Tax Problems with Lindens:

Two years ago, I blogged about an IRS proposal to tax in-game profits, in games like WoW and Second Life. I haven't heard much about this trial balloon lately, and I hope it's good and dead, because there's no way to tax such gains, or even estimate their fungible value, fairly. But there is hope ... for me at least. A spammer found my entry and posted a comment beginning "You need us if you have any of these tax problems:". (I've deleted the comment, don't go looking for it.)

Red Tag Sale:

I've been driving past a new automobile dealer who's offering red tag sales. Some cars in his lot fronting the street have enormous red tags on them that say "Red Tag sale" and a price. I don't know about you, but I would never buy a car that had a big red tag on it. The only cars I've ever seen "red-tagged" were abandoned claptraps on parkways, waiting to be towed.

Doubles, 2-Person Shooters:

I was daydreaming about one of my favorite computer experiences. Suddenly I realized that what happened then was not just my story; it's also an exciting new pathway for you. So here goes:
In 1966, working at Princeton, I discovered the Dec PDP-1. (If you follow the link, you'll see the graphical display sitting right next to the computer.) This machine was a revolution! Small by mainframe standards, it cost only $250,000. (In today's dollar terms, considering computer prices, that's about $27.75.) A friend explained to me how DEC managed to make a computer so inexpensively: it was simpler. He made this comparison:
When an IBM mainframe wants to send data to a peripheral, it sends a signal saying “I want to send you data!” The peripheral replies, “Who are you?” The computer says, “I'm the main processing unit!” The peripheral says, “Are you sure?” The computer says, “I'm sure. The peripheral says, “You can talk to me.” The computer says, “I really want to send you data.” The peripheral says, “When?” (and so on, and so on). In comparison, on the PDP-1, the if the computer wants to send data to a peripheral, it says, “Herecomesthedata!”

The PDP-1 was purchased with a federal grant to use in particle-tracking experiments. Images of particle tracks were recorded in a “bubble chamber,” and PDP-1 programs determined what kinds of particles they were. Occasionally. Because, really, the PDP-1 was very busy.

Most of the time, the PDP-1 played the game of “Asteroids.” Two people piloted space ships that could accidentally fall into the sun, bump into debris, or shoot each other. It was a very nice implementation. If you kept playing for 30 minutes without crashing, the stars in the background completed one revolution around the sun.

There were no computer mice in those days, but there were toggle switches that were normally used to patch data into memory. Programs could read those switches. In Asteroids, each player operated four toggles, to: turn left, turn right, accelerate, and shoot. It was a very exciting game, especially since, for most of us, it was the only known computer game in the Universe.

One day the powers that be decided to make us stop. They moved the graphical display, and bolted it into a rack where it could not be seen from the toggle switches. And that was that.

Only it wasn't. And this is the exciting part that you must take to heart! From then on, we played “doubles”. Each team had a navigator who sat in front of the screen and desperately shouted commands; and a pilot who operated the toggles. The doubles game was much harder to play, and it was ten times more fun.

What modern computer game can be played this way? Just think of one of those shoot-em-up games, where you might play doubles: you'd work the mouse, and your friend would scream at you where to move and where to shoot.

Science Fiction, Fantasy: Which is which?

You might assume that there's a clear demarcation between science fiction and fantasy, but in fact, the dividing line is fuzzy. When I was young, I satisfied a lot of my taste for both genres by reading the Fantasy and Science Fiction mag. That magazine's very name suggested that there was a common audience for both types, and perhaps it also reflected the editors' desire to avoid deciding which was which. Today, it appears that there's a much greater audience for science fiction, and so the question of which is which becomes more relevant.

Now here's an obvious way to decide, but for me, it often fails to work: Science fiction deals with the future, with modes of science, transportation, robotics, communications and gunnery so far uninvented or uninventable. The rest of fiction, if not realistic, is fantasy. I recently read what is clearly a marketed as a fantasy novel, but after awhile, it became science fiction for me. In this novel, the great conceit is that the Horn of Merlin lies at the bottom of the sea and works its magic on all around it, giving the plants, creatures and even nearby humans a sort of immortality. You can see this immortality in the way their DNA has changed, giving them the ability to always heal themselves. On this matter, and several related magical ones, the author bores me to tears by trying to explain how, scientifically, these things could REALLY HAPPEN.

