Apps, Apps everywhere Apps. There has been a lot of discussion on the internet about the value of Apps. Which are abbreviations for applications, in this case small applications on mobile devices remind me of previous discussions, read arguments, about Client Server applications. These applications in the past were a model, a class of applications to distribute part of the workload of servers to the client. In reality, they had a more important role in decreasing the network communications traffic created by old style server based applications like Web-Apps. Using a client-server, or mobile app, can utilize an API that reduces the actual amount of data transferred between the server and client. And while the flexibility of Web-Apps is perhaps better for the application administration, mobile apps are better for the Mobile carrier reducing traffic and congestion on the wireless network. The current arguments are, that mobile apps are just a passing fad, funny how the same argument was used for client-server. But giving the issue with the Apple Antenna producing poor throughput, apps are what is saving Apples iPhone 4 and the AT&T network
History
A GPS for Genealogy
One of the things that i’ve found very useful about the GPS in the Nokia N900 is that when the wife and I are out investigating the back-and-beyonds the N900 is suppyling us with townlands as we traverse. In genealogy often the only locational information you can find are townlands, and many modern maps do not label them. Now I don’t know if othe GPS’s have this data, but it’s nice to have them in the pocket, in the form of the N900.
Another iPad prediction
Having read this article about iPad sales predicted to top 7.1 million in 2010 alone, the term, FanBoy gains a new meaning, Delusional! It’s not that the iPad isn’t cute, or that it won’t BE fun or even useful. It’s that this is still a recession, and there aren’t 7.1 Million geeks in the world who have enough money to buy this thing. The second point, Apple with all it’s planning couldn’t get God to manufacture 7 million of these things this year.
I almost assumed that the article was a late April Fool’s joke. But there really are a lot of people who believe that Apple can do no wrong. Mostly because of youthful forgetfulness no one seems remembers the Cube and even though Steve Job’s was not at Apple, still there was the Newton.
I remember, I still have a Newton 100, which I upgraded from the the original Messagepad. And I think, I’m even pretty sure the sales of the iPad will not exceed 1 million sales this year. I can almost guarantee they will NOT exceed 2 Million. Given that, it will still be profitable, and considered a success. I might even like to have one, except of the fact that I already have something a lot more practical, and ultimately more useful, a Nokia N900!
Update One: I’m calling BullShit on the 700,000 iPads. At best there was 500K with less than 100k which were not pre-orders.
Google begins to crumble
With all the press at MWC and for that matter, everyplace else, Google is King of the internet. But it’s crumbling. Right in front of everyone, their entire infrastructure is beginning to fail. Not in the obvious way like a server outage or service unavailability. It’s the control structure.
I’ve never been a big user of Google, I only really got a Google Mail account when I started searching for a smartphone, which may have been an Android model. I had heard that this gmail account was needed to be set up in advance to load contacts and what not. But then the office IT manager thought Google Wave was a great way to keep all our remote activities documented, in other words, a tool to herd cats. Then he discovered Google Docs and gee isn’t that a great way to share document creation. Now there’s Google Buzz …. and then … and then. Google just can’t stop, and beyond that, they can’t integrate either. All these systems seem disjointed to the point I can’t even sign on and get to them, they must each be logged on to, no single sign-on. THE single most important step in services, and they can’t seem to make it work. It’s quite apparent that there is no single share point in the login process where all the services can be accessed, in a way, Google is competing against itself. And to quote verse:
‘A house divided, cannot stand’
Google is crumbling.
They have grown so fast and so broad, they have not built out the infrastructure required to support the entire breadth of their development groups. Which from empirical evidence, seems to need some method of communication, not currently visible to the outside world. To quote again;
The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing
Google is stumbling
Watching fall will not be pretty.
Internet Privacy myths
One of the enduring myths of the internet is the one involving privacy. This article on CNN titled U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google takes umbrage at the notion that everyones email is secret and private. And while this myth might comfort many, the truth is that email was NEVER private. Every email host, every email relay was able, and in fact, completely open to reading, scanning and snooping, by man-in-the-middle processes and furthermore always has been since the beginning of the internet. And even if everyone was using https or ssh with their email clients while connected to their mail server, it did not encrypt the contents of the email. It may have minimized the likelihood of it being read in the data stream, but unless you were in the habit of encrypting your email with PGP or some other cypher your email and hence your ‘Privacy’ is negligible, hence, the privacy myth.
