After several years not touching my midi keyboard not my guitar, this is the natural evolution of having bought a new PC, I suppose: I got inspired and wanted to play music again. Sure, I also study and test stuff on it, but I also want to do something that really is for myself. And something that makes me help relax, instead than working around the clock.

It is then that I figured out how much has changed in these few years: cheap soundcards don't come with MIDI interfaces anymore, these days. That's probably because they were shared with the so called "GAME Port"…. but since most joysticks these days are USB…. also the MIDI disappeared.

Therefore I did a bit of research, and I found an interesting external sound card that does everything I want (and more) and (most importantly) has drivers for Windows Vista x64. I am actually using this on Windows 2008 Server, but since Vista and 2008 really have the same kernel – it just works.

I have been talking to Ariel last month, asking for a Microspotting T-Shirt since I had mentioned her earlier on my blog.

I have been on holiday in the meantime… but the T-Shirt had arrived and was waiting for me in my letterbox in the office !! How cool is that???

So today I am walking around the Rome office in it… and I am looking at people’s faces: you need to understand that Italian dress code is more or less the opposite of how people usually dress in Redmond… Italy is historically more formal, and it would be the norm to dress fancy… one would definitely look BAD here if he would show up in sandals in the office… and VERY bad going on sandals to a customer…

So this is a screenshot from my new Quad-Core Intel Q6600, 8GB RAM with Windows 2008 Enterprise x64, running Hyper-V.
I have bought it and installed it a few days ago, and migrated my home Active Directory off the old windows 2003 machine to Windows 2008. Yes, because I have an Active Directory at home. I know, I am probably nuts, but you already knew that much.

Today, I just updated Hyper-V to RTM version. Oh yeah, because Hyper-V has been Released To Manufacturing today! You can get it HERE.

I am having lot of fun with this. I had not bought a new PC in about 7 years and could not really test anything on that old one anymore…
I paid 8GB roughly 100euros, which is not a lot if you think about it. These days even standard "budget" PCs for just doing email and web surfing ship with 2 or 4GB…
With that amount of RAM, I expect it to last several years like the previous one. The one I bought 7 years ago had 512MB when everybody was buying 128 or 256MB. Kinda the same story here.

Wonder what happens to the old PC? That glorious machine that has been my server for years has now been converted to the new kids' PC and will go on for a few more years like that, I hope.

After that, I took a different approach: I kept sending the mail on the SAME server as the backup, and using IMAP I could DRAG-and-DROP the backup attachment from the mailbox on one server to the mailbox on another server (=GMail). They did not mark me as a spammer that way, of course.
So that worked for a while, but then I got tired of doing this manually.

So the following ruby script is the way I automated the "move offsite" part of that backup.
For completeness, I will give the due credits about who set me on the right track: I started off by this example by Ryan.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
begin_ = Time.now

#includes
require 'net/imap'

##Source Info
$SRCSERVER="mail.muscetta.com"
$SRCPORT=143
$SRCSSL=false
$SRCUSERNAME="daniele"
$SRCPASSWORD=""
$SRCFOLDER="INBOX.Backups"

##Destination Info
$DSTSERVER="imap.gmail.com"
$DSTPORT=993
$DSTSSL=true
$DSTUSERNAME="muscetta@gmail.com"
$DSTPASSWORD=""
$DSTFOLDER="Backup"

#connect to source
puts "connecting to source server #{$SRCSERVER}... nn"
srcimap = Net::IMAP.new($SRCSERVER,$SRCPORT,$SRCSSL)
srcimap.login($SRCUSERNAME, $SRCPASSWORD)
srcimap.select($SRCFOLDER)

#connect to destination
puts "connecting to destination server #{$DSTSERVER}... nn"
dstimap = Net::IMAP.new($DSTSERVER,$DSTPORT,$DSTSSL)
dstimap.login($DSTUSERNAME, $DSTPASSWORD)
dstimap.select($DSTFOLDER)

# Loop through all messages in the source folder.
uids = srcimap.uid_search(['ALL'])
if uids.length > 0
	$count = uids.length
	puts "found #{$count} messages to move... nn"

	srcimap.uid_fetch(uids, ['ENVELOPE']).each do |data|
		mid = data.attr['ENVELOPE'].message_id

		# Download the full message body from the source folder.
		puts "reading message... #{mid}"
		msg = srcimap.uid_fetch(data.attr['UID'], ['RFC822', 'FLAGS', 'INTERNALDATE']).first

		# Append the message to the destination folder, preserving flags and internal timestamp.
		puts "copying message #{mid} to destination..."
		dstimap.append($DSTFOLDER, msg.attr['RFC822'], msg.attr['FLAGS'], msg.attr['INTERNALDATE'])

		#delete the msg
		puts "deleting messsage #{mid}..."
		srcimap.uid_store(data.attr['UID'], '+FLAGS', [  eleted])
		srcimap.expunge

	end

	#disconnect
	dstimap.close
	srcimap.close
end

total_time = Time.now - begin_
puts "Done. RunTime: #{total_time} sec. nn"

One of the pictures I took in Pisa at the Hackmeeting has been published in June's issue of "Internet Magazine", a famous italian IT magazine.

The article talks about Internet Privacy and the "Piano R*" project by Autistici/Inventati.

This is the cover of the magazine:

Not having one of the "supported" platforms pushed me into playing with the provided Management Packs, and in turn I managed to use the MP for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 as a base, and replaced a couple of strings in the discoveries in order to get a working CentOS 5 Management Pack.

I still have not looked into the "hardware" monitors and health model / service model, so those are not currently monitored. But it is a start.

A lot of people have asked me a lot of information and would like to get the file – both in the blog's comment, on the newsgroup, or via mail. I am sorry, but I cannot provide you with the file, because it has not been throughly tested and might render your systems unstable, and also because there might be licensing and copyright issues that I have not checked within Microsoft.

Keep also in mind that using CentOS as a monitored platform is NOT a SUPPORTED scenario/platform for SCX. I only used it because I did not have a Suse or Redhat handy that day, and because I wanted to understand how the Management Packs using WS-Man worked.

This said, should you wish to try to do the same "MP Hacking" I did,  I pretty much explained all you need to know in my previous post and its comments, so that should not be that difficult.

Actually, I still think that the best way to figure out how things are done is by looking at the actual implementation, so I encourage you to look at the management packs and figure out how those work. There are a few mature tools out there that will help you author/edit Management Packs if you don't want to edit the XML directly: the Authoring Console, and Silect MP Studio Lite, for example. If you want to delve in the XML details, instead, then I suggest you read the Authoring Guide and peek at Steve Wilson's AuthorMPs.com site.

Disclaimer
The information in this weblog is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. This weblog does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. It is solely my own personal opinion. All code samples are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.
THIS WORK IS NOT ENDORSED AND NOT EVEN CHECKED, AUTHORIZED, SCRUTINIZED NOR APPROVED BY MY EMPLOYER, AND IT ONLY REPRESENT SOMETHING WHICH I'VE DONE IN MY FREE TIME. NO GUARANTEE WHATSOEVER IS GIVEN ON THIS. THE AUTHOR SHALL NOT BE MADE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE YOU MIGHT INCUR WHEN USING THIS PROGRAM.

"[...] What I particularly liked about this post was the insight Brad provides on the diverse views of open source outside and inside of Microsoft as well as his own personal experience contributing to many OSS projects. It's hard for some to believe, but there are developers internal to Microsoft who like and contribute to various open source projects. [...]"

In fact, being made by Microsoft people or not, the list of open source software on CodePlex keeps growing too. Mentioning CodePlex and interviews, another interesting one is that of Sara Ford, Program Manager for CodePlex posted on Microspotting. But Microspotting is awesome in general. My favorite quote by her:

"[...] Hey. My name is Ariel and I'm the person you thought would never work at MSFT [...]".

In fact, just as I do, she is running that blog on WordPress, posting her photos on Flickr, using a RSS feed on Feedburner and in general using a bunch of things that are out there that might be seen as "competing" with what Microsoft makes. In fact, this attitude towards other products and vendors on the market is what I am mainly interested in. Should we only use flagship products? Sure, when they help us, but not necessarily. Who cares? People's blogs are not, as someone would like them to be, a coordinated marketing effort. This is about real people, real geeks, who just want to share and communicate personal ideas and thoughts. I had a blog before being at Microsoft, after all. Obviously I had exposure to competing products. My server was running LAMP on Novell Netware in 2002 – after which I moved it to Linux. It is not a big deal. And if I try to put things in perspective, in fact, this is turning out to be an advantage. I am saying this, as the latest news about interoperability comes from MMS (Microsoft Management Summit): and that is the announcement that System Center Operations Manager will monitor Linux natively. I find this to be extremely exciting, and a step in the right direction… to say it all I am LOVING this!!! But at the same time I see some other colleagues in technical support that are worrying and being scared by this – "if we do monitor Linux and Unix, we are supposed to have at least some knowledge on those systems", they are asking. Right. We probably do. At the moment there are probably only a limited number of people that actually can do that, at least in my division. But this is because in the past they must have sacrificed their own curiosity to become "experts" in some very narrow and "specialized" thing. Here we go. On the opposite, I kept using Linux – even when other "old school" employees would call me names. All of a sudden, someone else realizes my advantage.  …but a lot of geeks already understood the power of exploration, and won't stop defining people by easy labels. Another cool quote I read the other day is what Jimmy Schementi has written in his Flickr profile:

"[...] I try to do everything, and sometimes I get lucky and get good at something [...]".

Reading on his blog it looks like he also gave up on trying to write a Twitter plugin for MSNLive Messenger (or maybe he never tried, but at least I wanted to do that, instead) and wrote it for Pidgin instead.  Why did he do that ? I don't know, I suppose because it was quicker/easier – and there were API's and code samples to start from.

The bottom line, for me, is that geeks are interested in figuring out cool things (no matter what language or technology they use) and eventually communicating them. They tend to be pioneers of technologies. They try out new stuff. Open Source development is a lot about agility and "trying out" new things. Another passage of Brad's interview says:

"[...] That's true–the open source projects I contribute to tend to be the "by developer, for developer" kind, although I also consume things that are less about development [...] Like one tool that I've used forever is the GIMP graphics editor, which I love a lot".

That holds true, when you consider that a lot of these things are not really mainstream. Tools made "by developer, for developer" are usually a sort of experimental ground. Like Twitter. Every geek is talking about Twitter these days, but you can't really say that it is mainstream. Twitter has quite a bunch of interesting aspects, though, and that's why geeks are on it. Twitter lets me keep up-to-date quicker and better (and with a personal, conversational touch) even better than RSS feeds and blogs do. Also, there are a lot of Microsofties on Twitter. And the cool thing is that yo can really talk to everybody, at any level. Not just everybody "gets" blogs, social networks, and microblogging. Of course you cannot expect everybody to be on top of the tech news, or use experimental technologies. So in a way stuff like Twitter is "by geeks, for geeks" (not really just for developers – there's a lot of "media" people on Twitter). Pretty much in the same way, a lot of people I work with (at direct contact, everyday) only found out about LinkedIN during this year (2008!). I joined Orkut and LinkedIN in 2004. Orkut was in private beta, back then. A lot of this stuff never becomes mainstream, some does. But it is cool to discover it when it gets born. How long did it take for Social Networking to become mainstream? So long that when it is mainstream for others, I have seen it for so long that I am even getting tired of it.

For some reason, geeks love to be pioneers. This is well expressed in a digression by Chris Pratley:

"[...] some of them we will be putting out on officelabs.com for the general public (you folks!) to try so we can understand how "normal" people would use these tools. Now of course, as we bloggers and blog-readers know, we're not actually normal – you could even debate whether the blogosphere is more warped than the set of Microsoft employees, who comprise an interesting cross-section of job types, experiences, and cultures. But I digress. [...]"

But I have been digressing, too, all along. As usual.

When I end up having conversations such as this, I get really sad: I thought we had finally passed the arrogant period where we had to spoon-feed customers, and I thought we were now mature enough to consider them smart people and providing cool, empowering technologies for them to use. I also thought that pretty much everybody liked Microsoft finally opening up and actually talking TO people… not only talking them INTO buying something, something – but having real conversations.

I get sad when I find that people still don't seem to be accepting that, and wanting back the old model, instead. Kinda weird.

The conversation goes as follows (words are not exactly those – we were speaking Italian and I sort of reconstructed the conversation – you should get the sense of it anyway):

[...]

Me: "The SDK service allows you to do quite a lot of cool stuff. Unfortunately not all of that functionality is completely or always easily exposed in the GUI. That is, for example: it is very EASY to define overrides, but it can get very tricky to find them back once set. That's why you can use this little useful tool that the developer of that SDK service has posted on his blog…"

Cust: "…but we can't just read blogs here and there!"

Me: "Well, I mean, then you may have to wait for the normal release cycle. It might be that those improvements will make it in to the product. That might happen in months, if you are lucky, or maybe never. What's wrong if he publishes that on his blog, bypassing the bureaucracy crap, and makes your life easier with it RIGHT NOW?"

Cust: "It is not official, I want it in the product!"

Me: "I see, and even understand that. But right now that feature just isn't there. But you can use this tool to have it. Don't worry: it is not made by some random guy who wants to trojan your server! It is made by the very same developer who wrote the product itself…"

Cust: "It is not supported, what if it breaks something?"

