tags: dell , hardware , support , customer support , solution

A chain of blog posts came through my reader this week that discussed the value, or lack thereof, in "code reuse" for most development teams. First, some background...

It looks like the original article was "Internal Code Reuse Considered Dangerous" by Dennis Forbes (great blog, btw). That article was then referenced by Carl G Lewis (cysquatch), who largely agrees with the sentiment in his "Is Your Code Worthless" post. Finally, Scott Reynolds referenced Carl's blog post in a follow-up the other day, wherein Scott suggests that "Code Reuse Is Not the Villain".

Still with me? Good.

As I worked my way back in time (Dennis' original post is from 2005), it occurred to me that this line of trackbacks is a bit like the "telephone game" that we played as kids. As each person responded to the previous person, the meaning of the story changed in subtle (but important) ways.

In deciphering this, I hope it goes without saying that "code reuse" as a practice is a worthwhile goal to keep in mind. It's not always achievable, nor even desirable, but certainly it's something that good developers keep in mind as they work.

That said, Dennis begins by arguing against the management notion that code reuse saves money by "codifying the abilities of the team" -- thereby making the team easier to replace or downsize. Ouch.

Code in the library is considered an asset, and managers and owners like the idea that, while developing product A, as a side effect they're accumulating this great repository of generalized code which they'll be able to use for a completely different product - let's call it product B. Soon the domain knowledge of their developers won't matter (and thus they'll be expendable), because everything is encapsulated in common code: They've codified the abilities of their team.

I'm not sure how any worthwhile manager could get from Point A (the practice of "accumulating [a] great repository") to that particular Point B (where the "domain knowledge of their developers won't matter"). And in fact, Dennis' rebuttal to this point is that the opposite happens -- the more you grow internal frameworks and libraries, the more you depend on your developers. New developers, regardless of previous experience, have a substantial learning curve in front of them with any of your internal code.

And in that, I completely agree. Where I got lost in Dennis' argument was in the next portion where he appears to argue that code has no value beyond the developers writing it and the project they're writing it for. [emphasis mine]

The question every organization needs to ask itself, then, is what value they could sell their "reusable code" for - what, realistically, would competitors and new entrants in the field offer for it? The answer, in almost every case, is $0, and they wouldn't want it even at that price. There is extraordinarily little code theft in this industry (even though we're in the era of burnable DVDs and USB keys) because most code - above and beyond the industry-wide frameworks and libraries - has no value at all outside of a specific project with a specific group of developers. Trying to use it for other projects is often worse than starting with nothing at all.

This is the part that loses me completely, for two reasons:

1. It assumes that the value of reusable code is measured by what an external entity would pay for it. I'd argue that it should be measured by its value to the company that owns it. Not just in that it saves time for the team that wrote it... but that it reduces bugs by ensuring that a bug fixed in one location is fixed for all locations. A user interface metaphor or workflow used in one place is used in multiple places. Blah, blah, blah, the usual examples... Reusing code in the correct way increases the value of a product in the eyes of customers and prospects and this has very direct value for the company's bottom line.
2. That argument also ignores technology acquisitions. The value of Visio's code when Microsoft bought Shapeware was something (much) greater than $0. It's not as if Microsoft needed the customer base or the market share. Similarly when Google purchased Writely or when Yahoo bought del.icio.us. In each case, the acquisition was a technology purchase -- the acquirer was infinitely larger than the company being bought and wasn't already in competition with them. The purchase wasn't just for the customer list.

I actually think Dennis' point is best made in a bullet point later in the post. And the point is that code reuse merely for the purpose of code reuse is a waste of time and money. [original emphasis]

Internal code reuse for niche industries and domain specific problems can be very valuable, but code for generalized, industry-wide problems are seldom valuable unless you're truly developing it for industry-wide consumption (e.g. the .NET Framework is tremendously valuable code reuse). I have seen too many examples of large internal libraries that are largely duplications of vastly superior functionality existing in the .NET Framework or C++ Standard Template Library, or which could be better served by available professional or open source libraries. If your problem isn't domain or niche specific, but rather is industry wide, it is extremely likely that either a library encompassing it exists, or that it isn't a problem that is worthwhile generalizing

And here's where I'd agree... I, too, have seen many examples where companies simply reinvent the wheel in the name of "reuse". Hey, if it's ours then we can change it, fix it, and reuse it -- right? It's really a buy-versus-build debate. If your team is writing things like data access layers, UI controls, or validation tools in the name of "reuse", then you may as well go out to your parking lot and just light some cash on fire. At least it'd be quicker and you'll get the momentary heat and entertainment.

The above quote is what Carl's response (from last month) is based on... and while the post's title ("Is Your Code Worthless?") is plenty controversial, his purpose was really more to tell a story -- and a funny one at that. It's the story of a client company who felt that their internal code was so proprietary and so valuable that they couldn't possibly let a contractor look at it offsite. Instead, they had Carl travel 8000km to work on it at their location -- only to discover that the code was a complete disaster. What a great line...

I sat down and fired up Vim to start looking at their code and was INSTANTANEOUSLY BLINDED by the reeking bile that was pouring across my monitor.

Hilarious.

Lastly, it's worthwhile, I think, to differentiate between the development of internal business applications and developing commercial products. If you're building internal applications (e.g., payroll, HR, accounting types of systems), then managing reuse across multiple applications is probably not as important. There's still value in reuse for you, but your company doesn't lose customers if the display grid in Application A is different from the display grid in Application B. The tolerance for error is higher. With commercial products, though, it's a different story. It would be silly for the Word, Excel, and Powerpoint teams to all go create their own base UI libraries or text-formatting behavior. And the consequences of a mistake are greater and more easily measured.

I guess the point is to not get carried away with a "reuse is worthless" meme and suggest turning away from it altogether. In 16 years, I've worked on several product lines that made extensive use of shared/common libraries, to great effect and to great value for the company. Bottom line - the key is to pay attention to where building your own libraries for reuse makes sense and where you should simply reuse existing, proven libraries.

In either case, recycle the good stuff... future generations thank you. ;)

Technorati tags: software development, reuse, architecture

Here's today's blogosphere bummer... word is that print magazine Business 2.0 is on its last legs and could be publishing their last issue later this summer.

I've been a subscriber for just a couple of years, but in that time it made the cut when I did a serious "print subscription purge" a while back. It filled the gap nicely between two other magazines I subscribe to - Wired (for tech coverage with little "business" angle) and Business Week (for the decidedly non-tech business-y stuff). The closest thing I've found to Business 2.0 has been "Inc" magazine, which doesn't have as strong a tech angle and isn't usually one I read from cover to cover.

Most telling, it's one of the few magazines I've had where people who see it on my desk want to read the issue when I'm done with it... guess I should have told them to buy their own.

It sounds like Business 2.0 has actually been on the upswing (no small feat for a print magazine in these "content wants to be online... oh, and free to access" days), but its publishers (those AOL-acquiring, 3.2-billion-wasting, internet-music-hosing geniuses at Time Warner) decided that B2.0's new numbers may be coming at the expense of Fortune. Can't have that, so the smaller tech rag gets the thumbscrews.

The coverage today doesn't make it clear whether this deal is 100% done and there was an effort to get a "show your support" FaceBook group going. If it is a done deal, I guess I'll have to look at the silver lining here -- a shorter to-read stack on my nightstand.

