According to statistics, today I have fifty years left. Wow, I'm not middle-aged after all! Forty is the new thirty!
I've been thinking about my second act lately, and this helps put it in perspective. It looks like I have enough time for two more acts before I get cut down by the reaper (maybe more, if you listen to some folks). Then of course, we could all get swallowed up in the Rapture of the Nerds before that – if we do, I hope it looks better than MySpace.
Wired founder Kevin Kelly came up with this as a motivational tool: he has a countdown on his desktop that tells him how many days he has left. This keeps him focused; everything else can be bought, but more lifespan does not currently scale.
My sell-by date: 28 September 2057. I have 18,263 days left; roughly 1.6 gigaseconds. Stay tuned for the agenda.
(via BoingBoing)
28 Sept 2007
26 Sept 2007
Not invented there
Like many geeks, I'm messing with Ruby on Rails and absorbing REST (which leads to not getting enough rest). I've been working on an ASP.Net project and tried to use a RESTful URL... bad juju. I got it to work under Mono by overriding the 404 error page, but that trick didn't work on Microsoft's server. The suggested solution is to write your own ISAPI filter. Uh-huh, I'll get right on that as soon as I get done knitting my own underwear. So much for that.
Today I came across an article about "Microsoft's Astoria REST Framework". Cool! I went to the official project page to check it out. What's really weird is that the page never actually uses the word REST. They're solving for it, they're implementing it, but they can't name it that? Bizarre. Just how are people supposed to find this thing?
Apparently Microsoft is switching from "embrace and extend" to something far weirder: "grudging adoption without admission"? Or "yeah, we'll do it, but we'll bury it in the FAQ." What's up with that?
Today I came across an article about "Microsoft's Astoria REST Framework". Cool! I went to the official project page to check it out. What's really weird is that the page never actually uses the word REST. They're solving for it, they're implementing it, but they can't name it that? Bizarre. Just how are people supposed to find this thing?
Apparently Microsoft is switching from "embrace and extend" to something far weirder: "grudging adoption without admission"? Or "yeah, we'll do it, but we'll bury it in the FAQ." What's up with that?
25 Sept 2007
A world unwelcome
Tom Ridge told the NY Times “The welcome mat has a little dust on it right now. We have to spruce it up a bit.”
Well, that's an understatement. People I meet go to great lengths to avoid traveling through what was once known as the Sweet Land of Liberty; it has now become a rogue state of the worst reputation. It seems like everybody has a story about being mistreated at the border or the visa office, and people will pay hundreds extra to avoid connecting flights there.
Aside from having flushed its hospitality industry, The US no longer attracts the brightest and best students and workers; they're now looking at Europe, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Heck, they're flocking to Dubai. You know you're in trouble when you can't compete for labour with a country whose working conditions have been described as "less than human". Richard Florida, who coined the term "creative class", documents this in The Flight of the Creative Class.
For a real-world example, direct your gaze to the building across the street from my office: Microsoft just opened a
global development facility in Richmond, BC. Three hours by car from their headquarters in Redmond, it is designed to allow Microsoft to recruit the best and brightest to work for them and live in an industrialized nation with a functioning civil society. They plan to employ 800 people there. Those would otherwise be jobs in Redmond if the US didn't have its priorities seriously out of order.
Well, that's an understatement. People I meet go to great lengths to avoid traveling through what was once known as the Sweet Land of Liberty; it has now become a rogue state of the worst reputation. It seems like everybody has a story about being mistreated at the border or the visa office, and people will pay hundreds extra to avoid connecting flights there.
... and the chocolate ration has been increased
to four grams per month!
to four grams per month!
Aside from having flushed its hospitality industry, The US no longer attracts the brightest and best students and workers; they're now looking at Europe, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Heck, they're flocking to Dubai. You know you're in trouble when you can't compete for labour with a country whose working conditions have been described as "less than human". Richard Florida, who coined the term "creative class", documents this in The Flight of the Creative Class.