Me: "So are all resource kit tools, in general. written by some dev guy in his free five minutes, and usually unsupported. Still very useful, though. Most of them. And they usually do work, you know that much, don't you?"

Cust: "But why on a blog?"

Me: "What's wrong with this? People are just trying to make customer's life easier by being transparent and open and direct in their communication, just talking RIGHT to the customers. People talking to people, bypassing the prehistoric bureaucracy structure of companies… the same happens on many other sites, just think isatools.org for example… those are just tools that a support guy like me has written and wants to share because they might be useful…"

Cust: "But I can't follow/read all the blogs out there! I don't have time for it"

Me: "Why not? I have thousands of feeds in my aggregator and…"

Cust: "I don't have time and I don't want to read them, because I pay for support, so I don't expect this stuff to be in blogs"

Me: "Well, I see, since you pay for support, you are paying ME – in fact I am working with you on this product precisely as part of that paid support. That's why I am here to tell you that this tool exists, in case you had not heard of it, so you actually know about it without having to read that yourself on any blog… does that sound like a deal? Where's the issue?"

Cust: "Sgrunt. I want something official, I don't like this blog stuff"

[...]

I thought this was particularly interesting, not because I want to make fun of this person. I do respect him and I think he just has a different point of view. But in my opinion this conversation shows (and made me think about) an aspect of that "generation gap" inside Microsoft that Hugh talks about here:

"[...]4.30 Hugh talks about a conversation he had with a few people inside Microsoft- how there’s a generation gap growing within the company, between the Old Guard, and the new generation of Microsofties, who see their company in much more open, organic terms.[...]"

Basically this tells me that the generation gap is not happening only INSIDE Microsoft: it invests our customers too. Which makes it even more difficult to talk to some of them, as we change. Traditions are hard to change.

"I have not posted in a while" …well you certainly will have read tons of posts beginning this way, right?
But that's the truth. One of the reasons is that you can follow very well a lot of what I do and write elsewhere on the Internet by using my lifestream RSS feed, which includes much more than just what I post on this blog. Our minds are not stuck on one subject matter only, but our thoughs just go around in many different directions. I mentioned the integrated feed/lifestream in a previous post, but I found that the concept gets explained very well by Yongfook in this post:

"[...] We interact with various websites and create content on them – why should I then have to come to my own website and reconstruct, repost or repackage the same content? It already exists out there on the internet, and it’s grabbable and usable. This is not to say I think conventional blogging is dead. I do however think it is evolving. The pace at which we consume and create content – photos, videos, links etc – is getting faster, more frequent. If we wanted to republish everything manually on our blogs, we’d just run out of time. [...]"

So at least even if this SITE does not get updated often you can see I have quite a busy digital public life on the web.

Very interesting to also read this post by Scott Hanselman on the subject. He rather just focuses on twitter/microblogging as an evolved form of blogging which was getting boring and time-consuming to people:

"[...] The rise of blogs brought conversations on the 'net more out in the open. Blogging enabled conversation via essay, but as blogs have matured, posts have gotten longer and longer and threads more difficult to follow. Now, most posts are jumping off points for the more interesting conversations that inevitably move to the comments. [...]"

He then goes into more detailed/structured analysis of what you can or could do with Twitter. While his analysis is pretty good about the many ways you could use Twitter as a broadcasting tool (and in fact loads of companies do already), I rather use it as public instant messaging. Or maybe not just. I don't actually know and to be honest I am not too much into classifying things, really. For example, if classifying what this blog is… I really am not sure I know myself what this blog is. It has been very funny when other people have tried to classify it… one said it was about "programming" (that would be nice, if I really was a better developer!), other people said it was "personal", other thought it was just about "IT" in general… Heck, there is no classification possible I am afraid. Therefore, not knowing what this blog is, I at least think that I know what this blog is NOT:

• it isn't a marketing blog
• I am not here trying to sell anything
• I am not promoting anything, anyone, or any brand
• It isn't just focused on one subject, on one area of interest

…and so are all my other "expressions" on the Net. Just me. Sprinkles of me all around. No special industrial plan for it. Just be myself. You might like me sometimes. You might hate me. You might not care at all. It's all good, anyway. Sorry for wasting your time.

I am seriously considering giving Asirra a try. It is an interesting project from Microsoft Research for an HIP (Human Interaction Proof) that uses info from petfinder.com to let users set apart pictures of dogs from those of cats. There is also a WordPress plugin, in the best and newest "we want to interoperate" fashion that we are finally getting at Microsoft (this has always been the way to go, IMHO, and BTW).

Anyway, what do you think ?

I just created an account for myself on the site… as you know I like PowerShell, so even if I usually prefer writing stuff in english, I will try to hang out there and see how can I contribute to it.

After all, I am italian…

Simply Works, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

I don't know about other people, but I do get a lot to think when the end of the year approaches: all that I've done, what I have not yet done, what I would like to do, and so on…

And it is a period when memories surface.

I found the two old CD-ROMs you can see in the picture. And those are memories.
missioncritical software was the company that invented a lot of stuff that became Microsoft's products: for example ADMT and Operations Manager.

The black CD contains SeNTry, the "enterprise event manager", what later became Operations Manager.
On the back of the CD, the company motto at the time: "software that works simply and simply works".
So true. I might digress on this concept, but I won't do that right now.

I have already explained in my other blog what I do for work. Well, that was a couple of years ago anyway. Several things have changed, and we are moving towards offering services that are more measurable and professional. So, since it happens that in a certain job you need to be an "expert" and "specialize" in order to be "seen" or "noticed".
You know I don't really believe in specialization. I have written it all over the place. But you need to make other people happy as well and let them believe what they want, so when you "specialize" they are happier. No, really, it might make a difference in your carrer

In this regard, I did also mention my "meeting again" with Operations Manager.
That's where Operations manager helped me: it let me "specialize" in systems and applications management… a field where you need to know a bit of everything anyway: infrastructure, security, logging, scripting, databases, and so on…
This way, everyone wins.

Don't misunderstand me, this does not mean I want to know everything. One cannot possibly know everything, and the more I learn the more I believe I know nothing at all, to be honest. I don't know everything, so please don't ask me everything – I work with mainframes
While that can be a great excuse to avoid neighbours and relatives annoyances with their PCs though, on the serious side I still believe that any intelligent individual cannot be locked into doing a narrow thing and know only that one bit just because it is common thought that you have to act that way.

If I would stop where I have to stop I would be the standard "IT Pro". I would be fine, sure, but I would get bored soon. I would not learn anything. But I don't feel I am the standard "IT Pro". In fact, funnily enough, on some other blogs out there I have been referenced as a "Dev" (find it on your own, look at their blogrolls ). But I am not a Dev either then… I don't write code for work. I would love to, but I rarely actually do, other than some scripts. Anyway, I tend to escape the definition of the usual "expert" on something… mostly because I want to escape it. I don't see myself represented by those generalization.

As Phil puts it, when asked "Are software developers – engineers or artists?":

"[...] Don’t take this as a copout, but a little of both. I see it more as craftsmanship. Engineering relies on a lot of science. Much of it is demonstrably empirical and constrained by the laws of physics. Software is less constrained by physics as it is by the limits of the mind. [...]"

Craftmanship. Not science.
And stop calling me an "engineer". I am not an engineer. I was even crap in math, in school!

Anyway, what does this all mean? In practical terms, it means that in the end, wether I want it or not, I do get considered an "expert" on MOM and OpsMgr… and that I will mostly work on those products for the next year too. But that is not bad, because, as I said, working on that product means working on many more things too. Also, I can point to different audiences: those believing in "experts" and those going beyond schemes. It also means that I will have to continue teaching a couple of scripting classes (both VBScript and PowerShell) that nobody else seems to be willing to do (because they are all *expert* in something narrow), and that I will still be hacking together my other stuff (my facebook apps, my wordpress theme and plugins, my server, etc) and even continue to have strong opinions in those other fields that I find interesting and where I am not considered an *expert*

Well, I suppose I've been ranting enough for today…and for this year
I really want to wish everybody again a great beginning of 2008!!! What are you going to be busy with, in 2008 ?

The last few months have been very busy with work. As much as I enjoyed them anyway, and learned a lot in the process and from the people I worked with, I now really want to enjoy these few coming days of Christmas holidays and RELAX and spend some quality time with my family and friends.

So I wish the same for all of you: that you may spend a Merry, relaxing Christmas, and have a great start for a grand, brilliant new year!

As a side note, having been very busy I have blogged a lot less. Blogging implies that I already have a sort-of-well-formed thought, that should span a few lines or paragraphs, otherwise I don't find it worth it. That does not mean I don't have small ideas or other things I like to share when I come up with them. That is why I am using microblogging and Social Networking a lot lately, so I remind you that even if this blog's builtin feed only includes the REAL FEW blog posts, then I also have another (very "chatty") feed that you can use to "follow me" and that one includes all of the following combined feeds: my status messages from Facebook, my Twitter messages, my pictures on Flickr, the stuff I read somewhere else and then share on Facebook, the places I visit and mark on 43Places and the goals I achieve, want to achieve, or I simply talk about on 43Things, as well as the REAL posts on this blog. It is my implementation of what has been called a "lifestream" by other bloggers.

Role Playing | Technology, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

I had not been playing Role Playing Games anymore for nearly 15 years. My wife recently thought that Joshua would be big enough to try, so I am trying to introduce him to the world of RPGs. This, as you can imagine, after all of that time, took back memories, ideas, and also made me think of how much the technology changed this all.

I am not at all referring to VIDEO or ONLINE games, even those that are marketed as being RPGs: most of them are not "real" RPGs anyway, they merely borrow some rules. I am saying that technology changed the way people ORGANIZE and prepare their role playing gaming experience (=the one played with real RPGs where you have to ACT a character), and how they interact with each other, and how the "knowledge" spreads.

When I was playing RPG a lot, in the 80's and early 90's, everything was paper-based, no Internet and technology in sight. For example, we photocopied a lot of stuff back then, as opposed to today when I just downloaded and printed a character sheet. But it was not just printed material that was being photocopied: in those years I remember myself handwriting my own extended set of rules, manuals, scenarios, description of places (I even kept and found back some of those!). Everything was handwritten: text, drawings, maps. A lot of work, very hard to mantain. But passion was driving me (and my friends at that time too). That has also been a big enabler in how I taught myself to read and write english: by translating handbooks that nobody had translated in italian. But I digress.

We use to go to a couple of highly specialized shops that were able to import and resell one or two copies of some rare handbooks of a strange game that would otherwise not sell at all. Sometimes even the specialized shops did not manage to get the originals of some of those rare books. Therefore, some of the expansions were sold as photocopies.
Some other times there had been some guy somewhere who did have one copy bought in the US and he took the effort to make an UNofficial translation and TYPEWRITE it in italian. Photocopies of this "product" was all that was circulating.

I am not talking or caring of copyright or "pirate" issues here. We were not "avoiding" the original stuff: if anybody would have told us that the stuff we wanted was actually available in its original format, we would have bought it. But it just wasn't available at all, and we wanted it. This kind of material was really close to impossible to get, with high costs, and all that us busy kids wanted was books with descriptions of imaginary fantasy worlds to place our characters in, and improvise and narrate our stories and saga's…

Also, all in paper format, what was circulating was a certain number of fanzines, also photocopies of an original, wonderful, "master copy" that someone had made with a typewriter and sticking pictures with glue on the paper. Desktop publishing was not that common nor easy yet. But the layout is not really what interested me, it was the CONTENT that was hard to spread.

At one stage, the thing improved slightly: I finally managed to convince my parents that I was allowed to get a modem, so I started using it to connect to various BBS. A couple of those BBS of the time were related to RPGs or had a related discussion area. I was interested in technology and in knowing how it was doing its magic, but most of all I was also pretty excited at the possibilities I saw for the technology as an enabler in connecting people. Just like I am now.
I have met some good friends on BBS's at that time. I'm still in contact with some of them, I've lost some other ones, like it happens in life anyway. But the possibility was showing quite clearly: those BBS were mostly text-based, with high connection costs (in italy were you pay every call, also local ones, per minute)… even in those circumstances they were managing to aggregate some people and were used as vehicles to spread the knowledge.
In Italy, thought, they were mostly local. International calls were prohibitively expensive. Of course we did hear of what happened to similar BBS in the US.

In fact, after pencil and paper, through a typewriter, the revolution started there: being able to type stuff on a computer and pass your file over to someone else made it easier for it to spread. But again, I am not talking about copyrighted material. I am mostly talking about self-produced material. I still remember I had troubles with digitalizing maps because I did not own a scanner… on some of the BBS people were sharing their works, and you could find good adventures and extra stuff on them. I also got to publish somewhere a couple of those I had written, and they even made it on a fanzine first, and then on a real magazine.

At one stage, though, I really got distracted. I probably thought I was "big enough", or I got too interested in the "serious" computing business, or I was too busy with other stuff. Probably a combination of many factors. So I sort of abandoned playing for a long time.

Now, looking back at that world, more than a decade later, I can see how it all changed: you go to the Internet, use any search engine and find dozen if not hundred of sites with forums, people playing online using Live Messenger, people sharing their adventures or their stories of the adventures they have played, other sites that collect all of the covers and information about all the booklets and manuals ever existed for any possible version of any game. Even the vendors are giving out stuff to play for free.