Technorati tags: business 2.0, fortune, magazines, time warner, print, media

I've been a Dell guy for the last ten years. Over that time, I've had just one non-Dell machine and that's because it was purchased for me prior to starting a new job and the company was then standardized on IBM machines. That machine was a Thinkpad T series and it wasn't too bad a machine.

Otherwise, machines for home and business have been Dell boxes (one every couple of years at home and who knows how many business machines) and I've always suggested to friends and family that they go with Dell also. You get a machine that's ready to go out of the box and their prices usually compare well with other options-- assuming you don't want to go the build-your-own route. When it comes to my personal machine, I prefer a laptop so the DIY thing isn't really an option.

That allegiance is beginning to wane. About a year ago, I bought an Inspiron E1705 for my home/personal machine and it is pretty much loaded (at to the extent that an Inspiron configuration could be). Lots of RAM, fast disk, 1920x1200 17" display, DVD burner, NVidia graphics, and so on. Not a lower-end machine and not inexpensive either. It ran fine for the first few months but then the issues began.

It started at the end of last year when I noticed that it was running really hot. Areas on the bottom were nearly too hot to touch. Then early this year, it started randomly giving me the BSOD with a general hardware failure.

I had next-day warranty coverage, so I gave them a call... they decided it was the CPU burning out and sent another one out. This is when I learned that Dell's "next day" service really isn't "next day". What they mean is that they'll ship the part(s) out to some local contractor in your area and then the contractor should be out to fix it the "next day" after they get the part. So it's more like 3 days... whatever, I could get by with that and the CPU was replaced.

So far so good for a couple months... but then suddenly the screen would go black (as if the display shut off) when the machine was on AC power. On battery, it was fine. The machine was continuing to run and I could use Remote Desktop from another box to get into it even when it was on AC power. So another phone call... this time, they said they'd ship out a new "main system board". Three days later, a tech's out to replace it - but the problem isn't fixed.

So he calls Dell that day and they ship a new LCD panel out... another week goes by and then the screen gets replaced. Seems OK for a few days, but then...

The left edge of the screen begins to fade (see image to the left)... it's gotten more pronounced since that picture was taken, to the point that the fading now comes all the way into the middle of the screen. It also seems to get darker the longer the machine is on and, after 30 minutes or so, the left half of the screen is unusable. Another phone call... this time, they'll replace the LCD panel and the NVidia adapter ("just in case," says the tech).

All of this was frustrating, but now it's worse... because there's been no progress. After a few days, I don't hear from anyone. So I call to see what's up and am told the part is on backorder for a day or two and I'll get an email with a tracking number once it ships. Nothing for a couple days... so I email the tech, who emails a tracking number back to me and says the part(s) are on their way. However, Fedex doesn't recognize that number at all.

I emailed the tech again last week, along with the tech supervisor for the incident and the Dell Customer Advocate email alias... still no response.

I've got surgery scheduled for this week, but my wife will end up having to call them and nag again about getting this fixed.

I also have to wonder -- at what point does Dell declare this thing a lemon and replace it? This will be the FOURTH time in a few months that a tech has had to come out to replace parts on this machine. All these support calls, replacement parts, shipping, and paying contractors to come to the house -- that's gotta add up. I've got nearly the same machine at the office for business use, as do several of my colleagues,  and nobody has had any problems. Clearly this box has some problems.

In any case, their handling of this support problem may just be what changes me over to Lenovo... or HP. Or Toshiba. It's kinda ridiculous to think that, over the last few months,  my machine has been out of commission for weeks.

Technorati tags: dell, hardware, support, customer support, problems

As I mentioned earlier, I find all the breathlessness around the iPhone to be entertaining. It's a sexy-looking device, to be sure, but it's a phone. And a $500-600 phone at that! Multi-touch sounds interesting, but it's not as though there's much else here's that innovative -- email, messaging, web-browsing. With no developer platform -- but wait, "there's the web" (and the Apple fans fall all over themselves to declare it some sort of ground-breaking genius move -- "bold"? "forward-thinking"? Yeah, you're objective).

In any case, it's obviously been a very successful launch for Apple, even with the too-many-to-be-a-fluke activation problems. Wildly successful. Down the road, I may even stand in line (for 5 minutes) pick one up for myself. You know, once it has decent download speeds and there are some compelling applications (I kid, I kid!).  In the meantime, it is nice to see mobile devices getting a lot of attention like this and spurring on the competition for features is a good thing.

What had me chucking this morning was a TechCrunch post that declares $200 million in profit for Apple in their opening weekend. How did they get at this number? First, the quote:

"Based on the cost of manufacturing an iPhone..., Apple would have made a profit of between $200million and $266 million in 3 days (not including marketing costs), on sales somewhere between $350million and $420million, significantly more than earlier estimates of Apple having a $300million weekend."

The original quote referenced a BusinessWeek article from Monday that estimates the parts cost for an iPhone to be $200-$220US. This is from a non-Apple estimate by a firm that took apart a production iPhone and came up with an estimated cost for the individual components. The $20 difference is based on the 4GB versus 8GB unit.

So using the most basic possible math, TechCrunch clearly took this route:

Voila, between $200 and $266 million. The TechCrunch article does point out that Apple "would have" made this profit by "not including marketing costs".

I'm not sure why marketing would be the only cost called out separately here because the true figure for expenses on the iPhone are clearly much higher. So while Apple will never tell us what that number really is, the most basic analysis would also have to include:

• R&D -- A team at Apple worked hard to decide what to build, which features to include, how it might be engineered, what the tradeoffs were for cost, features, battery life, and size. Multi-touch doesn't grow on trees, right? Nor do screens that don't scratch easily.
  
• Design -- A team worked to come up with that cool look and all that sex appeal.
  
• Development -- Somebody wrote that software, right? Sure, I know it's "based on" OSX, but it's certainly not a matter of OSX developers choosing "File -> Save As iPhone" in their development environment.
  
• Production -- The BusinessWeek article referenced above states that the $200/220 cost for the iPhone is just the parts. Those parts have to be assembled. By people. And big machines. In factories.
  
• Testing -- Use the phone internally. Find a problem. Fix it. Use the new phone internally. Request a feature. Add it. Repeat.
  
• Fulfillment -- Those phones have to be packaged (something Apple clearly spends a lot of time and money on -- they single-handedly created "gadget porn") and shipped out to stores.
  
• Marketing -- This is the one that TechCrunch opted to include and it's obviously a huge cost. There were iPhone commercials all over prime time in the weeks leading up to its launch. Posters, brochures, billboards, t-shirts, television spots, magazine ads, and so on.

Finally, there are other costs not specific to the iPhone that must be carried. All those jobs above people to sell it (sales and retail labor). Those jobs also include people who need places to work (facilities), recruitment and benefits (HR), paychecks and expenses (finance), and tools with which to communicate (IT). Overhead.

We'll never know exactly what those other costs do to the iPhone's bottom line. But we can safely say that they add up to some fairly non-trivial numbers.

Do I think Apple LOST money on the iPhone's opening weekend? I doubt it. But it's certainly not accurate to say they made anywhere near $200 million in profit. iPhone #1 was very expensive for Apple to put into a customer's hands... it's iPhone #5,000,000 and beyond that will let us know what sort of long-term value has been created for Apple's business.

