A Day in Paradise

Earning season is in full swing and with a couple days before MSFT is scheduled to report earnings, Steve Ballmer lets out that Microsoft will not be creating products which are “much more successful than Vista.”

I am not a huge fan of Vista, but I was one of quite a few people I know who skipped XP all together. Moving straight from Windows 2000 to Windows Vista (disclaimer, I used XP on a laptop – this strengthened my resolve not to use XP on my development machine).

Paul McDougal rants on the failures of Vista, and cites other well sourced articles (also written by him) about states which think Vista sucks so hard, that they are going to use XP until Microsoft pushes out the glorious Windows 7.

Ballmer may have been providing cushioning for an inevitable poor earning report, or may just be reflecting the fact that Microsoft has fundamentally changed the way they create operating systems, and will never again release as big a platform as Windows Vista.

I’ll agree with Paul that Windows 7 will not be as big a platform change as a conceptual change. Windows 7 and the rumored Windows Stratos will focus on the “Cloud” much more than the specific hardware.

Everything is pointing to Microsoft moving away from making their money as a Hardware OS platform and moving towards an internet services model, building a cloud computing platform which will surpass hardware and OS platform.

I am watching this PDC more closely than ever, and my money says that MSFT will do just fine.

It’s been a while since I have been in a blogging mood, but I want to discuss the bruhaha which “Anonymous” has made about the CoS and how they are using Digg as their HQ to get the word out.

Firstly, the Church of Scientology has been under fire for decades, a couple kids protesting outside the office does about as much good as a fart in a hurricane. Ffs, Scientology is banned in Germany that tells you something about the opposition that this group gets. This wannabe shit-storm that a couple of kids are starting will not do ANYTHING except piss of the rest of DIGG users.

Secondly, NOTHING that “Anonymous” has “dugg up” and placed on digg (pardon the pun) has been original. It has all been researched and published by people who really do have reasons to be angry at the Church of Scientology.

Anonymous, this is not your battle. If you want to be useful help the people who do have a reason to be angry and CoS and help promote their cause using them as the Spokespeople, not using them to promote your silly little group. Once you’ve lost interest and move on to other antics the real issues will still remain.

Digg, if you want to retain the attention of anyone who has a intelligence level higher than a bored 7-year-old, I would suggest you section this crap somewhere where we don’t have to be bothered with it.

I am on hold with bellsouth, and the longer they keep me on hold the longer I am going to rant about them. The trouble started before I even got into work, I started getting reports of “flakey internet” so when I get in and do a quick diagnostic sweep and determine that it was our DSL connection was at fault (as opposed to the shitty DNS service that we get which I can get around) I call bellsouth tech support.

That was 4 hours ago.

The first half an hour was spent with them trying to figure out how to get into our account – even though I gave them our username and phone number. I was then put on hold for 5 minutes while they got someone from billing to take care of us. Billing pulled up my information right away (with the exact same information I gave to tech). They then put me back through to tech and I was on hold for another 20 minutes.

After ever 5 minutes or so, the billing person would pick up the line and apologize for the wait. Finally she said “I keep putting you through to a tech, but they just pick up the phone and don’t say anything and then hang up”. I told her to keep trying and 5 minutes later I was on with a tech.

This tech told me that for them to do anything I had to be directly connected to the DSL modem, not any routers. I asked for a direct number which I could call when I was directly connected and they said that they couldn’t give it to me, but I would have to go through the whole process again.

I hauled a computer to the router and plugged it all in… and then called again and spent another 10 minutes on hold before speaking to another tech. This time she asked me a bunch of (the same) questions before and then told me she had to put me through to a tech.

This is the good part – instead of putting me through to a tech, she put me through to her slightly confused hairdresser.

Once I disconnected with the salon, I had to call back into bellsouth and work my way back through to the tech. Once I finally got through to a tech, they said “we can’t run a line test because you’re having an ‘outage’ – if you still have trouble in 30 minutes call back”.

So apparently we have a couple clowns working on our DSL line, and the only site I can access is my blog… oh well, sucks being them!

At least we have our TVs up

Don Dodge coined Web2.0 as “Web App + 2 Founders + 0 Revenue”. Funny, and not too far off the money.

Don goes into detail about the various ways that Web2.0 firms are funding their efforts. This goes from Freemium (free basic membership with paid premium package) to Subscriptions to simple Advertising.

