Inner Drive Software

I believe I figured out why the conference disappointed me. I last went to VSLive in 2003, when I had just started to get really good at my craft. The sessions at that conference hat a lot of information that I hadn't encountered before, and taught me a lot about where I should look to keep fresh and informed.

Then there's this:

I have to say, the conference has disappointed me a bit. Many of the panels I thought looked interesting turned out to be somewhat less in-depth than I'd hoped. To make matters worse, I'm in one of the greatest cities in the world, the weather is perfect, and I haven't had enough exercise this week.

So, as irresponsible as it seems, I'm going to take the next two hours or so to cogitate on what I've learned this week, by walking up Powell Street until I hit water. That should get me back to the conference (by Muni, most likely) in time for the next panel I'm interested in seeing.

I hope to write more when the conference ends, or perhaps if I play hooky from a session or two tomorrow.

One would think that planning a conference for 1,500 or so software developers would involve planning for 1,500 or so laptop computers. This means, among other things, providing (a) power outlets and (b) decent WiFi access.

After searching for half an hour I found one lone power strip in the "Gold Passport Lounge," and the only reason the other 1,499 people here aren't using it is that they're patiently sitting upstairs listening to an ill-prepared presenter from Microsoft who will probably get a "BillG" email tonight asking him why he was so unprepared.

As for WiFi access, despite the relatively few people down here in the lounge, I'm still getting only about 77 kbps of throughput. Yes, I'm at a developer conference getting modem-speed Internet access.

I'll have more later on today's presentations, the final three of which I may skip. The pre-conference workshop I attended yesterday I found invaluable; I'm looking forward to Deborah Kurata's panel discussions later on this week.

I realized last night that I forgot to bring some important things to VSLive:

1. Business cards. I have about six with me. I have about 200 in my office. Hello, Kinko's?
2. A USB cable, required to connect my phone and my camera to my laptop. There's a CompUSA about 100 m from here, fortunately.

It's always something.

Also, a propos of nothing, I got the best pitch from a panhandler today that I've ever heard: "Buddy, can you spare $1,000? I have a payment plan..."

I'm in San Francisco, at the Hotel California on Geary Street. They've checked me in to Room 404, which, as you can imagine, I couldn't find at first.

A one-hour flight delay makes the $7 fee for WiFi access at O'Hare almost worth it. Almost. Because I'd rather be in the airplane on the way to VSLive, one of the two major Microsoft-oriented development conferences. (The other is, of course, PDC; next one, October 2007 in L.A..)

I hope to have interesting things to write this week. If not, I'll just post archival puppy photos on my other blog.

This has to hurt:

While doing routine maintenance work, [a] technician accidentally deleted applicant information for an oil-funded account — one of Alaska residents’ biggest perks — and mistakenly reformatted the backup drive, as well.

There was still hope, until the department discovered its third line of defense, backup tapes, were unreadable.

The article said "no one was blamed." Right.

At my office, and at a few of my clients' offices, I have installed Symantec AntiVirus corporate edition. This product requires a license refresh every year. You go to the Symantec website, pay your subscription fee (about $140 for 5 licenses), and they email you a link to a license file.

Actually, that's what used to happen. Now, they've completely screwed up their delivery system, which is why I've been on hold with them for half an hour.

Via Talking Points Memo, this reminder that on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog...but they do know what terminal you're using:

In late August, someone with an IP address that originated from the National Institutes of Health drastically edited the Wikipedia entry for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which operates within NIH. Wikipedia determined the edit to be vandalism and automatically changed the definition back to the original. On Sept. 18, the NIH vandal returned, according to a history of the site's edits posted by Wikipedia. This time, the definition was gradually changed, presumably to avoid the vandalism detector.

People forget about this quite a bit. On the Internet, your browser must send a request to a Web server to get a Web page. In order for the Web server to respond, it has to know where to send the page; ergo, every time you hit a Web site, you tell that site who you are. Wikipedia uses this simple fact to help determine the value of contributions. In this case, it worked perfectly.

Security expert Bruce Schneier finds some cases of appropriate and helpful security theater:

Security is both a reality and a feeling. The reality of security is mathematical, based on the probability of different risks and the effectiveness of different countermeasures. We know the infant abduction rates and how well the bracelets reduce those rates. We also know the cost of the bracelets, and can thus calculate whether they're a cost-effective security measure or not. But security is also a feeling, based on individual psychological reactions to both the risks and the countermeasures. And the two things are different: You can be secure even though you don't feel secure, and you can feel secure even though you're not really secure.

Good, detailed summary of the economics and business aspects of Microsoft's latest operating system:

For years Microsoft's Windows logo often appeared against a blue sky with cottony clouds. But the cloud has become one of the company's biggest threats. The operating system matters less when programs can be provided online. Moreover, online software can be delivered to customers more cheaply, there is immediate feedback from users and applications can continually be improved. Those are big advantages over software sold in a box, one version at a time.

In the past Microsoft tied its operating system and applications together by “commingling” the code (and ran afoul of antitrust authorities for doing so). The rise of online applications threatens the primacy of Windows because the network becomes the platform for the software. It does not mean PC operating systems are unnecessary, just that it is increasingly the cloud, and not the PC, that is the launch pad for computing.

The New York Times picked up the ongoing story of botnets, networks of computers that spammers and other miscreants have taken over:

According to the annual intelligence report of MessageLabs, a New York-based computer security firm, more than 80 percent of all spam now originates from botnets. Last month, for the first time ever, a single Internet service provider generated more than one billion spam e-mail messages in a 24-hour period, according to a ranking system maintained by Trend Micro, the computer security firm. That indicated that machines of the service providers' customers had been woven into a giant network, with a single control point using them to pump out spam.

Users, ISPs, users, software vendors, and users contribute to the problem:

Serry Winkler, a sales representative in Denver, said that she had turned off the network-security software provided by her Internet service provider because it slowed performance to a crawl on her PC, which was running Windows 98. A few months ago four sheriff’s deputies pounded on her apartment door to confiscate the PC, which they said was being used to order goods from Sears with a stolen credit card. The computer, it turned out, had been commandeered by an intruder who was using it remotely.

Note that Winkler's computer probably ran slowly because it had already gotten infected, and the ISP's security software had a lot of work to do because of this.

At least with the Times picking up the story, perhaps more people will notice.

Wal-Mart will soon start scheduling employees based on predicted customer loads, requiring the employees to be more "flexible:"

The move promises more productivity and consumer satisfaction, but could demand more flexibility and availability from workers in place of reliable shifts and predictable pay checks, the Journal reported.

Wal-Mart started using the system for some workers, including cashiers and accounting-office personnel, last year, the paper also reported.

I have a rant about this on my personal blog. In short: just because software can do somthing doesn't mean it should.