Remembering

    For me it was Arthur C. Clarke’s 1979 novel “The Fountains of Paradise.”. I read it when I was in my early teens; old enough to understand the concepts of the science and technology of a space elevator as laid out in the book and at the same time young and impressionable enough to be fully enthralled by the story and its implications. I will never forget that book.

    It was one of the first SciFi novels I ever read, and afterwards I developed a voracious appetite for anything Science Fiction. I quickly discovered the other two masters of the Golden Age of SciFi and Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke became my new heroes, quickly followed by many others. To this day when I have the time to sit down and read it will be Science Fiction.

    In later years what struck me is that the advancing science turned the originally fictional idea of the space elevator into a real possibility. In the novel Clarke envisions a hyper filament; a form of a one-dimensional diamond crystal, being the only material strong enough to be used for a cable some 36000 kilometers long, linking Earth with a space station in geosynchronous orbit. These days thousands of scientists around the world are experimenting with carbon nanotubes, and commenting on its remarkable tensile strength. Now the concept of a Space Elevator is actively being investigated by NASA.

    This was hardly the first time Arthur C. Clarke envisioned the future. He started back in 1945 by publishing an article outlining the concept of the geosynchronous communication satellite. In his 1973 novel “Rendezvous with Rama” he predicted “Project Spaceguard”, an organization dedicated to tracking potential Earth-threatening asteroids. Project Spaceguard became reality in 1995.

    Earlier today, March 19th 2008 Arthur C. Clarke passed away at the Apollo Hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka. One of the sharpest minds ever to roam this Earth, with one of the gentlest hearts, the last of the Masters of SciFi has gone. Remember him, and the Fountains of Paradise will be forever flowing.

 

You decide for yourself. See the video.

 

    Florida Power & what?

    In October of 2005 hurricane Wilma ravaged South Florida with 120 mph winds, caused more then 20 billion dollars in damage and left 3.2 million FP&L customers without electricity.

    In February 2008 an overheating switch in a power substation near Miami, costing a few hundred dollars, left 4 million people without electricity, under a light 5 mph breeze.

 

HD DVD is dead, long live Blu-Ray.

    The war is over. Yesterday Toshiba announced it would stop producing HD DVD equipment. And thus Blu-Ray has won. Although not as expensive as the war in Iraq, Toshiba, Microsoft, Paramount and Universal are still going to have to cope with hundreds of millions of dollars in losses due to their support of the losing side.

    A war that has been waged for several years has seen many battles. But after HD DVD lost the battle of Warner Bros to victorious Blu-Ray, an unconditional surrender was all but inevitable. And Friday’s announcement that Wal-Mart was going to support Blu-Ray was merely the death-knell.

    The true winners in this conflict are you, me, and all the other consumers. Acceptance of the new DVD technologies has been delayed by an estimated 2 years because of this war. So, let us rejoice as we won war.

 

Fighting Comcast’s duality brutality.

    A new piece of legislation, "The Internet Preservation Act of 2008", has been introduced to support Net Neutrality. Although the bill itself is rather general and narrow in scope, if passed, it will have severe repercussions to internet providers (read Comcast) which throttle or block certain types of traffic.

    As US Congressman Edward J. Markey stated: "Internet freedom generally embodies the notion that consumers and content providers should be free to send, receive, access and use the lawful applications, content, and services of their choice on broadband networks, possess the effective right to attach and use non-harmful devices to use in conjunction with their broadband services, and that content providers not be subjected to unreasonably discriminatory practices by broadband network providers.". Trying to translate it from politicospeak, he states “Comcast bugger off”.

    As you may have heard, Comcast is screwing with their customers internet use by throttling bit torrent traffic, starting some nine months ago. Of course Comcast denied doing this even after the entire world had already verified it to be true. But then again, big corporations don’t have to be truthful; they just have to make money. In the meantime Comcast is the target of a class action lawsuit as well as an investigation by the FCC. As a result, Comcast recently updated its terms of service to better correspond with how they were actually screwing their customer’s.

    In the meantime however, the internet community in itself is still unclear if Net Neutrality is a good thing or not. Some say that Net Neutered would stifle content providers abilities to innovate, upgrade and improve their services as well as slowing acceptance of new technologies by customers. The opposition says exactly the same; that ISP’s will be unable to innovate, upgrade and improve their networks.

    It seems to me the truth is, as usual, somewhere in the middle, and it is best to leave well enough alone. Except Comcast of course. 
 

Why are we doing this anyway?

    I am going to assume most of my readers are not totally oblivious to today’s date and the fact it is generally recognized as Valentine’s Day. For the rest of you, you are either single, or you will be shortly, unless you get your butt in gear and go buy some chocolates and the pitiful remains of whatever passes for flowers after all other desperate shoppers got there before you.

    So, why are we doing this? What compels us to spend our hard earned money in a vain attempt to prove to our significant other that we love them by buying them overpriced flowers that will turn into brown muck before the end of the week? We do it because it is tradition, it is expected of us and if we don’t, we find ourselves sleeping on the couch. 

    Who do we blame for this tradition?

    Some say Valentine’s Day is named after Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni. Although it is possible they were actually the same person. Either way, they are both dead. And death is not very romantic so that can’t have anything to do with it.

    Another possibility is fertility festivals celebrated in ancient times around mid-February. To begin such a festival, a priest would gather all the villagers and sacrifice a goat. The boys of the village would then take strips of goat hide and slap the girls they liked. I am not sure about you, but I would not want to date any woman whose idea of romance is being slapped with bloody goat hide.

    Then there is the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Apparently back in 1382 he wrote these lines:
    For this was on seynt Volantynys day 
    Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.
If I attempt to translate that to modern English, it seems to have something to do with birds making cheese on Valentine’s Day. We move on.

