21 Rules of Software Development

21 Rules of Thumb – How Microsoft develops its Software

6. Beware of a guy in a room.

This is really just a special case of 'Don’t go dark.' Specialist developers who lock themselves away in a room, going dark for long stretches, are anathema to shipping great software on time. Without regard to their individual brilliance, before investing a developer with a significant assignment, it is essential that they understand and agree with the type of development program you intend to run. They must be capable of performing on a team, making their work visible in modest increments and subjecting it to scrutiny as it matures. Some people find this intolerable, and though there is a role for people of this disposition in the software world, it is not as part of a team devoted to shipping great software on time.

There are many pathologies at play here as well as certain healthy patterns of creative behavior. One pathology is a type of savior complex that cannot be satisfied without blowing every single deadline but the last, and then emerging victoriously with a brilliant piece of work five minutes late. A more healthy pattern is that of the true innovator who is truly designing something great, but who has no personal resources left over for anything but the work at hand. Every ounce of psychological, emotional and intellectual energy is being consumed in the work itself. Teamwork, in this case, is an insignificant factor to a person immersed in this sort of creative experience.

But whether or not the cause is healthy or bogus, the results are uniformly fatal to the professional development organization. Beware. Extricating yourself from this trap is nearly impossible.

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I am not impressed with Microsoft products in general, but I think these recommendations are important for well defined commercially succesful products -- even if they aren't great products. All 21 are interesting, but especially the above.

For great software I think one needs the opportunity to explore and experiment. That's why Google gives developers one day each week to work on their own initiatives.

Microsoft produces software that sells, albeit within a monopoly framework. Since Microsoft does not really compete, it's hard to say that it meets market needs. Google, on the other hand, does have to compete -- and it makes great software.

SuperCal for ColorSync settings in OS X

SuperCal

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Note mention of the Panther bug with contrast enhancement. This sounds like it might be worth a test. Macintouch reader recommends it to set white balance to DVD expectations (Windows).

Another iBook problem: serviced out of warranty

iBook 2001 (Part 13): "I purchased one of the first 500 MHz 'Dual USB' iBooks in the summer of 2001. I had to send it back for service during the original warranty because the airport reception was dependent on screen position (perfect reception at 90 degrees, no reception at full screen extension). I made the mistake of not purchasing the AppleCare extended warranty.

Last fall, the screen started to misbehave. I would get blue lines across the screen, and the screen would sometimes turn black. This also seemed to be related to screen position, so I went to my local Apple store to see what it would cost to repair. I was told it would be a minimum of $300, and it might not be the video cable as I suspected, but rather a motherboard problem.

Since I figured the whole computer was not worth much more than than that, I bit the bullet and bought a refurbished 17' PowerBook (with AppleCare this time). I knew that newer iBooks than mine had logic board problems, and the repair program had been extended before.

When I saw that the repair program had been extended to include my old iBook, so I took it back to the Apple store and went to the Genius bar to see if I was eligible for the repair program. The genius took a look at it, and told me it didn't seem to have the symptoms of the logic board issue. The store was closing, so he gave me a case number, and told me I could try calling the Apple Support phone number to see if I could get them to look at it anyway.

I called Apple support, and the phone tech had me try a few things. He had me boot into open firmware and try pressing on the corners of the computer. Pressing on the upper left hand corner caused the iBook to shut off completely. That was good enough, and I dropped off my iBook at the Apple store to be shipped off for repair, with the warning that it would probably take a week, possibly two to get it back.

This morning, only two days later, DHL dropped off my iBook, with a repair notice stating that the 'ASSY, Inverter/Sleep Switch' was replaced, and my iBook seems as good as new. The video problem is completely gone."

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We justly complain about iBook problems, but the new Dell corporate laptops my company uses make the iBook seem a paragon of reliability.

SendStation - Products - PocketDock Combo

SendStation - Products - PocketDock Combo

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I want to use my iPod to backup my laptop PC when I travel.