Here's a my dividing line: In science fiction, the author tries to persuade you that no matter how outlandish matters are, they are just a few scientific breakthroughs from what we know today. In fantasy, the author introduces some preposterous concepts and requests your “willing suspension of disbelief.” And please notice, my definition dovetails nicely with the words “science fiction:” This is a field of fiction that pretends to base itself on science.
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5733:

When I started swimming last May, I bought a digital lock for the locker room. I chose a lock with four digits rather than three. (Three-digit locks were $5 cheaper.) I knew that no one was going to open my lock in any case. I'm using it in a locker room where many people use no lock at all, even to protect their wallets. But ... I wanted never to waste a moment of anxiety over my stowed gear.

I initially set the combination to a familiar, memorable number. But over the months, I occasionally changed the number, for reasons that utterly escape me. When we came home from vacation in November, I realized I hadn't a clue what the number was. I had a completely useless lovely lock.

I bought a much cheaper and smaller 4-digit lock. This one has been a bitch too use. It barely fits, and in order to fit, it has bent just enough to make it hard to close. Last December I set about figuring out the combination of the original lock. I was pretty sure the first digit was 1, 4, 5, or 8. That meant testing at most 4,000 combinations. I figured, a few each day, I'll eventually get it. I started with the five thousands. (By the way, all the numbers in this story have been changed, to protect: me. I'm a touch paranoid about my lock.)

As I worked on the old lock, I began to lose some respect for it. My routine was to move a digit, tug; move a digit, tug. I noticed that I could tug a little further before meeting resistance, when the lock was set to any odd number, and it tugged even better if the last digit was a 3. When I got to 5533, my tug moved the handle a lot. I decided to try all the numbers ending in 33!
5633, 5733, and the lock opened!

What a relief, I can use my good lock again. But really, it's too easy to figure out the combination.

Public Address System Distractions:

Our fitness Center has a Public Address system. A typical announcement goes like this: “Attention all staff. Attention all staff. Alex, please pick up the phone.”
All messages are for staff, but I always listen to them. I used to work at a company that had a PAS and almost never used it. The managers felt that every announcement would cause at least 150 people to lose their train of thought for a few minutes, a productivity cost of over $1,000 per message. I don't agree with them, but I do agree that public announcements ARE distracting.

In the current case, part of the distraction, for me, is a recurring question: why say “Attention all staff”? when the message isn't for all staff, it's just for Alex Hepplemonger? Why not just say, “Alex Hepplemonger, pick up the phone!” But we know that wouldn't work. Alex H. would miss his name, not paying attention, and meanwhile, some new customer, Alex Oberlander, would rush to the desk to ask if the call was for him. I've decided to assume that, in effect, these PAS announcements really mean the same as this: “Alex Allstaff, Alex Allstaff, pick up the phone.”

I tried to negotiate the terms of a website EULA and lost. Or did I win?

I'm going to warn you about an awful “Terms of Service” (ToS) term that you might not want to agree to. And I'm going to tell you how I tried to negotiate that term with a big website. I'll tell you the whole story, but first I want to mention that the day I received a form letter from www.ning.com, refusing to negotiate their ToS, I felt really bummed out. Hours passed before I realized I had won, not lost. Here's what happened:

NING provides software and facilities to operate social communities and forums. They wrote me that over 150,000 have accepted their terms of service. The ToS contains this amazing paragraph:

You must be a registered User to create Networks on the Ning Platform. Networks and their Network Creators, in turn, determine whether Users need to be registered with Ning to contribute Content in that Network. That is up to the discretion of the Network Creator. As a User, you are responsible for keeping your password secure. Names of Social Networks and Ning IDs are non-transferable. You will be solely responsible and liable for any activity that occurs under your Ning ID.

I am not a lawyer (my father was!). But I believe that if you agree to this ToS, you have unlimited liability, possibly in the millions, if some hacker figures out how to log in as you and damages Ning. That's true even if you have selected an abstruse password and kept it very secret. Can you imagine 150,000 agreeing to this term? I admit that the risk could be very small, but if they get you, you may lose every dollar you have. And you've agreed in advance not to fight them when they blame you. What is worth that risk? I wouldn't agree to that ToS, and neither would security expert Bruce Schneier. (Here's Schneier's blog.) I asked him about this term, and he wrote to me:
I wouldn't accept it. And my guess is that over 150,000 people didn't bother to read their ToS.

