rwandering.net
The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson
Archive for November, 2007
November 30, 2007 at 7:40 am · Filed under Attention
Unless you live under a rock (or don’t follow the social space) you know that there has been a big uproar of Facebook’s Beacon. This is the feature that enables 3rd party web sites to transmit your actions (or “stories” in Facebook lingo) to Facebook.
If you want to know more about how it works, Jay Goldman wrote the excellent post: Deconstructing Facebook Beacon JavaScript. The title belies the fact that the article gives a good overview too (it isn’t just for developers).
An innovative idea — one that reminds me much of the GestureBank work conceived by Steve Gillmor and myself. Given that, it should be no surprise that I don’t think Facebook did anything “evil” here.
Now, they could have done a better job with it. From the get-go, I would have preferred if they had
- been more public about how it works; and
- required that users “opt-in” to the whole program.
Not surprisingly, there was a backlash and Facebook made some changes (Official- Facebook Flips On Beacon). Great. I don’t think what they did violated their user contract, but the changes are more user-friendly. I would prefer my User Aware contract, though this is a User Beware contract (User Contracts – Part II- User Beware).
But, the problem isn’t with Facebook or their user contract. If you don’t like the service (in total), don’t use it.
What I don’t understand is all the focus on Facebook here. Like all silos they are capturing data, data, data. That is what Facebook is all about.
Why isn’t the focus on the 3rd parties who submit your stories? They are the ones pouring user stories into Facebook. There have been reports of users not having approved their stories. This is a bad thing, and maybe a technical flaw in Beacon, but ultimately it is the responsibility of the 3rd party to protect your data.
They should give the users control over their Beacon settings:
- Never send stories to Facebook
- Approve each story before it is sent to Facebook.
- Always send stories to Facebook.
If anything, Facebook should require this of its Beacon partners.
So, why aren’t people up in arms over the eBays, TripAdvisors, Yelps, Fandangos, Epicureans, etc.?
But, hey, if you don’t like the way these sites are spraying your data over the Internet, then stop using them.
Tags: Attention, AttentionTrust, Beacon, Facebook, GestureBank, Gillmor, User Contracts
November 17, 2007 at 6:33 pm · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing, Web 2.0
John has an excellent post wrapping up his trip to SC ‘07 — the bashers’ ball. He is tired of all the Microsoft bashing:
It is amazing to me the level of religious fervor that Microsoft still inspires. The bashers out there can be perfectly calm and reasonable about a wide range of topics – but say the word “Microsoft,” and they turn bright red and irrational. I have watched this phenomenon for years, and still find it inexplicable. Microsoft is a company. That company makes software. Some of their software is very, very good. Some of it is remarkably bad. I don’t understand why some people find it so hard to remain objective (or even civil) when discussing their products and market presence.
Statement of fact. Nothing new exactly, but then he goes on how this relates to our company (emphasis mine) . . .
Many Microsoft bashers think that all of us at Digipede are mouthpieces for the Evil Empire, and that we are just pawns of the Microsoft machine. On the other hand, while we have plenty of fans within Microsoft, there are also some Microsoft employees who think we are difficult annoying troublemakers . . .
Pawns of Microsoft? Please. But maybe we are misunderstood. The other day I found myself convincing Steve Gillmor that I’m not a Microsoft fanboy (I don’t think I succeeded). But John says it well,
In fact, none of us at Digipede love or hate Microsoft – we work with Microsoft. We do so for real-world business reasons that help us change the world for the better while building a great company. We work with other companies too, but Microsoft occupies a special place in the technology landscape, and we work very, very hard to understand how to work with them to our mutual benefit. There are some great people there doing great things, and the bashers only hurt themselves by blinding themselves to these very real contributions.
Yeah, I don’t love or hate Microsoft; however, I do really like Microsoft .NET. Does that make me a pawn of Microsoft? .NET isn’t my religion. I’m not a zealot about it. It doesn’t mean that I think everyone should be using .NET / Windows nor does it require that I go around bashing Apple / Sun / IBM / Google / Linux / Java / PHP / Rails / whatever.
I don’t think Microsoft bashing is a requirement for entry to the HPC and Apple fan clubs either, is it?
As long as I can remember, I have detested the religion of the OS (or programming language, or platform, etc.). Passion for technology is great — it’s a requirement for success in this field. But I’m tired of people using their passion to bash, bash, bash.
Maybe I just don’t get it, but if you’re a basher, please just move along. And if you still think I’m a Microsoft pawn, well, I’m not going to convince you, now am I?
