I almost forgot . . . thanks to Dan for the reminder . . . we are making it even easier to try out the Digipede Network.
Today we announced that the Digipede Network Developer Edition is free. This has all the capabilities of Team Edition, but it is limited to two processors.
Go here to fill out a form to get your copy.
At the Dow Jones Enterprise Ventures conference in San Jose today. John will be making a couple of presentations later today.
The opening panel consisted of Jason Maynard (Credit Suisse), Douglas Kehring (Oracle), Terry Garnett (Garnett & Helfrich Capital), and David Skok (Matrix Partners). The overall topic was consolidation, business models, etc. and how these changes effect startups.
I don’t think I disagreed with a single thing except for something the Oracle guy said. Frankly, I found it odd to put a guy from Oracle on the panel with these other guys. He did a good job certainly; however, he (i.e., Oracle) ended up being ganged up on a bit as an obvious target. You can guess how it went:
Anyway, Mr. Garnett mentioned that large enterprises are tired of paying the large maintenance / support fees to the incumbent database companies. Mr. Kehring noted that the price / performance and capabilities (i.e., features) of Oracle continue to increase greatly; making the maintenance worth it.
Right, but a very many of these big enterprises don’t want the new features and new performance. Their Oracle install licenses already do what they need. They aren’t upgrading. They don’t need the new features — they don’t care. Mr. Garnett made this point, too, that a large percentage (I think he said 33%) are still running Oracle 7.
This is something that we all have to understand as vendors: many customers don’t upgrade.
Most of them do value maintenance and support for a time, but don’t actually want or need the new features. Driving upgrades is important for vendors for a couple of reasons. More on this later.
I brought my kids to Merced for the weekend. It gives them a chance to spend time with their grandparents. My wife asked me to drive carefully — she is not a worrier by nature. I understand the feeling of seeing the rest of your immediate family drive off in a car on a road trip. Accidents do happen.
As one did while we drove through Livermore.
Heavy traffic, moving quickly. In the fast lane. Workers on the shoulder picking up debris. Traffic slows ahead. I slow and nearly stop. One of those times when you have to brake hard making sure that you don’t hit nor get hit. No problem for me. No problem for the white car behiind. A red car darts onto the shoulder. Luckily, no workers here. Red car comes along side and veers into my lane. I move to the right (staying in the lane) and narrowly avoid getting hit. At the same time I hear a crash behind me (not my car). Red car falls behind and hits the white car. Another crash. Look behind and see the front-end of the white car crushed. The red car is back there too but I didn’t get a good look at it.
I don’t know how many cars were involved nor if anyone was hurt.
We are fortunate tonight. I hope, perhaps in vain, that no one was hurt.
Tags: Personal
Many people would like to see an online Office product. Bill Gates says that what people really want are online documents. That is, if Office is available everywhere (with a full-desktop license or through some other interface) then the users need to get to their documents from any machine.
Setting aside this storage requirement (and the services to support it) for a moment, making Office available everywhere requires one of two things:
Isn’t that what Softricity’s SoftGrid product does? From their site:
All applications are instantly available anywhere in the world – from a user’s desktop or a browser . . . whether the machine is the user’s own computer or a device shared by many users; or whether the user is on a high-speed or dialup connection — or even completely disconnected.
In addition, they claim that they can rapidly pull just the part of the application needed by the user (again, from their site):
. . . the Softricity client rapidly responds and “pulls” only the code necessary to start the program from a central Server — typically 20-40% of the total code. This happens without any degradation in functionality or response time; applications launch within seconds, based on application size and connection speed.
So, Office 2007 + Softricity = Office Live?
Is this the real reason Microsoft is buying Softricity? Is this the Office Live strategy? Mr. Ozzie, is this your online strategy? Robert, do I have it right?
Yesterday I wondered about the overlap between Softricity and FlexGo. So, alternatively, Office 2007 + FlexGo = Office Live.
Tags: FlexGo, Microsoft, Office-Live, office12, Office2007, Ozzie, Softricity
With WinHEC 2006 going on, this is a big news week for Microsoft. I blogged about FlexGo yesterday, but they also unveiled their virtualization road map (press release here). Their roadmap contains three main points:
Side note: Softricity’s product name embodies one of the reasons we at Digipede avoided the term grid for so long . . . there product looks cool, but I wouldn’t call it a grid.