Ning is not the only website to use this term. Here's a search for the offending words.

Now let me ask you: are you one of those people who have blithely agreed to this ToS term? Is the risk that important to you? Please think about it. Lawyers who write ToS's can put in anything they want, as long as we're willing to sign anything they want.

I faced this term a few years ago at a different web site. I'm a software consultant, and I was looking for work. A friend told me to join a website that listed work openings at his company. He said that several were just right for me. “Pick one,” he said, “And I'll help you get the work.” But I could not agree to that ToS clause, so I never saw the job openings and never got the work.

This time I really wanted to join a NING community at PodioBooks.com. I was having trouble producing some audio, and I knew their forums would have the solution to my problems. So I tried a crazy scheme. I edited my own version of the NING ToS. I joined NING, “agreeing” to their ToS, but I immediately wrote them and told them that I had agreed to my own version of the ToS. My change was to add one sentence to the poisonous paragraph. Again, let me emphasize, I am not a lawyer:

You must be a registered User to create Networks on the Ning Platform. Networks and their Network Creators, in turn, determine whether Users need to be registered with Ning to contribute Content in that Network. That is up to the discretion of the Network Creator. As a User, you are responsible for keeping your password secure. Names of Social Networks and Ning IDs are non-transferable. You will be solely responsible and liable for any activity that occurs under your Ning ID. Except that you will not be responsible and liable for any activity that happens under your Ning ID, having kept your password secure, if another person or computer or computer program logs in as you, without your assistance or authorization, and performs any activity.

I must stress that I did this in good faith. I wondered if they would respond to me. I considered that they might accept my change, since their own ToS is so unfair. During the three days it took for NING to respond to me, I consulted the podiobooks forum, asked questions and got answers. I solved my immediate problem. Then I got this message from NING, which I believe is a form letter:

Thanks for your note. Unfortunately, we do not negotiate our Terms of
Service. These are the "rule of the road" that all of our Members and
Network Creators have agreed to without exception on over 150,000 Social
Networks. If we had to negotiate our terms with each and every one, we
would never be able to keep up or get any sleep, for that matter. If you
don't agree to the Terms of Service as they are posted on our website,
you can discontinue your use of the Platform. We would be really sad to
see you go, but unfortunately that's the only choice here. Thanks.

You can't negotiate with a form letter, so I had to leave. I'm no longer a member of NING.But the bottom line is. I did get to use their system, to solve my immediate problem at Podiobooks! I wasn't locked out of their website, and I did NOT bind myself to NING's terms! I will do the same thing in the future, the next time another company tries to force terms on me that I cannot accept. I won't be locked out by some totally unfair ToS. At least, not for a while, so that I can get my work done.

(This has been the full story of my adventure with NING. See my Jan 22 and Jan 30 entries of this year for the beginning of the story.)

Staying in Sync:

As we entered the Lincoln Tunnel tonight, I recalled a lovely memory of my father. We listened to Bach's sixth Brandenburg concerto all the way through the tunnel. But it was not always thus. When I was a kid, entering a tunnel meant losing the radio station until you came out. In the tunnel, my father's great game was to continue to sing – or whistle – the music, trying to stay in tempo and not to forget an iota of the piece. When he did this perfectly, then, when the radio came to life again, he would be in sync with the broadcast. He did rarely achieve this challenging goal, and he often came close.

I'm Cringing about this!

On Tuesdays, I get up early for my radio show. I get dressed, and then I check out the electronic stuff that hangs on my belt. One recent Tuesday, my cell phone showed me I had missed a phone call. I called back. It was 5:30 A.M.!! Fortunately I realized at once that I was an idiot, and killed the call before it rang. I hope. I almost woke some poor friend in the middle of the night! I must be more careful about this. I must be more careful about this. Really, I must.

Actually, it's the phone's fault. It shouldn't be so easy to return missed calls.

