Finally someone has done some serious damage to one of the scourges of the internet, spammers. Unfortunately, they will probably run somewhere into Eastern Europe and re-stablish their operations in the next few weeks. They say they get around 25,000 hits per day ? Sheesh....If people didn't subscribe/click on these ad's it probably would help. Maybe it should be an offence to click on one of their ad's.. LOL

Although, I don't think capital punishment is appropriate in this day and age, an unfortunate and graphic accident with a bus comes to mind, (and backing up to see if they are "OK").

Ed's recent blurb on the Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging offerings got me thinking. Reading through the comments and seeing Ed's response to Bruce's comment has huge potential. The whole problem, be it MS, IBM or other large vendor's is that they're not ready for it, from a licensing point of view.

SaaS licensing for applications would enable many BP's out there to really offer some innovative solutions, and as that market matures, different xSP's would eventually integrate and share data in the "cloud", (lol.. I was looking for an excuse to use that buzzword).

Unfortunately, I think current licensing arrangements are still a pre-internet quagmire. If an xSP hosts a server and applications for a client already paying Lotus Notes server/client licenses, the xSP would still need to pay it's own license fee to IBM to host the solution. Thereby double dipping licensing fees back to the client. So, SaaS would only really work from a TCO perspective for sites that had no existing Domino licensing.

But there is still another problem. SaaS should allow a client to pick "best-of-breed", (woot! another buzzword), to produce the right solutions mix for them. But in the current arrangements, a client would continue pay multiple licensing costs for each xSP utilised thereby creating a dimishing value of returns as the licensing costs mount up. If IBM could address at least these 2 licensing issues and still make a buck, it could open up a huge market that is well beyond anyone's understanding in terms of size.

So, I think the technology is certainly ready for SaaS. In fact it's been ready for many years, it's a case of whether the vendor's are ready for it.

The RBA Govenor, Glenn Stevens, announced a higher than expected cut of 0.75% to the cash rate. Good news in some ways, but frightening in others. It basically means that the RBA has assessed the situation is (much) worse than previously thought. They are the un-disputed champions of political correctness.

If you read the RBA Statement you'll see what I mean. I suppose the goal is to not to spook the horses any more, (not that it matters anymore, because if they haven't already bolted, they've been shot). But this extract just typifies their skill:

"...it is reasonable to expect that inflation in Australia will soon start to fall. Global disinflationary forces will assist in this regard..."

"Global dis-inflationary forces", ROFL. Nice choice of words. If Glenn Steven's was captain of the Titanic he would have handled it like this, "Ladies and Gentile's, we have sufferred a noticeable de-stabilising contact with sizable mass of frozen sea-water. We will now experience pre-mature termination of our journey and utilise a more discrete form of transport.".. LOL. Please put on your life jackets and form a line for the exits (behind me!)....

The risks with "Free" mail is that you get extremely limited customer service. I have been trying to login to yahoo.com.au mail and can't seem to get in. If you trawl the Yahoo site you will not find anything that refers to a server status. My stomach sinks because I was concerned that someone had managed to hack my account. I tried to recover/reset my password but the verification process does not seemed to be working very well. It's probably getting hammered by thousands of people like me clammering for our email.

If you log a support request, (muwahahahaa!), you'll be lucky to get a response in a few days. So, I manage to ascertain a server status for yahoo mail by looking at Yahoo answers. It seems that a few people have chimed in with the same question in the last 24 hours. Not a very scientific method, but it provides some relief but doesn't categorically give me any assurance that it's a server problem and not a hack-attack.

Oi! All you email hosting providers, this is something to save you (and me) alot of grief. If you want to avoid being bombarded with support requests, publish a service status rather than have your remaining online services getting hammer by everyone asking the same question. So we're all sitting here like lemmings waiting to find out what's happening. Ho hum..Llike I said before, no such thing as "free" email, the cost is the grief when stuff like this happens.

Rant alert! Now, burning CD's (CD-R's) on a DVD-RW drive should be well established technology right ? Wrong! I have been lumbered with Vista Home Premium on my Laptop (HP DV6836tx). I have some photos I simply want to copy from an SD card to a blank CD-R. The problem revolves around Vista's apparent in-ability to detect the limitation of the type of media to be used. Now, back in the ol'days (just a year ago), I would put a CD-R into a DVD-RW drive and hey presto, XP would tell know that the disc is a CD-R format it accordingly. I would like to remind the technical wonder-kids over in Redmond that CD-R is a write-once media type. But they seem to have trouble counting. "Write once" is not a single event and that means it's not re-writable media (ie not more than once).

Vista does a couple of really (really) dumb things depending how you interact with Windows Explorer when you're writing CD-R's.