For a real-world example, direct your gaze to the building across the street from my office: Microsoft just opened a
global development facility in Richmond, BC. Three hours by car from their headquarters in Redmond, it is designed to allow Microsoft to recruit the best and brightest to work for them and live in an industrialized nation with a functioning civil society. They plan to employ 800 people there. Those would otherwise be jobs in Redmond if the US didn't have its priorities seriously out of order.
24 Sept 2007
Why write HTML for AIR?
I was trying to figure out why anyone would want to write standards-based web pages specifically for Adobe AIR. I'm not talking about Flash/Flex or ActionScript development, I'm talking about using regular HTML, CSS and Javascript to build a website, but then shoehorning it into the Adobe Flash runtime. Why would anyone want to do this?
The stated reason is to ensure that you are providing a consistent experience across browsers and versions, the WORA promise again, but for real this time. That way you can provide the same crap user experience to all users, disabling their scroll wheel and all that great stuff that Flash provides so "richly". Gag.
No, what this is about is locking down web content: keeping people from right-clicking images and saving them, safeguarding the sacred goodies. But first and foremost: disabling Adblock to make sure the punters see the ads. Keeping the geeks from personalizing your pages with Greasemonkey, and preventing client-side mashups. As collateral damage, keeping the visually impaired or blind from using their accessibility tools. But most of all, maintaining control. Control at any cost!
It's the gospel of control that Adobe has always preached, but a way of applying it to a whole other set of technologies: the ones that have formed a generation of software that enabled freedom of choice and diversity of platforms and spurred the development of the web. Adobe's other gospel of richness means two things: your page looks rich (shiny, high in fat), and Adobe builds a monopoly and a position of control that they can monetize someday. And that would make Adobe rich.
The stated reason is to ensure that you are providing a consistent experience across browsers and versions, the WORA promise again, but for real this time. That way you can provide the same crap user experience to all users, disabling their scroll wheel and all that great stuff that Flash provides so "richly". Gag.
No, what this is about is locking down web content: keeping people from right-clicking images and saving them, safeguarding the sacred goodies. But first and foremost: disabling Adblock to make sure the punters see the ads. Keeping the geeks from personalizing your pages with Greasemonkey, and preventing client-side mashups. As collateral damage, keeping the visually impaired or blind from using their accessibility tools. But most of all, maintaining control. Control at any cost!
It's the gospel of control that Adobe has always preached, but a way of applying it to a whole other set of technologies: the ones that have formed a generation of software that enabled freedom of choice and diversity of platforms and spurred the development of the web. Adobe's other gospel of richness means two things: your page looks rich (shiny, high in fat), and Adobe builds a monopoly and a position of control that they can monetize someday. And that would make Adobe rich.
Defending his turf
Slashdot referenced an article by Derek Sivers today: "7 reasons I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails". CmdrTaco managed to turn a case study on a failed project into an opportunity to badmouth Rails.
I didn't see any condemnation of rails in the article (quite the contrary, in fact). It was more of a case study for Joel Spolsky's classic position: don't rewrite from scratch. As Joel puts it:
But of course that wouldn't fit CmdrTaco's corporate agenda: to promote LAMP over a growing upstart, as PHP loses market share month after month to the not-very-comparable ASP.Net (mostly encumbered) and the comparable Ruby on Rails (also free). So he passed along the grossly misrepresentative summary of the article and came up with a similarly misleading title. I guess I expected more from CmdrTaco (a.k.a. Rob Malda): he was once an insurgent in the revolution, but he's over thirty now, and therefore not to be trusted.
I didn't see any condemnation of rails in the article (quite the contrary, in fact). It was more of a case study for Joel Spolsky's classic position: don't rewrite from scratch. As Joel puts it:
They did it by making the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make:Instead, Joel advocates doing what Sivers wound up doing: refactor and fix the existing code.
They decided to rewrite the code from scratch.
