Hey, it was a great day already watching OSU walk all over Purdue and avoid a stumble. The defense was great, the offense was great, that little ad-hoc flip pass that Braxton threw for a td was glorious.

And then Michigan just put the cherry on the top. You can glory in all the hair-pulling and teeth-gnashing over at mgoblog, but the highlight has to be Michigan’s all time rushing yardage low of -48 yards. That kind of futility doesn’t come easy, you have to really work at it.

@bfeld posted an interesting article suggesting that Healthcare.gov should have used Wordpress as some state sites did. I don’t have a strong opinion on whether Wordpress would have been appropriate, but I do love the call in the article to opensource the entire healthcare.gov project, advanced by a number of people including Fred Wilson.

The Healthcare.gov developers site claims that the source will be available but the link to the github project is dead.

The source should go public now. A), it would attract an incredible number of eyes that would be able to highlight the problems both known and unknown. B) it would attract the best and brightest eyes, better than the government can apply in a “tech surge”. C) there are undoubtedly a number of terrible security and privacy bugs in the code, as there are in any large software project, and they would get highlighted and fixed.

And D), the citizens own this code and it should be available to all of us, because we paid for it.

I’d like to see the states go public with their code as well, especially states like Washington where the exchange is working, everyone could benefit from seeing what works.

There is no reason whatsoever to not do this immediately.

UPDATE: there is already a whitehouse.gov petition at http://wh.gov/lD8bf, go sign it!

So now Apple has made OS upgrades free, and more importantly, has made productivity software free. A grab bag of thoughts, none of this is fully formed into a thesis.

• Of course none of this is really free, it is buried in the price of your device. Just as Windows prices are generally paid by OEMs. I’m not sure the “free OS upgrade” is remarkable or transformational.
• Free productivity apps are more interesting, maybe. Lots of discussion about how this is a “shot across the bow” at Microsoft, despite the fact that Microsoft already made this move with the Surface. But it isn’t much of a shot across the bow. One, the iWork apps aren’t that great. I’ve never used Pages for more than a second because I don’t write memos or papers so I am not sure what it is for. Numbers feels clumsy on iOS and is incomprehensibly different from XL on OSX. Keynote is the best but has horrible interop with Powerpoint. If you are a Keynote-only user and never have to deal with an inbound PPT presentation, it is OK, but that is a pretty small corner of the market. So I’m not convinced any of this is going to affect Microsoft in the slightest.
• It will be interesting to see how Apple organizationally deals with free software. Already one gets the sense that working on OSX and iWork are not the cool things to be doing inside of Apple. Now OSX and iWork are just cost centers. That is a tough position inside an organization. When teams start to squabble about resources and priorities, a non-revenue cost center doesn’t have a lot of pull, it tends to become a backwater in an organization. Money and talent flows elsewhere.
• We used the phrase “market discipline” inside of Microsoft, I think Paul Maritz was the genesis of this phrase. Setting a price on your product, and having to actually close sales with customers, creates great market feedback and market discipline. It is relatively easy to know if you are making customers happy. You get tons of feedback from customers when something they paid for is not working to their expectations. With iWork in particular, where will the market discipline come from? Already these apps are not best of breed, how are they going to get there?
• For years, Microsoft had a cheap productivity suite available, Works. It was generally sold to PC OEMs and was free to users. It was a fine product. It was positioned as being good enough for home and student users, whereas business professionals would want to pay for Office. Guess how many people want to think of themselves as “not professional, I don’t need Office”?

UPDATE: I’ve had some great conversations with people about this post. David Sobeski raises some great points, in particular the importance of making updates free and automatic, anything less is a disservice to customers and a nightmare to manage. Mike Conte and @Natbro both raise the point that sometimes a cost center can be correctly managed and feel empowered, Mike raises the example of the Audi transmission team who feel like they are part of a winning team. All great points and food for thought.

Someone saw my Surface this week and shook their head, they assumed I was one of the biggest Microsoft Kool-Aid drinkers ever.

I actually think the Surface is kind of a turd. I only have one because it is a part of the conversation in the industry, the conversation about the evolution of Microsoft and its attempts to return to relevance. I don’t know how to participate meaningfully in the industry if I don’t have firsthand knowledge of the products involved. So I have a Surface. I have a PC with Windows 8.1. I’ve tried a Windows Phone relatively recently.