One thing that he doesn’t mention is the “community-in-a-box” business model. A community in a box is not about selling any specific product, it’s simply about creating an exciting product creating a buzz around it, and then delivering eyeballs and mindshare to a larger company.

Let’s face it, despite their best efforts Netscape’s Digg clone failed miserably. Google couldn’t do nearly as good as YouTube despite of the grotesque amount of money at their disposal. Yahoo’s Image Gallery could never do what Flickr does. Nokia could have never attracted a userbase the size of Twango. And whoever pays $x Billion for flixster (or the next social media site) is not going to care about monetizing the site they are going to care about the community they are getting.

One of the main differences between this boom and the first technology boom, is that, like Dan states, Web2.0 can survive as an idea + 2 young enthusiastic founders. All we need to build a community-in-a-box is a good idea, and a couple beat up servers somewhere and a couple hours a night spent cranking out some slick PHP or Ruby code.

Yesterday I read the an article on Network Neutrality on CNN.com. The article was written by Craig Newmark of Craigslist and was VERY wrong.

Here’s part of what bothered me:

Here’s a real world example that shows how this would work. Let’s say you call Joe’s Pizza and the first thing you hear is a message saying you’ll be connected in a minute or two, but if you want, you can be connected to Pizza Hut right away. That’s not fair, right? You called Joe’s and want some Joe’s pizza. Well, that’s how some telecommunications executives want the Internet to operate, with some Web sites easier to access than others. For them, this would be a money-making regime.

That is a VERY misleading analogy on many levels. Here is my counter-analogy.

Steve runs a Pizza delivery service. When his service started he used to charge per-pizza he delivered. The prices weren’t that high, and since I’m too lazy to go out and get my own pizzas I appreciated the service. I didn’t eat as much pizza as I would like to, because Steve’s surcharge was always in the back of my mind.

Once Steve got enough clients, he expanded his business and realized that he could offer a better service by charging a flat-fee. Using this new business model everyone paid a flat monthly fee, and the cost of people who ate a pizza every night (like me) were subsidized by the people who only ate 1 pizza a month.

Everyone had hot pizzas, everyone was happy.

A couple months ago Gpizza opened, they offer all the regular pizzas, but also offer the GSuper 4-course MegaPizza. This pizza comes in 4 parts which are served by midgets waiters. The midgets waiters need to be transported with the pizzas and then brought back to the Gpizza store.

For the first couple months Steve is happy to provide his loyal clients with Gpizzas, even though it did require substantially more resources for Steve to transport the Gpizzas and midgets. As Gpizzas become more and more famous, people start to complain that their Gpizzas are arriving cold, the midgets were tired from the slow ride and weren’t as enthusiastic with their serving the pizzas.

Ypizza, which has been using Steve for 10 years, sees how much money Gpizza is making and decides to make the Ysuper 4-course MegaPizza and one-ups Gpizza by providing a dancing leprechaun along side the 3 midget servers.

Steve sees that he will not be able to provide any service if more Pizza places start offering MegaPizzas. He has two options:

1.Revert to a Per-pizza business model and charge his clients for the delivery of MegaPizzas
2.Charge pizza places for the delivery of MegaPizzas

Gpizza catches wind of this and prepares the “Pizza Delivery Guy Neutrality” bill which mandates that Pizza delivery guys are unable to charge pizza shops extra for delivering MegaPizzas.

Now with silly analogies out of the way, a bit of mythbusting:

The Network is NOT Neutral
Craig says “So let’s keep the Net as it is now: Neutral, fair and free.” The network is currently NOT neutral, it’s free for ISPs to do what they want. Network Neutrality regulation will not free anything, but will restrict the ISPs in the service they can provide.

Bandwidth / Latency costs Money!
High Bandwidth/Latency applications cost money to transfer. The money has to come from somewhere. Creating laws that stop ISPs from charging the Googles, YouTubes and Skypes of the world mean that YOU and I will be paying for it instead.

YouTube/Google/Skype and Craigslist are making money
They can allocate a bit of money to provide good pipes.

When Google rules most of the Cable in the US
How neutral do you think that will be?

Short version – Awesome cinematography, interesting action sequences and CGI – the demonization of the Persians and underlying political rhetoric make the movie hard to watch.

spoilers and ranting ahead… click through at your own risk

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While drinking my coffee this morning I caught up on my PHP Architect mag (yes, I am 3 months behind). The interesting bit was Marco’s rant on the “insurmountable” difficulties in code interoperability. One of the examples was why we can’t use Wordpress plugins inside Serendipity.

