Zzot!

So, I was reading this story on what might threaten iTMS, and what Apple might have up its sleeve to respond to such threats, and a quote in the middle really jumped out at me:

Meanwhile, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates followed with a few jabs of his own — proclaiming that mobile phones should replace the iPod as the primary device for listening to music, and hinting that Apple shouldn’t get too comfortable with its current position.

Now, I heard that Bill Gates said Apple shouldn’t get too comfortable on top, and I have no reason to think he wasn’t implying what that says he was implying — aside from it being a really dumb idea. I know a lot of people with iPods. I know a lot of people with mobile phones. All of the people in the first group are also members of the second group, so I guess iPod users largely already have mobile phones they could use instead.

The thing is, an iPod is a great mobile music player — I don’t know anyone who has a mobile phone that’s even a great phone. Is there really a growing demand from people who want to replace their lousy phone and good music player with one device that’s both a lousy phone and a lousy music player? Even if there is, who would want to be the major player in that end of the market?

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So, I’m sort of half-watching The Late Late Show tonight and the host de jour is showing some videos that he and his friends made when he was “pre teen” and into professional wrestling. It is a stark reminder that my idea of what’s funny just doesn’t match with everyone else’s — embarrassing video from some host’s life only reminds me of embarrassing moments from my own life that I’d rather forget. While there are many adjectives I might use to describe television that reminds me of such things, “entertaining” and “humorous” are not among them.

But, what do I know — most sketch comedy makes me nauseous.

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While I’m not normally a huge fan of “me too” blog posts, this (which I found via mozillaZine) is an absolutely stunning display of failure to understand what the web is, how to use it, or why you would want to — and some idiots are, presumably, actually paying this company for their services…as an ISP!

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I voted this morning (well, yesterday morning). I just want the record to reflect that I drew a line connecting the head and tail of the arrow pointing at the phrase “in the name of all that is good and nice, let the campaigning be over”. I’ve been having nightmares that they’d just keep going…and going…and going…

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Do people just not know how ridiculous they look? Do they know and just not care? Do they know and (mistakenly) think they are doing something about it?

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When my mom went back to school, one of her teachers referred to parts of the Fine Arts world as “art snot” — you can probably imagine which parts. I was reminded of this today when I was thinking about a couple of decisions I made recently. These aren’t major life-changing decisions, mind you, but they still got me thinking.

Continue reading…

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Lins and I went to an Omnimax theater today — it was okay.

I think it is fishy that none of the top 10 Google hits for that word are the vendor. Now that I look, the vendor only appears to use IMAX as a trademark. What, did the theaters all make up their own name for it?

Anyway, the experience. I haven’t been to one of these in ages. It isn’t that the experience was any less — it was great. The projected image totally envelops you, just like it is supposed to.

First, I noticed a neck ache almost as soon as we got in there. It might have been there before, I don’t know. But as soon as we were in there, my neck was sore.

Second, the seats weren’t too comfortable. Don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware that I’m a pretty tall guy, and most theater goers are, well…less so. That being said, our usual (ordinary) movie theater has really comfortable seats.

Third, there didn’t seem to be much agreement on where the screen is. I mean, omnimax appears to refer to the IMAX Dome projection, where the dome has a 180° view with a 30° rake, the seats are positioned high, at a steep angle, and in a convex arrangement so other seats (or the people sitting in them) don’t obstruct your view.

Once you get beyond that, however, only the designers previously mentioned seats seemed to have decided where they thought the focal point of the presentation was. It seems to me that usually these theaters project some sponsor-related material at a random spot on the dome before or after the main presentation — that’s not what I’m on about. During the film we went there to see, at no point from the opening credits, through the content, and the closing credits, was it apparent that the people who made the movie had any idea where they thought the sweet spot was.

Now, the reason that these theaters and formats tend not to attract a lot of commercial success is that the market just isn’t large enough to justify the expense of producing the large format films. That being said, however, you’d think the few people who are producing the films would do the best they can.

I mean really — if you have a format where the entire concept is that you can look at the focal point of the presentation and there’s enough screen all the way around to cover your peripheral vision, is it so much to have the producer edit their film to keep the focal point in the center of the damn screen? Feh.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about platforms lately. Usually when you hear that in the summer of an election year, it means politics — I guess I do too. Sort of.

