I just (re)read a lot of Winer's messages on Microsoft -- especially on the dicey subject of trust.I don't know Dave, but from his writings he seems to be a particularly trusting person and I would claim that gets him into more trouble than telling the truth.
I guess I'm one of those people who is tempted to call his approach somewhat Quixotic, but I admit that could be the remnants of a faint, lingering and fading bitterness on my part.
I'm sure I'm not telling him anything he doesn't know 1000 times over, but it's going to be hard to re-capture lightening in a bottle when it comes to initializing a "widely held standard." On the Net, these things seem to work best with a singular vision followed by organic acceptance -- rarely with the bottom line, contradictory concerns of large corporations mixed in.
Dave is convinced that using Microsoft will help (and it has in the past with some success as with the CSS spec) but just a word of warning: in a cross-cultural multi-fiefdom like MSFT he can talk to dozens of people for years who help him build his vision but it will take just one (any one) to kill it in an instant. And there is no reason to assume the killing is intentional (which would be great fodder for /. list-lurkers and NY Times reporters alike) but much more likely it would be death by triage proxy 18 months from now -- somewhere during a bug squash exercise of a "real" product (anything from Visual Studio to Outlook XP) where there are dozens of career reputations on the line and the goal is to ship, not make the world safe for SOAP compliance. The negotiators have long moved on by that point to other projects or companies and the executives overseeing the product shipping either don't know or understand the ramifications of the "cut," leave alone the investment in "making Dave happy."
posted by VS 2:43 PM
While struggling with the IE toolbar APIs, my friend and mentor tried to explain to me the psychedelic nature of the experience (Quoting from KB I think):
"Therefore, if the chicken screeches rather than squawks, one must stroke the tail of the squirrel toward the body instead of away from the body, or else the squirrel will go after the pecan instead of the walnut, which will trigger the allergies in the rooster..."All this brought to mind a column I once wrote for the Informant group that is no longer on the web. I found a copy in the Google caches (the real dot-com graveyard) so look forward to a reworking of the famous Cloudy Tuesday piece next week.
..and I don't want to get into the whole monopoly debate, but it does look suspicious now that Win2k documentation has made it official that they are reaching beyond "roaming users" and "nonroaming users" to their new growth category: "nonroaming nonusers."
posted by VS 3:20 PM
Here's a hint for you wannabe web site runners: If your hoster says "we're moving data centers" then freeze your damn content for at least a week. Somehow the dynamicism of the web lulled me into sloppy workmanship -- that or the ganja. Either way, better to be boring than not be there at all.
posted by VS 10:48 AM
posted by VS 1:54 PM
Hacked! Well, that was fun! Don't have a clue which one of a 1000 reasons someone would use to knock the system files out from under my hoster but there it is: 18 hours of silence later we're back up and running and getting hits from Denmark on a Sunday. Quite frankly, I don't really want to guess what it could be, but I just can't imagine it's anything remotely political
posted by VS 12:03 AM
"Hello Mom? Yea, listen, I was wondering if it was alright if I come back home. Yea... yea... no, no, everything's fine it's just I found out that blogging is dead."
posted by VS 1:11 AM
As I suspected there have been a few hiccups in the server migration -- (Reader Comments are on hiatus, some mailing list funnies, etc.)Please make sure to empty your browser cache of old FS pages!
But I have to say, I've been extremely impressed with the quick reaction times of the my hoster everytime I notice some problem. (Sorry for gushing so much but for the price this was whole thing was a steal -- if someday I get Slashdotted then we'll see their metal, but for the volume I get I have no right to complain.)
The only thing that concerns me just a little is the security policy of the new data center which seem to be more Tripper style than the more traditional approach.
posted by VS 11:39 PM
Anybody else notice that KB Search is broken? (Sometimes they just hand you irony in a five course meal.)The support call I don't want to make:
"I'm having problems with favicons ..."
"You can't clear the cache of out of date ones?"
"Exactly! So it's a common problem?"
"Number one question about favicons."
