Missing Mary Road

“Microsoft unveiled the schedule for Windows 7 Release Candidate’s retirement in May 2009, when it issued the early look to the public. At the time, it said Windows 7 RC would expire June 1, 2010. Before that date, however, users are to receive warnings of the impending end. Starting on Feb. 15, Windows 7 RC will display notices every few hours that the machine will periodically shut down beginning on March 1. As of March 1, PCs running Windows 7 RC will automatically shut down every two hours. Those shutdowns will come without warning.“

apple (computers? devices?) these days reminds me more and more of fairy tales and other stories or rather the morals learnt (or lack thereof) from them. it’s funny how the company makes an announcement and the world of media just explodes all over the interwebs. anyway…so i suppose from my previous post you know what my stance on the new device is.

apple is a smart company. their UI’s are usually beautiful and they make sleek and elegant devices. usually in my experience, that’s all they are though, sleek and elegant, and not much else. also they’re flimsy, very, very flimsy. (if you’ve ever bought a first gen apple product, you know what i’m talking about). take the new tablet for example.

they’re aiming for a netbook alternative, but they’re not gonna be  getting much out of it to because to keep their price point low, they’ve had to skimp out on hardware. pretty much no usb ports or SD support. super cool idea for a device that’s being advertised as a media box, don’t you think? and in true apple fashion, they’ll just charge you an arm and two legs for getting those plastic pieces of apple USB and SD adapters. same thing with 3G support. you want 3g on that thing, you may hand over 60% more money for the same thing without, thank you very much. good stuff. oh another thing seriously lacking, a camera. my n900 has two! one for making video calls forward facing, and another for shooting video and taking photos.

now let’s see…what else, oh yeah, wanna see what the web looks like using the ipad. click here and find out. err…get used to the blue logos. you’ll be seeing it a lot if you’re on the ipad. and if you’re interested in reading why Mac OS doesn’t support flash altogether…not well anway…well you can read here more about it and why they won’t be supporting it anytime soon either.

the other reason apple can afford to keep down their hardware costs is by making up most of the money in software, especially since they make huge cuts in the app store, itunes and  ibook sales. so what it boils down to, with apple, no such thing as a free lunch. it will be interesting to see how apple reacts to it’s software content distribution systems and the percentage it takes off it, as it sees the apps move from the stores to the web itself (case in point, google voice).

now giving credit where it’s due. both the ipod and iphone reinvented the future and brought it to us and handed it to us on a silver platter. it changed the way we consumed the technology and  we loved every minute of it. the ipad just took a step back unfortunately. it was designed to consume media. a sort of re-invented television, yet it’s being marketed as a computer which it hardly isn’t. a computer is something that is customizable both in terms of hardware and software, the ipad is neither. a user of a computer has a very intimate relationship with the computer itself. the very design of apple devices these days deny you that privilege. the whole reason why computers are in the shape and form that they are in today is because thirty years ago there were hackers and geeks tinkering away and messing with parts to improve upon and adding on devices and other electronics and fun toys to make their computers better, faster and using them in ways that the original manufacturing neither intended nor imagined. with the whole lock down of software (and now hardware, especially with proprietary hardware), the future is fast looking like a bleak place where there can be no innovation as far as the end users are concerned.

unfortunately without the lack of multiple apps running simultaneously, all the ipad is is something similar to changing channels on tv, good luck trying to watch two things at the same time, or for that matter, even choosing what playing, because the app store really doesn’t give you that choice, Apple does, and they control what gets to play. so you’ve got hundreds of channels, and nothings on. they got away with this business on a phone, i’m not sure how successful it would be on something thats meant to overlap with a computer. yes you can writeup quick emails and browse the app store and text in real fancy manners to other ipad users, but thats not the same thing as reconfiguring an entire computer to do something entirely different.

have a good day ladies and gents.