But of course that wouldn't fit CmdrTaco's corporate agenda: to promote LAMP over a growing upstart, as PHP loses market share month after month to the not-very-comparable ASP.Net (mostly encumbered) and the comparable Ruby on Rails (also free). So he passed along the grossly misrepresentative summary of the article and came up with a similarly misleading title. I guess I expected more from CmdrTaco (a.k.a. Rob Malda): he was once an insurgent in the revolution, but he's over thirty now, and therefore not to be trusted.
20 Sept 2007
Rupert Murdoch is an old man
The purchase of MySpace by News Corp for $580M was a watershed moment: old media realized the game was changing. But they still do not realize how fundamentally, and they do not understand technology.
Rupert Murdoch is an old man. In his mind he sells newspapers; whether Faux News or the Wall Street Journal or Prison Break, it's the same centrally produced flat surface that shows stock quotes, Ed Anger look- and sound-alikes, and pictures of warm jigglies that he has provided to loyal punters for years. So now the idiots produce it for themselves? Great, Rupe and his noxious progeny can just sit back and rake it in.
Wrong. First off, the trendsetting liberal élite fears and loathes Murdoch and his company. Second, others understand deeply that it is not about The Simpsons or American Idol, it is about a platform. Facebook understands this, which is why they're seeding $10M in development on their platform. No equity stake required.
So why should hardworking ramen-suckers build an environment to build an empire for News Corp? I haven't seen a reason yet. Facebook may not be Mother Teresa either, but they're at least giving ten million more reasons to build on their platform.
Rupert Murdoch is an old man. In his mind he sells newspapers; whether Faux News or the Wall Street Journal or Prison Break, it's the same centrally produced flat surface that shows stock quotes, Ed Anger look- and sound-alikes, and pictures of warm jigglies that he has provided to loyal punters for years. So now the idiots produce it for themselves? Great, Rupe and his noxious progeny can just sit back and rake it in.
Wrong. First off, the trendsetting liberal élite fears and loathes Murdoch and his company. Second, others understand deeply that it is not about The Simpsons or American Idol, it is about a platform. Facebook understands this, which is why they're seeding $10M in development on their platform. No equity stake required.
So why should hardworking ramen-suckers build an environment to build an empire for News Corp? I haven't seen a reason yet. Facebook may not be Mother Teresa either, but they're at least giving ten million more reasons to build on their platform.
16 Sept 2007
The unreliable narrator
Two of my top ten books of the last decade are Cheap Complex Devices and Acts of the Apostles by John (Compton|F.X.) Sundman. These are two of the richest and most complex pieces of fiction produced in a contemporary, technically proficient vein. He has written only two books, but he has a mastery of literary structure that takes you by surprise. They mangled my mind.
I suggest starting with Acts of the Apostles (ded tree, free pdf). This is presented as a very straightforward Neal Stephenson or Crichton thriller, like Snow Crash or Sphere. Very readable and engaging, with a few tech industry in-jokes to make a nerd feel like a war veteran (DEC, Microsoft, Sun, and their respective personalities appear under aliases). It's been described as “What Tom Clancy would write if he were smart.”
After you've enjoyed that you can graduate to Cheap Complex Devices (ded tree, free pdf). This is not standard genre fiction, and you might not be sure what you're dealing with. The author's notes, the stories, and the meta-story combine in your head to produce an interference pattern. Which of the three versions are you supposed to believe? Perhaps none of the above. I can't compare this to anything I've read before or since.
I first bought Acts when I saw the story on Slashdot back in 2000. Then I bought it again two years ago. Both are available for download, but you may find you want the real thing (CCD is a little different in print). They are self-published, and the author provides quite a backstory – but can you really believe him?
I suggest starting with Acts of the Apostles (ded tree, free pdf). This is presented as a very straightforward Neal Stephenson or Crichton thriller, like Snow Crash or Sphere. Very readable and engaging, with a few tech industry in-jokes to make a nerd feel like a war veteran (DEC, Microsoft, Sun, and their respective personalities appear under aliases). It's been described as “What Tom Clancy would write if he were smart.”
