Lawrence's employer had heard that this newfangled "Desktop PC" could reduce their IT costs, and they wanted in on it. It was the mid 80s, and at the time, their plants scattered all over Alabama connected to a central mainframe via dumb terminals connected over very expensive leased lines. It was time to upgrade, and Lawrence wasn't in charge of it. He didn't get called in until things went wrong.
"This new PC system is really slow," he was told while on a plant tour. That didn't sound likely- the PCs were running blisteringly fast 4.77MHz, 8088 CPUs with 16Kb of RAM, and since someone had connected "arithmetic-heavy accounting usage" to "floating point processing", they all had 8087 co-processors. There was no way they were slow, especially since half the time they were just running a 3270 terminal emulator.
But sure enough, when they fired up the terminal emulator, it was slower than anything. Going from the login screen to the menu, and then from the menu to the order fulfillment screen took multiple minutes. Was the 300-baud smartmodem that slow? Lawrence fiddled connections, tested the line, and then eventually got around to cranking the volume on the modem's speaker. No, the modem wasn't that slow.
Whoever had configured the deployment had tried to mirror their old system as closely as possible. In the old system, the terminal started a new connection every time the user pressed enter, and then disconnected from the mainframe until the user triggered the next command. So in the new system, they did the same thing- which meant each time the client finished loading a screen, the modem would hang up.
That particular problem was easy to fix<script src="http://www.cornify.com/js/cornify.js" type="text/javascript"></script>, and simply involved making sure each PC had its own phone line, and that the terminal emulator made sure to keep the connection open. But one of their remote offices, someplace deep in the Alabama backwoods, proved intractable- they couldn't connect at all.
Lawrence tried diagnosing their problem remotely at first. The phone line seemed good- he could dial it; the plant users could dial out. He shipped them a fresh modem, and eventually a fresh PC, but nothing seemed to make a difference. They couldn't dial the mainframe. So he had to go out to the plant.
Having learned his lesson, the first thing Lawrence did was crank the volume on the modem speaker. When the computer attempted to dial out, he heard the sound of touchtone bleeps followed by a crackly voice saying, "Number please."
That particular plant was so back in the backwoods of Alabama that it didn't have direct-dial long distance. The users were so used to it that they didn't even think it could be the problem. The small town phone company had no firm plan when they would start doing it. Lawrence helped pack up the PCs and reinstall the dumb terminals. By the time he left that company, they were still using them. They might still be using them today.
It’s like this: The browser’s doomed, because apps are the future. Wait! Apps are doomed because HTML5 is the future. I see something almost every day saying one or the other. Only it’s mostly wrong.
[If you don’t want to read my opinions, hop to the end of this post for months & months worth of links to things I thought worth reading on the subject.]
If you want immersive/interactive polish, with ultra-fine control over your gradients and textures and how the things on the screen react to being touched, you need an app.
If you want to capture what the phone can see, permute that image’s colors based on how hard you shake it, and vibrate in the user’s hand to say it’s time to stop shaking, you need an app.
If you want to make an urgent phone call based on detecting that you’re within five minutes’ drive of your destination, you need an app.
If you want to be featured in a phone’s electronic storefront, and then be purchased effortlessly with a couple of taps, and have the charge end up on the monthly phone bill, you need an app.
If you want to port your existing C++ shooter which is based on one of the big gaming engines to a new mobile platform, you need an app.
If your app is mostly about delivering highly-readable text that flows around pictures and contains navigational links, be in the browser.
If you don’t want to be in anyone else’s storefront and pay them a piece of the action for access to the customers, be in the browser.
If you don’t have the budget to write an Android app and an iOS app and (soon, maybe) a Windows Phone app, be in the browser.
If you want to be sure you can reach everybody everywhere, even the ones who aren’t rich enough or hip enough to have the latest pocket jewel, be in the browser.
If you need to be sure you can update your app, not in iOS’ weeks or Android’s however-long-until-the-user-updates, but right now, then be in the brower.
The apps-are-the-future absolutists like to point to Instagram and yep, it’s interesting, all right. Consider this dreamy photo by Scott Hanselman. Is it part of the Web? Well, it must be, because I just linked to it. But can you find it in Google? Not directly, because Instagram explicitly tells the search engines to go away. But, well, you sort of can anyhow. Does the example really prove anything? You decide.
Pardon me while I get a little geeky and address the Morlocks in the mobile sausage factories:
HTML5/Browser technology is moving forward fast; which will be changing some of the trade-offs above. But then, so is mobile-app technology. It’s complicated.
The mobile-app programming models are better than the rococo pandemonium of DOM and JS and CSS and friends. Otherwise, why do things like CoffeeScript and Dart and WebSockets need to exist? It’s complicated.
There are very few pure things in this world; lots and lots of apps have WebViews inside, doing the heavy content-display lifting. Did I say it’s complicated?
It seems very likely to me that there’s something simple and beautiful lurking inside the browser platform that will hit the greatest 80/20 point in software history. But I’ve been thinking that for a decade or more, now.
Of course, this will be out-of-date the morning after I hit “publish”. But still.
This Is Not The Net You Thought You Knew by Jon Evans, 2011/12. Tl;dr: There are lots of new technologies behind the scenes.
Bedrock by Alex Russell, 2012/4. TL;dr: Lengthy but dense ramblings on the nature of the browser platform; contains the phrase “Turing tar pit”.
Will Apps Kill Websites? by Jeff Atwood, 2012/4. Tl;dr: No.
Apps are too much like 1990's CD-ROMs and not enough like the Web by Scott Hanselman, 2011/12. Tl;dr: “The real win is linking”.
The Man Who Makes the Future: Wired Icon Marc Andreessen by Chris Anderson, 2012/04. Tl;dr: Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. But Marca gives money to Republicans these days thus his current opinions can safely be ignored.
