[no subject]

> I have 4 systems in my home right  now, recently replaced one that I used
every
> day for hard core development and it never game me any problems except
> occasionally it would fail to shut down after upgrades.

Forgive me if this sounds rude, but you're not any typical user I know.  If
we reviewed, in detail, using system logs, what you've actually had to do to
keep your machines running through various upgrades, we would find, I am
sure, that you've taken care of some small "infelicities" that as a pro
you'd barely notice, but that might stop some neophyte dead in their tracks.

Experienced users tend to minimize any problem that didn't stymie them for
more than a minute or two.  Inexperienced ones tend to call me (or someone
like me) and say "I ran an auto update and now I've got a box on the screen
asking me if I want to overwrite or keep File X because of . . . " Easy for
you to answer that question, nearly impossible for them.

Microsoft's own list of problems created by the XP SP2 service pack upgrade
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=884130 included Photoshop,
Encyclopedia Britannica, Omnipage Pro and other programs such as:

? Multiplayer games and instant message programs that are used over the
Internet.
? Windows XP SP2-based client programs that receive data from a server.
? Windows XP SP2-based server programs that respond to client requests.

So I guess I still don't quite understand how a client/server product like
yours can truly insulate itself from the OS that's managing all the
client/server traffic.  More troubling, I can't see how a product that
maintains a media repository isn't going to fall into the impending snake
pit of digital rights management issues.  Surely that has to be one of the
issues facing you when considering support for I-Tunes and I-Pods.

> The others have been working just fine. I've had automaton controllers
that run
> without problems for a year or more (and would have continued had I not
replaced
> them.)

You didn't have any issues with CQ or your machines when XP SP2 arrived or
porting up from an earlier version?  What version of Windows was CQ "born"
under?  As for your experience, that's a commendable data point, but that's
all.  Reading through support groups for HomeSeer, ADI and others would
reveal other, incongruent, data points.

> This is because I either buy a pre-fab configuration (Dell's mostly) or I
> research what other people have been using and use hardware that I know
> other people are using without problems.

I'm all for research but it gets a little problematic in the modern age.  By
the time you fully research a PC, a newer model appears.  To fully research
a PC, you really have to be a PC expert.  I consider myself just such an
"expert" but I get fooled reading ads.  The last one was a Fujitsu Tablet PC
that "appeared" to have a network connector built in but all it really had
was a network chip built it - you needed a docking station to connect to
externally.  Apparently, I wasn't the only one fooled, either.  I noticed
the same reports from one of your users on the CQ forum.

When I read through PC ads they're deliberately deceptive, hoping to pawn
off a flat screen CRT monitor as a flat panel LCD display.  As for Dell,
you're one of the few I hear speak highly of them but as I've said before,
these are all just data points that paint a larger picture.  Maybe Dell
isn't as poor at support as my friends have indicated.  More likely, they're
not able to support themselves they way that you can so poor support is more
of an issue to them.

> > Untested by whom?  I have a little problem here trying to visualize the
> > process by which Joe Average is able to test and evaluate a driver, or
> > to even figure out who to trust to test the equipment.  This is what I
call
> > a  "magic dingus" in that it calls for process that's not visible.  In
your
> > case, granted, you have skilled installers and maintainers making these
> > decisions about drivers and what is "good gear" and what is "bad gear."
>
> The average person will probably not do this, any more than the average
> person will fix their own car.
>
> > As for "bulk people" I would have to counter your observation and say
> > that the "bulk" of the people I know just install things.  They don't
backup
> > beforehand, they don't use an install log, they don't examine the
processes
> > list before and after to see what's changed and they neither back up the
> > registry nor do a registry concordance to see what a new program has
> > done to their system.  Those are among the many things it takes to
approach
> > 24/7/365 reliability.  Very, very few average users do them.
> >

> I was refering to the bulk of people implementing an automation system,
> not of the public at large, since I thought that was the issue at hand.

I think one of the problems we're having here is that we're talking about
different things, or at least I *think* we are.  I had (mistakenly) assumed
that CQ was an automation program that an average user could deal with.
Upon closer inspection, it seems to be clearly aimed at people who have
fairly broad PC, programming, networking and configuration skills.   I would
say that it's probably a good fit for less than 10% of the people who stop
by CHA to ask automation questions.  That's not a knock, BTW, it's simply an
acknowledgement that you're catering to a different crowd than, say,
Activehome.