PCs and the Internet DID change the world, if anyone was still doubting. And yes, Role Playing Games and computing ARE related interests.

The world changed, yet it stayed the same: you still play those games with people, with the help of your imagination. It's the resources that are now at your fingertips.

But in my blog I don't require or need people to actually log in to do anything. I actually like anonymous/free comment. A CAPTCHA takes care of spammers and I am fine with it so far. Probably for a big site with a lot of users it might make sense, but for my blog so far it doesn't. But there's one thing for which this is instead useful: I have always been worried, when logging in through HTTP (thus, without SSL) to my blog from networks I don't manage or completely trust, that my password could be sniffed over the wire and stolen. Live ID solves my problem by letting Microsoft validate my identity: I have associated my Live ID to the blog's main user account(=myself), the one writing this post. So the plugin in its current form is used as a replacement of the login form (the standard wp-login.php wordpress form CAN still be used if you like, of course, you just don't HAVE to. Also the use of xmlrpc will still require local user/pwd combination.). Anyway, this new form will authenticate you thorugh Live ID and then check if your Live ID is associated to any local user. If it is, it will log you on to wordpress with that account. Otherwise it will inform you that you are successfully logged on to passport Live, but unfortunately there is no corresponding local account for you, and that it would need to be set up. Setting it up is as difficult as adding a line to the database… probably adding a form or a property page would be nice, but in my case I just did it with a query:

INSERT INTO `wordpress`.`wp-usermeta` (
`umeta_id` ,
`user_id` ,
`meta_key` ,
`meta_value`
)
VALUES (
NULL , '1', 'LiveID', 'f11fa1d3e82c68776f94a3a5c459b70b'
);

which adds an extra "property" for the first user (admin) called 'LiveID' which contains your Live ID (the one above is not my real one, in case you were wondering). When you are authenticated by LiveID and you get back this value, the plugin checks in this table which WordPress userid in the database has been associated with this Live ID and – if it finds one – it authenticates you as that user. Of course you should not have duplicates.

My code is mostly based on the SDK PHP Sample, with some modification to integrate it in WordPress as a plugin. Of course I removed the file that is used as "user database" and used wordpress DB instead.

There's a ton of things that could be improved. I just did not put any more effort and time in it. As you might know if you read this blog, I am not a full time developer. Actually I shouldn't write code at all for work and I am mainly considered an "infrastructure" guy. Anyway, I would like to code more and even if I am not supposed to, I always try to find stimulating situations that require a bit of integration, thinking out of the box, some scripting, etc…

[updated: november 3rd 2007] You can download the sample plugin "AS-IS" here: liveauth.zip . This has only been tested and only works with WordPress 2.3.x serie (but should also work with earlier versions – not tested)

[updated: march 30th 2008] WordPress 2.5 has changed the way the authentication cookie is generated, therefore here is an updated version of the plugin that works with the new secure cookies: liveauth02.zip
I should really invest some more time in this and clear up the code. I should also make an interface to make the configuration easier, and maybe make a version that works on both 2.3 and 2.5 branches. I am not sure when I will have time for that, though…

[updated: april 20th 2008] I have released version 0.3c of the plugin which now finally includes a simple configuration page, and should work on both WordPress 2.3 (and older) and on the 2.5 brach. Please visit the new Windows Live ID Authentication WordPress Plugin Page.

Disclaimer:
The information in this weblog is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. This weblog does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. It is solely my own personal opinion. All code samples are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.
THIS WORK IS NOT ENDORSED AND NOT EVEN CHECKED, AUTHORIZED, SCRUTINIZED NOR APPROVED BY MY EMPLOYER, AND IT ONLY REPRESENT SOMETHING WHICH I'VE DONE IN MY FREE TIME. NO GUARANTEE WHATSOEVER IS GIVEN ON THIS. THE AUTHOR SHALL NOT BE MADE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE YOU MIGHT INCUR WHEN USING THIS PROGRAM.

Praktica!, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

My backward walks in technology.
The old Pentax still makes nice pictures, but it is gradually falling apart. So I found this one for a very low price. During the weekend I am determined to test it, let's see how it behaves…

Some months ago Christian discovered a hack to change your Facebook status. Some other people also used it and extended it. I also ported it to C# and made a winform using its unofficial method.
Suddenly after, Facebook asked us to take down the code, as it violated their terms of service.

It has taken a while, some struggles, but now they finally recognized the need for federated status, and implemented a user.setStatus API.

Twitter is the first to pick it up, so now you can update twitter and have your status propagate in Facebook!

Well done, guys!

When I'll have some time I might think of rewriting my app using the SUPPORTED method, maybe finally writing that Live Messenger plugin… it would be nice
When I'll have time…

Ubuntu on Virtual PC 2007, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

This was a VMWare "virtual appliance" with Ubuntu that I was using for testing. As I mostly use Virtual PC or Virtual Server, I found it annoying having to switch to VMWare player to use that specific machine, and I could not be asked to install a new one. So I converted the .VMDK to .VHD format (the other way around than it is described on this article ).

After that, I had to change GRUB's configuration to inform it that the SCSI disk (/dev/sda1) was all of a sudden become an IDE one (/dev/hda1), and then I also had to reconfigure X.

After that it runs like a charme!!!

[...] The phrase surprised the marquess, because it was the same thing that he had thought when four o'clock had passed. To the bishop it looked like it was a natural coincidence. “The ideas are nobody's” – he said. It drew in air with his finger a series of continuous circles, and concluded: “They fly there in circles, like angels” [...]

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "Of Love and Other Demons"

5° Festival Romano di Giocoleria, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

This weekend we have been at the 5th roman festival of juggling, organized by the "C.S.A. La Torre".
You will find a bunch more photos here.

I used to have Windows Live Writer and Windows Live Messenger on my Windows 2003 Server box. Now, this new fantastic integrated setup says it won't install on this operating system. Ridiculous. You read the release notes, and in fact it only says Windows XP and Vista.

I see.

Well, I happen to use a Windows 2003 Server at home – the same machine for day to day use (like writing this post or checking private email) and doing some study/testing. I don't have loads of machines. I don't actually have money for a new machine (even if I would really need a new one to test stuff).
I try to do more with less.

Well, if this does not install, what am I supposed to do ?
I want to chat with people, which means I'll keep using Pidgin on this machine. That way I also have my GTalk, ICQ and Yahoo buddies all in one place. And it eats up much less memory that the "real" live messenger. And without advertisements. How nice.

I am sorry when my employer does this kind of stupid things. This is not interoperability. It does not even work on OUR operating systems!

As for Windows Live Writer, read Phil's post. It seems like FrontPage, all over again.
For writing this post I've used Flickr.
Since I happen to post quite a bunch of photos or images on my blog, I find it ideal. The ONLY thing Flickr is missing, when used as a blogging tool, is the ability to post tags/categories too. Otherwise it would be perfect.

[...] I've been pushing the idea that every app should be a platform for a long time, that in addition to a user interface, every app should have a programmatic interface. For me the idea came from growing up using Unix in the 70s, where every app is a toolkit and the operating system is a scripting language. Wiring things together is an integral part of being a Unix user. It's why programmers like Unix so much [...]

It is entirely true. The limits are blurry, IMHO. In the Unix world it is common to find full-fledged "applications" which have been written by the ground up by people that were doing SysAdmin tasks, and those "applications" are usually just… scripts. Simple shell scripts, or something more evolved (PERL, PHP, Python) it does not really matter.

I am so tired of the division traditionally made in the Microsoft world between "Developers" and "IT Professionals". We even have separate sites for the two audiences: MSDN and Technet. There are separate "TechED" events: for"Devs" and for "IT Pros". There are blogs that are divided among the two "audiences"…

There aren't two different audiences, really. There are people, with various degrees of expertise. There is no such a thing as a "developer" if he doesn't know a bit how the underlying system works. His code is gonna suck. And there is not such a thing such a "IT Pro" that builds and integrates and manages systems if he does not have the palest idea of how things work "behind the GUI". He's gonna screw things up regardless of how many step-by-step (click-by-click ?) procedures you spoon feed him.

That's why automation and integration are best done by people who know how to write a bit code.

The PowerShell folk GET IT.

I Wish, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

Tomorrow the new school year will begin for Joshua and Luca (and for all the other kids in Italy).

For me and for my kids, after having moved to another city, this is a more important event than the *real* new years eve that will come in december: september, after the holidays (even tough we have not really been on vacation) is the real moment when the "year" starts in Italy.
Even my company ends its "fiscal years" in June, and the real work starts back in september…

I do hope this school year goes well for my kids and that they can find a bunch of new nice friends in the new school. It is so important for them. I am sorry I had them move, furthermore for the second time (first time having been when moving from holland to Italy, in 2004) but it was the only place we could afford to buy a house in, while still being relatively close to Rome. Having to pay an ever-increasing rent and having no security was not really helping us.
So we moved to Velletri in June, leaving Castel Gandolfo.
With Velletri being a bigger town compared to the village we were living in earlier, everything should be better organized when for they grow – there is more to do, more schools, more shops, more life, more opportunities. This time we live very close to the school, so they can walk to it, instead than being taken by car. This also means that their new friends are going to be the kids living around us. Which makes for more opportunities to play and study together.
It's gonna be tough at the beginning, but in the long run they should be fine.

For this reason, I had to pull down the code of the small application I had previously released, which was "logging" into the mobile web application "pretending" to be a mobile browser and change your status. Big deal!!!

I am quite sure there are a lot of people writing "official" applications (that is using the "platform API" and so on) that are collecting A LOT of information about users who install their applications. They are being sent the info about the visitors by facebook, they are storing them, they might do whatever they please with (study it, sell it to spammers, to marketers, to making-money-assholes) and nobody will ever notice because it is on their servers and nobody can check that.

But a script that changes your status from remote – since this is not a functionality they CHOSE to expose in their API – then THAT is a big issue. Doh!
It's just plain ridiculous, but that's it.

Sure, the terms of service for app developers say a bit more in this regard:

[...]
4) Except as provided in Section 2.A.6 below, you may not continue to use, and must immediately remove from any Facebook Platform Application and any Data Repository in your possession or under your control, any Facebook Properties not explicitly identified as being storable indefinitely in the Facebook Platform Documentation within 24 hours after the time at which you obtained the data, or such other time as Facebook may specify to you from time to time;

5) You may store and use indefinitely any Facebook Properties that are explicitly identified as being storable indefinitely in the Facebook Platform Documentation; provided, however, that except as provided in Section 2.A.6 below, you may not continue to use, and must immediately remove from any Facebook Platform Application and any Data Repository in your possession or under your control, any such Facebook Properties: (a) if Facebook ceases to explicitly identify the same as being storable indefinitely in the Facebook Platform Documentation; (b) upon notice from Facebook (including if we notify you that a particular Facebook User has requested that their information be made inaccessible to that Facebook Platform Application); or (c) upon any termination of this Agreement or of your use of or participation in Facebook Platform;
[...]
You will not directly or indirectly sell, export, re-export, transfer, divert, or otherwise dispose of any Facebook Properties to any country (or national thereof) without obtaining any required prior authorizations from the appropriate government authorities;
[...]

Are we sure everybody is playing by these rules, when every facebook "application" really runs on the developer'server ? How do you know that they are really storing only what you want them to store, and deleting what you want them to delete ? Everybody knows how difficult it is to really "delete" digital content once it has come into existance… who knows how many copies of this database/social graph are floating around ?

Of course that is not an issue because people don't talk about it enough. But a script that changes your status – now, THAT is a very terrible thing.

I just don't get this "politically correctness". It must be me.

Oh, no… look! It's not only me!
I had read this post of Dare, but I problably had overlooked the last bit of it…. because he did point out this Hypocrisy going on:

[...]
Or (5) the information returned by FQL about a user contains no contact information (no email address, no IM screen names, no telephone numbers, no street address) so it is pretty useless as a way to utilize one’s friends list with applications besides Facebook since there is no way to cross-reference your friends using any personally identifiable association that would exist in another service.

When it comes to contact lists (i.e. the social graph), Facebook is a roach motel. Lots of information about user relationships goes in but there’s no way for users or applications to get it out easily. Whenever an application like FacebookSync comes along which helps users do this, it is quickly shut down for violating their Terms of Use. Hypocrisy? Indeed.
[...]

He then insists in a more recent post in calling things by their name:

[...]
I will point out that 9 times out of 10 when you hear geeks talking about social network portability or similar buzzwords they are really talking about sending people spam because someone they know joined some social networking site. I also wonder how many people realize that these fly-by-night social networking sites that they happily hand over their log-in credentials to so they can spam their friends also share the list of email addresses thus obtained with services that resell to spammers?
[...]
how do you prevent badly behaved applications like Quechup from taking control away from your users? At the end of the day your users might end up thinking you sold their email addresses to spammers when in truth it was the insecure practices of the people who they’d shared their email addresses with that got them in that mess. This is one of the few reasons I can understand why Facebook takes such a hypocritical approach.
[...]

Thanks, Dare, for mentioning Hypocrisy. Thanks for calling things by their name. I do understand their approach, I just don't agree with it.

