Ice Cavern Studios

Ok, so it’s happened again. Microsoft has released a patch, and someone’s written an exploit for it. And it only took three days.

I just don’t get it anymore. Is it really that hard to keep a Windows computer up to date? I mean, it is just a simple setting. Just click ÒEnable Automatic Updates.Ó That’s it. Just enable the updates to be auto-magically downloaded and installed on your computer. And you’ll be safe. Ok, maybe I’m being hard on people. I’m much more technically savvy than most.

But the fact that CNN,ABC and The New York Times got hit. Well, I can’t have sympathy for that. These are not general consumers. They’re major corporations. They should have serious IT staffs. This needs to get patched. I understand you don’t have the budget to move everyone off of the 5 year old OS you’re currently running. That’s fine. It’s not like you’re running Win 9x. But come on. If you’re a systems admin, patch the systems on your network. Your job is to maintain the network. Patching systems is part of the maintenance process.

And of course, everyone who hates Microsoft (Slashdot, I’m looking in your direction) is going to go, my God it’s so insecure. This should never have been allowed to happen. Well, you wouldn’t run Linux with a gaping hole in the kernel. (Yes they do exist) so why do you expect Windows to be the same?

Ultimately, this is just another example of people ignoring the recall notice that was put out. Yes, a recall notice. That’s what a patch is. And the best part is, in the end, the real lessons of keeping one’s machine up to date will not have been learned. Instead, people will merely say it’s Microsoft’s fault for releasing windows, and the people who just didn’t patch will get off Scot free.

Security

This worries me. Only because it can only mean that the apocalypse is here. Could it be that the two biggest players in the browser industry agree on something. I’m just so confused.

Mind you, I think the argument is incredibly stupid. As Asa says, we don’t call it an HTML Viewer. Nor is it a IMAP/SMTP client. Personally, I don’t care what it’s called. People could call it Bob, as long as the browsers still understand what it’s doing with the feed, I don’t think anyone should really care.

Actually, a better question is what do the end users think? And I don’t mean people like me (I work for Microsoft, I’m clearly geekier than most). But people like, I don’t know, my Mom. Personally, I don’t think my mom is really going to care if her web browser calls it an RSS feed. All she’ll probably care about is that she can see her son’s latest website posts easily and effectively.

The irony of all of this is that the people making the biggest stink aren’t the users. Or the browser developers. It’s the content providers. Bloggers like me are getting all up in arms over this. Do you really care what people refer to your feed as? You shouldn’t. Just care that they get it.

It’s RSS (or Atom, which is a rant for another time). It’s not some major paradigm. It’s not the second coming of Christ. It’s just your latest blog entries wrapped in XML. So everyone needs to chill out, find a new topic, and blog about it (so that your XML Weblog Syndication Feed will friggenÕ update).

Web Development

It's been a pretty good couple of days since I last posted. Saturday was fun, I managed to miss the Sakura-con meeting, but we had a sweet party in the evening. Sunday was a good recovery day, and got me ready for the week. I had a good day today. I felt that I started strong, which is something I've wanted to do for a while. Unfortunatly, not everything was good. I recieved some bad news about Campus Club

I just recently discovered that Campus Club is going on “hiatus” this coming year. I am deeply saddened by this. It’s a bit like having one’s fraternity shutdown. At the moment, I feel as if a part of my Princeton experience has been wiped out. The place where I spent so much time, made so many friends, and have such deep memories is closing down. I knew it would eventually happen, but for some reason, this just seems too soon.

A lot of my friends have already talked about why it went down. I’m not going to pour any more fuel on that fire. Instead, I’m just going to mourn the loss of my club. I wish I had more to say, but I’m still at a loss for words, and I’ve known for a few days now.

Life and Times

Sigh, I wish this site (at it\’s current time) was at least in beta. If I were in beta, than typing in my blog entries would be so much easier (I can easily cut and past from word now). And people would actually be reading this rant as soon as it went live (or as soon as their RSS aggregator grabbed the feed). But nope, instead I’m doing this on what can be considered the alpha site at best. I’m still about a few days worth of coding and at least a weekend or twos worth of graphic design. But the key functionality is in place, and I want all of it. Now.

This is a major problem for dealing with web sites. I deal with this at work. I deal with this on my own private site. The ease with which one can publish a newly updated site is so much greater than with boxed software. When I feel a site is ready, I just upload it and I’m done. There’s no packaging. There’s no marketing. I just say ÒGOÓ and it’s done.

This often makes it very easy to just publish small minor updates without anyone noticing. Small features can be added in under the radar and it’s often not a huge deal. Hell, the 1.0 version of this site was developed in much that same way. As I added things, I just pushed it live. Didn’t even worry about it.

Now, however, I’m making major changes. Yet the site is still going strong being live. I’m re-factoring whole sections of code. Entire chunks of code have been ripped out entirely. The layout, flow, and overall design are changing. The page is streamlined. It validates. It has new features.

And I want to make use of all of it for everyone RIGHT NOW. Some of it I want for reasons of people reading it. (RSS, the Rants Section) Other parts, I want for myself (the changes to the CMS make writing easier). I want to show what I’ve learned. But I can’t. The site isn’t ready. So it will exist only on my test server and dev boxes. And I’ll release it when it’s done.

I just hate waiting. I hate having to update my blog with the old system. I hate it the same way I hated coming back to Office XP when I was using the 2003 beta at work. My life is full of this. Working at Microsoft often means that you go home and work on a piece of software that is good, but the version you use at work is better. It’s the same thing. Using the Download Center knowing that a better version is going to ship in XX number of weeks. And you can’t do anything about it. It’s mind numbing.

And that’s why I think so many sites are going out live as betas and being treated like RTW releases. Gmail, Google News and MSN Virtual Earth are all live as betas. Not because they are ready to go, but because they couldn’t wait to get the technology out the door. Features are being added to this day. These products aren’t fully tested. Hell, Google News just got RSS feeds (another rant for another day).

I’m beginning to wonder if this may be a problem. On the web, it’s cheap to throw something out there. If you already have the space *cough*Google*cough* *cough*MSN*cough* it’s not a big deal to push more out. But when is it too much. Will we begin to see Alphas of projects being released? How about just proof of concepts being pushed like full fledged programs. At least the Firefox People waited till they went 1.0 to make the huge public push.

Hopefully someone will get clued in and realize that website development needs to treat Beta software with the same respect that it gets in it’s boxed form. Or at least, they won’t hype it till they get to the RC stage.

Web Development

I'm going to keep this one short today. SO I found out that one of my friends from college just got engaged recently. I just found out today at lunch when he told me. Pretty crazy to think about that. Especially when I think about how later tonight as I was climbing I was talking to Nikki about her having kids. Yeah..scary indeed.

Life and Times