Note to Robert Scoble: you had the temerity to criticize Apple and the zealots came out in force — even called you a Microsoft shill. Welcome back to our club, Robert — though I’m not sure you ever really left.
Tags: .NET, Apple, Digipede, Gillmor, HPC, Microsoft, SC07, Scoble
November 13, 2007 at 11:08 am · Filed under Grid Computing
Two exciting announcements at SC07 came out of Microsoft today. I wouldn’t normally lump them together into one post (because they are only peripherally related), but Microsoft announced them in the same press release here. None of this is news to those who follow Microsoft closely, but it is worth a mention.
- Microsoft announced version 2 of Compute Cluster Server, renamed Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008. Ever since I saw a preview of this a couple months back, I have been excited about some of the enhancements they’ve made in terms of manageability and interactivity. Mostly, I’m excited about new interop scenarios between the Digipede Network and HPC Server. As some resources become available, I plan to do an internal proof of my idea — I hope I’ll have more on this soon.
- Microsoft announced their Parallel Computing Initiative with the mission of enhancing developer productivity for multicore and distributed systems. Most exciting (to me) is the announcement of their Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework. These extensions include mechanisms for expressing parallelism inside managed code. One thing that will be built on top of these extensions is P-LINQ. Expect previews of this technology will begin to come out over the next six months. Why am I excited about this? Because the more tools that are made available to .NET developers to express parallelism, the easier it will be for the Digipede Network to fit in and managing varying workloads across a large number of disparate computing resources.
Note to Wagg-Ed: there is no such thing as Visual Studio 2007.
Tags: Digipede, HPC, Microsoft, P-LINQ, PFX, Wagg-Ed
November 9, 2007 at 8:56 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Upgraded to WordPress 2.3.1 with its new tagging support — very cool that they included an importer from Ultimate Tag Warrior.
Added my twitter feed to the sidebar. You can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/rwandering
Added new phone-only templates: both iPhone and Windows Mobile users should see a simplified version of my blog.
Tags: blog, Wordpress
November 6, 2007 at 7:54 pm · Filed under Attention, Web 2.0
Recorded a show with Steve and the Gang last Friday. Steve says,
Last Friday we recorded a new show titled The Gang. I’m initially asking those interested in hearing the results to join this Facebook group. Looking forward to seeing you there.
See you there?
Tags: Facebook, Gillmor, GillmorGang, GillmorGroup
November 6, 2007 at 10:31 am · Filed under Miscellaneous
Congratulations to the PowerShell team for getting out their CTP. I grabbed it this morning to make sure the Digipede AddIn works against it. Yes it does.
Cool stuff.
Couple of things:
- WS-MAN needs to be installed before installing the CTP (this What’s New post implies that the remote-shell features need it, but not that it is required). I hope this is only for the CTP and will not be required in the eventual release. Any extra requirements make it harder for ISVs to integrate PowerShell into their products. If you do not have WS-MAN installed yet, go here to get it: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=100350&clcid=0×409
- This new version comes with a “Graphical PowerShell”. This appears to be similar to the Shell Tools PowerShell Analyzer product, and not a replacement console. If you are looking for a better console, check out the other Shell Tools product, PowerShell+.
I will spend more time with the CTP soon and likely have more comments then.
Tags: .NET, CTP, Digipede, Microsoft, PowerShell, PowerShellV2
November 2, 2007 at 9:42 am · Filed under Attention, Web 2.0
Many are calling Google’s OpenSocial play an apparent retaliation against Facebook for their recent Microsoft deal. The reasoning is that both Microsoft and Google were bidding for a Facebook ad deal. Microsoft won, so Google is going to make Facebook, and by extension Microsoft, pay.
Perhaps it is payback, but certainly the OpenSocial strategy predates the Microsoft agreement. Not even Google could pull this whole thing off in just a few weeks.
This begs some questions:
- Did the losing proposal from Google include OpenSocial? Did it require that Facebook adopt the APIs? Did that push Facebook to Microsoft?
- Alternatively, was Facebook threatened with OpenSocial as a retaliation? That is, did Google offer to shelve OpenSocial if Facebook accepted a Google deal?
It isn’t yet clear (to me anyway) whether or not Facebook was briefed on OpenSocial. Google said yes, then no. Facebook said no, but some evidence points to them actually having known.
- Are these differing stories rooted in non-disclosure agreements dating from the failed negotiation between Google and Facebook?
Final question:
- Does anyone really believe that Google would have shelved the OpenSocial strategy just for an ad deal with Facebook?
I for one do not.
For an excellent post on Facebook / OpenSocial, read Dan Farber.
Tags: Attention, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, OpenSocial
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