Posts by OffBeatMammal

less pranks, more apps

How about, instead of silly antics, these people sit down and make Linux a viable desktop alternative for my Mum, my partner or my 12yo?

They want to hit "power" and be up and running... not recompile the wifi drivers to get the damn thing to talk to the router that every other device in the house just connects to.

And then when it's powered up they want to play the games, read their email, open docs with the same fidelity that their OSX and Windows (any version) friends and relatives are using.

Over the years I've lost track of the number of times I've tried to switch, but before long the complaints mount up and back we go to the mainstream.

I have a day job. I have hobbies and dogs to walk. I don't want to have to explain that because Ubuntu is better than Windows you can't play Wizards101 any more

I know I'm going to get downvoted into a hole for this but just because Richard Stallman gets his jollies off the EULA doesn't make it good... being usable, and supported does

Cloudy pricing

the thing that bugs me about this - be it Aure, AWS or AppEngine - is that to engineer for failure means you need more overhead running (ideally distributed in multiple locations) and while it's still cheaper (usually) with the cloud it's really hard to predict with the pricing models that all of these guys have in place.

I've worked on a couple of projects recently where the customer didn't really know what their traffic and usage was going to look like (both new ventures) so in both cases we budgeted for success (ie took their estimates, modelled the compute load and then doubled everything)... one of them is paying about 30% of what we budgeted (some of that due to offloading a lot of dynamic content to static pre-published pages and looking at how we could cache better - they're actually above their revenue/user estimates), the other is about 10% overbudget because the usage pattern doesn't fit nicely into the particular platforms billing model (but now we've modelled and observed for a couple of months we're tweaking the architecture to bring costs down).

In both cases though the random restarts or disappearances of instances has been problematic and required a lot of up-front investment in the architecture and design that was hard to explain.

Hopefully as cloud computing matures the "design for failure" mantra will become easier to develop around with frameworks and toolkits becoming more readily available and understood but until then... a bit of up-front effort pays dividends in the long run...

there's a reason I love MaxRoam.com ...

Love WIn8. Not so sure about Metro

so I've been using WIn8 preview releases for as long as they've been public and I'm looking forward to playing with it properly on an ARM tablet to see how well the touch-only experience is (though I really want a stylus)

but on my current laptop (even with it's touch screen) I avoid the lego layout as much as I can and stick to the properly mouse and keyboard driven desktop world where I love the tweaks and fine tuning that's gone on. It's more stable, faster, things like the copy dialogue are more useful and the experience is so much better ...I don't really miss the start button but I don't like the jarring transition to Minecraft every time I want to open a new program (so my desktop is now littered with icons!)

Win8 won't be a flop, and I'm sure MS will continue to iterate. I wonder if early adopters will be burnt in the same way that that WP7 users have been with dead-end hardware and limited app support (though WP8 at least comes with a new set of "trust us" promises)

in 6 months time all this fuss will be over, it'll be business as usual and we'll be hating on the changes Win9 is going to force on us and wishing they'd just left Win8 alone!

makes sense

I can see how this would work...

On my way to the office, or in my lunch hour stroll around and stock up on groceries. I got to work on the bus so I don't want to carry a load of stuff with me, but having it delivered to my home at a pre-arranged time... makes sense.

I'd probably not want to do that with meat and fresh veggies (though in the past I've used ShopFast in Australia and AmazonFresh in the US without complaint) and from experiences in China if they can deliver it in a refrigerated truck it's going to be in better condition than if I tried to get it home on public transport!

Right now if you buy white goods it works pretty much that way... the store only has one of each as a display model... pick what you want and they arrange delivery from a warehouse at an agreed date...

Apple, not Amazon

just to be clear...

Amazon only listed four digits of a credit card number (a common practice elsewhere today)

Apple gave away the keys to the kingdom by not refusing to divulge the information when the scammer couldn't remember any of the other detail

Two factor auth - by a phone app, SMS or little dongle you can lose - is a pain in the bum but sadly (for the moment at least) seems to be the way to go... and much as it pains me to say Google with their alternatives (I use the phone app) seems to be the best solution (thanks to my bank and need for RAS access to work I have three token generating devices I have to lug around!)

don't forget the lessons of GSM

One thing when I lived in Europe that always impressed me was the ease with which cellphones became prevalent. Even today I can comfortably carry the same device pretty much anywhere in Europe (and further afield) and it'll work.