Microsoft Windows, Shut Up! (1)

Microsoft Windows has a terrible behavior. I cannot believe this annoyance has survived for years. I'm sure the person who wrote this bit of software never had the slightest interest in using it.

I refer to the Windows audio volume control. If you move the slider to change the setting, then OF COURSE you want some response, to know the computer has done what you asked, right? Do you think it would be too much to ask the slider to move, to show you that the volume is changing? No, of course it wouldn't be too much. Unfortunately, it's not enough! Windows BEEPS to tell you that it has obeyed the volume change command.

Any idiot can tell you that we change the volume in order to hear better. We do not change the volume to hear something inaudiblized by a BEEP!

Too many choices:

I understand that I'm lucky: most health clubs do not provide towels for members. Near the showers, there's a set of four shelves, like a book case. Each shelf is heaped high with three piles of towels. They're all the same: white terrycloth. Now do you see where I'm going? When it's time to shower, I have to decide which of TWELVE piles to reach for, to grab a towel. The top piles are sometimes too high. The middle piles are sometimes squashed in under the next-higher shelf, making them hard to take. The bottom piles are too low, but if the other piles are depleted … the point is, I have twelve choices, so I have stop to think, when I'm already tired and exhilarated from whatever. This is unfair.

But now, it has gotten worse. Or maybe better, I'm not sure. These days, the towels are not all the same. The nap varies, from practically flat, to thick and efficient. That thick nap gets you dry a lot better and faster, and it just feels more luxurious.

So now I have to look at TWELVE piles to find the one that clearly has a thick-nap towel on top. Or near the top, if I can bear to increase my pool of choices to, forty-eight, say. This, also, is unfair.

That damn, blinking "12:00":

We still use our VCR. If you don't, then please allow me to remind you that most of the time, most VCRs blink "12:00" at you. The reason they blink is to remind you to set the time in the VCR. The main reason you don't is that you don't need to set the time unless you plan to setup a VCR "record in advance" command. Every time you unplug the VCR, it forgets the time anyway.
The other reason you let it blink (if you're like me), is that you know how Murphy's Law works: if you set the time on the VCR, you'll soon have a power outage -- yup -- and it will start to blink again.

The Blinking 12:00 on VCRs has been called one of the worst user interface blunders of all time.

But it's fixed now. I covered that 12:00 with black electrical tape. Let it blink, I'll never see it.

Org Chart Blues – Vanquished.

I've worked in organizations of 100 to 500 people who experienced horrible, traumatic events with org charts. Imagine a wide sheet of paper full of boxes, showing all the managerial hierarchy. Now I'll tell you about my two favorite disasters:

(1) There was a hurried layoff and a reorg. We all got together in the auditorium to be told what a much better company we were now. Somebody asked about the org chart. “It's not ready yet,” we were told. We knew what that meant: the remaining high level managers were still arguing about who manages whom. Five unsure months passed, during which, as you might guess, there was no sure hand on the tiller. At last, we got an org chart. The next reorg followed a few weeks later.

(2) There was a gigantic, hurried reorg. We all got together in the auditorium to be told how the organization had refocused on its goals. The new org chart was passed out,and a speaker started to explain it.
One of the six most senior managers in the room howled “I'm not on the org chart!”
“See me later,” said the speaker. No, the fellow was not fired, but he was off the org chart for a trembly month.

The company I work at now has no such problems, because it does not seem to have a classical org chart. There is a data base anyone can consult to look up people's phone numbers, office addresses, and also who they manage, and who manages them. And of course it's kept up to date, as much as Murphy's Law and the old classical uncertainties allow. If this new-fangled org chart is totally out of kilter, nobody might notice, because you can only see a little piece of it at a time. I was thinking about that today when I looked up the person responsible for my work. According to the “org chart” we are in a tight loop: he oversees my work, and my work is overseen by him; and he reports to nobody. (But of course he DOES report to somebody, the “org chart” is just a wee bit behind the times.)

Have you accepted liability fro $10,000,000 of Damage? Or more?

Last Jan 22, I blogged about my attempt to get www.NING.com to accept my modified Terms of Service so that I could use their account. When this story is over (somehow, it isn't!), I will tell you all about it. But meanwhile, I want to warn you, in case you agreed to a similar term.