Really, (really) dumb thing #1: Whack the CD into the drive, and click on it in Windows explorer, Vista will present you with a dialogue window asking you to format the CD-R in 2 ways. Either A/ "Live File System" which is for re-writable disks, or B/ "Mastered" which is for your classic write-once. Even their (supposed) online "Help" tells you that you can use a CD-R as a re-writable media.

They even say for CD-R media, (and I quote) : "Be able to add and erase files over and over, as if the disc were a floppy disk or USB Flash Drive". But later on they state that a CD-R "You can burn files to a CD-R more than once (each time is referred to as a session), but you can't delete files from the disc. Each burn is permanent."

Regrettably, I thought, ok let's see what magic they have done to make a CD-R re-writable (even though a little voice was screaming, "Dude, it's write once, what are you doing ?"). Well, 80% into the burn, the remaining files can't be written. Hmm.. silly me... maybe it's bad media, 2 more failed discs later, I tried "Mastered". Success! But why can't Vista determine that CD-R is Write-Once ? And why did I permit Vista to trick me into thinking that formatting a CD-R as "Live File System" is ok. No other Disc writing device on this planet can do it. Silly me...

Really (really) dumb thing #2: In case you playing at home, we're onto our 4th CD-R attempt. If you just whack the CD straight into the drive, and not open the drive in Windows Explorer it will sit there quietly without asking you to format it.

If you then drag files straight onto the drive (remember I haven't accessed the drive yet previously), it won't even prompt you to choose the format. It just assumes you want to use the default, (Live File System). 80% into the burn, the remaining files can't be written. D'oh!!!

So the correct procedure to avoid wasting about 4 CD-R's is to, whack the CD into the drive, open it in Windows Explorer, where you will be prompted to format it. Select the "More Detail" option for formatting, and then select "MASTERED" to do a write-once burn. Oh, I forgot to mention, Vista doesn't want to confuse you by those difficult choices, (just 2), and actually hides the choice from you intially, unless you actually select the "More Detail" option, and then select "Mastered". And if you are not on the ball, you will probably forget (like I did one time), and incorrectly format a CD-R again as "Live File System" (arrrgh! Disc number 5 down the toilet!).

Our friends at Microsoft have been making Operating systems for some 20 years now. And this is the best they can do..... They don't seem to know how to determine the type of media in my DVD-RW drive to prevent the wrong form atting type from being selected.

On another disparaging note, I found out that Microsoft is a 75,000-ish person company, and only have about 350-500 guys producing product, the rest do suppport/training/marketing/writing spin/defending law-suits/what-ever. No wonder stoopid product goes out their front door, when you produce umpteen versions of Vista, and fragment under-manned teams, I don't think anyone coherently knows what their products do any more.....I need to go lie down now...

Unless you have been marooned on an island or just don't get out much, like Charles Arthur or Dan Lyons :p, you will have heard about the affectionately named "trillion dollar" bailout now under-way. Oblivious to the intricacies of corporate finance, I thought the US Government would work out how to divy up the cash. But instead they're gonna use asset management firms via tender.

Now their fees run at around 1% of asset value. So, if you're giving out $700 Billion dollars, that's $7Billion in fees. That's right, there was a "B" in that "-illion". The US government will be tendering out the work so it won't be the full 1%. Well, heck, I'll offer a 90% discount right now but you gotta call me in the next 10 minutes... So, that's around, errr, $700 Million....sheesh.....But there are though some real patriots out there who are offering to do it for free which does give us some relief that not all species on Wall Street are of the "Shark" genus.

Now imagine what the congress coulda done with $700Billion for it's infrastructure programs, like those things unrelated to wars, like education, hospitals, carbon emissions, transport, community programs... Good thing George's time is up as prez, and can't run again. A trillion dollary war on "bad intel", a near trillion dollar bailout, I think George's platinum amex if it hasn't already melted, it's just about max'd out.

How many of you use TS Build Manager ? I am currently using it on one client site and it's very powerful with it's ability to configure deployments between environments without the need for a "cap in hand" excercise to the admin's. A soul destroying experience at the best of times, as they look down on you like you're about to corrupt their daughters (ie their servers, not their real daughters), in ways they have not even conceived.. but that's another story.. LOL...

I really like the concept of it, but the interface was built without much (errr, or any), consideration of how it is to be used. The interface has absolutely no flow to it, and there are a few gotchya's that can have you thumping desks in a very short amount of time. Once you have managed to sort it out or your knuckles are bleeding sufficiently, you can expect fairly smooth and consistent deployments. The environment here, may not be setup to spec but I can't be sure..the admin's are not the best communicators about it.

