I'm NOT Crazy!

...well, at least I'm not alone...

For a while now, I've been feeling vibrations in my hip area - the area where my Blackberry holster hangs from my belt. I'd reach down, pull the BB out and find out... that nothing was sent, emailed, SMSed since I last checked the damn device.

This started happening more often. And then it started happening when my BB was on the desk in front of me. That freaked me out.

Ido just sent me a link to this CNN article. Apparently, I'm not alone. They call it "Phantom Vibrations", "ringxiety" or "fauxcellarm". And many other people report it. Including Scott Adams, Dilbert's writer.

I'm not crazy, I'm in good company :)

Get What You Need From Tech Support

Yes, we're all big technology buffs. We know how to take our computer appart blindfolded, install 3 different operating systems and look at a core dump to find the root cause of a blue screen.

But when something goes wrong, when a piece of software or hardware misbehaves, we're reduced back to elementary school when talkink on the phone with your friendl tech support represenative.

"Is it connected to power?", "Can you please restart it?", "Are you sure it worked before?" are some questions that can drive you mad. Couple that with the fact most tech support departkments are handled in parts of the world where English is not a first language, and you've got an explosive situation in the making.

ExtremeTech published these 10 tips oif dealing with Tech Support (the link points to the printer-ready version, to save you repeatedly clicking "next"). I especially liked the image attaced to the article, presented here for your enjoyment :)

Another Beautiful PC

A while back, I took a whack at writing a design-oriented article, under the guise of looking for a beautiful PC. Well, here's one I saw yesterday at the local Fry's. It's Sony's Vaio PC/TV series.
Amazing design, can be hung on a wall, price ranges from $1900 to $2900 based on specifications.

Certainly, Sony's performance has been than stellar (serving Rootkits to the masses, exploding laptop batteries, attempting to change the competition's reviews in Wikipedia and one more word PS3). But when it comes to design, Sony is only second to Apple.

Few More Blog Updates

Here are a few short updates to the Traveling Tech Guy:

1. A list of the 5 most favorite articles has been added on the right. The statistics are based on search engines data. I may publish some of it soon, so you'd get a feeling about your fellow blog readers.
   Right now, number 1 on the list is 1-800-BIG-SCAM - I guess scam attempts are up. Most people reach it by searching for one of the 800 numbers mentioned in the post.
   Number 2 is my American Express RFID post. The data is from the last month only, so numbers are a bit skewed. The situation will improve over time.
   
2. A link to fave this blog on Technorati - right now I have 5 references. Technorati is a Technical Blog aggregator. Give it a try and fave the blog :)
3. The number of ads has been cut down. All I have right now are 2 Google ads and a GetACoder banner in the header.
   Give it a try - you can either offer your services as a freelance developer, or hire freelance developers through the site. Become a subscriber by clicking the banner.

Easter Eggs

It's not Easter, still I was reminded of Easter Eggs when I came across the following image. If you watch the movie Fight Club, with Brad Pitt and Ed Norton and freeze the movie right after the inane FBI warning slide, you'll see this (click to enlarge):

Other than the fact that this matches the subversive atmosphere of the movie, I find it very appropriate. To find this and many more Easter Eggs, I refer you to the Easter Eggs Archive. Enjoy!

AT&T Issues an Apology

In a surprise move, that probably came after enough people published posts like this, AT&T today recanted from their draconian language in their term of service.

In this post, you can find AT&T's apology, along with the new paragraph 5.1 (Suspension/Termination clause) language.

I especially liked the following quote:

AT&T will clarify the language in its Internet Terms of Service agreements to reiterate the company's commitment to freedom of speech and open dialogue...whether that be via the Internet or elsewhere on the AT&T network.

AT&T's Terms of Service follow the company's longstanding respect for our customers' freedom of speech, and clarifies that we will not terminate or suspend a customers' Internet access service based upon their political views or criticism of AT&T.

Longstanding respect... yeah right...

FogBugz Will Estimate Your Estimation Abilities

Today I've attended a demo of FogBugz 6.0 given by Joel Spolsky, at Mountain View, CA.
FogBugz used to be an issue tracking system and has evolved into a product management software.

Initially I went there just to meet Joel and chat a little, but I found myself getting more and more interested in some of FogBugz's features. Here are some of the things that I found most interesting in the latest release:

1. A Wiki application handles specs and communication between team members. This Wiki has been done extremely well, with a nice, friendly interface and some cool editing and comparison features.
2. A new feature called Evidence Based Scheduling (EBS) allows you to predict release dates, based on estimation from developers. Each developer estimates the time it'll take him/her to complete a task. The real time is measured as well.
   As time goes by, your estimations are divided by the actual time, for each task. This produces a measurement called "Velocity".
   The closer your velocity is to 1, the better you are at estimation. This has absolutely no reflection on how good or bad a developer you are, just on how well do you estimate. All the velocities in your team are then input into a Monte Carlo prediction algorithm that attempts to predict when will your software be ready to release (see image).
   You can then play with the parameters in order to get a more suitable release date.
3. Everything you can do through the web application is exposed through a REST API.
4. The search engine is smart and versatile, allowing to report or focus on any criterion or field. It's also integrated into the browser as a search engine (saw it working on FireFox - I assume the same is available for IE7).
   
5. EVERYTHING can be subscribed to through RSS. Even filters you create on issues.
6. Full integration with source control systems, means that every bug fixed can show the filenames involved and any file name can show all the issues connected to it.

