How Microsoft Can Become More Interesting

Paul Thurrott asked the question “How Can Microsoft Fix Microsoft?” - here is my take.

I believe that one of the things that makes Microsoft less 'interesting' than other tech companies is the reliance on being predictable for businesses.  Large organizations simply can’t tolerate constant churn in its core technologies – they have a hard enough time simply keeping up with the plodding pace of change as it exists today.  I think that Microsoft can take a lesson from open source projects and offer frequent innovations while maintaining the predictability that large organizations need.

The key is to offer frequent updates, say every six months but only offer long term support on a subset of those releases - every four releases for example.  This would allow Microsoft to try more experimental features and observe how well they are received in a community that is more forgiving of constant churn while maintaining predictability for its largest customer base.

This approach would avoid forcing Microsoft into splitting its products into separate governance models for different product lines (one of the things that I think slow down development cycles on products like Live Essentials and Windows Phone) and hopefully speed up the rollout of interesting technology for those of us that are enthusiasts.

Technorati Tags: technology,Microsoft

Why Students Hate School

Most students hate school because they believe that it is intended to build human capital but all of their classes have near zero real world application.

Since the classes are worthless they feel like they are wasting their time learning things that they don't need. 

If students understood more clearly that the goal of school is to get through school they would have an easier time putting up with the nonsense.  But, if too many understood this the value of the signal would likely diminish.

Technorati Tags: education,school,economics

MDL: Script to Convert MPG to AVIs

The MPG videos that I have are not getting along with XBMC.  To get around this I need to convert them all to AVI format.

avidemux has a great command utility and PowerShell has the power to batch the process.

$avidemux = New-Object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
$avidemux.FileName = "D:\avimux\avidemux2_cli.exe"
$avidemux.windowStyle ="Hidden"

foreach
($SourceVideoFile in (Get-ChildItem @("D:\videos\") -recurse -include @("*mpg", "*.mpeg") | sort-object name))
{      
    $SourceVideoFile.fullname
    $avidemux.arguments = "--autoindex --load ""{0}"" --save ""{1}"" --output-format AVI --quit" -f $SourceVideoFile.fullname, ($SourceVideoFile.directoryname + "\" + $SourceVideoFile.basename +".avi")
    $avidemuxProcess = [System.Diagnostics.Process]::Start($avidemux)
    $avidemuxProcess.WaitForExit()
}

All done!  The videos all converted in a couple of hours.

Technorati Tags: PowerShell,HTPC,XBMC

MDL: How to Share Databases with Multiple XBMC HTPCs

I’ve raved about how great XBMC is already.  Just to demonstrate how truly great it is, I went out and bought a Nettop so that I could install XBMC on my primary TV.

The one problem with this setup is that each install of XBMC maintains a separate database of content.  This is problematic for a couple of reasons.

First, I have OCD really bad and it bugs me beyond belief if the pictures, posters and details associated with all of the music, movies and TV shows are out of whack.

Second, XBMC keeps track of what you have already watched and you can choose to hide that content if you wish.  This feature isn’t all that useful if it only tracks watched content on a TV by TV basis.

So what is the solution?  It turns out that XBMC can be configured to run off of MySQL.  And since MySQL is designed for use by more than one connection, more than one XBMC can be setup to use a single database!

I am well adept at Google-Fu but couldn’t find any decent documentation on how to set this up so it took me some time.  But don’t fret, my sweat is your gain.

Step 1: Download and install MySQL (default everything is fine).  I’m running Windows so downloaded the Windows Community version 5.1.45.  The instructions will reflect this setup, but if you are running linux you should be smart enough to translate from Windows to *nix anyway.

Step 2: Once MySQL is installed and running, log into the database by opening a command prompt and typing: ‘mysql –u root –p’

Step 3: Create a user xbmc with password xbmc: ‘CREATE USER 'xbmc' IDENTIFIED BY 'xbmc';’

Step 4: Create a couple databases:

“CREATE database xbmc_video”
“CREATE database xbmc_music”

Step 5: Grant the new user access to create and modify a new database:  “GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'xbmc';”

note: yes, I am fully aware that there are more secure ways to accomplish this, but its a media database for Christ’s sake!

Step 6: Create a file called advancedsettings.xml and place it in %appdata%\xbmc\userdata\

Step 7: setup advancedsettings.xml to look just like this.  Note, if you didn’t follow my directions exactly you will need to modify the details to make your setup.