I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect this ToS term means what it says: that regardless of how careful you are, you are responsible for any damage done by a hacker who logs in, somehow, as you:

Accounts, Passwords, and Security
You must be a registered User to create Networks on the Ning Platform. Networks and their Network Creators, in turn, determine whether Users need to be registered with Ning to contribute Content in that Network. That is up to the discretion of the Network Creator. As a User, you are responsible for keeping your password secure. Names of Social Networks and Ning IDs are non-transferable. You will be solely responsible and liable for any activity that occurs under your Ning ID.

You say you don't know what ToS terms you've ever agreed to? Well for starters, here's a Google search of some websites who have that ToS.

NING told me that over 150,000 people have accepted their ToS. I think the chance of me personally having to pay for hacker-caused damages is very small. The collective risk to any of 150,000 people might be greater.

By the way, I assume that every web site that uses this ToS term -- especially NING -- has excellent security to prevent the type of breakin I fear. If so, it might even be safe to agree to this ToS term. But security is not perfect, and none of these sites has shown me how they keep my data secure. In the lack of knowledge, I shall be cautious. What about you?

Name Tag:

You know those events where they put your name on a tag? I saw a woman named: Shrill Price. That's what her tag said. Sometimes you can't just keep your mouth shut, you have to ask, and I'm glad I did.
"Say, you have an unusual name!"
"Oh, it's Sherill Price, I haven't had time to get them to correct it."

Terms of Service: Silly Legal!

I'm sure you're all aware that legal issues are often decided by common sense. In other cases, the precise letter of the law governs all. It's risky to rely on common sense, because you never know when you've got to pay exact attention to what a law, or a contract says.

I hope that bit of philosophy helps you to understand why I thought thrice before agreeing to yet another Terms of Service for a major software product. (By the way, I'll soon tell you the full story of my attempt to modify a company's Terms of Service, the story I began last Tuesday, the 22nd. I have good news and bad news.)

Anyway, the company I work at has some crown jewels, and one of these is a product that I am helping to evolve. (I'm just a bit player here, I claim no credit for its brilliance.) I had to install it today, so that my newest software would become part of it in our current project. Frankly, I simply could not agree to this term in the ToS:
You may not: ...
· reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, modify, translate, make any attempt to discover the source code of the Software, or create derivative works from the Software;
· separate the Software into component parts for use by more than one user;


If you were to ask me what I DO at work, I would say that the above lines pretty much describe it. How can I agree NOT to do my daily work? But I had to agree to the ToS, in order to do exactly what it forbids.

Common sense better prevail this time.

HOWLS:

I have invented a new kind of word puzzle: The “HOWL”, or Homonymic Word Ladder. In an ordinary word ladder, you change one word into another in a series of steps. At each step, you change one letter, in place, to form a new word. In a HOWL, you are also allowed to replace a word by its homonym. Here's a simple example: Build a HOWL from Duet to Pucker:

Duet
Duct
Ducked
Sucked
Sucker
Pucker.

Here's a simple one for you: Build a HOWL from rind to shine.

Email: so polite!

HP sent me an advertisement about a new computer. Their ad is full of pictures. It's tricked up in tons of HTML. But HP knows that some email programs cannot display HTML properly. So the ad begins with a little message for those poor users.

Gmail showed me just part of that message, but I think they had exactly the right idea:
If you are having difficulty viewing this mess

Espresso Squeeze:

I've been brainwashed by the search for the perfect cup of coffee. I am not a participant in this search, but I read about it all the time. I have an expensive espresso coffee maker. It's expensive by my standards, but purists would laugh at how little I've spent on my hardware. I believe I make espresso that's better than any Starbuck, better than most coffee houses can make. That's good enough for me.

But yesterday, reading about $11,000 and $20,000 devices that brew a truly, truly, amazingly, remarkably, perfectly fine cup, I realized that I had to get this brainwashy idea of coffee perfection out of my head. I acted on my perception, and now I can recommend to you a truly practical way to use your espresso maker. If anything, my coffee-making is now influenced by the Gongfu method of tea-making.

First, use your espresso maker to make your cup of coffee. Enjoy it. If it pleases you, that's perfection. But note: espresso coffee generally has less caffeine than regularly brewed coffee. Not enough perhaps, to face the day. But never fear! You can empty the little basket, pour in fresh grounds, and start over, can't you?

