London Beckons

Alright, well I'm off to the London (hopefully for 1 year), with my wife Samara. 30 days to go.

I thought I better create a fun list of things to do while I'm there that you just can't do any where else in the world.

1. Don't get deported upon arrival
2. Ask the Immigration Officer "Do you have anyone who can speak English?" (include hand movements and point to the British Flag)
3. Then bring up "Australian Cricket Team", "The Ashes", "The cricket world Cup" and of course the performance of the English Cricket team.
4. Don't get deported upon arrival.
5. Inspect Buckingham palace to ensure it is made of real Ham.
   
6. Play "Touch Queen" which is similar to "Touch Football" except with more security guards and contact involved.
   
7. See if Big Ben is really so Big. I've seen "Boogy Nights" and he wasn't so big.
8. Hit a security guard in the "crown jewels", with the Crown Jewels.
9. Go and do volunteer work by teaching English to the Welsh.
10. Remind the Scots that they have no army and hence are not a sovereign nation.
11. Star on Big Brother in the Centre of London (no TV show required)
12. Try to out drink an English man
13. Get my stomach pumped for alcohol poisoning
14. Try again to out drink an English man
15. Loose the Aussie Accent and pretend I studied at Oxford
    
16. Find a descent well paying job
17. Avoid every single of the 20,000+ "communal accommodation" Aussie's who have never spoken to an Englishman since arriving.
18. Watch a public be-heading.
19. Dress as a knight in shining armour and destroy the house of rival Lords and the house of Commoners. For Queen and country.
    
20. Meet James Bond.
21. Tell the Irish they've spelt Island wrong.
22. Find a place to stay for a year
23. Travel on a Tube. And maybe one day "The Tube" and then post the experience on YouTube.
    
24. Help Richard Branson "score" so he no longer needs to call his company "Virgin". New name could be called "Rooted"
25. Tell Billy Shakespeare to lighten up or his screen plays will never be big in Hollywood.
    

Anyway lots to do. I'll keep you posted.

MSDN Subscriptions pricing

I'm generally not a fan of subscription software (WoW excluded), but MSDN Subscriptions were not too bad. All you had to do to stay up to date with Microsoft developments was subscribe to MSDN Universal and ALL (used to be all their dev software) the MS software was at your finger tips for AU~$1,500 p/year (renewal).
But unfortunately with the release of Team System the old pricing model is out the door and in comes the new subscription model.

and you should see the prices today in AU dollars, (grabbed 6/Jun/07) from
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700832.aspx

Subscription Model	Renewal	New
Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite with MSDN Premium Subscription	$6,100.00	$19,060.00
Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for either Database/ Architects/ Developers/ Tester with MSDN Premium Subscription	$4,010.00	$9,530.00
Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition with MSDN Premium Subscription	$3,485.00	$4,355.00
Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition with MSDN Professional Subscription	$1,568.00	$2,084.00

Side note: A lot of Microsoft website pages still don't display correctly in FireFox 2.0! Either Microsoft or Mozilla fix this (someone is not following the rules).

Note there is also the "Microsoft Empower ISV program" which can get you 5 x "unknown MSDN" types of subscription (probably Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition with MSDN Premium Subscription) IF you regularly provide proof of MS development for AU$875 . This is the best deal if you can get it. And of course there is the Microsoft Certified Partner and Gold Partner program as well for discounts and MSDN licenses (harder to get and maintain).

Now even the cheapest subscription for the regular chumps (which has less tools than the old Universal Subscription) is AU$1,500 and it doesn't include tools like "Expression Web/Blend" (Although it will include them in built into the Orcas release of VS 2005). Also it doesn't include Office tools or Dynamics etc...

And the one which does include everything is AU$19,060 (which is about 1/2 of an average annual graduate salary). Or 1 billable hour for me (I'm also a plumber).

Now let me just search my change draw for some coin to pay for that subscription. Oh wait, I don't have AU$19,060 in change. Oh well guess I can't get that version. Seriously is there any corporate/enterprise in Australia willing to fork out that cash for ONE developer/architect license PER YEAR? My guess is that most corporates can haggle a much better deal for this subscription.

Problem is now that I can't afford the "all developer tools version" I have to think very hard about should I pay AU$3,000+ for a "not everything" version subscription which has a lot of confusing Premium/Professional names and potentially not the new software when it comes out (remember its the version that DOESN'T have everything).

I propose they move to a simpler a cheaper system of subscriptions where even Joe W Blogs can get the "everything version" of MSDN subscription for around 1-2 weeks of gross salary. Microsoft doesn't have to support all licensed tools for that price, but at least I can get it, play with it and feel satisfied that I don't need/want have to know about it. But more importantly I don't have to worry that I will miss out on the new tools and developments because "my subscription" doesn't cover that tool or technology.

I would have thought giving the people the best tools to develop software cheaply and on-mass would help Microsoft keep its nichè programs that make people compelled to return and purchase their operating system.

By all means charge the corporates for the support of those enterprise / large scale tools. But at least let the little people have a chance to use them. I mean its not like a small 2-4 person development project can gain much by the over head required to run a Team System Project anyway. Why price the Subscription so that only 2% of developers can even try it (and I mean try it on small projects indefinitely)?

