That was weird: searching for anything on Google was returning all results marked as "This site will harm your computer". Even searching for Google:

I submitted a report to Google, and in a few minutes Google.com was corrected. Google.co.uk showed bad results for one more search, but now that too is corrected. I couldn't find any mentions elsewhere of this yet, but it occurred both from home and via my work PC.

Sam Gentile pointed out the CTP of the new Windows Home Server. I can't believe I'd not seen this before -- the original press release is from January. There's a good description and series of previews on Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows: start with the first Windows Home Server Preview and follow the links on the right for the rest. The Wikipedia article is also a useful summary.

The feature list is largely unsurprising -- or to put it another way, just what you'd want. The centralized backup from all client PCs, kick-started by the server, is a nice touch. Disk usage is kept manageable by Single Instance Storage: if the same file exists on several PCs, only one copy is made. One of the issues with backing up all clients is the timing. WHS is set to complete the backups at night, and sets the clients to wake up then. It looks like this is on a timer in the BIOS, rather than Wake on LAN (which is cooler but hard to get working).

I've looked at various kind of NAS devices (e.g. NSLU2), and also at the Mac Mini, for use as an always-on server at home. Having a Topfield 5100 as our media centre (digital TV, MP3, photos) and a Wii as our games console and TV internet browser works great on the home entertainment side, but it would be nice to have something more integrated on the computing side of things. With a Win95 laptop for my son, a Win98 laptop and Ubuntu desktop for my wife, an XP desktop for me, and a couple of PC carcasses to look after, I don't want to tempt myself to waste more time configuring anything clever.

It's d%E9j%E0 vu all over again... In a fit of optimism, I let Windows upgrade to IE7 on my back-up machine. The result didn't exactly fill me with confidence:

(Image slightly edited for size: click to open original)

I know this happens to us all on occasion: bugs only appear when customers get their hands on products. Still, you'd think that at least the first intro pages would have been tested pretty thoroughly. And it's hard to find excuses for Microsoft: they have the resources, they wrote the OS, they wrote the app, and they wrote the page. The rest of us building web pages have to make do with just the last item.

Much has been written recently about the problems Microsoft are facing (bloat, Ballmer, brain-drain... and those are just the ones beginning with B! For a more humorous view, see here). I can't see them going anywhere soon, but with the release of Vista, Office 2007 and IE7 we sure get a good chance to examine what we think of them. Maybe people won't jump ship on Vista and Office, choosing just to stay with their current version for now, which will give Microsoft a chance to redeem themselves in the subsequent version. IE7, however, could be too little too late -- and if my first impressions are borne out, too badly executed.

I've not seriously considered another browser since moving to IE from Netscape, but even I'm now feeling more inclined to try Firefox than IE7. If Firefox 3.0 can stay on schedule and nail one more major feature over IE ("places"?), it might well have a shot at taking the lead in the browser wars.

I'm happy but exhausted -- and no, it's not much to do with the title of the next post! I'm flying to OOPSLA tomorrow, and the-airline-who-must-not-be-named's in-flight hospitality executives (or whatever they're officially called these days) have decided that now would be a good time to go on strike. This means that my 6am flight tomorrow morning -- which I was of course eagerly looking forward to waking up to -- is canceled, and I've had to find alternative transport for the first leg. Apart from they couldn't just tell me the flight was canceled, that would have been too easy. Instead, some time in the afternoon they announce which flights are going to run tomorrow. Doesn't exactly give you much time to react if they tell you Friday 2pm and you were meant to fly Saturday 6am...

Left without much choice, I booked another flight for this evening. You'd think that would be the end of it -- some hassle, but at least they'll refund my morning flight if it is canceled. The twist in the tail though (and I'm really hoping we've got to the tail here) is that if the flight is not canceled, I won't be using my morning flight (obviously enough), so the airline will kindly cancel the return leg of that flight, leaving me stranded after OOPSLA. Craziest of all is that the return leg is operated by an airline that isn't on strike, in fact the same one as I'm flying on this evening.