The old joke about geeks talking about what text editor or what UNIX lineage what programming or scripting language is best is that it becomes a religious issue. How many of these religious issues are there? Well, a lot more than you’d think.

Anyway, platforms — there are a lot of them. Right now, right this minute, I’m using a Mac. The web-server is a Linux box. There’s another Linux box next to me, which ironically is where I test my site to see how MSIE mangles it (thanks be to wine). There’s a lot more Windows at work, and a handful of other assorted platforms represented. So, which one is best?

Glad you asked. Not because I have an answer handy — I don’t. The problem is that a lot of people do have an answer to that question…and the question is unanswerable.

An (un)answer

I don’t own a full-size framing hammer. That’s probably not surprising, since I’ve never “stick built” a house. I do know there is such a thing though, and if I expected to spend a weekend doing framing, I’d buy the proper hammer. It’s not that I don’t own a perfectly good hammer, it just isn’t the tool for that job.

In the real world, people pick the tool they think is best for the job. While that’s different than using the tool that actually is best for the job, the fact remains that they chose on (their perception of) function.

Take your metaphors and…

Okay, okay. I’ve long believed that it is irresponsible for our colleges and universities to allow a homogeneous computing environment, let alone encourage one. I’ve never walked into someone’s workshop and found that they own one of every different size and shape open-end wrench made — and that’s it. But schools that have the same version of the same OS on every desktop, and a server variant of that same OS on all the servers are everywhere. Why is that such a bad thing?

Because computers are tools. Don’t get me wrong, Macs are pretty. I don’t have anything against good industrial design on your products; if I did, I wouldn’t have a Mac. Looking at some of the hardware I have around me, I apparently don’t have anything against terrible industrial design on your products either, but I don’t go advertising that.

The whole idea of a tool is that you’ve got a problem (the nail), and are looking for a solution (the hammer). Once you’ve got the hammer, anyone who figures they might as well get a screwdriver while they’re at it have one of these attributes:

• Expect non-nail problems
• Collect tools, or otherwise are geek-ish
• Have the same IQ as the hammer

So, how does this relate to politics?

Glad you asked. Schools teach that it’s normal to have just one platform — it’s not. Anyone who can tell you what the best computing platform, mechanical fastener, or fiscal policy is without asking you several questions first is selling something. And it’s probably something you want to not have. Just look at the U.S. government right now — the problem isn’t that there’s too much adversarial politics, it’s that they’re doing adversarial politics wrong. The whole idea is that our elected officials argue about what’s best, come to a comprimise, get something done, and move on.

Oh, right — I wasn’t talking that politics. What (computing) platform do I use? Well, a lot of them. I’m a software engineer, and a geek, so I should be expected to have all sorts of stuff — and I do. Of the top three desktop platforms, I use all three of them. Every day. What, you don’t? Well whose stupid fault is that?

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I guess I never entirely thought it through. The thing is, when I listen to music that I’ve bought, I listen to albums. On the other hand, I’ve been buying music through iTMS. Don’t get me wrong, there are a handful of single tracks that I’ve bought for one reason or another, but I frequently found myself wanting a no single tracks option, either in iTunes or on my iPod when I’m browsing.

Every so often, you’d hear someone like Dave Matthews say that they’re not letting Apple have their songs because they ‘don’t want to contribute to the downfall of the album format.’ I always thought that was nuts. This downfall is caused by the steady supply of albums consisting of a couple good songs and a lot of filler, not by the artists who actually bother to make an album worth listening to.

All that being said, it’s slowly dawning on me that I’ve got my own political reasons to lean towards a particular way of buying music — CDs are better. A CD has good sound quality, no compression artifacts, and you don’t generally have to ask if a particular artist makes a CD that’s compatible with your hardware.

Oh, and another thing — I think the RIAA is wrong. I think DRM is bad for everyone. They should be embracing file-sharing (if nothing else, its a large-scale marketing system that other people pay for) and talking about how to still get artists paid rather than continuing their endless attempt to put every genie that comes along back in its bottle — and now to have the Department of Justice do it for them. Have there been any new movies produced in the years since VCRs became ubiquitous? Yes, a lot of them, in fact.