<stuff snipped about time it would take to port CQ to Vista>

> > A few days?  I think you're quite the optimist, Dean.  We'll have to
> > wait  and see.  I've worked on a number of software projects for
> > various clients.  When you have to support another OS, particularly a
> >  new one, it can double your testing load, it can increase the size and
> > complexity of your distribution media, it can require multiple sets of
> > help files tailored to each OS.  Housekeeping and version control can
> > just eat you alive if you run into significant issues porting.

>
> I've done more cross platform software development than most people on the
> planet, I'm sure.

This is again, no knock, but how would or could we know that?  We hear
remarkable claims most every day here in CHA.  In my experience, coding
skills vary tremendously.  I've known coders that can write super-tight
assembler with executables so small and algorithms so ingenious that very
few other people can understand their what the program does, let only how
elegantly it does it.  Often, they are truly people of few words, both
codewise and wordwise.  Documentation has to be forced out of them, often by
means of coercion. ;-)

Other coders are superb virtualizers.  They can trace simultaneous execution
of process threads in their heads the way Beethoven could the various
musical instruments.  One of the ones I used to work with, Ygal, liked to
play simultaneous chess games during his lunch hour with up to eight other
opponents.  He rarely drew a game, let alone lost one.  I have great respect
for people with such talent because they are very few and far between.

> I've already explained how our product is architected to
> minimize platform impact. You can believe it or not.

I'm not sure I recall all the detailed technical explanations of your
cross-platforming features.  I'm not sure what you've learned about
marketing, but most advertisers know they have to repeat their meesages
often if they want anyone to retain what they've been told.  So, sorry,
Dean, but I don't feel very badly about not recalling the details of a
program I'm not ever likely to buy.

I do remember being surprised that a program that strove for such a high
level of abstraction from the OS did not support other platforms, like Linux
and the Mac. Or did I get that wrong?  If you don't support Apple or Linux,
does Apple's switch to an Intel CPU have any impact your future plans?

A lot of *very* smart AV people I know are heavily invested in Macs.  The
I-Pods and I-Tunes have incredible market share, AV-wise.  I'd be interested
to know how you incorporate such devices into CQ without having to deal with
some very knotty digital rights management (DRM), driver and networking
issues.

I'll readily admit being able to insulate yourself from serious changes in
the underlying OS is nice, even if it's only from slight version changes
in Windows.  The problem I have is that my experience tells me that no
matter how a programmer tries to insulate himself from the OS, the success
of his efforts lies in how many OS upgrades he's survived, what the OS
manufacturer has changed and the plain ol' luck of the draw.  How many OS
revisions has
it been for CQ?

> > Has CQ ever had to make the trip to a brand new OS?  It's an interesting
> > journey.  My organization created several widely used in-house
> > applications over the years for thousands of users.  The programs
> > ranged from collecting survey data to decision modeling software.
> > When we had to bridge from DOS to WIN3 to Win98 to NT to W2K
> > we had to spend a fortune.
>
> No CQC the product, but the underlying object infrastructure has. I'm well
> aware of the issues, and have long since put the mechanisms in place to
deal
> with it.

NASA puts loads of safety systems in place to prevent failures, but they
still have them simply because unanticipated stuff happens and safety nets
fail.

> The underlying object platform used to run on XP and Linux
> simultaneously back in the day, and because of the very mechanisms I've
> pointed out it required no changes in the code, just the use of the
> virtual kernel layer being implemented on each platform.

"No changes in the code" could be misconstrued.  Who writes the virtual
kernel for the new OS?  (-:  By using another layer of abstraction, you're
simply moving the difficult interoperability issues to a different software
layer, but the issues still remain.

It almost sounds as if you've built an OS for CQ within the Windows
framework.  While that might not be a workable solution for other fields,
perhaps because of HA's relatively relaxed CPU requirements, the performance
hit it would seem you would take re-creating system utilities and services
embedded in the OS might be worth the gain in reliability.  If, as you say,
you have problems if another device chooses an IP address already in use,
perhaps you're not as insulated from the OS as you'd like to be.

