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Friday, February 22, 2002 [5:21 PM] Wooooo I stand corrected, thanks Larry. I called Mac OS "Apple OS", sorry I'll be a little more careful next time. Be incorporated is, like everyone else these days, taking Microsoft to court for a piece of the pie. Larry, the reason I pointed out Apple is because the Be OS ran on Apple built computers as well as Intel boxes. It's strange to me that Microsoft would be their only target. Apple killed off an entire clone market and I don't believe they went to court over it? Unfortunately we live in a litigious society, I wish it wasn't so. Lawyers... Can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em. (Oh, by the way, that's called a joke so please don't sue me) [5:06 PM] I want one, NOW! I'd like one of these, please? Not because it's the best searching device in the world. Nope, I want one because it looks cool! [2:42 PM] Visio SR-1 Visio SR-1 is now available for download from Office Update. Click here for Visio Standard 2002 SR-1. Click here for Visio Professional 2002 SR-1. Enjoy! [9:20 AM] Movie Line of the Week answer Yesterday's movie lines came from "Big Trouble in Little China". They come right at the beginning of the movie as Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) is driving into San Francisco to hook up with his buddy. Great flick, run out and rent it today! Our winner was David Hoskin! Congratulations David! Dave does graphics It's no surprise that Dave Winer believes in outlines, heck he probably dreams in outlines! But check this out! That shot is from his days working on More. Now that's my idea of an outline! Oh ya by the way, do you ever sleep Dave? Have you figured out a way to sleep and browse at the same time with a Manila or Radio macro? Check out the times he was browsing on that list, DOH! Around the web CNet News: "Microsoft, Apple alliance at key juncture." - CNet always has the big scary headline to suck folks in. Personally I can't see us giving up on the Mac, it's a great product with a loyal following. It may only have a 5% share but it's a sweet machine. Steven Vore explores his D&D self. I loved this game as a kid, mom had to kick us out of the house on nice summer days. While you're there visit his son's site. Hi Robert! (Good name by the way) Thursday, February 21, 2002 [2:41 PM] Funny, funny, funny CNet News: "PC makers and several states allege that new Microsoft licensing agreements, arrived at under the proposed antitrust settlement between the software maker and the U.S. Justice Department, impose harsher terms on some manufacturers than agreements currently in place." - This is a total crackup. Because of the lawsuit we can't charge folks like we used to. We have to treat everyone pretty much the same when it comes to licenses. So now there are complaints about pricing because some companies have to pay $4 more per copy. It's what we have to do because of the lawsuit. It's what was asked for, equal treatment of OEM's. Zeldman's site I received an e-mail earlier that pointed out I was a bit critical of Zeldman's use of tables on his site. I wasn't meaning to be critical of him, I love the guy and his creations. Look at this site for a minute and you can guess where the layout came from; I'll give you a hint, Zeldman! So if it comes across as critical I am sorry for that. It was merely an observation. [9:13 AM] Movie Line of the Week That's right, it's back in all it's glory! Ok, ok, so maybe it's not so glorious, but it is back. Here it is.... You just listen to the ol' Pork Chop Express an' take his advice on a dark and stormy night when some wild-eyed eight-foot tall maniac grabs your neck an' taps the back of your favorite head up against a barroom wall. An' he looks you crooked in the eye an' he asks if you've paid your dues. You look right back at that big sucker an' remember what Jack Burton always says at times like that. "Have you paid your dues, Jack" "Yessir, the check is in the mail." Ok... quick.... What movie? Send your guesses here! I've basically given this one away; I couldn't help myself, I love these lines! STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I will NOT, I repeat WILL NOT share your e-mail address with anyone! If you're a winner and you want me to point at your blog please include the address and I'll happily point there! Good luck! New idea for Microsoft Since folks are worried about being locked into .NET I have an idea. Why don't we port the .NET CLR to Mac OS, Linux, and Unix? So essentially you have an OS within the OS. We could sell the runtime for the price of Windows XP Professional. If you purchase Windows XP you get it, if you download a Linux distribution you can the purchase a CLR and development environment for it. Folks still have the freedom to purchase it, right? They can still choose Java