This made me laugh.  Then cry.

Microsoft Did It

 I found this article on the BBC interesting:

Windows Vista is causing problems for some new PC owners hooking up their machine to a broadband connection.

One memorable quote:

One reader was warned by Virgin Media that it would be "weeks" before its software worked with Vista.

Come on Virgin, its not like you didn't have close to a year to get ready for this,  You are after all a ISP didn't you ever stop to look at the pretty new OS? and test your install pack?  Seriously ISP such as AOL are such vultures I find it hard to believe that they would not update their freebie install disks before vista computers hit the market.  How would you ever convince some one to buy AOL if they didn't get a free disk with they computer?

Virgin:

"We can get people online without the installation disc," he added. "It's not that it does not work, it's just the disc."

So Virgin sat on their lorals and now are paying the price in support calls.( I wonder what the average time to answer if for their support. )  But it gets better support has placed a help page.

The spokesman said BT had created a help page devoted to Vista to make it easier for people to get their PC connected.

I believes when I can read a help page with out broadband connection that....

BBC NEWS, Net firms tackle Vista headache

Strong Passwords for WinQual:

Password Requirements: Contain 8 - 16 characters with both upper and lower case (e.g., a-z, A-Z). Have digits and punctuation/symbol characters as well as letters e.g., 0-9, !@#$%^&*()_+|~-=\`{}[]:";'<>?,./). One or more of the characters from the second (2) to sixth (6) positions must not be an alphabet character e.g. between A-Z or a-z.

I wonder if I will remember it in the morning

Allison over at O'Reilly Radar wrote a little note to Google for the international feature.

By Allison Randal

Dear Google,

I applaud the enlightened international perspective that led you to provide your site in multiple languages and to detect a user's country and language preferences by their IP address. You'd be surprised how much French I remember from studying it as a child, and how much Dutch I can read as a result of studying Afrikaans the past 3 months. However, perhaps you should consider providing an option to change languages, or set a language preference, so your users aren't all forced to be so linguistically nimble when traveling. If there is such an option, I haven't been able to find it yet while navigating my account preferences in Dutch. I'm curious to experience Google Docs & Spreadsheets in Japanese, but maybe not that curious.

Love,
Allison

I post this as proof.  "Google guesses your language based on your IP address." and you doubted me!

Jeff Atwood over at Coding Horror is at it once more FizzBuzz: the Programmer's Stairway to Heaven In His second blog post he left out the FizzBuzz test so as not to distract his programmer brethren.  As with the last article Jeff addresses the surprisingly high ratio of weak programmers to interview candidates.

Jeff once again asserts his readers superiority

The whole point of the original article was to think about why we have to ask people to write FizzBuzz. The mechanical part of writing and solving FizzBuzz, however cleverly, is irrelevant. Any programmer who cares enough to read programming blogs is already far beyond such a simple problem. FizzBuzz isn't meant for us. It's the ones we can't reach-- the programmers who don't read anything-- that we're forced to give the FizzBuzz test to

In yesterdays post Why Can't Programmers.. Program? I thought Jeff ment if you read  programing blogs, you are competent.

I now realize Jeff is just trying not to offend his readers. 

The Moth broke the Orcas News fist.  The Orcas March CTP is available for download.

Install or VPC image

After numerous articles about MySpace's scalability it would appear the camels back broke today.

Perhaps not  the best message to great hundreds of thousands of teenagers after school. 

In the past Eric Sink has discuss the idea that there is some thing wrong with Google when his name comes up before Eric Clampton(who ever that is.)  I have to agree. I have a small blog it's just wrong that a Google search for 2008 epa estimates is the first search result.  I know there is a delicate art form to constructing a Google query to limit this noise but..  There is something flawed with the system and we need to fix it.  Maybe the search game isn't over, Yahoo, Search.MSN and Google really don't provide search results but rather link results.  I think there is still room for a new search king to emerge.

Jeff Atwood at codinghorror.com writes Programmers can't.. Program? 

In comment Jeff says

Any programmer who cares enough to read programming blogs is already far beyond such a simple problem. It's the ones we can't rerach-- the programmers who don't read anything-- that we have to give the FizzBuzz test to.

winch brings to mind.

Phillip Haack at Haacked.com response Why Can't Programmers.. Read?

Trouble is there are many Specs that are not well constructed just as there are many Developers that need a little better reading comprehension. Why this idea that blog authors and readers are some how better then others in this industry?  Where is your proof?  There are quite a few wanabes that hang around the proverbial water cooler trying to blend in because they want it.  This is the reason you see Programmers that cannot program.  Look around programing forms or myspace.  Jeff also  observed.

it's amusing to me that any reference to a programming problem-- in this case, FizzBuzz-- immediately prompts developers to feverishly begin posting solutions.

Why do "pProgrammers" feel the need to prove themselves?  Is it because any one that uses a formula in Excel can self proclame themselves a "Programer"? 

At any rate what we are left with are a group of "Programers" that can't read, can't write but are desperate to prove otherwise to the world, typicaly in the most public forum they can find!

Did I miss something when did it become popular to be a Programer?  Were's the glamor?