It would seem to me that an object platform created for both Windows and
Linux would be a valuable thing to leave that way.  Why did you decide to
limit your implementation so it only runs under Windows?  A limit to how
much HW can be virtualized?  Networking issues?  Driver issues? (-:

> > Did I miss it (my delete key was toggled for a while)?  Did you explain
> > how your business plan would cover a prolonged illness of you, the key
> > man? That little issue alone has been enough to sink projects far larger
than
> > yours.  It's rumored that Wordstar died because the key man left.  It's
> > pretty obvious at ADI that when Dan Boone left, development on ADI and
> > Ocelot gear stopped.
>
> We've made it clear that if, in the very unlikely chance that would happen
> before we are in a position to deal with it, that we would open source the
> product. So no one would be screwed, except me if I died.

That tends to assume there would be someone both willing *and* able to take
it over after it appeared to have killed you!  (-:  Dean, I've been involved
in a *lot* of projects where the original, and (often) very dedicated and
talented programmer(s) like you, have left for one reason or another.  I
don't
recall any of those projects surviving in their original instantiations,
even if all the source code and compiling tools were made available, which
often they were not.  I'll agree, after looking through your site, that
you've done a lot more than most startups to deal with the keyman issue.
However, the keyman problem rarely, if ever, disappears in its entirety,
even as you grow more successful.

The reason I brought up the "key man" issue was not to cause FUD.  It was a
reaction to a previous comment that you made.  You're in a slot that's
infamous for burning people out.  When I read this paragraph you wrote:

 |I've worked for almost five years now for almost nothing (average of less
 |than $10K a year, while spending over $40K of my own money, which was all
I
 |had, and another $40K of Mark's money.) It will probably be another four
 |before I could even begin to consider buying a house so that I could even
 |have a mortage to pay, and moving out of this tiny, one bedroom apartment
 |and stop having to work 7x12x365.

I know it's the God's Honest Truth because I've seen it so many times
before.  I consider working 80+ hours per week a serious danger sign that
you're not leading a terribly well-balanced life.  If you're a very good
programmer (that's hard for me to evaluate without looking at your source
code) that can write complete, intelligible English sentences as well (that
I *can* evaluate!), then you know that you're being seriously underpaid for
your talents by a factor of ten.  You also know that your friendship with
someone is now tangled up in money and expectations of future profit.  I
found a business partnership to be just like marriage only with more
headaches and heartburn but without the sex and affection.  (-:

If you were working for me in a corporate setting I'd immediately flank you
with a junior programmer and an AA.  I'd make you take your vacation time
for one thing, and might even put you part-time on another project to
encourage the junior programmer to *really* step up to handle the load
instead of just coasting behind you.  Oddly enough, you'd probably come back
from two weeks in Aruba with a whole raft of new ideas that came to you once
you stepped back from the daily ground.

Why would I do this?  Because a single person, grinding himself up slowly
but surely with no other life but the love of his project, is creating
something no one else can take over, no matter what the inducements.  Your
devotion to CQ is quite admirable, but it's likely to be very hard to find
in another person.  In my business, managers are rated on the success or
failure of their projects. When I was in grad school, huge SW projects were
failing left and right. Most management education at the time was geared
towards recognizing what caused such large, apparently well-thought out and
well-funded projects to fail.  Burnout was an important factor, but
ironically enough, so was lack of motivation.  I wouldn't worry about that,
though, motivation is something you independents have in large quantity!

> > If you get overwhelmed by a Vista port being harder than you expect,
> > who takes up the slack and covers for you?   If I were to evaluate your
> > attitude now as compared to a year ago, you seem far more tense than
> > you did before.  That probably means the workload is creeping
> > up on you more than you realize.  (-:  Chill dude, chill.
> >
>
> I'm not tense at all actually, at least not about the software issues,
> which are primarily in your imagination.

Well, you're tense about something.  While CQ may be immune to some of the
issues plaguing Windows users, I assure you things are not well in Windows
land for a lot them.  I wish I can recall where I read a study that claimed
that more than 50% of people surveyed feel they should get a lot more life
out of PC's than they do.  The claim was that naive end users are replacing
their PCs frequently because it's the only way they know how to free
themselves of spyware, adware and other anomalies.