Defining the Post-App Economy by Dan Rowinsky, 2012/4, and Why Apple Won by Betting Against the Web by Sarah Kessler, 2012/5. Tl;dr: HTML5 is groovy, but not just yet.
Financial Times passes 2m users for its HTML5 web app by Stuart Dredge, 2012/04, and Why Tech Review is ditching its iPad edition by Cory Doctorow, 2012/5. Tl;dr: The browser is for publishing, amirite?
Triggering Numeric Keyboards with HTML5 by Pamela Fox, 2012/5, and Shell Apps and Silver Bullets by Benjamin Sandofsky, 2012. Tl;dr: The mobile Web is hard.
Apps Aren't Dead. Neither is The Web. The Parrot Is, Though... by Richard MacManus, 2012/5. Tl;dr: “This isn't an ‘X is dead’ kind of article”.
"We're had been using a manufacturer's web service, but started getting errors all of a sudden," wrote Peter Lindgren. "Something has really, really failed."
<StatusCode>InternalServerError</StatusCode> <StatusDescription>Internal Server Error</StatusDescription> <WebHeaders> <X-Backside-Transport>FAIL FAIL,FAIL FAIL,FAIL FAIL</X-Backside-Transport> </WebHeaders>
"Fortunately, a short time later, it started working again with this message."
<StatusCode>OK</StatusCode> <StatusDescription>OK</StatusDescription> <WebHeaders> <X-Backside-Transport>OK OK,OK OK,OK OK</X-Backside-Transport> </WebHeaders>"I'm not sure of the purpose of this," Jasmine wrote via the Submit to The Daily WTF visual studio extension, "maybe the stack was just too small or something?"
Public Function Save() As Boolean Try SaveMeeting() Catch ex As Exception Throw ex End Try End Function
"I was asked to modify some simple web page used to generate an online store," Mihai Todor wrote, "here's a Javascript function that I found in it, which is used to validate the required fields."
function checkdata() { dataok = true; t1 = document.forms.signup.firstName.value; t2 = document.forms.signup.lastName.value; t3 = document.forms.signup.userName.value; t4 = document.forms.signup.password.value; t5 = document.forms.signup.passwordConfirm.value; t6 = document.forms.signup.email.value; t7 = document.forms.signup.url.value; t8 = document.forms.signup.adminFrontname.value; t9 = document.forms.signup.locale.options.selectedIndex; t10 = document.forms.signup.currency.options.selectedIndex; t11 = document.forms.signup.timezone.options.selectedIndex; t12 = document.forms.signup.packetType.options.selectedIndex; t13 = document.forms.signup.captcha_code.value; if(t1 == '' || t2 == '' || t3 == '' || t4 == '' || t5 == '' || t6 == '' || t7 == '' || t8 == ''){ alert("Please fill-up all the fields"); dataok = false; return(dataok);} if(t4 != t5){ alert("Please enter the password again"); dataok = false; return(dataok);} if(t9 == 0){ alert("Please select a locale"); dataok = false; return(dataok);} if(t10 == 0){ alert("Please select a currency"); dataok = false; return(dataok);} if(t11 == 0){ alert("Please select a time zone"); dataok = false; return(dataok);} if(t12 == 0){ alert("Please select a packet type"); dataok = false; return(dataok);} if(t13 == ''){ alert("Please fill-up the code field"); dataok = false; return(dataok);} return(dataok); }
"I've seen these types of constants on The Daily WTF before and always questioned if they were real," wrote Sterge, "and then I saw these."
public static final String SLASH = "/"; public static final String PERCENT = "%";
"I'm on a team that maintains a pretty 'serious' banking application," Giga B wrote, "it's pretty serious about the number of parameters in functions."
public void WriteStep1Data(int LoanRequestID, string InsertDate, string OperatorID, string FirstName, string LastName, string BirthDay, int DocuemntTypeID, int MaritialStatusID, string DocumentIssueDate, string DocumentExpireDate, string DocumentIssuer, string DocumentNo, string PersonalNo, int UniversityDegreeID, string Address, string Address2, int RealAddressLivingPeriod, int ChildrenCount, int FamilyMembersCount, decimal MonthlyIncome, decimal MonthlyFamilyExpanses, string HomePhoneNumber, string MobilePhoneNumber, string WorkPhoneNumber, string EmailAddress, string JobOrganizationName, string JobOrganizationAddress, string JobOrganizationActivity, string JobOrganizationPhoneNumber, string JobPosition, string JobWorkingYears, string JobBossName, string JobBossPhoneNumber, byte ClientSex, decimal FinTotalProductsAmount, decimal FinCommissionAmount, int FinLoanPeriod, decimal FinFirstPaymentAmount, decimal FinLoanAmount, decimal FinMonthlyPaymentAmount, string GuarantorName, string GuarantorLastName, string GuarantorBirthDate, string GuarantorPersonalNo, int? GuarantorDocType, string GuarantorDocumentNo, string GuarantorDocIssuer, string GuarantorDocIssueDate, string GuarantorDocExpireDate, string GuarantorTelHome, string GuarantorTelMobile, string GuarantorAddress, string GuarantorAddressReal, string GuarantorJobName, decimal GuarantorIncome, byte? GuarantorSex, decimal HistoryPlaticAnnualTurnOver, string HistoryDescription, string MarketingQ1, string MarketingQ2, int StatusID, string DateViewed, string DateAnswered, string BackOfficeUserID, string RepaymentDate, string ShopID, string CalculationGroupID, decimal RegFeeAmount, int clientDeptNo, int guarantorDeptNo, int guarantorMaritialStatusID, string AccountCodeWord, string ClientFatherName, string ClientBirthPlace, string ClientCityAttendingToReg, string GuarantorFatherName, string GuarantorBirthPlace, string GuarantorCityAttendingToReg, string GuarantorJobActivity, string GuarantorJobPosition, string GuarantorJobContactPhone, string GuarantorJobCodeWord, string GuarantorEmailAddress ) { ... snip a few hundred lines ... }
"I learned a neat trick from our enterprise framework," Eli noted, "if you want to convert an int to a double, just do this!"
double d = Double.valueOf(new Integer(i).toString()).doubleValue();
"I had to look over some C# code written by a colleague of mine," notes John D, "the following lines represent just the tip of the iceberg of the pain that I had to go through while understanding the code."
bool true1 =true; bool true12 = true; .... snip .... true1 = false; true1 = false;
"I found this pattern in source code I have been working on," wrote Nas Nubian, "this is how some developer decided to open a new window for when users click on a links."
