March 2010 - Posts
This is my prediction. I would not be betting my business on Adobe Flash right now. A number of factors are conspiring to kill Flash at the moment. There's some background by Scobleizer. According to Robert Scoble, "developers [...] are no longer including Flash in their plans". Big names are abandoning Flash in droves, as attested by recent Apple products that don't supoprt Flash. Google is putting a lot of focus on HTML5.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is doing what it does best: starting from behind and sprinting to overtake the competition, with Silverlight - which is everything flash was and a lot more, is free to both developers and users and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Silverlight has been developing rapidly over the last couple of years and is already on the verge of version 4, it has gone from bleeding edge to mainstream in a remarkably short time. Towards the end of this year, we will see the endgame unfold, with the release of Windows Phone 7 Series, a completely revamped incarnation od Microsoft's "Smart Phone" offering. The new Windows Phone 7 series incorporates "Metro", the codename for the Zune-like user interface and also dispenses with ActiveSync, using the Zune sync software instead. Most importantly, Windows Phone 7 Series incorporates Silverlight and developer tools are available today.
Some are placing their hopes on Google to save Flash, but I don't think it is going to happen. Google is too independent and is more likely to come up with its own in-house technology than rely on flash. From my perspective, this war has been won, ironically Apple has been the catalyst by failing to support Flash in its iPhone products.
Moore’s Law is a fiction invented by Intel. They put those little ‘heat sinks’ on top of processors, but actually they’re not heat sinks. Intel has been fooling us; processors aren’t actually getting faster.
Those ‘heat sinks’ are actually little chronon distillers that remove chronons (particles of time) from the surrounding atmosphere. The processors use these extracted chronons to boost their perceived speed, making them appear to run at 2x, 4x or even 8x real time. Perceived speed increase is proportional to the number of chronons extracted, so as processors appear to get faster, they had to put ever bigger fans on to scoop more and more atmosphere into the chronon distillers.
 |  |
Desktop Chronon Distiller
Typically 2x real time | Server-based Chronon Distiller
Typically 4x or 8x real time |
But they went too far! They are now stealing time from our lives. They distil out so many chronons that the chronon depletion zone extends out of the computer into the surrounding area. The rarefied chronon atmosphere causes time to pass slower for the computer user than an observer.
Chronon Depletion Zone around a typical notebook computer
This is why you seem to lose time whenever you sit in front of a computer and why software projects seem to take a reasonable time to the developers but always appear late to managers!
On my journey to and from the office yesterday, I had my Zune with me and I was listening to one of may favourite podcasts, Hanselminutes by Scott Hanselman. Scott is a technologist and web developer working for Microsoft, he is one of the ‘gang of four’ authors of the book Professional ASP.NET MVC. Scott covers a wide variety of interesting technology subjects and usually invites a guest speaker to his podcast to talk about their niche technology. Hanselminutes is one of the most consistently interesting podcasts I’ve discovered but this week was interesting for socio-political reasons as well as technology.
This week, Scott was in Cairo, Egypt. The podcast was devoted to interviewing Lamees and Abeer, two Egyptian girl geeks. Much of the interview was dedicated to the fact that in Egypt, there are many more women in technology than in the West and the reasons why that might be. Scott estimated that in the company he was visiting, 40% to 50% of the engineers were women. Far from being repressed and stereotyped (as we are led to believe) these women have been treated as equals and encouraged by their families to pursue an education. Get the podcast, have your eyes opened.
Comparing this to my own experience, learning Computer Science at university, in a cohort of perhaps 120 students, I remember only four females. That’s around 3%. Pathetic. In my professional career, in my first 6 jobs there were no female engineers at all on the team. Only when I worked with Nortel Networks in Silicon Valley, USA did I begin to encounter female engineers, even then only in small numbers. In fact, in my entire professional career, I think I’ve only been on one team with one single female member who was truly an engineer and this was again in California. Think hard. How many women do you know in IT or engineering? I know one or two, and they are formidable. I mean that in the nicest possible way. Women make excellent technologists and engineers, for all sorts of reasons. Why, then, are we so poor at encouraging them in the West? This has to change! People like Susanne Dansey, Eileen Brown, Susan Bradley, Amy Babinchak are all examples of successful women in technology that I have interacted with, but half the examples I can think of are in America. These are shining examples, but they represent a pathetically small percentage, there is a great deal of unrealised potential out there.
This podcast has really challenged a lot of preconceptions I had about the Arab world and the middle east. Scott is a natural, masterful interviewer and he skillfully navigated the conversation throuhg some difficult subjects, but the stars were the two ladies. They rose to every challenge with thoughtful intelligent answers, they were such good ambassadors for their country and for their profession.
Thank you to Scott, Lamees and Abeer for a particularly interesting and educational podcast. We in the West have much to learn about the way we think about and treat women.
In a surprise announcement today, Nick King (Senior Product Manager - Windows Essential Business Server) revealed that Microsoft is to withdraw Windows Essential Business Server from the product range. In a conference call with Small Business Server MVPs, he stressed that Small Business Server and Home Server products were unaffected and would continue in both current and future versions.
Support for EBS will continue with the normal Microsoft product lifecycle, with 4 remaining years of full support then a further 5 years of extended support.
EBS customers will be given the option to transition out to the ‘a-la-carte’ server products. For customers with Software Assurance, this will be free of charge. Customers without SA may be required to foot the bill for shipping and/or taxes, depending on local rules. The transition pack will likely include licenses for 3 x Server 2008 R2 (4 x for premium SKUs), 2 x Exchange Server 2007 and System Centre Essentials. User CALs will also be able to transition, but Forefront Threat Management Gateway and Forefront Security for Exchange are NOT included. These details had not been finalized and users should refer to Microsoft for final details of this transition offer.
UPDATE: Wayne Small tells it like it is.
I’ve written several times on why I think free software is harmful (Open Source or Microsoft; The Zen of Free; Free Software: Good vs. Evil?). The unfortunate precedent of giving things away for free on the Internet can result in a race to the bottom.
Some software developers are conflicted about this. They think they have to give their software away for free to get people to use it, but then they try to lay a guilt trip on users to make a donation. Worst of all are the developers who try to monetize their work by covering it in slime. By slime, I mean advertisements.
One case that came to my notice recently is Paint.NET. Paint.NET is a sort of poor man’s PhotoShop, it’s free. It’s a wonderful piece of software that I use all the time, perhaps most days. Visit the web site and see the slime. The site is covered with misleading Download buttons and tacky blinking banners. Even the ‘Donate’ button is hard to see amongst the spam fest.
Guys, either it’s free or it’s not. Be honest with yourselves and with me about whether you want to make money out of your software. If you want to charge me $5, then ask me to pay you $5 and I will. It’s worth it. But if you give me free software, I am not going to pay you for it voluntarily, not ever. Newsflash: free stuff has no value. Your guilt trip is not going to work, neither are your slimy banner ads.