June 2003 - Posts
It was a letter of apology and a check. I suppose I should be grateful, but I'm not. You see the check was for 1/5 the amount it was supposed to be for!
Back in July of last year I wrote an article for .NET Magazine about .NET Remoting (I'd link the article if I could figure out how to get to the magazine archives). The article was published in the November 2002 issue.
So, for you math wizards out there I have a math problem for you:
A developer turned author writes an article for a magazine in July 2002, the article is then published in November 2002. The developer gets 1/5 of his payment for the article in June 2003. When will the developer get all the money he is due?
If anyone out there has the answer to this question I'd love to hear it; because at this rate I should have all my money about the same time Longhorn ships!
Now don't get me wrong. It was nice getting a letter that was singed by James personally apologizing for the delay in payment (I'm sure he had to sign 5000 of them), but I want him to know something: Times are bad for everyone! Not just Fawcette. The quickest way for your magazine to tank is to not pay the people who provide you content!
I would love to write for Fawcette again. In fact, after I submitted the article on .NET Remoting I was preparing another article. But once I saw I wasn't getting paid I stopped working on it. Now I blog.
I'd rather do this anyway... =)
Update: Thanks to Phil for locating the link to my article, and for providing a little insight on FTP's position. If someone at FTP would have explained it that way a long time ago, I wouldn't have so much pent up anger at them... I cannot tell you the number of times I've called FTP, left messages, only to not recieve a call back (it's way more than 30). Thanks Phil!
[Listening to: Skinny Puppy - Too Dark Park]
It appears XML Dev Con is about sold
out. I wish I could take one the last 10 seats, but alas, my only
available conference dollars are earmarked for the PDC...
[Listening to: Skinny Puppy -
VIVISectVI]
Wow, may this never happen again. I just
realized I went an entire week without blogging. Not only was I neglecting
my blog, but I didn't read any blogs last week either. I opened
up SharpReader this morning and had ~500 unread posts (most of them
Scoble's).
This whole RSS vs. Echo thing is interesting.
I need to spend a little more time trying to understand Echo before I comment on
this though...
Anyway, glad to be back!
[Listening to: Skinny Puppy - The
Process]
Man, Eric's article is invoking thought all over blogland this morning!
Phil just posted:
I felt silly getting a Computer Science degree. I mean, I have a college degree in what is a really fancy tool. I mean, I understand its a complex topic and there is a science to it, but I really don't think that in 2031 people will need to get computer science degrees to work on computers. In fact, I hope people won't need to get computer science degrees to work on computers. I seems like going to outboard motor school or something to me.
This is funny. I have a crazy educational background. Below is a summary of my academic experience:
So does this mean I'm not a good programmer? Not at all! It does mean that I missed out on lots of theory and academic stuff like creating compilers and C for Unix, but that stuff really means nothing for the majority of today's developers. Luckily for me, both the Legal Studies and Urban and Regional Planning curricula taught me the most important thing: how to solve a problem.
If you can do that, it doesn't matter what your educational background is!
P.S. I do regret missing out on some of that CS stuff, so I've been reading about compilers, logic gates, etc... for a few months now.
[Listening to: Scoregasm - Lo Presher - (05:07)]
On Random Hacks, Eric Kidd says:
... that between MS and open source initiatives, there will be no room in the marketplace for small software companies.
This is an interesting article, one that brings up many good points. Overall, I don't really agree with him. I think, for the most part, commercial software companies will still be able to co-exist with MS and open source in the market place.
Open source software is great, and I think its a great resource of applications for technologically savvy people (especially developers), but it's still not targeted at novice end users (like my mom). Will this change in the future? Probably to some extent, but I still think open source will lag behind commercial software vendors due to lack of marketing and polishing.
On the other hand, I do see a specific niche of the software development market dieing out in the next few years due to the open source movement: custom control vendors. These guys have been lucky for the past decade because most development shops don't want to spend the time writing the next cool button bar, but many developers on their own time love this kind of development. Just look at Code Project. Anytime we need a control for one of our apps, Code Project is the first place we go. Why? Well, not only do we get great controls, we get the source! This way, if something is screwed up (which is has been), we can fix the bug and move on (which we do [and send it to the control developer]).
BTW, if anyone thinks that a small development shop can't exist when competing against the likes of MS and open source, check out fog creek software. Joel has managed to create a profitable software company, that sells a few great products, make a little bit of money and provide his developers offices.
One day maybe I'll be fortunate enough to work for Joel!
[Listening to: Summertime Rolls - Jane's Addiction - (06:21)]
A new addition to thier family (Samantha) arrived this morning. Congratulations man!!!
I'm in the process of integrating FxCop into our nightly build procedures. Before I sit down and write an XSLT Transform to display the results, I figured I'd check and see if anyone else has written one.
If you have, can you drop me an email...
I've started an internal blog here at work (thanks BlogX). I did it because I am the worst at being organized and taking notes. I mean, I'm a developer it's not in my blood to know how to take notes! Because of this lack of note taking, I was having a hard time remembering what I had done over the course of a week. My internal blog has become my online status report.
I've emailed both my bosses to let them know, if you want to know what I'm working on throughout the week, go to my blog. If they need the information to fill out one of their status reports then I'll write a xslt transformation to extract the info they need from the rss feed.
The best part is that its forcing me to be more organized... Something I desperately need!
OK, I'll preface this post by saying, if you use Visual SourceSafe, you must subscribe to Korby Parnell's blog. Korby is the Chris Brumme of VSS. But, as I've said before; MSFT is really screwing up by not replacing VSS.
Here's reason 101 to switch to Subversion/CVS:
When creating labels in Visual SourceSafe, avoid label names that begin with numerals or the letter ‘L’. Here’s why:
1. Avoid Numerical Labels When used in combination with -vL, labels that start with a number are not processed correctly. For example, ss history $/Test -vL4.0.1~2.0.3 should return history for versions of $/Test between labeled version “2.0.3” and “4.0.1.” In actuality, this command returns history for all versions of the $/Test project, including labeled version "1.0.0", which lies outside the specified range.
2. Avoid 'L' Labels When used in combination with the -L parameter, labels that start with the letter 'L' are not processed. For example, ss history $/Test -vLabel5 returns nothing. It returns nothing because ss.exe parses –vLabel5 as ‘return history for the -version which is Labeled abel5. Since there are no versions labeled abel5, nothing is returned.
How is this acceptable? I guess this is why MSFT gives away VSS. Anyway, this is just one more nail in VSS's coffin.
Subversion, here I come!
I'm looking to promote internal blogging at work (at the project level) and I'm looking for a blog engine. Anyone have any ideas. Mark wants me to try a Python based blog engine, but my linux skills aren't the best, and I'd like to get it set up this weekend.
If anyone can drop me a line about this I'd appriciate it...
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