FlexGo is a new “pay-as-you-go” service from Microsoft. From their site:
Introducing Microsoft® FlexGo™ – an innovative technology that makes it easier for people with modest incomes in emerging markets to buy a full-featured PC for their families.
Nick Carr calls this a “full-fledged utility computing service for PCs”. While technically correct, calling this kind of service utility computing further muddles an already troubled term — rendering it useless.
Update: apparently Mr. Carr decided this isn’t really utility computing and has changed his post to read “a utility-like computing service.” Good. I feared he had gone around the bend.
Tags: FlexGo, grid, Microsoft, Utility-Computing, WinHEC
It is refreshing that Scheme (the variant of Lisp) is getting so much attention right now.
Check out www.schemers.org for Scheme resources (thanks to Steve Maine for the pointer).
It was used as a teaching language at Cal. Scheme was, without a doubt, the only mind-expanding programming language I’ve ever had the pleasure to ingest learn and use.
Tags: Programming, scheme, Software-Development
From Don Dodge: Microsoft has unveiled the Microsoft SaaS Lighthouse Program.
This program is designed to help SaaS startups with licensing, technical, and marketing assistance.
I have been talking about this hole in Microsoft Partner Programs for sometime — a little on my blog, but mostly in person to Robert Scoble, Sam Ramji, John deVadoss, and many others. Pretty much every Microsoft person I meet. Microsoft has a good program (called Empower) to help the ISV startup and has, up until now, really had nothing for the SaaS startup. Why is the SaaS startup important? Because Web 2.0 companies are essentially all SaaS startups. Why are Web 2.0 companies important? If you don’t know, well . . . stop reading here.
It is obvious that Microsoft is trailing in the Web 2.0 community — this is embodied in the negative perception of Microsoft I found at a TechCrunch party: “anti-Microsoft” is a buzz word?. Most Web 2.0 startups are making use of free tools to build their sites and view Microsoft’s products (primarily Server 2003 and SQL Server) as being too expensive. While the productivity gains attained using these tools trumps licensing costs, Microsoft still needs programs that will help the adoption of their technology in SaaS startups.
Unfortunately, this program isn’t it.
You see, to get into this program, your company must have venture funding. A few problems with this:
Now, I cannot claim that the purpose of this program is to help Web 2.0 startups (or to increase adoption of Microsoft techologies).
Just to be clear: it doesn’t.
C# 2 has anonymous delegates. I like them. Of course, they enable advanced constructs like closures and continuations, but one of I’m a pushover for language and environment features that improve readability and maintainability of code. Before C# 2, if you wanted to perform a task on another thread, you might do something like this:
/// Do something worker callback
private void DoSomethingImpl(object callerData) {
// implementation here
. . .
}
/// Do something on a threadpool thread
private void DoSomething() {
// invoke on threadpool thread
ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new WaitCallback(DemoJob));
}
With anonymous delegates, you can just do this:
/// Do something on a threadpool thread
private void DoSomething() {
// invoke on threadpool thread
ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(delegate(object o) {
// implementation here
. . .
}) ;
}
Fewer lines of code. Easier to maintain. Logic easier to follow. The pattern gets even nicer when your worker method needs arguments. For example:
/// Do something on a threadpool thread
private void DoSomething(int a, double b, SomeClass c) {
// invoke on threadpool thread
ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(delegate(object o) {
// implementation here can use a, b, and c
. . .
}) ;
}
To pass the three arguments a, b, and c to a named method would require a custom class or packaging in a collection or array. I won’t show you how to do it. It is tedious, after all.
Actually:
Disagree all you like. But, if you haven’t taken the time to grok the actual argument beyond the low hanging fruit, then just move along. There is nothing to see here.
I’ve finally gotten around to listening to the discussion about links and the link economy between Steve Gillmor and Doc Searls (part I, II). Definitely worth a listen.
Good thing, too, since I stepped into an argument about this on Jim’s blog and found him taking issue and posting about it. Jim’s initial point was regarding a recent Seth Goldstein post, Attentrons on the cutting room floor, and specifically the statement:
Strong web bloggers no longer link.
