IT notes

Monday, June 06, 2005

Is it time to gang up on Billy the Bully?

(To say that I was spectacularly wrong is to underestimate how spectacular a supernova of miscalculation can be. A modest man would have erased or re-edited, but I prefer to leave them online. Primarily because I believe words?once written?deserve to remain as record, foolish or not. It goes to fidelity and veracity. And also because I know no-one read this thing anyway. Enjoy.)

It’s hours before Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference 2005 and the newswires are alight that Apple is switching to Intel. True or not, consider the message. Is the world now looking for a savior from years of Windows hegemony?

Since I do so badly at prognostication, I’m going to throw my hat in the ring now and see if I can make a few qualified predictions. Please mind your head, keep your arms inside the ride at all times and, as always, no wagering on who survives.

  • Apple will not switch to x86 processors - Apple builds “walled gardens” like Macintosh and iTunes, places where there’s freedom but safety. Opening up the gates to x86 compatibility would reintroduce the spectre of Orange/PowerComputing-type clones. I can’t see that happening.

  • The PowerPC spec is open - anyone can build them. Perhaps Intel will become the primary manufacturer since IBMs going to have their hands full making all those 3+Ghz G5s for Microsoft’s XBox. Altivec - Moto & IBM’s versions - would be a problem, but the G5 architecture takes care of much of the Altivec advantage. The bait to the Intel rumor has been the new Pentium D processor - with DRM handily built-in. If Intel can build it into a Pentium, why not a PowerPC?

  • Did I say ‘IBM’ and ‘3+ Ghz G5’ in the same line? Sure I did - do you think Steve likes following behind Bill for anything? Add a dash of hubris and you can see why Intel now becomes attractive to Steve.

  • Lastly, why leave a hardware platform that’ll soon have games developed for it? Games have always been Apple’s ‘Achilles Heel’, and with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo adopting the G5, what kind of advantage would there be to drop it now? The G5s that will be used in future game systems are scaled-down and streamlined verisons of the Apple core…if anything, porting should be easier.

    • There’s likely either alot more to this or alot less, but it does do one very important thing - worth all the media attention draped across the subject this weekend: it marks a line in the sand that both Apple and Intel are willing to crossing over. Is this the opening salvo in a war against the bully of the marketplace, Microsoft? MS dumps Intel for IBM, and Intel promotes Apple’s security over Microsoft. Sony is getting cozy with Apple. Intel. Sun.

    There’s blood in the water and everyone can smell it.

    Posted by Admin on 06/06 at 07:09 AM
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    Friday, April 22, 2005

    Setting up a HP Laserjet on a bridged Apple Extreme/ Express network (updated)

    I think the biggest trouble most tech people will face when coming to the Mac is “overmanipulation”: We try to do too much beforehand. I’m an overmanipulator, and this is my story.

    We’ve done some upgrading at Casa de Trascapoulos and the new wireless network had an upgrade. We doubled the effective range in the old house by adding an Airport Express, making it the primary base station, and then moving the Airport Express to the upper bedroom-cum-hardware dump, where it LANs out to a HP 4100tn laser printer.

    That’s the short version - the long version is a bit twistier.

    First I tried to do this with an Asus WL500g wireless router. The benefit was that it had a parallel printer port, a 4-port router, USB and it was only 50 euros (59 with shipping). I was told the HP’s network card didn’t work and it wasn’t very reactive when I first tried it, so I assumed it’s was dead and decided to go parallel. And you know what that say about when you “assume”...*

    As a word of advice - fuggedabout it with anything but an Asus network. As a rule, WDS bridges are almost impossible across different manufacturers, and while the Airport Express was happy to see the Asus (and vica versa), and they could negotiate the 64-bit WPA key, they couldn’t handshake. Constant timeouts. Just consider it a lockout “feature” - if a manufacturer is going to drop their pants with a cheap price to get you to buy their router, they’re going to anything they can to keep you buying their hardware. Bridging is their hook.

    Being that I bought the printer lightly used for - get this - 1 euro, I figured I had a little lattitude on buying a wireless router…

    To be fair, I only tried the Asus - it’s possible the the Airport would bridge with a Linksys or Buffalo system, but I’m no longer willing to fuss more than a few days to get some 3rd-party network solution working. I sold the Asus for what I paid for it and bought an Airport Express. Setup was brilliantly simple - where I had to be prepared ahead of time with the Asus - MAC addresses, passwords, WPA and access lists, etc - with the Airport I just clicked 3 times:  WDS button, the plus button to add the other station and the update button. Linked. Once the basestation restarted, I could select it, give it the same settings as the existing system and reset it once more to be a masked 802.11g node.