And I don't mean to pick on TechCrunch here... lots of sites were calling the iPhone a massive hit before the first device had been sold over the counter. There's no shortage of this sort of speculation.

In fact, TechCrunch themselves poked fun at all the hype a few weeks ago by calling it the second coming. Hilarious.

  Technorati: iphone, business, apple, techcrunch, cellular

Earlier this week, I turned on XM Radio in the car and was greeted with a "No Signal" warning -- and dead air. This had happened once or twice before in the last four years and fixing it involved a call to XM's Customer Support line, waiting on hold for far too long, and then dealing with some of the worst support staff I've ever experienced.

Both times, they "sent a signal to reset" the radio and it was fine within 10 minutes or so. But it took phone calls of 20-30 minutes to get there.

So I was dreading making that phone call once I got to work and decided I'd use Google to see if it's possible to request this "reset" online. No dice, but in searching I found that the entire XM system was down. That saved me a phone call, I suppose.

A day or two later, I got an email explaining that they had "resumed normal levels of service" and apologizing for the inconvenience. Apparently, some software update in a satellite went bad and it took hours to get the problem resolved. "Sorry, our bad."

The truth is, I didn't really miss it. Sure, I enjoy the programming when I have it... but the truth is that I find myself listening to my iPod far more often than I listen to XM. Many of the channels I listen to on XM are NOT commercial free (news/talk channels from other organizations) and the channels that are (XM's own music channels) increasingly have too much DJ chatter and advertisements for programming on other channels. And their exclusive content (such as Major League Baseball, Oprah, and until recently, the Opie and Anthony show) has never interested me much at all.

On the other hand, I still dig listening to podcasts on the iPod and there's no shortage of new ones coming out all the time. I've also been using the "Smart Playlists" feature of iTunes more often, which helps get me playlists that are very focused on the things I most enjoy listening to. Plus, I can use the iPod in places that my XM SkyFi currently doesn't work, such as while exercising, in planes, and so on.

Their handling of this outage is further making me re-think my subscription to the service. Not only was their never a notice on their web site (the logical place for many people to turn when they have problems with their radio -- if only to get the support phone number), but they're apparently offering a pittance of a refund. Engadget reports that they'll refund about $.87 to customers due to the system outage -- but only if you call in and request it.

Yeah... my experience with XM wait times is such that sitting on hold to ask for $.87 is a money-losing proposition. On an hourly basis, I'd make more money sewing clothes for Kathy Lee Gifford. To say nothing of the incompetent staff on the other end of the phone. The right thing to do here is to just automatically deduct the $.87 from next month's charge for anyone who was affected by the outage (XM implies it wasn't everyone by saying it affected an "undisclosed number of customers").

I like (not love... not need... just like) XM Radio... but their competition extends far beyond potential-merger-mate Sirius Radio. Their competition is with iPods and every other MP3 player. It's with PSPs, laptops, home media centers, Tivo, game consoles, and every other way in which media can be delivered to me.

At $12.95 a month, it may just be losing that competition for my money. I'll definitely be paying attention to how much XM-specific content I listen to over the next few weeks.

  Technorati: xm radio, satellite radio, customer service, podcasting, portable audio

Last night, I mentioned that I was mostly happy with the Vista upgrade. One thing, however, that is standing out for me as a major annoyance is its insistence on treating ZIP files as folders in Window Explorer.

In the left pane where folders appear, ZIP files are treated as if they were subfolders of the folder in which they appear. I can see why some people might prefer this behavior -- you can, after all, just click on the ZIP file as if it were a folder and the right pane will display the files within the ZIP archive.

The problem for me is that I have some folders that contain a hundred or more ZIP files. When I navigate to those folders in Explorer, the folders pane on the left suddenly becomes very long and unwieldy. When there are just a few ZIP files in a folder (as in the screenshot above), then it's not a problem... but when the entire folder pane gets taken over by ZIP files, it sucks. Navigation becomes very inefficient.

Under XP, this could be taken care of by unregistering a DLL at the command line:

regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll

Under Vista, you'll get barked at if you try this:

The module "zipfldr.dll" was loaded but the entry-point DllUnregisterServer was not found. Make sure that "zipfldr.dll" is a valid DLL or OCX file and then try again.

I've Googled around quite a bit and perused the Vista-related newsgroups, but have yet to come across an answer... though there appears to be no shortage of people asking the same question. I've got both WinRAR and WinZIP 11 on the machine (yes, both are licensed and paid for) and associating either of those with ZIP files doesn't make the view-as-folders thing go away. It just changes which app opens them when you double-click a ZIP and which icon is used to identify them (WinZIP in the above screenshot.

Note: It does seem that there are lots of people who have broken Vista's built-in handling of ZIP files and need to get those files re-associated with the Vista handler. This appears to be resolved by opening a command window as an administrator and running this command:

assoc .zip=CompressedFolder

Any advice on getting this resolved?

  Technorati: Windows Vista, ZIP, Explorer

The problems with running iTunes on Windows Vista are pretty well documented at this point. From purchased music/videos not playing to outright corruption of the iPod's contents in some circumstances. Apple has even taken the unusual step of recommending that iPod users not upgrade to Windows Vista.

Om Malik's site, GigaOm, has a brief post about it that includes a poll asking "Who's to blame?." What I find amazing is that, as of early this morning, with 487 responses, nearly a third of respondents (30%) are blaming Microsoft. Another 29% think both parties are to blame.

I really don't understand that... Given that Apple controls both the hardware (the iPod device) and the software that interacts with it (the iTunes application), how is Microsoft to blame here? Did Apple not have access to the Vista betas and release candidates that the rest of the world did?

And while I make my living developing on Microsoft's platform, I'm not anti-Apple in any way. My wife and I both have iPods (and love them) and I've spent a good chunk of change at the iTunes Music Store. I think they make great products and I could easily see a Mac in our home down the road.

Apple has made a "repair tool" available that is supposed to help with the major issues... and their knowledgebase clearly indicates that the ball for fixing this is in their court (e.g. with the next update to iTunes for Windows). Yet a full 59% of respondents in the survey hold Microsoft at least partially to blame? I just don't get that.

Technorati tags: ipod, itunes, apple, vista, rants

I'm glad to see that an increasing number of blogs I subscribe to are starting to turn OFF the Snap.com previews. These began showing up a couple/few months ago and drive me up a wall.

When I'm reading someone's post and come across a link, I'll often hover my mouse pointer over it so I can see the target URL... is it on the same domain, do I want to follow it, etc? What I DON'T need is a small thumbnail of the page I'm going to.

What's the point of the thumbnail?

It's not as if I can actually read the target site via thumbnail and do I really care about their color scheme and columnar layout in advance? For me, it falls into the same category as those sliding DHTML panels that ask me to fill out a survey (ahem, HP.com) or "support" the site's sponsor.

I haven't looked into it much, so it's not clear to me what the benefit is to the site/blog operator... I can only assume that they get some metrics on which links are being followed or "hovered". Whatever... get that another way. One less irritating alternative is the MyBlogLog service that Brad Feld uses on links in his posts (right)... a small popup tells me how popular an outgoing link is and, more importantly, doesn't replace a decent portion of screen space with visual noise.

