Just couldn't watch and let it happen!

The media is talking a lot about Blockbuster's plans for hostile takeover for Hollywood Entertainment.

I just couldn't sit and be an observer to the events which affects me so much (I rent a couple of movies a month). So I fired up a short e-mail to antitrust@ftc.gov explaning why this is not in the best interest of the consumers urging it to do something to block the merger. I for one want choice in my howntown when I choose to rent a video. If this merger goes through, BlockBuster will have a monopoly in the rental business and I will have nowhere else to go if I don't like the business.

Well, I have had problems with BlockBuster charging me late fees for which I am absolutely sure I returned on time and the people weren't happy about it when I argued for a refund. Also, the 2 day rentals never works for me.

I for one will switch to NetFlix or something like that if this deal goes through.

Book of the month: The Tipping Point

I have finished my earlier book and just started reading The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. The quality of the book shows in the first few pages itself. It is very fun to read and engrossing. I am not just finding enough time to read it as fast I want it between the busy work.

The Scientist in the Crib

Have been reading The Scientist in the Crib : What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind and not quite done yet. This books was suggested to me by a researcher at University of Washington whom I met when I took my son for a study. My son is about ten month old and he facinates me every second. You may find this book boring if you don't have an infant.

Also, don't miss the "The Baby Human" TV series in Discovery channel which I and my wife watch regularly. We find both the book and the TV series very educational and informative in helping us understand our son and makes us enjoy even the occasions when he gives us a hard time.

CSS Quiz

I took the CSS Quiz and got 19 out of 20 answers correct. I was hoping to get 20/20 given my technical background.

I find web programming very interesting and have worked for few years until I realized that there is not much left for me to learn in the world of HTML/CSS/DHTML/Scripting/ASP. So I switched to the world of C++ and COM programming a few years ago. I must admit that I realize how much more to learn in this area. This will keep me busy for at least 5 more years and will probably find myself in the same spot wanting to move on to bigger and better things. I am not sure if I will ever be good as Raymond Chen whom I worship a bit :-)

Internet Explorer and order

http://www.news.com has this article about:
Pennsylvania State University's Information Technology Services department recommending that students download other browsers to reduce attacks through vulnerabilities in the Microsoft software.
"We're not telling people to wipe off IE, because you need IE to do operating-system updates," Robin Anderson, a spokeswoman for Penn State's ITS department, said in an interview. "We're telling (students) there are alternatives--and for them to strongly look at those."

If you read carefully the second paragraph above, it could be interpretted as "If MS didn't require Internet Explorer for Windows Update, we could have recommended users to uninstall IE" or something like that.

The IE team is back in the business and has a blog now and is asking user's feedback. There is also a rumour that the old timers are coming together to make it big again. Please feel free to drop by their blog and leave your feedback.

Not a day goes by w/o me reading about another IE vulnarability. Here is my 2 cents for the IE team. The only features our customers would love to see and want is "Security", "Security" and more "Security". I do not take the excuses that some people give about IE being the most dominant browser and so it the center of attention. If it is so dominant and under scrutiny, why isn't that MS isn't putting few hundred more people to work on security and weed out the last security issues???!!

Does Microsft really care about you?

Short answer is, I am not sure. I admit that I work for the big brother and I enjoy what I do. But that doesn't mean I can't speak my mind. I have been watching Microsoft's moves in the last couple of years and nothing that I see tells me we are heading in the right direction. Does that mean it is going down? Not anytime soon. It is going through what IBM went through in the last couple of decades with and it would take a good few years before a major re-structuring happens like in IBM. Here is why?

