I do enjoy the NYTimes.  I also enjoy the NYTimes online site.  I don't however, enjoy having to logon, providing personal information just to get that content.  Two notes to online content creators:

1. if you think your content is very special, then make people pay for it and you'll see just how special your content is
2. if you think your content is kinda, sorta special, then don't make me provide you demographics just to get at your content

If you decide to lock down your content and make money, congratulations.  If you decide to collect demographics, you better make sure you test your users well, or at least check out BugMeNot.com to see if you're being gamed.

What's interesting is that the Times seemed to have a very special set of content, and I thought they would not stray from the pay-per-view model.  Interestingly, they decided to let their content go free tonight at midnight, realizing they will make more money from online advertising than pay-per-viewers**.

The best news is that they are also opening up their historical search tools.  Hooray!  I no longer have to keep the famous no-knead bread dough recipe in my safe deposit box.

**I wonder if the Times is going to start redirecting Firefox users who employ AdBlock extensions?

[Irony note: when I went to read the details about this article, the Times asked me to log on (see image).]

Now that the first software-only hack for unlocking the iPhone is in the wild, I have to wonder how Apple privately is  handling all of this.  Publicly, they have stated that they are neutral on the idea of 3rd-party applications, which basically applies to this software-only hack.  But I pose the question: if you could stop this hack from working, would you?

Arguments for blocking the hack

The money

The people at Apple most likely gnashing their teeth are the accountants, and Peter Oppenheimer most specifically.  Rumor has it that Apple has an agreement with ATT which earns Apple $3USD/mo for each iPhone subscriber, and $11USD/mo for each new (to ATT) iPhone subscriber.  Given that Apple just recently sold it's 1 millionth iPhone, and the ATT subscription agreement is for 2 years, simple and conservative math yields a 2 year income to Apple of $3MM/mo for the next two years, or $72M USD over the next two years.

$72MM is a fair amount of money, but more than just the end number, its a recurring revenue stream which is the holy grail for sustaining any business, large or small.  iTunes, for example, doesn't make a dime on the download of the client software, but rather earns money on each and every song purchased; every day; every month; for as long as iTunes is the dominant player in the legal online music download space.  Now that is a killer application.  And that is exactly why iTunes is constantly battling the likes of Hymn and SharpMusique. 

User experience

The phone I use is a 3 year old handset running an unbridled version of Windows Mobile 2003.  Behind closed doors, you could certainly get Microsoft to admit that WM2003 has significant flaws, the most glaring is that it doesn't tell how much battery life is available on the main screen.  For the first six months with this phone, I would gamble taking the handset on an overnight without having a charger available, as it's a bit of a battery hog to boot.  The only available option to this problem was to purchase a 3rd party tool that displays the battery information right on the screen. 

The solution is elegant and provides better feedback from the phone, but it also has it's issues.  At it's root, the solution significantly alters the UI and the experience I have with the phone.  For someone like Apple, who worked so hard to create a specific experience, this might just be the reason to extinguish the hack. 

For example, one of the iPhone's five main sales points was visual voicemail.  With the hack (and service with someone other than ATT), this feature is gone.  Additionally, Steve Jobs specifically mentioned his concern to having 3rd party applications on the iPhone in a NY Times article, for fear that you load "three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn't work anymore." 

This hack should be driving the industrial designers in Cupertino completely batty.

Arguments for leaving the hack alone

Market share

I propose that a sexy piece of hardware, such as this, or the XBox 360 will have an inherent market regardless of the functionality or price.  If it can be hacked, I would suggest that you're going to get a perceptible bump in sales directly proportional to the ease of the hack implementation.  Engadget describes how a hackable system (XBox 360) can lead to tangential sales (DVD+/-R), but I would argue that Microsoft also saw a bump in sales.  Was it a 50% bump?  Not likely, but even a single percentage bump in sales would be welcome in such a competitive marketplace.

I hacked my original XBox.  I didn't do it to copy software, but rather to run all of the great 3rd party software developed for the hack, such as MAME.  As a matter of fact, that hack was the primary reason I purchased the XBox versus another game box.

The petri dish of 3rd party applications

One of the largest complaints leading up to the launch of the iPhone was that it lacked the ability to run 3rd party applications on the handset.  Although Jobs is worried about 3rd party apps, he's not entirely against the idea either.  In my opinion, he shouldn't be.  The Palm used to be the undisputed champion of the handset market not because it was sexy, but because it had the largest number of 3rd party developers writing software for the OS.  Heck, this was exactly how Microsoft beat Apple in the personal computer business of the '80s and '90s.

Although Jobs thinks Safari is an acceptable sandbox to write all of the applications to run on the iPhone, that idea is flawed in that it inherently allows application portability, which the Palm OS applications didn't.  In other words, if Microsoft can (finally??) get a handset and OS to the market that is stable and has a web client that doesn't suck, all of those web-based apps will suddenly and transparently work on that handset as well.  Facebook?  Check.  YouTube?  Check.  NYTimes?  Check.  How about a portable iTunes client? 

What this hack (more specifically, the underpinnings of the hack) allows is the ability for the millions of creative minds to do more in months with the iPhone than the thousands of Apple developers could do in years.  Specifically, all those disenfranchised Palm OS developers can now find a new OS to start porting their previously hot-selling application to.  It's a win-win solution for Apple.

CH Products has strangely been the lone producer of a yoke system, the most familiar interface to flight simulators for real pilots.  I've never been a fan of the cheap feel that their plastic products give off, and the layout of some of their sliders and switches have been less than convenient or realistic.

