Wine

It's a good thing they named the project "wine" as it took 15 years to get to 1.0:

http://www.winehq.org/

Drucker's Law?

I was reading a book that referred to the notion that to get people to switch to something new it has to be 10 times better. The book specifically referred to this as Drucker's Law and went on to discuss how Christensen's Disruptive Innovation is probably a simpler way to innovate since you don't have to figure out how to make something 10 times better, but rather come up with a way to change people's expectations.

Problem is, 20 minutes of Googling and I can't find any reference to Drucker's Law as defined in this way. I did see that Guy Kawasaki maybe has mentioned this 10x theory, but he didn't really take credit for it nor did he cite somebody else for originating the notion.

Without some kind of analysis of startups and failure it would be difficult to verify this idea of 10x. It does sound pretty good, but seems to fail the sniff test for fictional empircal numbers (those that don't end in 0 or 5 so that a random number you throw out feels less like what it is. ie, We estimated it would take 472 hours to build the UI in Java and 17 hours to build it in Rails.)

I suppose I'm fixated on this notion because maybe it explains why many startups fail. I mean if VCs could just ask, is this 10x better than the last thing, it'd be pretty easy to just say no.

The book BTW is, George Gilder's, The Silicon Eye.

I've officially turned into a Mac User

Was on a windows box. Selected 3 files from the desktop and hit Backspace. Nothing happened.

Why?

Why when I buy a CFL does it come in a dangerous to open plastic container that does not appear to even be recyclable? The cardboard insert tells me that it is "better for the environment" but I just don't know when you throw in all the packaging. Is there a class action I can join somewhere for people who have been disfigured by the stupidly sharp plastic packaging that seems to be wrapped around everything these days. It seems like CFL packaging is a step back from the old-school incandescent light bulb packaging of yesteryear.

Compact discs ditched the excessive packaging years ago. Why can't others follow suit? At least if a manufacturer is going to wrap their packages in layers of plastic crap they could try to make it look pretty (like Apple).

IM client with different statuses based on group?

This might not be possible with the protocols in question, but is there an IM client that would allow me to have different statuses for different groups?

For example:

1) friends: available and willing to talk
2) brother-in-law: busy
3) client #1: not logged in
4) client #2: busy

I made the mistake of giving a client my personal IM information and now I can't use IM because every time I log in, they start chatting with me...There's some stuff in gmail chat where I can block certain people, but I'd like to be able to toggle it. Preferably for AIM.

Link Friday

This is awesome:

starcade.tv

Random Vista / XP Stuff to Remember

I've spent much too much time being a Windows admin lately. Things to remember that don't seem obvious.

• If you dual boot between Vista and XP, every time you boot into XP it deletes all your system restore points.
• Look at this page when you need to help a friend with some IT issue. The conversation usually starts like, "Everytime I get on the internet a bunch of windows keep opening up..."