Open Source Myths

Found an interesting collection of thoughts on Open Source Myths. These are the myths that are perpetuated by open source advocates themselves.

1. "Open Source software allows you to get under the hood and fix problems"
2. "All software should be free"
3. "Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"
4. "Scratching the personal itch"
5. "More choice is always better"
6. Conclusion: It's Not So Simple

Expected Problems with XP SP2

Microsoft Windows XP's Service Pack 2 is due out any day now^TM. As can always be expected with a major upgrade there may be software incompatibilities.

It might appear that Borland may have more then their fair share of these problems. This isn't surprising since they make development tools with debuggers, which need a closer to the metal relationship with the system. In fact the debugger didn't work at all with Release Candidate 1. Luckily that was addressed, but there may be other issues with the BDE under some circumstances.

If you have software in the field, especially if you use the BDE, then you really should be making sure you have a plan to deal with the changes Microsoft is about to unleash upon the world!

Most Expensive Bug?

What was your most most expensive bug? Can you imagine having a bug that got into production that cost close to $1,000,000? Beyond the monetary cost to cover losses there is the fact that they came close to missing an edition, which they have not done since the Great Chicago Fire in 1871.

It would appear the Chicago Tribune rolled out a new version of their software over the weekend without proper testing. It appears that the output was not compatible with the printer. It seems like a simple test run would have discovered this incompatibility before it was critical.

I am curious if it was a small patch, or a major upgrade. Many times small patches are roll-out without proper testing. The testing only covers the expected changes, and then they have unexpected consequences.

In mostly unrelated news: ICANN has installed IPv6 in their root servers. Unlike the Chicago Tribune, ICANN will be running IPv6 and IPv4 sin parallel for 20 years to ensure there are no bugs.

Blogshares

I finally claimed my Blog on Blogshares only to find out it looks like Danny Thorpe form Borland is staging a hostile take over! He owns 4000 out of 5000 shares.

I doubt I will get into trading shares in blogs, but it is an interesting idea.

Get the most out of Firefox

Since I know you all upgraded your browsers to either Firefox or Opera after the recommendations of US-CERT, MSN and others I thought you might enjoy this Firefox Tweak Guide. It covers:

• Keyboard shortcuts
• Advanced configuration
• Performance
• Extensions
• Themes

I am giving Firefox a go. It still isn't near fast as my favorite Opera, but more web sites support it (namely GMail).

Writing the Right Stuff

Very interesting article on the culture and process of the talented programmers who write the code that makes the shuttle fly. One of the programmers left to work for Micron Technology, but returned because they couldn't stand the chaos of their development process. I haven't finished the article yet (it is long), but it is on my definate finish list!

Hatch Introduces Law Against Technology

Senator Orrin Hatch, from Utah has introduced a bill that could criminalize creating software that he doesn't agree with. Just in case you didn't know, he writes songs and is afraid that he might loose some royalties to Peer-to-Peer file trading. As a result he wants to make the creation of P2P software illegal.

You may have heard of the Sony-Betamax decision as a result of Universal Studios vs. Sony over the VCR. The thought was it would ruin the studios because everyone would just copy shows and the revenue stream would dry up. The ruling was that the VCR had a legitimate use, so it was legal, and Sony was not liable for possible infringing uses. I guess Sony is lucky that Hatch didn’t have a TV show.

The bill is introduced under the guise that there are these mean nasty companies out there that are tricking our young kids into illegally trading copyrighted music and these companies then make money off their crime. So this bill is to protect these kids and to make a company liable for "inducing infringement".

While that all sounds good in principle the fact is that if you or I as a software developer create a program that someone decides encourages them to violate someone’s copyright then we are liable for their crime. As much as Hatch tries to side step around things this is the net result of what this law proposes.

Not to mention the fact that this bill also contributes to the sociopathic thinking disorder that is infecting the nation where people don’t feel like they are responsible for their actions. "But mommy, it isn’t my fault, the software made me do it!" I seriously have a hard time believing that anyone out there is not aware that they can be sued by the RIAA for sharing music on the Internet. <Sarcasm> But just in case someone does, let’s pass a bill so they can claim they are not responsible for their actions. </Sarcasm>

Personally I think the RIAA is racketeering and blackmailing people with their law-suits against individuals. The DMCA and laws like it have been created to take basic rights that individuals have enjoyed (fair use) away from them and make it so the RIAA can extort money from the biggest fans of the artists.

But that is just my opinion, and at least for now I am entitled to have that opinion and share it. If senators like Hatch keep it up then soon I may not even be able to enjoy that right.

It is getting more and more dangerous to write software. Not only do you have to worry that you might infringe on some patent that may or may not have even been filed yet, soon you will have to worry what your end users will do with your program. Now I advocate responsibility for ones actions and this bill may not be the Armageddon, but it certainly is a step in the wrong direction.