I did pull my small application off the Internet because I have a family to mantain and I don't want to have legal troubles with Facebook. Sorry to all those that found it handy. No, I cannot even give that to you per email. It's gone. I am sorry. For the freedom of speech, especially, I am sorry.

I will change my status more often on Twitter.

Sure, gapingvoid has got 700+ users in 3 days, I know. But hey, he's famous, and I don't see the point of cluttering my already busy Facebook profile with a cartoon. I do read him and generally like his cartoons, and I am in the "friends of the blue monster" group (so to say I like him).

But I prefer reading him in my "normal" aggregator.

I think Facebook apps should rather "inject social objects" (where did I read this definition? sorry I cant recall it or I would appropiately link to you… I swear).

There are of course other similar applications that just pull comics in your profile (like Dilbert, Garfield, etc) but again – I think this is all stuff that YOU are interested in, and thus should just go into your aggregator – so YOU can read it; on the opposite your profile in Facebook should talk about YOU and things YOU are doing, for example. Occasionally they can be YOUR posts or they can even be someone else's posts that you read and want to share/let other people see (that's why I pull in my Google Reader's shared items for example – things I read and want you too to see). If this includes importing other social objects/information from other social networks, like the music you are listening to on last.FM, or the photos you published on Flickr, then it is fine. That's why I wrote an app that shows the things you want to do, pulled in from 43things.com and one that shows the places you want to visit pulled in from 43places.com. Because I felt those social objects from another network were missing. In fact a user commented "[...] Glad someone finally took a step forward to create this, though [...]".

But of course what I wrote about which kind of applications you should or shouldn't have in your profile, remember that this is just my personal opinion rant, and everybody is free to put whatever stuff he/she likes onto his/her profile, in the end :-)

[...] Bayarsaikhan has posted the top 25 most active open-source projects on Microsoft's Codeplex site. Looking at the list, it looks like Microsoft developers spend their time doing much the same as the rest of the Java/other world: play games and make the Web world pretty with AJAX. You can see the top project interests below in the Codeplex tag cloud.

Codeplex is interesting to me for several reasons, but primarily because it demonstrates something that I've argued for many years now: open source on the Windows platform is a huge opportunity for Microsoft. It is something for the company to embrace, not despise.

And it does several things well (better than Sourceforge, in my opinion) [...]

Facebook mobile is not working from mobile operators not in the US, I suppose.
I can't even log on to m.facebook.com with my WIndows Mobile SmartPhone.
I can't send status updates through SMS.

I can't even send them by mail, or I get the following back:

So, now, I am updating Twitter.
Twitter can be updated with an SMS even from Europe. Or it can be updated with a bot running GTalk. Very easy, can do it from everywhere.

I then wrote a small command line application (based on the same "hack" as the one described before) that runs every five minutes from the scheduler on my server and keeps the two in sync.

I wrote it in C# as a Console application because that's usually what I do when I want it to run it both on my windows machines and/or on my Linux server (with MONO). I already used this approach in the past and I found it to be successful. As long as you keep the application simple enough and check out the documentation for the implemented classes on mono, it runs without modification both on windows on the "real" .Net framework and on Mono on Linux. i just copy the executable and I am ready to go.
Not this time, though.
I am hitting what seems to be a bug in mono. I might be able to find a workaround, but I haven't had the time to dig in the issue yet.
I posted some info about this on this forum.

Windows Live ID Team has published on the web the SDK that lets you liveID (or "passport")-enable your applications!

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb676633.aspx

There are even code samples in six different languages: C#, Java, PHP, Python, Ruby e Perl! You can download them from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=91761

Wow! Having time, it would be cool to write a WordPress plugin using Passport authentication to authenticate/identify users that want to comment… mumble mumble…..

Interoperability. Wow.

More info at the Live ID starting Page: http://dev.live.com/blogs/liveid/archive/2006/05/18/8.aspx

Anyway, the post goes about Microsoft Surface. Which is something really cool. Eileen goes saying that she's worried if her cat would jump on the touch-screen table doing some damage to her information / data /accounts…. when I first saw the technology presented, I actually thought sort of the same thing…. what about my son going to the table with his hands dirty of chocolate paste ?? I have blogged in the past about the danger he poses…

Since kids these days do use the computers, having to replace keyboards because they are full of biscuits'crumbles or because they spilled fruit juice on them is quite common. Just less expensive than the special touch-screen, at the moment….

I keep finding way too many software that claim to interact with Web 2.0 sites or services, and connect here or there…. still forgetting one basic simple rule, that is: letting people use a proxy.

Most programmers for some reasons just assume that since they are directly connected to the internet, everybody is. Which isn't always the case. Most companies have proxies and will only let you out to port 80 – by using their proxy.

…which in turn is one of the reasons why most applications now "talk" and tunnel whatever application protocol on top of HTTP… still a lot of softwares simply "forget" or don't care proving a simple checkbox "use proxy", which will translate in two or three extra lines of code… three lines which I personally usually include in my projects, when I am not even a *developer*!! (but that might explain why I *think* of it… I come from a security and networking background )

I thought of writing this post after having read this post by Saqib Ullah.

Anyway. I keep finding this thing over and over again. Both in simple, hobbyist, sample and/or in complex, big, expensive enterprise software. Last time I got pissed off about a piece of code missing this feature was some days ago when testing http://www.codeplex.com/FacebookToolkit. The previous time was during Windows Vista beta-testing (I had found a similar issue in beta2, and had it fixed for RC1.)

Actually, I am being polite saying it is "missing a feature". To be honest I think missing this "feature" would have to be considered a bug: every piece of software using HTTP *should* include the possibility to pass thorugh proxy (also, don't forget about  AUTHENTICATED proxies), or the purpose of using HTTP in the first place is defeated!!

Developers!!! You have to remember people ARE behind proxies !!!!!

Scoble Spam ?, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

In reply to Dare….. he's Hijacked my news feed too!!!!

Facebook StateTray, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

This is a Screenshot of the small application I first described in my previous blog post.

It is a simple Windows Form that lets you change your status on Facebook without having to browse to the site. It does not rely on Facebook's API (as they won't let you change your status, at least to date) but is really uses a hack on the Facebook mobile pages. It is based on PHP code posted by Christian Flickinger, ported to C# (.Net 2.0) by me.

When you pull down the form you get to see the settings:

Those can be stored in an XML file, that gets loaded automatically every time the program starts.
Beware that password ARE displayed and stored in clear text.

The idea so far is that you run it on your PC and you just keep it resized so it does not show the "dangerous" bits.
You can keep it minimized on the tray in windows, pop it up when you need to update your status, write your new status and click "change" – it will freeze for a couple of seconds while updates your status, since it uses synchronous calls – then you can minimize it again.

UPDATED –  September 1st 2007: I have been asked by Facebook to pull down the source code from the Net, as it violates their terms of service (I had not realized that). Apologies to all.

What I had in mind was a simple program that would run on my PC, maybe minimized in the system tray, that would let me update my status in a click, thorugh the day, without having to log on to the website. Most of the day I am busy working, and I don't really have time to go surf and check Facebook… but I like the possibility for people to hear how I am doing. Changing the status would keep them up to date, and would keep my profile current.

As I figured out afterwards, their API does not yet let you change your status yet.

There are other people asking for this possibility… but then I went further searching on the Internet, and I found this blog: http://www.nexdot.net/blog/2007/04/20/updating-facebook-status-using-php/. 

I just hacked together a small WinForm written in C# that reimplements this idea.

I indeed would like to thank Christian for the idea, and my friend and colleague Pierluigi for his precious help with the regular expressions

At the moment it has terrible things such as hardcoded passwords in it, but as soon as I will have time to polish the code a bit, I will post it.

One more thing I would like to do with it is turning it from a standalone application into a Live Messenger Add-In, so that it synchronizes my messenger status with the one of Facebook. When I will have time for that.

PopFly lets you create mashups and even custom blocks, and I liked that too. But you have to use fancy-shiny Silverlight (which is very cool indeed, but probably not *always* necesary) and you can only create blocks using Javascript. Sure, as someone as already written, the meaning of AJAX is "javascript now works". I can understand (even if I don't know them for sure) the reasons behind certain choices. But I find it limiting. Maybe it is because I don't like Javascript. It must be it. 

Facebook, instead, empowers you to inject code into their social networking framework. Any code. In whatever language you like. They started it in PHP, but you can plug-in whatever you like: Java, Ruby, Perl…. you can even have your application running on your own server, still providing a seamless experience inside of facebook. This opens up to millions of possibilities, and I got fascinated by that.

At the same time, the paranoid part of myself has been thinking to the security implications of it. This open platform is cool, but it also sounds like a framework for cross-site-scripting (XSS) attacks. Sure, you can "report" an application made by a third party that does something weird… but who will really notice if all that happens under the hood is that your cookies get stolen (and someone accesses your bank account) ? Will you figure it out it has happenend because you wanted to see the "dancing pigs" loaded in your profile ? Or will you figure it out at all ?

This said, I set aside my fear for a while and I delved into coding. What I did learn in the last couple of years, having slowly moved away from security engagements, is to relax. When I was working costantly with security I was a lot more paranoid. Now I case much less, and I live a lot more.

So I developed a couple of quick and simple apps running from this very server into Facebook, and I started using thePHP5 library they provide, so to be able to follow the examples first and figure out how it was working.

Now I also want to take a look at the .NET library for facebook when I have time. It sounds cool.

Facebook_Daniele, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

Yet another social networking. I am on there too, now.
http://www.facebook.com/p/Daniele_Muscetta/742258687

Ah, and by the way, I really find it incredible that every time I invite some people to a new social networking site (it has happened for all of them), it happens that some (many) of the persons I have invited reply to me or call me asking me "is this really sent by you ?" "it looked like spam" "what is this thing" and the like.

Come on, guys, we are in year 2007, you still don't know what social networking is… especially if you work in IT you are sort of a dinosaur, you know?

Here, in my home, we are affected by a serious colorful plastic shoe addiction. They have already outnumbered us…. please help: if you know how to get de-intoxicated feel free to contact us…

I could not attend, as it turns out I am the only guy in Rome, among all of them.
That is strange. What is also strange is being all of a sudden in a list of *Microsoft* bloggers. I had never thought of myself like a *Microsoft* Blogger. Sure enough I work at Microsoft, but as my disclaimer says it clear "The content of this site are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer’s view in anyway.". I just feel like I am myself. And I also have a blog. MUSCETTA.COM has been online for 5 years now, and I have only been working for Microsoft for less than three years now.
For sure, I do blog about technology, also Microsoft technology. Of course, I also talk and write and blog about NON-Microsoft technology. In the past I did try to get an official blog (which I called a "corporate blog") but then I preferred to keep using my own domain, just because a lot of what you find here is often personal, politically incorrect and even – yes, I am gonna write it – open source.

Don't get me wrong, I love being at this company, because there's a lot of brilliant people and you cannot find anywhere in any other company such a huge mix of techies that rock so much and are so passionate about what they do! Those other bloggers in that list are this kind of people.

This said, this will stay my random and personal thoughts' basket. I like being in the community, but don't take my word for "official" please. Those you find written here are just my ramblings written from the couch after dinner.

[...] In Sanskrit, "yoga" means "union." Indians believe in a universal mind – brahman – of which we are all a part, and which ponders eternally. Everyone has access to this knowledge.

Knowledge in ancient India was protected by caste lines, not legal or economic ones. The term "intellectual property" was an oxymoron: the intellect could not be anybody's property. [...]

It is on most newspaper today, read on for example at Herald Tribune.

This patent and copyright thing is becoming more and more ridiculous every day.

I particularly enjoyed the following passage:

[...]
Antonio “s4tan” Parata (ap): Hi Rain Forest Puppy, many thanks for this interview. You are considered one of the fathers of web security and the inventor of the SQL injection attack. Anyway in the year 2003 you decided to publicly retire from the security field (to get more infos http://www.wiretrip.net/rfp/txt/evolution.txt). Can you briefly sum your decision?

Rain Forest Puppy (rfp): My decision to retire from the public eye was based on a lot of reasons; overall, the amount of resources & energy required to release and maintain advisories and tools was just getting to be too large. It wasn’t fun anymore–and why pursue a hobby if you’re not enjoying it?

Plus, the security industry was becoming commercialized. Advisories and exploits are now bought and sold; performing security research in the first place can land you in legal waters. The intellectual value of the security research performed has been reduced to a single severity rating, which…if not high enough…causes the entire research to be dismissed. I really enjoy security from the intellectual angle; to me, it’s all just a big mental challenge…a puzzle, if you will. So when the creativity and intellectual aspect of it started to fade away, I decided to go with it.
[...]

I do back up this point of view: "why pursue a hobby is you're not enjoying it ?".

Creativity and intellectual aspects of security do still interest me, just the market around changed. That's also part of why I started doing more System Management again – at least I have fun thiking and thinkering, integrating, scripting and composing….

[...] The intellectual value of the security research performed has been reduced to a single severity rating [...] I really enjoy security from the intellectual angle; to me, it’s all just a big mental challenge…a puzzle, if you will [...]

His point is expressed beautifully.

But he does not only talk about the Security community and market, he also has some interesting thoughts on open and closed source software:
 

ap: You are the author of the libwhisker library (http://www.wiretrip.net/rfp/lw.asp), widely used to create assessment perl scripts. What do you think about nowadays products related to web application assessment? What about some open source software (like parosproxy or nessus) changed to closed-source?

rfp: I have to choose my words carefully, because I very recently started working for a security software vendor.