E-mail, IM, Facebook, phones—what if all of these ways to reach you over a network could be condensed into a single, unique number? The ENUM proposal aims to do just that, by giving everyone a single phone number that maps to all of their identifiers. Here’s how it works, and why it isn’t already widely used.

so i suppose i’ve been neglecting posting here. fair enough. let’s try and catch up. from the previous post, you can tell i’ve been playing with my new toy quite a bit and absolutely loving it and the more i use it, the more it rocks. and just a day or two after that, the google nexus one phone was announced so i’ll post more on that in a bit and try and explain why the n900 still rocks more than any other phone out there right now.

in the mean time, here’s a day in the internet.

so after a whole lot of waiting, i got me a new toy. behold. i’d promised hugh i’d write up a review so here goes my attempt at my first review.

first off, let’s begin by saying that this phone is so high in demand right now, that it’s been very hard to get a hold of. most places have been out of stock for about two months which is when it was released. nokia hasn’t made it easy for canadians to buy it either. had to have it shipped from the US and it wasn’t cheap either. the device runs at about $500 USD but it’s well worth the price and i’ll try to explain why below and why it also beats the pants off any iphone or blackberry out there.

first off, the technicals.

Display – 3.5 inch touch-sensitive widescreen display, 800 × 480 pixel resolution (highest i’ve ever seen of any phone)

Connectivity – 3.5mm AV connector, TV out (PAL/NTSC) (how cool is that, another reason not to buy a flat screen tv)
Micro-USB connector - (iPhones now are the ONLY phones that have disagreed to a universal phone charger, sucks to be a mac geek)
Bluetooth v2.1 including support for stereo headsets
Integrated FM transmitter - (superb for road trips, testing it out last weekend on a drive to michigan)
Integrated GPS with A-GPS – (didn’t try this yet, i got a gps in my head)
Battery Life – (sucked at first, after a quick firmware upgrade, battery is rock solid now)

Processor and 3D accelerator – (the accelerator is pretty neat, flip the phone from landscape to portrait and it automatically switches to the phone, i believe nokia has had that going in their N series for a while now)

TI OMAP 3430: ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz, PowerVR SGX with OpenGL ES 2.0 support – (basically it’s faster than your computer from six years ago)
Memory

Up to 1GB of application memory (256 MB RAM, 768 MB virtual memory) – (remember this is a phone!)

Mass memory – 32 GB internal storage : (!!!!) expandable to 48 with microSD !!!!!

Input – Full QWERTY soft and hard keyboard with a stylus (take that you one handed iphone crackberries!)

Operating frequency Quad-band GSM EDGE 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 900/1700/2100 MHz – (This sucks for Rogers customers, meaning you can only use EDGE. wind mobile will you give you full 3G support, i use wifi for the most part so don’t matter much to me)

Email & Messaging – Supported protocols: Mail for Exchange, IMAP, POP3, SMTP (IMAP rocks!)
Support for email attachments
Support for rich HTML
SMS and Instant Messages as conversations (This is one of my most favourite features)
Instant messaging and presence enhanced contacts
Multiple number, email and Instant Messaging details per contact, contacts with images (This is my most favourite feature, integration of contacts with skype, googletalk, SIP, jabber, yahoo, aim etc is seamless and can make google talk and skype calls like pure vanilla)
Support for assigning images to contacts

Web browsing – Maemo browser powered by Mozilla technology (i actually was able to setup fennec as well which is basically a variation of the browser that comes with the phone)
Adobe Flash™ 9.4 support – (take that iPhone)
Full screen browsing – (oh yeah did i mention, none of that pinching shit is involved. oh and since the screen is a resistive touch, not capacitative, i actually don’t need to smudge all over the screen with my fingers, thats why the stylus rocks)

5 megapixel camera (2584 × 1938 pixels), Image formats: JPEG CMOS sensor, Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar lens 3 × digital zoom Autofocus with assist light and two- stage capture key Dual LED flash Full-screen viewfinder Photo editor on device TV out (PAL/NTSC) with Nokia Video Connectivity Cable (CA-75U, included in box) or WLAN/UPnP Landscape (horizontal) orientation Capture modes: Automatic, portrait, video, macro, landscape, action  - (i’ll be honest, i’ve never cared much about camera phones and don’t think they’ll ever take decent photos, but this damn thing keeps testing my stance on it)

