Category: Computers and Internet

An interesting user interface from Microsoft Research. Although, I have to say that it’s not the first time that I’ve seen something like this. At the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, their digital archive already uses a similar system.

 

In one gallery, the Digital Depot, a sample collection of some of the museum’s artifacts is displayed along the wall. In front of the wall are transparent touch-sensitive screens with images back-projected on to them. Visitors can look through the screen to the objects on the wall, as well as see the images on the screen. And just as in the Microsoft video, can use their hands to manipulate the images, to drag them around the screen or "open" them to retrieve further information about the objects in the gallery. 

…Long Live the King. Well, depends if you believe marketing speak or not. I’m talking about Microsoft’s WinFS – the object-oriented file system that was supposed to be one of the major pillars of Vista. It had its roots in Cairo – a project that was first announced 25 long years ago. Alas, this technology appears still to be beyond what Microsoft can do. Microsoft has announced that the plug is being pulled. Well, sort of. They claim that it’s not really dead, merely being recycled into other products. I fear that I am in the camp that says this is pure marketing-speak. Even more depressing is that the blogs from within the development team seem to have caught the marketing bug. I think that Charles Miller and Dare Obasanjo speak with more directness.

A near real-time database recording how people are expressing their feelings on the Web with the results displayed graphically. Is it Art? Ist it Science? Is it Both? Whatever it is, it is certainly intriguing.

 

(hat tip to Neatorama)

Wikipedia is a fascinating phenomenon that seems to polarise people: either they love it or they hate it. Robert McHenry, former editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia Britannica, famously likened Wikipedia to a public restroom – a vistor never knows who has been there before him. 

 

A more considered essay – Digital Maoism – has now been penned by Jaron Lanier, and is well worth reading. In it, he considers the hazards of the collective mind at work. There’s also a follow-up to his article in the form of a collection of responses from what could be termed the chiperati – the shakers and movers in the cybernetic world. That follow-up is also worth reading.

 

The most arresting response to my mind comes from George Dyson, who quite rightly points out that the individual mind of Jaron Lanier is itself the production of a hive collective of processes within his brain. "All intelligence is collective. But, as Lanier points out, that does not mean that all collectives are intellingent".

As you may be aware, I use MSN Spaces as my vehicle for blogging – along with about 100 million other users a month. For the most part, I have no complaints, the system works as expected. Within the last few days, though, there’s been a major upgrade to MSN Spaces that seems to have introduced a couple of odd things.

 

First, the RSS feeds from blogs on MSN Spaces appear to have dried up, at least as far as my RSS Aggregator (RSS Bandit) is concerned. Even though I know that the blogs have new entries, they aren’t getting through to RSS Bandit.

 

Second, the list of trackbacks to my blog keeps jumping between giving the list and saying that there are no trackbacks.

 

Third, the comments list appears and disappears in the same way as the trackbacks list…

 

Presumably just teething troubles, but slightly irritating all the same, like a pebble in the shoe. I feel like the princess out of the Grimm’s tale of the princess and the pea…   

So there I was, using the beta of Outlook 2007 to enter in a forthcoming appointment in September. My eyes happened to stray to the 19th September, and there I saw that it was apparently the Day of the Queer.

 

 

Hmm, I thought, I don’t remember putting that in. A little further investigative work reveals that the full title is "The Day of the Queen’s Speech" – the opening of the Dutch parliament… Oh well, just for a moment there I thought that the world had shifted on its axis…

…but I’ve never quite understood the attraction of online music subscription services over simply buying a CD.

 

Yes, OK, one doesn’t get the instant gratification of downloading. Then again, one doesn’t have the fact that if one stops paying 9.99 per month (or whatever the charge is), then one’s whole music library simply vanishes into the ether.

 

Music downloaded to your hard drive won’t play anymore once you stop paying the supplier.

 

That’s not a value proposition. That’s blackmail.