Having had open source projects, I will say this: it is very hard to bootstrap a development community, and achieve the same level of polish, quality (as in QA), and implementation thoroughness as a commercial product. This isn’t necessarily because commercial software vendors are better coders; the dynamics are just different.

Open source coders are usually working on their own donated time. That means contributions are often catch-can and best-effort. Open source (when not sponsored by a commercial entity) are typically limited in resources (with time being the critical one).

[...]

All I care about is whether the tool works and/or gets the job done. I’ve spent so much wasted time trying to get a screwdriver to do a hammer’s job, and vice versa. I really don’t care if a tool is open source or commercial; I let the job dictate the tool, and not the other way around. Of course, there are certain artificial restrictions on this (like price limitations), but in general, I think there are some things that currently only exist in free & open source tools, and there are some things that currently only exist in commercial tools.

So use both wisely and get the best of both worlds.

[...]

Read the complete interview here: http://www.ush.it/2007/05/01/interview-with-rain-forest-puppy/

Digital Printouts.
I often find it funny to use the old reflex camera with films, but I mostly use it as if it was a digital one: I make many shots, some are good some are bad – I don't bother printing them, I just let it develop and I scan the pictures I like from the film (several ones are even posted here this way).
I have even been talking about this with fellow flickerer's: www.flickr.com/groups/romamor/discuss/72157600009019234/p…

On the opposite, it often happens that I want to print some photos made with the digital camera. So I take them to the shop on the Compact Flash, or more often on a USB pen drive.

Today, tough, something strange happened: the machine they use to print digital photos (some very big professional system for printing on photographic paper with a proprietary application which manages it) hanged while it was trying to load this one photo which was on the USB pendrive.

The guy at the shop got panicked: he said a week earlier a guy got the machine infected with a Virus through his USB pen, and he had to stop working for three days, spend a lot of money to get the system reinstalled…

I tried to tell him to close the application but he did not even get what I was talking about. He was saying that the system was not responsive… I was pretty sure the system WAS responsive, it was just the APPLICATION which was hanging, and since it looked like an NT-based system I tried to guide him through CTRL+ALT+DEL, to start "Task Manager", kill the application (this whole procedure took several minutes, and I had to show him which keys I was talking about as he was abel to find "ALT" but he had never hear of CTRL, left alone "DEL"). It was a Windows2000 Professional… so I wondered how did he logged in if he did not know that key combination….. I asked how did he get in when he started the machine…. "it opens automatically" he said. I see. I though it must be configured for autologon then. After killing the application he asked "how do I get out of this now??" "This" being Windows Explorer… I mean, the desktop. I pulled out my USB pendrive he was afraid of, I helped him reboot. He was nervous and he said it took much longer than normal to start up (I don't believe ONE word of it, it just took much less time than my laptop with Vista takes to start up… but he was worried and that makes one anxious and makes time flow slower). He was afraid and nervous that the "thing" could have been broken somehow by trying to load a JPEG…
NOTHING made him confident about me: I tried to reassure him I am an IT Professional, that I work for Microsoft (unfortunately I did not have my business cards with me today, that would have probably helped!), that I put my hands on much more complex and "missioncritical" systems, that I would not bring him any virus whatsoever and I am paranoid about computer security…
Nothing. Nothing worked to re-assure him that there wasn't anything to worry about my pen…

While the machine started I saw it doing AutoAdminLogon with Administrator… with a password of TWO characters.
Oh my god!
Then he wonders that he gets viruses from strangers. He runs as Administrator all the time!!!

But then I though and asked… "is there maybe a LIMIT on the SIZE of the file?". "Of course there is!".
Right.

Since the photo I wanted to print is actually a composition made of two photos pasted together, and each of the original was a 8 Megapixel photo, the resulting is a 16 Megapixel picture, a JPG file of roughly 8 megabytes in size. Well, this days it isn't much anyway. We nearly have cameras which produce files with that high resolution…
..but if THAT application has a limit… WHY on earth doesn't it CHECK for the bloody SIZE of the file BEFORE trying to load it ?

I mean, those are professional systems which – he said – cost around 150 THOUSAND of Euros… which they let run with an application which does NOT do any input checking/validation, runs the whole time as Administrator… while letting people bring in their own CD-ROMs, USB pens, flash memory cards….
and they expect it to be safe?

Now the guy was panicked and wouldn't let me plug my pen in the machine again.

Then he's keeping his shop closed in the afternoon since it is saturday, and I need that photo (and other ones) printed for tomorrow, because tomorrow it is my grandad's 91st birthday and I wanted to bring them printed for him and framed as a present!

Morale: I have to find another place to print them in the afternoon, in a rush, because some company sells print systems which are written like crap, which need to run as Administrator and won't do any input validation in their code. This is one of those situations where a design flaw matters.

MOM has always been a great tool out of the box because it sort of FORCED you to implement an Incident Management Process to deal with Alerts, as described here:
http://ianblythmanagement.wordpress.com/2006/07/27/mom-2005-and-itil-part-1/
In fact, Alerts had to be actually set to "Resolved", and this had to be done manually.

I have now been wondering for a while: "How is OpsMgr2007 going to affect this?" I refer to the fact that now OpsMgr2007 does something customers have been asking for a while: it can auto-resolve alerts as soon as the incident/issue is fixed, by monitoring the state of the component rather than waiting for people to resolve it!

Practically, people were often the bottleneck, due to a missing Incident Management Process. MOM has tried for nearly 8 years to push them to implement one… and I feel that it finally gave up even trying.

All the other stuff described in the other two articles of Ian'serie do still apply.

For Capacity Management nothing substantially changes.
Availability Management is greatly improved, with the generic "availability report" and the state roll-up feature provided by the new Health Service and the new ways object are discovered and instantiated and the way their health models work.

Problem Management can also still be done, and Alert tuning will be still required (but it should be slightly easier now, with the improved "overrides" kind of thing).
Service Level Management can also be done – this will actually be done much better: if the system knows you've fixed the incident and it closes the alert for you, SLA calculations will be done on the REAL down/up-times of services, not on people keeping the Alerts open forever like I have seen in many places.
This means it will be done better, WITHOUT relying on people.

All in all there are substantial changes in OpsMgr2007, most of them are for the good…. but still, I think, I will be missing the fact that people have to actively look at their consoles and manage Alerts the way they were asked to do before. I will miss all the talks I used to do about "you HAVE to manage your Alerts/Incidents", now.

You should have OTHER people talk about YOUR stuff because it is really cool.

Self-promotion does usually the opposite effect on peopple these days.

I am not into this: I just talk about technology when I feel like to, and I talk about other stuff when I want to talk about other stuff. And when I talk about technology it is usually about what interests me at that point, be it Microsoft or not. I talk of MOM as well as of Linux, of C# just as much as of Ruby. It depends what I'm hacking with at that point in time. I like cool technology, it does not matter if it comes from one side or another. I even like to integrate them when it makes sense (and it makes sense a lot of times). But I've already written about this here in the past. So I'll stop this rant here.

And yes, I feel very "debiany" today. In fact I just finished upgrading my server from Sarge to Etch and it went very smoothly, even if I had to reconfigure / migrate some settings – for example moving all the virtual server configuration from Apache 1.3 to 2.x … but it was about time for me to move my ass off 1.3! Among other things I am quite glad now I can use mod_mono and have it update with apt-get, instead than having my own compiled version with all sort of broken dependencies… also, it performs better – faster, and takes up the same amount of resources, which I would not have believed and I was in fact slightly concerned about. Nothing to be worried about, it turns out.

Some other guy was pointing me out today all the other improvements in the desktop-feature-space. I would not know, I am a runlevel-2 guy when it comes to linux.

Yesterday I was talking to someone and he asked me if I ever look at the mirror, if I do see a different person sometimes or would like to be one; they wondered if there was anything that I would change: "do you ever wonder what it would have been if you were born as another person, or more in general – what would you change if you could?".

I did not know what to answer.

At first, I thought it would have been very unpolite to say "no, not really, not since I was 16 years old, more or less…". Well actually that's what I was thinking, tough. Maybe he'll read this. Who cares. I don't feel like I need to make everybody happy anytime, anyway. Who are they after all ? What are they trying to sell ? I don't need to buy things because this society wants to make you think you need them. I don't need to be thinner, fatter, taller, blonder, I don't need an iPod, I don't need a TomTom, I don't need all of the crap this society pushes you to think as being necessary.

That is why I am posting this picture. I was angry back then when it was taken, I was wanting to be someone else like most teenagers who haven't found themselves yet.

What would I change of myself now ?
Nothing, not really. If something has changed, is that I DO like myself these days.

Sure, it would certainly help having more money. We could have a house of our own. Currently we live with my one and only wage – me, my wife, two kids and two cats – and half of this salary goes away in paying the rental of the house – so it's not exactly easy to get on; but that is just material things. We are healty, we are happy. I've even stopped feeling miserable and sorry for myself like a lot of people do. When sometimes I feel weaker and I realize that I might start getting caught in the consumistic trap (nobody's perfect) – which happens when I feel sorry and unfortunate….
to get out of it I usually read something about people in the real poor countries, people at war, people who don't have to eat, and I think what have we done to them to sustain our richness. Then I don't feel sorry for myself. I feel sorry for them, I feel thankful for what I do have. I feel like I should be doing something for them rather than for myself. I there was anything I would change is to have the courage to need even less. Because it is among the poor people, the less fortunate that you mostly discover humanity.
Rich people tend to complain, they forget to be thankful for their situation, they always want to have more.
Sure that if "successful" people, people who think of themselves as being very important, people who make a lot of money and are enterpreneurs, if those people still think they want to change something, if they get excited by stuff like "second life", if they get shaken by looking at themselves in the mirror and they expect you to be like them… if all of these things I have seen are true, then well, then my answer is NO and NO – sincerely I don't want to change anything in my life in the way they mean. There is no project for any killer application or business that I would borrow money for, there is no dotCom follow-up I would be getting rich for.

Probably for this reason, I do LIKE looking at myself in the mirror.
I even laugh like a kid making funny faces at myself, and that is all about.
I don't have to be afraid of my shadow.

This one is a post regarding my first test writing a cmdlet for PowerShell. After a few days since having change my blog's title to "$daniele.rant | Out-Blog" (where Out-Blog was a fantasy cmdlet name, and the title just meant to mimick PowerShell syntax in a funny way), I stumbled across this wonderful blog post: http://blog.boschin.it/archive/2006/09/21/4375.aspx that describes how to use the assemblies of "Windows Live Writer". Then I saw the light: I could actually implement an "Out-Blog" cmdlet. I am not sure what this could be useful for… but I thought it was funny to experiment with. I followed the HOW TO information on this other blog post to guide me through the coding: http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/10/lets_all_write_1.html

The result is the code that follows. you see is pretty much Boschin's code wrapped into a cmdlet class. Nothing fancy. Just a test. I thought someone might find it interesting. It is provided "AS IS", mainly for educational purpose (MINE, only mine…. I'm the one whose education is being improved, not you )

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Text;

using System.Management.Automation;

using WindowsLive.Writer.BlogClient.Clients;

using WindowsLive.Writer.BlogClient;

using WindowsLive.Writer.CoreServices;

using WindowsLive.Writer.CoreServices.Settings;

using WindowsLive.Writer.Extensibility.BlogClient;

using Microsoft.Win32;

namespace LiveWriterCmdlet

{

[Cmdlet("out", "blog", SupportsShouldProcess=true)]

public sealed class OutBlogCmdlet : Cmdlet

{

[Parameter(Position = 0, Mandatory = true, ValueFromPipeline = false, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName = true)]

[ValidateNotNullOrEmpty]

public string Title

{

get { return _title; }

set { _title = value; }

}

private string _title;

[Parameter(Position=1,Mandatory=true,ValueFromPipeline=true,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=true)]

[ValidateNotNullOrEmpty]

public string Text

{

get { return _text; }

set { _text = value; }

}

private string _text;

[Parameter(Position = 2, Mandatory = true, ValueFromPipeline = false, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName = true)]

[ValidateNotNullOrEmpty]

public string BlogApiEndPoint

{

get { return _blogapiendpoint; }

set { _blogapiendpoint = value; }

}

private string _blogapiendpoint;

[Parameter(Position = 3, Mandatory = true, ValueFromPipeline = false, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName = true)]

[ValidateNotNullOrEmpty]

public string UserName

{

get { return _username; }

set { _username = value; }

}

private string _username;

[Parameter(Position = 4, Mandatory = true, ValueFromPipeline = false, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName = true)]

[ValidateNotNullOrEmpty]

public string Password

{

get { return _password; }

set { _password = value; }

}

private string _password;

[Parameter(Position = 6, Mandatory = false, ValueFromPipeline = false, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName = true)]

[ValidateNotNullOrEmpty]

public string ProxyAddress

{

get { return _proxyaddress; }

set { _proxyaddress = value; }

}

private string _proxyaddress;

[Parameter(Position = 7, Mandatory = false, ValueFromPipeline = false, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName = true)]

[ValidateNotNullOrEmpty]

public int ProxyPort

{

get { return _proxyport; }

set { _proxyport = value; }

}

private int _proxyport;