"So... what's the fix? Because I tried using cookie and cache washers but the old favicon keeps being displayed anyway."
"What are the steps you did exactly?"
"Jeez, I have no idea. I wasn't keeping a log, I'm just trying to get rid of an icon being cached somewhere I can't find."
"The site has to rename the LINK tag's HREF so it points to another icon file."
"Well then why did you ask me what the steps were?"
"Because I like doing that. Have you reformatted your C: drive?"
"NO!! And I won't. Anyway, I am the site admin and I don't even have a LINK tag... so will that still work in older browsers that look for favicons?"
"Not sure. You need a LINK tag."
Later...
"Hi remember me? I made a LINK tag, pointed it to the new icon and it's still showing me the old favicon."
"No, you must have spoken to someone else. Oh, well that was fixed in the 5.1 browser."
"But I have the 5.5 browser!"
"Oh, well then they broke it again in 5.5"
"So what is the fix?"
"Could be a problem in the DDE communication with the desktop."
"DDE??? Isn't that the COM 1 precursor inter-app communications? That's gotta be ten year old technology."
"Oh, way older than that. That's pretty much why we rely on it."
"Because it's old?"
"Because there's no glory in touching it so the devs are happy to leave it alone."
"But I remember hearding it was too slow to use."
"Sure, ten plus years ago. But performance screams now. Because..."
"...no one has touched in ten years."
"Yup. Atrophy is a performance enhancement."
"What's this got to with favicons again?"
"Nothing, I just like doing that. Are you still having the problem?"
"I don't rember you solving it, so I guess yea..."
"Oh, well, try it in 5.1"
"But I've got thousands of users looking at the wrong favicon, I don't know what browser they are using and I can't very well ask them to reinstall an old browser, can I?"
"Have you tried one of those cookie and cache washers? They work great."
"Yea, I've heard that someplace. I'll have to try that."
posted by VS 4:32 PM
Wow! It seems the transition to the new data center is complete -- to be honest I don't get how they could change my IP and (seemingly) update all the DNS tables in the world instantainiously but quite frankly: I don't care either.As of tonight the FS site's performance is screaming because of the new hw they put me on to. (dual PIII 800 with 512MB -- hey, for FS that's a lot, trust me.)
posted by VS 8:45 PM
Wouldn't it be cute if Simon was behind the kaycee debacle?There's a very popular piece on O'Reilly that is essentially a well, duh! rah-rah piece on JavaScript. I could be biased about this since I was made the head of the Active Scripting team in a horrific, not-very-well-reasoned move by upper management and that left a bitter taste in my mouth (as well as other parts). The stint was gratefully short lived however as I turned out to set records on being the world's worst manager. (All the brilliant engineers that flocked to my version of the scripting team because they thought it would be cool to work with/for me couldn't run away fast enough shortly after I actually became their 'boss.')
There's an even more important response however that reflects a huge trend amongst people who browse: turning scripting off. Why? Try it. I did, for a few days last week I just shut it off and I was pleasantly surprised by how high the fidelity of my browsing experience was. And not a single popup.
posted by VS 2:31 PM
Yet another FS reader named Anders (I'm huge in Denmark!) posted a link back to FS in the lounge area of CodeProject.com and FS was hopping as a result. Welcome to all those who stuck. Meanwhile, if you don't know about CodeProject it's a very cool, useful hang-out for developer types with a Microsoft technologies bent.
posted by VS 12:25 PM
Got notified today that my hoster is changing data centers in the next few days. They promise no interruption in service in the short run, and better overall service in the long run, but I thought it wise just to let everyone know in case FS (pronounced "fizz") vanishes for a Net moment.Presumably the trouble with the discussion list and the notify list -- including another stoppage today -- were all traced back to the dc. I still like to think it's all my fault somehow.
posted by VS 12:49 AM
Today I am a blog.If you want to know what Hoard the Black Coffee was actually about, here is a (frighteningly current) article about this particular madness.
posted by VS 1:39 PM