Apple and Alpha

All the talk about Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips had be thinking one of the worlds greatest CPU’s was the Alpha. This chip was created by DEC and landed in Intel’s hands. And while Intel still produces it, I don’t think anyone uses it. It still contains revolutionary technology. The hyper threading in the Pentium 4 is a derived from the Alpha. But the amazing thing is that that the Alpha is micro encoded, and can emulate ANY instruction set. At DEC it was developed to emulate the aging VAX CPU. And guess what, it could emulate the PPC instruction set of the PowerPC, without requiring a PowerPC template or a license. Interesting thought, looking forward to Monday’s announcement.

More Windows and Linux issues

Earlier this week I was helping my wife’s teacher colleagues with fixing windows on a generic Packard Bell computer. Well now my wife’s Sony Laptop, appears to be on the injured player list as well. While she has not been kind to the Sony over the years, it has managed to work. But lately it has been causing her grief. She did manage to drop the thing on the Netgear 401 WiFi adaptor (PCMCIA) and it looks to have broken the connector from the mother board. Windows continued to work and I managed to get her wireless again with a Belkin’s USB WiFi adaptor. And this worked for a while.

Now Windows XP was never stable on this laptop. It regularly locked up, took long pauses for no discernible reason, or generally blue screened. This was something she took in stride, and was fine with. Until the Sony became really unstable. Now it may have been the damage to the PCMCIA mount, or not. And with the assumption that it just needed to have the OS reinstalled, she proceeded.

It’s been three days now, the Sony has yet to operate on windows. After three failed attempts to reinstall Windows. Everything from the install CD’s failing on the third disk with an unknown error, to not being able to install the virus software, to having to uninstall the XP service pack 2 and reinstall it.

This brought my wife to her current dilemma, and breaking point. She has known for a long time that Mac’s just work. And that I have been a supporter of Linux. So we embarked on a journey of exploration for a User friendly Linux install for her Sony. I personally had been dying to try out the different distro’s and had quite a selection. We started with Mandrake (now Mandriva) 10. I had this on CD from one of the magazines. This installed great all three CDs full, and seemed to be going great up until we found we couldn’t use the built in track-pad. Nothing I tried would get mandrake to recognize the mouse.

On to XanderOS this I thought would be good, as one of the applications my wife uses a lot were the MS Office suite. Having CrossOver office on it made it interesting. Mind you we have been Installing OpenOffice on the school machines she is in-charge of at her school. So she was comfortable with the Star Office in this distro. So on to the the install, not a problem even the track-pad worked this time, and I even managed to get it on the internet. On the built-in ethernet adaptor. There was nothing I could do to get it to recognize the Belkin USB adaptor. My wife, a fan of WiFi, (why have a laptop if you can’t use wireless) found this useless.

Lycorius never finished installing, Knoppix, while fine on the liveCD, it was too crude for my wife. And I couldn’t easily install Gentoo, or Ubuntu.

This could just be a broken Sony Laptop, But that’s only part of the problem. While Windows XP did install, it did not provide any better service than it’s previous erratic behaviors. But worse were the Linux installs, either they were too hard to install, or did not provide enough coverage of the hardware to produce a viable laptop operating system. Now I know that Linux may work better on a more generic desk side mini tower. But really, how many people are really using simple generic systems. And how do you win the hearts and minds of the general public, who can barely manage to install Windows XP, if the alternative is in the Linux distro’s which are so bad.

As another thought, from what I can tell, Linux will never be a widely used desktop, until one of the big PC builders Dell, Sony, HP or someone else starts building Linux configured Laptops and desk side systems. Then Joe user could rightly migrate from Windows XP to a safer, and stable Operating system.

I hope someone, an Outsource builder, or overseas manufacture will fill this role. Maybe Lenovo will utilize the IBM think pad design’s and pump out Linux laptops. That would be something to see, something my wife could buy and use.

Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips

This story on CNN Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips is burning up the wires Mac wise, and there is a ton of commentary pro and con, positive and negative. I won’t hazard a guess. The news coming the day before the Apple developers conference can only fuel this discussion. Let me inject my two bits worth.