Technology advances, and business models change in response. No amount of lobbying congress can change this, and even if it could, suppressing technology in favor of one industry’s stability is bad for everyone.

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George Carlin once asked, “Did you ever get so mad at someone that you forgot where you’re going?” Well, that just happened to me, but I’m at my desk, not in my car.

Here I am, calmly sitting at my desk¹ trying to figure out why one of our webapps wasn’t working on my boss’s machine until he upgraded certain components that it uses. I knew his version was out of date, but from what little I can tell from the vendor’s release notes,² the older version wasn’t old enough to give us any major problems.

So, I figure I’ll just install the older version on my machine and see if the problem appears. (You can stop giggling now.) Among the major obstacles here is that the vendor’s website breaks in strange and spectacular ways in Firefox — but only on one platform. (?!)

So, having switched to MSIE, I started again. The main page for the plug-in isn’t much help. Release notes? Feh, we don’t need no stinkin’ release notes. The support page lists some older versions, apparently chosen by /dev/random on the webserver. Eventually, it becomes clear that the most effective way to find older versions is to run don’t walk by any large blinking signs that read “Older Versions, Keep Right” and instead use the downloads search engine and wade through the results.

Oh, hey! While I’m in here, I might as well just grab the current version so I can fix my machine when I finish. (Didn’t I tell you to stop giggling?) You might think that, being a list of search results in the downloads section, that the results are, well, downloads. In fact, the “download” for the current version only is instead a link to the Marketing Department’s merry-go-round. You know what happens when you go in the front door and ask for a plug-in driving MSIE? You get a self-installing ActiveX Control instead. Not the plug-in.

This is where my memory gets fuzzy. Looking at my desktop, I can only presume that I gave up on finding the installer for the current version. I double click the installer, it tells me to smeg off. I run Add Remove Programs, click the Remove button, and run the installer again. I run Add Remove Programs again, reading more carefully, clicking the other Remove button, and run the installer again. Old version installed, and the webapp still works. A couple more cycles of remove+reinstall, and I find a way to install it that yields the behavior my boss was seeing.

He didn’t install it this way, so that’s not the answer.

So, I cool off for a while, write a first draft of this rant, and then go talk to my boss about this stupidity. While talking to him, it occurs to me what the real answer is (you don’t win anything for having figured it out already). He hadn’t installed it the way I did, he didn’t even download an installer (I was telling him how he had installed the plug-in once I realized what had happened). The thing is, when you see the magic self-install dialog box that MSIE posts when it doesn’t have an ActiveX Control for something, the installer is almost never complete. It might install the old-style or new-style plug-in, and any other browser that exists and runs on Windows might find it, but something about it is probably broken.

If you want a plug-in that is fully functional, you usually have to download and run an installer. If you go in with a plug-in using browser, you’ll usually get bits to install a working plug-in and ActiveX Control. If you go in with MSIE, no promises. That was what he had done; use the bits MSIE found for him and hope for the best. I removed everything from my machine again, went to the website in MSIE, let it install the bits it found, closed MSIE and started Firefox, and that was the answer.

Oh, so the title. About the time my memory went fuzzy, I started getting shortcuts repeatedly installed on my desktop and in my quicklaunch box. Fucking shortcuts. Anyone who makes installers that add shortcuts anywhere should be shot. And then we should go to work on them. The entire company should be barred from doing business in any country Americans think they know how to pronounce. Fucking shortcuts.

Did I mention that this happened on a Friday afternoon? Thank God it’s Friday. Lins left a note on my desk at home saying, basically, lets go find a place for dinner that knows how to make a decent steak. Thank God it’s Friday.

1. Anyone who knows me personally would know that I never lose my calm demeanor while seated at my desk (italicized text dripping with sarcasm). [↩]
2. For those following along at home, lousy release notes eliminates…exactly zero plugin vendors from being today’s winner — I think writing browser plug-in release notes is secretly a front for the qualifying round of the International Cryptography Olympiad. [↩]

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