But the guys at TS should really think about how to make the products easier to use. Other products like analyzer, configurator, delta and CIAO all have relatively intuitive interfaces... Build Manager could use the treatment as well.

Remember that Sydney IBM Collaboration university event that was on early this month ? Well, I haven't heard anything about it. Did anyone go ? Did it go ahead ?

If you did I hope you got your money's worth out of it. Just a comparison, but the US and UK version of the events are around $800-$1200 per head cheaper than this one here in Sydney.. But the content I will admit is different, as they only talk about Quickr and Sametime. But still carry on for the same period. I know I harp on about the cost of it. But if you want people to use your technology to their best capacity, you gotta spread the love around...Go figure...

If you're like anyone who lives as a domin-ite or Lotusarian you will cruise Ed's blog. Ed recently met up with Charles Arthur as part of an interview of a long pod-cast of Poms in the US.

As I listened through it, the degree of technical ignorance, and technical pettiness demonstrated by Charles was amazing. Ed faced up to a Lotus critic and sailed rings around his questions, but Charles is determined to believe that "Lotus Notes is under attack", and it's crap for users, how can people use it, blah, blah, blah.. yawn...zzzzz

Some of his comments were totally ill-informed, such as inferring that compatibility with the Mac has not improved over recent releases. In the end Ed has a tough job in restraining himself to not throttle the ignorance out of some people. I agree Notes is not perfect, but making vast generalisations over, IMHO, very minor feature issues, and not even attempting to validate his opinions with any research, only reflects on Charles... Charles and Dan should share a drink as they both see the cup as half empty.

Google released chrome today. You can also check it out here and here. Although I am not an uber-geek with the daskeyboard, I would say chrome is the next breed of browser. Firefox 3, safari, opera, and the infamous IE are soon to become the univac's of the browser world, and igniting a new browser war.

 If you read through the 30+ page google book you will see how they re-wrote the browser to support independent multiple threads and introduced a JS-VM. It supports Google Gears so developers can get into well enough. You can detach a window from the tabs and move it around like an app window.... kewl.

I cruised over to the  IE 8 beta site and it's not too specific on features, but they seem to be still thinking in the established architecture and single-threads. But I can't be sure.

Chrome is extremely efficient by running a process for each tab you display in the browser, and it shares common global memory structures. Complex web-pages will load super-quick in Chrome. Not long ago I was comparing Notes 8's memory footprint being actually less than that of Firefox 3. Chrome is a different beast entirely.

Because Chrome runs a thread for each tab, it's extremely kind to the OS' memory by chunking it down into small memory stacks and greatly improves memory management, thereby eliminating performance problems with one fat memory stack. So where could this lead ?

Coupling Chrome with google doc's will certainly make things more interesting in about 12 months. With a genuinely thin and smart client available for free, the level of functionality of currently rich web-apps can now go to another level. Symphony could also learn something from this as well.

One of the chasms in Domino's data model is the (lack of) ability to run transactions. I had found someone else who started a thread on ideajam. If I had penny for the times a webQuery Save agent failed halfway through a complex save process because of object variable not set I would be listed on the ASX by now. I think the start/commit transaction would be feasible within certain constraints.

1/ Runnable only  from Scheduled or Web script agents.

2/ Transaction Pair (ie Start/Commit) must be within the same sub

3/ An ability to link transactions across sub's.

Because Domino's document model allows us to support pseudo-relational links as well as response hierarchies, the last constraint is more of a feature than a constraint. Logging would be a bugger though, being able to configure a separate transaction server/file store would be needed. So how hard is it ? Maybe see it in Domino 9.0 ?

Interesting how David Gerwitz has tried to smooth over and distance himself from the rumblings caused by everyone's punching bag of the day, Ron Herardian. In reviewing David's response, I agree with his comment

"A community that can talk out it's tough issues is a stronger community."

But when the "tough issues" are based on tripe, you are not getting a value-adding discussion. You are just antogonising the community. I also think David was asleep at the wheel on this one. The war-and-peace length response are an attempt to save face, and the last morsels of credibility for DominoPower. This brings me to another issue about an editor's responsiblity to. I think if you're an editor of an e-zine, you need to exercise some due diligence in qualifying what is published, just as editor's do in the printed media. Why should it be any different.

Ron issues a dubious apology, I think more to appease David than actually admit any guilt. Not acknowledging that he used the inflammatory article to further his own commercial needs is not much better either. David share's part of this apology in his response.

"I do not personally believe that I have done anything wrong or inappropriate. Nonetheless, I apologize sincerely for having caused you any difficulties."

If that's an apology I wouldn't want to see what he says when is upset. David should give Sara Radicati's contact details to Ron, as they'll both be sharing the same war-stories now..

We now resume your normal programme.....