Yeah Sure, Go Nuts
Posted on June 27, 2008
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 140 views | Leave a Comment
Good luck with that.
(Incidentally, I’d hope this would go without saying but Windows users, don’t go to the link mentioned in the dialog box.)
iTunes Movies in Canada: First Impressions
Posted on June 8, 2008
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 223 views | 2 Comments
Up late last night hacking away it occurred to me to give the new iTunes movies a go, now that the feature is available in Canada. My first impression: very, very nice indeed. The rental process was trivial, iTunes downloaded the film in the background exactly the same way it does when buying music, and it played back with nary an issue.
Video quality on a 22″ widescreen monitor was good but more importantly to me, the responsiveness of the iTunes controls was excellent. As a long time user of VLC, which is amazing software, my only gripe towards it is that for some video formats some controls such as fast-forward and rewind are sluggish, or too coarse, or occasionally non-operational. iTunes behaved exactly as one would expect, even scrubbing forward and back through the video seamlessly without hiccup.
I like that at 3:30am with 25 minutes to go in the movie I was able to simply put my machine to sleep, wake it up this morning and resume watching the remained without issue.
Unfortunately Rambo wasn’t available for rental yet so I tried it out on Hitman instead. Lest you be entertaining a similar notion, allow me to suggest you do not. Ever. Hitman is a celebration of cinematic mediocrity and ham-like acting.
(And I know what you’re thinking, but know that movies which require concentration and intellectual thought are not complimentary to writing code at the same time, especially late at night. A movie that requires little thought punctuated with explosions is in fact ideal for remaining awake and stimulated. Don’t judge me.)
I’ll definitely be using the iTunes movie rental again.
The Reason Dev Environments Should be Sandboxed
Posted on April 24, 2008
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 358 views | 2 Comments
We developers love getting detailed bug reports - the more detailed the better in fact. Unless you’re reporting that something broke your pr0n in which case, less detail might be best.
(If you’re not seeing it, keep scrolling down… and who is Paola Rey anyhow?)
CNN Shirts Beta
Posted on April 21, 2008
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 598 views | 2 Comments
CNN Shirt is a great idea, made even greater by the gaping content security hole that allows anyone to create any t-shirt headline they want (look in the URL for details).
I’d love to get this shirt:
CNN is “America’s Most Trusted News Source” so it must be true.
HP Thinks I’m an Idiot
Posted on April 18, 2008
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 303 views | Leave a Comment
Actually, they think we’re all idiots if their printer driver installer is any indication.
Curious about why a printer driver would need 250 megs of space I clicked on the “More Info” button:
As a general rule of thumb when the user asks “What is it that’s being installed on my computer?” (which is really what the More Info button is), the proper response is “x and y and z” and not “Don’t worry, you’ll love it. Hey look, shiny!”
Condescension is what happens when you leave the marketing wanks in charge of your customer satisfaction. Don’t do that, ever.
But It Always Says It’s Sorry Afterwards!
Posted on April 11, 2008
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 924 views | Leave a Comment
This is going to seem like an anti-Windows rant but really, Windows is just the catalyst for this, again. The deeper question driving this post is this: why do we still put up with this shit?
The machine: a brand-new HP 6820s laptop, out of the box.
The operating system: Windows XP.
The place: a nondescript urban office.
Yesterday the laptop booted just fine, loaded XP, everything is as good as it’s ever going to get. The machine spends the day doing not a whole lot since it doesn’t have any useful software on it yet but this morning, a cold boot and:
We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware failure or software change might have caused this.
A couple hours and much effort later, it turns out that it seems to be suffering from a well-known yet oddly difficult to define problem that may or may not have something to do with Mup.sys and for which the solution is to re-install Windows from scratch.
Really? One day of operation and I’m already at the point where the machine is so hosed it needs to be re-imaged?
Why?
