Don’t Throw Rocks When You Are in a Glass House

I was just reading this article over on Tom’s Guide. It appears Leopard is giving Blue Screens of Death. I’ve had some problems with my Macbook Pro freezing up (software freeze I think/hope) but haven’t received any of these problems yet. To make matters worse, Apple is censoring topics on its forums in an attempt to apparently keep the false illusion that there are no problems what-so-ever with anything that ever came out of Cupertino.

Tom points out some disturbing facts.

1. Retrodata is reporting "disturbing hard drive failure rates in some Apple Macbooks"

2. Finder sometimes causes you to loose data when you cut-paste across hard drive because it doesn’t write before deleting first. (only happens during hardware/power failure but still very important)

3. BSODs (blue screens of death) on Leopard machines, yes, Apple’s Leopard (Yikes, better change the Icon for Windows Computers Steve! See Above!)

4. Major problems with Freezes and hangs (I can verify this happens all the time on my Macbook pro)

If there is someone who first of all, knows what the heck he is talking about, and second, isn’t afraid to say it, it’s Tony Celeste. Bravo to you for having the guts to say what needed to be said, Apple is no better than Windows when it comes to being "made by humans." It does have flaws! It did ship too early! Not as early as Vista shipped but still.

I have two copies of Vista Ultimate, a Copy or two of Vista Premium, a Family pack of Leopard, a Macbook pro and more Linux servers and desktops than you would care to here about. I love all OSes and even Sun Distros are growing on me despite their usability issues.

A user named FusionGuy over at one of my favorite forums for learning, Channel9, posted the following. 

I find it amusing that Apple refuses to call a "blue screen" kernel panic the Blue Screen of Death but rather a Blue Screen; I suppose that’s the artistic approach Steve?  It’s also amusing that OS X is designed to work on a very narrow hardware set and they still have issues like this, whereas Windows is designed to run on thousands of unique hardware configurations and nobody critisizes (sic) Apple’s "brilliance" for failing to deliver a product that clearly wasn’t ready.  *sigh*
Now I’ll just sit back, relax and wait for the flame war to begin…

Good for you FusionGuy, and I agree, call it a BSOD if you have one, especially when you rub it in Microsoft’s face by making the Windows icon a BSOD. (not that I don’t find it funny, but now it’s twice as funny, don’t throw rocks when you are in a glass house)

I was going to post my thoughts that I thought Leopard was released too early as well, they are now guilty of some of the things Microsoft is guilty of, and yes, they are no better than Microsoft. Let’s take this time to admit that all operating systems have their strengths and weaknesses, some hate Vista, but I love it. As we push the envelope on what an OS can do, we will run into glitches, and I have no reason to believe that Apple will fix the problems. Hopefully Microsoft keeps improving Vista.

Update: While we are on the subject of problems with Apple products, an occurrence which wasn’t perceived to have happened very much until recently I just read this article by Alexander Wolfe. It appears that iPhones are having a lot of problems as well. I never complain about poor reception on my iPhone, it’s generally acceptable and I realize that not picking up a signal very well usually goes hand-in-hand with producing less brain cancer causing radiation. The complains noted are:

• o2 carrier reception
• iBricking because of 3rd party apps.
• Camera lens wearing off
• and more…

The only complaint I have with my iPhone is that the keyboard sometimes changes my words for me (it works well half the time) and the iPhone’s keyboard is sub-par in general especially when you are using an app that doesn’t use landscape mode. In landscape mode, I have minimal problems, but I could type on my XDA exec twice as fast if not faster. Other than that, I hadn’t planned on getting an iPhone, but after playing with my friends unlocked iPhone, i couldn’t resist but to get one. It’s the best mobile phone ever made, Apple has successfully taken all of the innovations of others, added a bunch of their own, and pretty much hit a grand slam. Now if they would just open the freaking thing up….

Technorati tags: Apple, Tom’s Guide, Apple BSOD, Apple Blue Screen of death, macbook, macbook pro, leopard, leopard problems, leopard freezes, leopard bsod, lopard hangs, battle of the os

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Vista: The Most Ironic Name For Microsoft’s New OS

If you do a search for the definition of Vista, Princeton defines the word as such:

view: the visual percept of a region; "the most desirable feature of the park are the beautiful views" wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Basically, you could ironically describe Microsoft Vista as the perceived most desirable Operating system. I love the tool just fine, I think it’s great, warts and all, but Computer World UK survey has done a survey pointing out that most people are very worried about the operating system.

"The majority of IT professionals worry that migrating to Windows Vista will make their networks less stable and more complex, according to a new survey."