After you've enjoyed that you can graduate to Cheap Complex Devices (ded tree, free pdf). This is not standard genre fiction, and you might not be sure what you're dealing with. The author's notes, the stories, and the meta-story combine in your head to produce an interference pattern. Which of the three versions are you supposed to believe? Perhaps none of the above. I can't compare this to anything I've read before or since.
I first bought Acts when I saw the story on Slashdot back in 2000. Then I bought it again two years ago. Both are available for download, but you may find you want the real thing (CCD is a little different in print). They are self-published, and the author provides quite a backstory – but can you really believe him?
15 Sept 2007
Maps for the rest of the world
Google Maps now includes map data for 54 more countries, including many in Latin America -- and of great interest to us, Mexico.
Years ago we bought a street map of Veracruz. The maps are terrible... Mexico does not have a great tradition of map use. Mexico City has the excellentGuia Roji (as do Guadalajara and Monterrey), but the rest of Mexico gets by on blurry, out-of-date maps. If you could even identify minor streets it was a major victory.
Here's our neighborhood in Veracruz, Colonia 21 de Abril. Our house is at Florencia Veyro 264, between Echeven and Sánchez Tagle, just above the "V" in "Veyro".
Apparently the map provider hasn't put street number information into these maps, and driving/walking directions are not yet supported. But even so, this is a wonderful thing. Hooray Google!
Years ago we bought a street map of Veracruz. The maps are terrible... Mexico does not have a great tradition of map use. Mexico City has the excellentGuia Roji (as do Guadalajara and Monterrey), but the rest of Mexico gets by on blurry, out-of-date maps. If you could even identify minor streets it was a major victory.
Here's our neighborhood in Veracruz, Colonia 21 de Abril. Our house is at Florencia Veyro 264, between Echeven and Sánchez Tagle, just above the "V" in "Veyro".
Apparently the map provider hasn't put street number information into these maps, and driving/walking directions are not yet supported. But even so, this is a wonderful thing. Hooray Google!
14 Sept 2007
Perfect fit
The buzz is that Microsoft is buying RIM, maker of the BlackBerry mobile device.
I think this makes perfect sense. Blackberry is ubiquitous, practical, and ugly. The development platform is terrible – if you were there for DOS, the Blackberry will seem eerily familiar. The operating system crashes regularly. Wonderful error messages like: "Null pointer exception" and "VM: too many threads" are common.
Ugly though it may be, it is very popular (heck, I have one). Microsoft has to have this. Their mobile platform is dead in the water, and this is where the market is expanding. I suspect that Microsoft was waiting for RIM's recent patent difficulties to blow over – the last thing a convicted criminal organization needs to do is buy more trouble.
So there will be a marriage, and many children. Sometimes ugly parents produce beautiful children. Just not usually.
I think this makes perfect sense. Blackberry is ubiquitous, practical, and ugly. The development platform is terrible – if you were there for DOS, the Blackberry will seem eerily familiar. The operating system crashes regularly. Wonderful error messages like: "Null pointer exception" and "VM: too many threads" are common.
Ugly though it may be, it is very popular (heck, I have one). Microsoft has to have this. Their mobile platform is dead in the water, and this is where the market is expanding. I suspect that Microsoft was waiting for RIM's recent patent difficulties to blow over – the last thing a convicted criminal organization needs to do is buy more trouble.
So there will be a marriage, and many children. Sometimes ugly parents produce beautiful children. Just not usually.
13 Sept 2007
Who's your daddy?
Windows Update isn't asking anymore. Even if you configured it to ask you before updating anything on your system, it updates the update mechanism without asking you, and without telling you. There's no telling what exactly the (unavoidable) update mechanism does, either.
So, your computer now belongs to Microsoft: they decide what software runs on your machine, and any notion of control of your own computer has been rendered quaint. In a way, I understand their position: they get all of the blame when viruses and worms exploit known bugs for which people haven't applied their updates. But my sympathy is running out because somebody put all of those bugs in Windows in the first place, and three years after their security audit the bugs keep coming – even in their newest versions.