This week’s Technobile column in the Guardian has Kieren McCarthy delivering a few well-aimed barbs at the so-called "support" offered by computer companies. He also takes some hefty swipes at the "support" forums inhabited by geeks who either dismiss queries with irrelevant opinion ("using Windows? What a loser, you should get a Mac") or who reply with technobabble that confuses the poor questioner even more.

 

I have to say that sometimes I have found a workable reply to one of my questions in these forums, but often searches are fruitless. Part of that is down to the fact that I’m often to be found trying out beta software. And despite what some commenters have said here recently, I do understand that beta usually means bug-ridden. But when the bugs are so obvious, one sometimes wonders why the software isn’t called an alpha release…

 

I’ll leave you with an example of a bug I came across yesterday when I decided to try out the RSS capabilities in the beta 2 release of Internet Explorer 7. I imported my list of RSS feeds from my trusty news aggregator (RSS Bandit) into IE7, and sure enough, all the feeds were present and correct. Well, my hierarchy of categories was lost and I just had an alphabetical list of 300 feeds – not very useful (hint to the IE7 developers). But when I tried to access any of the feeds, I got a file download security warning, so in effect, the RSS capability is useless. I see I’m not the only one who has this problem, but so far I haven’t found a solution to this. Oh well, time to delete the feeds (which I have to do one by one, on 300 feeds – another hint to the IE7 developers: batch is your friend). Back to RSS Bandit…

 

 

Sometimes I think that Microsoft is its own worst enemy.

 

Today, Microsoft has announced the availability of Beta 2 of Office 2007. So off I go to the web site to register and download the beta. First of all I get presented with a new file download manager- SmartSource – yet another one in a long line of download managers from Microsoft. This one uses the .NET version 1.1 framework. Er, excuse me, but Windows Vista comes with .NET version 2.0. So immediately, there is a problem.

 

OK, so I finally get the software downloaded. And I manage to install Office 2007 Beta 2.

 

But then the fun starts. The Beta insists on having a new (beta) version of Windows Desktop Search installed. OK, but after installation, I discover that my MSN Search Toolbar in Internet Explorer has been hosed. Sigh – did I really expect Microsoft product groups to talk to one another?

 

OK, I then want to install the next beta from the Office 2007 suite. So I start up the SmartSource application again. What’s this? "The email address specified is invalid! Please contact customer support or try again."

 

Er, no, my email address is perfectly valid – it’s your software that is a pile of fucking crap. Oh, and what’s that about "contact customer support"? You provide no bloody means of contacting your bloody customer support. Try again? I don’t think so. Linux is starting to look awfully attractive right now.

So, here I am, sitting at my PC and watching the Bill Gates keynote at this year’s WinHEC (yep, I know that I’m a sad case). And here’s Alan Nunns of Chevron, talking about information management in the oil industry. That brought back memories. One of the challenges the oil industry has is dealing with the torrent of information – for example, an oil refinery can generate up to a terabyte of data per day. Nunns was touting what Chevron and Microsoft had done together in information management and introducing a standardised desktop infrastructure for Chevron’s decision makers. Hmm, that reminds me of the sterling work done by folks such as David and Johan in my old company…

I’m here crossing my fingers because tomorrow, with a bit of luck, someone will arrive to install ADSL at the farmhouse. This last month without Broadband access has felt really strange. I’ve hardly been surfing at all on the Internet and the blog has slowed almost to a standstill.

 

Mind you, I think it will also be a problem to find the time to surf. These last four weeks we have been falling into bed every night totally exhausted from all the jobs that need doing around the house and the land. Today, for example, I mowed the meadow – which took 3 hours even though I was regally seated on my mowing machine dispensing royal waves to passing cyclists.

 

Add to that we now have a dog – a 3-year-old chocolate brown Labrador – who needs lots of attention every day. Quiet life in the country? You have got to be joking! I think it was quieter when I was working for my living. Still, this life is giving more satisfaction.