[Parameter(Position = 8, Mandatory = false, ValueFromPipeline = false, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName = true)]

public string ProxyUserName

{

get { return _proxyusername; }

set { _proxyusername = value; }

}

private string _proxyusername;

[Parameter(Position = 9, Mandatory = false, ValueFromPipeline = false, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName = true)]

public string ProxyPassword

{

get { return _proxypassword; }

set { _proxypassword = value; }

}

private string _proxypassword;

[Parameter(Position = 10, Mandatory = false, ValueFromPipeline = false, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName = true)]

public SwitchParameter Published

{

get { return _published; }

set { _published = value; }

}

private bool _published;

protected override void BeginProcessing()

{

base.BeginProcessing();

ApplicationEnvironment.Initialize();

if ((ProxyAddress != null) | (ProxyAddress != ""))

{

WebProxySettings.ProxyEnabled = true;

WebProxySettings.Hostname = ProxyAddress;

WebProxySettings.Port = ProxyPort;

WebProxySettings.Username = ProxyUserName;

WebProxySettings.Password = ProxyPassword;

}

else

{

WebProxySettings.ProxyEnabled = false;

}

}

protected override void ProcessRecord()

{

if (ShouldProcess(Text))

{

ISettingsPersister persister = new RegistrySettingsPersister(Registry.CurrentUser, @"Software\Windows Live Writer");

IBlogCredentials credentials = new BlogCredentials(new SettingsPersisterHelper(persister));

IBlogCredentialsAccessor credentialsAccessor = new BlogCredentialsAccessor("dummy-value", credentials);

credentials.Username = UserName;

credentials.Password = Password;

MovableTypeClient client = new MovableTypeClient(new Uri(BlogApiEndPoint), credentialsAccessor, PostFormatOptions.Unknown);

BlogPost MyPost = new BlogPost();

MyPost.Title = Title;

MyPost.Contents = Text;

client.NewPost("dummy-value", MyPost, Published);

WriteVerbose("Posted Successfully.");

}

}

}

}

Rome Calendar 2007, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

I've used these photos to publish a calendar that you can get here: www.lulu.com/content/512186

Ok, I won't get rich from it, but I thought it was funny.

News of this Microsoft-Novell deal are all over the web.

I'd like to comment by cross-posting: this post in particular hides a pearl of wisdom:

"[...] But what does this mean to the end user?  Probably not very much. 

SLED aficionados will continue to praise Novell while espousing the virtues of free Linux – pretending all the while that Novell is not just as anxious to turn a profit on enterprise versions of their Linux products as Microsoft is to push its Windows wares. 

Others in the Linux camp will criticize Novell as a 'turncoat' to the Linux movement — never mind that everyone pushing their own Linux distribution is desperately trying to make money off of the open source software movement [...]"

But this is something you could see a long time ago. I even fell in the trap at the beginning when I started looking at Novell's move in the Linux and Open Source market…. but they did not fool me for long . In the second article I wrote:

"[...] There are people who might not like this. I even understand it. An I am not referring to Microsoft. I am referring to people who love and advocate free software. This behavior does not look fair. It looks like the competition to Microsoft is trying to use all possible weapons to regain market, using (and abusing) open source software they did not create in the first place. This might be true, but to those who might not agree, being idealistic about linux… I have to say that unfortunately the dream of 'complete freedom' of software has already vanished. Haven't you noticed it already ? It would be great, in theory, but talking of IT is rather obviously talking of a market, rather than of just a hobby. And a market is where companies play. After all, RedHat is charging money for its up2date, while WindowsUpdate is still for free… …you might say that other distributions don't charge people for the updates… but for how long is it really going to last? Companies have stepped in, and they are going to stay. I am not trying in any way to defend their position. I am just making an analysis of this phenomenon. [...]"

And that was already three years ago.

Still you get people insisting on free software, and how companies should use it to stop paying Microsoft. Yeah, right. And to start paying IBM or Novell. They'll always pay someone anyway.

I stepped out of the dream and started working at Microsoft when I realized this.

I also still use FREE-OSS (like Debian or Gentoo Linux Distros) for myself. But companies can't really depend on those. Their mentality requires them to pay someone to do things. And this is not that terrible. It actually keeps the market going and it gives me a job after all. Why should I despise it ?

It's a shame that people don't see things in advance, they sometimes are even hard to figure them out when they are already old. Some other people instead do look around and see things when they are preparing to happen. They are probably those that keep their eye open. Even if not directly related to open source, Roberdan wrote this concept in Italian here:

"[...] ma perchè dicono che ho una visione? perchè sembra che io sappia esattamente come andranno le cose, che veda quello che accadrà tra 1 mese, tra 1 anno o tra 10 anni. Chiaramente dal punto di vista tecnologico, ma anche organizzativo. Avrò quindi poteri soprannaturali?? Sarò un fenomeno paranormale come Alberto Sordi? (e quindi riuscirò a monetizzare questa facoltà mettendomi a fare il santone? ….o SEMPLICEMENTE…

Semplicemente ho gli occhi aperti? una bocca e due orecchie per cui ascolto il doppio di quanto parlo? Un istinto non ancora represso e ingabbiato nei meandri della moderna società del lavoro? Secondo me si.

Volete essere dei visionari? Aprite gli occhi, non fermatevi a guardare la goccia che cade dal vostro naso, non arrendetevi all'evidenza. Scavate. Se non capite fate domande. Se avete dubbi confrontatevi, SE VOLETE CAMBIARE QUALCOSA CAMBIATELO [...]"

It's a shame it is not written in English, but – hey, he was probably referring to an Italian audience. I love Italy, but Italian readers should really move their asses and learn english. He probably thinks different so he addresses them in writing in Italian… as of me, I just don't care anymore (I have probably never done) about those little italians who can't read english. Those who can't read my posts in english are probably also the same people that need to be spoon-fed and told everything, those who can't figure it out themselves. And when they can't figure it out themselves, that usually also means they take themselves too seriously… so why bother ?

Paolo Coelho has written in his last book, "The Zahir":
"[...] One day, I am going to write a travel guide containing only maps, addresses of hotels, and with the rest of the pages blank. That way people will have to make their own itinerary, to discover for themselves restaurants, monuments, and all the magnificent things that every city has, but which are never mentioned because 'the history we have been taught' does not include them under the heading 'Things you must see'. I have been to Zagreb before. And this fountain does not appear in any of the local tourist guides, but it is far more important to me than anything else I saw here – because it is pretty, because I discovered it by chance, and because it is linked to a story in my life [...]".

When reading this last night I have been thinking that he does not need to write such a guide: this is already happening on the web these days. Right now. You don't just buy a tourist guide anymore. The Internet can act as a guide. Other people's comment about places, and their stories, can guide you.
It's not anymore just buying a guide from some publisher, it is being part of the publication as well. And contributing back what you discover.

This is what happens on 43places, for example. See what the are saying over there: http://www.43places.com/entries/view/1239344 - "These are YOUR places" – "If you’re new to 43 Places you may not realize that all the places on this website have been added by users. Once upon a time, all we had were country names and a few major cities. 43 Places is a community effort where users are actively filling up the site with their favorite spots and the places they want to visit.

Along these lines all of us users can also correct and enhance data on 43 Places [...]"

43Places fits perfectly with the example of the tourist guide. But there is more than just a tourist guide. The great news is that the web is becoming an immense platform for sharing stories, experiences, feelings.

Hugh MacLeod describes this aspect (that is: the evolution of the web in the way it lets people and companies interact) on his famous blog: http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/003358.html
"[...] Dotcom basically built glorified Yellow Pages. You go, you get the info you need, hopefully you buy something en route. The relationship between the user and the website is impersonal, not unlike the realtionship between the Yellow Pages and its readers. They show, you select. They give, you take.

The architecture of Web 2.0, however, is about people giving away their stuff i.e. "sharing". Whether its a well-written blog post, or photos uploaded onto Flickr, or videos uploaded onto YouTube, the act of you giving is every bit as important as people other people receiving. This is why the number of blog readers isn't that much larger than the number of blog writers. Writing is as important as reading. Giving is as important as taking.

Suddenly for the first time in history, the world's most powerful form of media is about giving, not taking. The implications are vast.[...]"

Ravi and his son, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

Ravi has been living in Italy for not such a long time: not even two years.
He works as a manager for a hi-tech factory, in Italy, so that's why he moved here.
He already knows he won't stay here forever, but he's enjoying his stay so far.
It's good to see how hard working people actually CAN be successful here.
Even when they move from another country.

So far he doesn't know many italian people, and hangs up mostly with the other indian people he has met here. Which is something I definitely can understand, as I also met all the italians in town when I was living in Holland, and I know it isn't extremely easy to get along with the local population, for how friendly they can treat you on the surface (even tough I bet that italians are much *warmer* than dutch people in their "welcomes").

His kids had loads of fun playing with mine, today, and we (the grown-ups) enjoyed the conversation and the food very much.

I am one of those people that loves living in a globalized world (despite all its weirdness and the bad consequences globalization also brings): at least for this fact that you get to know people from everywhere on the globe, and exchange different ideas and experiences.
People have all sort of stories to tell, and we all have to learn from each other.

'mot je ?, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

Have you seen how pretty has she become ?
This is the same cat I found – little and sick – here:
www.muscetta.com/2006/07/21/find-me-a-name/

Amma @ Heathrow airport, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

A coincindence meeting?

I don't know, but I'll tell you a story:
I have been in england all week for a training: I left on monday and I came back yesterday (friday).
When I booked my flight to go to england I should have come back with the flight that takes off at 8:00pm. It would have been late (coming back home to midnight) but there was no place in the earlier one (4:40pm). Then my ticket was disappeared. Not "physically", because it was an electronic ticket. Just its presence in the computer system of Alitalia was vanished. The booking on my name appeared strangely "cancelled", and both Alitalia and the American Express agency that had booked that for me could not explain me WHAT actually went wrong with my ticket.
It looked like it had been requested, but the process stopped half-way through and never ended, it never spat out my ticket (don't remind me of the concept of TRANSACTION, please).

So, at the last minute, in order to leave on monday (I *really* wanted to attend this training, and furthermore the hotel WAS booked and I could not cancel it anymore without paying a penalty), I had to buy another ticket at the airport. But at that point there was not place anymore on the evening flight for the return. So I had to take place in the 4:40pm one (hey, wait a minute: wasn't THAT FULL as well, when I tried to book it myself, earlier ??).

So when I came back, look who's at the airport.
I was not even sure it was Her, and I did not really dare come much closer. Both because I was afraid I could disturb, and also because I was scared of airport security (you are not supposed to take pictures in airports, I have already been told off other times, and with the current paranoia in London I really did not want to take the chance…).
She was about to travel, and was writing down the text of some bhajan with her followers and her singers and all the other people who travel with Her.
Also a woman, who was working in a shop just in front of this scene, not having any customer in at that moment, was looking at the scene with curiosity but (or at least I thought I could read that in her eyes) without prejudice.
Nice surprise.

PS – If you don't know who Amma is, please visit www.amma.org or en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mata_Amritanandamayi

On a side note, I honestly ignore why do you need to UPLOAD photos there and you can't just LINK or REFERENCE photos you've already uploaded on Flickr (isn't it a site they bought ?). So I don't see the effort in any INTEGRATION here. I don't get why. If I had a photo platform like Flickr I would use its Web API to let registered users just "PASS OVER" some pictures from one site to the other.

But, hey…. regardless…..it looks really COOL. It really does. More cool than actually USEFUL (it reminds me of Intrusion Detection Systems… but I digress), but that's how this amount of community things are. It's not useful for your business, but it is good for your heart.

In fact i consider GMail as being one of the best interface for reading mail that exist out there – I love "tagging" (oops: it's called "labelling" in their syntax), speed of search through messages (even tough Outlook 2007 is faster on indexed content, but still you have to buy it and install it on your PC)… I also especially love the way it shows THREADING… so that I moved pretty much EVERY mailing list I read on their account:

(ok, they could do better with the localized version of "Re:" in replies…. in Italian a lot of broken MUA's translate that into "R:" and that isn't understood by GMail and will make it think it is another thread…. but that's a minor issue, and also one that every MUA handling threading has – including "mutt" – the real problem is the broken MUAs sending the "R:" in the first place. But I digress too much….).

I also keep GMail continuosly opened in a browser during the day because a lot of informative mail and that sent by friends goes there. This to say that I do get a lot of their ads (that is – the point of having such an application, for them…). On the contrary, Windows Live Mail reduced its ads to show only one… not to annoy you too much.
But the ads in GMail were not *really* a problem (I don't read them anyway, I just plain IGNORE THEM).

But this week they REALLY pissed me off. They REALLY have. And here is the reason:
I have been using a script for MONTHS to backup my database (the one powering THIS blog) and send it "off-site" to my GMail mailbox. Pretty much something like a lot of other people do, described in various articles and blog posts. Then I was labelling them with a rule, so that I could access my backups easily in case I needed them.

