Software, Technology, Business & Life

It seems Windows XP is being phased out:

Fans of the six-year-old operating system set to be pulled off store shelves in June have papered the Internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions recently. They trumpet its superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft’s latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch last January was greeted with lukewarm reviews.

No matter how hard Microsoft works to persuade people to embrace Vista, some just can’t be wowed. They complain about Vista’s hefty hardware requirements, its less-than-peppy performance, occasional incompatibility with other programs and devices and frequent, irritating security pop-up windows.
[…]
“You really can’t make 69 percent of your installed base unhappy with you,” he said.
[…]

This troubles me, too. My wife has Vista on her laptop, and I’m amazed at how it makes a brand new processor feel slow. And how often Internet Explorer 7 has problems.

I don’t feel like I missed a thing when I skipped over Windows ME and 2000. I kind of have that same feeling towards Vista.

Maybe I should be happy. After all, it creates more work for us software folks. More work, but less real progress.

Many Windows apps run under Linux via Wine, or ported to Linux via a variety of tools. Is it time to (re)evaluate?

It’s a good time to think about your criteria: What do you need? What would tempt you to switch?

Stepping into Linux can’t be done casually. You may be trading one set of unknowns for another. Steep new learning curves. You can buy support, but how much will you need? How much will you spend in the end?

I’m amazed at how far Linux has come, but I still don’t think it has caught up as a full-featured desktop. And what flavor? Ubuntu? OpenSUSE? Xandros? Red Hat? CentOS?

30 years from today–that’s January 19th, 2038–at 3:14am, the 32-bit unsigned clocks of legacy Unix systems will roll over. They’ll read January 1, 1970.

I wrote about it here.

More serious than Y2K, since all such clocks will roll over. If you recall, with Y2K it was primarily whether the programmer used two-digit years or accounted for the 1999-2000 transition some other way.

Similarly to Y2K, only those computers making decisions based on the clock/calendar will be affected. For instance, your car won’t since it doesn’t care (or even know) what day it is.

Another similarity: we can easily categorize calendar problems from severe (loss of life) to nuisance to trivial. For instance, if some cash register receipts (or even bank statements) read 1970, that’s unlikely to cause mass insanity/hysteria.

Our best bet is that all such legacy systems will have retired by then. And that’s not too bad a bet, either.

As a consultant, I’m always looking for the perfect Swiss Army knife-type tools related to what I do. Pulling the right adapter or gizmo out of your bag can save the day, avoid embarrassment (yours or your client’s), or make you come off looking like the hero.

But you can’t carry a stack of steamer trunks: small and lightweight are crucial.

Here are a few things I’ve found helpful related to the software I write:

• Of course the USB flash drive (aka flash disk, thumb drive, or USB key) is crucial. They’re getting higher capacity and cheaper by the month.
• This Ethernet cross-over adapter lets me carry just one CAT-6 cable instead of two. It’s very small.
• Trendnet’s USB modem is nearly as small as a thumb drive.
• This Cables-to-Go USB Serial Port has proven itself valuable. The Belkin version is even a little nicer, with 3 LEDs: TX, RX, USB.
• This Eforcity USB Sound Card Adapter gives you another sound card for $5, and is as small as a thumb drive. It’s amazing. (It was a bit confusing when I was looking at these, but it’s the same as this and this.)
• National-tech seems to have lots of little adapters, though I haven’t bought from them.
• If you need USB cables, this kit has them all. Other similar kits are here, here, and here.
• An ordinary chair can be a life-saver (or back/neck-saver) when you’re working in an unfriendly environment. Target sells a camping chair for under $6 that packs into a bag. Well worth the money if you need it. (Sorry, I couldn’t find it online.)

I’ll put more up as I go.

My business has been taking me into elevator machine rooms recently. It’s amazing how far the technology has come.

These elevator drive motors are circa 1938, and still work fine.

These drive motors are new, and a fraction of the others’ size. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I was looking for a years-old appointment and realized I’ve been using a PDA for ten years now. My data goes back to 1997. (I think I’m on my fourth PDA, but I’ve lost count.)

It was a strange realization on a few levels.

It was pretty cool seeing appointments from ten years ago. What was I doing then? What was I working on? Who was I hanging with?

It was strange suddenly looking into my life ten years ago.

It was strange, too, seeing things that I have no idea today what they were (or meant).

Guy Kawasaki, web entrepreneur:

During the dot-com bubble, you needed $5 million to do stupid ideas. Now you can do stupid ideas for 12 grand.

Doing some exploratory work for a VoIP application, I bought this nifty LinkSYS VoIP adapter. But I find that adapter only knows how to find Vonage. The firmware is programmed that way. Easy for Vonage customers, useless to us.

But it seemed to be a reasonable business decision for LinkSys. Sign on with a big player.

Or is it? Vonage recently lost a lawsuit from Verizon, so their future is uncertain.

That makes all these boxes useless. (Or will someone find a creative way to redeem them?)

I threw away a bunch of old software today.

I threw away the CD-ROMs but kept the (plain) sleeves. Ironic, that.

Reminds me of a story I heard: Post-World War II Germany’s hyper-inflation, where someone stole a wheelbarrow full of cash. They stole the wheelbarrow, but dumped the cash.

I’d say this software’s hyper-deflation is about equivalent. (Not to make light of that country’s hardship.)

Software has a life.