For the same reasons I have an Android phone now, because there is a huge conversation in the industry about Android vs iOS, the differing corporate strategies of Google and Apple. I have a hard time understanding that discussion if I haven’t experienced the Android product directly. Maybe if I was more insightful I wouldn’t need to actually use the product, but for me, the product experience is essential knowledge. I’ve read some stock analysts’ dissections of Apple or Google or Microsoft and their lack of hands-on product experience is obvious at times, which suggests all their analysis is flawed.

And I have a Macbook, and an iPad. I’ll probably get one or both of the next generation consoles. I have an AppleTV and a Google Chromecast. Important to understand the home entertainment experience. Oh and several linux boxes running Ubuntu and Centos. Hard to understand the trends around open source and modern software development if you aren’t living with these. And a Raspberry Pi, and piles of Arduinos, super important to understand the IOT wave and low cost computing. I also use AWS. And Heroku. And Cloud Foundry. And have played with a couple other service options. I’ve tried Azure. And of course the legion of higher level services for developers and devops.

It amuses me when someone sees what I am working with and decides I am an apple zealot or linux fan or windows diehard. What I am is a technology enthusiast, and an industry participant. There may be other paths to remaining smart about the industry, but for me, it is all about hands-on experience with the products.

#4 in the first rankings, a fine place to be. A #5 average in the computer polls is a lot better than anticipated (Billingsley in particular loves the Buckeyes), this past weekend’s carnage cleared out a LOT of riffraff. BCS Guru as usual had the standings already correctly forecasted.

OSU’s position is exactly where it has been most of the season – OSU needs to win out, and needs 2 of the 3 above them to get a loss. Which seems very possible, consider the remaining largest challenges for #1-3:

• Bama: LSU, @Auburn, and then an SEC championship game against Missouri?
• FSU: Miami, @Florida (OK maybe Florida is not a challenge this year), ACC Championship game against VT?
• Oregon: UCLA, @Stanford, Oregon State, and then a PAC-12 championship game against ASU? UCLA?

There are some losses hiding in there for someone.

That said, OSU does not seem like they are the equal of any of these teams right now. Defense is just too weak, particularly the defensive backfield. If Iowa can put 24 on OSU, including tight ends getting behind coverage and outrunning DBs for a TD, well that doesn’t bode well. Still a lot of time left in the season though, plenty of time to get better.

• Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. I love Hesse’s “The Glass Bead Game” and so presumed I’d love this more famous work. But too much droning on and on and on about the nature of the Steppenwolf, and not enough demonstrating his nature through plot and action. I’m a quarter of the way through and I just don’t care anymore, I find myself unable to pick the book up and finish. I will keep it on my desk for a while, hoping that I will be inspired to pick back up.
• The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. When I was at Microsoft in the 90s, it was a demanding place to work, but I always felt like I was an “owner”. Company leadership created a culture in which we were expected to think and act like owners, it was partly our company. I don’t know if that culture has continued at Microsoft, but it is how I always felt. Amazon is a great company and has done great things, and seems to have maintained an element of nimbleness that Microsoft may lack now, and I love the customer-first focus of Amazon. But the books leaves the impression that, as an employee, one does not feel like an owner, it is pretty clearly Jeff’s company. I’m not sure I would like working there, although there is a ton to learn from the company, and this book does a great job of letting you stick your nose in the tent.
• The Smartest Kids in the World by Amanda Ripley. Great comparative work on world education systems. The lesson seems obvious – rather than punishing our kids with more tests, we should be focusing on raising the bar for teachers. The book yammers on way too long, the core ideas could be in a long magazine article, but interesting nonetheless.

This thing is stuck on my desktop, on the left side of the screen. No matter what I do, it won’t go away. Persists when I maximize and minimize windows, when I bring up the metro interface or any metro app. Not just a classic desktop phenomenon.

Oh and this is a machine without a touchscreen. I can’t follow its directions. Mousing over it, clicking on it doesn’t do anything. Ok well actually the arrow animates.

When I try to bring up a context menu on an icon near it, this tip overlay is on top of the context menu. It wants to be the boss, dammit!

I presume it will disappear on reboot.

In the “counting chickens way before they’ve hatched department”, look at the remaining schedule for the Seahawks, Niners, and Saints:

• Seahawks remaining opponents are 20-32 in aggregate. Niners: 24-34. Saints: 26-31. Advantage: Seahawks.
• Seahawks remaining opponents average a little worse than 3rd place in their divisions. Niners and Saints, about midway between 2nd and 3rd. Advantage: Seahawks.
• Seahawks have 4 remaining away games. Niners 6, Saints 5. Advantage: Seahawks.
• Seahawks away games are easier – the opponents have an average 2-4 record. Niners: 2-4, Saints: 3-3. Advantage or Push: Seahawks

The Seahawks are benefitting in particular from the Giants and Vikings cratering this year. Has left them with a great opportunity to secure home field advantage throughout the playoffs, which of course for Seattle is a substantial advantage.