    In the early 1800’s a bookstore owned by the Howland family in Worcester, Massachusetts started making and selling embossed paper lace Valentine’s Day cards. In the middle of the 20th century people started exchanging gifts, candy and flowers as well. And in the 1980’s the diamond industry pushed jewelry as a way of saying “I Love You”.

    And there we have it people. Stores selling cards, flowers, candy and jewelry are to blame for Valentine’s Day. It’s all about getting their greedy little fingers on the money.

    I’d suggest boycotting them, but I don’t want to sleep on the couch tonight.

    So, I wish a Happy Valentine’s Day to my readers. I love you all.
 
  

Hackers got the Powah!

    Those guys work fast! Windows Vista Service Pack 1 has yet to be released to the public and it is hacked already.

    Yesterday I posted my personal view on why Windows Vista failed to live up to expectations. In that post, I may have let slip some minor personal reservations towards Vista, as well as to the upcoming Service Pack 1. I can be very subtle. Microsoft already distributed SP1 to manufacturers, and it "will start being available to customers in March".

    SP1 contains a lot of bug fixes, tweaks, new drivers as well as some changes to the controversial Windows Genuine Advantage software, which checks registered software, and then automatically sends reports to Microsoft over the internet on what it has found. Previously WGA would shut down certain functions of Vista if it is found to be not “genuine”. After installation of SP1, it will be less drastic, but still show warning messages that are annoying enough to badger users into forking over money to Micro$oft for a real copy of Vista. In addition SP1 will disable two popular hacks that were used to circumvent WGA.

    It seems, at the same time I wrote my previous post, a hacker got his hands on SP1 and had some fun hobbying around with it. And before his pizza went cold, you guessed it; he found a new hack to turn a pirated copy of Vista with SP1 into a “genuine” copy.

    Microsoft still has several weeks before SP1 will be released to the general public. I suspect some people in Redmond will be putting in a lot of overtime.
 

Geeks got the powah!

    Many years ago I installed my mother’s first computer. Back then, computers were still running the Windows 95 operating system. Since then, my mother has owned several computers. Her most recent computer is a nice middle class, running Windows XP. With all those years of computing experience my mother is now quite capable of finding the Start button. And then she’ll call me for help.

    Of course, over the years she has had her share of computer problems. Who hasn’t? Some experiences were a bit daunting as she inadvertently wiped a disk, uninstalled whole software packages and downloaded lovely new screensavers with a complimentary virus, repeatedly. Fortunately for my mother she has a son who is a true geek and quite computer savvy.

    Recently she mentioned that it might be time for a new computer. These days all new computers come equipped with Windows Vista. It is unavoidable. And for a person such as my mother, what would be better then Windows Vista? It features better security then any other Windows operating system has ever had, and it is almost impossible to do something drastically stupid because you are asked a dozen times if that is really what you want to do. I think it would be enough to scare off my mother for sure!

    Indeed, Microsoft designed Windows Vista with users like my mother in mind. This new operating system protects you from bad things on the internet, shields you from things you don’t need to know about, and guides you along on anything that requires more then a single mouse click. It truly is a brave new world.

    So, do you think my mother will get a new computer with Windows Vista?
    Not if I have anything to say about it. And I do.

    My mother still has a son who is a true geek and quite computer savvy. And I don’t particularly care for Windows Vista, because Windows Vista is Microsoft newest piece of bloatware that is constantly harassing the user with pointless popup questions already answered a thousand times before. It repeatedly makes (wrong!) assumptions about what the user wants and how the user wants it. It even comes preinstalled with Microsoft spyware which will collect data on the use of Vista and send it over the internet to Microsoft every night. It can be disabled, but my mother would never find that option. And sure, the new Aero interface may look nice, but it doesn’t actually add to the usability of Vista. And it only runs well if you have the hardware to match.

    Because of all these issues, after a full year of being on the market, Windows Vista sales are nowhere near Microsoft's predicted outlook.  Microsoft claimed it would sell 400 million copies of Vista in the first 24 months (compare this to the 210 million copies of Windows XP sold in its first 36 months). The truth is harsher. Recent data from NDP indicates that Microsoft is shipping fewer copies of Vista in its first year then it did for XP in its first year, even though there are twice as many computers in the world now than when XP was released. And Gartner is reporting that many companies are postponing the introduction of Windows Vista to as late as 2009.

    A recent report by Pfeiffer Consulting focused on some of the user interface issues in Windows Vista. And their conclusion (page 7): “While the graphics of the new user interface are more sophisticated, Vista does not correct the User Interface Friction issues that plagued Windows XP. Windows Vista and particularly the new Aero user interface design, fared less well then in Windows XP.”

    So, what went wrong? The Windows Vista Aero interface is obviously ripped off from inspired by the Apple MacOS Aqua interface. Somebody at Microsoft decided to listen to the marketing department. Is that ever a good idea?

    As a result, Microsoft aimed Vista at the common user that makes up 99% of all Windows users. They made Vista look neat and slick and easy. Unfortunately, that last 1% of users is comprised of us: the geeks, the power users and the IT professionals. And we are the people who help and advise the other 99%. We are the people who do the installations for our mothers, do the software reviews, write the articles in the magazines, and decide on implementing Vista in the corporate environment. And this 1% does not like Vista.

    Next month Vista Service Pack 1 will be released. I believe I will sit back and wait and see what chaos that will bring. And if it's not too bad, then perhaps I may consider advising people to switch to Vista.  Eventually.  In another year or two. And my mother will just have to plod along with Windows XP until then.
 
Ps. Hi mom! Love you!