Posts by Decade

Prices going down is a problem?

Do you get upset when you buy a new computer and immediately afterwards a new computer comes out at the same price? So Apple is doing the same thing with the software that comes with the computer.

So it turns out that the $15 that Jasper spent for Pages and Garageband would not have been necessary if he had waited, what, a few weeks? I would be feeling a small amount of buyer's remorse, too, but only if I didn't bother to use those apps. I thought you get computer stuff to do a job, and if you sit around waiting for the price to drop then you won't get your job done. You pay the current price to do things now.

Also, unless you're in the grips of poverty, $15 is just not that much money. Does The Register need to give its writers a raise?

DRM does not belong in the standard

Okay, so DRM is going to be around? The least-bad solution is to marginalize it. Netflix wants to DRM their videos? Fine. Let a hundred Netflix apps bloom. Google wants the Netflix app to go through the ChromeOS browser? Let them collaborate with Netflix to make a proprietary browser. It should always remain clear that DRM is limited and proprietary, like we always understood Flash and Silverlight to be proprietary.

With the WHATWG doing the actual HTML5 development, the W3C should be used to having real development happen outside its bureaucracy, anyway.

Douglas Engelbart was sad that his Mother of All Demos deeply influenced computing, but he was never able to raise enough influence and money to finish the project. I guess Tim Berners-Lee is the opposite case: He had an innovative idea, but his influence continues long after he ran out of benefits to bring to society.

Non-profit discounts now apply to religious non-profits, too.

Microsoft has long tried to lure non-profits into using current Microsoft software by providing severe discounts through organizations such as TechSoup. Now, I just noticed that they added religious non-profits, so there are fewer excuses for your random parish office to stick to pre-2010-era Microsoft software.

Can't standardize, yet. Innovation still needed.

You know what I miss about the old barrel plugs? The ability to insert the plug in any orientation. (Almost) Everybody has standardized on MicroUSB, but it's difficult to tell which way you're supposed to plug it in.

I'm not exactly happy about the clutter generated by new Lightning cables, but I think Apple is proving that there are still desirable improvements that we can implement in our mobile device cables.

Who would listen to Carl Icahn?

Why would Tim Cook listen to Carl Icahn? Does Icahn have any advice worth listening to for a company that doesn't plan to kill itself?

Isn't $20 billion enough for Mr. Icahn? It's not like he has a big family full of heirs to distribute his possessions to when he croaks.

Where is the SEC in all of this? Isn't the SEC supposed to protect the interests of shareholders against harmful individuals?

Smart meters may actually lead to remote control

Well, smart meters don't currently allow the government to remote control your appliances. The power companies just want to reduce the staff needed to check the meters every month. But the futurist people do imagine a world where that is possible. For entirely altruistic reasons, of course. So we could avoid taxing the power grid when the renewable power sources aren't working at full power.

Probably the government won't have direct control, though. If remote-control appliances do happen, they would be run by the power company, which in many places is a government-regulated monopoly. I don't like the proposed erosion of privacy, I don't like the possibility that these energy-saving techniques might randomly combine to make my refrigerator turn off too long and spoil my food, and I especially don't like the risk that a hacker could take over and make my house very uncomfortable. So, I'm not sure what would be the uptake on remote-controllable appliances if they actually happen.

Of course, Rush is just in it for the money.

MacOS is there for you

If you want hierarchical icons and consistently placed menus, you should be using MacOS. Apple has always been better at having Human Interface Guidelines (even if they don't always follow them), and they haven't dramatically changed the interface since the switch to MacOS X. The downside is they've never fixed the OS X Finder, which still sucks at the basics compared to the Classic MacOS Finder.

I think a search-based interface is crucial to manage the complexity of modern systems. A hierarchical clicking system is fine when you have only a few files, but as the number of files goes up then it becomes unwieldy. The worst is the Windows XP Start Menu: Non-alphabetical, multi-column, with sub-menus jumping out at you like bogeymen if you don't move the pointer to the correct selection with the proper grace. When MacOS X 10.4 and Windows Vista introduced searching that worked, I was pleased to use it.