<a href="/the/path/to/the/url" onclick="window.open(this.getAttribute('href'),'_blank');return false;"> link text </a>
"So," wonders Johnny B, "I guess GUID from our production db servers are better than local GUID?"
Function GetNewGuid() Dim cnGuid, rsGuid Set cnGuid = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") Set rsGuid = CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset") cnGuid.Open = _ "Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;" + "Data Source=<production server>; " + "Initial Catalog=<production DB> " + "user id = '********';" + "password='*********'"" rsGuid.Open "SELECT newid() as Guid", cnGuid If Not rsGuid.EOF Then GetNewGuid = rsGuid("Guid").Value End If End Function
"The comment says it all," wrote Michael.
/** * Defines the value for none. Default is "none". */ public static String NONE = "none";
"This is snippet of code I found in a large program I maintain," wrote Brian. "The original developers have long since moved on. Funnily enough, this particular code was properly mutexed, but I guess the paranoid programmer doesn't trust mutexes. I only wish the original developers were so 'paranoid' when it came to avoiding things like buffer overflows, memory leaks, and sql injection."
if ( resData.state() == RESOURCE_STATE_ACTIVE ) { elapsedTime.setBase( resData.startTime() ); if ( elapsedTime.diff() >= maxDuration ) { // Do one more validity check, the paranoid programmer knows // the state may have changed since the last check. if ( resData.state() == RESOURCE_STATE_ACTIVE ) { resourceActiveTooLong( resData ); } } }
Particularly intense botanical red; it remains the Achilles’ heel of the sensor in many (all?) digicams. I often see things in my garden that I just can’t get close to with the combination of camera and screen; hm, perhaps the problem is computer screens not camera sensors? Here we have some Japanese maple leaves against blue sky.
The leaves were actually redder than this, but at least the sensor, while losing some of the intensity, managed to get close to the tint.
Generally I haven’t had a positive attitude towards the NBN. It doesn’t seem likely to fulfill the claims of commercial success and would be a really bad thing to privatise anyway. Also it hasn’t seemed to offer any great benefits either. The claim that it will enable lots of new technical developments which we can’t even imagine yet that aren’t possible with 25Mb/s ADSL but which also don’t require more than the 100Mb/s speed of the NBN never convinced me.
But one thing it could really do well is to give better Internet access in remote areas. Ideally with static or near-static IPv6 addresses (because we have already run out of IPv4 addresses). Currently 3G networks do all sorts of nasty NAT things to deal with the lack of IPv4 addresses which causes a lot of needless pain if you have a server connected via 3G. One of the NBN plans is for wireless net access to remote homes, with some sanity among the people designing the network such NBN connections would all have static IPv6 subnets as long as they don’t move.
I’m currently working on a project that involves servers on 3G links. I don’t have a lot of options on implementation due to hardware and software constraints. So if the ISPs using the NBN and the NBN itself (for the wireless part) could just give us all IPv6 static ranges then lots of problems would be solved.
Of course I don’t have high hopes for this. One of the many ways that the NBN has been messed up is in allowing the provision of lower speed connections. As having an ADSL2+ speed NBN connection is the cheapest option a lot of people will choose it. Therefore the organisations providing services will have to do so with the expectation that most NBN customers have ADSL2+ speed and thus they won’t provide services to take advantage of higher speeds.
Related posts:
"I found this ad for an interior design company," wrote Wouter, "they probably do a lot of rectangular designs."
"How am I supposed to troubleshoot this?" wonders Jeff Mitchell.
"I'm not really sure what happened here, but I had to use Chrome's developer tools to hack my birthdate into the form so I could submit it," writes Dave.
"I need this form to renew my immigration documents," writes Jack Nathan, "what do i do now?!?"
"I found this ad for an interior design company," wrote Wouter, "they probably do a lot of rectangular designs."
