Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…
I often drop by Jeffrey Friedl’s blog. He’s a computer scientist living in Japan, but in addition to this, he’s a keen, and talented, photographer, and his blog usually has stunning images of Japan and Japanese society.
He recently attended a Japanese Archery contest for the first time, and has written a number of blog posts about the experience. Do go and take a look; I suggest you start with this one, followed by this and this. There are others in the series as well.
Friedl’s book Mastering Regular Expressions is a classic, I have a well-thumbed copy of this book in my office. For non-computer-specialist readers, regular expressions or regexes as they are known to coders, are a key part of many programming languages and text-manipulation tools (including Perl, the language I use most, and Vim, the text editor I use most). Regexes can look like feline typing to the uninitiated, but are a very compact and powerful way to pick apart strings of text. I use regexes on a daily basis, and have learned many useful techniques from Friedl’s book.
That’s the culmination of an excellent speech and article by Maryam Namazie. Please, just go and read it. Her argument rings true.
You know, when I was at university, in the dim and distant past, back at the beginning of the 1970s, the LSE (the London School of Economics) was viewed as a hotbed of student activism. So recent events at the LSE have left me completely at a loss.
It appears that there has been a mass invasion of politically correct body snatchers that has resulted in a Students’ Union that has completely lost the plot about what free expression and the ability to criticise means.
Maryam Namazie points out the obvious: the LSE SU is supporting criticism of religion, just not that of Islam, which gets a free pass from them.
It would never have happened in my days at Uni. What on earth is wrong with the students of today?
Five years ago, I thought that news that the Dutch government were considering a burka ban to be a very bad idea.
Fast forward to today, and now the current Dutch Cabinet has voted in favour of the ban, despite advice from its most important advisory body, the Council of State.
As I said five years ago, this is taking a sledgehammer to crack the metaphorical nuts of between 150 and 200 women in the whole of the Netherlands (population: over 16.7 million):
While I happen to think that the garments say more about the odd ways in which women are viewed by one religion (and gawd knows, it ain’t the only one), I don’t think that banning them is going to help one bit towards the avowed intent of integration into Dutch society. It’s more likely to drive the “us and them” wedge further into this society’s hearts and minds.
What would be far more helpful is for public order to be preserved by coming down hard on extremists such as the Islamists who attempted to break up a public meeting in Amsterdam last December.
There’s a book review in today’s Guardian. It caught my eye, because the book’s title is The Science Delusion, which sounded rather provocative.
Turning to the review, I saw that it was written by Mary Midgley, and my heart sank. I read the review, and she likes the book. That settled it for me. The book, by author Rupert Sheldrake, is probably tosh, and not worth getting. She also ends her review with a not-unexpected swipe at her bête noire, Richard Dawkins.
I see that Dr. Adam Rutherford has felt moved to add in the comments on the review:
I’ve read this dreadful book, and fail to recognise any of it in this review. It is, I’m sorry to say, drivel. Drivel that stands in opposition to Dawkins’ work to cynically promote Sheldrake’s many times debunked fantasy supernatural gubbins. If there is a philiosophical point therein, I missed it for all the tales of dogs who know when their owners are coming home, experiments abut the Nolan Sisters and Sheldrake’s woo phlogiston which he calls Morphic Resonance.
A couple of years ago, I wrote this piece on Sheldrake, which applies to this current book too. A book for ignoring.
Based on my previous exposure to both Midgley’s and Rutherford’s work, I judge Rutherford’s opinion to be the more sound. The book is almost certainly tosh and I definitely will not be buying it.
A few days back, I wrote that I was not convinced by Alain de Botton’s presentation of his Atheism 2.0 thesis, and even less impressed by his use of a false categorisation of Richard Dawkins.
Now I see that de Botton is back in the news today. He’s announced that he wants to build a “temple for atheists” in the City of London. It is to be a 46 metre tower, costing one million quid. According to the Guardian’s report, the tower is:
to celebrate a “new atheism” as an antidote to what he describes as Professor Richard Dawkins’s “aggressive” and “destructive” approach to non-belief.
Sigh. More false categorisation. As Dawkins has apparently said:
“Atheists don’t need temples,” the author of The God Delusion said. “I think there are better things to spend this kind of money on. If you are going to spend money on atheism you could improve secular education and build non-religious schools which teach rational, sceptical critical thinking.”
I can understand the tower as being a piece of public art (although hopefully not paid for by the taxpayer). The tower serves no purpose other than being a Folly, in every sense of the word.
In passing, I note that the Guardian couldn’t resist a quote from the Rev George Pitcher:
“This is a more constructive atheism than Dawkins, who is about the destruction of ideas rather than contributing new ones.”
Ah, yes, the good reverend has previous form in such remarks.
… the point about Atheism is that there absolutely has to be a Theism for it to be contrary to. Hence my declaration of being an Agnostic Secularist (If god does exist, and can prove it to my satisfaction, then I’ll believe; otherwise a non-theistic approach is applied and I couldn’t care one way or another whether a god or gods exist or not – and I refuse to acknowledge said existence until I am satisfied). That’s not to say that I disagree with Dawkins though… but people like de Botton just don’t get it, as you’ve shown in the included snippet…
Yes, as Hitchens said: “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” and thus far, you, me, and Dawkins are awaiting anything that even comes within light years of that. Give us the evidence, and we’ll become theists; but without it…
There was unease last week in Amsterdam’s Orthodox Jewish community when it emerged that their nominal Chief Rabbi, Aryeh Ralbag (who lives in New York), stated that homosexuality was an illness that could be cured. As a result of this patent nonsense, the Chief Rabbi found himself suspended by the community.