So, I heartily endorse Markus Voelter's "I hate traveling" stance (sorry, no links here: we're 20,000 ft above the nearest WLAN). There ought to be an extra ribbon at OOPSLA: "Yes, the airline screwed up my trip too". Whatever the statistics might say, the quality of air travel is rapidly approaching the quality of software ten years ago. We all have our own idea which airline qualifies best as the "Word Perfect for Windows" of the aviation world, and the sad thing is that pretty much all of them are getting a good number of votes.

If things are going to get worse, let's hope they get so bad that we all decide to stay home and figure out how to do these meetings without leaving our families and comfy beds behind -- wouldn't be a bad thing for the environment either.

Great video via Dion of the BBC interviewing completely the wrong guy on the Apple Corp vs. Apple Computer lawsuit:

Guy Kewney, a white, bearded technology expert was astonished to see himself appear on screen as a black man with an apparent French accent. The BBC were interviewing "Experts" on the Apple Corps vs Apple Computers legal case. They called for the "Expert" a Mr Guy Kewney, but a Mr Guy Goma raised his hand. A mic was attached and he was put live in the studio to answer questions. He was a cab driver waiting for job interview.

Reminds me of some DSM/MDA/Software Factories panels I've seen recently... ;-)

Since our server runs several web apps for internal, partner and external use, I was looking for something to monitor it automatically. Last year I tried a couple of monitoring services from the US, where their PC pings our server or grabs a web page. Both of them completely failed to deliver -- on one the automated system to try out their service for free didn't respond at all, and on the other it responded, but then only ever pinged our server once.

Whilst an external service would be best, having one directly on our server is still useful. If just one service on the server fails, emailing or paging me will generally work fine. With a little ingenuity, it's also possible to check network connectivity, e.g. if our server checks a web page elsewhere, which loads a page from our server.

For the moment, we're going with PA Server Monitor, which seems to be working quite nicely. It has an impressive array of things it can check, all highly configurable, but with a nice default set of choices. No "customization cliff" here, and yet no need to hand-code things :-). There are versions ranging from free to $99 per server, and even the free ones do a useful job.

Their WatchDisk software also seems like a good idea, if you too have users who sometimes hog too much server disk space, but you don't fancy going all totalitarian and imposing quotas.

If you know of any other good solutions, do share them with others by posting a comment!

Intentional Software is hiring a few programmers:

Currently we have openings for a select few outstanding programmers. If you would like to work on a new breakthrough product that will transform how software is used and developed, this is your opportunity. If you are bright, highly competent, willing to take risks and enjoy having fun working together in a team, you will fit right in. Your specific background, your number of years in the industry or the specific technologies you master are less important.

The "willing to take risks" bit might just be related to their No-Privacy Policy (Terms of Use for their website), which is either hilarious or frightening (or then both):

Intentional Software Corporation reserves the right to change these Terms of Use from time to time without notice, effective when changed on this website. For that reason, you should read these Terms of Use each time in the future before you click, access, browse or use this website or our blog.

Catch-22. I just hope they can find someone to shave their barber...

On a more serious note, they have some great people there, including Magnus Christenson. He's charged with turning the interesting ideas and prototypes into an actual released product -- a task I and many readers can sympathize with!

Intentional Software's ideas are similar to DSM and Software Factories. They're more like Software Factories than DSM in that they stay closer to code than to models -- the main visual format is more code-like than model-like. Then again, they're more like DSM than SF in that a new language is created for each project domain -- SF being more about Microsoft or partners creating somewhat domain-specific languages that many companies will use. A good overview can be found from a ZDNet interview with Charles Simonyi.

Spotted in Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

This is a very cool outlet gadget - it's simple, but boy, would it solve a lot of problems. ... I have lots of devices whose power plugs eclipse the nearest outlet (on powerstrips and on walls). Very cool.

Next I want to see the powerstrip version (sorry, the PowerSquid just doesn't do it for me). And why not let the sockets slide back and forth along the strip while we're at it?