One of the oddest parts of the CH yoke is where their throttle/control stack is; right over the yoke itself.  So, say you've got your realism set fairly high, you're fighting a crosswind during a landing and you decide to go around.  You would have to reach over your yoke and shove that little tiny switch forward.  That's just not comfortable, and at best, it's just strange.

I just read that Saitek has added their own yoke to the market, and it seems to be a superior product than CH's.  Although CH does offer a separate throttle/control stack similar to Saitek's, it costs more.  So out of the box, it appears Saitek is offering more value for the sheer volume of products.

Although the casing is still molded plastic, the control shaft is metal (presumably aluminum) so if you're more into fighter games, you won't twist or snap the shaft off.  Saitek also has a USB hub in the yoke, so there's not a tangle of chords you have to plug/unplug to your main box (especially if you also use their rudder system, which also consumes a USB port).

I'm disappointed that they haven't released this product with a good force feedback, as that feedback is a much more realistic way to diagnose a stall or feel winds aloft.  Given that they've decided to add a timer to the center of the yoke, it appears Saitek wanted to add some realism to the product, but apparently not too much.  Certainly, if they offered feedback, they wouldn't be able to offer it at such a reasonable price, but a guy can dream, can't he?

GameAlmighty.com has some great close-up photos of the product in their review.

Coming from nearly 10 years of experience of setting up various flavors of Microsoft IDEs on various flavors of Microsoft OSes, I thought this would just be another walk through the park.  After reinstalling Vista 3 times, I decided that the park I was walking through looked more like the one in Escape from New York, rather than something from Georges Seurat.

I'm assuming you're working on industrial-strength, two-tier applications, requiring SQL integration.  I'm also assuming you've backed up everything that might possibly have any value to you.  This isn't a post about combing through your old stuff, so I'll leave you to your own devices to get that done.

If you're ready to take the plunge, here's the software you're going to need to have ready in order to make the process less painful:

• Vista install disk (duh)
• Your computer's specific NIC drivers for Vista (just in case)
• Visual Studio 2005 install disk (flavor of choice)
• Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1
• Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Vista
• SQL Server 2005 install disk
• SQL 2005 Service Pack 2
• SQL 2005 Books Online update
• An installer for your virus protector of choice.  If you have no favorites, and/or you don't want to pay for an alternative, you can check out Grisoft and get their free AVG product.

Pre install checklist:

• Download and upgrade the latest BIOS for your make/model computer.  [I run Dell hardware; here is their support website.]
• (optional) Get your wireless router access passwords
• make sure you've backed up all of your old project files, and wwwroot\ directory
• check in any code that you might have still checked out
• I would additionally suggest that you max out your RAM before the install.  Vista demands a ton of memory, and Visual Studio is no lightweight.  Add SQL on top of that, and your Office products and you're asking for trouble.  I'm currently running with 1GB or RAM and although it's working, the machine is anything but speedy.  Installing the RAM before installing Vista will allow you to verify that the RAM is working well prior to changing the mix.

Now, clear off a calendar day.  Seriously.  This is not a 2 hour process, but rather a 5-6 hour marathon.  The only alternative is to run this in chunks.  I did the latter on my notebook using a new HDD for Vista.  Every morning, I would drop my old XP drive in, work, then every night (for a week) I'd plop the Vista HDD in, and continue along.  It's your choice.

Installing the enterprise VS2005 development environment:

[update 10/30/07: I forgot to include the (new) step 8 of altering the IIS settings.  I'm assuming you're running a version of Vista that has IIS, and you'll be installing features from SQL (i.e. Reporting Services) that wants IIS6.0.]

1. Breath deeply. 
2. (optional) if you're physically connected to your LAN, disconnect your NIC.
3. Install Vista.  Go take a walk, ride your bike, or start a vicious game of faceball.  This will take a while.
4. Install your virus protector.
5. Connect to the internet by physical or wireless methods; if you can't, install the NIC drivers you downloaded above
6. Update Vista.  Continue playing faceball.
7. Disable the User Account Control (UAC) "feature".  Until Microsoft figures out how to get the IDE installer and debugger to work nicely within the UAC, you're just going to have to work without a net.
8. Change IIS settings to use IIS6.0 compatibility.
9. Install SQL 2005.  You have a couple of options here.  You can either work from the 3 disks you have from above (SQL, SP2, BOL), or you can just copy all of the contents of those disks on to your local HDD.  The benefit of the latter is that you can slipstream the BOL into the SQL install, thus skipping step 10 below.  DBAZine has a great how-to on both installing SQL, and slipstreaming the BOL.
10. Upgrade SQL 2005 to SP2
11. (optional, see step 8) Upgrade your Books Online for SQL 2005
12. Update Vista again, just to be sure there isn't anything new.
13. Install Visual Studio 2005.  You're going to get some warnings that VS2005 has some known issues running under Vista.  That's ok, as we'll later patch those issues with the SP for Vista.
14. More faceball.
15. Install Visual Studio SP1.  Memory serves me that this took an inordinate amount of time to run, but YMMV.
16. Install Visual Studio SP1 Update for Vista
17. (optional) Install your source control client (e.g. Visual Source Safe)
18. Again, check Windows Update.

Now, with the (obvious) exceptions of your productivity suite (i.e. Microsoft Office), and getting the OS tweaked, you're ready to start developing.

Good Luck!