Ursecta

What a strange piece

Can’t help commenting on this opinion piece on TechRepublic: The Apple Tablet will disrupt Apple’s device momentum. Just a few choice quotes:

… 1) providing good entertainment; and 2) providing flexible input and output. The success of the iPhone illustrates how correct I was in the first point. It stumbled into the entertainment angle.

Yes, sure, Apple “stumbled” into success.

In fact, every key innovation in PC technology for the past 30 years has been driven by gamers, but Microsoft, HP, and everyone else – including Apple with its largely accidental success with the iPhone – have ignored this in the portable electronic device market. And the whole time, I feel like I’ve been jumping up and down, screaming, “Deliver the games, become the dominant games delivery system – and the rest will follow!”

You didn’t scream loud enough, did you? Oh, btw, me and a lot of other people I know buy iPhones for other reasons than games, like for their business and connectivity apps, you know? Haven’t heard of those yet? Maybe if you stopped jumping up and down and screaming for a sec, you’d hear us talking about that.

“Take my word: The super-hyped Apple Tablet – which is supposed to be a convergence of the iPhone, the Apple Mac, and the netbook phenomenon – is going to be a failure”

What Apple Tablet? Nobody has seen one, but you already know what it’s going to be and even why it will ultimately fail.

Why will the Apple Tablet fail? The one thing consumers don’t want is another gadget that ultimately does the exact same thing as several other gadgets they already own, especially one that requires all kinds of contortions to move legally-licensed and legitimately-owned content around from device to device.

Yes, especially as Apple is known for making their users buy media again and again every time another product of theirs comes on the market. Like the last time people bought all their media on the Play-For-Sure system only to discover that it wouldn’t play on the new generation Apple Zune. We’re not going to walk into that trap again, are we? When will Apple finally learn to treat their customers with respect, like Microsoft does with their iTunes, which is not only DRM free but works across devices without new purchases being required.

Oh, wait, did I get that backwards?

Then I just skimmed through the rest, but if you feel like being abused by more of that bad thinking, please head over there and enjoy some more of these “insights”.

What’s up with Snow Leopard and file sizes?

Yes, I know Snow Leopard changed the way they calculate file and volume sizes, but what I’m seeing here is too weird to be explained by that. I’ve got a few image files in a folder on my desktop and the filesizes I’m seeing with ls -al is:

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Now watch the png file sizes when I look at it using Finder:

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Oops… WTF was that??! A display bug! Let’s try again after juggling the column widths so the selection bar straightens itself out again:

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Just to be sure, I opened up the info panel on the first file:

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Yes, truly, here it says 109,207 bytes while ls -al says 15,843 bytes for the same file. And yes, I’ve checked and double checked and triple checked, I do indeed look at the same file. Doing a spotlight search also only returns one image. Uploading the image to a webserver and checking through Transmit shows the 15k size. Here it is, the file, from a webserver: http://vard-it.com/images/20091019/interaktioner1.png, so you can check for yourself.

So why is Finder reporting a size value seven times larger?

Update a little later: yes, I used the ls -al@ to find the resource fork and that is what is making the difference. Maybe Finder should have the option of showing that separately at least in the inspector? Maybe I should read the man pages before posting? Maybe I should wonder what exactly are in those resources? Maybe I should just shut up and crawl under a rock?

Yet another update: I used 0xED to look into the file and the fork. The fork is full of Adobe info, since I used Photoshop CS4 to convert from a BMP to PNG. And, obviously, when uploading the image using Transmit, that fork is stripped off. Well, now I know that Photoshop saves a load of info in a resource fork, possibly including info I don’t want them to save. Can’t see any obvious way of excluding that in the Photoshop save dialog box. So take care when passing on images to others that you strip off the resource fork first. Somehow.

Update about “Somehow”, this is how to do it: create an empty file, copy it over the resource fork, then delete the empty file. Like so, in terminal:

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DoS your kids

Saw this “How old will you get?” site, in Swedish, linked from a friend’s Facebook page (or an ad, can’t really make it out, but that’s the nature of FB, right?):

Stupid site, don’t go there. But if you do go there, they ask you to register. So you don’t, but click “Starta testet” instead. Then they ask you for your email address, so you invent a dummy address, of course. Then they ask you for your personal number (before you Americans freak out, it’s not as secret as a social security number, but still, I wouldn’t give it to them), so you invent one. You’ve got a one in ten chance of making it a valid number, since only one digit is used as a check digit.

Anyway, after three failed tries, you get this:

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Great! Love it. Which inspired me to think we could use this mechanism to stop other members of our little NAT tribe, since we’re all behind the same public IP, to get to that stupid site so our kids could give away email adresses and personal numbers to dubious people. Instead of blacklisting their domains in the router, let’s lock out our public IP by random login trials.

Not that I see what advantage the method has technically, but it’s just so cool turning their own tools against them.