Palm's troubled history

I think Palm's problems go back to the original PalmPilot. I seem to remember Palm selling themselves to USRobotics to benefit from their "infrastructure and resources," but immediately USRobotics sold themselves to 3Com. The CEO of 3Com, Benhamou, drove away Hawkins and Dubinsky, the founders and visionaries, leaving Palm rudderless at a crucial time.

Even after Hawkins and Dubinsky came back when Palm bought Handspring, Palm meandered and frittered away any advantages they had. So, this ending for Palm is sad, but not out of character.

Shocking lack of imagination

I've frequently been annoyed by people who say that they can't imagine needing faster broadband because Netflix doesn't take any more than 6 Mbps. (Well, it now takes 12 Mbps in 3D Super HD, and it's bound to only go up.) So, the market is mostly made up of slow connections, and the major ISPs can point to low adoption as proving low demand instead of ridiculously high prices.

But the real crime is the lack of upload. Cisco had a very pretty networked webcam that flopped hard, mostly because Cisco sucks at the consumer market, but also because it required 1.5 Mbps upload for the 720p version and 3.5 Mbps for 1080p. Nobody on DSL has that kind of upload speed.

Not to mention all the other ideas that have to be shelved because speeds are just too low.

Enemy of Fitts' Law

I see they've brought their signature design element to Chrome: A 1-pixel border above the tab bar. Google and Mozilla make their tabs infinitely tall, by having the tab right at the top of the screen. Microsoft ignores Fitts, except for making the close button have the largest Fitts' Law area. Maximum destructiveness, just what you'd expect from Microsoft.

But Opera is unique. Opera puts the tabs almost at the top of the screen, but not quite. There is a border between the top of the tab and the top of the screen. Just 1 pixel tall. This new version puts the O menu at the top of the screen, while the old version had a 1-pixel border, but the tab bar is still barely not at the top.

Tired? Try spoiled and lazy.

It has been how many years since Windows 7 came out? Microsoft came out with the next version right on schedule.

IT administrators have been spoiled rotten by the decade-long reign of Windows XP. That was an anomaly, and a hindrance to progress. After Vista was released, Sinofsky got Microsoft back on track, releasing new versions of Windows on time.

Before Windows XP, Microsoft released new versions of Windows every couple years. After Windows XP, Microsoft is again releasing new versions every couple years. This is how it should be.

DRM promotes interoperability? Wrong!

It's sad that the CEO of the W3C would be so wrong.

The Encrypted Media Extensions would standardize the APIs for the content decryption modules, but it won't standardize the content decryption modules (CDMs). It can't standardize the CDMs, because that would make the encryption scheme unworkable, due to pre-existing W3C policies on open source. Therefore, the content "protected" by the CDMs would be restricted to "applications inaccessible to the Open Web or completely locked down devices." Exactly what Jaffe said he didn't want.

EME will not make the web more open. It will only make life easier for people who try to restrict users' freedoms. It's the <video> tag all over again, but even worse.

Amazon and Google, please work together.

Google Shopping is almost useless. Retailers pay to be included, and they generally have poor selection and high prices.

Amazon Search is almost useless. It frequently returns items not related to the search terms. It's getting better, but it's still a chore to sift through. Also, sorting by price is a bad joke.

In my ideal world, I would use Google Shopping to search for things from Amazon.

No, the problem is still there.

"The problem that gave rise to VP8 and WebM, namely Mozilla declining to support H.264 in 2010 for fear that it might be target of an patent bomb from MPEG LA, the overseer of MPEG IP, has therefore passed."

No, the problem is still there, and you're an idiot, Richard Chirgwin.

The problem is that every implementation and every commercial use of H.264 require a paid license, which is incompatible with free software licenses such as the GPL and many open source licenses.