It was only when I moved to the US that I really appreciated the part that GSM had played in that when I discovered the eternal battles being waged here by the CellCos with competing standards (CDMA, WCDMA, GSM on different frequencies etc) that served to push up their operating costs and make the choices much more complicated for consumers and in general held back innovation. Even now with LTE the US still lags behind the rest of the world but the providers spend a lot of money telling consumers how wonderful it is.

The various DVB challenges were a similar story... one standard to rule them all (putting aside national pride and politics) helps level the playing field and makes it easier for consumers to find good, reasonably priced, kit.

Of course at the end of the day there's so much crap on TV who really cares any more... I can't remember the last time I watched "live" TV for anything other than F1 (and let me tell you that experience in the US is painful compared to watching it in the UK a few weeks ago!)

Private vs Public

will be really interesting to see the results and compare.

Given that the selection criteria will (hopefully) be managed by people at least with a clue and that there's some pretty defined structure to it I wouldn't be surprised if there is a higher success rate... or the project will shutter and never be heard of again.

The hard thing is going to be qualifying startups well enough and then helping introduce them to the right people to keep the momentum going but ... it's all good and hopefully will be big enough to make a dent

but what happens with spotty coverage

much as I hate my Garmin for being the height of 1970s user interface design (and don't get me started on out of date maps) the one thing it's never done is let me down when I needed a route from the back of beyond to civilization because it couldn't find a data connection long enough to plan the route.

While I love not having to sacrifice storage space to maps of the outer reaches there needs to be some balance in intelligent caching and basic routing capabilities on the phone itself before it would ever be a reliable replacement for a self contained unit

The other thing I've noticed is my Garmin is pretty good at working out where I am if I power it on at a strange airport as I get into the rental car... with the phone... it can take quiet a while (I assume smaller GPS antenna plays into this) to work out where the heck I am - very frustrating (though still way less painful than having to resort to a paper map!)

Duke it out

Tim Cook and his oppostive number from Samsung should be thrown in a paddling pool full of jello and the one left standing should be declared the winner and the lawyers won't get a dime.... much more entertaining than the current soap opera...

unlike the US...

where we get 7-9 mins of content per hour of programming (what with the ad breaks and the last week on and the flashbacks)

I fondly remember growing up in London listening to Laser 558 (pirate radio, and don't ask why I remember the station ID) - they started with never more than a minute of advertising per hour and ended up as "never more than a minute from the music" ... but were still a vast improvement on what's available today on radio or TV either side of the pond

Hopefully broadcast Linear TV will go the way of the dodo replaced by a la carte on-demand access with a subscription model which lets you avoid constant interruptions by soap powder hawkers and actually enjoy TV again

why is Military spending running amok?

Why, in a world where everyone is having to tighten their belts are military suppliers able to charge an endlessly increasing premium for what often turn out to be failed or faulty services and supplies?

They seem to be the only ones who benefit from the atmosphere of fear that justifies the inception of many of these projects or initiatives... yet by the time they are delivered the solution is outdated and inappropriate so the cycle begins again

It appears that there are too many big consolidated suppliers and with no patriots (no matter what flag) looking beyond the next bonus cycle holding the military (and us) hostage with the threat of a bogeyman (who they also supply)

stripper name

I usually use my stripper name when filling out website registration forms ... why the h3ll do they need my real name anyway?

[watched Reg admin scurry away to check my account....]

great bacon to be had around here

what makes it even funnier is that there is some amazingly good British style bacon to be had around here... http://properbritishbacon.com/ are local and even arrange once a month deliveries to the MS campus... it's a real taste of home ;)

throwing the baby out with the bathwater

while there are many good reasons that the world would be better off if Flash were to be "retired" saldy HTML5 is not yet mature enough to take it's place...