So much knowledge in such a small box

I was doing the rounds at a nursing home out in the sticks the other day, and came to an old (all of them were old) woman with a urinary catheter and bag. Her problem, or rather her worry, was that the bag turned violet from the urine sometimes, but only the last week. The urine itself didn’t change color, only the plastic of the bag.

I already knew that some laxatives can cause the urine itself to turn violet if it’s alkaline, and I’ve heard of this phenomenon of the plastic becoming discolored, but as far as I remembered, it wasn’t alarming, so I just made the regular soothing doctor noises. But the nurse persisted, said she’d heard it could indicate urinary tract infections. iphone

So I pulled out my iPhone, opened Safari, and googled “violet urine bag” and lo and behold, there’s an article about the “Violet urine bag syndrome” from Osaka University, explaining how this happens in some urinary tract infections. Other similar articles taught me which bacteria are usually involved and when to look out for it.

I happily explained this to the nurse and told her she was right and I was wrong. Then the patient said to the nurse: “Amazing how they can get so much knowledge into such a small package” and they both looked with wonder and amazement at my iPhone. I was on the verge of explaining it wasn’t in the phone but on the ‘net, but then I thought: what’s the difference, really? Isn’t that just a technical detail? So I just nodded and said “yes, indeed”.

Protected media truly stink

I’m so fed up with protected media of all kinds making me spend time doing shit that I shouldn’t have to do. This is what I encountered today for the hundredth time (less, but it feels so):

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Every time this happens, you have to uninstall Zinio, delete its prefs, clear up a cache somewhere, then reinstall and reauthenticate it. Yes, I’ve got the routine documented, but man, this isn’t right. So I wrote them this letter, with absolutely no hope of them giving a damn:

Guys,

Really, time for you to get a grip. I’ve had MacWorld on Zinio for a couple of years now, and I’m growing so sick and tired of this 22-M error you never seem to fix, that I’m almost prepared to give up on subscribing to MacWorld anymore. You really need to fix this pronto. Show that you care, for once.

Every time anything at all changes on my machine, I have to manually go uninstall all of Zinio and reinstall it again, just to make it stop accusing me of being a thief. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to do this. I have it installed on two machines, a Pro and a MacBook, and if that is too much for you, well, it’s going to be goodbye at next renewal.

I’m copying MacWorld too, since I think they should be aware of why they’re losing this particular subscriber at least. I’d sincerely suggest they’ve got a better chance of keeping paying subscribers by distributing unprotected pdf’s, or at least pdf’s protected by somebody else than Zinio.

Sincerely,

— Martin

PS: I could have added “You’re worse than Microsoft”, but that would be overdoing it.

PPS: No, I haven’t read the MacWorld issue. I’ll try to find the energy to go through that crap later, so I can actually see it, but I can’t keep myself from wondering if it’s worth the trouble. Very bad sign.

Update Oct 11: after reinstalling on my desktop Mac Pro and redownloading the last issue of MacWorld, I got this dialog box instead:

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I mean, seriously, reading a mag is supposed to be relaxing, but this??!

Update Oct 16: Got another message from Zinio support telling me to do the exact same thing their previous message told me to do. That is, download the uninstaller, uninstall, download the installer, install, authenticate, hope for best, try. Since they sent that message twice, I figured I could repeat the procedure just for kicks, and sure enough, this time it worked. Um, no, actually not. I discovered that the issue file I redownloaded from Zinio according to the instructions I got the last time was corrupt, with a bad filename and extension. In other words, when Zinio told me “you do not have rights to this publication on this computer” it actually meant “this file is corrupt”. Would you have guessed? So I copied the file I had on my MacBook to the Mac Pro, and then it worked. Except it took another hour or so until I could read the MacWorld issue due to this problem:

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In other words, if the Zinio server is down anytime the reader wants to verify your status, which is the first time you open it and whenever it feels unsure of itself, you’re out of luck yet again.

Right, now I can finally read the November issue of MacWorld on my portable and my desktop. Am I happy? Not really. As I already said, reading a mag is supposed to be relaxing. I’m prepared to pay for convenience. But all I’m getting for my money is aggravation. I’m not going to extend my subscription anymore, hoping instead that the so far mythical Apple iTablet will revolutionize this market and bring something much more useful and pleasant. But if it doesn’t, I fear the end is near for DRM’ed online publications.

Zombies…

Like this company X I know, in the vertical application business. Same as company Y and Z I also know in the vertical application business, all of them doing healthcare applications like record systems, pathology systems, etc. Doesn’t matter exactly what they do or who they are, they are all representative of how that entire segment is looking and behaving right now. So when I describe one of them, I describe them all.

Right off the bat, I have to confess that my sudden blinding flashes of the obvious are brought on by an overdose of Seth Godin’s books. I’m on my fifth right now, “Survival is not enough“, with the subtitle “Shift happens“, and I’ve got six more to go. I simply bought all of them, as far as I know. (Seth, shouldn’t you provide for subscriptions?)

