Rants Tagged with “Technology”
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Wow, it's been over 12 hours since my site started to have problems. At first I thought it was an ISP issue, but now I found that somehow my main xml file got corrupted. Luckily I didn't lose much. I am back in business finally. It finally got me to published some minor changes including a new categorized "
Books I Like" section!
I was listening to Jim Gray today about about lots of interesting ideas (listen to the entire two parts for some fun). But in the second part of the discussion, he talked about another coming of the Client-Server vs. 3-Tier war. He seems to really like
SQL Server exposing WebServices directly. He understands the issues very well. After he mentioned WebServices in
SQL Server he directly brings up the DMZ issue with putting
SQL Server out of the web. I think he's right here. C/S is easier, 3 tier is usually easier to scale. As he says, "They're both right."
Later in the conversation, he brings up the difference between WebServices story from Indigo and his view (RPC vs. Document) and his discussions with Don Box about them. It's nice to see that inside MS the right people are talking about both sides of the argument. I still contend that WebServices are about interop, not IPC. That might leave me in the middle of Don and Jim.
Anyone interested in the future of SQL, WebServices and how the TerraServer was built, take a gander at these talks.
Sure, I am the editor for ONDotnet.com, but I really like this interview. The emphasis is trying to explain to the Linux developer why Mono/CLR development is the way to go. I am in!
Since MacWorld, I've been delving through some of the public docs about "Spotlight". Metadata annotation of files, at OS level, integrated into system commands (e.g. ls). Sounds a lot like WinFS, but maybe less heavy handed. I wonder how it will perform. It might be a good model for how the WinFS team look at the metadata/file problem instead of trying to embed
SQL Server into the OS.
I posted a long winded reply, but it's mostly a love-fest response. It is definitely worth a read.
Nice alternative to .Text/DasBlog. Includes Blog, Forum and Photo Gallery support.
I just don't get it sometimes. Trillian used to be an interesting product. I now have to have AOL and MSN running for certain clients so I thought I'd try Trillian. To my surprise, it was a hog. It was taking 90% of the CPU and tons of memory. They do know it's just an IM client, right? During installation they checked for DirectX and other API's. What are they up to? It's unfortunate when good programs get gold-plated to death. Guess I am back to Gaim!
I was interested in where Apple was going with the new iWork productivity suite. But with just a word processor and a presentation app, can they really call it a "productivity suite" to complete with Office? I doubt it.
Here is video of Gate's MCE demo at CES. Not only a MCE crash, but also an XBox crash later on in the day. Very embarassing. But it isn't without a precedent:
Windows 98 BSOD
After a relatively happy honeymoon, my marriage to the new Tivo is on the rocks. I've been spoiled. ReplayTV just does what I expect, with less of the intrusive advertising of Tivo. Here are my sticking points:
- You can only buffer live TV for 30 minutes. There was an old hack where you telnet'd into the box to change this, but it doesn't work any more. ReplayTV will buffer up to available diskspace. This means that on Tivo, if you pause live TV and hit hits the 30 minute limit, it starts to play the beginning of the buffer. If I am out of the room, I miss the show I had paused. Quite unnerving.
- Skip forward button moves to the end of the program by default. I can use a hack to make it go 30 seconds (to make passing ads easier), but it loses the hack everytime it is rebooted. Thirty seconds is the default on ReplayTV.
- No way (that I can tell) to have it record a show on a particular channel, at a particular time. I can tell it to record from 11-11:30 on comedy central, but it records whatever is there, not just "The Daily Show" like I want it to. If I setup a Season Pass for the Daily show, I get the same show records 3-4 times a day (since they re-air it). ARG! This is simple (and the default behavior) on ReplayTV.
- No way to tell it to record a show on low priority (e.g. if it doesn't conflict with a guaranteed show). When you tell it to record another show that conflicts, it will allow you to record instead, but if multiple shows conflict, I can't decide which are guaranteed, and which are not. ReplayTV has the notion of Guaranteed and non-Guaranteed shows which simplifies all of this.
- Taking my bandwidth to download ads for movies, cars, etc. On ReplayTV, I will get an occasional image ad on the Pause screen, but Tivo goes way beyond that. They download movie previews, complete car ads and more. I thought I was paying them ($15/month) for the service. Stop using my broadband connection to make you more money.
So this leaves me with two options, go back to my ReplayTV (luckily I still have it), or see what a Windows Media Center Edition box with the XBox MCE Extender will do for me. For now I am probably just going to get the ReplayTV going again, and look at the MCE for the future.