over it, right? Most importantly you can use .NET and still choose your OS! I'm sure just about everybody that reads that will find a problem with it. Just like folks complaining about the settlement not being good enough. Give 'em what they want and they piss-and-moan anyway. Welcome to the new competitive tactic, sue, sue, sue. If you can't compete with 'em, sue 'em. Have some coffee So while you're working on this mornings movie line and digesting stories on the web, have a cup of joe on me. Note to Dave This morning on Scripting [note: looks like the back issues server is down?? I'll fix the link when I can get to the page.] Dave is talking about getting Zeldman to use Radio in exchange for Dave using CSS. Hey Dave, Zeldman's personal size still uses tables for layout! I think he's adopted Dogma 2000 for his personal stuff and uses his bag of tricks for paid gigs. I believe converting to CSS is a good thing, but if I had to choose content over CSS I'd take content. I say bite the bullet and do CSS. It's a better way to control the look of your site anyway. I'm still struggling with my re-design. It's not just CSS conversion, it's an entire new design. Once I get it working I still have to plug it into Radio, then the conversion will be complete! Time is all I need, just time. Wednesday, February 20, 2002 [4:10 PM] I caved... I couldn't help myself I had to take the Sesame Street Character test... results below. I am ERNIE. Everyone loves to hang out with me. Which Sesame Street Character Are You? [11:40 AM] Web Services While I think we (Microsoft) are struggling a bit with what Web Services are there are folks out there creating them. Here's a good example, via CNet. When I read the story on CNet yesterday [via Scripting News] the one quote that really stood out in my mind was this... Ballmer said Microsoft has "put a lot of good talent" on the project but "could have mixed a little more business talent in with the technical talent...Sometimes we give too many bodies but not enough senior bodies." That being said we have introduced some web services of our own, like MapPoint.NET. We'll iron it out. It's just taking longer than originally expected. CityDesk re-design??? No, not really. That doesn't stop Richard from re-designing it for them! It's a good idea. His picture is basically what UserLand has with Radio (client) and Manila (server). [8:43 AM] Build Breakage? The alarm clock goes off; it's 5:45AM, time to get up. I hit the snooze a couple of times then finally turn off the alarm. As I lay there thinking about today I'm hit with the thought that I forgot to check something in! Something that's going to cause the build to NOT work. Breaking the build is not something I want to do. I myself believe a developer should be tarred and feathered for breaking a build. It basically puts the breaks on the day waiting for a fix. I went about my morning as fast as I could thinking I could get here and fix the problem before anyone came in, ya right! Things actually went pretty smooth at home this morning so I was able to bail out on time. That's a good thing when you're freaked out. I get to work fire up my boxes and wait..... booting.... ahhhhhhhh.... hurry up you stoopid machine!!!! The box boots I log in, fire up Outlook, down comes my e-mail.... Where is it... come on.... POW! The nightly build notes start coming down... good... good... phew... NO ERRORS! I can rest now. How did your morning start? Tuesday, February 19, 2002 [2:57 PM] Doh! Will the stupidity ever end? Now Be has decided to sue Microsoft, hey why not Apple? Apple computers come pre-installed with Apple OS don't they? And didn't Apple kill off the clone vendors. Hmmmmmmm, I think we need to take the giant target off our logo. Visio in the News InfoWorld: Visio takes the ORM (Object Role Modeling) approach to database design. - ORM is something we're really pushing. 9.11 Story This article on MSNBC is chilling. It recounts the events leading up to the tower collapses as seen through video shot by two French filmmakers. It's quite chilling, that's all I can say. [9:25 AM] Lameazon In our house Amazon is referred to as "The Company That Shall Remain Nameless". It's obvious I don't like the company, why? I don't have trouble with what they do. I think it's extremely cool to hop on the net and purchase books and CD's along with a bunch of other stuff. It's actually a nice evolutionary idea. My problem is with their bottom line. Even though they finally made a profit it comes after Bezos promising to make a profit in 2000. Two years later they finally do it but only by slight of hand. Apparently the conversion to the Euro in Europe helped with the bottom line. I've heard they would have reported around a $10,000,000.00 loss if it hadn't been for that saving grace. So don't get your hopes up for the survival of Amazon, put your