There once was a man named Fred...

Who decided to go to bed.
Then late at night
he woke up with a fright
and in the morning he was dead.

What's wrong? Answers by IM to Andy Swarbrick (d) /PopG
(ps: nothing to do with Groove, just the result of wine, curry & friends)

posted by Andy Swarbrick (d)/PopG at 17:36

Definitely not for the fainthearted Groove game no 4 & 4a

Shutdown Groove. Physically copy all your groove directories: data, system, accounts - wherever they exist. Now start Groove. Ok so you have a backup & groove is operating normally. Fine.

Now comes the fun bit. Work for a few hours, days, or weeks. And then replace your Groove with the backup from olden times. What's the result?

Of course there is an addendum to this. Take the backup and install it on another computer. Load up Groove running with this data. What's the result? Especially what is the result if the two computers are running at the same time.

No-one has yet comment on the results of my previous quizzes. Next week I hope start to posting results. And all I can say right now - is take a deep breath.

posted by Andy Swarbrick (d)/PopG at 5:52

Thanks.

That's it. I just want to say that to all you Groovers out there. You know who you are. Thanks for being part of the new global & local, sharing & caring, focused & pertinent, active & reactive, attentive & "there" business paradigm.

posted by Andy Swarbrick (d)/PopG at 17:41

A great moment indeed...

Back in early 2003, Groove indicated that it was creating a price differential for purchasing Groove within the USA/Canada versus Internationally. The major reason cited as justification was that this was in-line with sales policy for other "similar" companies. And it is indeed true that almost any US company hikes its prices when trying to sell abroad. So you can see that this ideology would gain some serious credence: and credence led to fact.

As a driver of Groove business I registered my opinion that this was not good for Groove. There were several reasons for this, the most important one being that Groove sales would increase more dramatically with uniform pricing. Having registered my opinion over a period, myself and others let the subject lie, and hoping that eventually sense and realism would somehow prevail.

Right now sense is prevailing. Great news for Groove, its partners and customers. As of first of September uniform pricing is back. This is a great moment in several ways and I think it is worth reflecting on this. Actually great does not do justiice to the moment. And it is nothing to do with any form of self-congratulation such as "we were right, they were wrong".

What it is about is in several levels. Groove is not like Excel, Windows, Mac-OSX, Quark, Acrobat, GoToMyPC. It is a distributed network app that does not understand National boundaries (export license apart). A wonderful aspect of Groove life is communicating intelligently without borders. So if one colleague is penalised for being in a different zone then this stark reality hits the motivation of the entire team. As of the 1st Sept, that problem is no more.

At a business level Groove as a company has grown in stature. It has had its critics but it has addressed those criticisms internally and worked through them - perhaps subconsiously. Such changes in culture do not happen overnight. It takes time for Groove the product to weave its magic on people whether they are insde or outside the company. It takes time and persistence for Groove's partner and customer eco-system to operate as a feedback loop should and give the company the confidence to take this brave decision.

It is worth pressing on this subject a little more. Ray and his friends created something called Groove. And so initially they owned the idea. And ok they still largely own the direction. But there is a force growing here, an inimmitable force, that of the Groove community. A truism of computing is that when a software product goes to market many users use the product in totally different ways to those imaginged by the creators. What is happening in the Groove idiom is more than that.

In Bear & Sterns report on Internet 3.0 back when Groove was 1, they suggested that growth of Groove sales would initially be slow but solid. That prediction was easy to understand and accept by advocates such as myself. That prediction has been perfect to date.

But now the climate is changing. Now the community has confidence. Together we have achieved some extraordinary, world-first, unique projects. Not least of which is staying the journey. And I will give you just one personal example that gives me great satisfaction.

An early advocate of PopG is one Rick Lillie of CalState University. Rick has been in there from year dot. He, like us all has his own way of approaching Groove. His tenacity to his approach is enormous. And right now we are on the cusp or realising common dreams - that of enabling his students to have a world-beating learning experience using Groove on PopG. This project has been three years in the making. And Rick has done it.

And that is the final reason. Groove is now gaining confidence in its market, and vice-versa. Enjoy the new pricing.

posted by Andy Swarbrick (d)/PopG at 17:05

It never rains, but...

And so I was feeling happy and complacent about Windows XP SP2 issues, "not my problem". And then what happens but I take a support call and find that a) the general internet performance issues were hampering someone even connecting to PopG's public service and b) I then find out that good ol' Citrix has been affected as well as any other app. Andy so if you yourself, or you hear of anyone having probs accessing or using PopG then ask them "are they using Windows XP" and/or ask them to speak to us asap.

We will be posting updates here as soon as we have more concrete info. Right now it seems that people coming in via Java will not be affected and so our hope is that should be most of our users.

posted by Andy Swarbrick (d)/PopG at 8:42

Lest anyone think I am prejudiced against SP2...

I reckon they should read http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/xp-sp2.html very closely and understand the tremedous potential benefits of what MS is trying to achieve. SP2 is an impressive package: my argument is soley against the way it is rolled out.

According to the official bad apps knowledge base article 200 proper apps are on the list. That is 200 apps that MS thought would be at risk. My guess is by the time SP2 is history that number could rise to 2000. Some will be small and trvial, but my guess also is that almost every Windows developer will need to take account of Sp2 - just to stand still.

But hey, something needed to be done to stem all those worms and virus problems out there right?

Of course something had to be done. And of course, until now Microrsoft were there own worst enemy. Their operating system was wide open by default, unless you knew how to lock it dowm. So of course suppliers good (eg Groove?) and bad (eg virus writers) exploited every loophole.
But MS has a real political problem upgrading Operating Systems. The momentum in previous release means that up and coming OS releases (and SP2 should have been a new OS, imo) are rejected by the community rather than welcomed. But rejection comes from more than just momentum. It comes from distrust.

Increasingly MS is pushing the boundaries of distrust. Whether it be the merits of MS-Passport, "trustworthy computing" or this latest "security" initiative. Whatever MS does it seems to be able to fall well short in managing customer relations. It continues to treat general users as something close to being untrustworthy.

With SP2 they decided they could not trust users to install SP2 and so took the unilateral decision that if they did not force it down people's throats then it would not be adopted. Mr Gates also put direct pressure on the release method by indicating that MS would fundamentally deal with virus & spam in a short time frame.

The upshot of this is that suppliers are quaking in their feet over this particular downgrade. I use that last word advisedly: SP2 is not an expansion of functionality - it is a contraction of any networking app.

Suffer colleagues, suffer.

Arrogance it seems is not in Microsoft's spell checker

And so Microsoft seem, in my opinion, to overstretch the mark yet again. How do they do it? Now not only is this Windows XP SP2 service pack breaking apps apart left right and centre, but Microsoft are forcing its deployment down people's throats. A blocking tool is available - but it has a timeout. Thereafter SP2 WILL install itself and there is nothing you nor I can do about it.

posted by Andy Swarbrick (d)/PopG at 10:04