It's an XP laptop, so I need a USB solution and software that allows XP to read & write to HFS+ file systems. Choices:

MacOpener: http://www.dataviz.com/products/macopener/index.html

http://www.macwindows.com/disks2.html lists a bunch of solutions ...

Modifying an OS X printer using the CUPS localhost web interface requires root privileges

MacFixIt - Troubleshooting Solution for the Macintosh

The security update of 04-05-2004 made some small changes to cupsd.conf
that have major changes in how the user gets to access it. If you read lines
820-823 you'll see notes about how admin rights in the system group are
required to make do 'administration functions' which are what you are trying
to do.

We found that if we change this back with the following procedure. Open the
file cupsd.conf with a text editor (I use BBEdit, you may prefer something
else). Go to lines 835 and 836 and comment them out (put # at the beginning
of each line).

You'll see that these two lines indicate the auth types required to access the
function. By commenting them out you deactivate them and you'll be able to
make the changes again.

Note that subsequent security updates reinsert these lines and you'll have to
deactivate them again.

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I used my root uname and pword and was able to get access. Usual admin pw didn't work. The above is another fix for this problem. The CUPS web access is htpp://localhost:631. It has options beyond the native GUI tool.

I'm also using the shareware app, Printer Setup Repair, to work my OS X CUPS printing problems.

OS X Printing Problem: Printing to an HP DeskJet 882C on a Hawking Print Server

Mac OS X Panther (10.3.2)

William Brinkley
I followed Guillaume Gete Feb.23 tip: 'It seems the issue is in the CUPS printing server, which creates an incredible amount of temp files in /var/spool/cups/tmp/. Rebooting sometimes helps, but sometimes does not. Therefore, you must log in as an admin, and type in the Terminal : sudo rm -rf /var/spool/cups/tmp/' Unfortunately, my printer (HP Laserjet 4mv) then had'Jobs Stopped' and when I click the 'Start Jobs' icon, the job tries to print, but nothing happened.

After considerable research, and an excellent suggestion from a friend that I simply add another /tmp/ folder, here's the fix for the 'tip' but note: I am NOT a Unix user. The above was my first, and now, most likely, last Unix command on the Mac.

Open NetInfo Manager (Applications/Utilities)

Unlock it (give admin name & pw)

Choose: 'Security-Enable Root User

OK out, using passwords as requested

Quit NetInfo Manager

Log out; log in again as 'root'

Navigate to to /var/spool/ folder

Open the /cups/ folder

Create a new folder: /tmp/

Log out as 'root' and log back in normally.

After the above, my printer allowed me to print the job which had been queued at some point, waiting for the 'tmp' folder (I guess). Hope this helps anyone inexperienced and/or foolish enough to try the above-mentioned tip, as I did.

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My iBook has never printed properly to my Win2K hosted HP 882C. Instead I saved jobs to PDF and printed them from the PC.

This irritated me, but I was also unhappy with the way Win2K supported printer sharing for any machine. (One of XP's big improvements on Win2K printing. Any printer hiccup will mangle the Win2K printing services, requiring a command line or Admin tool service stop/restart.) So I moved the old DeskJet to my Hakwing 12PSU print server.

Worked very well for my PCs using the Hawkings tool or IPP printing. Better than the Win2K share!

Then I worked on my OS X machine. I found using http://10.0.1.250/lp3 with internet printing http (Advances setup using Print Center or use localhost:631 and use Samba web client setup) worked well. But I couldn't get CUPS printing to work well. I tried lots of things, including an OS X shareware tool that is supposed to fix bad printing situations. I had best success using the CUPS web client to install a printer accessing the HP CUPS/Linux driver set.

Turns out though that HP now has a native OS X driver (32MB download). So I'll try that ...

UPDATE: The HP driver seemed to work, then stopped working. No error messages -- a print job would start then the printer would go offline. I switched to root and added the printer as root. Seems to work now for all users. I figure a security update changed print privileges and broke the late 2003 driver, HP hasn't updated it. We'll see ...

The Neuberg Tidbits Series on Information Management

TidBITS Article Series: Conquer Your Text

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In pursuit of the Grail. Neuberg's seen it all.