"Ninety percent of 96% IT professionals surveyed said they have concerns about migrating to Vista and more than half said they have no plans to deploy Vista."

What do people perceive as the major roadblocks for implementation of the operating system?

1. Stability (I can concur, Vista is less stable than XP, but this a problem that can be remedied–over time. I will also point out that there is a sensationalist element to this.
2. Compatibility (Getting better but I can name a laundry list of programs that don’t run.
3. Cost (Implementation and hardware add significantly to the cost of the most expensive consumer OS in the world.
4. Complexity (I think this is partially laziness, part truth. IPV6 is something that needs to be implemented, and Vista has an untested, sub-par but advanced network stack in the OS.

Perception…  Vista was thought to be the clear road to the future, and things now look cloudy. I like to think I was one of the first people to say that there are some real crazy thinkers amongst our good friends in the EU over across the pond, and that it’s very possible that Microsoft’s operating system Monopoly might fade away soon.

The report goes on to say that many companies are thinking about breaking up with Microsoft:

Macintosh leads the pack of Vista alternatives, with support from 28% of respondents. About a quarter said they would opt for Red Hat Linux, with SUSE Linux and Ubuntu each garnering 18% of the vote. Another 9% cited other Linux operating systems and 4% were unsure.

They list Virtualization as a key driver in client innovation but for some reason they leave out the fact that many companies are reverting back to a early to mid 90’s think client computing initiative. The report talks briefly about the many roadblocks to getting off of Windows but doesn’t specifically mention exchange as a factor.

I run Mac Hardware, and I recognize that each OS out there has a strength and weakness. By running all operating systems (not all at once always but I can if I want to do so) I am learning about the evolving strengths and weaknesses of each OS.

I believe that the following features will be key drivers that will decide what operating systems are ran in the consumer and enterprise space. (the requirements are slightly different for each group but I’ll lump them for the sake of time)

1. Price: (OSS has a huge advantage here, especially if you have the in house talent in the enterprise and in the consumer space.
2. Hardware efficiency: Do more per cycle. An OS shouldn’t suck everything out of your hardware, but should enable your software to exist, and an OS not only must get out of your way, it must now help you more productive with the software you choose to run.
3.  Choice: Standards compliancy. The number 1 driver of innovation in the OS space is the standardization of protocols and services. This is becoming more and more important to architectural provisioning.
4. Price/Innovation cost effectiveness. Sure Vista and Leopard are the most consumer friendly operating systems (For the time being, and arguable in some portions like interface this isn’t always true anymore)
5. Barriers to adopting new technologies: These are still in place, perhaps not as much, but there are still many barriers that are costly to change off of a Microsoft ecosystem.
6. Software and Developer Adoption:, as well as how important the Internet becomes and how much it makes the OS a commodity. Most services do become a commodity

Microsoft doesn’t like to loose. They are making a record amount of profit, and you can’t take to heart every report (even mine) you read.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Vista, Microsoft Vista, Linux, Ubuntu, Novel, SLED, OpenSuse, Open Suse, OSX, Apple, OSX 10.5, Leopard, Irony, OS Wars

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OSX “Spaces” + VMware Fusion = “Unparalleled” personal computing power.

I am soon to be a full time research associate instead of a part time one doing it in my spare time. Currently I’ve been spending the last few months teaching myself to program, install, support and generally get to know Oracle 10g and 11g on both an Ubuntu Server environment, as well as on a SunOS Unix server. Instead of lugging around five machines I only lug around two. One is my work issued "Stinkpad" (okay, IBM Thinkpads are solid machines) but nothing, and I mean nothing I’ve ever encountered delivers what I have going on my Macbook Pro. Let’s run through what I’m doing, and how I’m doing it.

VMware isn’t a multibillion dollar company for nothing, these guys understand virtualization like Lebron James does a basket ball. At the core, we are running a micro and macro kernel in OSX’s Darwin Kernel (Version 9). (Download Darwin Source Code Here) Mac OSX is powered by a Mach & BSD Kernel which enables some cool stuff which I’m about to talk about here.

I have the ability to have up to 4 operating systems (including OSX and more if I wanted) and when I want to switch between operating systems, I just press "CTR + LEFT OR RIGHT." and Wazam!! I’m in another OS. Currently I’m running OSX 10.5, Windows Vista Ultimate, Sun Solaris 10 with Oracle 10g, Ubuntu Desktop (or Server with 10g, depends on whether I’m using Ubuntu as my IDE environment or testing a program on my virtual network of up to 5 PCs. I am also downloading gOS to give it a try, it’s a Ubuntu flavored distro with tight integration with Google.

