Recently in tech Category

I have been using MovableType for this blog for a while and I have not been truly happy with it. It works well enough that I cannot really complain but it just seems more complicated than I needed. In addition, it just did not have a theme that I could use out of the box that I liked. I prefer a theme with light text, dark background and navigation on the left. This is not a common thing and although I can make my own theme, it takes time. I have precious little time right now and would rather spend it on stuff that's more interesting than reinventing the wheel.

I dug around a little bit and ended up looking at Serendipity. It has a few things going for it. First, it looks pretty simple to install, maintain and operate. A feature that I particularly like is that when I am logged into the blog I see little edit buttons next to each item. I do not have to go to the admin side and relocate an item when I want to make an edit. It also has theme that matches my desires fairly closely. I think I will have to tweak it slightly but nothing drastic. There's also the added bonus that it is BSD licensed. I prefer license that I can easily understand and the BSD license, in its various incarnations, covers that rather well.

I've installed it on a test site and if things go well, I will move this blog over to it. After that, I have some stuff to consider. I have a couple of domains and a few different blogs. I have been thinking about consolidating them a bit. I am the only one who ever posts or visits the sites so making my life easier is really the only concern. It might also help me get back on track with a few of my goals. One of which is to simply post more stuff here. You'd finding time to do something you enjoy would not be so much work. :)

I finally updated MovableType to something that is not quite so horribly out of date. I'm not sure I did it right since I was in a hurry but everything works well enough for my purposes. Where well enough is defined as at all. :)

The real challenge now is to come up with something worth writing about.

Microsoft finally puts its kin phone to rest. The product that symbolizes Microsoft's desire to emulate all of the worst aspects of GMs badge engineering with none of the benefits, reasons or even excuses is no longer for sale. This is certainly a good move on Microsoft's part. The last thing they want right now is more reinforcement for Apple's marketing.

Their dominance in the office suite, desktop operating system, and server operating system markets gives them a huge advantage over their competition. They have the resources to commit to a project and see it through regardless of early success or failures. However, Microsoft has proven itself unable to capture and exploit new markets. They had some success in the console market. However, it is considered an open secret that their profit from the original Xbox has been wiped out by their current Xbox 360.

Their original attempt at MP3 players PlaysforSure was a reasonable first effort at creating a digital music market. The problem it ran into was people didn't see the digital music market the same way as the offline world. This included not only consumers but also music executives. The advantages of the Playsforsure ecosystem made it more complex. The advantages of the iPod were rooted in its simplicity. These hurdles were difficult by not insurmountable. In retrospect, Microsoft would have been well served by creating a better iTunes for its hardware partners to work with. Any possibility of this was eliminated when Microsoft turned itself into a competitor to its partners. The Zune was by most measures a good product. However, it has failed so far because it has little to differentiate itself from the iPod. Potential partners are wary of being abandoned in the same way Microsoft's Playsforsure partner's were abandoned. It also gave Apple far more time since Microsoft was starting over in the market from scratch.. Time to solidify its place in the market, expand the number of people reliant on Apple, eliminate competitors and time to make it the *standard*. A standard Apple can use to invade other markets.

They have done the same thing with phones. They were too complex too soon and are now are starting over twice. Giving Apple and other competitors time to solidify their lead.

Microsoft's inability to focus has caused it to blow billions of dollars over the last decade or two. This kind of incompetence was forgiven for a long time because of the constant rise in stock prices. However, new markets, open source and good old fashion competition have been slowly eroding their position. Microsoft so far seems unable to drop its dead weight and focus on its strengths.

I was always taught that no meant no. Now, I supposed there may be circumstances where people are fooling around that is not the case. I just never thought one of those cases would involve a jury. However, it seems that SCO has decided that the jury may have meant something else when they said no. Now, considering the shape SCO is in. It makes sense to through the Hail Mary. You never know. The judge may throw them a bone and give them another chance to get the unix copyrights back from Novell. It is still unlikely they'll ever win any money but you never know how long they could drag this out or how much money they can spend on it.

I recently switched email over to Google mail for savings. I have to say that it is worth the price, but not more than that. Their obsession with cluttering my mail with crap I wanted deleted makes it difficult to use IMAP. I archive my mail locally so i can work around it. It is just annoying.

It has reinforced my opinion that Google is a classic example of success as a result of success not merit. Sorta like Paris Hilton is famous because she's famous.

It is the fault of all of us really. We'd rather deal with a big name idiot than a small name of any kind.

Recently a local hospital started touting their switch to electronic medical records. The idea is to improve efficiency, lower costs, etc. However, there's always the question of theory and practice, the design plan versus the as-built. This brought up the memory of a few examples where the practice didn't work out so well.

The first one was a hospital that for the first time in a hundred years had to turn away patients. They had a computer failure that affected their ability to access their electronic medical records. They became so backed up that they started diverting ambulances to other hospitals. The diversion wasn't terribly long and they still took walk-in patients. It is still the kind of thing that will make you think twice about your current infrastructure. I would hate to be the guy who had to explain what happened.

The other article was a mention of a Harvard study. The basic idea of the study was that there were no cost savings with electronic medical records. The idea is that in practice the costs outweigh any cost savings. The real benefit settles in on things like reducing medical errors. That of course still relies on the ability of an organization to implement a system. We all know how well large projects like that go, don't we?

Security is a real issue and Microsoft is not taking it seriously. Things like and the weekly credit card breach are going to be more common. Microsoft has too much money, smart people, and market share not to take this more seriously. They do not even have to do it for altruistic reason. Pure greed should motivate them as well. If the market turns against them over this they will never recover.

I love how the SCO lawsuit has destroyed what was once a reasonable company. The latest is that SCO has "abandoned rehabilitation" and the judge won't let them sell to some consulting outfit. Unfortuantely, the judge has also refused to convert their Chapter 11 reorganization to a Chapter 7 liquidation. Instead, he's appointing a trustee. This should be good for a few more delays.

The gory details.

Don't trust the three week thing.

The interface is lousy.

It is overpriced.

No one cares about email encryption. They should but they don't.

I'll spare you the details.

Yeah, you heard me, gigabit Token Ring. They not only had 100 meg standard. They also released a gigabit standard. There are apparently no implementations of the gigabit but you can still get the 100 meg. The fact that someone even decided to standardize the gigabit standard is amazing. You have to wonder what those last meetings were like. Were they just going through the motions or did they actually think they might sell some gear.