I am a strong supporter of copyrights and other intellectual properties. I have had works published (in print and electronically) and am named inventor on a number of patents. I also believe that we shouldn’t create laws to criminalize certain technologies simply because they may be used in ways we don’t like.

Daemon Customers

Nick Hodges commented on the San Francisco Gate article about Daemon Customers.

Long ago, in another life I was a technical support rep for a computer company. We used to joke that before someone could order a computer they would have to tell the sales rep what time their VCR clock said. If their response was "12:00, 12:00, 12:00" then they were not allowed to buy a computer. These "12 o'clock flashers" were always calling tech support for trivial things like how to install software. Individually they cost more then we made on their single computer sale.

Prior to that I worked for a bank. I am not sure if you are aware of this or not, but most banks loose money on individual customers with free checking. If you never pay any fees then it costs them more to service you then the value they gain by having your pay check in the bank for the 3 days it takes you to spend it.

One day we had training on customer service. In the training we watched a video where all these individual customers came into a bank for typical banking services, and they received poor customer service. The service was laughable. At the same time the bank was putting on a good show for a businessman who represented a large, profitable account. At the end of the video you see the businessman setting down to dinner. He announces that he has chosen this bank for his business. From off camera you hear a response of shock, and the camera pans out to see all the individuals sitting around the table with him. The point of the training is that customers talk to each other. If you alienate a customer whom you don't think is worth much money then they may turn away a customer who is worth a lot of money.

Now what does this have to do with the daemon customers described in the article? Well, the ones that are sending in for refunds and then returning items are blatantly committing fraud, and should be prosecuted. But the ones that only shop at Best Buy for sales? I think they should be left alone. They are not doing anything wrong, and they may turn into profitable customers, or refer others.

I am reminded of the time we had State Farm auto-insurance. They offer roadside assistance. Like many people, I am not the type that calls for help at a drop of a hat. Due to a couple unfortunate events we ended up using the roadside assistance twice in a few months. It was a really stressful time. Our car had actually broken down and was going to require very expensive repairs. To add to the stress we get a letter from State Farm warning us that the roadside assistance was for emergencies only, and that if we used it again they would cancel our coverage. So they were insinuating that the times we used it were not emergencies, when at least in our eyes, they were. The result, we stopped using State Farm, which may not be a big deal to them, but I have also related the story to a number of people who may now also not use State Farm. End result may end up being a lot more money being lost then the cost of us using our roadside assistance.

So what is a company to do? My suggestion: Reward profitable customers. Mail them a rebate check for no reason. Send them special promotions that are not available to everyone else. The only possible side effect is they might tell others who may in turn become profitable customers too.

One thing that makes me laugh about Jacob Thurman's post is where he says:

To the "demon customers" who are causing the problems in the first place: you are an affront to the fundamental values of western capitalism. Shame on you.

That is like asking someone to hold still so you can hit them. Capitalism goes both ways. It means a business can try to make as much money as possible, but it also means that a consumer can try to get the greatest value for their money possible. If a business chooses to offer loss leaders then consumers should be able to choose to only buy those. Both should obey the laws, but as long as they do that is capitalism in action!

When companies or customers break the laws / ethics of the marketplace then everyone is hurt. Just look at the example Microsoft sets.

Denis Bauer's Reflector.FileDisassembler

If you need to get at the source code of an assembly then Denis Bauer's Reflector.FileDisassembler may be the answer. It works as an add-in for Lutz Roeder's .NET Reflector and supports generating IL, VB.NET, C# and the Delphi Programming langauge.

As an added bonus besides being free it comes with full source code, which is good since it wasn't able to disassemble itself.

Now MSN recommends Firefox

As if US-CERT's recommendation of not using IE wasn't enough, now Microsoft's own Slate magazine has an article touting the benefits of Firefox over Internet Explorer.  Surprisingly it has been up since June 30th and not removed by someone who notices the irony.

This isn't an official company recommendation, but an article written by an author who made the switch to avoid the security.  None the less, it is posted on a site controlled by Microsoft, and the author does point out a lot of the advantages of Firefox over IE, as well as provide some tips to improve your installation experience.

Noteworthy quotes include:

• No matter how well [Internet Explorer Users] had protected themselves against viruses, spyware, and everything else in the past, they were still vulnerable to yet another flaw in Microsoft's browser. - All of Microsoft's products that connect to the Internet have this feature!
• I've been using [Firefox] for a week now, and I've all but forgotten about Explorer. - The nightmare's with the cold sweats finally ended last night.
• . . . Internet Explorer has been stuck in the mud for the past year, as Microsoft stopped delivering new versions. - Just like Microsoft, once they kill the competition, they kill the customers.

One interesting comment in the article is in the last paragraph:

. . . But for now, there's safety in numbers - the lack of them, that is. Internet Explorer is used by 95 percent of the world. Firefox's fan base adds up to 2 or 3 percent at most. Which browser do you think the Russian hackers are busily trying to break into again?