Here is the kicker. I don’t even have to have a network connection to test real world applications, I can have multiple concurrent LAOP/UAOP/LAMP stacks running. I don’t usually do all of these at once, but I plan on upgrading to 4 gigs or ram, at which point all of this would run very very fast. Having 4 operating environments at once does work fine for me, you can adjust the VMWARE Fusion settings, and your mileage may vary.

As you can see, I have Sun Solaris 10, Ubuntu Desktop, Microsoft Vista, and OSX all running concurrently thanks to the magic of a OSX Spaces, a kernel that’s advanced, dual processors, and the magic of VMware’s Fusion product.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Technorati tags: Vmware, Spaces, Linux, Ubuntu, SunOS, Solaris, Thinkpad, MacBook Pro, Vista, VMware Fusion, Leopard Spaces, Mach kernel, BSD kernel, Macro kernel, Micro kernel

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New Term: Technology Squatter

I am an advocate of innovation in all forms. What I don’t like to see is those without the ability to create keeping those who can create wonderful new novel products, services, and software. Boston.com is reporting that Northeastern is suing Google over a way to split queries over multiple computers also known as a clustered database. From the Boston Globe article:

"This particular patent has to do with the fundamental database architecture, which they use to serve up every single result they serve to you," said Michael Belanger, president of Jarg Corp. in Waltham. Jarg is a privately funded developer of advanced search technology. The company was cofounded by Northeastern associate professor Kenneth P. Baclawski and holds an exclusive license to the patent, which is owned by Northeastern.

The patent covers a method for chopping up database queries into multiple portions and having each part processed by a different computer. This allows for much faster searching of huge databases, like Google’s vast index of Web pages on the Internet.

I work for a fortune 50 company, I have written patents, and I’ve come up with new concepts. These are concepts that our company will use though. The whole idea behind patents is, to protect & reward those who go the extra mile use their creative powers to envision something that doesn’t exist, and then to create that vision until that single thought is a product or service in our economy. As far as I know, this Jar Corp doesn’t even have a product, and they need to concentrate on providing a service instead of trying to litigate. As far as suing Google, they’ve not even seen the real tech behind Google, and it’s technology that’s probably changing every day. To say that this whole concept of clustered database queries is unique is unfathomable. Oracle uses the technology in its 11g product. The idea is that you can take a bunch of commodity boxes, through common OSes and databases on them and then you have an area of memory (oracle calls it an SGA) which resides above the hardware that sends tasks over the cluster. 

To sum up what I’m thinking here. I don’t know whether or not there should be software patents. What I do know that novel approaches to doing things which require a lot of work, but could be quickly reversed engineered and then put into a competitors product shouldn’t be allowed. On the opposite side of the coin there is a troll economy. Think patents, not products…. This doesn’t help our innovative world and it only serves the selfish few who would profit off of such lame patents that never come to market. I’ve come to the conclusion that if you invent a technology, you better be bringing it to market, or you are not only a patent troll but a technology squatter.

Technorati Tags: Google , Lawsuit , Technology Squatter , Northeastern University , Michael Belanger , Jarg Corp , Boston.com , Database Architecture , Clustered databases , Oracle 11g , oracle , database design , database

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Radiohead: comScore… Pounds or Dollars?

Mathew Ingram has this great tidbit at his site.

“In response to purely speculative figures announced in the press regarding the number of downloads and the price paid for the album, the group’s representatives would like to remind people that… it is impossible for outside organisations to have accurate figures on sales.

However, they can confirm that the figures quoted by the company comScore Inc are wholly inaccurate and in no way reflect definitive market intelligence or, indeed, the true success of the project.”

That’s a quote from the band. As someone who purchased the album, I wonder if the band would have done better if they would have given the option to pay in dollars and not pounds. I can assure you most of America’s kiddies are not hip to how much they actually spent. Also, I hope Radiohead did well on this, I know the album being on bit torrent is a big turnoff. Really makes me upset that a band would give away its music and people still pirate. I do think pirating would go away, but it takes time for those people to change their habits.

Technorati tags: Radiohead, piracy, Mathew Ingram, comScore

 

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Wow! A real 3d Desktop!

Beryl and Compiz and now Compiz-Fusion and the Open Composition group has done more for the advancement of the desktop environment and the adoption of Linux than perhaps anything recently. I am a big fan of Compiz Fusion and I’ll be out tomorrow to get some 3D Glasses to give Wordor a try. Looks very cool, read more over at the Compiz-Fusion blog.

Technorati Tags: Linux , OSS , Beryl , Compiz , OpenCompiz , Open Compositing , Wordor , 3D Desktop

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OpenSocial vs. Facebook is a lot like Windows vs. Mac

The OS Wars were about software revenue, smart next generation advertising is what’s at stake now.

