On my way early tomorrow, driving from Contoocook to Knoxville. I-89 to 93 to 495 to 290 to 90 to 84 to 81 to 40. 985 miles as the crow flies, 1024 on my route. Layover in northern Virginia. Hope to arrive in time to get my broadband set up Monday afternoon. Wish me luck.
Archive | 2003
Microsoft dragging its heels at licensing software to competitors?
The Washington Post reports
Microsoft Corp. is taking too long to alter how much it charges competitors for technology that is necessary for their products to work with the software giant’s systems, the Justice Department told a federal judge yesterday.
Happy Fourth of July!
Enjoy Independence Day!
Email offline
Something’s gone wrong in my email configuration, and I’m trying to chase it down. Currently, email sent to the tedroche.com domain seems to be disappearing into the ether, without a trace nor a bounceback. Those of you who know me know the alternate email addresses to contact me; those who don’t can use the the little letter icon on the right. Sorry about that, folks.
TedRoche.com doesn’t support their own mail server, as I’ve left that to others. Typically, the MyDomain.com server holds the MX record, and they provide the forwarding to one or the other of my ISPs. Today, however, mail is vanishing without a trace, and no one seems to be able to explain why. Very frustrating.
And just like that, with no warning, it’s back. Go figure. Sorry if your mail got lost in the ether somewhere. Please resend.
A catchy phrase
7/4/1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Linked via Scripting News.
The Hyperlinked Declaration of Independence, courtesy of Duke University. A wonderful document, with some interesting hyperlinks. Well worth reviewing for those interested in American history.
July? When did that happen?
Whew! “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans…” Time flies, and all that. Hope June was good for you, too. On the road, later today, so few posts until I’m back in the home office. Hope I can get out of town before the tropical storm peaks. Knoxville’s forecasted for 3 or 4 inches of rain tomorrow…
Hittin’ the fan….
I’m disappointed to see a (un)civil war breaking out in the blogging community over RSS and a proposed new technique, nicknamed “Echo.” While there are surely limitations to the older formats (lack of well-formedness, difficulty in parsing), there is the undeniable situation of an existing standard, or standards. ASCII had limitations, too, but tearing it all down and replacing it with a new format might not have been the right thing to do. Progress and evolution of a standard to a better one is better than breaking everything out there.
From [Jon’s Radio]: Voices. So many voices in this most tumultuous of the many tumultuous moments I’ve lived through, in my five years of involvement with the RSS phenomenon. So many people taking time away from friends and family, this weekend, to consider the matters at hand. So tempting to simplify it all as a silly-season little-endian/big-endian tempest in a teapot. So much at stake. Update: So sad the voice that started it all has, for now, gone silent. Further update: And now is back, thankfully.
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Engaging with the Open Source Community
The Inquirer has two parts of their series on “Engaging with the Open Source Community:” Part One and Part Two posted already. I’ve only skimmed the article so far, and I’m ploppoing them up here as a bookmark. Links via SlashDot
Crossing the beams would be… bad. So would pressing that button.
Crashed the laptop hard this morning, just clicking on Windows Explorer. Restarting Outlook took many minutes, so I decided it was time to do some personal folders cleanup (after a backup, of course). Dropped about 20,000 messages from email lists with good archives, and decided to compact the file. Warning: don’t try this at home kids, except perhaps overnight. In LookOut, er, Outlook 2000, File, Data File Management, Settings…, Compact Now, puts up a silly dialog with “Compacting” and a Cancel button. For hours. No progress indicator, no clues. What does “Cancel” do? Is it partially compacted, rolled back, or corrupted? (I know which one I’d guess.) How long will it take? What’s the result? No clues.
Welcome to User Interface Hell.
Two hours later, and it is done thrashing the hard disk. The result? No change in size. Sheesh.
A shutdown and restart (for unrelated reasons) and Outlook hangs on startup. Another shutdown and restart and I get a message starting outlook that the “Send to Bluetooth” option hung up Outlook the last time, and allows me to disable it.
Do computers ever behave the same way twice?
Isn’t It Ironic? Well, no.
“Ironic” seems to be the buzz-adjective of 2003, misused in nearly all situations. Zoe Williams of the Guardian attempts to set the record straight in this column.