Jim concludes that non-linkers are not blogging, that they are actually columnists, and says:
I [. . .] recognize that sometimes bloggers feel that it is no longer necessary to provide links to source information so that their readers can get context, further information, or view those that came up with the original idea credit.
He goes on to say (in response to me and, to some “elite”, of which I am not one):
The notion that links are merely to build readership is rather frightening to me. It says to me that conversation is important until you reach a point where you can pontificate. That blogging is a culture to grow TechnoPriests. What a drag that would be.
What I should have said is that as a new blogger, linking is required to get into the conversation. I do this not to build readership as I flipply suggested, but to be a part of a community — if readership was truly my goal, I would go on a snark hunt or something.
While there must be those who refrain from linking due to their own elitism and to withhold credit, suggesting this is the motive behind the whole “non-linking” crowd ignores the argument being made. To be fair, I don’t think Jim is ascribing these motives to all non-linkers; however, I cannot agree with the claim that not linking is not blogging. And if he turns out to be right (i.e., once the definition of blogging is finally complete), I suspect it won’t matter. Things are changing, blogs are evolving, tools are getting better. Coupling RSS, gestures, and discovery engines will bring more of the right information without relying on the sacred link.
In terms of the arguments against links, I boil this down to a few points:
Steve Gillmor makes his points in his podcasts as well as on his blog — he doesn’t need me to make them for him. Read his latest, Back in the U.S.S.R, on this very topic.
The Digipede CEO, John T. Powers, has begun blogging at Powers Unfiltered. This will turn out to be an interesting blog. Aside from being really smart, John is funny and opinionated.
Our partner Nathan asks,
when do we get Powers filtered?
BTW: you may recognize his blog template . . . if any of you IE CSS wizards know how to fix the white gap between the header graphic and menu, let me know. John will buy you a drink. 
Update: Thanks to Shannon Whitley for the simple fix to the header. It still looks better in Firefox, but I’ll tweak it.
Just yesterday I compared the Digipede Network to Sun Grid. One point I made was that our product is very easy to use . . .
Of course, I’m biased, but: stay tuned for an upcoming independent review that contrasts the Digipede Network favorably against Sun Grid on this very point.
Little did I know that the review would be just a day away.
The review Gridlock Alert For Sun Grid? goes further than I thought. It slams Sun Grid and speaks well of our product. You can see it all in the article’s subheading:
Analysis finds hidden costs in Sun platform, while competing Digipede offering shines
The article also specifically supports my earlier point. The reviewing engineers gave up after spending five hours trying to get something to work on Sun Grid. On the Digipede Network, it took approximately 1/2 hour. In the reviewer’s words:
The difference in ease of use in Sun Grid vs. Digipede was enormous.
Thanks for the great review!
CRN has a more comprehensive review of the Digipede Network here: Grid Computing Turns .Net Into Enterprise Powerhouse.
Jon Udell, lead analyst at InfoWorld, recently posted a screencast of the Sun Grid Compute Utility (Screening Room #4: The Sun grid compute utility).
I enjoy reading Mr. Udell on his blog and in InfoWorld as well as listening to him on the Gillmor Gang. He brings together both the broad view of an industry analyst with the deep dive on the technical only achieved by a developer. In fact, he is a developer (for example, he recently deployed metadata searching and exploring services for InfoWorld).
In the Sun Grid Utility screencast, Mr. Udell does a good job of quickly showing the major functionality of the Utility and the Compute Server project (i.e., Java APIs for communicating with the Utility). The screencast is not too different from the webcasts we do for the Digipede Network, our distributed computing solution for the Microsoft .NET platform. The quality of Mr. Udell’s questions in his screencast are on par with the best questions we get in our webcasts — he clearly groks distributed computing.
Sun Grid appears simple but is deceptively hard to use. Simplicity was a primary reason we developed the Digipede Network: we don’t think distributed computing needs to be complicated. I think we have been pretty successful at that. Of course, I’m biased, but: stay tuned for an upcoming independent review that contrasts the Digipede Network favorably against Sun Grid on this very point.