Now I don't know if this violates their terms of use in any way… because I am not really using it as storage with those programs that circulated at one stage that had "reverse engineered" it. Those were bypassing the web interface altogether so people did use it as storage with a program without having to see their ads. That was the issue, I think. In my case, I am just sending MAILS to myself. One per day. I also delete the old ones every now and then, and they are not even huge in sized (attachments of 40 to 50KB so far!!)… anyway, I know a lot of people that store documents and all sort of stuff even in their corporate mailboxes in Outlook (then maybe index them with Windows Desktop Search of Google Desktop to find it back)… I was only doing the same with GMail. I don't see the big issue here….. they might think otherwise…. but from what happens I don't think that's the issue.

Anyway, now it's been three or four days that my backup mail gets rejected. My SMTP Server gets told:

host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[66.249.83.27] said:
550-5.7.1 Our system has detected an unusual amount of unsolicited
550-5.7.1 mail originating from your IP address. To protect our
550-5.7.1 users from spam, mail sent from your IP address has been
550-5.7.1 rejected. Please visit
550-5.7.1 http://www.google.com/mail/help/bulk_mail.html to review
550 5.7.1 our Bulk Email Senders Guidelines.

Now for fuck's sake. You know how much I hate SPAMMERS and what I would like to do with them. But I also know that it does happen to end up in RBLs and such sometimes. Fine. But GIVE ME a way to tell you that I am NOT one! If you go to the link above, all you find is a form where you can specify that mail that ended up in your "junk" folder actually wasn't spam. Yeah, right. In my case it does not even go into my "junk" folder! How am I supposed to give me the original header that arrived to THEM if I only have the one sent by my mailserver ? They just blacklisted my mail server's IP Address! As they say, I even have an SPF record, I always use the same address, etc….
So I tried to fill in the form, the day after I also tried to contact their abuse@google.com and abuse@gmail.com addresses.
Still nothing.
They even tell you (in the automated reply when you contact "abuse":
"[...] For privacy and security reasons, we may not reveal the final outcome of an abuse case to the person who reported it. [...]".
How great. How am I supposed to know if they even READ my complaint ?

You anti-spam people at GMail: "I am NOT a fucking spammer!!!!!". I 'haven't found a better way to tell ya this, you know, than writing it on my blog… this is just RIDICULOUS!

But to date my mails still get dropped. I'll probably have to send my backups somewhere else. At this point they pissed me off so much that I am also seriously considering getting back to use my own mailserver also for receiving and reading my mailing lists. Then I won't get ads there.
Afzetterij!
(I hope you have some dutch guy on board at Google, as "Google Translate" does not translate from/to dutch yet…. )

Edited on October, 8th - While GMail REJECTS those mails (it SAYS it is not accepting them), Hotmail simply DROPS them (that is: it does not even SAY it is not accepting them):

to=, relay=mx4.hotmail.com[65.54.245.104], delay=3, status=sent (250 <20061008061010.GA19807@muscetta.com> Queued mail for delivery)

This way you THINK it is going to be delivered, but it NEVER shows up in your inbox. I don't know who's behaving the worst…

Black Tea, uploaded by Daniele Muscetta on Flickr.

Finally the first complete weekend.
After four weeks of holidays, I had pretty much got used to relax and do my stuff.
On monday 28th I started working. I worked the usual 5 days, and customers were waiting for me anxiously. I also had to work on friday night for some updates they had waited six months to do (when I was telling them "let's do this") but they could not wait anymore NOW obviously.
Then, late friday night I had weekend… sort of. Just saturday.
In fact, I had to be ready to leave early sunday morning to go to the "company meeting". Sunday and monday. Awesome. Not.
Tuesday to friday: work, work, work again.

Not THIS weekend I am doing MY stuff, actually trying to relax.
That's more my cup of tea.

This guy is right. Stephan, you really got it – and you described it well too.
I am just crazy about this Flickr thing. It's the HUMAN and collaboration features that make Flickr that cool, addictive and popular. Those really make it emerge over ANY other photo-gallery software or service available.
That is the reason why I use it (and I pay it) even if it has been bought by a competitor of my company, even if I have my own server where I could indipendently publish my galleries at no cost, even if…. [insert random reason here about why I should not be using it]. It is for those "countless stories intertwined" that I like it so much.

my wife: "Oh, look: they DO sell finger paint here in Italy as well"
myself: "Sure, why not?"
my wife: "Well, kids are usually not supposed to get dirty from their parents, right ?"
myself: "ROTFL "

it's quite a comedy (or a tragedy). They really aren't supposed to have fun in many occation because "you get dirty". Sure. That is what washing machines have been invented for, right ? At least these days we have those….
I have seen kids at the playground that were not allowed to get in the sandpit because they would have got dirty or…. well, why did you get them to the playground then if they are not allowed to play ?
Anyway, excluding some moments when my italian genes come forward and try to take ownership of my brain, our kids ARE allowed to get dirty. At least they have fun.

You might find this book of Tim Parks to be quite amusing on this topic

Cool. Transparency in this RC1 build finally works on my laptop. I mean, even with a DECENT resolution.
Everything is much more stable than in the previous beta1 and beta2 builds.

And yes, the background image I am using is this photo of mine.

We already had a cat, but two days ago I found this kittten that had been abandoned and was sick, so I took it to the vet, and then home.
We accept suggestions for a name that suits her

Looking at the computer screen, trying to understand a complex configuration…. headache. These days I am very tired, I would like to sleep more, to work less. I need holidays….

"[...]
For example, in response to "How do I write a batch file that…" some people will say, "First, install ". This doesn't actually solve the problem; it merely replaces it with a different problem.
In particular, if the solution begins with "First, install…" you've pretty much lost out of the gate. Solving a five-minute problem by taking a half hour to download and install a program is a net loss.
[...]
So be careful when you suggest a solution that has a high activation energy. Sure, something could be taken care of by a one-line perl script, but getting perl onto the machine is hardly a one-line endeavor.
[...]"

[...]
I had a dream.
Ho sognato che giravo per la mia città e c'erano tutte bandiere tricolori, gente che dai balconi sventola strilla "Italia Italia".
Sono convinto che sia per il fatto che la nostra Costituzione Repubblicana è stata difesa dall'attacco dei leghisti che con il tricolore si puliscono il culo.
Poi però mi sveglio e mi accorgo che si, la Costituzione è stata difesa, ma le bandiere erano per una partita di pallone. Vinta dar pupone al 94' minuto su rigore.
M'è venuto da piangere.
[...]

Also, my dad started leading some turistic trips and excursions with an association of friends. If you want to visit Rome and have a great turist guide who knows what he talks about, give them a try! The association also leads some trips in the countryside, to enjoy the nature.

]]> http://www.muscetta.com/2006/06/17/with-my-head-in-the-clouds/feed/ 0 http://www.muscetta.com/2006/06/13/besaamsterdam-and-other-stuff/ http://www.muscetta.com/2006/06/13/besaamsterdam-and-other-stuff/#comments Tue, 13 Jun 2006 14:15:30 +0000 Daniele Muscetta http://www.muscetta.com/?p=117 About Daniele Muscetta

My friend Daniele Besana, founder of IT Virtual Community has relocated to the Netherlands lately. I just think he wanted to copy me for having been living there a few years…. let's see if he also falls for a dutchie ?? In the meanwhile I will keep an eye on his new blog.

Other news of the last few days include what you've already read elsewhere, for example Scoble leaving Microsoft, so I won't go into many details there even because I don't know much about the choice, the person, and the above link surely have already commented better than I could. I only wish Robert the best in his new carrer.

Then I'll take the time to do a bit of shameless self-promotion and talk of one more personal thing to note: some of my pictures of the typical roman pavement (the stones called "sampietrini") have been published on www.sampietrino.it. In particular, I took these five photos.

]]>

Only this time the sentence gets applied to Microsoft products, rather than to OSS…… Interesting

It provides several links and things to think about. If you are into .Net, or Ruby, or both, or simply interested about how things can interoperate, give it a read.

It was already more than three years ago and they are still fighting.
I can remember it well, the start of this Iraq war, because they attacked on the 20th of March – that is my bday.

The photo is of the huge demonstration that was held in Amsterdam. Actually it was kept in a lot of countries, and they were all huge.
Still they did not listen, they went further, and fought this war anyway, regarless of people's will. It's always time to remember.

I get this old memories, also to say that tomorrow it is "Festa della Repubblica" in Italy, and in Rome they want to carry on this idiotic military parade they have been doing for some years now.

But there's also a counter-demonstraion of people that dislike the military forces and that want PEACE.
Guess which demonstration will be more colourful and HAPPY ?

I'll try to get there tomorrow and take some photos too. But I am not sure I'll make it…. my kid has got a basket match first that he cares about. So I'll go there, and then I'll try to go to Rome, park *somehow* *somwehere* (it will be madhouse) and catch the "Peace-Parade" that will be already started of course…..

I have changed the tagline for this blog, leaving the first part of it ("Superior Dedication") and adding a further explanation to it ("Specialization is bullshit").

This should give a better insight on my feeling about some trends I have observed (and keep observing) in the IT World: management wants higher specialization, replication of work, the possibility to render persons much more similar to machines than to artists.
It is capitalism applied to the intellectual capabilities of people.
"If what you can do can be replicated, can be made a procedure, or even a batch, you become easily replaceable and they can make bigger bucks with your work".

I tend to see myself more as an artisan than as a robot.
An artisan: no, I did not say "artist" because that might sound arrogant….
But what I mean is that IMHO Information Technology does not need replaceable parts and new dotcom explosion of big bucks for the rich ones. It needs more dedicated, creative people. People that love to learn. People that actually read the manuals when trying something new.

Replication, standardization, "specialization" – how boring is that ?

Most students in this photo have a laptop!
They were visiting Italy with their school, and were having a lesson on the square in front of Santa Caterina Church (behing the Pantheon).

Funny thing is how much difference there is in the amount of technology that is actually available to people in different geographical areas of the world, and how it is spread.

I will explain it better: they were probably american, most students have a laptop – I remeber them (the laptops) being MANY – I can count at least SIX laptopts in this photo, there are probably more….
That's so much money already, and a laptop is used so much over there…. but that explains to me something I had never really understood: why they were pushing so much the TabletPC…. here in Italy not even COMPANIES buy those….

As far as school goes…. an italian school would not have that many computers NOT EVEN in a special class/laboratory. It would be a miracle if it had an internet connection that's not dial-up, and it would already be great if there were computers at all, quite often….

Software vendors usually do "special deals" or discount prices, or donations… but that's never enough for the small budgets of public schools….

Coming to comment spam, I've been dealing quite a lot with the old 'b2' (WordPress's progenitor) at one stage, while I could not be asked to upgrade yet. At one stage I'd even coded my own unofficial fix for it to keep it going and mantain my sanity…

Then with WordPress I've enabled a CAPTCHA plugin which takes care of robots and only lets HUMANS place comments.

But now it's the turn of trackback spamming….
Sure, a lot of people have seen it AGES before me, simply because people DO read THEIR blog more than mine….
In a way, this might mean this is starting to be read – gosh! Who makes you read this ? Are you really THAT bored to get to read me?

Anyway, here's a couple of useful links proposing approaches to tackle comment and trackback spam. They might be useful to you too:
http://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/spam/
http://photomatt.net/2005/01/05/trackback-spam/

Also now, I could get some of those plug-ins…. probably. For now I don't have time to test the plug-ins, so I've just hacked my own fix, see if it does. Probably I will have to 'touch' it again, as I might have broken the trackback feature altogether. Well, it will pretty much test itself. Spammers, where are you now ? I'm watching my logs, please try….

[edited: 20th May 2006 - Ok they did send trackbacks tonight and my fix did work ]

How two kids can be happy and have fun with something as simple as a fountain.
Kids teach us a lot, all the times.

So far, just not to loose visibility of the old pictures I've posted there, I've decided to cross-post the photos that are on Flickr to my MSN Space. Check them out there…. (I am still in the process of posting them, as I write this, so that is not complete yet, but it will eventually be).

Sure, Italy is divided in two, as we saw from the last political elections, but…. these days everything gets sold no matter what: how can you possibly THINK of placing these two characters side by side with each other ?

Yesterday evening we've been to the event that the Bangladesh, Indian, Pakistan, and other Asian people that live in Rome hold every year to celebrate the beginning of their year – according to an old traditional calendar of those places.

It is absolutely fantastic, it was like being in a piece of India inside Rome. People were extremely friendly and the food was delicious.

In case you are in Rome and you're interested, this still goes on till tomorrow, you can find more information here (in italian):

http://italy.indymedia.org/calendar/event_display_detail.php?event_id=10422&day=22&month=4&year=2006

What I wanted to write now, instead, is a link to an article I just read and wanted to share, which is quite interesting as it tells a bit of the story of how Flickr has born. Quite interesting.

Especially, the two things I linked here make you think of the "top-down" vs. "bottom-up" kind of approach.

I don't personally know you, Dare, but I am a voracious reader of your blog, and I respect and estimate you a lot… so I thought I'll comment some of your thoughts here (hope you don't mind, and I hope the trackback works ). I'll do it because your writings often make me think, because I do have similar thoughts, because I feel like writing some more than a comment this time.

1) [...] learn a new programming language: [...]

