The problem with scaling Twitter is not the choice of framework, but the choice of architecture. In other words, abandoning Ruby On Rails probably isn't going to solve all of their problems. At the same time, I'm not sure that decentralization is necessary and comes with its own set of challenges. The real problem is that the polling model of the Twitter API doesn't scale for real-time communications. As it is today, many Twitter clients will poll (by default) every 3-5 minutes to see if there was an update. Not only are they not really participating in real-time, they are generating an enormous number of requests that - even while each payload is small - generate a lot of overhead in aggregate just in checking and responding. As I've suggested in the past , a better solution would be to move the "real-time" API around the Jabber/XMPP client instead of HTTP. The good news is that Twitter already has an IM presence so it's easy enough for third-party clients...

There are certain expectations for "face time" in corporate America. Let's assume for a moment that the "normal" hours are 9-6. Now, fortunately, my last job was flexible and there were no strict guidelines. As long as you got your work done, it wasn't really an issue - some of the folks got there earlier and left earlier to be with their kids, some got there earlier and left later, and so on. We could go to the gym in the middle of the day or take a long lunch or whatever. Now, given my tendency to color outside of the lines, I definitely tended to test the limits of that structure. I would either show up around 7am or 10am... and I would usually leave at either 4:30pm or at 9pm. I guess I just don't like being "normal". As I've found out, though, the important thing was that there was a was a framework of expectations in place that I could defy. It's hard to rebel when you have nothing to rebel against So, on one hand, I was thrilled when...

Porn for the Blind is a "not-for-profit organization dedicated to producing audio descriptions of sample movie clips from adult web sites". If you want to contribute, you can record a website description .

I find this story particularly amusing because Hamilton was so big on the honor code (and then our former president stepped down because he failed to cite parts of his speeches). Their goal was an honor code that discouraged cheating and plagiarizing. However, the wording in a draft by students at the University of Texas at San Antonio appears to match another school's code -- without proper attribution. Oh, the irony.

Hank Williams managed to stir up quite the controversy with his recent post lamenting the rise of free and blaming the VCs . His assertion is that the venture capitalists have made free, ad-supported businesses the norm and effectively "ruined it for everyone else" (my words). I believe it should be possible to start a small business and to have a small number of profitable customers, and to earn a living. From there, it should be possible to work hard, and to grow your business into something substantial. Until recently, this was the American way, and it applied to technology as much as to any other business. But no more. In today’s “free” world, in most online business categories, it is inherently impossible to start a small self-sustaining business and to grow it. This is because in the digital world, advertising, the only real revenue stream, cannot support a small digital business. If businesses were based on the idea that people paid for services then small...

Over on the Notches Blog , I wrote about review integrity , highlighting some of examples of abuse and how we're trying to deal with them.

With its recent announcement to support ActiveSync on the iPhone , Apple is clearly going after the enterprise user. The problem, as Colin puts it, is that the decisions that consumers make decisions on a radically different set of criteria than organizations . Lack of Exchange support was surely holding back enterprise adoption, so that move was both obvious and inevitable. The fact that they are also supporting remote wipe is a bigger deal than most might realize too - security is a major concern for large enterprises, and for a long time Blackberry was the de facto device in large part because of this. (Windows Mobiles devices weren't allowed at my last job until the Remote Wipe feature was enabled). Fundamentally, I think we're moving to a model where enterprises are going to demand a certain baseline for devices to play in their garden. Features like over-the-air Exchange connectivity, remote wipe, and support for .NET, Java, and Flash are quickly becoming non-negotiable. It...

Well it amazed me that this is a typical issue.  My Toshiba M400 the other day was running really warm during normal use, 60° C-70° C.  So of course I had to take the whole thing apart and inspect.  The first thing I did was to clean out the FAN, again a big yuck!  Then I took off the CPU fan and heat sink and removed all the old CPU paste.  I then cleaned the surfaces with Isopropyl alcohol, re-applied some new thermal paste, making sure that it is evenly coating the CPU and then re-assembled the notebook. So now my idle temperatures are more inline with when I got the notebook, 35° C-45° C. Here is a good article I found on the topic .

A friend of mine is organizing a 5 day race to benefit CHASE , a hospise in the UK that supports families with life-limited children, in memory of his late son Fraser . Iain and a group of 7 other riders are training for a sponsored bike ride from Land's End to John O'Groats. They will be leaving Land's End on 29th June and arriving in John O'Groats 5 days later on 3rd July, where they will average 180 miles per day. The ride will benefit CHASE children's hospice who provided so much help & support for us and Fraser when he was alive and since.   If interested in supporting this cause, you can donate here or find our more details on the Race for CHASE homepage .

Well it has been over a year since Vista has been released and I have been struggling with poor file copy performance between my Vista machines on a GB switch, since about December.   Poor Network Performance with Windows Vista (RTM) Poor GB Network Performance on Vista back! =( Poor Network Performance on Vista resolved?   I don't know how I missed the article about MMCSS (Multimedia Class Scheduler Service) but after reading into it, it seemed to fit my performance issue...my stability issues were due to old network drivers.  If you have a Broadcom onboard nic, you should definitely upgrade the drivers. Mark Russinovich uncovered that MMMCSS is hardcoded to throttle your network performance to 10,000 frames per second or about 15Mb/sec on standard ethernet with 1500 byte frames. Here is the solution .  I have disabled the MMCSS service, updated the registry to remove the Windows Audio dependency and network performance is back to where it should be!  CPU utilization...