The fact of the matter is that it’s not such a big deal. Porting a plugin from Wordpress to Serendipity is usually trivial, and as we see more web-services based plugins (stuff like the awesome askimet) the task becomes simpler and simpler.

Interoperability is overrated, the more you think of it the more complex it gets. As you start throwing in new factors into the equation (how will this interoperate with a java/c# application) you start to develop monsters like JSR 170 which solve a lot of problems on paper, but in reality are too unwieldy to be truly useful.

My steps to interoperability are pretty much the same as steps to writing good code.

1. Use as much abstract code as possible: Most problems have already been solved in stand-alone PHP packages such as those found in PEAR or Zend Framework. These are (mostly) solid and (mostly) well tested solutions, use them!
2. Create new libraries to encapsulate new functionality: If you need to add some complex functionality, create and publish a reusable library which encapsulates the functionality. This will make your work not only simpler to interoperate with other applications, but also enable your code to function in scenarios you may never think of.
3. Keep your “glue code” as simple as possible: When it comes to the proprietary code which glues all your pieces together, keep the probability of someone porting the code to another platform, and stay as simple as possible.
4. Use services: Whenever possible make your application available as a webservice. This will offer a level of interoperability that is available to any application regardless of shape, size and programming language.

In the footsteps of a couple good friends I’ve decided to make the first blog entry of the new year yet another year in review round-up for the year 2006.

It’s hard to believe that we’re already done with 2006, this one went by fast. A lot happened, and due to the overflow of work, I missed a lot of what I did last year (specifically LinuxWorld Expo and LinuxTag).

One of the big work-related events is a new venture that I’ve been working on this year. <project-pimping>HedgeCo Hedge Fund Website Creation was officially launched on December 1st, however about 18 months worth of work had gone into the product and building a client list before the site launch. The sprang out of my work with HedgeCo Networks which involved a the development of a high-end statistics/graphing package which generated quantitative statistics for Hedge Funds. After deploying the product on their flagship product, they started receiving request to license the package on various other website platforms, so the package was reworked into a slimmed down edition which can be deployed in smaller sites.

As we started deploying the product we realized the potential, and reallocated some of the design talent that we had been working on other project into creating entire websites and Hedge Fund start-up consulting/compliance packages. Since our Dec. 1 launch we have had a fantastically profitable month (to keep up-to-date with what we’re doing check out the Hedge Fund Websites blog)</project-pimping>

All of the above required me to reallocate my own time away from other projects, until the point that for the last year I have done little else. So as of Jan 1, 2007 I am officially working full time for HedgeCo Hedge Fund Websites… Freelancer no longer! This year I’m also moving my family up to West Palm Beach, Florida and will be working in the brand new HedgeCo offices (will post pics of when we move in later this month).

OK, so now that I’ve spent all my time pimping my current project I’ll skim through the news.

January: Slow month, Sid officially joined our family as “brother”. I weighed in on the PHP Security debate du jour wondering when good security verges on paranoia and the side effects.

February: Traveled to UK for PHPLondon conference. This was a fantastic event (looking forward to next year), as far as I remembered there were about 250 geeks attending the 1-day event. Got a cool new LCD. In defense of PHPNuke (and other applications of low repute whose name starts with PHP*) I responded to Marco’s post reminiscing about how great PHPNuke was back in the day.

March: Slow month… google releases finance portal, barra stops reporting S&P numbers and screws up my webservice. Tom Fox is Executed.

April: Gearing up for the world cup 32Cards PHP-based card game is released. I start using backpackit to organize my life (note to reader, I stop using it in a couple months, when it stops scaling with my needs). I spent 10 days in Florida, unfortunately missing PHPTek by 10 days.

May: I question open-source for highly specific niche applications (more specifically my statistic package). I enjoy Scott Sigler’s “Infection” which is in full swing. I start watching theshow with ze frank.

June: DSL CRASH!!! I try to “upgrade” my connection by switching providers which turns into 3 weeks on dial-up. During this time I camp at friends houses during all night product launches, and drive everyone around me insane. I finally return. World cup is in full swing, and Germany is World Cup CRAZY! I take pictures.
I travel to Norway for the eZpublish conference & PHPVikinger. Ammar Ibrahim comes to Frankfurt, we watch some football!