And yes, I know that you can click the "Options" link in the Snap preview popup and turn them off for all sites. I've done that... a few times... it doesn't "stick" for me for very long (and no, I don't regularly clear cache, cookies, or that sort of thing). Also, while this Lifehacker article suggests that site visitors should go to Snap's web site and "download a cookie", what site operator wants to force visitors to do that? The comments on that Lifehacker article suggest an even better approach for Firefox users -- Adblock to stop them once and for all.

Anyway, here's hoping the recent backlash continues and more sites remove the preview popups.

Technorati tags: rants, blogging, web design, snap

The "Tempest in a Teapot" issue got me thinking about the "are all blogs really 'blogs'?" debate... it's a question that comes up from time to time as various people try to define what "blog" means. Some think it's only those that allow comments or provide syndicated feeds. And, of course, some feel it has to do with linking to others in the "blogosphere" (can't stand that term). Then there's the whole "A-List" topic, which I think is the adult geek's equivalent of high school's "in" crowd. How to be an A-List blogger... it's always funny to come across those posts and find yourself asking "Who is this person again? And who's on that list, exactly?"

Ultimately, who cares?

Does it matter whether something is a "blog" or a "news feed"? Is a site like Engadget, written by a team of contributors, a blog? They also include some tips/tricks and contests... so is it a news site? What difference does it make... if it provides value to readers/subscribers? And if you're providing value, doesn't that make you "A-List"? And doesn't the definition of an "A-List" change for pretty much every person with a news aggregator?

For me, blogs fall into various categories... and this tends to be how I classify them:

• First, there are those who generate new and interesting content of their own -- and are not typically technical (a category unto itself for me). They have done interesting things. They have interesting things to say. Their observations are insightful or provide perspectives that I might not otherwise get. My list of examples include Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, Brad Feld, Mark Cuban, Levitt and Dubner (the Steves), Chris Anderson, and Rands. When non-technical colleagues and contacts want to know who to check out, these are the writers I point them toward.
  
• Next up is the geek elite... the bloggers who provide interesting content that is technical. Given my area of expertise and interest, these are of special interest to me. Again, this is content that I wouldn't otherwise get hold of. It's a code snippet that does something elegant. It's the review of a ThinkGeek gadget that I didn't know about. It's a utility or some buried software feature that can improve my day. These include Scott Hanselman, Jeff Atwood, Martin Fowler, Phil Haack, Omar Shahine, and Nick Bradbury (note the bias toward the .NET/Microsoft ecosystem?). I would also include the "hacks and tips" sites here, most of which tend to be geek-oriented: Lifehacker, Web Worker Daily, or Parent Hacks.
  
• Third is the sites that are niche-oriented news and link sites, though most these have tips and tricks in there alongside their focused news updates. Engadget, Kotaku, Colorado Startups, Valleywag, and Information Aesthetics. These are the sites that provide me news and links to the far corners of the web that I wouldn't otherwise see coming though in FeedDemon.
  
• There are also those (and I put myself in this category) who I think blog mostly to get things we find interesting out into a Google index somewhere. I'm probably the person who traffics my blog the most and that's usually after thinking "what the heck was that link...??" and searching Google with my domain name as a filter. We throw things out there that may or may not be of value to anyone else... but what the heck, it's out there and it could be interesting to someone. There are thousands of people out there like this... blogging about their programming language, their Lego creations, their rec hockey team, or their New Year's resolutions. Lots of gold nuggets to found out there, with no shortage of interesting content (and Technorati tags have recently become my favorite way of exploring new topics).
  
• Finally, there are those who most identify themselves as "bloggers" -- I don't need to provide links here, do I? If your posts are typically about blogging, blog traffic, and blogging etiquette, you may be on this list. And while there's no question that blogging is a phenomenon worth discussing and exploring, these sites often have an echo-chamber feel. Blogging conferences... blogger dinners... blogs about blogging... it all makes me wonder: when the postal service first started, were there "letter-writer meet-ups"? Will mainstream, non-techy types eventually have a blog, just as sure as they have a mailing address?

I guess my point here is that "A-List" is such an exclusionary concept -- it leaves people wondering "who's on it?", "Am I?", "How I can get on it?". Every blog/feed/site mentioned above is my A-List. Those are the sites I recommend to others. Those are the sites I'll stop to read first when I see a new post come through. They're important to me because they provide value... and if the value I receive exceeds the opportunity cost of the time I spend reading, then it belongs on my personal A-List.

YMMV.

Technorati tags: blogging, rants, netiquette, community

... the US Department of Justice decides to reach beyond its own borders to crack down on internet gaming. After sneaking anti-gaming law into "port security" legislation last year, they're now getting serious about enforcing it. Companies (most of them offshore) are losing a ton of their value in the market and many big names have pulled out of the US. 

So poker (where a player can control the outcome to some degree) is out, while horse racing and lotteries are still in. Makes perfect sense.

Technorati tags: poker, gambling, legislation, rants

Doesn’t it seem like the governor of Louisiana would have too much on her hands to spend time working on legislation that…

• Bans all abortions (even in cases of rape or incest)… but it doesn’t have any effect unless the Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade, and…
• Restricts the sale or rental of violent video games to minors… but uses a “I know it when I see it” standard to define “violent”?

She’s been pretty busy.

I mean, it’s not like she doesn’t have anything else to do in that state, right? It’s only been 10 months (and counting) under a state of emergency.

In my last post, I had a bit of a rant about how irresponsible some companies were when it comes to allowing sensitive customer data to reside on employee laptops. Later, I came across this article on Yahoo News, describing just how widespread this problem is.

According to the article:

Since June 2005, there have been at least 29 known cases of misplaced or stolen laptops with data such as Social Security numbers, health records and addresses of millions of people, according to the Privacy Rights Clearing House, a San Diego-based nonprofit that tracks data thefts.

So more than two major incidents a month occur along these lines. Given how high profile some of the companies have been so far (e.g., 26.5 million veterans were affected by the laptop stolen from a Dept of Veteran Affairs employee), it’s just a matter of time before this affects me or someone close to me.

The article comes from the perspective that encrypting sensitive data on laptops would help alleviate these problems. I’d argue that encrypting data isn’t enough — there should be an examination of why sensitive data would ever be stored anywhere but on servers that are both physically and electronically secured.

Also from the article:

Sometimes, there's no good reason for why so much information is being kept on individual machines that are designed to be carried out of the office. In other cases, workers were allowed to have the data on the laptops but didn't follow proper procedures for keeping it safe. In others, they broke the rules by taking personal data out of the office or not protecting it with digital tools.

I would actually argue that there’s not a good reason at all for customer data to be on individual machines… ever. With the availability of secure VPN access into the office, why would a user traveling around with a laptop every need customer data on their laptop? Actual customer data shouldn’t be available to just anyone… and of the people who DO have access to it, what type of information worker needs that data locally? At home?

My perspective is admittedly biased, but I could see where a developer who works with that data might WANT it to be on his or her local machine — but a company’s engineering and/or security directors should be laying down the law against that. Use a VPN to get at an approved development server. Generate test data if you need to work offline.

It’s just asinine that this continues to happen as often as it does when the remedy for it seems so clear — strong security policies, reasonable practices to ensure security, and zero-tolerance enforcement when those practices are ignored or those policies are broken.

