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This site is no longer maintained.
My current weblog.
Tuesday, April 16, 2002Random .NET Thought
In Palm's recent testimony against Microsoft, it was alledged that MS tried to require Palm to support .NET in order to enter the Visual Studio Integration Program. Seems to me that .NET is the entire purpose of VSIP. It would be like partnering with Sun to extend their Java IDE to support C++ code destined for compilation into a native Palm application. That may seem like a convoluted example, but it's exactly on-point.
Now, think about Microsoft offering to help support .NET on Palm devices. That's like a free gift to them. Palm would instantly gain access to Microsoft's entire developer audience. Developers wouldn't have to learn Palm's environment, and likely be limited to using C/C++, because Palm OS would simply be another .NET target.
Microsoft's MO has long been "Embrace and Extend." Microsoft sees something big coming, like Java, XML, or web services. Do they run scared? Bah! Microsoft may be slow to catch on sometimes, but once they do, they turn around and make Java the best environment for writing Windows apps, bake XML support into everything, and make the development of web services as simple as COM.
Companies trying to compete with Microsoft need to understand and adopt "Embrace and Extend" strategies of their own. Palm was offered the chance to co-opt .NET, and instead of laughing all the way to the bank they chose to refuse and testify about it in court, as if it Microsoft had done something bad.
Palm will be on life support in a few years, barely hanging on to a rapidly declining marketshare, and Microsoft offered them a chance to save themselves.
Look at it another way: Palm asked Microsoft to scratch their back, to allow them to add Palm OS support to Visual Studio. Microsoft wanted their back scratched too. Just because Microsoft is a convicted monopolist they're supposed to become altruistic towards competitors? Ha!
To those that view Microsoft and/or .NET as evil, getting .NET on non-Windows platforms reduces the Microsoft threat. Once Mono is fully implemented, millions of Windows developers can instantly target Linux. Miguel de Icaza understands how to beat Microsoft at their own game.
Slashdot brings word that the Nomad Jukebox 3 is officially out. The optical input is interesting, but I suspect not very useful. If you're at a friend's and want to rip an album, are you going to wait an hour for it to finish? Are you going to have a TOSlink cable handy?
It's no iPod, but the vendors are begining to catch up. How many sales is Apple losing by not having a driver for Windows Media Player? They could have outsourced the work to Microsoft Consulting Services...
News.com has a story about the OQO, a PDA-style device a bit thicker than a Pocket PC, running Windows XP on a Crusoe processor. Supposedly it will come out in the second half with a price of around $1000.
I keep eyeing the old Palm Vx LE laying unused on the back of my desk, wondering why no Pocket PC manufacturers are building devices of that size.
The Danger HipTop has received FCC approval.Deutsche Bahn to sue Google [via IDG InfoWorld]
This caught my attention because I used to frequently commute to remote data centers via Deutsche Bahn. DB is one of those rare organizations that is generally pleasant to deal with, and their web site is excellent. DB is suing Google for providing links to, and cached copies of, a document on sabotaging railways put out by the "left-wing extremist publication, Radikal." This publication is illegal in Deutchland, and the web site itself has already been shut down.
This is one of those glaring instances where the American brand of freedom is "superior to" Western Europe's (and especially Germany's). Reasonable Americans revile the KKK, yet many would die to defend their right to exist, publish, and peacefully demonstrate. In Germany, the KKK would be outlawed and they would not be able to publish or demonstrate. You are free only so far as the Bundesregierung is not offended by you.
Outliners in Programming
Python is a breakthrough language in that it considers indentation to be syntactically revlevant. Our outliner-based language environment takes it further -- by editing in an outliner, you get the ability to hide detail and move huge branches of code around with a single keystroke. Even if Mark doesn't want to believe, other Python developers may want to take a look at Radio. Thirty-day free trial. You won't be sorry. [More] [via Scripting News]
I have my issues with Userland's outliner, but there is no denying that the outlining concept is a powerful way of dealing with any sort of structured text. Progamming is a natural fit.
Visual Studio .NET has a great new feature that allows sections such as functions to be collapsed and expanded, similar to an outliner. Unfortunately it does not go as far as a full outliner would, indenting a section does not make it collapsable. Given Microsoft's steady evolution of the programming environment, we can probably expect that feature in the next release, three years from now.
Bruce Schneier on how to think about security. [via ARTS & FARCES]If Bruce Schneier isn’t the best computer security expert in the United States, he’s certainly in the top 10. The current issue of his Crypto-Gram newsletter has completely changed the way I look at and think about security issues. [More]
Couldn't agree more. I read Applied Cryptography back in '95, I follow Cryptogram religously. Schneier has a knack for explaining cryptography and security in a way that management can understand.
AT&T Wireless launches mMode service [via IDG InfoWorld]
Basic service costs $2.99 a month, with additional charges of $0.02 per kilobyte of data uploaded or downloaded. A $7.99 monthly pricing plan provides 1M byte of data transfer without additional charges, and cuts the price per kilobyte after that to $0.01. The premium plan at $12.49 provides 2M bytes of data before $0.01 per kilobyte charges.
This is what my roommate has, the Ericsson T68 that he purchased was SIM-locked to AT&T. The rate plans that InfoWorld referrs to are obscene, and the bundled AT&T data plans do not compare favorably to VoiceStream's iStream rates.
Pocket Blog Status
Still haven't figured out a work-around to the sporadic Winsock.LocalIP problem, which causes Pocket Blog to not detect a current connection. Yesterday I managed to get my PPC into that state and coded several potential work-arounds and debug scripts without any luck. Using the registry to figure out if a connection is active isn't feasible either, as WinCE doesn't have a central set of keys for storing TCP/IP settings.
If someone out there is a C++ ATL wizard, I have some sample code for directly calling the Winsock API that I would love to have converted to a COM object.
If nothing else turns up, coding to assume a constant connection and allowing it to gracefully timeout is my option of last resort. The rationale for not doing it that way in the first place is that I'm not sure of the effects of integrated cellular (PDA Phones or PDA + Bluetooth + Phone). Seamless auto-connection over GPRS or 1xRTT could become untintentionally costly very quickly.
Wishlist: RSS feed for Google News.Staples is selling the Audiovox Maestro for $299. [via Pocket PC Thoughts]
Picked mine up when CompUSA was offering the same price. The Maestro is no longer listed on their web site, further fueling my suspicion that channel inventory is being cleared.
Pros: CF Type II and MMC/SD sockets. Lightweight compared to other PPCs. Supposedly the sound quality is excellent. Pricing makes it competitive with the cheapest color Palm OS devices.
Cons: only 32MB ram, weak battery compared to more expensive Pocket PCs.
PS: I've found 32MB to be plenty on the Maestro. Wish that the same could be said for my Zaurus SL-5000D. Fortunately 128MB SD Cards aren't very expensive.
Patent Granted on Sideways Swinging [Slashdot]The April Cryptogram is out.
Via Macintouch:
EarthDesk 1.0.2 replaces your desktop picture with changing maps of the world that show correct sun and moon illumination, with 11 different projections, political and satellite maps, zoom from 50% to 400%, city lights at night, and an expandable atlas with 10,000 cities.
I want something like that for my PC. Once upon a time I used to use the Eye of the Storm screensaver, which presents a beautiful rotating image of the Earth with tropical weather systems super-imposed, and I also had a NASA satellite image of the Earth that was perfect as the background on my dual-monitor system.
Flughafen
There's a new version of the Java utility for monitoring an Airport basestation modem connection. This version doesn't require the Swing libraries, making it usable on PDAs. Hopefully this will be followed-up with an update to the Java Airport Configurator itself.