July: A slow month… I try Fedora Core, only to get frustrated when I can’t mount my ntfs external drive with the correct permissions (worked fine in root, was able to find no usable explanation). Infection ends. Put out a notice for css code monkeys get more response than I can handle. Macs Rock? During one of the hottest months on record the kids have chickenpox and we are confined indoors.

August: I subscribe to Gail Orenstein’s Flickr feed during her trip to Israel. cool pictures (quite possibly NSFW) with political commentary. Two talks are accepted for ZendCon. I manage to squeeze into the PHPConference schedule at the last minute. We take the kids on a mini-vacation to Legoland and then visit some friends in Switzerland.

September: Catch Mark Nemcoff on in a 5-minute-review. I deploy a site using eZpublish, blog about lessons learned. RIP Lilo. Do some myspace defending.

October: The Pear book is out!. I speculate about google world domination, and yahoo opens up the login api. Spend a week in WPB Florida, then fly to LA and drive down to San Jose for Zendcon.

November: Conference season. Meet Scott Sigler!!! Give talks at Zendcon, fly back home and give tutorial at IPC2k6. After seeing that the Zend Framework is more than hype I take a look at it and start my Zend Framework Hidden Gems article series. I dump backpackit for google docs (which I am still happily using). When is it a good time to rewrite your platform?

December: HedgeCo Hedge Fund Website launch. Fantastic month on the work front, however not a whole lot of time for anything else. David (CPUNerd) on the other hand has way too much time on his hands, and immortalizes me in kilt.

And that’s about it… probably the longest blog entry ever! I’m looking forward to this year as being the craziest yet. I’ll be flying to WPB next week, and for this first quarter will probably spend more time on that side of the pond.

A big THANK YOU to my readers (let’s make that anyone who made it this far into the blog entry). And most of all thanks to Stella, Annie and Mia for putting up with me during this hectic time.

At ZendCon I talked about “Planning a PHP 4 to PHP 5 codebase rewrite, a practical approach”. The talk was based on my own experience, as well as famous discussion of the topic such as Joel Spolsky’s “Things you should never do” and the examination of “famous” platform rewrites.

During my monday morning surf, I bumped into this dailywtf called “No Need to Change It!“. This is an interesting story about a software development company who created car dealership systems. The original system was built in Cobol and the story goes on to explain the various loops that they jumped through to avoid having to rewrite their entire system. These steps included creating a COBOL->C converter (so that they could run under x86), and then the generation of windows forms to run on top of the system so that they could use “new windows technology.”

While it’s obvious that this story was intended to be derogatory, from a business standpoint sounds like a success and probably even something that Joel would be proud of.

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This disturbs me on many levels.

Police brutality is nothing new, but what was most shocking about this video was how little the 100 or more students standing around did to stop it.

The question that needs to be answered is “if not you, then who?” what is the point in having a free country with the constitutional right to bear arms (to form malitias which keep government tryanny in check) if you’re just going to stand around and ask for the cops badge number after he’s needlessly tasered some kid five times? Or are we so scared of our government that we’re powerless to do anything in the face of tyranny.

I’m not going to get involved with what the kid did and what the police did, and whether or not he was an asshole. It really doesn’t matter. Regardless of what the kid did, the police handled it brutally, and the students (and anyone who watches the video) realize that.

Civil uprisings which have overthrown governments have been triggered by less than this. I guess the bright side is that it was captured and now that has seen it maybe next time someone will do something to stop it.

</rant>

This one is at least a little more coherent. I agree with what they say, the problem, is that what they say doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you think my website is ugly and because of all the ugly sites the internet sucks. What matters is that despite (and in some cases, because) of all the crap on the internet people still use it and enjoy it.

Another case of the elitest “there-goes-the-neighbourhood” syndrom.

Having said that, the original list is quite interesting. Notice how YouTube and Del.icio.us are on both lists. Where is Craigs list? Is that just another one of those ugly sites that millions of “uncool people” use?

PCWorld Author Dan Tynan, starts off his “25 Worst Website” list, with what I imagine he thinks is an insightful comment: “When it comes to the Web, hindsight is more like X-ray vision”. I’m not sure if Dan is ignorant, elitist or just suffering from radiation poisoning from over-exposure to X-ray vision, but this article suffers from a severe disconnect from how the real world views and uses the internet.

The technical world is quickly heading into another bubble, call it web2.0 if you like. Articles like these show that we haven’t learned our lessons. The question that I have to ask, is after the boom bursts, who will be left standing, MySpace or YouTube?

The rest is a rant.
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