Google has learned just about everything it knows from the genius maneuvering and mistakes of the business savvy Bill Gates of the late nineties which walked all over anything and everything that even so much as moved within 10 inches of it’s crown Jewels. It has also perhaps evolved Microsoft’s methods.

In this case, Google’s crown jewels are its monstrous advertising revenue, and the reason why it (Google) has stirred is because Facebook is working on a way to advertise on the web in a more sophisticated way than Google currently has available (on the web at least: see Gphone for the evolution of advertising with GPS.)

With a consumer culture that abhors lock in to software & services; merely evoking the words "open" gets the attention and loyalty of any programmer or technically savvy individual. By embracing a concept of being open, the OpenSocial solves at least the perception of the number one frustration with social networks–portability–and as far as I know, it is impossible to create an OpenSocial application that does no in some way tie back to Google. You can’t even dig in as of this moment without a Orkut account.

To increase the concept of a really open future, Google has released OpenSocial with an Apache license, but open source doesn’t work the same way on the programmable web, because on the web you need the audience + software + service + location to be truly open as in freedom open. On the web, we need not only platform independence, but URI independencies in order for the principles of freedom to exist on the web. 

Microsoft always embraced partners, and the power of many over one rings as true to to Facebook owners and aficionados this week as it has to those at Apple in the late nineties. The questions that the founders and VCs must answer are these: Does having an end to end ecosystem like Apple make sense on the web? And if not, should they mimic Google’s strategy and make it a many vs. many battle? Or join an ecosystem that will be ran by Google, forcing Facebook to compete solely on its merit, or should it do both. According to Peter Kafka, a Facebook investor and board member, Jim Breyer, "is open to the OpenSocial platform, and isn’t philosophically opposed to what Google is trying to do."

I think Facebook would be wise to create it’s own "Open" Platform because if they do not, we could be looking at a cloud-lock down much like Microsoft has desktops locked down. And then here we finally have it! Really it is the second coming of the OS wars. This is it. We are looking at one of the two companies which will be responsible for the "Programming Platform" of the web in a meaningful way.

Google has so many advantages, but Facebook has a dream and a vision and most importantly–a product–which is more refined than that of Google I believe. As I look over the simple APIs that Google released, I am reminded of a fancy IM platform and not a whole lot more. (I’ve only glanced over it)

Regardless, people will be spending their weekends digging into The Open Social trying to get a grasp on whether or not it’s the direction they want to take their application teams. Unfortunately, Google is starting off the OpenSocial in a way that let’s those who already have a large stake in writing applications a head start, and most of us must wait for our API keys to arrive. Regardless, here’s what the whole deal boils down to:

Google Gadget API + People Data API + Activities Data API + Persistence Data API = OpenSocial.

That’s about it, not too much so far, but something which will make those folks at Facebook wonder what to do now. Google has so much clout and they are partnering with everyone but Facebook. It doesn’t matter at this point whether or not there is any solid bit of working code at Google, developers on the Facebook platform are going to be distracted. Google will no doubt hand out passkeys to all of Facebook’s top developers right from the rip. Distract and subtract, the programmable semantic web is forming for real now and this reminds me of when Sony killed the Sony Dreamcast purely by words and clout and of a promise which turned out to be quazi-vaporware.

As one Harvard drop-out leaves the world of Microsoft and into bigger and better things, the reins have been handed to another to handle what seems to be the first real stab at a semantic web.

The Semantic Web (Wikipedia) as defined by, Tim Berners-Lee, is really just transforming all of the information that Google and the unindexed web currently has into a format in which all other programs could easily understand and use. I think the Open Social is a good thing, but I don’t think it will stop what is forming at Facebook.

Facebook’s API and database is much more refined and organized than what Google has as far as I can tell, and according to M. Arrington, they are about to release some stuff which will demonstrate why Google is ready to use the term open.

Project Beacon (Beacon to advertisers) Source: TechCrunch

 

One thing is for sure, even though here in the United States we don’t have the super-duper high speed network we should have, the future of the Internet looks fantastic no matter what side of the fence you are on. Dana Blankenhorn thinks Facebook is doomed but I don’t know if I believe it, I think Facebook will prosper if it continues to execute its vision.

Technorati tags: Facebook, OpenSocial, Google OpenSocial, Social Networking, Tim Berners-Lee, Semantic Web, Microsoft, Apple, OS Wars, Web Wars, Michael Arrington, Google Gadget API, People Data API, Activities Data API, Persistence Data API

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