No! Stop! This is where we make our mistake!

After you've made that first cup, there's lots of caffeine left in the used grounds. Run some more steam through for cup #2. And cup #3. And maybe even cup #4. Give up when the “brewed” liquid hardly looks brown. We're not trying for taste now! We'll probably mix this stuff with milk, sugar, honey, anything to cover the weak taste. But there's CAFFEINE in there! We paid for it, we packed it into our espresso maker, and we deserve to push it right into our eager bodies.

I'm a little wired right now, but that's all right. My caffeine will last me through the day.

Who's to Blame for those sub-prime mortgages?

Yesterday, a New York Times article pointed out that everybody is suing everybody over the collapse of the subprime mortgages and the financial instruments built upon them. They ask, in that case, who's to blame? My suspicion is that an awful lot of the big entities who traded this junk knew what they were getting into, and they could all have used an extra dose of decency. But this stuff is way beyond me. I won't offer you any financial analysis; I'll just tell you a little story that my father liked. I'm afraid it's ... germane.

A man calls another man and says, "I've got a shipment of sardines to sell you. Ten cents a tin."
"Sounds okay," says the other. "I'll buy it."
Shortly afterwards, that fellow calls a friend. "I've got a shipment of sardines to sell you. Eleven cents a tin."
"Sounds good," says his friend. "I'll buy it."
Later, that fellow makes a call ... and right here, we'll make a long story short.
A few days later, the original fellow gets to wondering what happened to his trade. He calls his friend, calls that friend's friend, and so on, until he gets to the guy who bought the shipment for eighteen cents a tin.
"And who did you sell it to?" he asks.
"I'm not selling it. The wife and I LIKE sardines. We're going to eat them. When do they ship?"
"When do they ship? What do you mean? These sardines are only for buying and selling!"

Anyody want to live in a sardine tin?

I'm trying to modify a web site's Terms of Service, and it feels Great!

Several times, I have given up on joining a web community because I could not accept their terms of service. The problem is a common phrase that makes me too liable (see below). Today I just really wanted to join a website, to participate in their forums. I did join, but I tried something new: I emailed them that I had agreed to modified terms of service, and gave them a month to get back to me if they disagree. I have no idea what legal force this has. MFWAL (My father was a lawyer.)

Here's the obnoxious term. It's a common one on the internet:

"You must be a registered User to create Networks on the [xxx] Platform. Networks and their Network Creators, in turn, determine whether Users need to be registered with [xxx] to contribute Content in that Network. That is up to the discretion of the Network Creator. As a User, you are responsible for keeping your password secure. Names of Social Networks and [xxx] IDs are non-transferable. You will be solely responsible and liable for any activity that occurs under your Ning ID."

The last sentence is the problem. The above paragraph proposes to hold me responsible for anything that might happen if a hacker, or anyone with inside access, figures out how to log in as me, even if I keep my password secret and do not authorize, aid or abet them. I cannot accept responsibility for such events that are totally beyond my control. (In fact, I know of websites that do not even encrypt their user's passwords. This particular website has not told me what they do with my password. They never do!)

I added the following sentence to the above paragraph:

"Except that you will not be responsible and liable for any activity that happens under your Ning ID, having kept your password secure, if another person or computer or computer program logs in as you, without your assistance or authorization, and performs any activity."

I have no idea what's going to happen, but I feel unexpectedly great!
First, I got to use their forums, and even if they throw me off in a few weeks for trying to modify their TOS, I haven't been shut out.
Second, I don't feel like someone is walking over me with their TOS. I agreed to MY form of their TOS, and now I believe I'm negotiating with them.

They have till feb 20 to respond to me. I'm sure I'll be eager to fill you in.

One of 237 reasons for having sex:

Now I want to be clear: this is a reason for OTHER people to use. Not people like you and me, except possibly in the privacy of our own homes. There was a study about why people have sex. Of the 237 reasons given, this one is quite striking:
The opportunity presented itself.

Vista's failure: Did history repeat itself?