Video – Wide aspect ratio 16:9 (WVGA) Video recording file format: .mp4; codec: MPEG-4 Video recording at up to 848 × 480 pixels (WVGA) and up to 25fps Video playback file formats: .mp4, .avi, .wmv, .3gp; codecs: H.264, MPEG-4, Xvid, WMV, H.263 Music and audio playback Maemo media player  Music playback file formats: .wav, .mp3, .AAC, .eAAC, .wma, .m4a .ogg (basically any format you can throw at it, it will playback. err….iphone, i’m looking at you)

Built-in FM transmitter (i love this thing)

oh err…did i mention it runs linux so has a full ssh server and client setup as well as the fact that you have full root access on the phone and no carrier can actually lock the phone down (one reason why you haven’t heard too much hoopla about the phone, since noone is willing to provide it with a discounted service plan) full root = no lock down.

okay so i have to admit, i love nokia’s. always have and always will. i’ve always ever owned a nokia phone and i’ve been very happy in their reliability, sturdiness and durability. i’ve actually gone and done a lap in a swimming pool with one in my pocket, and come out the other end and have it working fine. i don’t know any other phone manufacturer that can provide such durability. on top of that, the usability of nokia phones is their biggest selling point in my opinion. the fact that they make using a phone as simple and intuitive as possible is something no other manufacturer has been able to do.

having said that, the n900 initially is extremely confusing to use. but as you use it more and more, after a few hours the usability becomes second nature and you realize why things are the way they are and how customizable the phone is and how superbly designed it is. now i’ve never used a smartphone before either so maybe this was just me. as mentioned before, the phone runs a version of linux developed by nokia called Maemo.  and it’s a geek’s paradise. the apps developed for it are strong and usable. i haven’t had a chance to mess around with the ovi store yet, but i’m sure it’s just as fun.

as far as apps go, the iphone seems to be a winner so far, but if most apps are rendered useless everytime a jailbroken iphone gets a firmware upgrade, doesn’t seem like much awesomeness. with apple, it seems like everything can be awesome and cool, but has to be bought at a price. also i’ve learnt that qik.com is one of the coolest things i’ve seen in a while as well. though in all fairness, ovi is revamping it’s ovi store for the n900 allegedly and giving it a redo making it similar to the app store. but also because maemo is debian based, apt-get has limitless possibilities with repositories popping up everywhere by anyone.

now most people compare this thing to the iphone, the iphone being the most popular phone in north america at the moment. i personally have found the multitasking abilities, the integration of skype, sip, google talk with nokia contacts is seamless and something i am so used to now, i cannot do without. most reviews and comparisons of the phones will tell you similarly.

at the end of the day, the price of the phone is well spent upon this thing, as it’s not a phone that you can do “smartphone” things with like the iphone. it’s essentially a mini computer, that also makes calls. the freedom and choice that nokia has offered is limitless. the build quality and the durability of the phone feels full and solid. the annoying virtual keyboard on the iphone is given an alternative on the nokia, and better yet, because the n900 has a resistive screen rather than capacitative, the n900 works superbly with the stylus that comes with it so if you’re feeling lazy about using the qwerty keyboard, the virtual one works just as efficiently, no fingers too fat for this puppy. (oh yeah, works with winter gloves/mitts on too, take that iphone users!)

also the multidesktop feature is a nice grab from gnome/kde users. and makes usability a lot more feature rich as customizing each desktop individually really enhances the enjoyment of the UI.

the browser that ships with the phone is one of the best mobile browsers out thereas well, but the tips and tricks of the phone are the selling point.

One day last year a daughter of Earl Spencer (who is therefore a niece of Princess Diana) called a taxi to take her and a friend from her family home at Althorp in Northamptonshire to see Chelsea play Arsenal at football. She told the driver “Stamford Bridge”, the name of Chelsea’s stadium, but he delivered them instead to the village of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire, nearly 150 miles in the opposite direction. They missed the game.

Such stories are becoming commonplace. A coachload of English schoolchildren bound for the historic royal palace at Hampton Court wasted an entire day battling through congested central London as their sat-nav led them stubbornly to a narrow back street of the same name in Islington. A Syrian lorry driver aiming for Gibraltar, at the southern tip of Spain, turned up 1,600 miles away in the English east-coast town of Skegness, which has a Gibraltar Point nearby.