Here’s a little nugget for the IT management at financial companies… for that matter, it’s probably useful for IT management at any company that has individuals as customers.

This is provided gratis for all and I’m hereby relenquising any future intellectual property claim:

Don’t allow customer data to be stored on individual user machines, least of all on those that leave the building with employees!

I just don’t understand how stories like this, this, and this continue to happen on such a consistent basis. You’d think that it would take just a story or two like this to come out before any company with personal customer data would jump on it. In some companies, devices such as iPods, USB keys, or cameraphones aren’t even allowed in the office — for fear that an employee might copy sensitive data from their computer.

Doesn’t do much good, of course, if the machine itself leaves with the employee.

It’s refreshing to read of a company like Amazon.com, though, that takes the security of customer data very seriously. This entry from Werner Vogels, Amazon.com CTO, says what’s on the mind of consumers everywhere — you guard it with your life.

Seems like most of the traditional media outlets have a “blog” now, from television stations to newspapers to magazines.

But what do all three of those “blogs” have in common? No feed. I’m all for businesses jumping on the “informal, community-facing content” bandwagon (the more content available via syndicated feeds, the better), but if you’re going to do it… do it right.

Those three examples links above were pretty easy to find and aren’t exactly things I’d subscribe to if they did have a feed. What’s frustrating is to come across one that’s got content, is regularly updated, and you really want it to have a feed — but it doesn’t.

In some cases, sites will have a single feed for their main articles or “top stories”, but nothing that’s specific to a category, department, or writer — it might not even have the content I’m viewing. In one case (the Rocky Mountain News), the URL for their “centralized feed” page is broken.

Bottom Line: I don’t think it counts unless Firefox can “see” the subscription feed (via the LiveBookmarks feature) and the feed it sees is specific to the content I’m looking at.

On the flip side, there are major outlets that get it right.

Did that suck, or what? It took two years to get another season out… and it came in with a bang and went out with a whimper. I know they’re doing another “mini-season” next year (already shot… but we still have to wait a year), but I’m not sure how much I care.

Honestly, for a show that started off so strong, the creative team and/or HBO is sure doing a good job of marginalizing it.

Nothing better than waiting all winter for your team to start their new season. Some questionable trades get made, but you try to stay optimistic.

And then… the season opens.  Ouch.

I love my Xbox 360. I loved the original Xbox. In fact, I was so amped over the Xbox that I sold off my PS2 and all the PS2 games. I’ll likely do the same eventually with the original Xbox in favor of just the 360 (especially since the backward compatibility list pretty well covers the games I’d want to keep).

But there is one area that the whole Xbox community falls well short of Sony… childrens’ and family games.

Now, before you point to the Xbox Live Arcade and say “those are all kid-safe”, hear me out. 

First, just because a game isn’t gory or violent doesn’t mean that’s a good game for kids. It may be “kid-safe”, but it’s not kid-centric. Is there redeeming value in letting a kid play Joust or Geometry Wars?

Second, consider what happens if you go to Amazon.com, choose Video Games, Xbox 360, and then select the “Kids and Family” category. You get three games — two sports games from EA Sports and Ridge Racer 6. While they may be “kid-safe”, they’re certainly not kid-centric.

One of the things I really liked about the Playstation world was that there were actually some good educational games for kids to play. When she was 3, my daughter used to love playing Elmo’ Numbers and Elmo’s Letters. The graphics weren’t going to win any awards from the Joystiq crowd, but there were a lot of upsides. She got to play a game “just like daddy does”, it was a fun activity for us to do together, and she learned as she played.

And I don’t think a game has to be strictly educational to provide some learning opportunities. The various Sim- and Tycoon games offer the opportunity for creativity and problem-solving. Adventure games that require puzzles to be completed along the way, and so on.

I know the 360 hasn’t been out very long, but this is still a problem for original Xbox titles as well. Go to the “Kids and Family” section on Amazon for the original Xbox and the list is dominated by EA Sports titles and various racers. The two relatively kid-centric games on that list are Lego Star Wars and Madagascar (both seem to have little redeeming value beyond mindless entertainment).

Finally, I know that the market for these types of games is pretty small. This seems like an area where the Xbox Live Arcade and Marketplace could come through. No need for packaging or media distribution and a couple of decent titles would market themselves. I’d have a reason to go get some Microsoft Points.

In the meantime, thank goodness for the V-Smile…

I’ve been looking forward to the Olympics starting up for a few months. Friday’s opening ceremony was pretty good and I had high hopes that I could catch a lot of coverage over the weekend. What a disappointment.

NBC has the Olympics’ broadcast rights for the US and, on the surface, you’d think that’d be a good thing. In addition to local NBC channels, they could be using MSNBC and CNBC. Turns out that, according to NBCOlympics.com, they’ll also be using the USA network.

But each time I’ve sat down this weekend to see what’s up, I’ve had just one choice — women’s hockey. Now, I don’t mind a little women’s hockey, but where are the other events? It’s a Sunday afternoon on the first weekend of the games! Shouldn’t the land of 1000 channels have a channel that’s virtuall 24–hour coverage? Even if it didn’t always have commentators (sometimes, that’d be even better), if it showed raw footage during some times, or if it repeated things occasionally… it’d be better than what’s currenly on these channels (the “Non-Olympic Programming” above):

• Local NBC Affiliate — Informercial
• CNBC — Informercial
• MSNB — “MSNBC News Live”, currently showing a story about sharks in Australia.

On the upside, the NBCOlympics.com site does have a pretty good TV Listings feature where you can put in a zip code and your broadcast provider (cable, satellite, etc), and it’ll give you a complete rundown. I just wish the answers it gave were better.

On a related note, maybe I can find some good blogs that are regularly updating with results and back stores from Torino.

UPDATE: Looks like the NBC site also has a page with various RSS feeds. That should be good for getting some results, but I suspect the best sources will be from actual “bloggers on the ground”.

NBC just announced that they’re canceling The West Wing after this season. That’s been one of my favorite shows on television since it started, so this is a bummer. While it’s had ups and downs with the change in writers and creative team, it’s still been a fairly strong show. According to the announcement, the decision was made before the death of John Spencer (one of the key actors in the show).

According to NBC, its ratings suffered with the move to Sunday nights… so why not move it back to Wednesday night to compete with Lost on ABC? Oh, that’s right… because the Biggest Loser is on. Lame. We lose a show that deals with political topics in an entertaining way so we can watch big people sweat.

I think it’s sad that CBS can sustain three hours a week of CSI, but NBC can’t manage to keep one of their smartest and most critically acclaimed shows going — especially when it was nearing the opportunity for a new lease on life and new perspective (the current season is in the middle of a presidential election).

I suppose it’s just another nail in the coffin of the broadcast television networks, who are getting their asses kicked by better, smarter shows on cable.

I guess there’s always “Command in Chief”.
(yes, that was a joke) 

As a hobbyist musician, I don’t write many music/composition related posts here, but this incident is worth noting. A couple of years ago, I purchased a sample CD called “Fat Boy Slim – Skip To My Loops”, distributed by AMG UK. I purchased it from an online retailer and it came in a shrinkwrap package. When it arrived, I opened it up and listened through its contents. It wasn’t right for the project I had in mind (I thought the MP3 demo files provided by the site I bought it from were pretty much the best the CD had to offer)… so it went on the shelf.

