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August 2007 - Posts

Friday, August 31, 2007 8:31 AM

iWozn't Impressed

I just finished listening to the unabridged version of iWoz. It's basically the autobiography of Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak. I was hoping to get an understanding of the early days of Apple. I've read several books on the subject but this is directly
Posted by SteveRowe | 3 Comments
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Wednesday, August 29, 2007 9:48 AM

An Explanation for the "Music Slows Down Networking" Issue

Last week there was a small storm on the internet when it was discovered that playing music on Windows Vista caused networking to slow down. Mind you, the slowdown had little practical effect for most users. It was most pronounced on gigabit ethernet
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
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Monday, August 27, 2007 5:28 PM

Penny Arcade Expo

This past weekend Seattle hosted what is reportedly the biggest video games expo in the United States. That honor used to belong to E3 but they changed their format this year. Now that title belongs to Penny Arcade Expo (PAX). Unlike E3, PAX is aimed
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
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Saturday, August 25, 2007 1:06 PM

Test Automation in Crackdown

An interesting report over at Gamasutra. Jami Johns from Microsoft Game Studio gave a talk at Gamefest 2007 about how they tested Crackdown. The thing that strikes me most from the article is the increasing need for automated testing and thus test developers
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Friday, August 24, 2007 10:41 AM

Why Algorithms Matter

New programmers often don't appreciate the power of algorithms. They have one criteria for a piece of code: does it calculate the right answer? If it does, they go with it. Every CS program has at least one class on algorithms. However, if you are a self-taught
Posted by SteveRowe | 3 Comments
Thursday, August 23, 2007 10:10 PM

My Team Got Me

It's a tradition at Microsoft that when someone leaves for a while, their office is vandalized in one way or another. Sometimes it is something big like moving the office into the hall or covering it in post-it notes. Other times, it's something more
Posted by SteveRowe | 3 Comments
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Thursday, August 23, 2007 8:55 AM

Creating Change

A few articles that came across my browser recently. Both deal with the idea of changing an organization. We all get the feeling now and then that our organization is suboptimal in some way or other. Sometimes it's just a few things. Other times it might
Posted by SteveRowe | 0 Comments
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Wednesday, August 22, 2007 12:37 AM

HD-DVD Wins Over Dreamworks and Paramount

Recently people have begun to declare a victor in the next-gen DVD wars. Because of the PS3, the number of BluRay players on the market are higher than the number of HD-DVD players and thus sales of BluRay discs are higher than HD-DVD players. From what
Posted by SteveRowe | 2 Comments
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Monday, August 20, 2007 6:37 AM

Tacit Approval Often Isn’t

Most of us have found ourselves in situations where we need someone’s approval to get something done, but we can’t seem to get them to respond. It would be okay if they said no. It would be better if they said yes. We just need an answer yet we can’t
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
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Friday, August 17, 2007 8:15 PM

XP Machine Can't See Vista Computer - Solution

I'm at my brother-in-law's place and had to troubleshoot a network issue. I didn't see quite this situation on the web so I'll post it here in case it can help someone else. The issue was that his laptop (XP) couldn't see his desktop (Vista). The easy
Posted by SteveRowe | 6 Comments
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Monday, August 13, 2007 7:09 PM

History of the Amiga

Ars Technica is running a series on the history of the Amiga. This is the machine I grew up with. It was way ahead of its time for graphics and sound. It took many years for the PC (and even Mac) worlds to catch up. Unfortunately, it was marketed by a
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
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Monday, August 13, 2007 9:15 AM

Scrum Meetings for Test

A year and a half ago I talked about how I was running scrum meetings with my team. Since then, we've refined the process but have consistently held scrums on a regular basis. Note that I'm not running a full Scrum system with sprints and product backlogs
Posted by SteveRowe | 4 Comments
Friday, August 10, 2007 8:52 AM

Another DRM Domino Falls

First it was EMI announcing that they would sell non-DRM'd music on iTunes. Later they announced they would sell through Amazon as well. Now the next RIAA member appears to be taking the plunge. Universal is going to be selling most of their catalog in
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
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Thursday, August 09, 2007 9:38 PM

Summer Vacation Here I Come

I just turned in the project for my summer class. If you want to take a look, you can find it here . That means I'm now on summer vacation. I liked the class but it's nice to have it over with. Now I can get to some of that reading I didn't have time
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Thursday, August 09, 2007 12:34 PM

Windows Live SkyDrive Is In Open Beta

Windows Live SkyDrive is now open to the public in beta form. From what I can tell, it is basically 500 megs of drive space on the web that you can use to store personal documents or things you want to share. This isn't the first time something like this
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
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Wednesday, August 08, 2007 9:06 AM

Vista Performance Update

We just released two update packages which improve the performance and compatibility of Vista. As far as I can tell, they aren't on Windows Update yet so you'll have to go get them manually. The most significant in my mind is improvement for file copies
Posted by SteveRowe | 2 Comments
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Thursday, August 02, 2007 9:26 AM

New Blade Runner Coming!

25 years after Ridley Scott's masterpiece was first released, another version is nearly upon us. Blade Runner: The Final Cut is coming December 18. What I find most cool about this is not the new cut, but rather the original. When it was released in 1982,
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
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Wednesday, August 01, 2007 12:51 PM

Dilbert On Software Testing

Two recent Dilbert comic strips are a picture of how things sometimes work in our business. In the first , Dilbert complains that funding for test automation has been eliminated. The PHB responds that Dilbert should write some himself. Because Dilbert
Posted by SteveRowe | 0 Comments
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Wednesday, August 01, 2007 7:20 AM

The Comfort of Unit Tests

Working on my class project this summer, I decided to bite the bullet and do full unit testing. I've done unit testing before, but only in small amounts. In this case, I'm doing something akin to test driven development. I'm writing the tests very early
Posted by SteveRowe | 6 Comments
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