Why do we still put up with this shit? Seriously. Can anyone think of any other product for which we’d happily shell out $1200 bucks, take it home, have it completely, spectacularly fail to work, and accept that sometimes that’s the way it is? Fuck no.
We in North America live in a world in which the vast majority of the cost of what we buy is determined by convenience - we pay an inordinate amount for the convenience of the purchase as opposed to the actual material good of the product. When I buy frozen pizzas as the grocery store for $8 instead of buying the ingredients to make my own for $3, I’m paying for convenience. When I buy coffee at Starbucks instead of making my own at home, I’m paying for convenience. $13 movie tickets are just another convenience (”experience” is another word for this phenomenon, in paying for a large screen and not having to wait for it on DVD two months later). My Logitech tv remote synchs itself to my devices and grabs a whole whack of crap off the internet without me having to really care about what it’s doing; that’s pretty convenient and I paid to not have to manually program one myself.
If someone has ever told you something “just works” and they’ve happily paid a little more for it (you know what I’m talking about), they’re really saying they’re glad they paid for the convenience of it.
Yet Windows continues to deliver absolutely no convenience whatsoever and we’re still paying for it. Think of it this way: what part of a brand-new, completely non-functional laptop provides $1200 worth of value to the consumer? None of it. As is, it is a beautifully-assembled collection of a couple dozen dollars worth of precious metals, plastic and high-quality glass functioning as a remarkably unwieldy paper-weight.
The moment I have to spend my day trouble-shooting the original problem, re-installing Windows, re-configuring the user and network settings and hoping that tomorrow it doesn’t all happen again, the value of every cent spent on the convenience factor of this purchase evaporates; it becomes wasted money.
Ok, I Lied
Ok, I lied. This is going to be an anti-Windows rant, and here it comes as a comparison of operating systems.
Linux is free and with that you get every bit of convenience you’ve paid for. Given the blood, sweat and tears expended by a massive number of Linux contributors chances are if you stick with Ubuntu you’ll be up and running just fine; the work of that army of people is the currency of any convenience factor you perceive. But if Linux goes wrong then you’re going to be inconvenienced and that’s exactly what you’ve paid for. No slight to Linux, that. An entire industry has built itself up around pay-for-convenience services on top of Linux and that, IMO, is a great thing. It abstracts the cost away, makes it optional, and provides it only to those who want it.
Mac OS has a very real convenience cost built in, though it is much less than Windows zealots would have you believe. This cost reduction is not because there is less convenience now but rather because the cost used to be higher in the past and today’s users are just reaping the benefits of that. Unlike hardware, high-cost quality in software paid for in the past often continues to pay dividends into the future, even as the quality cost reduces. If the convenience cost of Mac OS 10.1 was an extra $400 back then, that convenience value is still in the OS today but at a cost today of only $40 (those are wildly arbitrary numbers simply to illustrate a point).
And Mac users realize this value (both in the cognitive sense and in the financial sense). It is precisely this that we refer to when we say “it just works” and “I don’t know, I don’t have that problem” and when we casually put the lid of our laptops down and drop them into our laptop bags knowing the machine will go to sleep as it should instead of having to shut it down each time while watching it do so to make it sure it really does shut down (you know who you are and which machines I’m talking about).
A real-world example of why I pay for the Mac convenience happened just the other day. I own a MacBook Pro. After 98 cycles the battery was down to 46%. That’s crap, that is. Apple’s own spec is 80% after 300 cycles. I took the machine back to the store it was bought at and, no questions asked, had a new battery at no cost. As you would expect. That should not be considered an exceptional experience, that’s how it should work. Fortunately it did.
I have yet to perceive this convenience cost-to-value relationship in Windows, at any level. In fact, Windows is amazingly inconvenient to use, all costs considered. Organizations pay massive licensing fees to Microsoft for the convenience of homogenizing Windows throughout their organization and then get knocked down by a single rampant virus. Home users pay for the convenience of wireless networking cards and then resign themselves to a wired shackle when “I don’t know, it’s never worked” (you can substitute your favourite “it doesn’t work” story for “wireless card” there; feel free to share in the comments). And most recently everyone’s paying an inflated convenience fee in the form of Vista, often to find out they can no longer use their printers, or cameras, or software with it.
