Archive for the 'Geek' Category

Senator Ted Stevens is clearly a very corrupt politician, and Alaska will do well to be rid of him (in fact, recent polling shows that his prospects for this November’s election weren’t so good even before yesterday’s indictment).

But Ted Stevens has also given the world a great gift, in the form of a few words of wisdom he spoke on a fateful day in June of 2006.

Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got… an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.

[...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Every time I experience slow upload speeds on my cable internet at home, or a website takes a few minutes to load, or I see a big truck, I think of Ted. When my demo app at TechEd 2007 in Orlando took a few moments to download data from my server back in Redmond, I was able to fill the time with a simple reminder to my audience that the internet is a series of tubes.

Recently, one of Kenny’s co-workers asked him a question about one-way messaging and WCF. He forwarded me his response, which borrowed a few of Ted’s words of wisdom to illustrate how TCP and pipes work:

UDP is fundamentally one-way. MSMQ also fundamentally supports one-way.

HTTP and TCP (and pipes) have built-in throttling to the protocol. While you can send one-way messages down the pipe on TCP and Pipes, they will eventually back up (remember, the internet is not a big truck; it is a series of tubes and sometimes they get clogged)…

Thanks, Ted.

I was so excited when I learned that Rock Band would be released for the Wii this June. But, as I feared, it turns out that there will not be any downloadable content for the Wii version of the game, just as there wasn’t for Guitar Hero 3:

“When developing Rock Band for the Wii platform, we focused on making the core gameplay experience as solid and enjoyable as possible while tailoring it specifically to the strengths of the platform. The Wii version still contains the robust four-player band experience and all the fun at the core of other versions of Rock Band,” said Harmonix in a statement. “However, because the Wii’s online capabilities and potential have yet to be fully realized, we wanted to wait before we explored online functionality for Rock Band to ensure that players get the high-quality of online performance they’ve come to expect.”

So for now, I’ll pass. To be completely honest, we don’t really have room for the drum kit in our condo anyway. Fortunately, we have the game at the office, so I can still satisfy my rock cravings. And when I do decide I just have to have Rock Band, I’ll know that the time has finally come to purchase (1) an Xbox 360, and (2) a house.

A few things on my mind today:

• Why, when viewing the website for any retail store, is it always so hard to find the “Store Locator” link?
• How is it that, after 7 years in office surrounded by fully literate people, our illustrious president still hasn’t learned to pronounce the word “nuclear”? (he made a speech in Nebraska this morning, part of which I heard on NPR)
• Why am I completely exhausted today even though I went to bed at 10pm last night?

I’ve resisted buying an iPod for a long, long time. Part of it was that I didn’t want to be a part of Steve Jobs-worshiping elitist white-headphones-wearing drone army. Another (more practical) part was that I already had quite a bit of music in wma format and didn’t want to switch over my entire collection. And another part was that I’d heard quite a few iPod customer support nightmare stories.

But what really killed the iPod for me was the lack of FM radio.

I’m addicted to NPR. And while I wouldn’t mind just listening to podcasts for some shows (This American Life, for example), I’ve gotta hear the news in a timely manner and I need my Marketplace every day at 6:30.

Since I started riding the bus regularly, I finally got motivated to come up with a good FM radio solution — ideally one that could store some music and podcasts as well, especially to help me make it through the dreaded NPR pledge drives. It was good timing for the new Zunes.

I ordered one of the 8gb flash players. Bright red, with custom artwork laser engraved on the back. Sweet.

It hasn’t even arrived yet, but I’ve had so much fun playing with the software already. It is slick. Within 20 minutes, I was so sold on it I’d already canceled my Rhapsody subscription and signed up for a Zune Pass. In fact, I’d recommend the software as a Rhapsody replacement even if you have no intention of purchasing a Zune.

The Zune should arrive tomorrow.