<advancedsettings>
    <videodatabase>
        <type>mysql</type>
        <host>localhost</host>
        <port>3306</port>
        <user>xbmc</user>
          <pass>xbmc</pass>
          <name>xbmc_video</name>
    </videodatabase>
    <musicdatabase>
        <type>mysql</type>
        <host>localhost</host>
        <port>3306</port>
        <user>xbmc</user>
          <pass>xbmc</pass>
          <name>xbmc_music</name>
    </musicdatabase>
</advancedsettings>

Step 8: Start XBMC and it will create the database for you. 

Step 9: Configure advancedsettings.xml on your second copy of XBMC making sure to change the ‘host’ entry to be the IP address of the computer hosting MySQL.

And there you go, a single copy of the database that can be shared by many computers running XBMC!

If you have spent a lot of time getting all of your metadata setup exactly the way that you want it, you can export the library before you start and import it when you are complete so that you don’t have to start over.

I also discovered one last benefit to sharing a DB on multiple computers.  The ‘New Content’ is synced on all of the hosts if you have that feature turned on.

One final gotcha – if you are using Windows you have to setup your content using SMB shares and not local drives.  XBMC doesn’t handle the ‘/’ characters correctly yet in MySQL.

Enjoy!  Hopefully I saved you a little time.

Technorati Tags: XBMC,HTPC,MySQL

Healthcare Predictions

With ObamaCare ready to pass here are my predictions on what its effects will be:

• Higher Insurance Premiums
• 10s of millions of people still uninsured
• It will cost more than initially claim leading to spiraling government debt
• Zero change in the rate of change for life expectancy

I know the above will happen, I only suspect the following:

• Decreased innovation (measured by fewer patents)
• Medical clinics legislated into oblivion
• Increased regulation: limiting competition for doctors, pharma and hospitals

Even with the above failures, proponents will demand more government interventions, failing to admit fault and rolling back their mistakes.

Anyone care to make a wager?

Technorati Tags: hcr,healthcare,ObamaCare

Screw You EU

In the great wide world of the web does Google have to respond to an EU anti-trust investigation?

Can it just flip them the bird, close down any offices it has in Europe and call it  a day?  Or does Google rely too much on European based datacenters and content caching mechanisms?

MDL: Home Theater Meet PowerShell

Intro – Part I – Part II

As I mentioned in the last post, getting video to my wide array of end points can be a little challenging.  You may have been surprised when I said that getting video on a Zune was a challenge.

Well, it’s not that it is hard per se – after all the Zune software will go discover all that media from any Windows share just like it does for music.  The problem is that it needs to transcode all of that media before it can copy it to the Zune.

The other issue is those large video files aren’t optimized for playing on such a small screen.  It all works, but waiting for an hour or more to copy a single movie to your Zune isn’t my idea of a good time.  And I’m not always prepared enough to do it ahead of time.

So my solution was to couple HandBrake – a fantastic program for converting video files – with PowerShell.  I had to teach myself PowerShell along the way, but in the end I have a powerful script that converts all of my video files to smaller formats optimized for the Zune.  The good news for you is that the exact same process will work for iPods or any device that can play video with a couple small tweaks.

Step one is to download Handbrake and the Handbrake CLI (command line interface).  Launch Handbrake and create a profile that will convert videos into a format that your portable device can play.

There are a couple of items in this script that will need to be modified for your particular situation.

1. Your preset – on Line 4 I’ve called mine simply ‘Zune’, change this to whatever profile you created for your device.
2. The location of the Handbrake CLI on Line 2.
3. The location of your source videos – you can have as many as you want, just make sure that they are separated by a comma – Line 7.
4. The destination for your converted movies – Line 9.

   1: $HandBrake = New-Object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo

   2: $HandBrake.FileName = "C:\Program Files\Handbrake\HandBrakeCLI.exe"

   3: $HandBrake.windowStyle ="Hidden"

   4: $HandBrakeOptions = " --preset='Zune' "

   5:  

   6: foreach 

   7: ($SourceVideoFile in (Get-ChildItem @("D:\movies\", "D:\TV\") -recurse -include @("*mpg", "*.mp4", "*.mkv", "*.avi", "*.mpeg") | sort-object name)) 

   8: {

   9:     $ZuneOutputFile = "D:\Zune\" + ($SourceVideoFile |% { [IO.Path]::GetFileNameWithoutExtension($_) }) + ".mp4"

  10:     if (!(test-path $ZuneOutputFile))

