March 2005

Open source

March 15, 2005

As I noted recently I'd had some difficulties with closed-source software. I also worked with some open-source software that I had a problem with. The difference in the two ended up being that with the closed-source software I spent several weeks trying in vain to get the problem resolved (which I did today). With the open-source I posted here and within an hour had the answers and a great new place to find information.

Places to avoid

March 15, 2005

Perhaps I should start a list of places to avoid. These are businesses that don't understand customers. For several months I'd regularly shopped at an ARCO station at the corner of Paradise Road and Tropicana Avenue. Tonight there was a new sign on the pump saying credit cards had to go inside to pay. If I'll pay the ATM-tax imposed by the station owners I can pay at the pump, if not I have to go inside.

It seems this is probably to get more customers to use the ATM instead of the credit card function of the pump and to shift the costs from the profitable company to the individual consumer. With a little good luck the plan will fail, however. In my case at least, they have gone from a customer spending a few hundred dollars a month at their store to a non-customer. I'll gladly stop a block away and not have the hassle of going inside to pay.

The decline and fall of the Google empire

March 12, 2005

Dave Winer says "the thing that made Google different is that you treated us decently while the earlier search engines forgot who we were, and were treating us like eyeballs, not people."

The comment is part of a discussion on the way Apple is treating some of it's supporters in suing them for releasing trade secrets. I had a conversation earlier with a librarian blogger about the decline and fall of Google. I didn't start using Google because they treated anyone decently. I started googling things for the same reason I imagine most of their other users did - consistently better search results.

Homeland Security

March 11, 2005

With all the attention focused on protecting the US from terrorist threats there have been many reminders that often the enemies of justice are not foreigners come to attack our way of life. Since 2001 it has become easier to forget that our country has previously been attacked by our own citizens. Today brings the sad news that a judge and two officials were killed in a courthouse in Atlanta. This follows the murder last week of a federal judge's family members.

Formbuilder for data objects

March 10, 2005

I recently started working with DB_DataObject_FormBuilder, a part of the PEAR extensions to PHP. It is quite handy for rapidly creating web forms from MySQL databases. Unfortunately the main website with documentation is offline at the moment. Google has some of the pages in its cache.... digging.

Questions raised about CU Foundation

March 10, 2005

Cindy Carlisle, University of Colorado regent, has a very frank editorial in the Colorado Daily about CU Foundation President Michael Byram. The editorial is a must-read for every Colorado resident who has a direct interest in how $9 million are spent each year. Carlisle cites her two-year quest for some documents which seem as though they should be readily accessible to all Coloradans.

8 seconds under this cowboy's hat

March 10, 2005

Many years too early champion bronc rider turned country artist Chris LeDoux, 56, died in Casper Wyoming. The news comes days after LeDoux checked in to the hospital for complications relating to the treatment of bile duct cancer.

You'll ride a black tornado 'cross the western sky
rope an ol blue norther and milk it till it's dry
bulldog the Mississippi, pin it's ears down flat
long before you take this cowboys hat...
This Cowboy's Hat - Chris LeDoux

LeDoux's hat was taken from us far too soon.

TimeMatters on OS X

March 9, 2005

I've been wrestling the last few weeks with TimeMatters on OS X. It seems to almost work. I've put together a long list of the fixes that are necessary to get it running. Too bad they're not documented on the TimeMatters site yet. I'll get them posted as I can. After a complete re-install today the administration tool does not seem to be communicating with the database. Drat. Almost had it licked.

When I get a bit more time too I'll write about last night's marathon Sandy Valley CAC meeting. It is pretty wild to see the numbers of stop-n-shop stores that developers try to convince us the town can support. I fear a few years down the road we'll look back at all the abandoned strip malls and rotting gas pumps and wonder what ever possessed us to allow such a thing.

Marketplace disappointment

March 9, 2005

After posting yesterday about the hackers who wanted in to the Business School at Harvard I heard a story on Marketplace last night. I should explain that one of the things I've always liked about Marketplace is they seem to have the best stories about technology of all the shows on NPR. They completely botched the Harvard story though. At the end of it one would have thought these people were doing something that was as clearly wrong as robbing a bank.

The truth is they did what any good business person should do. They were observant and creative. They tried a few common variations and got the information they were looking for. Ten years ago the security being used by Harvard Business School might have been enough. It is Harvard's responsibility to secure their information. Harvard should be apologizing to the students and admitting them instead of blaming them for Harvard's lack of due diligence.

Are you a hacker?

March 8, 2005

Phillip Greenspun has a post about the would-be Harvard business school "hackers". He says that the "hacking" consisted of editing the URL's to cut the last part off. So, if you apply to go to Harvard you should have a big checkbook and not too much between the ears. And to think, I just ordered Harvard Business Review thinking of it as a good publication. Maybe I'll have to reconsider.

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