Microsoft's new Vista operating system has been widely viewed as a failure, having sold perhaps 100 million copies in its first year. Now please indulge me, and assume it really IS a failure. There are reasons for thinking it so. I believe that one great reason for its failure can be found in this well-known quote from George Santayana, who said something like this: Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

But now it gets interesting. What did MS fail to learn from history? First, let's look at: Drivers.

I was there when Windows competed directly against IBM's OS 2. I developed software for both these OS's at the same time. Many reasons were suggested for OS2's abject failure, despite its greater reliability and wide range of features. One of the causes is almost undisputed: it was much harder to develop a driver for OS2 than for Windows. Typically, we said that it took six months to learn to write an IBM device driver. (It took one to two months for a Windows driver.) That meant that many line printers, scanners, special devices and boards were unsupported when IBM's new OS came out. Many existing devices were never supported.

Look at the economics. Those six months of coming up to speed meant a likely cost of $50,000 to $100,000 to develop a driver. If you expected to sell a hundred boards, or a thousand printers, then that cost, typically multiplied by two times or more, just WHOMPED your retail price. For a product that had 1000 satisfied users, but no more likely sales in the future, that $50k to $100k was prohibitive; your device would never run under OS2.

One great characteristic of Vista is that it is much harder to write drivers for. The difficulty stems largely from Microsoft's attempt to support digital rights management everywhere, so that there's no way to copy something for free as data is passed around in your PC. This goal is impossible to achieve, but MS required video and audio vendors to TRY HARD, and much complexity resulted. In many cases, working drivers were not ready in time to deliver with Vista, and fixes had to be downloaded. It's likely that 99% or more of all Vista installs worked perfectly, but the people whose hardware stopped working have been very vocal. It looks like MS failed to learn the lesson of device drivers, a lesson less than twenty years old.

But I think that it's a different history lesson that MS failed to heed: the lesson of the IBM OS/370 operating system. IBM delivered many new and different mainframes in the1950's and 1960's. They developed a new OS for each major mainframe. Every OS had wonderful improvements, and IBM's customers dutifully moved to the new OS each time it came out.

OS/360 was the last OS that IBM's customers blindly adopted. It was a gigantic change from what came before, and the costs of upgrading and retraining were stupendous. Around 1970, when IBM released OS/370 and asked everyone to upgrade, its customers got nasty. They mentioned the great costs of upgrading, and stayed where they were if they possibly could.

What was IBM's lesson in this mess? The lesson was that they needed to remember that they were competing with themselves. Their outside competition was minuscule, six companies with tiny market shares. But OS/370 had to compete with IBM's own entrenched OS/360, and there, it nearly failed.

Microsoft's operating systems also have little outside competition. Mac OS, Unix and Linux have a minority share of the market. But Vista has had to compete with Microsoft's own entrenched Windows XP. Microsoft forgot that they have to compete with themselves as well as with others. That's the lesson they failed to learn.

The Skulking Scofflaw:

My car's registration sticker says “11” on it. But November came and went without my getting my car inspected. My car's old; I expected it to fail. I'm trying to nurse it through old age. I don't want to pay a few hundred bucks to get through reinspection.

But now it's January, and I always fear getting a ticket for not getting inspected on time. Today was the day! I greatly feared being stopped by a policeman on the way to inspection and getting that $65 ticket.

“I'm going to get inspected right now,” I would say to the policeman.
“Yeah. Right,” he would say.

So in hope of getting, at worst, a warning, I printed a page on my printer that said I was going, on Jan 15 at noon, to inspection. I signed it with a magic marker in my kitchen. I have NO magic markers in my car, so if a policeman stopped me, I would really look like I was on my way to inspection!

I drove all back roads to the inspection station. Fortunately – VERY fortunately, as you will see – the line was short.

I got up to the inspection guy. He looked at my car and did a mild double take. Then he walked over.

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” he asked.
“What's the good news?”
“Your inspection sticker is good till November 2008. You're good!”
“What's the bad news, then?”
“You have to leave.”

I left.

Ideal Hotel Temperature:

It costs a lot of money to heat (or cool) a big hotel, especially in a warm country. And the hotel we stayed at in Israel had a tight budget. We learned to our surprise that we did not want to be caught in weather between 70 and 77 degrees! Below 70, our room was reasonably cool. Above 77, it was air-conditioned. In between, our room was just hot. Very tricky ...

Would you (12) open an Email with this Subject?