Now the US-based Committee for the Declaration on the Torah Approach to Homosexuality, which includes Rabbi Ralbag as one of its members, has opined that it is “shocking” that a chief rabbi in the Netherlands has been suspended for his statements on “centuries-old religious truths”, and that this action is “verging on fascism”. Welcome to Planet Godwin.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. They are no different to the Catholic Church or Islam in their touching adherence to ancient and false beliefs about human sexuality. But what really raised an eyebrow was the report that
…the rabbi believes his life would be in danger if he came to the Netherlands.
Ralbag told the NRC newspaper: ‘I have strong indications that my wife and I would not be sure of our lives if we came to the Netherlands now.’ He declined to say what the threats were but did say he took them ‘extremely seriously’, the paper reported.
I’m sorry rabbi, but you really are living in another world if you think that to be the case. The Amsterdam Orthodox community, and the rest of us, are merely pointing out what an idiot you are. Idiots don’t deserve death, they deserve education.
Perhaps he’s worried education would be such a shock to his system as to prove fatal.
Could be. Or perhaps he’s just letting his imagination run riot?
We’re in a similar place with disability – more specifically, ‘hidden’ disabilities, like autism. ‘Idiots’, i.e. those in the medical profession who follow the 40 year old definitions of conditions and the ignorant general public who see ‘autism = retard’ don’t seem to be able to realise that their understanding of said conditions is so far out of date, so that when a ‘Celebrity’ (whether it be a common or garden sleb, or a medical sleb) states something along the lines of ‘Autism is caused by the inhalation of pollen grains from tagetes patula’, people then get on the bandwagon and try and ban the sale and ownership of a humble flower, for fear that their unborn children may ‘contract’ a terminal ‘disease’ (in much the same way that homosexuality was viewed, pre-enlightment: association with ‘one of those’ will make you contract queerness, and you’ll die from it). Consequent lawsuits get filed by parents of kids with autism demanding some sort of recompense from garden centres, seed suppliers go into panic and withdraw all their stock because they can’t afford to be bogged down in some useless legal battle and don’t want to lose trade…
… but ultimately, it all boils down to idiots who either refuse to be educated, or are afraid to be educated… and usually, because someone who they respect (previously mentioned slebs who are famous for publically humiliating themselves in the mass media, or other ‘influential’ persons, like priests or doctors whose expertise is in an incompatible field) has uttered some speculative comment, said idiots further their ignorance by believing the rubbish that has, like effluent from an industrial sewer, fallen out of the speaker’s mouth.
… or, perhaps, bearing in mind your adoptive homeland…
“Autism is caused by the inhalation of pollen grains from tulipa tarda”
Hah! And, of course, Al, you’re right. It’s all too easy to dismiss people who are different. Reading Amanda Baggs’ blog is a constant reminder to me to open my eyes. (https://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com/). But for some, it becomes very easy to dismiss people because you believe that God does it as well…
Hmm… yes…. God. Well, as an agnostic secularist (not an atheist – though this is a pretty close description), I have no truck with superstitious claptrap. And what’s worse is that for (at the very least) the Abrahamic* faiths, the religious texts effectively state: ‘Don’t listen to what other people say, because it might be a falsehood. Go and find out for yourself’ – and yet, still they listen to the ‘intepretation’ of God’s word… and in some of the worst examples, if you directly ‘converse’ with God, you’re either a heretic or a lunatic because you aren’t allowed: only designated priests (and in the case of a couple of particularly virulent and inward looking Abrahamic sects, only _the highest priest_) are allowed to talk to converse with God. And yet, and yet… where is the evidence that the texts demand you find to affirm your faith? Science, on the other hand, demands proof, and regularly supplies it, often supplying more proofs that contradict earlier proofs, but that doesn’t matter: the proof only has to last long enough to ensure we’re on the right track… 😉
* I won’t identify those faiths individually for fear of militant retribution, as this often happens when someone writes something that is considered heretical…
* … although saying that, I’m surprised either of us haven’t been the target for said retribution, you because you’re sinning against God, and me because I’ve been cursed by God… ho hum…
Alain de Botton is a philosopher. He recently gave a talk at a TED conference where he proposed “Atheism 2.0”, a form of atheism that would reject all deities and supernatural acts but cater to the “ritualistic side” of some atheists.
It sounds like an appalling idea to me. I see that Jerry Coyne, over at Why Evolution is True, finds the idea to be “a facile attempt to appropriate the trappings of religion as something essential to an atheist world”. As Coyne says, “What we need, as sociological studies indicate, is not stained glass, potted lilies, and a gasbag orator, but a society that cares about its citizens”.
In fact, I like some rituals, such as walking the dogs in the woods, or going to the theatre or listening to a concert; but the idea of elevating those ad-hoc activities into prescribed rote and trappings is simply a bad one, and has nothing whatsoever to do with “atheism”.