Enjoy your NFL weekend!

The Republican Surrender by the New York Times editorial board:

The health care reform law will not be defunded or delayed. No taxes will be cut, and the deal calls for no new cuts to federal spending or limits to social welfare programs. The only things Republicans achieved were billions of dollars in damage to the economy, harm to the nation’s reputation and a rock-bottom public approval rating.

So glad I live in the Washington that is sane, that is moving ahead on healthcare, that doesn’t have a significantly crazy congressional delegation.

Ed Lazowska shared some observations about the failures in some recent large scale public (or quasi-public) software projects – notably the federal health portal. This project, like others, has had a massive budget, and undoubtedly has had hardworking and well-meaning people beavering away on it. And yet is is an operational failure so far.

The discussion on Facebook is worth reading, Ed is a super smart guy and has a set of very smart friends on Facebook. Ben Slivka points out that this is not a new pattern, many large scale government IT projects struggle. Ed and others point out it is not just large scale government projects, but large scale commercial projects as well. Rick Rashid points out agency problems and also the classic mistake of thinking that a “bespoke” solution is required, that off-the-shelf solutions are just not sufficient – Rick’s comments are very short but well worth reflecting on.

I’ve got some observations up there but I will repeat and expand here. First, there is a dramatic contrast between the economics and quality of this project, and that of internet startup projects. Internet startups survive on a fraction, a small fraction, of the budget allocated to the healthcare portal. And the traffic volumes that the healthcare portal aren’t crazy large, internet startups can scale up to handle these traffic levels reasonably quickly. This suggests that as a society we should try to figure out how to get some of the internet startup mojo applied to the health marketplace portal or other public infrastructure problems. Otherwise all that startup effort is going to be used to serve up animated gifs of cats wearing hats or gosh knows what else.

Second, rather than just trying to learn from internet startups and apply the lessons to a large public software project, perhaps we should create a different structure for these projects that encourages entrepreneurs to work hard on our public projects. Rather than have the government run the whole project, perhaps the government should define the goals and establish prizes, ala the XPrize foundation. Rather than committing a priori to a project and plan, let 10 or 100 teams chase the goal, and pick the best at the end of the project. Hand out contracts and award dollars at the end to the best projects and cherry pick the results. Have some consolation awards so that ultimately many teams are motivated to fight their way to the finish line. The government may be better setting goals and handing out awards rather than trying to build it all internally.

There are certainly problems with a prize-driven approach, and some thought needs to be applied to ensure that the most obvious pitfalls are avoided. Having a truly independent panel judge the results will be important. Preventing corruption and influence in the judging process will require some effort. Thinking through the IP issues and ensuring that the resultant IP is appropriately owned would be important. And many others.

We have proven that the way we are engineering these large public systems is costly and not very performant. We should discuss different ways to approach the problem, it seems stupid to keep on doing things the same way.

One of the simple reasons why I do most of my dev work on a Macbook is because OSX terminal windows just work way better than Windows command prompts. Notably for copy paste. I can for instance easily copy a command and paste it and re-execute on OSX, or copy it and paste it into an editor window, etc. The normal system-wide copy/paste keyboard commands just work.

Contrast with Windows, where every terminal window has that stupid edit window, and that stupid Mark command, and stupid paste command with no keyboard equivalent (or none that I know). Even the fancy new powershell prompts still have this same old stupid behaviour. it is the behaviour that the dos box had in Windows 95, probably even Windows 3.x before that. In 20 years it can’t be fixed??

Sorry, just in a grumbly mood this morning.

UPDATE: and hey to be clear I am just sshing from either OSX or Windows into Linux VMs. I don’t give a hoot about the native command line tools, except for needing SSH to be present WHICH WINDOWS SCREWS UP AS WELL. C’mon guys, show some pride in your work.

MORE UPDATE: Sadly the Quick Edit setting mentioned in the comments doesn’t really seem to work. Probably why it is off by default. Supposedly it enables Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V Copy/Paste but it doesn’t seem to work on my Win8 machine. Ctrl-C does something – the current selection in the window is forgotten – but doesn’t seem to put the selection into the clipboard. And Ctrl-V just sends a Ctrl-V to the input line, no change. This is true in both the command prompt and the powershell prompt.