Some people say that the security as a result of providing a less appealing target because of a smaller user base isn't really a feature.  In response I ask you this: If you are looking for a good place to raise your family, would you consider a less populated suburb with a very low crime rate an improvement over a highly populated, downtown urban housing project with a crime rate so high even the police are afraid to visit?  The way I see it Firefox, Opera, etc. are the suburbs - the place we all really want to live.  Internet Explorer is the housing project - the place we get stuck, and are only happy with because we don't know any better.  Or we may be stuck there because our work requires us to live there, or we have some relations that require us to be there. 

My suggestion is do anything you can to move out.  If we spread our numbers out then we make ourselves a less appealing target.  If there are sites that require you to use IE then education them on why they should support other browsers!

Make the move!  Life is better here!

Fabu Delphi on Linux News

You have two new choices as a Delphi developer who wants to build applications for Linux. The first is CrossKylix and the second is Mono 1.0.

Thanks to Danny Thorpe for the tip on CrossKylix, this is something I have wanted for a long time. What CrossKylix allows you to do is call your Kylix compiler from your Delphi IDE. So if you are developing primarialy on Windows and you want to make a build for Linux you just click the menu option and whamo. This is not a new compiler, but a hack that lets you call the Kylix compiler that you already have without needing a Linux install. Granted if you don't have a Linux install then it makes testing your program a lot harder, and we would never ship an application that we didn't test.

For anyone who was paying attention you may have noticed that I mentioned Mono 1.0 release previously. Well, there were some questions as to if you could run a Delphi for .NET application on it. According to Danny Thorpe you can! I would assume this works for Delphi 8 for .NET, Delphi 7's .NET preview compiler and C# Builder. Obviously you need to stay away from anything Win32 related, including VCL.NET, WinForms, and the interestingly the SysUtils unit. I am not so sure the reasoning behind avoiding SysUtils. Maybe when I get a chance I can figure that one out. Or you can keep an eye on Danny's Blog and see if any news breaks there.

As far as Kylix goes, Danny did comment about that in his previous post about Mono support. He said that Kylix was included in the 3 year plan.

Kylix is included in the 3 year outlook. Nothing I can announce as yet.
Danny Thorpe, 27.05.2004, 12:02pm

Please note, Danny has not moved to the new Borland Blog server, so these links may change when he does, and the comments may die (the reason I quoted his Kylix comment). Although I will grant that a 3 year outlook is very forward looking and things are certainly expected to change in that time. It is good to know that Kylix is at least on their minds. Of course it isn't like Borland to abandon their developers. Be sure to read Danny's disclaimer.

7 rules for using laptops in meetings

If you have ever been to a meeting where everyone has a laptop and you wonder if they are even paying any attention then you should look at implementing some of Microsoft's 7 rules for using laptops in meetings

1. Make sure there's a point.
2. Designate a laptop.
3. Be ready to explain why you've brought a laptop./li>
4. Use some discretion.
5. Turn down the bells and whistles.
6. When in doubt, leave them out.
7. Dissect your meetings.

For the full rules visit the page. I think these could also be used in presentations. I know John Dvorak has complained about people Blogging his key notes. Although having been on the receiving end of someone Blogging a presentation or conference (thanks Rich!) I can't be too critical of the practice.

Little Brother is Watching. . . .

Did you see the 2-to-1 decision by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit in Massachusetts that says ISP’s can read their customer’s e-mail messages while they are stored on the server. The reason e-mails are not subject to the eavesdropping laws that apply to telephones is because the messages are actually stored.

I guess this settles the legality of Gmail advertisements since your e-mail message is stored on Google's server when they render the advertisement. Personally I would rather have targeted ads (which I opted in for) then someone reading my messages.

I am guessing that Think Geek's T-Shirt is going increase in popularity.

Time to Stop Using IE

It is now official, you should stop using Microsoft's Internet Explorer IMMEDIATELY. CERT (part of the US Department of Homeland Security) has made an official recommendation to switch to a real browser. There has been news about this all week.

It would appear that some individuals have combined the known vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Information Server and Internet Explorer to render Internet Explorer completely insecure (as if it ever was very secure to begin with). This latest exploit will steal your online banking information even if you have an SSL connection. It is only a matter of time before more exploits are made to take advantage of these vulnerabilities.

According to Secunia Internet Explorer has 54 current advisories, including this one. Opera on the other hand has 25 advisories. The most secure browser would be FireFox or Mozilla has only 3 advisories each.

It is worth noting that if you use one of the many browsers that use Internet Explorer to render pages then you are also vulnerable.

It would appear that most people just stick with the default browser that comes with their computer, never bothering to upgrade. As a result they have made a very attractive, homogenous target for exploit writers. Using IE because it came with your computer is like buying a picture frame and leaving the sample picture in it.