Quite frankly, that’s just insane.
The Real Switchers?
This in fact may be the best argument for switching to Linux that I can think of, from the perspective of the typical home user. If every moment you spend battling your computer erodes the value of the convenience you’ve paid for (your time, your patience, those have a real value) then perhaps it makes sense to pay zero for convenience. You can’t erode zero.
In my opinion the Ubuntu folks have already surpassed Microsoft in terms of raw code quality and operational stability with their operating system (though Vista’s “two graphical steps forward and a Boston marathon of compatibility steps backwards” approach has really helped Ubuntu there).
From a pure dollars-to-convenience value perspective Mac OS on Apple hardware cannot (yet) be beat. Ubuntu is making impressive strides and undoubtedly both have left Microsoft motionless in the dust because as it stands today, Microsoft holds a massive global convenience deficit.
Explaining My Twittering
Posted on April 7, 2008
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 407 views | 1 Comment
I just finished reading Joe Kissell’s excellent article Instant Messaging for Introverts which is so true-to-form for me that it felt like I could have written it myself. The gist of it is this: Joe, an introvert, explains what life in in an always-on, Twitter/iChat world is like for introverts. I’m especially fond of this part:
However, given the choice, I do generally prefer to be alone. If you asked me which would be more fun - going to a lively party where I’d be socializing with a couple dozen other people or sitting in a quiet corner reading a book - I wouldn’t even have to think about it: I’d much rather sit alone and read. All things being equal, I prefer smaller gatherings to larger ones, and I prefer solitude to company. To put it differently, being around other people seems to drain my energy, whereas being alone (or with smaller, quieter groups) gives me more energy. When I’ve spent hours around other people, I need to be alone to recharge, whereas for an extrovert, it’s typically the opposite: being alone saps energy, and being around other people restores it.
Introvert or extrovert, I suggest popping over to read the whole article. It just might open up a whole new perspective into some of your friends online. (And lest you think that brief quote sums up the whole article, it doesn’t. In fact it misses the good points entirely).
Joe’s article got me thinking about my use of Twitter, which I’ve tried to use the way most people seem to, and I think I’ve been failing miserably at it. So let me explain:
Who I Follow
Who I’m following on Twitter has almost no relation to who I actually like and consider a friend IRL. It’s more an aggregate function of these criteria, quite possibly in this order of importance:
- You post infrequently
- You post things I find interesting
- You post things that make me laugh
- You post a high level of geek content that makes me think
- I like you IRL enough to wonder about your day-to-day life
- Your posts are not the minutia of your day-to-day life
If I’m not following you in return you it’s simply because your idea of what constitutes good Twitter content doesn’t mesh with my hierarchy of Twitter content relevance. If your inner voice is your Twitter outer voice then I don’t mean to be rude but I’m just not interested. (Look at it this way: I love the BBC and I dumped them because they post just too damned often. CBC: you’re getting dangerously close.)
How I Decide What to Post
I’ve realized that I’ve unconsciously been using the list above also as a filter for what I post to Twitter. As such there’s a good chance that while I’m following you, you might not be following me simply because all the “I” statements in that list may not translate into “You” statements for you. Great! I promise not to be offended.
Twit Conversations
I have absolutely no interest in having a conversation via Twitter. None. Email me, IM me, don’t call me on the phone unless you absolutely have to. I’ve tried using Twitter for a conversation twice now and the 140 character limitation makes it feel like the communicative equivalent of grunting while throwing rocks at each other. Hopefully we’re both a bit more clever than that.
W(h)ither Twitter?