What really irritated me about de Botton’s performance in this TED talk, is that he opens it with a thinly-veiled sneer at Richard Dawkins, saying that “many [people] who live in North Oxford” simply find religion ridiculous. De Botton then has the effrontery to go on to say that:
I’m interested in the kind of constituency that thinks something along these lines: that thinks, “I can’t believe in any of this stuff, I can’t believe in the doctrines. I don’t think these doctrines are right. But,” a very important but, “I love Christmas Carols, I really like the art of Mantegna. I really like looking at old churches. I really like turning the pages of the Old Testament”.
So de Botton has created another Dawkins strawman by his sneer, because, in fact, Dawkins is in just the kind of constituency that de Botton claims he is interested in. Dawkins is on record as recognising himself as a cultural Christian, who loves listening to Carols, and who, in The God Delusion (p.344 in my hardcover edition), writes:
…an atheistic world-view provides no justification for cutting the Bible, and other sacred books, out of our education. And of course we can retain a sentimental loyalty to the cultural and literary traditions of, say, Judaism, Anglicanism or Islam, and even participate in religious rituals such as marriages and funerals, without buying into the supernatural beliefs that historically went along with those traditions. We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage.
I should note that I’ve read very little of de Botton that I have been able to nod my head in agreement with, or indeed, take seriously. Give me Daniel Dennett any day…
On a side note, is it just me, or has the quality of TED talks gone down the toilet in recent years? There was a time when I enjoyed listening to them, but these days they seem to contain a high percentage of woo-merchants doing their happy-clappy schticks.
I’m coming to the point where I wonder whether _anyone_ who criticises Dawkins has actually read him. And I have long wondered what the point of Alain de Botton is…without, as of yet, any actual success.
Yep, it is tiresome the way his critics often seem to attribute to Dawkins things that he’s never said, but there we go…
Oh, and I see that today’s Guardian has one of John Crace’s wicked digested reads of de Botton’s latest book. Quote:
“Religion may offer empty promises of a happier afterlife, but we should not overlook its power in helping people to cope with the fact they are never going to be as rich or as clever as me.”
See here for the whole thing: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/22/digested-read-religion-for-atheists
That is brilliant!
[…] A few days back, I wrote that I was not convinced by Alain de Botton’s presentation of his Atheism 2.0 thesis, and even less impressed by his use of a false categorisation of Richard Dawkins. […]
There’s a wonderful article in today’s Observer. It’s by Susannah Clapp, and it’s reminiscences about her friend Angela Carter.
Carter was a brilliant novelist who died of lung cancer ten years ago at the young age of 51. As Clapp says:
She was 10 years too old and entirely too female to be mentioned routinely alongside Martin Amis, Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan as being a young pillar of British fiction. She was 20 years too young to belong to what she considered the “alternative pantheon” of Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing and Muriel Spark in the 40s.
I see I have twenty-two of her books in my library, a couple in multiple editions. Time to go back and re-read them, I think. Meanwhile, if you’ve never heard of Angela Carter, do go and read the article, and then get one of her books: I suggest either Nights at the Circus or Wise Children.
There are times when the law goes beyond being “a ass” as Dickens’ Mr Bumble famously said, into realms where the law is simply anti-human.
I was amazed to learn this week that Sweden requires, under force of law, that its transgender citizens be sterilised. I was prepared, at first, to think that, OK, it’s a quirk of the law that no-one could foresee, but now that we are in the 21st Century, it will be changed tout suite.
Not a bit of it.
The Christian Democratic party in the Swedish Parliament, being key to the coalition, are against any change to the law. As an aside, I am really not surprised that it’s a political party with religious roots that is insisting on this barbarism – ‘twas ever thus. However…
As the Human Rights Watch organisation states:
The Swedish transgender law stems from 1972 and is out of step with current international best practice and understandings of Swedish obligations under international human rights law.
In July 2009 Thomas Hammarberg, the commissioner for human rights of the Council of Europe, made the observation about the forced sterilization requirement that in reality the state prescribes medical treatment for legal purposes, “a requirement which clearly runs against principles of human rights and human dignity.” This was followed up in the extensive report on human rights for LGBT people in Europe that the commissioner published this summer. The commissioner there recommends Council of Europe member states to do away with all physical requirements for people who want to change their legal gender.
In March 2010 the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe recommended to member states, including Sweden, that requirements, including changes of a physical nature, for legal recognition of a gender reassignment, should be reviewed in order to remove abusive elements. The Committee recommended that member states should take appropriate measures “to guarantee the full recognition of a person’s gender reassignment in all areas of life, in particular by making possible the change of name and gender in official documents in a quick, transparent and accessible way.”
I am mindful that the situation here in the Netherlands is not so far in advance of that in Sweden; however, the Dutch government, a coalition of the conservative Liberal Party and the Christian-Democratic party, has publicly acknowledged that its transgender law violates international human rights law and has published a law proposal which does away with the forced sterilisation requirement.
Here’s Georg Elfvelin asking for your support to help change the Swedish law:
And here’s where you can sign a petition to Sweden’s Prime Minister. I hope that you will.
I see that yesterday’s Jesus and Mo is dedicated to Rhys Morgan, Jessica Ahlquist, One Law for All, and Salman Rushdie. Quite right, too.