Anyway I'm lucky my company is an "Empower ISV" so I get one of their licenses, because I can't afford to fork out more than $AU1,500 p/a for my tools of trade. And if I didn't have access to an MSDN subscription I would look at Eclipse, SharpDevelop or just Visual Studio Pro standalone. But of course then if I'm going to do that then why don't I just look at Java instead.

Microsoft please make it a slam dunk reason to stay with .NET for your independent contractor, small ISV, by making all the development tools available for a reasonable price. Also simplify the names of each subscription to at most 3 words.

Apple Vs The Rest

Let me say straight off. I am neither an Apple Zealot nor Apple Thrower.

I grew up with "IBM Compatibles" and loved 'em (well actually Amiga to begin with). I have grown up on the Microsoft® teet if you like. But like all babies (at the age of 27) you must eventually ween off of the fatty nutritious goodness of one Operating System and at least sample or suckle what other vendors are offering.

After all the child-hood bashing of Apple (I had an IBM remember) and as much as it will leave a bad taste in my mouth after saying this, "I like what I've tasted from Apple ... lately"

I actually agree with a lot of (gulp) what Apple has done recently. There was a time when I thought Apple would have been swallowed whole by who knows which hardware / software / .com company. They really did look like fading away from my perspective. Their share price did not make any significant gain from 1988 to 2004 which is terrible considering how much the industry has grown in that period. However thanks to some clever products and marketing Apple back on track and more importantly in my good books.

What really hurt Apple in the 80s and 90s was custom proprietary hardware and software. While the rest of the world was forming specialist companies and getting economies of scale on their hardware Apple's Mac was stuck with smaller, slower and more expensive hardware that they developed or licensed. Like their old hardware slowly Apple has moved from "in house hardware" to mainstream components and none so obvious than when Apple moved over to an x86 Mainstream CPU Architecture at the start of 2006. Now apple picks the premium parts from the PC market and packages it up in a nice friendly OS X interface without having to fight the specialist hardware companies directly. Very Smart.

As for the proprietary software. Even though OS X is still "proprietary" it was based on BSD (Unix OS) and from what I've been told first hand can easily have Linux OS Apps ported with little to no effort. This is brilliant! I can't even begin to explain how this is going to help both Apple and Linux, but here goes ... "large application base is what keeps people on Microsoft Windows." If Apple (and Linux for that matter) get enough user friendly applications that are equal to or better than the usually pricey Microsoft applications then people will start buying Apple hardware and its associated applications.

But why not a mainstream OS then? If Apple are jumping on the mainstream hardware components market, should they run a Microsoft Windows software compatible OS? I mean after all Apple is essentially a hardware company.
Although it's possible to customise Microsoft Windows to the point of non-recognition would people still see it as just another "PC"? In my opinion ... Yes! What defines Apple is its visual style both on the box and when its switched on. Installing and running windows on any of the Mac flavours would have put them side by side with Dell and HP. Keeping a unique OS helps seperate Mac from the Dells.

And because of their "component picking" and "unix based OS" I believe Apple will in the next few years make large headways into the server / hosted box market. Unlike IBM and Sun who have costly "in house" hardware running with their software "unixish OS", Apple have mainstream components in a well maintained OS. Now I'm sure the IBM and Sun custom CPUs have their advantages but when your aiming for the large peice of pie called "small to medium sized businesses" cost matters and they are not cost competitive. XServers are. Now you may say that companies like Dell are more cost effective than Apple's XServer and you are probably right. But what Apple are providing is a Unix based OS tested on good hardware cheaper total cost of ownership (IMHO) than the other big players.


Anyway way I'm rambling so I'll end it here, however I do have more to say on how the iPod, iTunes and Mac Books are also great products, but I'll save that for another day.

Hopefully that was hype free and unbiased. Oh just so you believe me I'm a microsoft .NET developer and I think that it is pretty cool also. In fact I'll do .NET digest blog entry as well sometime soon.

shwaindog

Hello World();

Success!
...
Well ... if your reading this then my future blog postings have been interesting enough for you to bother going back to my very first blog entry ... this one!
...
Or
I have directed you to my blog page either via my résumé or you are a friend.

Well done me .

Now don't worry about me launching into who I am or what I do. Frankly I find blog entries that do that as boring as bat sh!t.

My first vow as a newly deflowered blog virgin is to "only allude to my personal life if it is interesting to a particular statement or argument."

Now, I've been thinking about a few topics before writing this line and I almost thought it would be to great to blog about blogging :-) How many first time bloggers have done that? 999,999,999,999,999,999

But since this is my first blog entry I'm going to do some blogger bashing.

10 Reasons why people blog.

1. They write so badly that even free newspapers wouldn't print their crap.
2. Environmentalists would protest on the colossal waste of paper if they wrote it down
3. They were born after 1990 and don't know how to use a pen.
4. They were born after 1995 and don't know how to talk to another human.
5. They have narcissistic specialities and want the world to "learn from the great almighty genius"
6. Only have wireless Internet at home (no phone, mail or humans available)
   
7. Genuinely have something worth saying but are too lazy to create a pod cast.
8. Hope to gain international fame, money and groupies from blogging.
9. Would rather their personal diary be accessible by 6 billion people.
10. Think that blogging is creating a homepage and hence only blog once in their life.
    

Yeah, yeah I know I was struggling by number 8.

Incase you were wondering the picture of a keyboard is there to symbolise blogging. Better more relevant keyboards will accompany future blog postings.

Let the blogging begin.

shwaindog