Now that Microsoft has softened you up to expect that they can (and will) patch your system without your knowledge or permission, there's a great precedent for doing it for other reasons: to repair their DRM when bypassed, to disable your computer when they think your Windows license is invalid, or to start advertising on your desktop. They're going to monetize that big installed base they have, and they will do it any way they can. Just so you know who's in charge: on Windows, it isn't you.
So, your computer now belongs to Microsoft: they decide what software runs on your machine, and any notion of control of your own computer has been rendered quaint. In a way, I understand their position: they get all of the blame when viruses and worms exploit known bugs for which people haven't applied their updates. But my sympathy is running out because somebody put all of those bugs in Windows in the first place, and three years after their security audit the bugs keep coming – even in their newest versions.
Now that Microsoft has softened you up to expect that they can (and will) patch your system without your knowledge or permission, there's a great precedent for doing it for other reasons: to repair their DRM when bypassed, to disable your computer when they think your Windows license is invalid, or to start advertising on your desktop. They're going to monetize that big installed base they have, and they will do it any way they can. Just so you know who's in charge: on Windows, it isn't you.
11 Sept 2007
Celebrity encounter
I've been a Todd Haynes fan since Poison. I was living under a rock when Velvet Goldmine came out, and didn't see it until two years ago, when I bought the DVD. I watched it... more times than I can recall, and soaked my head in the soundtrack.
As I was going through this obsession, every day on my way to work I'd pass a commercial real estate sign with an agent's name: Kurt Love.
Kurt Love.
Every time I read that sign, the name reverberated in my head, in Toni Collette's voice. This, generally, as I'd be listening to the soundtrack. I'd say it to myself, dramatically: "Kurt Love."
What a cheeseball.
So a couple of months later I was with a group of people evaluating office space. We went to some boring glass cube perched on the empty plains of Siberia^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Mississauga to look at another spray of veal-fattening pens in neutral corporate-approved colours, sniff the washrooms, and pretend that any of this mattered, as the only important criteria were the price and that it have enough parking to encourage and abet the continued slow suicide of our civilization. We met with the suits (corporate real estate agents still dress up), and one stuck his hand out at me. "Kurt Love."
I froze. I swear, the sound cue actually went off in my head: the intro to "T.V. Eye". I gaped. He didn't look like Ewan McGregor.
Somehow, after a subjective decade of embarrassed paralysis, I recovered enough to blurt out my own name and shake his hand. But I couldn't stop staring at him, like he was a major celebrity that I ran into at Costco. The only thing I could think of to say to the man was "are you really Kurt Love?" Thankfully, I was able to exercise restraint.
As I was going through this obsession, every day on my way to work I'd pass a commercial real estate sign with an agent's name: Kurt Love.
Kurt Love.
Every time I read that sign, the name reverberated in my head, in Toni Collette's voice. This, generally, as I'd be listening to the soundtrack. I'd say it to myself, dramatically: "Kurt Love."
What a cheeseball.
So a couple of months later I was with a group of people evaluating office space. We went to some boring glass cube perched on the empty plains of Siberia^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Mississauga to look at another spray of veal-fattening pens in neutral corporate-approved colours, sniff the washrooms, and pretend that any of this mattered, as the only important criteria were the price and that it have enough parking to encourage and abet the continued slow suicide of our civilization. We met with the suits (corporate real estate agents still dress up), and one stuck his hand out at me. "Kurt Love."
I froze. I swear, the sound cue actually went off in my head: the intro to "T.V. Eye". I gaped. He didn't look like Ewan McGregor.
Somehow, after a subjective decade of embarrassed paralysis, I recovered enough to blurt out my own name and shake his hand. But I couldn't stop staring at him, like he was a major celebrity that I ran into at Costco. The only thing I could think of to say to the man was "are you really Kurt Love?" Thankfully, I was able to exercise restraint.
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