Last week, I was organizing and planned to list a bunch of stuff I no longer use on Ebay, including this sample CD. I listed it and then had an email from Ebay this morning informing me that the listing had been removed for “copyrights violation”. I was thrown by this because I made it clear in my listing that this disc was an original disc, with the original case, and documentation. I know that sample libraries are pirated all the time and wanted to make clear that this was not a copy. In any case, the email from Ebay had an email address in it for the copyright holder and suggested that I use that address if I have questions on why my listing was pulled.

So I sent email to designerbaby@mac.com to see what rights had been violated. This is when the fun started.

“Matt”, apparently the guy in charge at AMG UK, wrote to explain that the license couldn’t be transferred and that if someone bought it, they could “innocently get in trouble” and would have “bought nothing in effect”. It didn’t make sense to me, so I asked him to clarify how it was different from plain old music audio CDs – which are bought and sold second-hand all the time. Or from software applications that are legitimately sold by one party to another (provided the seller no longer uses it and didn’t use what they sold for an upgraded version that they are still using). My question was, if I’m not keeping a copy for myself and I haven’t used it in any projects, how is it different from selling a used music CD if I didn’t copy it or leave it on my MP3 player? I also explained that as a software developer, I’m sensitive to piracy of software and developers are, of course, free to license their work however they like… but that this type of approach wasn’t making sense to me.

For someone in charge of a consumer-oriented business, his follow-up was unbelievably condescending and rude. Some choice quotes:

• That's shareware basically, are you really saying you thought sample CDs were shareware or something. Get back on some kind of sensible track... [this was after I asked about the license PDF on their web site, which speaks specifically to commercial use of the samples.]
• If you're looking for a consumer example that's better you could use going to the movies. You can't give your ticket to someone else if you didn't like the film, etc. [Of course not, but I can’t un-watch a movie. I couldn’t un-use the samples either if I’d ever used them in any work]
• Or what about taking samples from the music CD? Is that OK? No? Hmmm, maybe there's your difference? [in response to my question about how music CDs are re-sold all the time… since when is sampling a music CD for your own work acceptable, and how did we make this leap?]
• If a demo song exclusively uses samples from the CD too I can't see how you can have any complaint about that either, you can make that exact track using the CD, how can it be 'nothing like'? That's plain daft. [”Daft”? Nice… now I’m an idiot for thinking that the demo files for the CD weren’t representative of the discs overall content. Matt apparently never bought a CD he didn’t like based on one radio hit that he heard.]
• The FACT of the matter is few people will say they 'never used' the samples and even less will not have kept some if not all of them and have the opportunity to use them in the future. [Ah, here’s the crux of it. My statements that I haven’t used it and didn’t make a copy are clearly not to be trusted. Few people are NOT pirates.]
• You should avoid all sample libraries probably if you didn't like this one anyway, many think it's still one of the best ever released. [In addition to being daft, I also seem to have poor musical taste… my not being happy with this particular disc likely means I won’t like any commercial sample libraries. Don’t tell Sony, with whom I’ve spent thousands.]
• All you really need to do is understand a few simple ideas and know what you're buying, then there's no problem. Not only didn't you understand the basic concept, you seem to think the samples you heard in advance and are on the CD somehow misrepresent it although they're all there too - the whole thing seems to have been one big haze. [Yes, I’m in a big haze.]
• If you're really a software developer this is like page one stuff and should be easy to understand. You're not a software developer right? I claim my £10 prize! [Of course, I’m not. I’m actually a guy who re-sells sub-par sample CDs on Ebay for a living.]

Nice, huh? This is how the guy in charge at AMG UK treats a paying customer who’s not clear on how the licensing of their sample CDs is different from other copyrights. Ask some questions and get treated like both a criminal and an idiot. But I suppose when your customers are stuck with a product they don’t want and don’t have any options for giving it to someone who might actually use it, you can treat people this way.

My suggestion would be to avoid AMG UK’s products altogether. I’ll be passing that suggestion on to friends and colleagues, as well as various music discussion groups I frequent.

UPDATE: Just as I finished writing the above, I received Matt’s latest email to me, which is included in its entirety below. Anyone coming across this post can make their own decisions on doing business with AMG UK or not. My response to this was simply “I’ve said all I need to say on the matter. Thanks for clarifying the license terms.” and a link to this blog post.

> With nearly any consumer software package, I *can* resell my license
> to someone else if I'm no longer using it (provided I didn't use the
> license I'm selling to upgrade to a newer version that I *am* using).

That's rubbish.

So audio CDs
> can be legally re-sold and most software licenses can as well...

Ditto.

The buyer
> just takes the rights that the seller had (and no longer has). It's
> apparently your sample CDs that are licensed differently. So now I know.
>
Pretty much all software is like this. Whether you realise it or not, ask someone and they'll tell you. Then you'll know about that as well as sample software.
 
> In any case, your condescending and inappropriate response to my
> questions,

Whatever. That's your problem rather than mine I think. Read the mails again and if there's anything that can even be interpreted as rude I'll be amazed. It's an easy out if you've got no answer that makes any sense.

> as well as your rush to treat me as though I'm pirating the disc,

This is plain wrong. It's never been suggested. My objection to eBay wasn't on that basis and I never said anything of the such. Although I've never suggested it the idea that would wouldn't keep a copy of the data on the 'off chance' you might need it one day is as fanciful as your other ideas.
In your World where people are legitimately transferring software licenses I imagine you're suggesting that they all delete it too I suppose? Anyone with half an idea knows that over 90% will not of course.

simply
> confirms my decision about your business. Thanks.
>
Given your track record of:

A) Knowing nothing about software licensing - your business?
B) Not believing the demo made with samples from a CD is a valid representation of it.
C) Believing I have been rude (prior to this mail) or accused you of pirating our work.

I think it's fair to assume your 'decision' is equally ill-informed as most of your factually unsupportable decisions have been so far. The fact you can get the founder of a successful and long-established business to 'waste' so much time with someone on a Saturday (the facts) is what actually says more about AMG than whatever 'decision' you've come to. You actually wouldn't get that degree of *respect* from anyone else in my business I doubt although I'm sure you will be incapable of appreciating that fact along with the others that should have been equally obvious.

Cheers - Matt 8)

I got a bunch of “Comment: [entry]” emails this morning from .Text, indicating that there’d been comments posted on a some of the old posts (over a year old). Sure enough, lots of comment spam. Thanks, idiots. ‘preciate that.

The CAPTCHA thing seemed to be working well for a while, but ways around that are fairly common now… so I’ve turned off the Comments capability. It’s lame and I didn’t want to, but I’m not about to spend time each day going through the admin interface to delete some moron’s list of porn links.

If nothing else, this will probably hasten my move to Community Server or dasBlog, both of which are sure to have much better comment handling and anti-spam capabilities than this older version of .Text. I like the idea of having a file/picture gallery to go with the blog software, so CS is probably the first one I’ll look at.

My wife and I were out shopping one day and found a few books we were interested in… I surfed around on my phone and found that Overstock.com (not linked, intentionally) had them at a substantial discount. We didn’t need them immediately, Overstock takes PayPal, so we figured ‘what the heck’… we went home and ordered the books from Overstock.

Once again, you get what you pay for.