Using Intel does not mean that the OS-X and the entire Mac line will switch to the Pentium CPU from Intel. Intel makes a lot of good CPU’s that are NOT x86 architecture. ARM, Alpha, xScale all come to mind. The truth be told there are intel chips are already in Apple Mac’s as controllers and what not.

What would make more sense is if Apple contracted Intel to produce PowerPC chips for the next generation of Mac’s. This makes more since for both as Intel has been cut off from the next generation of game consoles producing a competing PowerPC chip would be good for them. The amount of money to be make from Intel selling CPU’s to Apple, will pale in comparison to the game console market it could be buying into.

And for Apple, it could get the speed increase, power reduction, and those architectural enhancements that it has be unable to get IBM to provide in the current PowerPC line.

Win = Win or rather Mac = Mac

One more note: How about OS-X on the new Intel motherboard with firewire? How would that affect Longhorn?

Mac’s vs Windows and Broadband

My wife and I spent last Thursday night attempting to get another teacher’s Windows XP system up on their new broadband (DSL) modem. They had been talking to the Eircom techie’s for almost 2 months, the duration of the free trial trying to get connected. As a last resort, this teacher ask my wife, who is the ICT coordinator at the school they both teach in to help. So my wife, a PC user, dragged me, an Mac user, along to help.

I brought my 3+ year old iBook (500Mhz) and the first thing I tried upon arriving was to plug in my laptop. Sure as anything, the Mac pickup the ethernet line and DHCP from the modem, and I was Online.

Knowing that the modem, and the DSL line was working, I proceeded to attempt to get the XP system to connect, I tried the ethernet, I tried the USB, remove network places, reinstalled the DSL software kit. And guess what, nothing. (but you knew that was coming)

What was evident was the spy ware infestation, possible virus’s or worms that were slowing down this 1+Ghz Windows XP system.

End result for the night, nothing. We left them just as we came, no working Broadband. We sent them a CD the next day with anti-spy ware on it, not really expecting it to work. And told them if it didn’t work, find the original install CD’s for their system, and reinstall the OS from the ground up.

I cannot, for the life of me understand how people in the Windows XP world live with an operating system so prone to failure.

Perhaps now that there are a few stores in Cork that are carrying the Mac Mini, which I attempted to sell the people, there my be a turn around.

Perhaps Apple is missing an opportunity here, Mac Mini’s loaners? Let people with PC take one home for a week or so, show them what they are missing. Could be a big thing here in Ireland.

Irish Retirement Nursing Centers

The Irish government is hot on the subject of Retirement Centers. This is good, except that it’s not due to the years of filed complaints setting in it’s files. It’s due to the news program on RTE that has made it impossible for the government to turn a blind eye to it any more.

It’s scary that the retirement/nursing home at the center of the program attempted to prevent the airing of the program. And almost won.

More amazing is the fact that RTE is a government run broadcasting system. You could just imagine what a truly independent broadcasting news media could bring to light here.

Then again the current government has been attempting to muzzle the media here with threats of creating government oversight committees to review published content. (read censorship)

That coupled with the extension of the waiting period for release of ‘freedom of information’ requests from 5 years to 10 years does not bode well for truth in government.

And then there is the issue of the brown envelopes.

Interesting Rumor: Staff Churn

One of my Indian/American friends here, who has a sister working in one of the Indian outsourcing companies, has passed on this tidbit.

They have between 25% and 40% staff turnover (churn). The cause appears to be job hopping for more money. This has been forcing pay increases in an effort to retain staff. And apparently it’s endemic for all the outsourcers.

Read this as you may, but this can only increase outsourcing costs, making it less cost effective for U.S. firms.

This goes hat in hand with another part of of the rumor, there appears to be, on the surface, a lack of available tech staff available to hire. Seems like they have found the bottom of the barrel, staff wise, hence the staff churn.

