April 2004 - Posts
If you're in Silicon Valley and looking for a place to buy and smoke cigars, check out Castro's Fine Cigars in downtown Mountain View. Located on the main drag, next to a Starbucks, this shop has good prices, an excellent selection and a cozy sitting room - a rarity in the State of California.
Each time I've been there, I've been warmly greeted by regular patrons and Mohamad, who runs the shop. Being in the heart of the valley, the conversation was typically high tech.
Castro's Fine Cigars
650 Castro Street #110
Mountain View, CA 94041
650-962-1550
castrosfinecigars@msn.com
Today is the 18th anniversary of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. A very interesting photo essay and travelogue is available at:
http://www.kiddofspeed.com
While I'm generally pro-nuclear, reading this account gave me second thoughts. The area cannot be inhabited by humans for six hundred years.
I'd like to read more about the chain of events that lead to the disaster, so if anyone has a link, please post it as a comment.
Ever get a error message and need to write it down? Particular one with an obscure error number like 0x80040e09? Starting with Windows 2000, you can copy the entire contents of a message box to the clipboard by pressing CTRL+C.
Software developers often put error messages into a “message box.” A message box is a type of dialog box managed by Windows. It's very easy to implement from a programming standpoint, and thus many error messages are shown this way.
Users see message boxes all the time. They are the ones with a either a icon to the left and some text. There will be buttons, like OK, Cancel, Yes, No, etc.
To see a message box in action, go to the Start menu and choose “Run...“ Then type in something that doesn't exist, such as “foobar“ and press Enter (or click OK if you really like moving your hands back and forth from the keyboard to the mouse).
You'll get a message box dialog that says “Windows cannot find 'foobar'.“ and a lot more information that I didn't want to bother to type in manually.
Since the text is presented in a static text box, there is no way to select all or a portion of the text. Another method would be to use the edit text box control, and set the text to read-only. That's what the Windows shell does for the file property sheets, which allows users to select and copy text such as the full pathname of a file.
In Windows 2000 however, a shortcut was added to the message box code to look for the copy operation. So, if you press CTRL+C, the text of the message will be copied to the clipboard. If you paste it into notepad, it'll look like this:
---------------------------
foobar
---------------------------
Windows cannot find 'foobar'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. To search for a file, click the Start button, and then click Search.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------
I seem to remember this feature being talked about in 1998 as a benefit to accessibility, and it is. I don't think the feature was added solely for accessibility purposes however.
Now, this only works for message boxes. Many dialog boxes are shown by applications. Those are generated and handled by the application. Only when an application asks Windows to display a message box will this shortcut work. For example, Microsoft Word displays dialogs that appear like message boxes, but they are not. Actually, they aren't the dreaded Standard Dialog Manager (SDM) type of dialogs either, so Word is all screwed up.
Last night I went to the party at Mountain View's Computer History Museum hosted by IBM. I figured it would be a low key affair with other curious folks like me. Nope the parking lot was full and the lecture hall packed. Had several laughs listening to Fred Brooks talk about the development of the System/360. Fred’s the author of “The Mythical Man-Month”, one of the great project management books. He also was the manager of the Job Control Language (JCL), which he terms “the worst programming language ever.”
A few things struck me about this event:
- The audience was overwhelmingly comprised of middle-aged white males. No surprise there. However, visible from my spot standing in the back of the room was that most of the middle-aged white males were balding and overweight, while many had scruffy facial hair. Now, of course that’s the stereotype of the computer geek, but I thought it was fascinating to see it in practice. Much more so than a typical developers conference crowd. It also made me think hard about my own appearance. I’ve got a bald spot on the back of the head that so far I’ve been able to keep covered without a comb-over. I’ve been overweight for the past 15 years as well. I’ve had scruffy beards, but these days I keep a goatee neatly trimmed. It just made me think that I’ll have to work harder to get out of the stereotype.
- Fred Brooks talked about the firsts of the System/360 – 8-bit bytes (6 bits was the norm prior), standardized I/O, and family concept.