In this case, the fact that we paid less for the books entitled us to:

• Two of the three books showing up damaged (ripped, fouled with what looked like copier toner, and shabbily re-packaged). No packing slip, invoice, or other order details. Just two destroyed books wrapped in a sheet of cardboard (not to be confused with a box).
• The third book didn’t show up at all.
• We’ve had the runaround from Overstock.com for nearly three weeks.

You’d think that in a business as competitive as online book sales, that a company trying to make a name for itself would want to differentiate themselves on the customer service front. Apparently, not Overstock.com.

On the first phone call, we were told that return labels would be sent for the two damaged books, we were given RMA numbers, and the third book was being re-shipped. Sounds good, so we wait a week.

On the second phone call, we were told that nothing had happened and that apparently the first phone call was “handled incorrectly”. They would now send out return labels, no RMA was needed, and they had to refund us for the third book. Wait a week.

On the third (most recent phone call), we’re told that both of the previous phone calls were handled incorrectly. This time, we were sent printable return labels immediately for the two damaged books. On the third book, we’re now told that we have to wait for a “tracer” so they can see if the book is in a warehouse somewhere.

Asked for a supervisor… “none are available”. Asked for an address for customer service issues “I don’t have that, check our website”.

Later, we get seven (7!) more email messages with return labels… including a label for the book that never arrived.

It’s been three phone calls, handled by three people, so let’s check our math… two out of three customer service reps at Overstock.com are apparently unqualified for their jobs, while the third is merely ineffective. At this point, I’m not holding my breath that the refund will be processed correctly when the damaged books arrive at their warehouse, nor that anything will come of this “tracer” without us having to follow-up yet again.

I wish I could say that there’s a happy ending to this story… but for now, we’re out over $50 with Overstock.com and there’s no sign of this being resolved soon. That’ll teach us not to use Amazon, huh?

So with Overstock.com, not only do you get to “pay up to 80% less every day” (their slogan), you also get roughly 80% less satisfaction and customer service. Actually, back on the math front, it's more like 100% less satisfaction or customer service -- we have neither our money nor a single usable book. Avoid this place at all costs.

Update: Disappointing that it took a public web log posting to make it happen, but Overstock.com came through for us today. This post made its way to the right people and they processed our refund right away. Thanks go out to Dawn, from Overstock’s Office of the CEO, for handling the issue so quickly and and completely once it came to her. Whew!

… you’re going to get better about blogging regularly, you lose it altogether. My “Things To Blog” bookmark folder is overflowing, things are settling down with the new arrival, so let’s try this again…

Oh yeah… and the “I just saw something cool, but can’t tell you about it” blog posts are multiplying in the run-up to PDC. Please let it just be over so the breathless anticipation can end, the hype can die down, and the pragmatists among us can just look at what’s new.

Larry Osterman (long time MS Employee) has a good post today about how peopls within MS have started "nounifying" the word "ask". Like Larry, I think it sounds pretty silly but it got me thinking about a similar pet peeve I’ve got.

Verbifying the word “architect”. You see this a lot on technical blogs, with usage along the lines of “the last system I architected had…” or “we’re currently architecting a distributed widgetizer…”. What’s wrong with the word “design”? Do you think Frank Lloyd Wright ever said to anyone “I had a great time architecting the Guggenheim… ”? Did I.M. Pei ever tell anyone “I architected the crap out of the Javits…”? No — they were designers. Architects design and engineers build. It’s been that way since the dawn of the t-square.

I’m pretty sure I’ve got some others along these lines, but I’ll need another meeting to jog my memory.

There’s a trend I’ve noticed recently in the world of tech blogs that has turned into a pet peeve. This trend is the “I have a secret and you don’t know it” blog posting.

My RSS subscriptions are fairly focused into a few categories, but I see it occuring pretty much with just the .NET development world. Maybe other software/platform ecosystems are the same, but the tech-gadget, poker-fan, photography-hobbyist groups don’t seem to feel the need.

In any case, employees of Microsoft, regional director/author types, and other people who have access to pre-release and pre-CTP efforts are the most guilty. Yeah, http://blogs.msdn.com, I’m looking your direction. Here’s the theme, typified by breathless anticipation and a complete lack of interesting detail or value:

• Boy, I’m tired. I was up all night writing code on a new feature. I can’t talk about it yet, but you guys will love it.
• So I was just talking to [some person] over in the [some product] group and he/she showed me some amazing stuff coming down the pipe. I wish I could talk about it, but it’s too early in the cycle.
• Holy crap. I just got access to an early look at a new product some people I know are building and it’s unreal! I really wish I could tell you more.

So if you’re a blogger who finds yourself in this sort of position and you’re sitting down to write a blog post, here’s my advice… don’t. It’s annoying and you’re really not impressing anyone. Really.

In fact, you’re doing just the opposite as each of the above blog posts amounts to this: I’m an insider/important person and you’re not.

I’ve unsubscribed from a number of blogs lately because of this pet peeve… when you have FeedDemon loaded up with hundreds of subscriptions, you can’t spend time with blog posts that talk about not being able to talk about something.

Thank you for your support.

Sheesh, months have gone by since the last post. In the meantime, I’ve got a Firefox bookmarks folder full of things I wanted to post, comment on, ideas to toss out, etc.

It has, however, been a very busy few months.

• I hadn’t mentioned it on the blog before, but my wife is pregnant. She’s due July 1, but we learned yesterday that the baby is in a breach position (feet down) and shows no signs of turning… so we’re scheduling a c-section this week rather than risk breach delivery. We know we’re having a girl (the ultrasound tech guarantees it) and Allie, our 5–year old, couldn’t be more excited about being a big sister.
• Got through the spring youth soccer season, coaching two teams — Allie’s U-5 team (“herding” more than “coaching”) and the U-14 boys team I’ve coached for years. They’re now aged out of our local soccer program, but many will be playing in high school.
• Got a spare bedroom cleared out, painted, decorated, and mostly furnished as a nursery.
• Busy as can be at work, which is a great thing. I also moved up to a new role (VP, Engineering) to add to my duties as the lead architect.
• The MLS soccer season is underway, though this is more a source of frustration than anything else these days.
• Got a couple of side development projects underway (call ‘em personal R&D), stuff around the house, etc.

Anyway, there ya have it… I’m hoping to get through some of those “blog this” bookmarks this weekend before the fun starts next week.

This blog was getting peppered with comment spam a while back and it became too much of a pain to deal with. So I turned off the comments feature and resolved to take care of it “one of these days”.

Today was that day.

I finally checked out a variety of options that are out there for dealing with comment spam on .Text sites. The one that seemed to have the biggest “bang for the buck” (where bang is the solution’s effectiveness and buck is the time spent implementing/managing it) was the Clearscreen HIP-CAPTCHA control from Miguel Jimenez. The part that took the longest was probably FTP’ing the changed files to the server. It doesn’t require a rebuild of the .Text source and seems to be working well in my brief testing.

I still have a bunch of stuff I want to do with my .Text install, starting with building it from source and continuing through a new skin design. But for now, this’ll do.

So now you have to enter some random code before you can post a comment. One thing I’ve noticed is that it sometimes has too much distortion in the display… in those cases, just hit Refresh on your browser and it’ll generate a new code. Shoot me an email if you run into any problems with it.