Survival Strageties

Several years ago, I took the plunge and married a nice Irish girl. We lived in the U.S. for a bit, and then moved here to Ireland. Since the move here we have been living off her teachers salary and the saving we had accrued in the states. The odd jobs that I’ve worked haven’t managed to keep the beans and toast on the table. So it’s even more unusual to find myself working for an Outsourcer. The company I had been working for in the U.S. had been threatening to do the Outsource thing, but we moved before it happened.

I can sympathize with people who are faced with that prospect. And having found what it’s like from the other side. I can confess that it’s not fun being the employee who is ‘taking’ the job from another. Even if the position could not be filled in the U.S. the smell of fear through the ether(net) in the form of email, or oozing through the phone line during conference calls is very offensive. And the defensive tactics used to fend off more outsourcing (see other rants) can be extraordinary, and totally ineffective. Hearing stories from other anti-outsourcing strategies, most have not only failed to prevent the outsourcing, they have caused it to happen sooner.

From what I have seen, the bean counters that believe that any outsourcing is a good thing, are oblivious to such tactics. And hence they matter not.

I illustrate, one of my previous posts mentioned the tactic in place was to not document anything. The belief was that if you didn’t know how everything worked without the current employees to ‘keep it altogether’ you couldn’t outsource it.

Wrong! The systems were working, and even if a bus would run them all down tomorrow, the business could hire people to document what was happening, and to reverse engineer the necessary documentation. The cost to the business, time!

Time to replace employees, something an outsourcer could provide quicker than a businesses own in house HR department. Time to document, reverse engineer and reproduce processes to operate the systems.

And time, as in no new deployments, upgrades or enhanced features until the new team (outsourced) could be comfortable with the change.

The benefit; (and you thought there was only a downside)

The business gets a new team (outsourced, cheaper, no ‘deadwood’) that operates with formal processes with baseline documentation, configuration control and with developmental efficiency’s that it didn’t have before.

The anti-outsource strategy also fails the original developers.
NO documentation, means more work, no controls, less recoverable, subject to errors. Making the work harder on the employees, less safe to operate for the business, less useful, and more trouble for the in-house customer who uses the system. Less productive.

From a bean counters point of view, much more expensive than outsourcing a blind application.

Blogs, Bots and Words.

Being new to this Blog thing, at lease as a writer of Blog’s. I was surprised by the speed that the bot’s on the net found my, very valuable musing, and even linking to one of the brilliant comments in less than 24 hours. The bot in question was searching for the word ‘Outsourcing’

I’ll have to think up other interesting words.

Klingon Programming

Top 12 Things A Klingon Programmer Would Say

12. Specifications are for the weak and timid!

11. This machine is a piece of GAGH! I need dual processors if I am to do battle with this code!

10. You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you’ve read it in the original Klingon.

9. Indentation?! — I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!

8. What is this talk of ‘release’? Klingons do not make software ‘releases’. Our software ‘escapes’ leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.

7. Klingon function calls do not have ‘parameters’ — they have ‘arguments’ — and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.

6. Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.

5. I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth contest. They will not concern us again.

4. A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!

3. By filing this SCR you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!

2. You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!

1. Our users will know fear and cower before our software. Ship it! Ship it, and let them flee like the dogs they are!

Seeing as how old school programmers think like klingon programmers, I believe that it can be reasonably assumed that all old programmers are klingon.

CowBoy Programming

I have been recently doing some contract database programing for a large financial institute. Part of a workflow system, not involved with a revenue stream, Thank God. Having my roots in the telcom and engineering world, software wise, I was expecting a more structured, formal process of software development. What I found was a facade of structure, and formal processes. While the environment had Alpha, Development, testing and Productions. Nothing, not a single data scripts, stored procedure, schema or database were under configuration control. To further make development difficult, there was NO (as in none, Nada, zilch) documentation as to the process flow, database schemas, application relationships. The entire series (couldn’t call it a system) of applications, and databases was being maintained by the developers in their heads.

This lead me to the belief that;

1) These developers were insane.

2) These developers were Genius programmers
(or Klingon programmers)

3) These developers were fearful of outsourcing

4) Did not have the time
(never enough time to do it right, always enough time to do it over.)

When I figure out which I’ll let you know.