- He also talked about the dangers of success. IBM became wildly successful selling the S/360 and later the 370 family of computers. It blinded them to the opportunity in the mini-computer market and when DEC and Data General started growing in the 1970’s, IBM didn’t react. However, both of those companies suffered the same pitfalls of success when PC’s came along in the early 1980’s. IBM was then able to take that market by storm while DEC and Data General are gone. Data General’s story is superbly documented in Pulitzer Prize winning book “Soul of a New Machine” by Tracy Kidder.
It was a fun evening. I’ll blog more about this last point shortly.
Apparently until recently, the Linux kernal value that measures “uptime” was a 32 bit number. Uptime is measured in centiseconds (.01) and thus after 497 days, 2 hours, 27 minutes and 53 seconds, the counter wraps around to zero. Doing a Google search on “Linux uptime 497“ produced a number of folks who encountered the issue and discussions about it.
Now, I doubt that this is a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I honestly don't know if Windows has similar limitations. Obviously Linux can stay up longer than 497 days, it just won't be reported as doing so.
What struck me as odd about this particular problem was the response of the user community. Many of the replies to folks bringing up the issue go along the lines of “if you go 497 days without rebooting, you're a security risk because you haven't applied kernel patches.” Example here and here.
I'm certain that if Windows had such an issue, it would be proudly proclaimed by the Linux user community as evidence of shoddy programming on the part of Microsoft. They would be right. Of course, the Windows user community couldn't care less about shoddy programming in the Linux universe so, other than right here, you're unlikely to hear about such problems. I suspect that Ziff-Davis (motto: “Pravda for the Linux State“) won't be running any commentary about the “uptime rollover bug.“
I stumbled apon all this when researching which OS was being used by major web sites for it's servers. Netcraft offers a page showing the average longest uptimes of the web sites it tracks. The Top 50 sites is dominated with BSD/OS, which accounts for all but 7 of the entries including the top 5 sites. #1 is 1,786 days by Netcraft's count.
#6 is 1,618 days and is running FreeBSD. No one in the BSD community thinks such a high number is out of place or indicates a insecure system. In fact, the version of Apache running on the #5 site is 1.3.26, which was released in June 2002. So obviously the site is getting secuirty updates, it just doesn't need reboots to make them happen...
...and that, my friends, is exactly the way it should be.
Oooo am I mad! Maybe someone from the TSA saw my rant two weeks ago on inconsistant security standards and decided to get even.
During my regular Monday commute from Seattle to San Jose via Alaska Airlines flight 344, someone stole a portable cigar case from my checked bag. The case, a gift from my wife, was carrying 2 Cohiba Robusto's and 2 Hemmingway Short Stories - about $100 worth of smokes.
Interestingly enough, I know that the TSA (motto: “Respecting Privacy, Preserving Freedoms“) opened up the bag - they put a blue tie on the zipper and enclosed a “Notifcation of Baggage Inspection” leaflet. Which reads:
“During the inspection, your bag and its contents may have been searched for prohibited items.” I wonder if someone thought the Cohiba's were Cuban and decided to play Customs Inspector. Then I read, “At the completion of the inspection, the contents were returned to your bag, which was resealed.” NOT!
The leaflet gives a toll-free number, 866-289-9673 for the TSE Consumer Response Center. Well, it's just a recording telling you to go to the web site (www.tsa.gov) to download a claim form. You can leave a message with your address though. Which I did. The page to make a claim directs me to call the Consumer Response Center, which in turn directs me to the web site. Ugh. The only privacy being protected is that of the thief's.
I'm thinking that while my cigars were being lifted, the TSA (remember our motto - “Respecting Privacy, Preserving Freedoms“) was making me wait 15 minutes in a line, then suffer the indignity of making me undress by having me take off my shoes, jacket and unpack my briefcase.
Another page indicates that valuables shouldn't be in checked baggage. They think the airlines are to blame however; “The air carriers retain possession of your checked baggage for the entire trip with the exception of a short period of time while it is screened by the TSA.”
Of course, it's during that “short period” where my bag actually gets opened up by TSA folks. How else would someone know the cigars are in there? It's not like they show up on a X-ray and a baggage handler goes - “hey, let's nab that one.”
FYI, if I felt that the TSA was truly helping America be a safer place, I'd be more understanding.
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