People argue that they only reason we see so many exploits for Microsoft products is because the exploit writers dislike Microsoft. This defense is like saying that the only reason the crime rate is so high in your neighborhood is because of all the gang violence. Just like people choose safer neighborhoods to live in, we should choose safer browsers to use on the Internet

Remember, only terrorists use Internet Explorer . . ..

July Meeting Wrap Up

We had a great meeting last night, although it ran a little long.

We laid out a plan for future meetings:

• Steve will present on Mono in August
• I will demonstrate Code Rush for Visual Studio in September
• We will see if we can get Rational to come do a presentaion in October
• And Chris will presnet on SharpDevelop in November

We are still undecided on our next book, and are recommending that anyone who wants to suggest a title should evaluate it and present to the group their recommendation. The following are some we are considering:

• Design Patterns Explained by Alan Shalloway and James R. Trott
• Test Driven Development (TDD) by Kent Beck
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler
• User Interface Design for Programmers by Joel Spolsky - Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
• Some XP or Agile Methodology book

We only made it through the first three chapters of our Code Complete reading, so the rest will be put off until next month.

Here are some links from the meeting:

• ADO and ADO.NET Connection Strings
• The easy way to e-mail large files - Be sure to make note of your download link, just in case the e-mail doesn't go through.
• Decompile .NET assemblies to your choise of language
• Download the VB.NET Power Pack
• SCRUM Development Methodology
• AgileData.org

Please post a comment if there was anything I missed.

Mono 1.0 Release

Well, Mono 1.0 is released. For those unfamiliar with it, it is an Open Source version of the .NET framework. It runs on Linux, Mac and Windows.

Beyond cross platform support, one of the things that sets Mono apart is the fact it has a linker. You can link in the portions of the runtime your application needs into the application itself so that your users are not required to download the framework.

Mono inlcudes:

• An IDE
• A cross platform ECMA CLI runtime engine.
• A cross platform IKVM Java runtime engine.
• C# 1.0 compiler.
• Development toolchain.
• Class libraries implementing the .NET 1.1 profile.
• The Gtk# 1.0 GUI programming toolkit.
• Mono specific libraries.
• Third party convenience libraries bundled with the release.
• GNU Classpath for the CLI.
• Visual Basic runtime.

There is support for both ADO.NET and ASP.NET. The major unfinished part is WinForms support.

Only time will tell if Microsoft will attack, embrace or tolerate this. I read an interview once with one of the people involved in Mono. It may have been Miguel de Icaza himself. Anyway, the interviewer asked him about the possibility of a lawsuit from Microsoft. He responded that they actually had two forks of the source code. One that was resistant to Microsoft patent infringements, the other that was not. I would assume there are advantages to the infringing fork.

How to Write Unmaintainable Code

As if anyone really needs any tips on this. Just in case you do though, here are some Documentation tips. I think a great tip would be to use l33t sP34k in all your comments and identifiers. Forget Hungarian notation and camel case!

Y2K All Over Again

The article Too many cars, too few digits on the VIN shortage starts out painting a picture of doom and gloom with the quote:

Longer codes would require a major overhaul of computer systems that would dwarf the challenges and expenses spawned by the Y2K computer dilemma, said Dave Proefke, chairman of the committee. . . "The scope of the logistical changes and the monetary impact are just astronomical,"

But then the article wraps up by saying:

Despite the complexity of the problem, SAE officials are confident they can iron out the problem. . . . "In reality, it’s not going to be the big issue that we think it is," said Sparkman, a former Michigan police officer. "It’s sort of like the Y2K thing."

Of course they won't start out telling you things aren't that bad. Bad news sells. If they opened with the good news then this news would hardly warrant a whole article.

It was interesting that the point out that when the VIN system was adopted in 1981 they only expected it to last 30 years. Can you imagine that? Only 30 years? And then they said that if they had gone with 18 or 19 digits instead of the 17 they used they would be good for 100 years.

Now I am glad they are confident that they can iron things out without much trouble, but was saving the space of those 2 measly digits really worth the 70 additional safe years they could have enjoyed? Just think if they had originally adopted a 20-digit number. What is it with the incredibly shortsighted people who are setting standards?

Check out the handy chart that explains VINs at the bottom of the page.

AskTheTechGirl.com

I must admit I am not quite sure how to take this service. Rich sent me a link for askthetechgirl.com.

From the home page:

"Ask The Tech Girl" gives you the rare opportunity to talk live to a super smart, sometimes snarky and always sexy tech girl, geek chick or network ops cutie.

So, is it a support site, or kind of a dating service type thing? I guess if you are going to call someone for support you might as well call a cutie. The line stating that "All our Tech "Girls" are over 18 years old." does make me wonder what is the overall goal of the service. . . .