 

Hopefully, more updates to follow once ADSL is installed…

"There’s nothing we can do – it’s an automated system"

 

That’s a sentence that is guaranteed to raise my blood pressure. Having worked in IT myself, I know that it’s not the computer’s fault; the blame can be laid entirely at the door of the humans who designed, programmed and paid for the computer system.

 

The latest example that has been sent to try me is provided courtesy of my Internet Service Provider, XS4ALL.

 

Normally, when one moves house in the Netherlands, the telecom provider (KPN) and the Internet Service Provider work in tandem to ensure that the ADSL (Broadband) service is also moved at the same time. Alas, my experience has been been far from troublefree and seamless. My experience has resulted in an XS4ALL sales support person uttering that dreaded sentence at the beginning of this piece.

 

The seed of my misfortune lies in the fact that I used an ISDN line at my old address to carry the ADSL service, while here at the farmhouse we have a plain old Analogue line. KPN and XS4ALL are quite happy to move ADSL between two ISDN lines, or between two Analogue lines; but between and ISDN and an Analogue line? Unfortunately, "that does not compute", as I’ve found out to my cost. At first, I was told that it could be done, but then it was: "sorry, you’ll have to cancel the ADSL service on the ISDN line and then reapply for a new ADSL service on the Analogue line". This I did – and then found out that I couldn’t apply for the new ADSL service until the old service is stopped. This takes a month. Then, once the application for the new service is made, it takes a further two or three weeks before the new service is available. Going back to dialup speeds after ADSL is like watching paint dry on most modern web sites. Still, I resigned myself to being up to three weeks without my ADSL fix.

 

But now, a new wrinkle in this sorry saga has appeared. KPN have indeed stopped my old ADSL service, but XS4ALL are still insisting that I have it, and are still stopping me from applying for a new one.

 

According to KPN’s automated system, KPN stopped the old ADSL on the 31st March. Not bad, I suppose, considering that they were supposed to have stopped it on the 27th March, as had been agreed. Considering that they had a month’s notice, they really should have been able to hit the 27th March target…

 

Meanwhile, XS4ALL’s automated system is still stubbornly insisting that I am enjoying ADSL service on an ISDN line that is itself no longer operational (I also cancelled the ISDN line). Last week, an XS4ALL’s sales support person first claimed that this was a temporary abberation, and that all would be well on Monday 3rd April. Inevitably, Monday has come and gone with no change. A second sales support person claimed on Tuesday the 4th April that it would all be alright by the end of this week. It was she who could quite clearly see in her information system that something was wrong, but then cheerfully uttered the Dutch equivalent of "There’s nothing we can do – it’s an automated system". 

 

So the upshot is that muggins here has found himself trapped in a hell between two automated systems that appear to refuse to communicate with each other, with support staff who seem to be unable to do a damn thing about it. And until they do, I can’t order my new ADSL line. It looks as though I am condemmed to dialup for at least a month, if not longer. Meanwhile, XS4ALL’s marketing department’s ad campaign extolling the virtues of fast Internetting with ADSL rolls on. I am thinking uncharitable thoughts at the moment.

Mike Fullerton is having a little difficulty with his Toshiba laptop. I know what he means – I’ve had the misfortune to use machines like that. There are times when a little simplicity and a well-designed user experience would not go amiss. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been happening for Mr. Fullerton.

Interesting research video of a touch-sensitive screen. The harbinger of things to come?

Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert, has an intriguing posting in his blog. It purports to be a cryptogram that was found near the body of a suicide who had just murdered his wife and stepson. While there was some doubt at first as to whether the cryptogram is genuine, it appears that it may well be. The comments on Schneier’s blog entry are also worth reading. The most plausible explanation is currently that (assuming the cryptogram is genuine) it represents a cheat sheet for a series of computer passwords.

It seems that Sony’s robot dog – AIBO – has had its plug pulled. Damn, this puts paid to my cunning plan to reduce the running costs of a dog. Now we’ll have to get a real one.