Mozilla finally caved on the use of H.264 in playback because the vast majority of systems where Firefox is installed have paid licenses of H.264. It's different for bare-metal systems such as Firefox OS, and it's different for encoders and potentially commercial uses such as WebRTC. If Mozilla required H.264 in these situations, then they would be adding new obligations to users, which is incompatible with the principles of free software.

This basic incompatibility between H.264 and Mozilla's mission is probably why Microsoft and their pet Nokia are trying to kill VP8.

Who wants a federal monopoly?

What a weird strawman, Mr. Orlowski. I don't think any reasonable person wants a federal monopoly. I certainly don't want the same organization that gave us the TSA to give me last-mile Internet. What I tend to hear is that Google, et al, want the last mile of Internet access to be regulated and opened to competition, but still privately owned and maintained.

Orlowski says Americans have a reputation for being doers instead of whiners, but existing regulations mean we just aren't allowed to do. As a resident of San Francisco, I'm sure you know of Monkeybrains' attempt to bring micro-trench fiber to the city. Well, they couldn't figure out how to file the paperwork to get their construction approved. Sonic.net is able to move forward only by turning themselves into a phone company and adopting all the regulations that are involved with that, which means no naked DSL.

I suspect that Cyrus Farivar at Ars is a bit anxious about the Comcast thing because it's a 6-month or 12-month promotional deal. At the end, he'll have to face the choice of paying 2-3 times as much for the same service, or having his service cut to 1/2 or 1/4 of its current speed. He knows he won't get anything comparable from AT&T, so he can't threaten to leave to get better prices. Also, frankly, $45 for 24 Mbps is pathetic compared to many other places.

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

"[Microsoft] maintains it wants to make WebRTC more flexible… That makes the technology more readily adaptable to a given developer’s needs, but it also limits interoperability."

Good to see that some parts of Microsoft are still up to their old tricks.

I suspect that one reason SIP never caught on is that it allows a bewildering array of codecs. If you have a SIP client from one vendor and want to communicate with a SIP client from another vendor, you have to carry so many codecs, most of them patented. Skype is just simpler to use and more reliable. So, I see Microsoft is trying to preserve the value of the investment in Skype.

Finkelstein old-fashioned, irrelevant?

I find any Worst CEO of 2012 list that does not include Stephen Elop to be seriously suspect. I mean, doubling down on a losing strategy, while tossing your institutional knowledge overboard, seems like it should be a reason Why Smart Executives Fail.

But castigating Zuckerberg for not wearing a 19th Century period costume is pretty low. Zuckerberg signals that he doesn't care about the traditional finance people. In fact, he doesn't. As long as he has controlling shares, it doesn't really matter what other people think, as long as he doesn't break any laws. If Zuckerberg can reduce his mental burden by wearing a hoodie every day, then he can concentrate his energy on stuff that really matters to his shareholders (especially himself).

On the other hand, what has Sydney Finkelstein done? Trained a bunch of executives? Made friends with the 1%? I require better reasons why I should pay attention to Finkelstein instead of Zuckerberg.

The value of Free Software

Once again, Richard Stallman is right. Proprietary software is wrong, and it requires insane rituals to preserve the illusion of civility.

UPS? So lucky!

My company just moved into a new facility. I work in the AV department, and one of the items I put on my wish list was a UPS system. The company hired a consultant to build the AV system, and he denied the request, saying, "The power from the utility is reliable."

Um, part of my work is digital recordings. I have to buy my own UPS units. :(

Automatic memory management

Of course, this sort of problem is absolutely impossible in a system with automatic memory management, because the programmer has no direct access to pointers. For example, Java.

But Javascript itself uses automatic memory management. Obviously, they should have written their Javascript engine in C#. Turtles all the way down.

No IPv6 = no sale

I wouldn't recommend any router that doesn't come with IPv6, such as the Asus RT-N56U.

World IPv6 Launch was earlier this month. It's an essential feature. If the router doesn't have IPv6, at least it needs a nice, stable third-party firmware project.