Michaelzanussi.com

Twice in one day. Guess I had it coming.

(Pic: My character on Thunderlord experiencing Deathwing’s schadenfreude.)

I do not think we’re in a financial crisis currently, but I would describe what’s happening as more of an existential crisis – a crisis of leadership and political will that has drained people’s confidence in our ability to make the necessary changes that would improve our economy. We are painfully aware of politicians’ unwillingness to transcend partisan differences for the good of the country during a time of acute economic anxiety, which has the effect of increasing that anxiety. In fact, I suspect that the bear market was driven not so much by the situation in Greece as by the idea that both political parties are hostages to special interests and to the most extreme ideological fringes. However, I am confident that we will ultimately meet our challenges politically and economically. As for the stock market, I think that the current mood is so unrelentingly negative that even a small-scale positive surprise could shift the mindset of investors to a positive perspective.

- Chuck Royce, The Royce Funds

Spot on, in my opinion.

Groupon had their IPO today. Congrats, but good luck with that. Let’s see how long Groupon can make it, but I’m skeptical. The business model leaves a lot to be desired, there’s already tons of competition in the daily deals marketplace, it has a low barrier of entry, and the model is easy to replicate. I’m trying to find the upside to their business, but I’m not seeing it, at least from an investor’s point of view. I think I’d rather wait for another more viable long-term Internet play to come along. (Hmm, like that Facebook IPO that should be happening sometime in 2012 or 2013?) At any rate, Groupon should make for an interesting business school case study.

I’ve been a consumer of Apple products since the early PowerPC days of 1995. Apple computers and devices (then and now) are not only cool to look at and use, but they are amazingly productive tools as well. A lot has been said about Steve Jobs this week, but in my mind, the true genius of Jobs was creating products that were powerful yet simple to use. Simplicity is the necessary bridge between complex technology and the productivity we require. Feel free to mock that, and many have, but so many others have embraced the idea that such simplicity matters. Even a power user like me. Take a look around a typical CS or engineering department and you’ll be amazed how many MacBook Pros you’ll see. It’s no fluke so many of us write code on Macs these days, because of their hefty power combined with ease-of-use. Plus, thanks to virtualization, I can fire up Windows and do something in Visual Studio if I need to, or run some variant of Linux.

(Besides, I can still be dangerous: a terminal window is only a click away, allowing me to do whatever damage I may want to do from a Unix prompt. Now that’s geek.)

So thanks Steve for being a visionary and an innovator, and for giving us insanely great functional art to work and play with. Rest in peace.

(Top Picture: Boing Boing in a nice tribute, changing their page to mimic System 6, Macintosh’s first OS. Bottom Picture: Windows 8 developer release.)

Only good ones. A buck and some change at your local thrift store (if you can find them, and if they are still usable), but a bit pricier back in 1982.

With the Hyperion login issues resolved a while back, one user experienced a problem of another kind with Hyperion Intelligence Designer 8.5, specifically receiving ORA-12705 errors (Cannot access NLS data files or invalid environment specified) on startup.

To resolve this problem, we renamed the NLS_LANG key

which is located in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE.

Strangely enough, I have the same key on my machine, but have not encountered this Oracle error, which means there is something else going on (or in addition to) that is causing this problem besides the NLS_LANG key. So far, renaming the key (deleting or clearing it will work, too) has not had any side effects with other applications requiring Oracle connections.

Tip #54: Do not whine to the professor because his assignments are due by 8am on the due date, when every other class you have ever taken in your whole entire collegiate career has had an 11:59pm deadline, and then use that as an excuse as to why you turned everything in late. If you do, it proves that a) you can’t read a syllabus and b) you can’t manage your time. These are signs that perhaps you are not ready for business school let alone a career in management. If you also decide to question the professor’s logic or reasoning when it comes to setting deadlines, expect the professor to post your inane rant to the rest of the class so we all see how important it is to think twice about hitting the ‘Send’ button.

I’ve been spending more time with Windows 7 lately, for various reasons, and I must admit I’ve been enjoying the experience so far. If anything, any negative issues I’ve had I can probably blame on the slow hardware I’m running it on. (Ok, it’s still a huge pain downloading and installing all the updates and patches, but I doubt that will ever change!)

As I get re-acquainted with Visual Studio and SQL Server, I’ve been enjoying reading the new blog by the Windows 8 engineers over at MSDN, where they give you insight into the new version 8 features they are developing and invite comments from the peanut gallery. Highly recommended.