What lacked, in my opinion, are tester roles and estimations. We all know that a bug fix time includes testing, coding and re-testing. FogBugz seems to be focused on the coding part, but time blocks can be entered for the tester parts to make up the full picture.

You can try FogBugz here.

As for meeting Joel, I found him every ounce as entertaining and knowledgeable as his blog persona.

He stuck around for an hour after the presentation to answer various questions.
My question was: in this post, he claimed that every measurement system designed to measure developers can and will be "gamed" in the end, because developers are ingenious and impervious to measurement. How does that sit with ESB?

His reply was that they've made every effort possible to make sure FogBugz will not yield individual-based reports, that ESB can only attest to a developer's estimation skills and that ultimately, it's what managers do with that data that counts.
If I were to paraphrase it, a-la the NRA: Data doesn't judge people. People judge people :).

We also heard a funny anecdote from his Microsoft development days, about the MS Project 1.0 team. They were forced by their managers to use Project in their project (eat their own dog food). The first Gantt chart they've produced, predicted that Project will be coming out in 2018. They were henceforth excused from using it on Project in any project... :)

Fanboy confession: I originally intended to ask Joel to autograph my copy of "Smart and Get Things Done", but kinda chickened out when I saw all the people around. Next time...

A Story of Storage

I bought a new 400GB Hard Disk today - for less than a $100.

This got me thinking. I still remember my first year in the university, when everything was still measured in megabytes (1024KB). In a course called File Structures, my professor, Ariel Frank, said: "Pretty soon, we'll be talking about giga-bytes. That's 1024MB people! And just so you won't be ignorant - the next unit up is tera-byte - that's 1024G. But this number will probably only be used by governments and large movie studios" (he was into multimedia well before the rest of the world).

Looking around my house, I have, for my laptop:

1. 2 100GB internal disks
   
2. 2 external USB 100GB disks
3. 1 external USB 400GB disk

For my Mac:

1. 80GB internal disk
   
2. 250GB Firewire external disk
   

Altogether, not counting the numerous Flash disks thrown around, my iPod and the 20GB on the Xbox 360, I have well over a terabyte at home. And last I've checked, I'm not a government and my only interest in movies is watching them.

So, Moore's Law has been broken several times and the price point has dropped enough for us to not ever need to delete files. This, of course is heaven to makers of search software (X1, Copernic, etc.). If people don't throw away their garbage, they definitely would need help to sift through it...

Oh, and just so you won't be ignorant, the next unit up is peta-byte - that's 1024TB...

Fix Your Finder Crash

This is a Mac OS post - Windows posts will continue after the break :)

For several months I've suffered from a chronic problem on my Mac: upon right clicking a file in Finder (Finder is the main windows manager program in Mac OS - can be compared to explorer on Window. Actually, explorer was built based on Finder :)), about 1 in 4 times, Finder would crash.

Unlike Windows, the Mac OS is very resilient and Finder would restart itself, but this became annoying. Finally, I found the answer today in one of Apple's support forums.
Turns out, certain programs register themselves as "Context Menu items", by inserting plugin into a certain folder (HD/Library/Contextual Menu Items). The plugin for StuffIt (the Mac version of WinZip - actually preceded WinZip by at least 5 years) does not behave well. Removing it from there solved the problem. Thank God there's no registry to wade through :)

Download This! - TcpView

Would you like to know what kind of network activity is going around on your computer?
You can install fancy sniffers and network listeners (like Ethereal or Network Monitor 3), or you can run TcpView from Sysinternals.

Not only you don't have to install it, but it can track all open connections, in all applications and even resolve IP addresses for you.

Download it here.

Set Your Dark Data Free!

A small article in the Wall Street Journal last week reminded me of an issue that bothered me since my university days: Dark Data.

The term "Dark Data" refers to results of failed experiments, usually discarded by scientists and researchers, on their way to prove their new theory or invent a new revolutionary product.

During my thesis-writing days, a quote, supposedly funny, made the circles: "If the facts don't support your theory, hide the facts". Even then, I didn't find this notion funny. First, it reeks of deception. If an experiment exists that negates your theory, bring it out to the open and intelligently discuss the ramifications and how you intend to overcome them. (A similar issue can be taken with car makers, who may know things are wrong with their cars, but will not disclose it until a certain number of accidents has been reached - I refer you the the movie "Fight Club").

But the second, more important issue I take with Dark Data is that what you consider a failed experiment, a fellow scientist, maybe in a different discipline, might consider a treasure trove.

Consider the following: let's say you're a scientist, on your path to discover a new cancer cure. In one of your experiments, your drug fails to kill the cancerous cells, but hits the cells responsible for, let's say, the common cold. You will consider this a failure, but another scientist, on the other side of the world, toiling in vain to find a cure for the common cold, could use this data.

Add to that the fact that many experiments are extremely expensive to run, preventing certain researchers access to them. So if you've already "wasted your money" on a failed experiment, why not share the results with the community?

In the past, one of the excuses for not keeping this data round was the cost of storage. But since everything nowadays is computerized and since the price of storage is constantly dropping, this excuse is invalid.

So, here's my humble call to the researchers of the world: bring your Dark Data into the light. Publish your failed experiments and let other people play with the results. The world will become a better place for it - and you would still get your credit.

More on the subject can be found in this Wired article.