• she coils her creamy muscles
  
• URGENT GREETINGS!
  
• The difference between soft and regular Alan
  
• Your Manhood is in danger
  
• icosahedron but molecule the spiny
  

Or would you open an email from:

• Fidelity M. Loonier
• Account: Opened
• Baroness Karen Peterson
  

I did read one spam message I shouldn't have opened, and this is what it said:
"Any movie theater can conquer near gypsy, but it takes a real snow to for tomato."

Macho:

There are challenges in life that bring out the macho in the man. Today, the challenge was my electric razor. I want to change the razor's battery, because it holds a charge for about 36 hours. My razor is held shut by two screws. Removing them allows me to see what the battery is and order a replacement. Or so I thought.

The two screws were screwed in tight. The screwheads seemed to require a Phillips screwdriver, but the depression in the center of the screwhead wase shallow. That meant a screwdriver of the approximate correct size did not make firm contact with the screwhead slots, and the screw refused to turn. I tried small regular screwdrivers, and they got into the slots, but they were too fragile to survive enough torque to turn the screws. (If you're wondering, the screws looked like they would not fit a “star” screwdriver either.)

So I took my razor to my Ace hardware store to find the ideal screwdriver. And when I quickly failed, I asked an employee to try. This guy took more than ten minutes, trying many screwdrivers, twisting with all his might, and stripping my screwheads. When none of the store's screwdrivers fit, he pulled his own eighteen-screwdriver thingy out of his pocket and kept trying. Well, eventually he gave up, but not before using up all his macho spirit.

I asked him to select the Phillips screwdriver that came closest to matching the screw, and I bought it. I took it home and clipped the point off the screwdriver. It now fit perfectly into the screwhead, and wish I had some good news to report.

I got the razor partly open and discovered that a wire is actually GLUED to th outer surface of the battery. Opening the razor fully will require fiddling a lot of wires. It does not look like an operation for the casual end-user.

Now I went macho on my previous electric razor, trying to install batteries and watching a few small parts spring across the room and vanish. Enough! I got this razor at a great price, and it will cost almost as much to send it away for a battery change.

CNN Weather advisory:

Yesterday, I watched CNN on an overhead monitor (no sound). The following weather warning caught my eye:

TORNADO WATCH IN NORTHEAST


Actually, that was not the entire advisory. I eventually noticed the second line:

TORNADO WATCH IN NORTHEAST
ARKANSAS AND WEST MISSIPPI

I'm in New Jersey; I can relax now.

Plan your vacation around your work schedule! Not!

I remember a rather hysterical period in my work career: The whole group tizzied, trying to meet a long string of nearly impossible deadlines. Our manager wanted very badly to take a week off to ski. But there was a particularly critical moment in our project, and she just HAD to be at work then, so she scheduled her ski trip after that critical moment. The project slipped, so she rescheduled. And so on, for three slipping, rescheduling months.

I made up my mind then that I would never plan my vacation around my work schedule. Just plan the trip, buy the tickets, and hope for the best. I've scheduled vacations to conflict with critical work moments many times, yet I think there has never been a vacation/work schedule conflict for me.

By the way, when I said that this project had nearly impossible deadlines, I meant it. Here's how we referred to three of those deadlines in our formal schedule:

• Fool our manager into thinking the completed software compiles.
• Fool our director into thinking that the main functionality works.
• Fool the customer into thinking that the software's ready to ship.

And imagine how proud we were, when the software actually was ready to ship.

A recipe today, Winter Squash Fu-fu:

I cooked a squash that looked like a giant acorn, but probably any winter squash will do. Cut the squash in half and remove the seeds and their binding strands. Then take your titanium spork (I doubt an ordinary fork will work as well) and scrape, scrape, scrape away at the squash's interior. You will eventually scrape free hundreds of short strands. Gently transfer these to a hot, oily pan and fry gently. Delicious! (You might add black pepper to taste. You might also fry the squash, as I did, with sweet plantain.)

Human Nature again:

We went to our exercise place today, and it was unbelievably crowded. In six months, we've never seen so many people there. Almost all of the dozens of treadmills and cycling and stepping machines were busy. One of the trainers said it's always like this on January first. Seems like people make resolutions ...