And while on the CNN article the discussions brought up the same old saw that governments HAD to have backdoors to snoop on email communications to prevent crime and terrorism without the concern that at no time has it proved itself in practice. Anyone wishing to sent communication, and have it stay private can do so, even in the face of a dedicated snoop. Anyone who had even browsed an encryption textbook can create a completely uncrackable code, and I mean uncrackable by anyone, by any means and present their messages in plain text in emails. Hacking them by any government is merely security theater and fundamentally has NO value.
If you seek ‘privacy’ stop sending anything through the internet unless it is encrypted by at least PGP (if not something more substantial). The only thing Google has lost in this privacy issue is the trust of their users to protect their email ‘publications’ on the internet. Now everyone will know that they have another recipient to all their emails, in other words, all the other governments, hackers, scammers and spammers in the internet.
Displaying Toys
Conor got a cheap thrill from some of my Amazing Collection of computer Toys that I brought to the BarCampCork III meet up. I was more than happy to bring them out for an airing, although my back, and Walter’s will be thanking us later for our efforts. I would definitely offer (like in free beer) the collection to any group who would display, preserve and teach the history of these (and other) machines from my collection. And I support Conor’s idea of a computer/science/technology museum in Cork. After all, just because the UCC Computer Science Department refused the offer, doesn’t mean that citizens of The Republic of Cork should be denied the gift.
UPDATE: IS this going to be opportunity to have a Museum Cork Science Park
The YES! vote.
One thing, If the Yes vote is supposed to be the right (as in correct, AND good) Vote. Why is so much money being spent to Buy the Yes Vote!
Shouldn’t the Yes be self evident? And don’t say that it’s because there is a ‘No!’ campaign on, that must be countered. Opposition occurred second.
Fear and Loathing in the U.S.
I found this on the @SarahPalin_Blog and it reads in the discription;
The continuing story of a moose hunting, hockey Mom who may become leader of the free world.
And I find this disturbing and frightening on so many levels, however after thinking about it for a bit it could never happen. For if Ms. Palin should ever become President of the United States, The United States would cease to be part of the ‘Free World’ and be in fact, the antithesis of a free country, a new Fascist state would rise, and have to be putdown by the remaining ‘Free World’ countries.
Be afraid, be very afraid!
For if you don’t put down a mad dog now, you will surly have to put it down later after it’s bitten someone!
A different thing in a real OS.
Through the weekend I believed that I had managed to screw up my OpenSolaris installation. So serious was my suspicion I was planning to erase the disk and reinstall the entire system. The sound system that I’d manage to get working wasn’t, the ZFS snapshot system kept failing into maintenance mode and the NetBeans IDE that I installed disappeared. Perhaps living in a windows world tainted me but in my ignorance, I recognized my lack of understanding and started Googling.
Sometimes panic can instill reason, and so with some illustrations and illumination from the OpenSolaris.org site, I discovered that the issue was the multiple packages that I had been downloading. The ZFS file system had been doing boot snapshots and I was rebooting into one of many boot ‘pools’ that were ‘confusing’ the system, when I was shown the tool for selecting the correct boot environment, and deleting the others, everything became stable. The sound works, the tools were there and it all works.
One note, the ZFS file system in OpenSolaris will surprise you, it takes a ‘snapshot’ of the ‘partitions’ you choose, and performs a type of backup journal of all the files there. Given that, the file manager, using a slide bar, allows you to ‘time slide’ the directory through the entire snapshot history to display the changes that have happened. Very interesting, but it takes a bit of getting used to. I have ‘time machine‘ on my Mac, though I have not used it, so I suspect this behaves in a similar fashion.
There was one issue, of course created by myself, in and effort to get video on the system I purchased a Logitech 3500 video class webcam with built-in Mike. And while the Ekiga VoIP and video conferencing application could detect and use the video from the camera, the built-in mike would kill the sound system. So I’m operating without the camera, hoping for a bugfix.
The conclusion, more or less, is that the fixes I perform, did not require a drastic rebuild and the loss of my work. Only some understanding, and some learning on my part. Learning about how a real OS operates, and protects itself. Something toy OS’s from the past have made us all believe don’t exist.