Two complementary things are happening in these stories. One is that these people are displaying a woeful ignorance of geography. In the case of Stamford Bridge, one driver and two passengers spent well over two hours in a car without noticing that instead of passing Northampton and swiftly entering the built-up sprawl of London, their view continued to be largely of fields and forests, and they were seeing signs for Nottingham, Doncaster and the North. They should have known.

The other is more subtle. Everybody involved in these stories has consciously handed over responsibility for knowing geography to a machine. With the sat-nav on board, they believed that they did not need to know about north or south, Spain or England, leafy Surrey or gridlocked Islington. That was the machine’s job. Like an insurance company with its call centre or a local council with its bin collections, they confidently outsourced the job of knowing this stuff, or of finding it out, to that little computer on the dashboard.

Here is another story. A former winner of the BBC quiz show “Mastermind” recently took part in a pub quiz which came down to a tiebreaker between his team and a group of young people who were relying on BlackBerrys. Anyone familiar with quizzes these days knows that this can happen, whether it is under the table or outside in the smokers’ zone; the combination of wireless internet access and Google searching is simply too powerful for some to resist and for others to prevent. In this case, happily, virtue triumphed and the team led by the Mastermind champion won. Then afterwards a young woman from the losing side came over and asked in baffled tones: “How did you get that?” So attuned was she to the idea that answering quiz questions was a task to be outsourced to the internet that she seemed not to understand the idea of general knowledge that was kept in the head.

Keep reading to find out whether Google is killing general knowledge.

for all my programmer buddies who’ve been avoiding switching to linux because they are “programmers”.

A few weeks ago, I switched my development environment from Windows to Linux, on a project which was developed so far on Windows only. In this post, I want to describe the issues that brought me to this switch, a short overview how I did the actual port, and some observations on Linux for developers. This is the first post in a series of at least two, the second post will describe the tools I use on Linux right now.

This website can display your browsing history based on information that your browser willingly provides.  Not quite on the same scale as Echelon , but then again think of the marketing and profiling opportunities.  Courtesy LWN.

The Free Software Foundation today launched a campaign against Microsoft Corp.’s upcoming Windows 7 operating system, calling it ‘treacherous computing’ that stealthily takes away rights from users. At the Web site Windows7Sins.org, the Boston-based FSF lists the seven ’sins’ that proprietary software such as Windows 7 commits against computer users. They include: Poisoning education, locking in users, abusing standards such as OpenDocument Format (ODF), leveraging monopolistic behavior, threatening user security, enforcing Digital Rights Management (DRM) at the request of entertainment companies concerned about movie and music piracy, and invading privacy. ‘Windows, for some time now, has really been a DRM platform, restricting you from making copies of digital files,’ said executive director Peter Brown. And if Microsoft’s Trusted Computing technology were fully implemented the way the company would like, the vendor would have ‘malicious and really complete control over your computer.”

for the rampant facebooker’s.

Facebook as Evidence

In today’s modern world of technology which includes Internet-based social networking and the accompanying rise in the sharing of personal information, a recent Ontario Court of Appeal decision, Leduc v. Roman (“Leduc”), has concluded that such personal information is a legitimate form of documentary evidence for civil litigation cases.

Social networking websites, such as Facebook, provides the opportunity for millions of internet users to connect, interact and, at times, share personal information with other online users ultimately creating “online communities” of individuals that share common interests. The sharing of personal information is done via postings on community member “walls” (a space on users’ profile pages that allows community members to post messages for the user or other members to view), “photos” and “videos” (where users can upload albums, photos and videos); and “status” which allows users to inform community members of their whereabouts and actions.

Leduc was involved in a motor vehicle accident wherein he alleged that as a result of Roman’s negligent driving his enjoyment of life had lessoned, in particular his personal life.