"My mother's middle name has 3 characters." wrote Julie Crowner. "I only have a middle initial. Fortunately, we're the only ones impacted by this. Well, except Ada. And Aja. And Ala, Ali, Ama, Ami, Amy, Ana, Ann, Ara, Ava, Bea, Bee, Bev, Deb, Dee, Dot, Eda, Ela, Ema, Ena, Era, Eva, Eve, Exa, Fae, Fay, Flo, Gay, Gia, Ica, Icy, Ida, Ila, Ilo, Ima, Imo, Ina, Ira, Isa, Iva, Ivy, Iza, Jan, Joe, Joi, Joy, Kai, Kay, Kia, Kim, Kya, Lea, Lee, Leo, Lia, Liz, Lou, Lue, Luz, Lyn, Mae, Mai, May, Meg, Mia, Mya, Nan, Nia, Nya, Oda, Ola, Oma, Ona, Ora, Osa, Ota, Ova, Pam, Pat, Rae, Ray, Roy, Sky, Sue, Tai, Tea, Tia, Tom, Ula, Una, Ura, Val, Zoa, Zoe, Abb, Abe, Ace, Acy, Ada, Add, Alf, Ali, Amy, Ann, Ari, Art, Asa, Bee, Ben, Bob, Bud, Cal, Cam, Cap, Cas, Che, Con, Coy, Dan, Dax, Dee, Del, Doc, Don, Dow, Ean, Ebb, Edd, Edw, Eli, Ell, Ely, Eva, Fay, Fed, Foy, Gay, Gee, Geo, Gil, Gus, Guy, Hal, Ham, Hoy, Huy, Ian, Ida, Ike, Ira, Irl, Iva, Ivy, Jan, Jax, Jay, Jeb, Jed, Jep, Jim, Job, Joe, Jon, Joy, Kai, Kay, Kem, Ken, Kim, Kip, Kit, Lea, Lee, Lem, Len, Leo, Les, Lew, Lex, Lim, Lon, Lou, Loy, Luc, Lue, Lum, Lyn, Mac, Mae, Mal, Mat, Max, May, Mel, Moe, Nat, Ned, Nim, Noe, Obe, Oda, Ola, Ole, Ora, Ott, Ova, Pat, Rae, Ras, Ray, Red, Rex, Rey, Rob, Rod, Roe, Ron, Roy, Sal, Sam, Sid, Sie, Sim, Sol, Son, Tab, Tad, Taj, Tal, Ted, Tex, Tim, Tod, Tom, Toy, Tre, Tye, Val, Van, Vic, Von, Wes, Yee, Zeb, and Zed." What will people with all these middle names do?
"My company recently partnered with a developer who had a custom applicatio written in Microsoft Access that we are now forced to train/support/install," writes Ben Reisner. "The following error message is just one of many that has an interesting definition of Equal."
Kira Russell snapped this when it was a bit cold in North Wales.
"I'm still getting used to my new keyboard, and occasionally hit the '\' and ENTER keys at the same time," writes Michael Dowden. "I was pretty sure I had done this one morning when I logged in to Windows for the first time, however I got in okay and figured all was well...until I got back from a morning meeting, having locked my workstation. I was greeted with the usual login prompt (screenshot attached), but with '\' appended to my username. I was forced to hard boot my machine since Windows doesn't allow you to edit your username on the locked-login screen."
Everybody in the IT department was quite happy -- even a little surprised -- with how well the outsourced project to replace the legacy billing system was progressing.
Well, actually, the project managers weren't all that surprised. Over the past four months, they'd pumped out reams of specs and design documents, often boasting that their level of planning hadn't been seen since the Apollo missions. So, for them, the fact that everything was turning out as designed spoke volumes about the success of their planning and processes.
Jeff and the other developers who were stuck supporting the existing billing system until the big cutover (still a few months away) wanted to see what this super system looked like under the hood. After all, because they were expected to support the new system once it came online, shouldn't they at least have an understanding of how the underlying code worked?
The developers made their case for months before the project managers gave up on their "it's not done yet" rhetoric and reluctantly handed over a few modules that they'd deemed bug-free.
When Jeff got his hands on the code, one line in particular caught his eye:
int strElapsedDays = ( convertDate(intDay1, intMonth1, intYr1) - convertDate(intDay2, intMonth2, intYr2)) / DAY;
Knowing that C# had built-in functions to easily determine the span of days between two dates, Jeff thought the approach was a little strange. Once he tracked down convertDate, things got even weirder:
public const int DAY = 86400;
public const int WEEK = 604800;
public const int YEAR = 31449600;
private static int convertDate(int day, int month, int year)
{
int[] months = new int[]
{ 0,31,59,90,120,151,
181,212,243,273,304,334 };
return ( ((year - 1970) * DAY * 365) +
(((year - 1970)/4) * DAY) +
(months[month - 1] * DAY) + ((day-1) * DAY) );
}
Caught off guard, Jeff just stared at the function for a good 10 minutes, trying to figure it out. When he did, it hit him like a ton of bricks. Rather than using the built-in C# date functions, the developer had opted to convert a date into its Unix Epoch -- the number of seconds elapsed since Jan. 1, 1970 -- and work from there.
Jeff had to admit, the solution was a little bit genius. Unfortunately, it wasn't a fit because the new system was running on a Windows server. So Jeff did his duty and raised the matter with the project management team so it could be added to the bug-fix queue for the offshore team.
Weeks later, Jeff followed up with one of the members of the project management team, just out of curiosity, to see if the fix had been made. To his surprise, it hadn't been addressed -- nor would it be any time soon. Apparently the "bug" was downgraded to a feature request because -- in the eyes of the project managers -- if an application functioned as it was designed, there wasn't a need to go back in and change it. <fck:hr> </fck:hr>
Epoch Billing System was originally published in the March 2011 edition of Visual Studio Magazine. VSM is the leading site for enterprise .NET developers, and offers a free magazine subscription for influential readers.
It’s May so Cottage Life is recurring. On the island, many of the things one sees and wishes to photograph are far away thus must be captured through fairly specialized lenses which tend to impose their perceptions, particularly when the lenses are elderly and actually not that elite. Here are three of those.
The lens in question is my Tokina f5.6 400mm, which has a story attached.
I processed these in Lightroom. It has a superb noise-reduction module, which on this occasion I wished had negative settings to crank up the vintage-telephoto grainy dreaminess. Which would probably betray truth-before-beauty. But anyhow, Lightroom doesn’t.
[Update: Actually (see the comments), it turns out that Lightroom does.]
I’ve been working on some ideas for clean-screen apps; instead of controlling them with the touch screen, you wave your device around or tap it or shake it. To do this, I’ve been learning about the output of the sensors you find on Android devices. I’ve found that the documentation, while complete, contains some scary-looking math and assumes you know more about quaternions and rotation vectors than the average developer. Well, more than I do.
So I created a little app called “Sensplore” which captures sensor data, dresses it up in CSV (spreadsheet) format, and emails it to you. It’s Apache2-licensed on Google code; for those who just want to run it, go hit Google Play Apps.