What ails the American company these days? Why, it’s the plethora of MBAs running them, that’s what. Back in the day, successful companies were run by executives who were focused on the product and the consumer, but now these companies are being driven into the ground by “short-term, myopically balance-sheet-driven” management, typically finance-only guys and gals, who don’t understand what the company is producing.

Now, unfortunately, either Time Magazine or Bob Lutz (who wrote Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business which is thusly being previewed by Time) is guilty of committing the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy here, but somewhere in there I think they make a good point. After all, what do finance guys know about computer hardware or social networking?

Coming from an engineering background myself, as well as being an eager, fresh-faced MBA student, I can see their point clearly. But to lump all MBAs together, well, that’s a bit disingenuous. Rather than dumping all MBAs, perhaps the solution may be simply to get more geeks and gearheads into MBA programs.

The problem: Upgrading to Firefox 5 disables Google Toobar. At this time, Google hasn’t updated the toolbar to work under Firefox 5. Here’s what you’ll likely see in the Add-ons Manager:

The workaround (Windows): Shutdown Firefox. Under
C:\Documents and Settings\{user}\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\{user profile}\extensions\{3112ca9c-de6d-4884-a869-9855de68056c} edit the file named install.rdf and locate the em:maxVersion element:

(Note: This also applies under Mac OS X. On the Mac, install.rdf can be found in your user directory under \Library\Application Support\Firefox\Profiles\{user profile}\extensions\{3112ca9c-de6d-4884-a869-9855de68056c})

Change the value from 4.0.* to 5.0.* (likewise, if you are using version 6.0, use 6.0.*), save, and restart Firefox. The Google Toolbar should now reappear:

Good reading at the mid-point of the Summer school session.

The Spring semester ended a few weeks ago on my first year as a B-school student, and the Summer session just started. I did great, and expect similar results in about 8 weeks. Well, I hope. It wasn’t too much of an adjustment getting back into the swing of things, even though it’s been a few years since I’ve been in school and it’s tough scheduling studies with full-time work. But it was an awesome experience.

However, I’m annoyed with electronic books. My summer class is using an eBook as a textbook, and I really dislike it. I’d much rather have a physical book that I can dog ear or put notes in, or even sell at the end of the semester if I so wish. Or, better yet, keep on a bookshelf. As it is, though, I’ve paid $117 for an electronic book that is difficult to navigate and read, can’t download as a PDF, and that I am basically “leasing” and expires in December. Poof. Gone. If you thought college textbooks were a rip-off, college textbooks as eBooks are an even bigger rip-off. IMO.

Small annoyance, though. I’m looking forward to a great summer in school!

On my MacBook Pro when trying to create a new project in Xcode 4 (4.0.2 Build 4A2002a), if you tap on a template to select it, the template deselects itself and you’re prevented from creating any kind of project. It’s really strange.

After a few minutes of frustration, I found that it’s just an inconvenient bug, and is easy enough to workaround by clicking on the template rather than tapping. Remember to click the template, rather than tapping it. Alternatively, you can also use your arrow keys to select the template.

The reboot process had already been underway for about a minute when I started recording. Unbelievable. (And my office computer had just been refreshed last year.) Thank you, Microsoft.

Sounds like wishful thinking to me, but that’s the prediction made by IDC recently:

Up until the launch of Windows Phone 7 last year, Microsoft has steadily lost market share while other operating systems have brought forth new and appealing experiences. The new alliance brings together Nokia’s hardware capabilities and Windows Phone’s differentiated platform. We expect the first devices to launch in 2012. By 2015, IDC expects Windows Phone to be number 2 operating system worldwide behind Android.

Disappointingly, the press release doesn’t say a word about what this differentiated platform is that Microsoft is now or will be offering (as usual such prognostications are short on details), but I guess it must be an iPhone killer, but not killer enough to overtake Android!

6/3/11 Update: Microsoft better get busy, they’re still losing market share.

That’s the message coming from Apple’s own fan base. Of course, when you read the tweets, it’s typically whining over iPad 2 availability. (Flash-related tweets are spot-on, though.) Guess the impatient forgot about that earthquake/tsunami event that took place in Japan a few weeks ago and that it just might be affecting component supplies. Dunno. Early adopters will continue to be frustrated, to be sure, so I’d suggest to take a chill-pill and wait a few months (or just order the thing online and you’ll have it in 3 weeks). You’ll get your beloved iPad 2 soon enough.

I’ve hit the midway point in my first semester of business school, at wouldn’t you know, I’m really enjoying it. (I may be changing my tune shortly when my MIS class starts working on case studies, though.) It’s been a bit of a struggle balancing classes with a full-time job and home life, but I’m beginning to adapt and get into a rhythm.