money in companies that have a future. Here's a nice little article in Business 2.0 about an up-and-comer. Here are my favorite quotables from it.... Are you profitable? Yes. That's real GAAP profit, not Amazon (AMZN)-bulls***-accounting profit. What's your dream? Taking over Amazon. We could make it profitable overnight. Ahhhhh I see there are other people that think Amazon is a lame duck! Maybe I should go register Lameazon.com and start selling books and CD's; oh yes, AND make a profit doing it. Monday, February 18, 2002 [4:50 PM] Surprise of the show We were showing a simple demo at the Visio kiosk last week. We had installed the Office XP Web Services Toolkit and hooked a Visio drawing into the EightBall service at GotDotNet. Folks LOVED this thing! Here's the VBA required to call the service, I can put a link to a drawing up here if people are interested. Private Sub cmdAskTheEightBall_Click() Dim answer As String Dim visShape As Visio.Shape Dim eightBallService As New clsws_EightBallWS ' You can ask a question or just pass a blank string. ' We're just passing a blank string for now. ' On Error GoTo errEightBall answer = eightBallService.wsm_Ask("") On Error GoTo 0 ' Get the shape and set the text. ' Set visShape = ThisDocument.Pages(1).Shapes(2) visShape.Text = answer Exit Sub errEightBall: MsgBox "Unable to connect to the EightBall web service.", vbOKOnly, "Whoops!" End Sub [11:16 AM] Shiny new week Welcome to a new week! It's time to go figure out how to put .NET to work. I'm sure lots of folks are asking all kinds of questions this morning about .NET. Last week was extremely cool and it's only going to get better. The framework and CLR were well received I.M.H.O. I'm excited about them it means a whole new level of productivity for people, and you can use the language you know and love to do it! So how can we make Visio better for you. You who? You the end user, you the corporate developer writing custom solutions, you the developer writing add-ons/add-ins to the Visio environment! We want to make Visio better, but more importantly we want to make it better for you. So how can we improve the product for your discipline? Do we need more tools? Does the development environment need improving? Do you need more automation methods? Do you want to use it today with the .NET CLR? That last one is a trick question! We're working very hard to complete a new Visio SDK that will bring you a .NET Primary Interop Assembly. Huh? That means you can use managed code to drive Visio! The code is in the oven; baking to a nice golden brown as we speak. Give us a little more time and you'll have a way to do it. Trust me on this, I know what I'm talking about. Sunday, February 17, 2002 [5:26 PM] Back Home VSLive concluded on Friday at 2:00. I think the event was a success. The new platform is generating a lot of excitement throughout the development community. I think we'll see a lot of new web services built on .NET coming down the pipe. We'll see... So now that the states are going to get our source code I wonder if we're going to get a California branded Windows XP; Windows CA? It'll tax you for each and every connection to your ISP as well as routing through the phone company, per minute charges will apply. It'll also tax you for visits to web sites within the state and make you fill out a questionnaire each time your packet is about to cross a state line. I'm sure the new Windows CA will run around $10,000.00 retail which should be enough to make Sun and Oracle happy. I'm too darned sarcastic for my own good. These stupid lawsuits just keep dragging on and on and on, just like the Energizer Bunny. I'm sure folks like Sun and Oracle wouldn't have to piss and moan about unfair practices if they would lower their prices and make software that's easier to use. Here's a clue guys. Running to the nearest lawyer isn't the way to win. Make better stuff than Microsoft makes, bring your server prices down, and you'll probably see more of your software used. I dunno, just my opinion. Ohhhhh, here's a better one. Instead of messin' with Linux why don't you just license the NT source and port it to your big servers? San Francisco I must say that San Francisco is a WONDERFUL city! I wandered the streets between the time I got up and the time I had to be at the show each day. It was a real treat. I wish Kim and the girls had been there and we'd had about the week to better explore it. Chris Pirillo wasn't kidding when he said Peet's Coffee was really good. I walked up the street from my hotel on Montogmery to the Peet's on Sutter, at least that's what I think the name of the street was? Chris if you happen to stumble on my little site make sure to visit Monorail Espresso on 5th and Pike in Seattle if you're ever up that way. Peet's reminds me of Monorail. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!