The Digipede Network is a Windows-focused product that shares some similarities to Sun Grid (specifically Sun Grid Engine). Here are some differences between the Digipede Network and Sun Grid:
If you want to see this stuff in action, sign up for one of our webinars here or go to MSDN. They recently hosted two webinars on the Digipede Network: Object-Oriented Programming for Grid: Grid Computing for .NET and Advanced .NET Programming for Grid Computing.
And Mr. Udell, we would love to do a screencast with you, too.
In my previous post, Ah, it was DLL hell, I said I still have a problem. The problem is with Server 2003 registration-free COM and a custom-generated manifest. XP and Server 2003 have different requirements for the location of dependent assemblies, so it isn’t suprising that they might behave differently. Anyway, now that I’ve gotten past my initial issue, the problem is clear. Well, as clear as can be expected with registration-free COM.
The event log said (reformatted and abbreviated for readability):
Syntax error in manifest or policy file "C:\\ . . . \\DigipedeAutoManifest.manifest" on line 4. The value of attribute "name" element "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1^file" is invalid.
The name attribute was a full path to the DLL containing the COM server to be activated. I changed it to a relative path and now it works just fine. The DLL is in the same directory as the manifest (rooted below the executable).
I know for a fact that the full path used to work on Server 2003. I can only guess this was changed by some Windows Update in the past six months.
Now I’ve fixed our code to be compatible with the change.
BTW: the required syntax seems to be <file name="./comserver.dll">. It doesn’t work without the ./. Thanks to Steve White — his articles on registration-free COM are very helpful.
Last week I posted about some frustrating bug hunting:
In fact, I still don’t know what the problem is, but I’m moving on for now (confident that this problem will resurface somewhere else).
I was faced with the problem almost immediately because the feature wasn’t working on Server 2003 either. So, back into it I went.
This morning I figured out the original problem: that special form of DLL hell created by waxy-build up of shifting COM registry data.
Great news! Well, no, not really. Turns out it wasn’t the same problem. So I’m still dealing with a frustrating registration-free COM activation issue on Server 2003. This code used to work. So, I don’t know if we broke something or if a recent Windows Update did. Time to do some spelunking.
A lot has been said about Google complaining to the government about IE7 (from NYT).
Don Dodge says that Google’s honeymoon is over. Perhaps this is true. Their complaining about the way search is handled in IE7 does seem disingenuous.
In the past I’ve said that Google’s goodwill will wane. From Dave Winer’s Geek Dinner for Scoble with relevant excerpt here:
Google has enjoyed a great deal of popularity as an answer to Microsoft’s dominance. They have a stockpile of goodwill and trust from people simply because they are not Microsoft. This is not permanent. The bigger they get, the more profitable they are (if that’s possible), the more people they piss off with their own kind of over-reaching, the more this is going to wane.
Google has some great products, of which search is #1. But, please Google, don’t try to lock in your users by complaining. Do it by making your products better.
If you are like me, you use the Visual Studio Command Prompt frequently, because you need the environment that gets set up by the vcvarsall batch. I’m using the PowerShell now exclusively, but still need this environment. Just calling the batch file doesn’t get the variables set in PowerShell. Adam Barr has a good explanation and solution here (and the interesting bit below is taken from his blog and credited there to Bruce Payette).
My goal was to have these environment variables set for every instance of PowerShell. Not rocket-science, but not terribly straight forward to a newbie PowerShell user either. To do that, I needed to add a script that will get run on every invocation of PowerShell. Here is what I did.
If you don’t yet have a profile set up, then create the required directory (explanation of profile naming is here):
mkdir "$home/My Documents/WindowsPowerShell"
Open your profile (or create if it doesn’t exist):
notepad "$home/My Documents/WindowsPowerShell/Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1"
Paste the following into your profile:
pushd 'C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\vc'
cmd /c “vcvarsall.bat&set” |
foreach {
if ($_ -match “=”) {
$v = $_.split(“=”); set-item -force -path "ENV:\\$($v[0])" -value "$($v[1])"
}
}
popd
And then start a new PowerShell. Now the environment should be set properly.
Update: I fixed the path to the default profile. Thanks to dreamlusion for pointing out that my info was pre-release and out of date.
Tags: .NET, Monad, PowerShell, vs2005
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