After almost a month of Twitter (though I do often forget to start up Twitterific) I have a nagging and growing suspicion that I’m going to abandon it completely at some point in the near future. To date I can’t actually remember anything I’ve seen on Twitter that struck me as being worth remembering. To be honest I much prefer reading your blog or getting a beer with you and talking in person.
Frankly, you’re far more interesting that way. Hopefully so am I.
(Aside: I just posted the URL for this post via Twitter to see if that was viable, and to revel in the semi-irony of it. Doing so felt very, very awkward. I suppose I’m not very good at the blatant self-promotion.)
Creative Looks Gift Horse In Mouth, Shoots it In Head, Apologizes Afterwards
Posted on April 4, 2008
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 330 views | Leave a Comment
Dear Creative: you’re doing it wrong.
But in all seriousness, Creative’s mis-handling of this situation is a great learning opportunity for other companies. The lesson is simple:
If your users care enough about your product to improve it themselves, thank them. Use them. Hire them. Pay them.
William Gibsom famously wrote:
The street finds its own use for things.
The equation at play is very simple: no matter how many big brains you have inside your organization creating things, there are more big brains outside your organization doing whatever they damned well please with your product. In an age of digital distribution, with the ubiquity of decompilers, and facing an army of hackers who’ve used computers since they day they were born, the corporation is no longer in control.
The open-source community already understands this. In fact, it speaks to the fundamental tenet upon which OSS is built: that you too can make it better and in doing so, mine is better too.
Not every hardware company will get this. Fewer still will support it. But it behooves all consumer hardware companies to, at the very least, turn a willing blind eye to the hacking of their products. Don’t alienate the hackers, embrace them. They just might create your next business model for you.
Ventus Available Gratis
Posted on April 1, 2008
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 404 views | 2 Comments
I just noticed that Karl Schroeder’s Ventus is now available for free in digital format from Karl’s site in damned near every kind of format you could ever want.
In my opinion the description on Karl’s site really doesn’t do Ventus justice:
Ventus is a novel of information apocalypse set in the far future. For a thousand years the sovereign Winds have maintained the delicate ecological balance of the terraformed planet Ventus. Now an alien force threatens to wrest control of the terraforming system away from the Winds…
Jordan Mason, a young tradesman, is thrust into the midst of an ancient galactic conflict when he becomes the only human on Ventus who can locate the source of the alien threat. But will he side with the Winds, who have brutally suppressed technological development among the human colonists of Ventus? Or will he throw in his lot with an entity that may be planning to remake Ventus in its own, deathly image?
It’s actually far more interesting than that sounds. If you’re a fan of sci-fi/fantasy that also contains a healthy dose of hyper-plausible future tech (as opposed to the stuff from authors who treat future tech as a form of quasi-magical plot crutch/story filler) I urge you to download Ventus and give it a go. I thoroughly enjoyed it when I first read it a few years ago and it still holds a spot on my bookshelf to this day.
I think I shall pick up Sun of Suns next.
(To be clear, this is not an April Fool’s joke, despite the date).
Into the Twitter
Posted on March 17, 2008
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 448 views | 3 Comments
Today I took the plunge, downloaded Twitterific and decided to give Twitter a go. It took me awhile because some time ago I decided to only engage in a limited number of social networking sites/experimnents. Before Facebook, something had to die (sorry Friendster). Before Twitter something else had to die (sorry LinkedIn).
It took about 10 seconds of use before I wondered: “how annoying could Twitter get?”. Two more seconds of thought: iTunes status updates automatically dumped out through Twitterific to Twitter. An annoying, useless update every 3 to 5 minutes! ‘Course no one would actually do that, it would be so extremely annoying and useless. I was wrong.
Which means I’m simply not thinking maliciously enough. I need to step it up a notch. iTunes and Adium status? iTunes, Adium and Transmit messages? How about going directly to the source and pumping all local Growl notification out through Twitterific? Now we’re talking!
I’ve added it to my “ToDo” list. Lucky for you its near the bottom.
(Twitter: senorprogrammer.)
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