Leduc maintained a Facebook account but with restricted access permitting only those who were personally authorized by him (Facebook “friends”) to view his personal information. Those who did not receive Leduc’s authorization were not categorized as a Facebook “friend” and subsequently only able to view information commonly available for all to see such as his name, photo and city of residence. Despite not having “friend” status, Roman’s counsel requested that Leduc produce contents of his Facebook profile pages to ascertain whether or not his claim was genuine. Leduc refused to produce the Facebook pages on his private setting. As a result Roman sought an order from the court to obtain access to the information on the private setting.

The Court of Appeal granted Roman the opportunity to cross examine Leduc to determine if any information on his private setting would be relevant to the litigation and if so, to produce it. In making this order the court stated, “to permit a party claiming very substantial changes damages for loss of enjoyment of life to hide behind self-set privacy controls on a website, the primary purpose of which is to enable people to share information about how they lead their social lives, risks depriving the opposite party of access to material that may be relevant to ensuring a fair trial.”

The Court of Appeal appears to have been persuaded by the fact that Facebook, as a social networking site, is a means by which one can reveal one’s personal life to others, and for that reason is likely to contain relevant information about how one leads their life. Accordingly, despite privacy controls and settings, the contents of a social networking website can be disclosed to a third party but only if the contents are relevant. One cannot go on a fishing-expedition of all profile materials that do not relate to the matter or are overly broad.

This case illustrates that the development of social networking sites opens the door to new sources of evidence; evidence which litigants may now obtain and rely on as potentially key information that would have only been previously captured through surveillance. The information of course has to be relevant.

For employers, information contained on an employee’s profile may be useful in cases involving disability management whereby an employer may have the ability to obtain valuable information regarding the employee’s daily physical activities, or in cases involving wrongful dismissal claims whereby an employer may be able to obtain information regarding the employee’s efforts, or lack thereof, to find alternate employment.

the utility of the ipod fast wore out rather quickly after it first came out, for me at least. the sound quality sucked, the ear buds and speakers sucked, my ears hurt most of the time wearing those damn things and the enjoyment of music wasn’t there as it would be with a proper audio home setup. the iphone has a fairly low appeal for me as well, gets lame rather quick after the “cool” factor wears out and also why i won’t be buying one any time soon. never the less, these are very cool covers for ipod nano’s.

ok so i got a beef. what the heck is wrong with computer software today. or rather to explain better, software made by companies.

adobe, can you please explain to me what the hell is in adobe reader? just the GD installer is 45MB for crying out loud?! for reading a damn pdf file?!?

real player? 7 mb for an installer FOR ANOTHER INSTALLER? really? i mean, REALLY?

nokia, i know you really want me to sync my phone to my computer every single day, but i won’t do it, i promise, especially  if its 70 MB just for the install file.

apple…where do i begin? quicktime is  75 MB just for the player. itunes, same deal. cmon, just to play some music. and your software just isn’t even that good.

vlc does all of the above in 15 mb as far as media playing goes. amarok is a bit bigger, but at least it’s a bit of a better player too.

even firefox is getting a bit too bloaty for my liking now, that’s why i switched to opera. go try it fools. it does everything and more that firefox and thunderbird combined can do!

please note my exclusion of ANY software produced by microsoft, they’re not even worthy of a rant. i’m too tired of all the bloat they produce and as most of my readers now, i haven’t dealt with any of their rubbish in a few years now.

oh yeah, and another note, get your shit out of my system tray. if i wanted it to start up everytime i boot my computer, i’d put it in the startup myself. thanks much.

p.s. (feel free to expand on this list in the comments).

Microsoft has announced that the forthcoming Windows 7 operating system will contain a number of piracy ‘tweaks’ it says are designed to protect the interests of customers. Under the new regime users will be expected to validate their software in a much more precise way than before. Other Microsoft operating systems and anti-piracy measures, including Windows Genuine Advantage, allowed users to delay ‘activation,’ but Windows 7 will make it harder to ignore repeated messages. According to Joe Williams, general manager for Worldwide Genuine Windows at Microsoft, counterfeit software ‘delivers a poor experience and impacts customer satisfaction with our products, particularly if users do not know that their software is non-genuine.’ Williams gave the example of one piracy exploit that caused more than a million reported system crashes on machines running non-genuine Windows Vista before Microsoft was able to resolve it.