If you're a technical person, consider improving one of the four areas of technical skills (See this post for one idea about how to think about it. And any improvement you make in your non-technical skills such as verbal and written communications, influence, negotiation, or facilitation skills will certainly improve your value. If you're a manager, review your management skills and think about how you can improve them.
VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
Boing Boing: Removable Media For Our Minds
In my latest article for TheFeature.com, I report on the first baby steps toward 'memory prosthetics,' systems that could someday enable us to google our entire lives.I really need one of these. Aging has taken it's toll on my memory. It's good but selective. And tends to operate at less than real time speed.
Trusted Computing (TC) continues to be one of the most controversial technologies to come along in many years. Ross Anderson's (anti) TCPA FAQ, Lucky Green's apocalyptic DEFCON presentation, and sites such as notcpa.org and againsttcpa.com are full of predictions of online disaster if TC technology is allowed to go forward.
JNN (the Juicy News Network) is an RSS news feed reader/aggrigator. To try it out, click here. On some platforms, WebStart's cache is a little sticky: new versions don't get downloaded as often as they should. You may have to manually clear out the WebStart cacheI wish my attention span was such that I could knock out something like this in an evening
The Synthesist - software_platforms:
A friend recently asked me to explain how Ray Ozzie's interesting observations about software integration, interoperability, and standards might be reconciled with my own beliefs about the inexorable commoditization of successful packaged software and the long, slow, decline of the packaged shrinkwrap software industry. Ray understands the far-reaching impact that technical decisions have on business outcomes as well as anyone that I've ever met, and re-reading his essay was serendipitous. Just last week, at the Open Source Business Conference, I had heard Clay Christensen devote a large part of a long lecture to his theory of 'the conservation of attractive profits' (a phenomenon that he also calls 'the conservation of modularity'). To me, this theory bears directly upon Ray's assertions about the business impact of software architecture, and more generally upon several 'truths' that I've observed during my career in the software industry, but have never been able to explain succinctly.
manybooks.net - Free eBooks for your PDA
This site contains more than 10,000 public domain eBooks from Project Gutenberg and other sources, formatted for reading on your Palm, PocketPC, Zaurus, Rocketbook, or PDA.
The XML Files: All About Blogs and RSS -- MSDN Magazine, April 2004
- Q
- What is blogging all about?
- A
- First, 'blog' is short for Web log. It's a medium in which an author writes a journal-style Web site with provisions for readers to respond. These Web logs are becoming quite valuable in the software community for sharing ideas. Check out blogging on MSDN at http://blogs.msdn.com.
Slashdot | A History of Every GUI Ever
An anonymous reader writes "I stumbled upon this site - GUIdebook, that offers a history of every GUI, from command prompts, to GEOS for the commodore 64, through Mac OSX. It's an interesting stroll down memory lane."
Copyfight: Godwin/Public Knowledge on DRM: "Mike Godwin @ PK has released his 'Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About DRM But Were Afraid To Ask' 40-page primer. A free PDF is available here."
Common Content: Catalog: Text : Fiction : Rieger Mortis
Mercilessly crushing all resistance, Armand Rieger had led a one-man war on the Empire's enemies through brutal assassinations. But after a seemingly successful job, he finds himself set up by his handlers and placed on trial for a treason he didn't commit. Now he must fight for his very life to unravel a sinister plot that could threaten the political stability of an entire galaxy.
In the New Economics: Fast-Food Factories?
Is cooking a hamburger patty and inserting the meat, lettuce and ketchup inside a bun a manufacturing job, like assembling automobiles?
That question is posed in the new Economic Report of the President, a thick annual compendium of observations and statistics on the health of the United States economy.
The latest edition, sent to Congress last week, questions whether fast-food restaurants should continue to be counted as part of the service sector or should be reclassified as manufacturers.
No answers were offered. In a speech to Washington economists Tuesday, N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, said that properly classifying such workers was 'an important consideration' in setting economic policy.
trubble | your cultural bloodbank | Visualizing a VCL
This is a sketch of how a voluntary collective license might work if applied to P2P.