It took me a couple of tries, a few visits to StackOverflow.com, and input from Android engineering, to get this right; for example, the graphs I recently published in Sensor Kinetics Pictures were, well, wrong. I’ve found it really quite helpful in figuring out what the sensors do. It’s only available on Gingerbread-or-higher devices.
When you run the app, it fills the screen with a button saying “Go!” Once you press that, you can shake or tap or wave the device as much as you want, then hit the button again, which will have changed to read “Done!”
When you’re done, Sensplore writes out the CSV and fires an intent with ACTION_SEND, which shows you a big list of candidates to do the sending; if you pick Gmail, it shows up as an email from you to you with the subject filled in and the CSV data as an attachment, so you can download it, fire up your favorite spreadsheet program, and get it to draw graphs of what the sensor data is showing you.
[Digression: This made me feel a little bit silly; I’d been toying with all sorts of ideas for getting the data off the device, including RESTful back-ends and the like. The idea of just emailing seemed impossibly klunky at first blush, but in practice it works pretty well; it brings up the Gmail app and I found myself tapping in a few reminder notes to myself before hitting “Send”.]
I suspect that someone who really understands app scripting could set up their favorite spreadsheet to draw the graphs automatically; I end up selecting ranges and asking for graphs, which feels a bit laborious.
Sensplore generates CSV containing two output sets, each with four columns of numbers. Each set has a time (msec) column and three floating-point x, y, and z values.
The first group is the raw data you get from a Sensor.TYPE_ACCELEROMETER sensor, which to say acceleration along the x, y, and z axes in the device space; the axes are illustrated in this image from the SensorEvent docs.
You have to be careful with this data; “acceleration” may not mean what you think it does. I’ll probably have more to say later about best practices for using this stuff, but a look at the data is instructive.
The second group represents successive changes in rotation angle around the x, y, and z axes. It’s not measured directly; we take the samples from the Sensor.TYPE_ROTATION_VECTOR sensor, turn them into rotation matrices using SensorManager.getRotationMatrixFromVector(), then extract changes from successive pairs of matrices using SensorManager.getAngleChange(). Once again, these are in device not world co-ordinates.
The code for doing this is easy to get wrong, so if you’re going to want data like this, stealing a few lines from Sensplore might be a good idea.
Here are two graphs, produced by Sensplore and iWork’s “Numbers” spreadsheet, showing what happens when I hold my Galaxy Nexus upright facing me and make chopping motions to the left, back, right, and forward, returning to vertical after each chop. The first graph is the accelerometer data, the second the angle changes.
I’m not claiming that these are the only interesting sensors. I’m not claiming that the data they produce, or the way that Sensplore processes it, will meet your needs. This isn’t an official Google tool, and may not get any more attention from me; on the other hand, I may use it as a workbench to to explore other sensors and how to analyze their data.
Having said all that, programming up against the analog-to-digital coalface is a new experience for many of us, and anything that helps understand the raw data might prove useful to a few. After all, this is one area in which mobile-device software is profoundly different; waving ordinary computers around in the air is rarely useful.
A client just lent me a new Mac Mini with OS/X Lion to play with. I think it’s interesting to compare it with regular PCs running Linux.
The Mac Mini is tiny. It’s volume can be compared to that of a laptop. The entire outside apart from the base is made from aluminium which helps dissipate heat, it’s not as effective as copper but a lot better than plastic. The ports on the system are sound input/output, 4*USB, Ethernet, Firewire, Thunderbolt (replacement for Firewire), SDXC, and HDMI. It ships with a HDMI to DVI-D adapter which is convenient if you have an older monitor (or if you have a recent monitor but no HDMI cable as I do).
To open the case you unscrew the bottom, this is much like opening a watch. Also like opening a watch it’s not particularly easy to screw it back on tightly, I will probably return the Mac Mini without managing to completely screw the base in.
The hardware is very stylish and intricately designed, what we expect from Apple. It’s also quiet. In every way it’s a much better system than the workstation I’m using to write this blog post. The difference of course is that this workstation was free and the Mac Mini cost just over $1000 including the RAM upgrade. A Mac Mini could be a decent Linux workstation and if I see one about to be recycled I’ll be sure to grab it!
The Mac OS comes pre-installed so I didn’t get to do a full installation. When I first booted it up it asked me if I wanted to migrate the configuration from an existing server, I don’t know how well this works as I don’t have a second Mac system but the concept is a good one. Maybe having full support for such a migration process would be a good release goal for a Linux distribution.
After determining that the installation is a fresh one I was asked for a mac.com email address or other form of registration. I skipped this step as I don’t have such an email address, but it could be useful. Red Hat has “Kickstart” to allow configuration of an OS install based on a file from a server (via NFS or HTTP). Debian supports “preseeding” to take OS configuration options from a file at install time [1] and the same option can be used for later stages of OS autoconfiguration.
One thing that would be really useful is to allow the user to enter a URL for configuration data for an individual account or for all accounts, so someone with an account on one workstation could upload the configuration (which would be either encrypted or sanitised to not have secret data) and then download it when first logging in to a new system. I can easily take a tar archive of my home directory to a new system, but people like my parents don’t have the skill to do that.
One of the final stages of system configuration was to identify the keyboard. The system asked me to press the key to the right of the left shift key and then the key to the left of the right shift key and then offered me three choices of keyboard. That was an interesting way of reducing the list of possible keyboards offered to the user and thus preventing the user from selecting one that is grossly incorrect.
When first logging in I was asked for an iCloud [2] login. iCloud doesn’t seem like a service that should be trusted, it’s based in the US and has been designed to facilitate access by government agencies. Ubuntu One [3] is a similar service that is run by a more reputable organisation, but the data is still stored by Amazon (a US corporation) which seems like a security risk. Ubuntu One isn’t in Debian (which is strange as Ubuntu is based on Debian) so it was too much effort for me to determine whether it encrypts data in a way that protects the users against US surveillance.