But is an MBA the right path for you? This article at the Financial Post discusses some possible alternatives if it’s not.

An MBA is a useful tool for many students, especially those lacking business education or experience, but it’s not the only option for people looking to accelerate their careers.

I like the digital copies of movies you get when you buy a Blu-ray disk. But Fox might want to perform more in-depth QA on their installer. Attempting to transfer this particular movie over to iTunes resulted in this inaccurate warning:

This Fox Digital Copy file requires iTunes version 7.6.2 or newer. Your current version of iTunes is 10.1.2

I’ll leave it up to first year CS students to figure out what might be going on here.

(Note: You won’t be able to use the Fox installer to get this transferred into iTunes. Just click Cancel here and in iTunes select the disc/Blu-ray icon and iTunes should then request the activation key and transfer the movie to your library.)

Code Rush, a PBS documentary about Netscape’s efforts to release the source code to Netscape Mozilla in an effort to keep the company afloat. While the effort didn’t necessarily save the company (they were acquired by AOL in 1998), it did usher in the age of open source software.

Enjoy.

Tomboy is a great utility for taking notes that I find indispensable on my laptop and I wanted to use it at my office computer. Not only is Tomboy available under Linux, you can also use in on your Mac or Windows box, and share notes between them using Ubuntu One.

Here’s how to do it under Windows (Mac is equivalent).

1. With Tomboy installed on your Windows box, open up Tomboy Preferences and go to the Synchronization tab.

2. Specify the Tomboy Web service and the Ubuntu One server:

3. Click on Connect to Server.

4. A browser should pop up and take you to the Ubuntu One login.

5. Follow the instructions until you see the Authorization Successful page:

6. Return to Tomboy Preferences and click Save:

7. Click Yes to begin synchronization:

8. You are now done.

After cloning an existing Mercurial repository in Eclipse, what results is generic project that doesn’t play well with Java:

What the project really needs to be is a Java project, with Mercurial functionality. There is no “checkout as a Java project” option when cloning a Mercurial repository, but there is a simple, manual way to accomplish this.

To convert a MercurialEclipse project to a Java project with Mercurial support, shutdown Eclipse and modify the .project file and add the Java nature to it:

<natures>
<nature>org.eclipse.jdt.core.javanature</nature>
</natures>


Start Eclipse and configure the Java Build Path, moving the JRE System Library to the top:

In Project Explorer, your project should now look like the familiar Java project, but also with Mercurial support:

Plus, no more Content Assist error messages.

It’s a rare occurrence, but once in blue moon we’ll encounter the development Oracle Application Server wireless container spontaneously restarting.

Since it’s our dev environment, I have control over the container, but unfortunately bringing down the container doesn’t help. The DBA thinks it’s a memory issue in the web cache, so the solution has been to bounce the entire AS itself. Seems to do the trick. Stop process Shutting down… Starting process iAS Wireless System Log Directory is Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE 10g (10.1.2.0.0) initialized

Issue this command in the Zax 0.91 (or 0.90) interpreter while running Zork I and you’ll be greeted with an ArrayIndexOutOfBounds exception.

To reproduce, fire up Zax and load the .DAT file for Zork I. The command sequence:

walk around house
walk around house
open window
enter window
w
take sword

The bug lies in getNextProperty() method in ZObjectTable.java. Here’s how to fix.

Line 316: Add 1 to propaddr since text-length byte is also part of the property table header. The change:

propaddr = propaddr + (memory.fetchByte(propaddr) * 2) + 1;


Lines 319 & 340: Property numbers in V3 story files are incorrectly calculated as if V4 or later. The change:

if (version <= 3)


I haven’t performed any extensive testing, but it seems to have done the trick.

Mom’s in her 70s now, and as we all probably know as we get older, change isn’t the easiest thing to embrace sometimes. But when she started having Internet connectivity issues with her computer, I decided to try an experiment. I figured her wireless card in the Dell desktop wasn’t working properly, and to troubleshoot, I gave her an old laptop to try out. But instead of Windows XP, it was running Ubuntu. Windows on that Dell Inspiron was a constant series of BSOD (even after a complete reinstall), so I installed a fresh copy of Maverick Meerkat and with a few accessibility tweaks for my mom’s sake, it was now a stable computer, and the wireless worked great. Even more exciting, she’s had an enjoyable time using a Linux box. (Ok, she’s only surfing the web, not running commands in a terminal window, but she’s happy now. As she puts it, the thing runs very fast now!)

So to anyone wondering if they can put mom or dad on a Linux-configured computer, put your fears to rest and let them dive in.