So Tivo finally announced their TivoToGo service… with it, you can transfer recorded shows to your laptop to watch “on the go”. Later this month, they’re supposed to have an app available that lets you burn those shows to DVD as well. It’s a slick service that’s been in the works for a while.

In order for it to work, Tivo has to roll out a software upgrade to all their Series 2 boxes. And their web site says that this can take several weeks! I understand that rolling out an upgrade to that many boxes is a big deal, but that still seems like a really long time. There are some reports of people getting it already, but no such luck here. Tivo put up a “get on the priority list” page, but who knows what effect that has.

I just know I want it now. Patience is not one of my virtues.

Hard to believe that my blog, which hasn’t seen any attention by me in over a month, was picked up by comment spammers but sure enough — a bunch of cheeseball comment spam in the last few days.

Rather than delete it all by hand on-going, I’ve disabled comments for now. As it turns out, one of my to-do items for this weekend is to do some work on the blog. I’ve got a bunch of entries I want to add, possibly switch skins, add some stuff to the Links section, etc. Basically, regular blogging is one of my New Years resolutions and it has to start with cleaning up the place. Looks like adding a CAPTCHA capability for comments is on the list now also.

A couple times a month, I get a Plaxo email from someone asking me to fill in my current contact information -- usually from someone I worked with in the past and with whom I haven't really stayed in touch. Plaxo is a service that lets you manage your contacts (as well as calendar, tasks, etc) and tries to ensure that your contact details stay up to date. It also lets you sync your data, via Outlook, across multiple machines. I can see that the contact-updater might be helpful these days, with email address and phone numbers constantly changing.

So every once in a while, someone (usually a former colleague) who uses Plaxo wants to update my contact details. That's great and they obviously had to have reasonably current details so that Plaxo could even get the update-request sent to me.

Here's what I don't like -- when I get an email from their service, it's an HTML form that I have to submit... back to Plaxo. In filling out the form, I also have all sorts of opt-in, tell-me-more-about-your-service options for Plaxo.

Do I really need to be added to yet another marketing list somewhere, just so that a former colleague has my current contact details? Up to now, I've deleted them when I get them. If you want to reach me and have my contact details, use those contact details to do it. I'm not all that hard to find.

So... am I missing some key piece with Plaxo? Am I being overly paranoid about having to fill out an online form just so that someone who's contacted me before can contact me again?

Dave Donaldson for President! ;)

This is something I struggle with at work. It's frustrating when colleagues doesn't understand "the why," and even more so when you sense that they don't really care to. It's even more fun when you ask why something was done a certain way and are told "I saw it was done that way in XYZ component, so I copied that code here."

Ever since reading Steve McConnell's Cargo Cult Software Engineering, this is an issue that really resonates with me. You can wave sticks around all you like, but if there aren't any planes on the way, then you're just getting exercise. Not knowing "why" something works (or doesn't) means you're just going through the motions. As McConnell quotes in the article, Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. Shouldn't take Einstein to see that if you're responsible for building something (anything?), the "why" for the choices you make is more important than "how" they're implemented. Especially with software, where there are usually many ways to accomplish a given task -- if you don't know the "why", then how do you know which method is best?

I'm imagining a conversation with the architect designing my house: Architect: "So then, Jeff, we're going to put a beam here through the middle of this room." Me: "Having a beam there would suck... why do we need it?"  Architect: "Well, that's how it's been in other houses I've designed and that's just how I learned to do it." Me: "Hit the bricks."

Which leads to the "adding value" rant... Dave also mentioned those who just want to get the bare minimum done and go home. If that's your goal, you're not adding value to your organization. These days, "writing code" isn't, by itself, enough to add value. There are people on the other side of the world happy to do that for a fraction of what someone here makes. So how do you add value? My opinion is that you do it by working with everyone in the organization to serve the customer, no matter what it takes. Work with the product people as they figure out what the product should be and how it should evolve. Work with the sales people who know what potential customers are looking for. Work with the support people whose phones ring when the product falls short. Work with the management team to understand the overall business' needs and direction. Be flexible. Be proactive. Be innovative. As cliched as it may sounds, work to see the "big picture".

Anyway, Dave, thanks for a good post. I've subscribed!

Just over a week into the Olympics and I'm finding it hard to watch for very long. We get all the channels that NBC is using to broadcast the games... still, there seems to be a lack of in-depth coverage.

First, the coverage is too US-centric. I know that's to be expected to some degree given NBC's audience, but I'd bet that there are some great background stories to be found in non-US delegations as well.

The commentating is really hit-or-miss. With diving, gymnastics, or other "judged" events, I can barely stand to watch it. You have a pair of people, one of whom is the "regular" broadcaster with the booming voice and the other is some ex-contestant (usually whiney-sounding) who's supposed to give us insight. Instead of insight, though, they're nit-picking the performances. Take diving as an example... I'd like the "expert" to tell me about the dive, the things to watch for, how the athlete may have prepared, how its difficulty stacks up to other dives, and so on. Instead, each dive is dissected to the Nth degree - "Oh, Bob, that'll really cost her there. Between the slight twist [requiring .01 slo-mo replay to see] and the knees not being together [by an inch or so, which the judges seated at the side can't see anyway], the judges just can't give her a good score. There's simply no way she can make it to the next round. Her dream is over!" The best part is when the "expert" is horribly wrong and the judges see it differently. In gymnastics, you could go back and watch the individual competitions, both won by US athletes with some big mistakes early in the competition, as an example -- the "experts" wrote them off as non-contenders and they're now wearing gold.

Not enough coverage of "smaller" sports -- last weekend, I happened to catch a couple minutes of highlights from a 10m shooting match. It was great... the commentating was informative, not critical, and I was fascinated by it. I learned a lot about a sport I know nothing of. Unfortunately, there was a US athlete somewhere with a camera pointed at them, so NBC had to cut away.

Medal counts? Who cares? I want to see competition, regardless of who's in the event. And sure, I'll root for US athletes much of the time, but I just want to see great performances from athletes I wouldn't normally get to see. And yes, I'd rather sit and watch the Iraqi mens soccer team than the US men's basketball team. I can watch overpaid, whining primadonnas all through the NBA season. How often can I watch a group of athletes who practice on dirt fields, can't play "home" games in their own country, and have to be airlifted by military planes out of their country. That's a group I can root for.

So I've had a seller's account on Amazon.com for years. Michelle and I often put up books we're done with or CDs we no longer want. You get an email when someone bought something from you (via the "Used & New" links on each product page) and then you have a couple of days to get it in the mail. Sometimes, after we've done some spring cleaning, that seller account can get up to a few hundred dollars.

Every 4-6 weeks or so, they transfer it to your bank account and send you a nice little summary of the transactions. Then you've got some side money with which to get more books, CDs, or movies... right? So where should you go to spend that money?

Well, what they DON'T offer is an option to just credit your regular Amazon.com account with the money in your seller's account. I don't get that... all they need is to provide a "Convert this balance to an Amazon.com Gift Certificate" option and they'd often get that money right back. Doing that leads to potentially three transactions that make money for Amazon -- My initial purchase of an item, their fee for me selling that item on their site later, and then another purchase using the proceeds from that sale.

I've emailed them about this before (have fun finding an email address on their site), but just got a boilerplate "thanks for your suggestion" response... so, what am I missing?