The cost of Ubuntu One storage is $4 per month with music streaming. A better option is to use a self-hosted OwnCloud installation for a private or semi-private cloud [4]. A cheap server from someone like Hetzner (E49 per month for 3TB of RAID-1 storage) [5] is a good option for OwnCloud hosting. A cheap Hetzner server is about $US64 per month (at current conversion rates) which is equivalent to about 16 users of Ubuntu One for music streaming. So if 20 people shared a Hetzner server they could save money when compared to Ubuntu One while also getting a lot more storage. I’ve got about 300G of unused disk space on the Hetzner server that hosts my blog and when the system is migrated to a newer Hetzner server with 3TB disks it will have 2.5TB of unused space, I could store a lot of cloud data in that!
The main features of iCloud and Ubuntu One seem to be distribution of random data files (anything you wish), streaming music to various playing systems, and copying pictures from phones as soon as they are taken. These are all great features but it’s a pity that they don’t appear to support distributed document storage. Apple Pages apparently allows documents to be immediately saved to the cloud. I’d like to be able to save a file with Libre Office at home and then access it from my netbook using the cloud, of course that would require encryption for secret files but that’s not so hard to do. One advantage with such distributed storage is that when combined with offline-IMAP for email it would almost entirely remove the need for backups of the desktop systems I maintain for my relatives. I could have all their pictures and documents go to the cloud and all their email stay on the server so if their desktop PC dies I could just give them a new PC and get it all back from the cloud! OwnCloud supports replication, so if I got two servers I would be covered against a server failure. But I think that for a small server with less than a dozen users it’s probably better to just take some down-time when things go wrong and do regular backups to an array of cheap SATA disks.
Apple has an “App Store” in the OS. The use of such a store on a desktop OS is a new thing for me. It’s basically the same as the Android Market (Google Play) but on the desktop. I think that there is a real scope for an organisation such as Canonical to provide such a market service for Linux. I think that there is a lot of potential for apps to be sold for less than $10 to a reasonable number of Linux users. A small payment would be inconvenient for the seller if they have to interact with the customer in any way and also inconvenient for the buyer if they are entering all their credit card details into a web site for the sale. But for repeat sales with one company being an intermediary it would be convenient for everyone. A market program for a desktop Linux system could provide a friendly interface to selecting free apps from repositories (for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, or other distributions) and also have the same interface used for selecting paid applications.
This isn’t much of a review of Apple OS/X or the Mac Mini. Thinking about ways of implementing the best features of Lion on Linux is a lot more interesting. I admire Apple in the same way that I admire sharks, they are really good at what they do but they don’t care about my best interests any more than a hungry shark cares about me.
I got the currency conversion wrong in the first version of this article. It seems that to save money via a shared Hetzner server instead of Ubuntu One about 20 users would be needed instead of 10. But that’s still not too many and would still give a lot more storage. It would be a little more difficult to arrange though, probably anyone who is seriously into computers knows 10 people who would want to share such a service (including people like their parents who want things to just work and don’t understand what’s happening). But getting 20 people would be more difficult.
Related posts:
I own two mobile phones at the moment, I use a Samsung Galaxy S running Cyanogenmod [1] (Android 2.3.7) for most things, and I have a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 running Android 2.1 that I use for taking photos, some occasional Wifi web browsing, and using some applications.
The hardware for the Xperia X10 is better than that of the Galaxy S in many ways. It has a slightly higher resolution (480*854 vs 480*800), a significantly better camera (8.1MP with a “flash” vs 5MP without), and a status LED which I find really handy (although some people don’t care about it).
The only benefit of the Galaxy S hardware is that it has 16G of internal storage (of which about 2G can be used for applications) and 512M of RAM while the Xperia X10 has 1G of internal storage and 384M of RAM. These are significant issues, I have had applications run out of RAM on the Xperia X10 and I have been forced to uninstall applications to make space.
Overall I consider the Xperia X10 to be a significantly better piece of hardware as I am willing to trade off some RAM and internal storage to get a better resolution screen and a better camera. The problem is that Sony Ericsson have locked down their phones as much as possible and they don’t even give users the option of making a useful backup – they inspired my post about 5 principles of backups [2].
The fact that the Galaxy S allows installing CyanogenMod which then gives me the liberty to do whatever I want with my phone is a massive feature. It outweighs the hardware benefits of the Sony Ericsson phones over Samsung phones prior to the Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy Note.
For an individual user the ability to control their own hardware is a feature. Such an ability wouldn’t be much use if there wasn’t a community of software developers, so if you buy an Android phone that isn’t supported by CyanogenMod or another free Android distribution then whether it is locked probably won’t matter to you. But for any popular Android phone that’s sold on the mass market it seems that if it’s not locked then it will get a binary distribution of Android in a reasonable amount of time.
It seems that Apple is the benchmark for non-free computing at the moment. The iPhone is locked down and Apple takes steps to re-lock phones that can be rooted – as opposed to the Android vendors who ship phones and then don’t bother to update the firmware for any reason. The Apple app market is more expensive and difficult to enter and if an app isn’t in the market then you have to pay if you want to install it on a small number of development/test phones. This compares to Android where the Google market is cheaper and easier to enter and anyone can distribute an app outside the market and have people use it.