  11:     {

  12:         

  13:         $HandBrake.arguments = $HandBrakeOptions + "-i " + '"' + $SourceVideoFile.fullname + '"' + " -o " + '"' + $ZuneOutputFile +'"'

  14:         $HandBrakeProcess = [System.Diagnostics.Process]::Start($HandBrake) 

  15:         $HandBrakeProcess.WaitForExit() 

  16:     }

  17: }

In short, the script:

1. Compiles a list of all video files in the locations specified (and, conveniently, all of the subfolders too).



2. Checks to see if the file exists in the destination.



3. If it doesn’t already exist it converts it based on the profile that you set up.

Some items of note:  the script hides all of the conversion process so that it can be scheduled without interrupting any other activity on the computer it is running on. 

It will also take forever to run the first time since it needs to convert all of that video.  But if you schedule it on a routine basis it shouldn’t take too long.

Pretty cool, huh?

Technorati Tags: HTPC,PowerShell

My Digital Life – Part 2: Video Distribution

Intro – Part 1

A brief recap: 

1. I hate physical media.
2. The world is moving to digital anyway.
3. Just not fast enough for me.
4. So I have to figure out how to make all this stuff work together since no one is doing it for me.

That wasn’t so bad.  Now ripping a crap-ton of media isn’t the most glamorous exercise in the world, but it isn’t exactly rocket science either – so I’m not going to explain how to do that.  Let’s just assume that all of my music and video is all in a central location.

Which is good, because it is all in a central location.  I have everything stored on a Windows 7 computer with Windows file shares. 

Cool, but how do I get everything to Zunes, Tivos and XBMCs?

Well, XBMC and music on the Zune are easy since they both recognize and can consume Windows file shares.  As an added bonus the XBox 360 can consume everything as well – though the experience is simply awful.  But the Tivo isn’t so straight forward and video on the Zune isn’t as easy as it should be.

First the Tivo.  Newer generation Tivo devices support multi-room content sharing (something Tivo calls “Multi-Room Viewing” (MRV)).  This along with Tivo Desktop provides most of the functionality I was looking for – but not all.

Open Source to the rescue!  Some enterprising gentlemen backwards engineered the protocol that Tivo uses for MRV and created an application called PyTivo that shares content across the network with any Tivo that supports MRV. 

PyTivo is very straightforward to install and use.  It isn’t 100% point and click, but its close and the forums are friendly and helpful.

The main advantage that PyTivo has over something like Tivo Desktop is that it will transcode content on the fly whereas Tivo Desktop requires that all of the content be stored in Tivo acceptable format.  Pytivo also can push metadata along with the video so that you can get names, descriptions, dates, etc populated which makes the viewing more seamless.

MRV isn’t the most fully functional method for consuming content, but it is acceptable.  The text only navigation is bland – especially after being spoiled with XBMC.  MRV doesn’t support subtitles either which comes up more often than I would have guessed.  But I can live with it, at least until I can get Live TV by some other method. 

Continued – Home Theater Meet PowerShell

Technorati Tags: HTPC,XBMC,Tivo,PyTivo

End of a Decade

No need to write anything new.  It’s all been said before.

With this record during the past decade, it would be foolhardy to look forward … with anything more than restrained hope.  Perhaps we shall yet develop the wisdom to achieve a livable environment, a world of peace and order, a stable economy as free of inflation as of recession, a government brought under control both as to size and to extravagance, and a social order governed by justice and equality.

But, given the halting progress of the last 10 years, that would be quite a big order.

-Chicago Tribune, Dec. 31st  1969. 

You know, those dreadful days when budget deficits soared to unprecedented levels of 20 billion dollars.

What Do You Consider Speech?

Can the government ban pornography?

Can the government impose morality laws on Hollywood?

Can the government prevent the Metropolitan Museum of Art from displaying Robert Mapplethorpe?

Can the government stop the publication of The Pentagon Papers?

Can the government outlaw donations to the Communist Party?

Can the government ban the showing of Hillary the Movie 30 days before an election?

Can the government ban Fahrenheit 9/11 30 days before an election?

Can the government control what 3 brothers say about a politician?

What if those three brothers are a union?

What if those three brothers are a cult?

What if those three brothers are an LLC?

What if those three brothers are a Corporation?

If your answer to those questions isn’t either all ‘yes’ or all ‘no’ I would love to hear a rationale explanation as to what the difference is – because they all seem the same to me.

Technorati Tags: free speech,Citizens United