When I was growing up (many years ago), there used to be a saying: “If you want to know the time, ask a policeman”. Presumably it started when most people did not carry around timepieces of their own, whereas policemen were issued with them as standard equipment.
These days, it would seem, that London’s policemen consult a higher authority: the “Speaking Clock”.
Guess how much they spent ringing the Speaking Clock for the time in the past two years?
Just a staggering £35,000. The mind boggles. Particularly when they could have got the time, for free, from their mobile phones to atomic clock accuracy…
There are also websites run by various government agencies and standards bodies that give the official time. The US government runs http://www.time.gov which gives the time for US time zones, the BIPM in France gives the time at http://www.bipm.org and many other agencies have similar services.
If you saw last night’s Sherlock episode (The Reichenbach Fall – note the singular, by the way, a nice joke), you’ll know what I’m talking about. If you didn’t, and don’t want spoilers, then stop reading now.
…
I suppose, in a way, with a title echoing the climax of the original Conan Doyle story The Final Problem, which features the Reichenbach Falls, it was obvious what was going to happen; but the question is: how did he do it? There are lots of theories floating around, and while I’m unsure of the precise mechanics, I’m fairly sure of the following:
Some viewers have complained that we shouldn’t have got obvious confirmation that Holmes faked his own death by seeing Holmes alive in the closing seconds, but I thought it was a good plot device:
The writing and the acting of this series has been outstanding. Hats off to all concerned.
The falling body did flail its arms – but that may simply have been the desire of the stuntman to remain alive long enough to get paid 😉 It’s a short drop and he had to be in control all the way down.
My solution involves the observation that the kidnapped girl had seen Sherlock before – so there’s some method in-story of looking like Sherlock without being Sherlock. Mind you, I reckon Moriarty is still alive too!
I don’t buy the theory that the falling body was already dead. If that were the case, then why didn’t they just shove a Sherlock dummy off the roof? Answer: because it would be too obvious that it was a dead body, and strained the versimilitude of the tale too much. No, I think that had to represent a live Sherlock, not a dead Moriarty wearing a Sherlock mask (pace the kidnapped girl).
I think there could well be something about the girl being connected in some way, and I suspect that you are right about Moriarty. Although I have to say that this strains credulity – we are expected to believe that Sherlock was taken in by Moriarty’s faking of the blowing out his brains? That’s a step too far…
Steven Moffat said that we are missing something and it’s a thing what Sherlock usually won’t do. So I guessed this- What if Sherlock indeed kidnapped that girl? That should clearly explain why she screamed at the sight of Sherlock. This is something what Sherlock usually won’t do. He should have done this for some purpose though I don’t know how.
What do you think?
Well, it’s possible, but it does seem somewhat unlikely. I think SM is referring to something else, but what, I haven’t the faintest idea…
The gas from the Hounds of Baskerville may have been used on the girl to make her think it was Sherlock who kidnapped them, and this would be why she screamed and pointed at him.
Sherlock acted out of character a few times in the episode.
First notable one would be when he is at the lab with Molly, and Molly says to him that he looks sad when Watson isn’t looking, Sherlock says “thank you” to her, which is out of character because he knows it’s illogical for him to say it at that point… then she asks him if she can get him anything, and Sherlock says “actually…” but she interrupts saying “I know you don’t” and she walks off.
Second slight out of character moment was when Moriarty was pretending to be “a hired actor” in the journalists home. Sherlock screams at him to “stop it, stop it now!” right before he makes his escape through the window. Shortly after this scene, Sherlock seems to have figured out what Moriarty is up to… Sherlock says to Watson “there’s only one thing he needs to do to complete his game and that’s…” that’s when Sherlock figures it out and goes to the lab.
Then when he was at the lab again with Molly, and he asks her if she would still do anything for him even if he wasn’t what she thought he was. Along with the first scene with Molly (mentioned above), Sherlock is acting out of character, as he usually ignores her completely, but now he is opening up to her.
The last out of character moment is when he is with Moriarty and he says “I may be on the side of the Angels, but don’t ever assume I am one of them!” Which implies he could have a dark side… one that would explain “why” he may have kidnapped the children (unlikely), but could imply some other form of crime.
I don’t think it’s the interactions with Molly that SM is referring to as “the big clue”, but you may be on to something with the interactions with Moriarty – particularly the first one in the journalist’s home. However, they still don’t seem to add up to what I would think of as “the big clue”, so I suspect it’s something else entirely!
I think Joe’s point could conceivably be extended – were Watson under the influence of the Baskerville nerve agent, his mind, suitably suggested, might fill in Sherlock’s face on the falling body – but on the ground? Perhaps not.
As with “The Final Problem”, Holmes may wish to remain dead for a while to clear up any issues left around by Moriarty, so that makes eminent sense. And Watson’s grief is powerful testimony to the world that the great man is dead. But since anyone in the UK with a pulse, just about, knows that Holmes survived “The Final Problem”, the sight of Holmes at the cemetery is hardly a spoiler.
Molly has had a wonderful series. Just imagine, if they hadn’t made “Mayo” (which people were terribly rude about, but I rather enjoyed), Lou Brearley would never have been considered for the part. And what a missed opportunity that would have been.