Andromeda Streaming Jukebox: MP3 server for PHP & ASP: "Andromeda is the simple and smart MP3 server for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It's great as a personal net-jukebox, as part of a public Web site, or over a private network."
Andy Kessler: WSJ: Hack This (Please)
Millions of products today have embedded computers and code in them, and thousands of service businesses use the Web to interface with customers. The real benefit from all this is not lower costs-if you think it is, you're toast-it's adaptability. When you ship a product, it should be the starting point of what it can do, not the end. It sounds blasphemous, but management needs to be open to their customers hacking their stuff.
There is a new breed of users out there, computer-literate consumers who don't think twice about altering the look, feel and functionality of a product. Those billions of embedded computers have turned business on its head. The Henry Ford school of "one size fits all" or the Colgate school of 40 choices of toothpaste are now both obsolete. Give us one size that we can alter how we wish.
Boing Boing: Uncovered - The Whole Truth About the Iraq War
Uncovered is a documentary about the way the White House distorted the truth in an attempt sell the American public and the rest of the world on its pre-emptive war on Iraq. I already thought that Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, and the rest of that gang were being sneaky about it, but this DVD nailed it for for me. The reason Uncovered is so persuasive is that the director wisely chose to interview only 'insiders' for the documentary -- CIA analysts, weapons investigators, Pentagon officials, and former White House counsels. Their comments on the administration's exaggerations and spin are devastating. According to the director, even people who support the war in Iraq become angry after watching Uncovered, because it exposes the Bush administration as a pack of thoroughly corrupt liars.
Boing Boing: MP3 of SXSW Friendster keynote: "Here's an MP3 of Jonathan 'Friendster' Abrams's SXSW keynote on YASNSes"
Daring Fireball: Markdown: "Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML)."
Virtual Dimension: "Welcome to Virtual Dimension: a free, fast, and feature-full virtual desktop manager for Windows platform. The main goal of this open-source project is indeed to enhance the Microsoft 'Window Manager' up to the level of usual Unix Window Manager, by providing virtual desktops, as well as some additional features, like always on top, window shading..."
Bluefish Editor : Home: "Bluefish is a powerful editor for experienced web designers and programmers. Bluefish supports many programming and markup languages, but it focuses on editing dynamic and interactive websites."
WSF Files, Pedagogic Code, and Lippert's Paradox: "The Scripting Guys had a blog entry the other day about WSF files. I thought I'd do a quick follow-up on some of the points raised and questions asked in Greg's entry."
Email filtering with Procmail SpamAssassin ClamAV || kuro5hin.org: "We all get a lot of crap these days in our email and it's pretty much a necessity to have some form of filtering in place. So what's the best way to protect your inbox on your *nix server? Well, here's a quick and easy way to filter spam and viruses with free software and about an hour."
IEEE Software, From the Editor
In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head for headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he's the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.I find it useful to draw a contrast between two different organizational development styles: 'process-oriented' and 'commitment-oriented' development. Process-oriented development achieves its effectiveness through skillful planning, use of carefully defined processes, efficient use of available time, and skillfull application of software engineering best practices. This style of development succeeds because the organization that uses it is constantly improving. Even if its early attempts are ineffective, steady attention to process means each successive attempt will work better than the previous attempt.
— Richard Feynman
It's time to manage your Outlook Inbox more effectively, so you can get things done and preserve your sanity. The David Allen Company is proud to be partnering with NetCentrics to bring you the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In.
Now you can put David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology, used by over a half million people to keep themselves organized, to work for you in Microsoft Outlook to manage your Inbox and get things done.
Economic Scene: Questioning Free Trade Mathematics:
FREE trade theory has a growing number of detractors, and one of their traditional concerns has understandably moved to center stage in this presidential election year. How much has the exporting of jobs to foreign nations contributed to the lack of jobs and the absence of wage growth in the current expansion at home?
On March 19, 2003, U.S. forces began military operations in Iraq. Addressing the nation about the purpose of the war on the day the bombing began, President Bush stated: "The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."