But for an individual this doesn’t necessarily cause any problems. I have friends and clients who use iPhones and are very happy with them. In terms of software development it’s a real benefit to have a large number of systems running the same software. As Apple seems to have higher margins and larger volume than any other phone vendor as well as shipping only one phone at any time (compared to every other phone vendor which seems to ship at least 3 different products for different use cases) they are in a much better economic position to get the software development right. As far as I can tell the hardware and software of the iPhone is of very high quality. The iPad (which has a similar market position) is also a quality product. The fact that the Apple app market is more difficult to enter (both in terms of Apple liking the application and the cost of entry) also has it’s advantages, I get the impression that the general quality of iPhone apps is quite high as opposed to Android where there are a lot of low quality apps and many more fraudulent apps than there should be.
The lack of choice in Apple hardware (one phone and one tablet) is a disadvantage for the user. There is no option for a phone with a slide-out keyboard, a large screen (for the elderly and people with fat fingers), or any of the other features that some Android phones have. The lack of a range of sizes for the iPad is also a disadvantage. But it seems that Apple has produced hardware that is good enough for most users so there aren’t many complaints about a lack of choice.
It seems to me that the biggest disadvantage of the closed Apple ecosystem is for society in general. Anyone who wants to write a mobile app to do something which might be considered controversial would probably think twice about whether to develop for the iPhone/iPad as Apple could remove the app at a whim which would waste all the software development work that was invested in writing the app. Google seem to have much less interest in removing apps from their store and if they do remove an app then with some inconvenience it can be distributed on the web without involving them – so the work won’t be wasted.
The Apple approach of locking everything down is clearly working for them at the moment. The Samsung approach of taking the Google prescribed code and allowing users to replace it is good for the users and works well. The Sony Ericsson approach of taking the Google code, adding some proprietary code, and then locking the phone down is bad for the users and I think it will be bad for Sony Ericsson. People are more likely to tell others about negative experiences and negative reviews are more likely to be noticed than positive reviews. So while many people are reasonably happy with Sony Ericsson products (until they find themselves unable to restore from a backup) it’s still not a good situation for Sony Ericsson marketing.
It seems that there are benefits to hardware vendors for being really open and for locking their users in properly. But being somewhat open isn’t a good choice, particularly for a vendor that ships poor quality proprietary apps such as the Sony Ericsson ones.
In terms of application distribution Google isn’t as nice as they appear. The Skyhook case revealed that Google will do whatever it takes to prevent apps that compete with Google apps from being installed by default [3]. Google is also trying to make money from DRM sales via Youtube which it denies to rooted phones [4]. Again it seems to me that the best options here are being more open than Google is and being as closed as Apple. Google might gain some useful benefits from applying DRM (even though everyone with technical knowledge knows that it doesn’t work) but the Skyhook shenanigans have got to be costing Google more than it’s worth.
The F-droid market is an alternative to the Google App market which only has free software [5]. On it’s web site there are links to download the source for the applications, including the source and binaries for old versions. In the Google App market if an upgrade breaks your system then you just lose, with F-droid you can revert to the old version.
A self-hosted OwnCloud installation for a private or semi-private cloud [6] can be used as an alternative to the Google Music store as well as for hosting any other data that you want to store online.
The Open Street Map for Android (Osmand) project provides an alternative to the Google Map service [7]. Osmand allows you to download all the vector data for the regions you will ever visit so it can run without Internet access. But it doesn’t have the ability to search for businesses and the search for an address functionality is clunky and doesn’t accept plain text, which among other things precludes pasting data that’s copied from email or SMS. While Osmand provides some important features that Google Maps will probably never provide, it doesn’t provide some of the most used features of Google Maps so uninstalling Google Maps isn’t a good option at the moment.
The K9mail project provides a nice IMAP client for Android [8]. Use K9 with a mail server that you run and you won’t need to use Gmail.
There are alternatives to all the Google applications. It seems that apart from the lack of commercial data and search ability in Osmand an Android device that is used for many serious purposes wouldn’t lack much if it had no Google apps.
Google seems to be going too far in controlling Android. Escaping from their control and helping others to do the same seems to be good for society and good for the users who don’t need apps which are only available in proprietary form.
Related posts:
Acoustiblok is an interesting product for blocking sound, it works by dissipating sound energy through friction within the sound barrier materiel [1]. They sell it in varieties that are designed for use within walls and for use as fences. As it isn’t solid it won’t reflect sound so it can be used to line the walls to stop sound being reflected back at you. It’s design is based on NASA research.
The web site claims that a 3mm sheet of Acoustiblok gives a greater noise reduction than 12 inches (30.7cm) of poured concrete. I am a little dubious about that claim as I’ve read a report of someone using three layers of Acoustiblok to make a quiet room for recording music (and to be used as a play-room for an Autistic child). I find it difficult to imagine someone needing a meter of concrete to stop any sort of noise that they might encounter in a residential area so the fact that someone needed three layers of Acoustiblok is an indication that it might not be quite as good as they claim (although there is the possibility that Acoustiblok was badly installed). I wonder whether the claims about concrete concern particular frequencies. The technical specifications and product comparisons page [2] shows that Acoustiblok is least effective at 130Hz where it only reduces noise by 12dB and that it’s effectiveness increases to 38dB at 5KHz. So perhaps a concrete wall to stop low frequencies and Acoustiblok to stop high frequencies would be the best solution.
The Australian distributor for Acoustiblok is based in Brisbane [3].
The same company also sells Thermablok [4] which is the first aerogel based insulation that I’ve seen being advertised for commercial sale. I guess that it must be rather expensive as they are mostly advertising it for use as thin strips to cover stud faces (steel studs conduct heat well and can cause a lot of heat loss). A note in their FAQ says that it’s available in rolls for insulating entire walls or floors. The FAQ also indicates that they sell samples suitable for science classes. They are also apparently looking for retailers, it would be nice if someone wanted to sell this in Australia.
Related posts:
My how time flies! We are already into March and 2011 is well and
truly disappearing in the rear view mirror. I cannot say I am sorry to
see 2011 go. It was not a year that I shall remember with a lot of
fondness. I need to get back into making more regular posts here.
