Politics.NET

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the weird behavior of Chrome's omnibox. Today, am posting about how Chrome's bungled a very simple feature of all web browsers. Since the very early days of the web, web browsers have always had an option for viewing the source code of the currently rendered page. Typically the menu is called "View Source" or something similar. You click it and you get the HTML source for the page you're looking at. Very simple, right? Well Chrome does it differently. In the spirit of complicating simple things, clicking on "View Source" in Chrome doesn't just give you the HTML of the current page. Oh no! It makes another request to the web server and shows you the HTML for that version. Yep. I am not sure how that's better than just showing the HTML of the already rendered page but that's what Chrome does. So in addition to using the omnibox to complicate web development , the "View Source" option makes a triv...

A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog post titled "InfoPath & SharePoint (Part 1)". Back then I had just started working on a project using InfoPath 2007. So, expectedly, the post wasn't very complimentary to InfoPath (or SharePoint). In fact, I said: InfoPath sucks and SharePoint is the most expensive piece of crap ever. InfoPath, as a development environment, has absolutely no redeeming value. It's worthless.... ( more ) Since then my opinion of InfoPath has changed slightly. It still suffers from all the flaws I pointed out in that post. However, I think when used right, InfoPath can be an OK tool. I think it's well suited for designing one off forms and not for anything that requires complex logic or multiple iterations (like most software development requires). Alas, most CTOs fall in love with its point & click simplicity and integration with SharePoint that they try to use it to replace more developed technologies like ASP.NET. What do you get? A h...

If you use the latest version of Google's Chrome browser , you may have seen this setting: Couple of days ago, I decided to turn it on. This way, I can get instant results when I search via the omnibox. Since I never go to Google's home page, this is the only way for me to get the benefits of instant search. So I turned it on and promptly forgot about it. Fact is, I never actually thought about how it worked. Why? Because the way it works is every character you typed is instantly sent, as a search query , to your search provider. So far, that's not a big deal. That's intuitive. However, what's not so intuitive is that once Chrome detects you are typing a URL , it starts sending those requests to the webserver for the URL. So say you want to type in "http://localhost/myapplication/pageAmTesting.aspx?Id=500", the last few requests Chrome will send are: http://localhost/myapplication/pageAmTesting.asp http://localhost/myapplication/pageAmTesting.aspx h...

First, I am typing this on the Cr-48 running Google OS . I signed up for the pilot program a couple of months ago and didn't give it any further thought. After all, what are the chances of them actually giving me a unit? Well, guess what was waiting for me when I arrived home this evening? Yep! A brand new laptop (more like netbook) with Google OS installed. These are my initial reactions: when I first heard about Google OS being based upon the chrome browser, my first thought was how will they deal with the *claustrophobia* that some people (ok me) will experience at being confined to a single window? Well they didn't deal with the issue. So that was the first thing I noticed. It just feels like I am being confined to a single browser instance What do you mean "everything is in the cloud"? Literally, everything is in the cloud! There's no file system. Personally, I think it's a mistake that Google didn't even create an abstraction to replace the file s...

I wrote the bulk of this post in November last year. Since then, I have indeed left Aquilent and now work at NIH . How do you keep employees happy? I am sure most people will immediately think of money when asked this question. To me, it's never been about money. Sure, everyone wants to be adequately compensated and certainly I wouldn't volunteer for a pay cut. But it takes more than money to keep a good employee happy. I am careful to qualify that with "good employee" because a bad employee will stick around and take the money. I think a key aspect of what keeps employees happy is how good the daily work experience is (from the employee's perspective). If your employees hate coming to work each day, you can be bet no amount of money will make them happy or keep them from leaving. Why am I talking about this? Well it occurred to me while riding the Metro to DC (where I am working on a SharePoint implementation project...feel free to Google that..I'll wa...

I know that sounds like an obvious observation but until you really think about, you may not realize how big the federal govt really is. I just started working at the National Institutes of Health (which is 1 of 12 operating divisions under the D epartment of Health and Human Services ). HHS itself is 1 of 15 federal executive departments in the United States. With me so far? So at orientation, I found out that NIH employs over 27,000 employees! NIH is the largest consumer of electricity in Montgomery County! 27,000 employees in an agency within the 10th largest (of 15) department in the US. According to wikipedia.org, as of 2007 the federal government employed 4.2 million people! Wow! That makes them by far the largest employer in the country. For comparison, the largest private employer in the US is Walmart with 1.8 million employees. That means the federal govt employs more than twice as many employees as the largest private employer. That's some serious clout.

So I just got a new job and along with that comes the task of setting up a new PC from scratch. First thing I did was install CCleaner and check out all the programs that have been set to run on start up (i.e. programs that run every time you start your computer) Since these programs are configured to run on start up, you would think they ought to be very critical components of your computer. So why is it that every self-important software company seem to think their programs belong in this category. For example, if Adobe Reader doesn't start every single time I boot my computer, is that really a big deal? So why the heck does Adobe think they need not 1, not 2 but 3 programs starting up every time I boot up? Why does Sun (Oracle) think I need to update Java (a program almost no one uses except for server applications)? Why does Apple think Quicktime needs to be started along with the computer? For one thing, the idea of having Quicktime is like appendix in humans i.e. absolutely ...