Slashdot | Trusted Computing Rollout Hits the Desktop
Alsee writes "Previously appearing in a few rare laptops, ExtremeTech reports on the first major computer manufacturer making a full scale Trusted Computing rollout. Samsung will now install the Phoenix Core Managed Environment (cME) BIOS in every computer they make. Previous Slashdot reports on this BIOS include Phoenix Bios to Incorporate DRM and Microsoft Taking Over the BIOS."
The Doc Searls Weblog : Tuesday, March 16, 2004: "Jay Rosen examines what really happened (as best we, whomever we are, can tell) with the Trent Lott Thing"
Change the icon cache size in Windows XP Pro - TechRepublic
With a quick change in the Windows XP registry, you can increase the icon cache that XP uses to store icon information. Doing so will speed up desktop refreshes on your users' workstations without having to remove the precious icons that are slowing them down in the first place.
Download details: PortRptr.exe
Port Reporter logs TCP and UDP port activity on a local Windows system. Port Reporter is a small application that runs as a service on Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003.
Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits:
SearchDay's Chris Sherman, whose opinion on search tools I respect greatly, really likes a new web research manager application called Onfolio. Sherman explains that it's "a toolbar application for Internet Explorer that lets you capture web page URLs, page snippets, images, PDF documents, etc. and store them in folder for easy retrieval later." While I haven't tried it yet, this sounds potentially useful for journalists.
Boing Boing: Secret knocking codes for firewalls:
Port-knocking -- like a secret knock for firewalls. Schneier calls it "defensive system that would not accept any SSH connections (port 22) unless it detected connection attempts to closed ports 1026, 1027, 1029, 1034, 1026, 1044, and 1035 in that sequence within five seconds, then listened on port 22 for a connection within ten seconds. Otherwise, the system would completely ignore port 22."
First Groove 3.0 reviewI have a love/hate relationship with Groove. I love the idea, I hate the implementation. I've tried to use Groove several times over the last couple of years or so. Each time the deal killer is that my information ends up effectively locked up in Groove. So it's only accessible to folk who Groove along with me, which so far has been pretty much nobody.
ongoing -- Still Life With Cello and Kelby:
The book is Photoshop Elements for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby, and there's no way to talk about it without sounding like an Amazon "Publisher's Review." Within ten minutes of opening it I'd learned a bunch of things that cut my editing time per picture way down. Plus, there are a million useful tricks, one of which really helped the picture above; this is the equivalent of the immortal Perl cookbooks.
Scoble says he loves Flash developers who have too much time on their hands. I dunno, check out Bubbels, courtesy of JWZ. This verges on being a WMD, Weapon of Mental Destruction; someone get Don Rumsfeld on the case. On the upside, it can distract a 4-year-old for a remarkably long time. Grown-ups, of course, are far too sophisticated to blow a whole evening on this thing; or at least to admit it.
Deskwin is a virtual desktop manager. Instead of having one desktop on which all windows are shown, you can now have multiple ones, each with its own set of windows. You can switch between desktop by clicking on a desktop in the deskwin window or using a hotkey. Unlike other virtual desktop managers, deskwin will also remove the invisible windows from Windows' taskbar
Download details: Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit 3.0:
The Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) version 3.0 for Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 or later, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 contains the tools and documentation you need to design, deploy, and support applications on these platforms. Tools include the latest versions of the Microsoft Windows Application Compatibility Analyzer that simplifies application inventory and compatibility testing, the Windows Application Verifier that assists developers and testers in locating common compatibility issues during the development cycle, and the Compatibility Administrator that provides access to the necessary compatibility fixes to support legacy applications in Windows
Download details: Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit 3.0:
The Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) version 3.0 for Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 or later, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 contains the tools and documentation you need to design, deploy, and support applications on these platforms. Tools include the latest versions of the Microsoft Windows Application Compatibility Analyzer that simplifies application inventory and compatibility testing, the Windows Application Verifier that assists developers and testers in locating common compatibility issues during the development cycle, and the Compatibility Administrator that provides access to the necessary compatibility fixes to support legacy applications in Windows
IBM downplays Indian hiring plans | CNET News.com:
IBM intends to hire more technical experts in India this year--but not nearly the 4,700 employees The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. 'While we plan growth in India, it is, by any measure, modest and nowhere close to what is being reported by The Wall Street Journal,' an IBM spokesperson said.Quoting local government officials, the newspaper reported that IBM was beefing up its presence in the eastern city of Calcutta by investing in office buildings and hiring software engineers. IBM said the Journal 'grossly exaggerated' its Indian hires, which are part of a plan to add 15,000 employees worldwide in 2004, to be spread across the United States, Europe and Asia--about 5,000 per region. IBM has also said it will transfer about 3,000 jobs overseas from the United States this year.