1. Linux : "Your Potential, our passion", this is our mission and it sounds nice when you hear it. But does MS lives up to its expectation? No. In reality, it reads like "Your potential to be our desktop OS user is our passion. If you go for something else, screw you. We will do everything to make sure your experience is miserable". Microsoft's first and the greatest mistake is ignoring the linux. First it was a cancer to the society, and then officially became our main competetive threat.
   Why hate Linux so much? Instead, just like we made MS Office & IE available on the Mac, I would have loved if it jumped on the opportunity and built Office and its other flag ship applications for Linux. That would have shown its real passion and enabled many of our user's potential. Instead, we chose to fight for nothing. I see Linux as just another platform in which Microsoft has huge market opportunity which it missed entirely. I for one want Linux to be a mainstream OS so that users have a real choice instead of the choice of "XP Home"/"XP Pro"/"XP Starter Edition" etc. This is not what I call choice but a repackaging off the same stuff for a different price.
   


2. Internet Explorer: Everytime I think of how IE was handled, I feel pretty sick about how bad MS screwed it up. MS reacted to NetScape only because it saw a threat to Windows dominence. Once the battle was won, it ignored the product pretty much and moved on to other things. It just left the 95% or so users in limbo and didn't care to listen to their needs and improve on it and fix the damn security bugs. When one has this much market share and potential, you just don't turn your back and move on to other things when you claim to be passionate about software and its potential.
   


3. Product Quality: Microsoft's product quality is mediocre. It is not because it does not have the best minds and resources. It is because, it has compromised on quality in favor of more ship cycles and its thinking that investing in fixing the existing code does not give any return on investment. Fixing bugs in existing code is not a priority for us. Instead, adding more new (buggy) features are the mantra. With Microsoft products, bugs tend to live forever. (I proposed recently about fixing an ugly printing bug found in the product we just released in the new version we are working on and the asnwer I got was not to touch the code since it would mean testing investment etc etc. This is not just once and happens periodically.)
   You would think that product version X + 1 will not have the same bugs that were there in version X. You are wrong. Product X +1 version will have all the bugs that the previous version had plus more bugs. I am a developer and I can't tell you how many days I felt really bad about postponing bugs just because someone decided that it is not a mainstream scenario. The bad part is it doesn't get fixed in the future releases either.
4. Focus: I see a lack of focus overall in the company. MS seems to be in a lot of businesses where it shouldn't be. It is because the company is not seeing the impressive growth it had in the early ninties and is entering into anything and everything it can to show everyone that it could still keep the profits up. IBM did something similar before it shed its excessive unwanted fat (under Lou Gerstner) and focus on its core business. A better approach would be to spin off small companies that could work better and faster due to its smaller size. This is the focus on another MS employee's blog and I read his often with some interest.

I do want to work for a company that not only gives me challenging work but also embrace OS diversity just like it belives in diversity in people & culture. Few more years and if I don't see a change, I sure be the one to find opportunities elsewhere.

Microsoft has a long and tough road ahead. It hasn't been making any progress on embracing the OS diversity, customer interests and of course being the "Good" company.

Note: I made some edits on 2/18/05.

Why pay someone for what is yours?

For a long time, I wondered why I should pay the credit bureaus to view my own financial history a.k.a Credit report and the FICO scores.

The credit bureaus invest their resources in collecting data about everyone they can and sell it to businesses under the federal guidelines. That is perfectly O.K and I have no problem with that. What doesn't make sense to me is why I should pay to access information about me? It costs close to $40 to get the "All 3 credit agencies" report.
Is it the cost that prevents them from doing it? I don't think so. In this 21st century, the cost of delivering information is dirt cheap (I am talking about electronic delivery) and it is not an excuse to not let us see our information. For example, Google is offering 1GB mailbox and it costs nothing. How do they do it? Well, others just don't get it. Is this a conspiracy by the big 3 credit reporting agencies to rip the consumer? You bet!

I was a bit glad when the govenrment required the credit reporting agencies to offer one free credit report a year. Now, I could go to http://www.AnnualCreditReport.com/ to see my report. But MSNBC reported that many users coudn't use it because of all sorts of problems. The cause of the problem was reported to be overwhelming traffic!! What the hell is wrong with them? Did they expect no one to want to see their information? The big 3s would rather spend their resources where they could make more money. This is what I could get it from their execution.

This is great and we are making progress. But why can't I see this information when ever I want to? What I would like to to be able to check mine once a month and would live with 12 reports per year.