In the advertising world it's easy to deliver a packaged, self contained SWF that can run, display animation, perform interactivity, report back to the the mothership etc... there's not a packaging equivalent for HTML5/JavaScript so those guys will have to resort to animated GIFs for a while!

More importantly the video world - as folks have already noted the youTube experience isn't quite there yet - the <video> tag puts us back 5 years... no adaptive streaming (HLS, Smooth, DASH), heck not even one default codec (h264, WebM, Ogg anyone?), no DRM and not even support for basic encryption witha secure keystore (so don't expect to watch anything the Studios want to monetize... the AES128 support in HLS is about the minimum they'll go for in streaming only, SD resolution), and finally no Live streaming support so forget concert and sports coverage on the web (or even breaking news). Even things like playlists (ASX, PLS formats) are ont supported unless you want to roll your own (eg a .PLS loader - http://post.offbeatmammal.com/pushing-pls-into )

HTML5 has much goodness, and browser support is improving but the spec needs some refinement in certain areas and the browser posse need to work a bit more on the common ground... maybe Flash will disappear quicker than IE6 but then again maybe it'll find a niche and be with us for a long time to come..

bloated

sadly FB is becoming more bloated and desperate to keep users sucked in (so they can mine information and sell it to advertisers)

given how crowded and painful the web experience has become I'm not holding up much hope for a good mobile experience - just look at the unholy mess that is the Android app these days (and try explaining to me why it needs a seperate Messaging app)

the biggest problem I had with MySpace was the user experience was like being poked in the eye with a fork and FB managed for a long time to avoid that but that simplicity is fading... unless they can focus as much effort on good interfaces as they do on clever features they're going to alienate their user base who will jump to the next shiny thing as soon as their friends do (I use twitter and G+ more now because FB is becoming annoying)

Green Card applications

I know if possibly stupid thing, but if you're considering moving to the US and applying for a Green Card this does make a fairly considerable degree to the time it takes to process an application... right now the difference between an EB-2 and and EB-3 is about 6 years (with the quicker route being for someone with at least a 4 year degree)

Ironically after 20 years in the industry coding everything from 6502/68000 assembler to COBOL, CASE tools to 4GLs, designing and implementing large scale projects my application is on the slow path... because all I had was an HND in Computer Studies

Just goes to show that there's still a disproportionate value attached to that bit of paper even half a lifetime after you've paid off your student loans

Dynadock

probably a better option is the Dynadock ... I use one (though in Bootcamp mode so I don't know if OSX drivers work) - single USB connection and you get to use the laptop screen as well

Knighthood or slap on wrist?

so what's the upshot of this deliberate breach of policy going to be? A slap on the wrist (unlikely, or if it happens just a public slap that's soon mended in private) or just promote him and give him a knighthood for innovation in civil service?

the 6 year old son of a friend of mine once referred to that breed as Snivil Serpants ... can't say I disagree

Livescribe

so... some procurement agency is going to spend many thousands of pounds to discover the only real solution is something like the Livescribe Echo but the NHS will end up paying several times over the odds for them and the appropriate paper and a botched implementation.

I love my Livescribe (ironically it was my vet who showed it to me first)... it's not perfect but if you're careful the OCR works reasonably well

roaming SIM?

for that price there are better options that give you better coverage... Skype wifi access points are pretty few and far between but something like a Maxroam SIM gives you voice and data (or data only) world wide

Thunderbolt?

not that I'm pining for parallel ports or anything but ...what use (today and probably for the next couple of years) is a thunderbolt connector vs (say) an ethernet one?

if there was an equivalent to the Dynadock that worked with Thunderbolt, or if Thunderbolt had gone the smart way and gone with a combined USB3.0/TB connector I could understand it but this just baffles me

not just Thrive

it appears to be a pretty common Android phone issue as well... for instance the Dream/Magic and G2 devices from HTC all exhibit the same (random) behaviour.

So far, at least, I've not seem my Windows Phone (HD7) also from HTC have the same behaviour so I'm guessing it's an Android specific issue