Sure, why not ?
IronPython interests me too. Of course Python is widely used, a porting on .Net is interesting… but we need to see where it will end up in practice…
This kind of ports are always a bit whacky, IMHO… I read in the release notes: "[...] Most of the standard Python library is not currently implemented, so it is unlikely that many existing Python scripts will run successfully under this release of IronPython 1.0 Beta [...]"
Right, I mean… this cross platform ports of stuff is always deluding in one or another way…. to me, at least.
I was also excited about MONO so I could run my C# (and ASP.Net) stuff on Linux for example… and yeah what they have done IS impressive, as some stuff simply works out of the box (I've got the small standalone application I described on my other blog (the risky one) compiled on Windows, then copied it and I'm running that off my linux server, for example, without much trouble… ) but you always need to be very careful about what references you use in your projects as not everything is implemented and will actually work…
Also, setting up mod_mono on Apache has been a pain and even once it is set up it is nowhere as flexible as using Visual Studio with IIS6….
So this kind of cross-porting is definitely INTERESTING, often in an achademic sense, but we'll see what happens about real usage (and usability) of these solutions….

If you want something really different, though, I would suggest taking a look at Ruby / Rails. It might piss off some more people (see resolution #4), so be warned…

2) [...]Write More Articles: [...]
[...] Looking back on various articles I've written it's clear that since joining MSN and getting a new girlfriend my output has reduced. I only wrote two articles last year compared to a minimum of five or six in previous years. [...]

Sure since I got in Microsoft I have the same. It's not Microsoft's fault, but I've got a couple of ideas about a number of reasons why this happens:

1. Some stuff you do is confidential, so you simply can't talk about it (even though some people on the very blogs.msdn.com seem to be writing about those anyway all the times: "not yet published KB articles", for example IS confidential information last time I checked…. I might be wrong on this one, and I won't link to anyone nor say names to protect the innocents But I've noticed this behavious several times…)
2. Some other stuff would only be your opinion, but working at Microsoft your opinion can be misinterpreted/misquoted/used against you and the company.. so troubles also there. In fact, I was free to just get an idea and blog about it without getting all troubled about who reads that and what would they think about that, and… whatever including what I am saying in this very list. Examples: I was interviewing people in the security community, writing about open source things… all stuff I now think twice before doing. Sometimes even thinking twice is not enough, and I should think three times…
3. Sometimes there might be unwritten rules about WHO has got the authority to blog/write about some topic so people tend to shut up in that case too. But they might be right, when there's people with authority let them speak…
4. Some other times you solved a problem but I feel it is just not interesting enough, and that it more or less IS already documented (this happens in my case, not sure about you). When the documentation IS out there is a very good point. In fact, many times I find a lot more stuff on the public web by using Google or MSN Search on site:microsoft.com rather than by searching on the internal KB. This is actually very good of Microsoft, and there are A LOT of resources out there in the open with pretty much everything you need to know to solve your problems… in general, our documentation rocks, so why bother solving *and writing about) obscure problems ? Some colleague has already done it most of the times!
   Of course this is not always the case, and sometimes stuff are not documented, and in the latter case… well, you can usually go back to #1 in this list…. (I've got specific examples here, but they are confidential…)
5. The TIME element is an interesting thing: at Microsoft I work more than I did in other places. This does not mean Microsoft makes me work too much. I actually enjoy being busy, and my idea about this is that you work more in general when on the vendor side of the IT market. I was working a lot in my previous jobs, then I have been less busy when I passed to the "customer" side or fence for a couple of years, and I was actually getting a little bored, and that's part of why I changed. Being on the vendor side (especially in Services) you are supposed to be the expert and face the customers everyday…. so you need to study more, be prepared.
   Also, I am very busy with my family lately (you might be with your girlfirend just as much, since you mention her ). This issue is of course personal, but since I moved back to my own country I need to do a lot more out of work too to help out my wife while she learns the language…

Some of the above reasons (those related to your work at least) might explain why you decided to move your blog to a private domain from blogs.msdn.com
I have had a private blog (this one) way before even joining Microsoft. Then when I got in, I got the idea that a corporate one would be cool… but then with it comes a big responsibility as you are under a "flagship" site, really. Sure, everybody knows who you are anyway, but it is less… you get what I mean. In fact I feel better writing "at home" (but that would be better said in the "resolution number 4", below…).
Of course some other reasons might be the case for you, I don't know.

3) [...] Come Up With New Career Goals:[...]
[...]When I was in school, my dream was to become a well-known technology guru like Don Box or Scott Meyers then get paid consulting gigs to be the hero that comes in to fix peoples problems and tell them how to build their software. Since then, I've seen a lot of the people who I once idolized end up working in the b0rg cube. In conversations with Don Box, he's mentioned that the life isn't as glamorous as I assumed.[...]"

You know, he's probably right…

"[...] It's going to be time for my mid-year review and discussion with my boss in a couple of weeks. I hope I have a clearer idea where I want to go by then [...]"

That is an issue, I never know what to say in those reviews anyway… I should work on that too…

4) [...] Piss of Less People with my Writing: [...]
[...]Whatever. I've already gotten two angry emails from different folks at work about stuff I've written online and it isn't even the first week of the year. Maybe next year. [...]

Welcome to the club

Oh well, look at the comments you received on your blog about it That should bring your morale up a bit….
That's happening to everybody, especially when you don't conform to just repeating their pre-made speeches and just use your mind and speak out your own ideas.
See the examples I mentioned about refraining from writing some stuff at point #2…

Or in general what does happen might be due to the company that you feel like being a Dinosaur (a question: did Office Marketing campaign influence you, per chance ?) ?

Leaving jokes aside now, though, for what I can see so far, Microsoft luckily is open enough and DOES let you say this stuff enough, doesn't it ?….
…sure, every time I post something like this on the web (or on a public mailing list, or lately even internally) I've got that thrill that says to me: "holy shit, I am going to get fired this time…". But then it has not happenened yet (maybe I haven't pissed them off ENOUGH yet ?).
Let's hope they don't really get worried by people's opinion but the look at a couple of more practical/humane things, like:
1) he's doing his job all right, customers ARE happy (in my case);
2) he's got a family to feed…

Anyway, KEEP UP THE AWESOME WORK !

Has anyone succeeded in doing this ? I did not even get any meaningful reply on Flickr Forum…

I usually don't talk of what is said in the news, other than those in the IT world.
But this time I can't keep myself, and I must speak.

The governments and the media are quite good at getting into what is a chain of violence that calls other (new) violence, as we've all seen.
Now, of course I am sorry for the victims, sure.
But I am also sorry for the victims of the Iraq war, for the innocent kids that die of hunger every day in third-world countries, of those who die from AIDS in Africa.

News are full all over of "we will catch them!", and everybody here is scared that there might be attacks in Italy too, while other people say "I'm not afraid!".
Just like the previous "United we stand", this is quite childish counter-fight. Sure, they are not afraid. So am I, but in a different way… I am not afraid of dying, and when the Lord will take me it surely will be the moment it had to be; no sooner, no later.
But that "I am not afraid" that people say, they say it to stand against the attack, to show that they're united AGAINST the terrorists, that they're AGAINST those who are AGAINST THEM, in turn. This is a vicious circle.

We built a world of injustice and slavery for the third world. Every time they democratically tried to raise their head, we pushed them down.
Even when they did nothing we have attacked them.
And now some of this third world is SERIOUSLY rebelling against us.
Now what ?
What do we say to them ? "we will catch you, we are not scared of you, you moron!".
Now, I am not sure this will actualy help anybody. Quite the opposite.

But it seems to be the mainstream reaction.

I take the train very often to come to a customer, and what I see now in the Station of Rome is that it is so messed up and slowed down that you don't wanna know: extra checks, special numbers to report "suspects" you might have seen, all sort of preventive measures…
…while all of this is understandable, it is sadly short-termed, and not useful in the long run.

The media, the governments: they should really be talking about HOW TO GET INDIPENDENT FROM PETROL.
After all, after they conquered Iraq, and the price of petrol keeps going up, we keep getting attacked by terrorists.
Why haven't the governments and the industry concentrated on sellilng electrical cars and using alternative sources of energy: wind power, solar power, etc.
All of THIS development keeps being too slow, but that WOULD make a difference.
A difference of a CLEANER world (from the pollution that's killing us anyway), and maybe with LESS blood, with less wars.

Less petrol, Less Blood, less Terrorists, More Life.

I like this a lot.
But I like gapingvoid in general.
I like his points of view. I like the way blogging is changing the market, and I am glad of being part of it. I like the freedom and the responsibility of being myself when I talk to people – thus also to customers. For they are people first, and customers later.

This time the blog post of gapingvoid has been linked in a number of places.

I also partially understand Jason's point here:
http://geekswithblogs.net/jolson/archive/2005/05/11/39447.aspx
I will quote part of his post:
"[...]Shame on me for thinking that my personality might be of interest to some people. Shame on me for thinking that character is interesting. Shame on me for thinking that you don't have to be a genius who always contributes priceless thought-turds to ?society? in order to be viewed as ?valuable.?
[...]Personally, I like blogs because of the person BEHIND the blog. Without that transparency, I might as well be reading the encyclopedia all the doo-dah-day.[...]"

I don't know what happened to him, but I suppose I can "feel" that.

Blogging IS about talking to the world directly and from one's point of view.
Even when I represent a company, I am still myself, and not a sales drone.
I am a geek, I like technology (better: I like to "convince" technology that it really HAS to behave MY way, and not the other way around – I've discussed this a number of times, here http://blogs.msdn.com/dmuscett/archive/2005/04/28/412959.aspx and here http://www.muscetta.com/2004/11/10/rant-just-a-rant
But me and technology wasn't the story I wanted to tell.
What was important to me to say is that it is FINE to show yourself as a human being.
I could not lie to people and they know this.
The whole point of sharing a personal space (such a blog) with the Internet (=with the World as a whole) is that of speaking our mind in several different matters and situations.

So for those who keep saying that I should get *specialized* in something, be excellend in *something* and don't do "a bit of everything" as I've always used to do, this is my answer.
Those people know who they are.
I like having opinions.
I like being myself.
I like knowing a bit of everything. Even when my brain seems to leak oil like an old engine that's near to its fusion point….

I like to rant, for one. That's for sure

RSS is a sloppy format.
That why is working so well and succeeding.
Wow, cool, like it happened for the web.
Yep, that's also a sloppy format, in fact, I agree on this one.
Sloppy or not… who really cares ?
Best things in life are usually SIMPLE.

What is happening with RSS feeds in building a logical network of links between content, which is more efficient than the web it runs on.

I like that.
I like that a lot.

A couple of years ago I in fact pushed my friends of a couple of sites to push their information with RSS feeds.

Here Brooble started with what seems like the first of a serie of posts/articles targeted to small business or home geeky admins who are hosting their own mail server and want to have it redundant in case they're down.

This being a widely known best practice, I mention it here because I liked the style of Brooble in describing how to set this up to people who are not quite as technical as we are, making it simple for them.

Of course my mail (at least for muscetta.com) is already backed up by a friend's server, and so my DNS zones are.

But I can't be asked for now, so I've only hacked a couple of fixes to the code to save myself from comment spam mainly, and fix some other security vulnerabilities here and there.

Sure, there might be more, but which software does not have those ?
After all, this is a rather old thing…

In the end it still looks crap, but *I* like it

Since I had enjoyed the speech very much when I first listened to it, and I found myself in complete agreement with it, I started emailing the link above to some friends to notify them of its existance. Unfortunately italians are not famous for speaking and
understanding english very well… so I found out that many of them could not be bothered to listen to an entire speech
in english without having slides next to it… so they were asking me to "explain it".

Thus, I decided to write it down and translate it for those fellow (illiterate?) nationals. I have asked Steve permission to publish it, and since he agreed, you can now read it here: http://www.itvc.net/opinion/view.asp?id=290

I prefer to leave anonymus posting capabilities to my visitors, but I don't like helping spammers doing their crap.

linking to a number of sites, to increase their ranking.
it looks like they're having loads of fun.
I don't get the fun of it, tough.

I have read of people writing this sort of crap on wikis too, and I just don't get why people should be so lame to use a public faciliy to write their crap. Possibly is the same sort of people who writes on walls…..

The logs were reporting the posts happened from two IP addresses:
38.119.107.88 and 213.91.217.78.

I now cleared them. If they continue I will have to deactivate the possibility for people to answer/comment to posts…. which would be a pity.

Microsoft Platform of Operating Systems is the most targeted because it is more widespread and used (each hous has at least a windows PC!). There *ARE* bugs in other software too, of course, and just as many, as complexity grows. But Linux boxes are (so far) less widespread and still coming out of the underground where customization made them hard target for automated tools.
So this has given this 'perception' of higher linux security because we have not seen major worms on that platform yet. Yet.

But when competitors such as RedHat and Novell/SuSE step in, and then try to standardize the platform for easiness of management and support's sake, it will come: we will get a windows clone (linux+gnome or kde… we'll see them fused soon now that novell/suse/ximian is under one umbrella i bet), just as easy to break as the original used to be, for things become configured and placed in predictable ways, and the platform is more widespread, so the exploiting can be automated at that point. I am talking of the plague of last years: Worms.

Does it really make sense to pass from a commercial entity to another, pretending it is *still* free ? Are you really sure it still is free ? I bet it isn't. And Microsoft is working damn hard to make its code more secure, and secured by default.
Run your linux servers too, if you like them, *INTEGRATE* the two worlds to get the best of both
Windows Services for Unix 3.5 TOTALLY ROCKS !