TCO, Firefox, Open Source, and the Release Engineering Blues

Getting Dan Kusnetzky, Program Vice President, System Software, Enterprise Computing Group, at IDC to sit a minute and talk isn’t easy. He’s usually putting on the frequent flyer miles for corporate executives all over the country. But sometimes you just need to grab a cup of coffee between the Apple confab and exec fests (I keep thinking Mini Mac like MiniMe in Austin Powers, or like a small Big Mac- not Mac Mini like the marketing folk want. Do you think anyone noticed how easy it was to swap the name before they decided on it?)

We continued a discussion begun with a Boston Globe quote of Dan’s on firefox and open source software – “‘A number of things are causing people to give open source a look. One is the security problems that are almost a daily concern in Windows. . . . There’s also the cachet. Some people think it’s cool to tell their friends, ‘I’m using Linux.” On this both Dan and I agree. He’s right homing in on security as an issue (I’m using firefox myself), and I guess it’s cool, even though we first launched an open source BSD OS years ago (remember – was the first), so firefox is just a good tool to me – not a religion.

Spotlight on Hidden Physicists

One of the pleasures of keeping up with your alumni obligations is that you can find out what other people are doing. Sigma Pi Sigma, the National Physics Honor Society, publishes Radiations Magazine, a bi-yearly discussion of issue relevent to the physics community. And one of their nicest features is their Spotlight on “Hidden Physicsts”. You see, not everyone who has a physics degree goes into research, so it’s nice to make a connection. For example, I didn’t know that Sun’s Assistant General Council Marilyn Glaubensklee had a physics degree, but there she is right next to a writeup on me. Small world, isn’t it.

The Forces of Nature – “Paradise and Hell”.

As the casualties continue to mount after the great Indian Ocean tsunami, with entire families and villages swept away, I found the words of Lars Collmar, a Lutheran pastor at Stockholm’s Adolf Fredriks Church on Wednesday night instructive. “Slowly it is coming to us that we have been hit by a tremendous catastrophe. We live in a world which is at the same time paradise and hell.”

And nature, which gives us so much, also shows us how easily things can be taken away. I wish everyone saddened by this tragedy peace of mind, comfort and closure in the coming year.

I Think I Forgot to Duck

This little item just in from Space Daily. Seems a little 5 meter wide asteroid called 2004 YD5 zoomed “just under the orbits of geostationary satellites, which at 22,300 miles (36,000 kilometers) altitude are the highest manmade objects circling Earth” and no one noticed until after it had passed by. Turns out it approached sunward (right in our blind spot), flew over Antarctica, and continued merrily on its way. Astronomers spotted it after it had passed us by.

Did anyone remember to duck?

What’s All This Stuff About Linux?

Well, after all those rabid attacks on Ken Brown of the Alexis d’Toqueville Society by Linux and free software fanatics over his papers (see Fire in the Hole), I just had to meet him in person. So here I was today at Bucks in Woodside, chatting up the future of open source, , and the next wave of Internet video over french onion soup and burgers.

I must say, Ken is smart, charming and articulate – and very saavy politically. In fact, we spent more time talking about how Internet video is going to change the landscape of education. Ken has some great ideas on bringing in “innovators” to encourage young people to study math and science with monthly virtual forums in video. This is really where things must move according to the Council on Competitiveness, if we are to emphasize regionalism / diversity / education using the Internet.

There has been a lot of concern voiced about our declining engineering and science enrollment (see Momma, Don’t Let Your Kids Grow Up to Be Programmers and Tech Outsourcing and the Dwindling CS Major). But after teaching at Stanford Tech Trek (see Girls Just Want to Have Astro Fun), I know the young people are there. We just need the talent and the will right here in our own backyard to do it.

“Just Dial, Point, Shoot, Oh Drat, I’ve Got a Message”

There is this truly hilarious article on the BBC about sending pics and flics on those fancy cellphones. Any product manager should take notes…

Some precious outtakes:
“More than 167 million handsets were sold globally between July and September 2004, a period that, according to Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi is “seldom strong”. ..In fact, the numbers of people not taking and sending pictures, audio and video is growing.”
– The more they sell, the fewer are used. Since cellphone services underwrite the gadget, looks like they’re losing money, but making it up in volume.

Ah, Those Homebrew Computer Days

Alan Saracevic wrote an amusing piece about Mac Addicts and their antics. I laughed at their stories, but really isn’t it just a continuation of their roots? My husband and business partner of long-standing William Jolitz was a Homebrew Computer Club member in the 1970’s, and remembers how the “two Steve’s” looked then – Steve Wozniak was a “pocketprotector jeans wearing hippie engineer sweating bullets taking too much time off from an HP tech position”. Steve Jobs would have “his back against the wall with one knee cocked sizing up the marks watching Woz work the computer with a cheapo little TV plugged in”. Is it any wonder the crowd they attract nowadays?

Codecs, Codecs, Everywhere, and Nary a Lip to Synch…

Ever wonder what kind of codec the pros use when working with video. Well, first of all, they work with raw uncompressed video for all their production needs. Only when they’re finished do they convert, compress, and otherwise create the format required (and only then does it matter). So actually, the first thing a video pro does not think about is the codec. She thinks “what do I have to do to create a professional-looking video”. Codecs and formats are technical specifications for viewing using specific tools. They’re not the only thing or even the most important thing for an enjoyable viewing experience.

So what if a pro has to go back and fix up a problem, like a synch error in a sound effect? Well, if she needs to go back, she’ll go back to the raw video she’s carefully saved in state, and do her work rapidly and well.

But what if you’re not a video pro? Then this little sad saga of video woe from a Microsoft consultant and Cisco engineer is a good warning of what happens when you don’t do what the pros do…or pay a professional service like MinutePitch by Valux to handle it all for you.

I Guess You Can’t Believe Everything You Read in the NYTimes

The good thing about gadget reviews is that the columnist who writes about them is supposed to be “an ordinary guy” and not a technologist who knows how things should work. But the bad thing about gadget reviews is that the columnist is an ordinary guy and hence will miss the obvious flaws any technologist knows is wrong and would tell folks about. So since Dave Pogue, actually a good columnist for the NYTimes, missed this, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with his digital camera chart this week so you don’t make the mistake of buying a lousy camera…

Fun Friday – accoona matata BSD?

Regarding Saul Hansell’s report on the launch of Accoona, with star power brought to bear by Bill Clinton courtesy of a large undisclosed contribution to his library by the Chinese government yesterday – I am puzzled. If Accoona is a variant on “hakuna”, and is derived from the phrase “hakuna matata” for “no worries”, and if, according to the Swahili English dictionary matata plural of tata means “tangle, mess, difficulty, perplexity”, and hakuna means “there is no, there are no”, does this mean the official 20 year licensed search engine of the Chinese government used to search out even better web pages than google really means “There is no”?

Hmmm. So if I search accoona.com for “Taiwan independence” will I get back “There is no Taiwan independence”? Subliminal Internet messages, indeed.

Ever notice what’s been going on with OS X? First it was Mac, then it was Mach (yes, that’s why Avi Tevanian moved there from NEXT), and now it’s BSD (of course, we’ve had Mach’s VM system in every version and variant from our first public open source BSD release back in 1992 – a very fine VM system BTW and a favorite of mine). But to actually cut through the Linux hype and mention someone else – Wow! “Then of course there is Darwin, Apple’s version of BSD Unix at the heart of its Mac OS X operating system, which would nicely provide IBM with a non Linux semi-open source alternative…”

Nice to see you say something nice about Berkeley Unix, John. Never thought I’d see the day.