First time at the Neptune, nice small venue, plenty of parking nearby. The acoustics aren’t awesome but a great place to see a band.

And Shovels & Rope blew the f$%king doors off the place. They were loud and had great energy. Love their songwriting and their stage presence and interplay. We first became hooked on them based on this video which is an utterly intoxicating performance, and captures their presence. But wow they kick up the volume and energy for most of their live show, it was very much a rock and roll show. Tickin Bomb and Shank Hill Street were both excellent with the added energy and volume, the guitar work was awesome. A super talented duo, so glad to have seen them.

Apparently I am now a linux zealot because I want to ssh easily into linux vms:

@jsnover nothing irks me more than *nix fanboys slamming CMD. It feels like wilfull ignorance of #PowerShell. I love *nix, but not bash!

— Reed M. Wiedower (@CTO_Reed) October 10, 2013

A brief summary of my daily computing environment: I use an android phone currently, iOS iPads, Osx on laptops, win8 on a desktop machine. I develop software components that target most of the above, as well as various flavors of linux for appliances and cloud hosted environments. On a less frequent basis I use a surface RT that I bought at launch. Each os has its pros and cons, each machine has its merits.

I have no emotional attachment to any os because deep down they aren’t all that differentiated. And I can’t afford the luxury of irrational attachment – I need to target users wherever they are, and I need to use tools that are the most efficient. My own usage, and that of most users, is inherently spread across many vendors and many oses, and I don’t see that changing. Multiplatform and interoperability is just a fact of life.

So when I said wanted ssh, I don’t want something better/different than ssh. I want exactly ssh because I need to connect to a variety of environments and ssh is the only reasonable common denominator. Powershell remoting may be super awesome and wonderful, but it doesn’t solve any problem I have, and just introduces a new non-interoperable tool and protocol with its attendant complexity. Not at all helpful – doesn’t save me time, just creates complexity. I am not saying that Powershell remoting is bad, it just isn’t useful in an inherently multiplatform environment. If your environment is Windows only, then by all means embrace Powershell if that works for you.

And when I say I want easy copy/paste, I don’t want copy/paste with some completely different keyboard and mouse interface. Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V and Cmd-C/Cmd-V have become second nature to me, I have a lot of muscle memory built up around those. Giving me copy/paste using some other keyboard interface or mouse interface is not very helpful (nor is command window text selection that works on blocks instead of lines). I don’t need or value innovation in the copy/paste interface, it doesn’t make me more productive.

So for those reasons, for me, OSX is substantially better than Windows as a development tool today. Which frustrates me because these are stupid little reasons, and there is no reason why Windows couldn’t add these features, it would only make Windows more valuable, and would make my life better. And frustrates me because I still have some affinity for Microsoft, and these seem like such petty features over which to alienate developers. If I was in charge, I’d make sure Windows was excellent at modern cross-platform devops, as well as having Windows-centric features. I can’t see the negative in this.

We are getting close to the first BCS rankings and the projections clearly identify OSU’s problem – the computers hate them, and they hate the rest of OSU’s opponents. Without a lot of help OSU will be on the outside looking in, even if OSU takes care of business throughout the season. OSU is certainly going to be stuck behind the ACC champ and the Pac12 champ if those teams are undefeated, so OSU needs to remain undefeated and hope those champs have 1 loss.

So this weekend, while OSU is enjoying it’s bye, here is the OSU fan’s viewing guide:

• BC at Clemson, 1230pm, ABC/ESPN2. Unfortunately I don’t think BC is very good so I have to cheer for Clemson to have one of those days where nothing goes right. Probably not happening.
• UW vs Oregon, 1pm, Fox Sports 1. (Why is this game relegated to Fox Sports 1?) Big rivalry game, these schools don’t like each other. Oregon is awash in Nike money and, in the eyes of Washington fans, is the most corrupt school yet to be caught cheating. The Huskies looked very good against Stanford. Oregon has been running up numbers against hapless opponents. Here is hoping that Oregon trips over their first taste of adversity.
• Stanford at Utah, 3PM, Pac12 Network. Utah is a credible team, Stanford might have a letdown after UW game, it is Stanford’s first tough road game. Certainly reasons to hope for the upset

I have a bunch of markdown files on dropbox. (and also some restructured text files). i just want to edit these with my text editor on android. but apparently there is no way to tell android that a .md file is just text? Android doesn’t maintain a mime/file type registry and a user can’t just add a mapping? without screwing around with app manifests?

Someone please point me in the right direction if there is a way to do this.