Everything he says, I already knew, but I didn’t know I knew until he told me. That’s the best kind of book, the one that digs out something that’s been lurking inside your mind and exposes it to the air. It’s also the easiest kind of book to read for me, since I need no convincing. It comes from me, inside myself, so it must be true (I’m almost serious).

So what about these zombies, what are they doing wrong? Well, they’re challenged, to put it mildly. All of them seem to have sales teams on crack, selling anything to anyone, if it exists or not. Then they’ve got backlogs they can’t handle, increasingly irate customers (some of them trailing lawyers and stuff), development languages and IDEs that are orphaned since years. They try one new development methodology after another, decide they have no time to implement them and abandon them again, after spending monumental amounts of money and time on stuff they never give a chance to deliver a return. They get involved, but they don’t commit (insert favorite farm animal references here).

Once they start losing orders, they abandon even more of the changes they tried out and go back to their old ways, just like a wounded animal curling up in the bushes, hoping the predators will pass them by. The worse everything gets, the more these people grab hold of methods and means that used to work so many years ago, but evidently don’t work anymore. They know it won’t work, but they can’t let go. Amazing.

Look, there’s one message here, that seems not to penetrate, and that is: if your old methods don’t work, change. The worse it gets, the more reason you have to change. The sooner you change, the more capital and time you have to bridge the change and pick up on the other side of the divide. If you wait until there is nothing left, there is, um, nothing left.

But it’s pointless. They will not uncurl and come out from under that bush. Poor bastards.

Dry cleaning and the web

I went to have my suit (yes, I do have one) dry cleaned. Looked up dry cleaners in Uppsala, found one that even had a web site. On the web site I found their address, used my GPS to go there, walked around the block with my iPhone until I very precisely located the exact spot where it should be. Except it wasn’t. Walked around the block a few more times, since the maps in the iPhone aren’t all that accurate in positioning the user, so I thought that was the problem. Nope, no dry cleaners around.

Finally, I went into a nearby store and asked if they knew where the dry cleaners were, and they pointed me to the other side of the block on another street. And there I found the place.

I pointed out to the guy that they ought to update their homepage. He told me they couldn’t. The guy that did the homepage died on them three years back and he had all the passwords, and as I understood it, the ownership of the site and the domain. So they’re stuck. They moved the store to a new location two years back, but couldn’t get at the website source. (Yes, I also find it strange that the site stays up, do they pay for it somehow? If so why? I didn’t ask.) A lot of customers walk around the wrong block looking for them and then give up. They had a notice up at the old location for a while, but the new store owners made them take it down.

The moral of the story: don’t ever let your site be set up by somebody else without getting ownership of the domain and the accounts and all relevant passwords. Especially not if they plan on dying just like that. This store is much worse off having a website than if they’d never had one. If they had no website, customers could only find them through the yellow pages, and those you can always update.

.NET considered harmful

A friend of mine just told me about what an MS evangelist said at a symposium on multicore (paraphrased), after getting the question:

“Did MS consider that cache awareness for programmers in multicore development?”

…and he answered:

“The average developer is not capable of handling that kind of level of detail. … Most developers are that ignorant. Welcome to the real world.”

To me, this explains a lot. It explains why .NET looks like it does, and to clarify what I mean by that, let me simply copy in extracts from what I had to say about it in a private forum just weeks ago. In what follows, the italics are brief extracts of comments from others. The rest is my own text. It’s not always in a totally logical order and it starts out in midflight, but it’s a synthesis of a longish thread on a security related forum.

Continue reading “.NET considered harmful”

App store or Dashcode?

Over the last week or so, I’ve spent a lot of time with the WDC 2009 sessions, and Dashcode, at least in its upcoming 3.0 version, seems to be amazingly capable. The results are almost indistinguishable from SDK apps (for want of a better label). And, they don’t go through the app store. And, they download to the phone and can run offline as well, including a local database.

This is probably what Apple hinted at when the iPhone 1.0 was introduced, except nobody would believe it was a useful way of creating apps. Neither did I back then, but now I do. Interestingly, the hassles with the iTunes policy (see previous blog entry) also pushes me in that direction. Maybe they did it on purpose? Read a much sharper and more enjoyable version of the same idea at Factory Joe.

Anything but games are illegal?

I’m having this most surrealistic dialog with a very agreeable iTunes support person, about invoicing. The thing is I bought a few apps from the iTunes app store, among which Omni Focus for the iPhone, but the invoice (or “receipt”) I got from Apple doesn’t mention sales tax at all. Just the net amount in Swedish crowns. It is, however, correctly addressed to my company.

As practically anyone realizes, this is super weird and means I can’t recover the sales tax when I enter this document into my accounting. So I wrote to iTunes support and asked for a correct invoice. The ensuing conversation follows (I took out the name of the iTunes representative).

Continue reading “Anything but games are illegal?”