In CHA, we're almost all in the upper percentiles when it comes to PC
knowledge.  I'm a little clearer now about your intended market so my
concerns are fairly moot.  People who can't set up a Windows network won't
be using your product so I assume your users do know how to select drivers
and perform system backups, etc.

> We are in a better position than ever and interest in our product is
ramping up at an
> ever increasing rate, because it's a quality product and doesn't suffer
from any of the
> problems you seem obsessed with.

Please, Dean, you don't really want to go on the record saying CQ has no
driver issues.  It's so easy to disprove it's hardly worth Googling again.
The first message I found and quoted above was a driver problem.  There's a
thread going on right now about Z-wave's slow response in CQ because of a .
. . (you guessed it!) . . . a *driver* issue, isn't there?

This is exactly what I meant by you appearing to be getting tense.  What dog
do I have in this "fight" compared to you?  None.  I'm not obsessed with CQ
nor driver issues nor whatever things in my "imagination" that perversely
speaking, you appear to be imagining are there.  We see at least a dozen new
HA
programs announced here every year.  It's up to you to tell us why your
special.  You're the one selling something, not me.

As for "imaginary problems" I've done a lot of PC support over the years.
The problems I reported are well-documented throughout all netdom.  No one
ever said your product wasn't a quality product.  To imply I've said so
simply add weights to my observation that you seem tense and frankly quite
defensive.  I've been primarily trying to find out how a program that
controls HW insulates itself from HW driver problems as well as you've been
implying.  I've been reading, as noted, comments about your Z-wave driver
and how much you had to slow it down to make it communicate reliably. In
looking for that URL, I found some more driver issues:

JRiver Media - XML file issue, driver won't load
First Big Problem: Driver wont connect to DVD-5900
Homelink 1132 USB X-10 Driver Issue

As for interest in your product ramping up, I suspect, from the little
economics I retained from grad school, that doubling the price of your
product is going to flatten that ramp quite a bit, but economics is a soft
science.  Maybe those cost v. demand curves were all wet.  (-:

> I just find that your arguments seem primarily oriented towards spreading
FUD,
> without any actual factual basis, and frustratingly incomphensible.

I think my comments are far from "incomphensible" - I think they're very
comprehensible; it's just that they're not very comfortable.  To say that
neither Windows nor CQ has driver issues strains credulity.  That's why I
pursued such comments so vigorously.

More importantly, you seem to be taking this all quite personally, as if I
were talking *solely* about CQ.  I would have thought it was quite clear
when I wrote about video drivers for games, version upgrades from DOS to
WIN3.1 you *must* know I am talking about the state of Windows, SW
development and the PC industry in general.  Yet you've taken those
generalized observations and taken them as direct criticisms of CQ.  I
assure you, they were not.  I simply assumed you'd be interested in
discussing how CQ is built better.  If I were to play amateur word
psychologist, I'd say you were "frustrated" somewhere or somehow, but not
necessarily here and now and by me.  (-:

I don't think there's a user out there who hasn't been gored by driver
issues, upgrade issues or network conflicts.  You said it yourself a few
messages back:

 |The downside of course is that IP networks for the home have to get a lot
 |smarter and self managing. As the vendor of a networked automation
product,
 |we have a fair amount of problems that are not related to our product but
to
 |the network itself. It's too easy to get two machines on the same address,
 |or to mess up network settings or DHCP settings, or firewall settings and
so
 |forth.

Perhaps the vendors of those products see the conflicts as arising from
*your* end, not theirs.  At least that's been my experience.  Vendor A's
support almost always tends to blame Vendor B's products for whatever
problems arise and vice-versa.  As the author of NOOKs pointed out, (the
topic that I really wanted to discuss!) the problems may be in the OS, but
the solutions can be achieved at the application layer if the OS can't be
made smarter.  It sounds like that's what you've done in CQ, but it's hard
to tell from your response.

Perhaps a truly bulletproof HA system *could* resolve the network conflicts
that a "stupid" OS like Windows allows to happen.  Perhaps the whole IP
addressing system needs to be scrapped in favor of a "one device, one
number" system like Ethernet MAC addresses where you really, really have to
work to get two NICs reporting the same address at the HW level.

--
Bobby G.