That’s the question raised by Mano over at his blog. It’s a rhetorical question, because he lists 15 reasons as to why he thinks the next version of Microsoft Windows will be worth it.

 

Mmm, perhaps; but I’m afraid I’m much more cynical. I’ve got this sinking feeling that if I were to step up to Vista, then I won’t be just faced with the cost of upgrading my operating system, but also having to replace some core application software and related hardware.

 

For example, with the current Technology Preview of Vista that I have installed for test; the soundcard, the webcam, and the USB video capture devices all don’t work. While I realise that this is not totally unexpected in a beta, my point is that I really don’t have much faith in the companies behind these devices coming out with new versions of drivers or application patches for Vista.

 

Take the soundcard – it’s not a mass-market device, it’s the E-MU 1820M DSP, which is part of my home studio setup for musicmaking, in combination with Steinberg’s Cubase SX. Neither the E-MU driver, nor the E-MU application currently work in Vista. And then, Steinberg is notorious for releasing new versions of software and dropping support for older versions. I’m quite happy with my version 2 of Cubase SX – but Steinberg stopped support of this back in 2004. Based on their history, I doubt whether they’ll come out with a patch to make it work on Vista. And I doubt that I can afford to upgrade to a version of Cubase that is designed for Vista. I expect it will be a similar story for the video capture device (made by Adaptec, who have not updated the drivers or the application – despite the fact that it has bugs – since mid 2004).

 

The real question is not "do I need Windows Vista?", but "what is the cost of upgrading/replacing my complete system – applications, hardware, and operating system?. The cost of the upgrade of the operating system alone is not the point. I would like to be proved wrong – it would be great if all my applications and hardware continued to be supported under Vista. But somehow, I don’t think that’s going to happen, and I’ll resign myself to soldiering on with Windows XP for as long as I can.

 

Update: Out of curiosity, I tried installing Cubase SX2 and the Steinberg Midex 8 interface onto build 5270 of Vista. Neither would install properly. For Cubase, Vista announced: "Application blocked due to known Compatibility issues. This version of Windows Media Technologies is incompatible with or has been superseded by this version of Windows". Not entirely unexpected, I suppose, but without proactive support by Steinberg, then Cubase SX2 on Vista is dead in the water.

There’s an increasing use of digital techniques to encode analogue signals all around us. Despite what I wrote about Digital Radio, it doesn’t necessarily have to be worse than the analogue FM broadcasts – it all depends on what the broadcaster does. And while there are plenty of Hi-Fi buffs who detest digital per se (“CDs can never sound as good as LPs”), I’m not one of them. I’m quite happy to buy CDs instead of continuing with analogue LPs.

In preparation for our move to the farmhouse in April, I’m currently transcribing my old LPs and tapes into digital form and storing them on computer hard disc and DVDs. This will have the twin benefits of saving us some precious living space and allowing subsequent archive copies to be made without further degradation of quality.

It’s been a fascinating wander down memory lane during the transmutation process. I’m hearing things that I haven’t heard for years. For example, yesterday I heard radio plays from the BBC from the early 1970s – Penthesilea (by Heinrich von Kleist, adapted by Robert Nye), The Hero Rises Up (with Paul Daneman and Fenella Fielding) and Cries from Casement as His Bones Are Brought to Dublin (by David Rudkin). And I came across some tape recordings that I made some 35 years ago of organ pieces played by a university colleague. l made the recordings on my trusty Revox A77 recorder, which, when I fired it up yesterday for the first time in 20 years, performed as well as ever. The Swiss built those machines to last.

Here’s another gadget that, if I had the money, I would definitely get. It is huey, manufactured by Pantone, a device that will help calibrate your computer display(s) for proper colour balance. If you’re serious about your photography and use your computer as a digital darkroom, then this is definitely a device to consider. I have two LCD displays on my main computer, and even to my untrained eye I can see that the colour balance on the two screens is not the same. It’s tricky, though, to correct it by hand. That’s where a device like huey comes in.

If I had the money, this is a gadget that I would probably waste it on…