I have been good about posting to Facebook but that has made me
incredibly lazy about updating this journal. I have, however, kept the
various sections (such as my reading log) up to date.
I hope that everyone reading this is so far having a safe and happy
year. I have several friends and colleagues that have already
been touched by cancer this year. My thoughts and prayers go out to
them and indeed, to anyone dealing with the effects of this awful
disease.
By the way, March is Colo Rectal Cancer Awareness
month. If you have been putting off getting "scoped" now would be a
good time. Also, remember I was only 42 when I was diagnosed so don't
put it off because you don't think you are old enough to have to worry.
It could save your life.
By the school calendar, which around here is the one most people
live by, as of today, Summer is officially over. This is despite the
fact that this week we will most likely break the old record of 69 one
hundred degree days in a calendar year. The high yesterday was around
105F and it is forecast to be about the same again today. I forget when
we last had serious rain but it has been months. Unless we get a
tropical storm come ashore soon it may be many more weeks until we do
get some rain. I love the hot weather but in my fifteen years here I
have never seen a drought like this one. We usually get some good
storms, especially during the Spring to top up the lakes. This year
that did not happen.
Anyway, my kids happily (yes happily) went back to school today.
They even got up at 6:20am and woke me up! Robyn is going into eighth
grade and Jack fourth. They have grown so quickly. Robyn is thirteen
now and Jack will be ten in December. Where does the time go? Anyway,
above is a photo, which has become a bit of a tradition now, of the
kids going out the front door on the first day of a new school year.
In 1986, August the 4th was a Monday and it was my first day as an
IBM employee (at Hursley Park in the UK). Twenty five years later, I'm
still working at IBM (these days in Austin, Texas). It's been an
incredible journey both emotionally , technologically and
geographically (from Hursley to Austin with seven years in Boca Raton,
Florida in between). I have worked with some fantastic people on some
very cool projects and been lucky enough to make great friends all over
the World.
The 25 years have flown by!
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In response to: My Symphony Experiment - week 2
So far there is nothing I have really needed to do that I have not been able to. That said while I am a self confessed "geek" I try not to be a super power user in any of the Office Suites as I find myself having to share my work with a lot of different audiences (customers, colleagues, conferences etc) and I have learned over the years that avoiding the advanced features seems to be a good general rule. It's the old 80-20 principle yet again I suppose. That said I view the evolution of all the ODF based tools in the industry to be just that, an evolution. I think we will see incremental improvement each release.In response to: Mac OS X 10.6 (a.k.a Snow Leopard)
I have discovered this evening that some of the plug ins I use with Safari on the Mac had stopped working under 10.6 I was able to get them going again by running Safari in 32-bit mode. To start Safari in 32-bit mode, locate it using the Finder, click on the icon and select Get Info. There is an option to launch the app in 32-bit mode. The plug in I most wanted to work that this fixed was the Delicious plugin that I use frequently to help make bookmarking sites on Delicious.com easier.In these challenging economic times, business has slowed, many companies have had to resort to layoffs and/or closures, and everyone has been tightening their belts. Unfortunately, Colorado Software Summit has not been immune to this downturn. As have so many companies and individuals, we too have experienced a severe decline in our business, and as a result we are not able to continue producing this annual conference.
This year would have been our 18th conference, and we had planned to continue through our 20th in 2011, but instead we must end it now.
Producing this conference has been a wonderful experience for us, truly a labor of love, and we have been extremely privileged to have been able to do well by doing good. We are very proud of the many people whose careers flourished through what they learned here, of the extensive community we built via the conference, and of the several businesses that were begun through friendships made here. We treasure the friends we made, and we consider them to be part of our extended family. Just as in any family, we celebrated with them through joyous life events and grieved with them through tragic ones.
This is a sad time for us, of course, but not overwhelmingly so. It's sort of the feeling you have when your son leaves for college, or your daughter gets married. You knew it was coming someday, but it is here much sooner than you imagined, and the sadness is sweetened with the joy you had in all that has come before.
We have been privileged to have created a thriving community of friends who met for the first time at the conference, and we want that community to continue. We hope that all of you will stay in touch with us and with each other, and that the Colorado Software Summit community will continue as a source of wisdom and friendship to all of you. If you have ever attended one of our conference, we hope you will consider joining the Colorado Software Summit LinkedIn group as one means to keep in touch.
With our very best wishes for your future, and with unbounded gratitude for your support,
- Wayne and Peggy Kovsky -
All presentations from Colorado Software Summit 2008 have been posted.
We have posted additions to the preliminary agenda for Colorado Software Summit 2009, in two formats:
We will continue to post additions to this agenda during the coming weeks. Please check back here from time to time for additions and/or changes to the agenda, or subscribe to our RSS feed to receive notifications of updates automatically.
We have posted presentations, and notes on the presentations, for this speaker from Colorado Software Summit 2008:
Presentations from Colorado Software Summit 2008 will be posted periodically throughout the year.
We have posted additions to the preliminary agenda for Colorado Software Summit 2009, in two formats:
We will continue to post additions to this agenda during the coming weeks. Please check back here from time to time for additions and/or changes to the agenda, or subscribe to our RSS feed to receive notifications of updates automatically.
We have posted presentations for these speakers from Colorado Software Summit 2008:
Presentations from Colorado Software Summit 2008 will be posted periodically throughout the year.
We have posted additions to the preliminary agenda for Colorado Software Summit 2009, in two formats:
We will continue to post additions to this agenda during the coming weeks. Please check back here from time to time for additions and/or changes to the agenda, or subscribe to our RSS feed to receive notifications of updates automatically.
We have posted presentations for these speakers from Colorado Software Summit 2008:
Presentations from Colorado Software Summit 2008 will be posted periodically throughout the year.