rss2email - Lockergnome's RSS Resource: "If you use Unix, rss2email, will let you subscribe to a list of news feeds by email, so that whenever a new update is posted, you get an email message with the full text (it even renders HTML for you)."
TikiWiki: "It has been six months since the last major release (1.7). During this period the Tiki team has grown from 68 contributors to 190!! Detailed stats here: TikiCommunity"
Marquee de Sells: Chris's insight outlet: "Mark Parks, a PM on the Visual C# Debugger QA team, has posted ways to fix common VS.NET debugger problems. He's even got a fix for why I can't debug the localhost version of my site. Thanks, Mark!"
Microsoft: Windows XP SP2 Will be Disruptive:
Worried that the full release of its Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) will break and disrupt existing applications, Microsoft (Quote, Chart) has created an online training course for developers to explain the intricacies of the security-centric OS update.
Excellent analysis of the obnoxiousness of RealOne's defaults, which hijack the hell out of your Windows box and install shortcuts everywhere imaginable and grab anything remotely AV and try to play it back in Real and spam you with upsell offers and other creepiness. I like MPlayer and VLC for playing back Real, WMV, and MPEG files, as well as DivXes and the like.
e-Learning Centre What's New Page: "What's new at the e-Learning Centre?"
Ask Joel - Pricing Products: "Could you give some advice is working out how much to charge for a software product?"
Joel on Software - Top Twelve Tips for Running a Beta Test:
Here are a few tips for running a beta test of a software product intended for large audiences -- what I call 'shrinkwrap'. These apply for commercial or open source projects; I don't care whether you get paid in cash, eyeballs, or peer recognition, but I'm focused on products for lots of users, not internal IT projects.
Groove Networks - Products - Groove Workspace - v3.0 Beta: "Introducing Groove v3.0 beta!"
Fast Company | How to Give Feedback:
Fast Company readers are far more likely to be asked for their input than the average employee. You're frequently required to approve, improve, and adjust things that are about to become real. And yet, if you're like most people, you're pretty bad at it.
The Three Big Lies of the modern corporation are:
- The customer come first.
- We make our decisions on behalf of our shareholders.
- Employees are our most important asset.
In the recent film Paycheck, based on a P.K. Dick short story, the protagonist has selective memories erased by a tech corporation as the ultimate non-disclosure agreement. It's a typical Dickian world (although poorly realized by director John Woo and badly acted by Ben Affleck) in which unfriendly external forces toy with people's minds and their sense of reality.
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Something New Under the Sun:
Here's another likely candidate for my reading list -- Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the World in the 20th Century:Humanity has consumed 10 times more energy since 1900 than in the previous thousand years. John McNeill will probably not appreciate reviewers pointing out this crude, back-of-an-envelope calculation of his, but I suspect he will have to get used to it. It is an extraordinary statistic, and one that should give all who care about the future of our planet pause for thought. People also move more rock and earth around the world than wind, glaciers, mountain-building processes or volcanoes. Only water remains a more effective agent of erosion--just. So numerous and powerful have people become in the twentieth century that we now collectively rank as a geological process.
640KB ought to be enough for anyone: "Of course, it's most likely just an urban myth that he actually said this, but the quote certainly evokes imagery of a simpler time ... and repeatedly serves as a wake-up call to the short-sighted."
Security Fix CD's now available:
Have your friends/family memebers/pets on dial-up connections take advantage of this freebie offer. Security-fix CDs available for Windows XP, Windows 2000, 98 and ME. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/cd/order.asp.