Time to learn that something old, is new again.
Another mucker for Zanzibar
With all the violence of late, I am reminded of a novel Stand on Zanzibar. It should be required reading, and was a Hugo winner in 1969. But it introduces a concept of the Mucker, a person that is running ‘Amok’ out of control. The cause, in the book, is attributed to social pressure, population explosion and the general degradation of the personal, environmental, social and political world. I’m sure there will be many reasons given for each of these current events, none will be adequate and no one will be satisfied with the answers.
Hero’s and Politicians
In doing some ‘research’ I came across a bit of a historical myth from the American Revolutionary War And I was thinking of Heroics and Politics. Have you ever wondered why we don’t have any hero’s these days?
THE BLACKSMITH AT BRANDYWINE
Terrible in the field at Brandywine was the figure of a man armed only
with a hammer, who plunged into the ranks of the enemy, heedless of his
own life, yet seeming to escape their shots and sabre cuts by magic, and
with Thor strokes beat them to the earth. But yesterday war had been to
him a distant rumor, a thing as far from his cottage at Dilworth as if it
had been in Europe, but he had revolted at a plot that he had overheard
to capture Washington and had warned the general. In revenge the Tories
had burned his cottage, and his wife and baby had perished in the flames.
All day he had sat beside the smoking ruins, unable to weep, unable to
think, unable almost to suffer, except dumbly, for as yet he could not
understand it. But when the drums were heard they roused the tiger in
him, and gaunt with sleeplessness and hunger he joined his countrymen and
ranged like Ajax on the field. Every cry for quarter was in vain: to
every such appeal he had but one reply, his wife’s name–Mary.Near the end of the fight he lay beside the road, his leg broken, his
flesh torn, his life ebbing from a dozen wounds. A wagoner, hasting to
join the American retreat, paused to give him drink. “I’ve only five
minutes more of life in me,” said the smith. “Can you lift me into that
tree and put a rifle in my hands?” The powerful teamster raised him to
the crotch of an oak, and gave him the rifle and ammunition that a dying
soldier had dropped there. A band of red-coats came running down the
road, chasing some farmers. The blacksmith took careful aim; there was a
report, and the leader of the band fell dead. A pause; again a report
rang out, and a trooper sprawled upon the ground. The marksman had been
seen, and a lieutenant was urging his men to hurry on and cut him down.
There was a third report, and the lieutenant reeled forward into the
road, bleeding and cursing. “That’s for Mary,” gasped the blacksmith. The
rifle dropped from his hands, and he, too, sank lifeless against the
boughs.
Hitler to Obama
From a historical perspective, what would have happened to the world if Hitler had been voted out of office before the start of World War Two? Most people don’t remember that Hitler WAS elected, maybe from a corrupt election process, but he was elected. So what if he lost an election? What would it be like to replace Hitler, and his policies. How much work would he/she have to do to repair the damages?
Somehow that’s what I think Obama has before him. A monumental task of restoring Truth, Justice and the American Way to the United States.
The Real, root of all evil.
I’ve been just watching The Root of All Evil on RTE, of all places, I’m surprised that the Catholic Church allow them to broadcast it.
I more or less believe this to be the case for years, there is Reason and then there is Religion, Good verses Evil. Christian Fundamentalists, Islamic Jihadist’s and any other religious belief system taken to an extreme is evil. Plain and simple, lesser measures of religion are merely irrational.
You can have morals without religion, you can have the rule of the laws of man without religion.
Irish Meat Denial
- All the pork recalled before the farms using the contaminated feed are identified.
- Pork producers offering to refill the supplies without testing the pigs first
- Declaring that the irish beef is safe after they discovered contaminated cows and before testing all the cattle.
This is a prescription for Irish disaster, the lack of transparency , the denial and the coverup. Typical Fianna Fáil behavior.
McCain releases Racist Jeni and tears country apart.
McCain has released the Racist Jeni and is tearing the United States apart. This news comes as McCain booed after trying to calm anti-Obama crowd. He and his co-conspirator Sara Palin have, with full knowledge, released this monster on the American people out of desperation, and are gleefully soaking up it’s benifits. There has always been a racist vein running through American culture, but now that white america is faced with becoming the minority on this planet, the prospect of being lead by ‘one of them’ has become vicious.