This series of “Sherlock” has been a joy – I could have giggled most of the way through the first episode just because it was exciting, and such fun (“I never beg” – “Twice!”). It takes the very finest acting to keep such an excellent script on track. Thank heavens the plans are to get the next series out before the end of the year!
Hi Robert, thanks for your comments. I never saw “Mayo”, so you now prompt me to try and catch up with it. Glad you share my feelings about Molly; she is just such a wonderful character, and Brearley is perfection in the role. Yep, it’s been a joy throughout. Roll on the next series!
It was definitely him that jumped, John’s constant watch, paired with the flailing limbs! I think he landed in something, got bloodied up, and moved to the pavement. The ‘Civs’ dotted around on the pavement could have well been his ‘homeless network’ which was referenced in the episode. The cyclist riding into Watson was no accident, probably for the purpose of disorientating him long enough for the switch as said above – he needed to be clueless to make it plausible, and save him from the assassin. No need for body switching, Watson was disorientated, and using the squash ball he had earlier he could mask his pulse – A nice clue.
After being taken to the morgue I’m sure we’ll see a clever Sherlock sitting up, with Molly preparing any body to be buried after he’s made his pretend death get away! That’s my guess anyhow!
[…] himself. Of course, part of the reason why I want that to be the real story was because it was the theory that I came up with when I first saw The Reichenbach Fall a year ago. When Holmes confirmed all the points I had listed […]
I mentioned a few months back that I was being tempted by the Samsung Slate PC Series 7 that is now available in a few markets around the globe. Now that CES 2012 is in full swing, a whole slew of new Tablets is being shown there. While most of them are running Android, it’s clear that some of them are being shown in anticipation of Windows 8, which could be available by late December this year (the first public beta will be available next month).
One such Tablet is the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 – and this looks even more interesting than the Samsung.
Really, the best course of action for me is to sit tight and wait. It makes no sense to rush into a decision at the moment. And I have to say that my desire to get a new Tablet PC to replace my now-defunct HP TX2000 has abated considerably since I got my Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone. I’m able to use it to do many of the things that I was persuading myself that I would need a new Tablet PC for. Not all, but sufficient to relieve the pressure and turn the “need” into a “rather nice-to-have” sensation.
I’ll revisit the situation at the end of the year.
What books get up to at night.
I sometimes wonder what happens in my library deep in the night as well.
(hat tip to Matthew Cobb over at Why Evolution is True)
I know that there are some intelligent churchmen around, but I do despair when I read bollocks like this:
The Spanish Catholic Church is also concerned about homosexuality. During his Boxing Day sermon, the Bishop of Córdoba, Demetrio Fernández, said there was a conspiracy by the United Nations. “The Minister for Family of the Papal Government, Cardinal Antonelli, told me a few days ago in Zaragoza that UNESCO has a program for the next 20 years to make half the world population homosexual. To do this they have distinct programs, and will continue to implant the ideology that is already present in our schools.”
It, quite literally, beggars belief.
Update: Benedict also talks bollocks. Sigh.
There’s a Spanish Inquisition joke to be found somewhere in all this. Sounds as though Bishop Fernández could use some time in the Comfy Chair.
No! Not the Comfy Chair!
For a moment there, I thought that Microsoft were improving. After a bad start in the process for rolling out updates for Windows Phone, they began communicating more transparently about the updates, and began rolling them out in a more timely manner. They even had Eric Hautala, General Manager, Customer Experience Engineering, posting weekly on the Windows Phone Blog about updates and their availability.
Alas, all those improvements would appear to have come to a screaming halt. Yesterday, Hautala posted about a new Windows Phone update – 8107 – but also stated that it would only be available to those Carriers who requested it. Cue instant uproar from Windows Phone users who fought for improvements in the update process in the first place because Carriers were delaying the release of updates. And then to rub salt into the wounds, Hautala also wrote that Microsoft won’t be individually detailing country, model, and carrier details on the Where’s My Phone Update? site any longer.
So much for a more transparent process.
And what is in this update – 8107 – that carriers can elect to request, or not? Well, according to Microsoft it seems to have some pretty important bug fixes:
With the exception of the last bug fix, none of these are carrier-dependent, so why on earth is Hautala saying that we will only get these fixes if our carrier requests them? Frankly, I find this a staggering misstep by Microsoft. How to destroy customer trust overnight… I really am scratching my head trying to work out how an organisation that sets up a function called “Customer Experience Engineering” can do any worse.
Well… I got my update today. 10 patches, takes about 40 minutes.
1. On Screen Keyboard Issue
2. Gmail sync issue
3. Location access issue
4. DigiCert Sdn Bhd revocation
5. Exchange mail issue
6. Voicemail notification issue
When I got my Lumia from O2, there was a leaflet tucked inside indicating that there was an issue with displaying 3G/HSDPA icons on the status bar, even though the functionality was present, so maybe this has been patched too.
Wonder what the other 3 patches are for? Gapless playback? Probably not – but if it is fixed, I’ll let you know.
Yep, it came through here to my phone as well. It came direct from Nokia’s servers, since my phone is an unlocked and carrier-unbranded phone.