Something really strange has happened to the U.S. under the Bush Administration. With her ever bulging budget deficits and foreign debts, America's skewed income distribution is rapidly making the U.S. resemble Argentina or Mexico. The 'Jobless Recovery' is not a political mirage, but a serious problem. America's GDP is increasing at an annual rate of about 4.0% this year. But, only those Wall Street 'money gamers' and self-dealing 'management aristocrats' of Corporate America are dizzy with their huge bonuses, padded salaries, and self-dealt stock options. The remaining hard working Americans cannot eat 'GDP.' The U.S. has widening income gap between a few 'haves' and many 'have-nots.'
projectified: It's Not REALLY Project related but it's still Cool:
I saw it this morning reading Marc's Outlook Blog and had it installed pretty quick. I live in Outlook and have always hated the search speed. This tool is squarely within beta-land but it is still damn cool! I have about 20000 emails in my various folders and then about 5000 RSS feed messages since I use NewsGator. After I built the index which took about 10 minutes or maybe a little less, I searched for a pretty common string in my folders: 'Project Server'. It returned the top 500 results, out of 3000 total) in just under .5 seconds. (Yes that is just under HALF a second!!!) It also supports Google-like search parameters so you can include and exclude folders, senders, dates, subjects, etc, etc.
Science Fiction Inventions by Publication Date: "Science Fiction Inventions by Publication Date"
Projects are about turning uncertain work efforts into reasonably certain outcomes. Project sponsors, customers, and stakeholders rely on project promises to carry out and coordinate larger strategies in support of organizational needs. Yet, making and keeping those promises are hindered by common problems: people on projects are reluctant to promise the unknown, plans are disrupted by rework, and schedules are thwarted by contention for resources that are involved with more than one effort.
Using Inch-Pebbles to Track Project State - Computerworld:
Drake's task is now officially late. Given his progress, can you believe Drake's estimate that he will be done next week? You don't have enough information. You need to know how much of the task is actually complete and how much is left. Inch-pebbles, or miniature milestones, are one way to help estimate task size and monitor task completion. Inch-pebbles are one- to two-day tasks that are either done or not done�there's no 'percentage done' with inch-pebbles. When you or members of your project team create inch-pebbles, first break down the larger tasks into smaller pieces, estimate the time each smaller task will take and then verify that you've accounted for interdependencies with other people. When I see a six-week task on someone's list, I ask that person to define all the pieces of that task�to break the task into inch-pebbles. The first reaction I generally get is 'Huh?' Here's what I do to create inch-pebbles.
Slashdot | Space Elevators Going Up:
MikShapi writes 'CBC is running a new piece on the Space Elevator. Nothing dramatically new, as we're all still waiting for one of the many Carbon Nanotube research centers to announce they reached the famous 100GPa red line from page 10 of the NIAC Phase 2 Report, thus obtaining 'unobtainium' [pun intended], the material necessary to build the Elevator. The report predicts this will happen during the course of the next two years or so. It's then that the fun really starts - A REAL all-out space race, open to everyone with will and a national budget, winner probably getting to own space [read last paragraph]. In the meanwhile, we can all spread the word, discuss, debate and brainstorm every nook and cranny of the program here on Slashdot, and give Edwards a shoulder by giving the program every bit of mass-exposure we can.'
Community Projects at Moertel Consulting :: 2004-02-20:
I like to listen to NPR, but I often miss interesting shows. So I decided to make a VCR for radio. That way, I can record shows and listen to them at my leisure.
Have you given any thought to offshoring any of your development? If not, is it because you would prefer not to or because it would not benefit fog creek's bottom line?
A Prolog Introduction for Hackers || kuro5hin.org:
Strange, but true: Prolog is, without a doubt, currently the simplest and the most straightforward programming language of all mainstream programming languages; however, the special interests of academia and inept teaching have given it a horrible, pariah-like reputation. (After all, you cannot write a PhD thesis explaining obvious, practical things.) This article aims to ameliorate the situation; to introduce the practical simplicity of Prolog to those that might normally sneer at what they consider a horrible, convoluted playing field of doctorate theory.
The pointless ramblings of an aging computer geek. I was a computer geek before anyone knew what a computer geek was. I was a computer geek for that brief dot-com period when being a computer geek was cool. And I'm still a computer geek.