I got both the WP OS 8107 update, and a Nokia firmware update (to improve battery life and WiFi). See http://allaboutwindowsphone.com/flow/item/14076_Nokia_starts_roll_out_of_secon.php
What I find frustrating is that Eric Hautala still hasn’t responded to the 270, and counting, negative comments on his original post. People have been asking him to clarify the update process for unlocked and unbranded phones, and surely he could have done so. Radio silence is not a clever tactic, particularly when you are supposed to be a General Manager of Customer Experience Engineering…
The team at Microsoft responsible for building Windows 8 (the next version of Windows) have been documenting the detail of its design in a series of blog posts over at, naturally enough, Building Windows 8.
I’ve been following this blog with great interest, because it gives a very detailed insight into the design, and why particular design choices have been made. It has certainly kindled my interest into wanting to take a closer look at Windows 8 (starting with the beta, to be released next month).
Yesterday, for example, Rajeev Nagar published a detailed post on the design of storage for Windows 8. Windows 8 will introduce a capability called Storage Spaces. Interestingly, Nagar begins his post by setting the context, and referring to the now-defunct Drive Extender technology that was part of Windows Home Server v1, but which was removed in Windows Home Server 2011:
…some of us have used (or are still using), the Windows Home Server Drive Extender technology which was deprecated. Storage Spaces is not intended to be a feature-by-feature replacement for that specialized solution, but it does deliver on many of its core requirements. It is also a fundamental enhancement to the Windows storage platform, which starts with NTFS. Storage Spaces delivers on diverse requirements that can span deployments ranging from a single PC in the home, up to a very large-scale enterprise datacenter.
Well, already, I’m interested. I thought that Drive Extender was a unique selling point for WHS v1, and bemoaned its removal in WHS 2011. I never wanted to take on the task of managing a RAID configuration in my home server. I have always agreed with Charlie Kindel that RAID is not a consumer technology.
So now, with Windows 8, it appears as though we might get the second generation of Drive Extender, substantially improved. I should no longer have to even consider RAID as a means to implement a storage pool; in fact, in the blog post, Microsoft explicitly advise not to use RAID in conjunction with Storage Spaces:
We don’t recommend it. Storage Spaces were designed to work with off-the-shelf commodity disks. This feature delivers easy-to-use resiliency to disk failures, and optimizes concurrent usage of all available disks within the pool. Using a RAID enclosure with Storage Spaces adds complexity and a performance penalty that does not provide any improvement in reliability.
That’s good news, as far as I’m concerned.
Looking down the road, then, what are the implications for Windows Home Server 2011? Well, it seems to me that Windows 8 will introduce a storage capability that exceeds what WHS v1 had, and that WHS 2011 will never have. So then the question is, what happens about the other shoe? That is, WHS (both versions) have an excellent backup facility for client PCs. The backups are efficient and allow rolling back a PC to previous points in time with ease.
If Microsoft introduce this capability, even as an Add-on in the Windows 8 Store, then I have to ask: what is the point of WHS 2011? It would seem to me to be eclipsed by the potential capabilities of Windows 8.
I seriously doubt that we will see a separate successor product to WHS 2011. Its capabilities (and more) can be fulfilled by Windows 8, with the possible addition of Store Add-ons for extensions to the base capabilities of Windows 8.
Geoff, Nice find … I concur on likely no follow-up to WHS 2011.
Comments … The drive extender allows you to “span” drives – it does not specifically allow backup images. Are you suggesting that we could use Windows 8 Backups to achieve the backup iamge capability … with the drive extender added to make disk sizing easier?
What happens when the Windows 8 system crashes? Where will the client backup come from? Boot from DVD maybe and find the images?
What I’m trying to say is that the Storage Spaces and the Client Backup capability are two separate things.
I don’t know what the Backup capabilities of Windows 8 will be as yet. I can guess that they will be at least equivalent to those in Windows 7 for the Home editions. That means: limited to one device (the PC on which the backup app runs) and unable to backup over the network. Now, the functionality of the Client PC backup in WHS far exceeds this. So the question is, will Microsoft extend the base capabilities, or offer an Add-on via the Windows 8 Store to increase them?
TBH Geoff, I was glad to see the back of DE. Sure, I wasn’t using it in a ‘typical’ WHS implementation (running as a Hyper-V guest on virtual dynamic disks), and it hated ClamAV (the ClamAV add-in wasn’t bad though). But the W8 ‘Storage Spaces’ might explain the half-baked ‘Vail’ that was delivered to us, with so far, no fixes to some of the many problems that we have experienced with WHS 2011, despite shouting at MS to get it sorted: and had this ‘broken’ functionality been in the beta releases, it could have been identified and addressed. Now WHS 2011 is a full product and subject to the ‘Consumer’ release cycle, which is considerably different to the ‘Enterprise’ release cycle. Anyway, enough moaning about WHS, and back to the subject at hand, ‘Storage Spaces’.
Back in the day when ‘Longhorn’ was still a code-word, and just before they decided to bring forward ‘Blackcomb’ (XP) – it hadn’t even gone to CTP, I got a sneak peak at the ‘doze roadmap. Bundled in with what they were calling the Longhorn Technology Demonstrator was the very lovely ‘Avalon’ and the powerful ‘Indigo’, was also a nice little toy they were working on called WinFS: the premise being that NTFS was going to be replaced by a SQL database, and everything was going to be stored as BLOBs with lots and lots of metadata… it never got passed beta. But I’m wondering if ‘Storage Spaces’ is a re-working of WinFS… now [i]that[/i] would be something. I got really excited about WinFS, I thought that this would be a killer filesystem, but I suspect that it was too hard to implement (or at least, too hard to build without providing an enterprise class database server for free – which is a [i]significant[/i] source of revenue for MS).
Still… I’m looking forward to trying W8 – after all, I’m getting used to Metro, and when I first saw it I thought ‘Nah, it looks sh*te. Gimme a proper UI’ – sure, it’s never going to replace the UI for the things that I do every day, but as a simplified easy to navigate UI for doing stuff like reading mail or playing music or videos it’s ideal. It’s not a ‘Power User’ interface though – but I look forward to getting the SDK (and something to run it on: my tired old PC won’t run the Mango SDK, but I’m waiting until there’s something reasonably priced that’ll run W8) and knocking together some of my own tools…
I think I have simpler requirements – DE worked well for me. That said, I agree that it was version 1.
I don’t think Storage Spaces is a reworking of WinFS – I think that’s still a hard nut to crack. Perhaps with Windows 10? I too am looking forward to trying W8. Metro on my Phone is brilliant, but I do wonder how it will translate to a traditional Mouse/Keyboard PC…
It’s funny, now that I’ve got my Lumia, I no longer have a passionate desire to get a Windows Tablet (e.g. the Samsung Slate). The Phone is filling in for many of the tasks that I would have used a Slate for…
Geoff, Al,
All good comments. I liked and used DE … mainly because when I started with WHS V1 large disks were expensive … so I could strap together my 1TBs and 500GBs without worrying about running out of disk space. But with larger drives available today, I can reasonably easily map data onto drives … So I am not missing DE … but maybe I wouldn’t mind having it anyway.
And I concur (Geoff) that Windows (7 & 8) will probably allow backup of themselves but not other clients on the network … so I don’t think that DE and W8 will really “replace” WHS. But maybe it will give us an “in-place” backup utility for large systems. Or maybe it will give us the capability to have one large data drive … so no more D:\, E:\ drives … which is OK for the casual user … but we all know that when things aren’t working right … people like us will still be back in the Drive Manager checking physical drives.
Mind you, to add to what you guys are already saying, it doesn’t look like M$ is interested in the WHS community at this time. Updates/fixes are way too slow in coming. Blogs don’t seem to announce much. And there aren’t a lot of box builders out there (maybe four – two well known) – so the non-IT bubba doesn’t have a lot of choices for an easy setup. Features are missing/malfunctioning. Additionally, I don’t see a lot of add-ins coming online – luckily some good ones are out there. It just looks to me like WHS has been sidelined. And of course, when that happens, sales drop … and M$ drops the line.
We’ll see. Time will tell.
[…] one possible ray of hope is that it may be possible to replicate the functionality of WHS using Windows 8. That is dependent on someone developing an App for Windows 8 that replicates the client PC backup […]
It’s now been almost two weeks since I got my new Windows Phone – a Nokia Lumia 800. How has it been so far?
I think I’m still very much in the Honeymoon period. The hardware (Nokia) and the software (Microsoft) of the device continue to delight.
The design of the Nokia Lumia 800 looks good and feels right to me; it whispers I’m a quality piece of consumer electronics and when I heft it in my hand it feels solid and dependable. Yes, I know that these are very subjective things, but, to me, it seems that the Nokia designers have done a good job with this particular product.
And, heavens, I think that the Microsoft software designers have done a good job with Windows Phone 7.5. I know that I spend a lot of my time pointing out flaws in Microsoft software (Windows Live Photo Gallery, and Windows Home Server 2011, I’m looking at you), but the Windows Phone operating system is pretty damn good, particularly for what is essentially a brand-new operating system, when compared with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android – both dating from 2007. The user interface (Metro) feels fast and fluid, even on what is fairly basic hardware. Android lovers seem to turn up their noses at the hardware in typical Windows Phones, but the fact of the matter is that Microsoft’s OS seems to be doing a better, and more efficient, job at exploiting the hardware. Then there are features such as the live Tiles on the Start screen, and these seem to me to be a clear step forward over Apple’s iOS and Android’s static icons.
Of course, all is not perfect. The performance of the camera in the Nokia, despite the 8 megapixels and the Carl Zeiss lens, strikes me as being lacklustre. Nokia have acknowledged the issue, and say that a software upgrade will be forthcoming this month. The same goes for a battery life issue – some owners are struggling to get through a full day on one charge. Nokia say that there will be a software update this month to address the issue.
But, on the whole, I remain very satisfied that I made the switch from a Nokia dumbphone to a Nokia smartphone running Windows Phone.
I’ve been struck, when reading blogs and newspaper articles by others on their experience with the Nokia Lumia 800, by the fact that not everyone is as positive as I am. It seems to me that some of the negativity comes from the fact that this is not a Nokia Symbian or Apple or Android phone. If you’ve been running your life and social interactions through your smartphone, then the change from the Symbian environment (or an iOS or Android environment) to Windows Phone is more than just a culture shock to some people. It’s apostasy, and deserves death – preferably for Stephen Elop, for singlehandedly destroying Nokia. I’ve been dipping in to the discussions on the Nokia forums, and some of the vitriol from Symbian users is quite staggering, but, given that we are all human (I think), not surprising.
Perhaps I’m fortunate in that, having come from a dumbphone, I have no previous smartphone religion to deal with. All I know is that I like what I see, and thus far, it seems to be an environment that I can comfortably live with.
Like you Geoff, this is my first smart phone. The previous incumbent was an antique E65, which replaced a washed 6310. I’m agree with all the points you’ve raised, though I do have issues with the media player (lack of gapless playback, poor audio quality), and as mentioned before, the lack of Flash is really annoying (though not enough to trigger my inner Vince Fox). Battery Dave mode is good, but the downside is that you get no pushed content – a bigger if you use something like WhatsApp. IE Mobile seems to have a few (intentional?) holes in it too (try downloading Opera Mini, for e.g.), though I am still very pleased with the Lumia, and would certainly recommend it to others. Any minor niggles could easily be fixed in software, so it’s just a case of MS and Nokia pulling their collective finger out and acting on the requests of the users.
Oh yeah – the Bing spell check isn’t perfect, replacing what you’ve typed with what it thinks you should have typed: Dave should read Save in the above reply.
Hah, I wondered what the “Battery Dave” mode might be for a moment there… Cheers.
I love mine Geoff and you have beaten me to it, as I intended to write a review (of sorts) of how I am using the Nokia. I love it Geoff, and unlike you, its a replacement for an iPhone. I am finding that I am using this much more than I ever used the iPhone. Its the UI I think, its just so easy to use. I might still do one, it depends on how I feel to be honest. It needs some really good marketing now, something that unfortunately MS tend to fall down on, and incentives to all sale staff in the phone shops so that they don’t continue to just push the iPhone and the Android phones.
Thanks, TG. Interesting to hear that you’ve moved over from using an iPhone – so there are some people who can do that!
As you say, Marketing (or the lack of it) is the problem. Since Microsoft does not control the phone in the same way as Apple, but relies on the phone manufacturers to help with the marketing, I think that they are at a disadvantage. Only Nokia has really done a WP marketing push, because they need Windows Phone to be a success. The other manufacturers have a couple of strings to their bow, Android and WP, so their marketing efforts send mixed messages. And until Nokia (and the carriers) launch in the US, we’ll continue to get negative noises out from the US media and blogsphere.
Yes, I freely confess that I’ve become a Grumpy Old Man. The latest thing to trigger a stream of grumpiness from me is the experience I’ve just had with the many-tentacled Google…
It all began innocently enough. I went to check what new postings there were in the Help forum for Picasa. When I arrived, it was to discover that the furniture had been rearranged, so to speak. The old forum had been replaced by a Google Product Forum. Well, that’s not so bad – the old forum capabilities were pretty limited (you could not post images or screenshots, for example), but one thing really irritated me: the display language had been changed to Dutch. Yes, I realise that I live in the Netherlands, and I do speak Dutch, but, call me old-fashioned, I just prefer my PC and web environment to use English whenever possible.
So I then spent the next ten minutes trying to find out how to change the Dutch pages back into English. Finally, after much hunting around, and wandering through various haunted wings of the Google palace, it dawned on me that the change of the forum software was not all that Google were up to. It seems as though they want us all to move over to Google+, and change over our old Google accounts to Google+ accounts.
Oh, mercy, not yet another bloody Facebook social networking and time-wasting gewgaw! I have thus far successfully resisted joining Facebook, and I really did not want to join Google+. However, I underestimated the sneakiness of Google (whatever happened to the “do no evil” mantra that Google were supposed to have? Seems to me that they are just like any other faceless Corporation). It turns out that I could elect to have the new forum (and other Google sites) displayed in English – but only if I signed up to Google+ and upgraded my account. Sigh, so that’s what I’ve done, I’ve drunk the Kool-aid.
And then, to really light a fire under my grumpiness, I then received an email from Google+, that started off as follows:
Er, “Hey Geoff”? I’m sorry, but that’s Hello Mr. Coupe, to you, you insolent young whippersnappers. You already know my age – it’s in my old account – and I expect to be treated with a modicum of politeness as befits my age. And I very much doubt that “you’re glad I’m here”. I suspect the phrase has all the sincerity of “have a nice day” being uttered by some poor benighted wage slave in a fast food establishment. Also, if there’s a word that invokes in me the same pain that I feel when I hear fingernails being scraped down a blackboard, it’s that last word in the screenshot above: “cool!”. People who use the word “cool!” (the exclamation mark is audibly present) as a term of approbation deserve to have a special Circle of Hell invented just for them.
Oh well, I’ll just wallow in my grumpiness for a bit longer. I expect I’ll have to go and pat the dogs at some point to restore some semblance of normality.
LOL. Welcome to Google + Geoff! You’ll feel right at home here! I’m on here, so is Ludwig and so are countless other photographers that you may know by name. I am enjoying Google+, the discussions are wonderful and you learn so much stuff, its so much better than Facebook. Seek out some old Windows Live Spaces users on here as well. I think that once you have gotten over the initial shock of it all, (being sort of bamboozled into joining) you’ll like it here.
Thanks TG, I’m afraid that I’m feeling rather in Groucho Marx mode at the moment: I would not wish to join any club that would have me as a member…
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