    But the printer wouldn’t print. Of course. Bonjour - previously known as “Rendezvous” and more commonly “ZeroConf”, saw the printer in the Setup window, found the correct driver and let me add it, but it would never connect accross to the correct address. Even if I manually changed the address to the correct IP range, subnet, etc…nada.

    Part of the Asus setup had me change some settings in the JetDirect 610 card and the printer itself, so rethinking my strategy of giving it exactly what I thought it should need, I hit the reset button. Cold reboot - factory settings. Whammo.

    And whaddya know…The printer setup found the printer again, set up the network addressing in the JetPrint itself, found the correct driver, etc. All I had to do was click on the printer name, agree with the driver, and click Save. And I was saved - the damn thing started printing perfectly. Everything was set-up for me.

    Sometimes less it more. You have to relax and let the Mac work FOR you.  So if anyone has a problem with an Airport network, do LESS. Hit the reset button, let the thing configure and THEN tweak.

    Update: In my hammering around for information, I did come across a good source for the WL-500g: the Chupa forums - http://www.forum.chupa.nl/index.php. Definately worth stopping in if you prefer to fight the good fight with the Asus…

    * Note: Who remembers the TV version of the “Odd Couple”? Quoth Felix: “When you ‘assume’, you make an ‘ass’ of ‘u’ and ‘me’...” **Sigh**...no-one writes like that anymore…

    Posted by Admin on 04/22 at 02:03 AM
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    Tuesday, March 01, 2005

    Microsoft in violation of patents on Windows Media?

    “(Is) Sony and Philips considering round two with Microsoft over codecs?”, asks ReThink. 

    If you were Sony or Philips and you found that Microsoft had been not just using technology that you invented to invade your markets, but had been giving it away, would you want to sue or negotiate?

    Seems Microsoft’s WMV may be liberally taking components of MPEG for use without paying for the intellectual property. I know I wouldn’t like that if I were Phillips.

    This is certainly worth a read since, if you follow the logic they’re employing, it could mean billions and billions in potential damages:

    Damages might be estimated in two layers - one based on how much benefit Microsoft has got out of giving the media player away, and the other on how much loss of business the $200 billion-a-year Consumer Electronics market has suffered because of this. 
    Assuming that 400 million devices carry the codec now and that, over the past decade or so, the total number of devices that have carried it, including obsolete and discarded ones, was close to 1 billion, then that might be the multiplier for the first set of damages. An MPEG 2 license costs $2.50 per copy, so assuming a similar licensing regime, that could mean that this act should have cost Microsoft $2.5 billion in licensing fees. 
    If perhaps the same amount again was lost by the collective CE firms in missed sales (not to mention what putting a free codec on a PC has done for piracy) then perhaps this doubles the fee to $5 billion. Apply triple damages?

    So - if this is the case, or even remotely the issue, then MS will have to either charge for a license, a la QuickTime Pro, or absorb the costs internally. Either way, it’s gonna be painful.

    (hee hee!)

    Read the entire article at ReThink

    Posted by Admin on 03/01 at 05:51 AM
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    Thursday, December 30, 2004

    2

    Only deadbeats use Firefox

    I’ve been asked why my employer’s site still uses tables (albiet a mix of tables and css under php), and can be answered with 2 words: “5” and “banks”...

    I won’t mention them by name here, but we’re a “stichting” - the dutch word for non-profit organization - we’re a collection of governmental agencies and large institutions. And because we’re built of the best and the brightest, we need to keep using tables.

    You may be crying “Why?” and all I can say is: Improper degradation. We have to, primarily because of the lingering existence of Internet Explorer 5.0 in Dutch enterprise, primarily banking and telecom sectors. These groups are major backers in our non-profit and nigh it’s impossible to get them to change their policies on installed software. I’ve used degrading CSS in designs but either our external programmers or our internal reviews have resorted to css-flavoured tables. Feh.

    Which isn’t the big question - the big question is why do some of the largest organizations in The Netherlands still rely on IE 5.x?

    No clear answers have emerged from my inquiries, but it’s safe to say it’s a combination of security policy, existing custom Java applications and reticence or inability to switch up to newer system software. And if you knew how old and creaky some of the the Java code was running the operations, you’d be looking for a new bank somewhere in Mauritius.

    The only way out is either an enterprise-wide system upgrade, which will cost too much, or switching to a *nix alternative, which is a hard sell with the MS Office crowd.

    You can’t say this enough: No policy will survive if the Boss’s secretary isn’t behind it.

    image

    All numbers are in thousands.

    IE5 is a goliath, old and failing but still able to kill you when it decides to move and step on you. I’ve heard the some (sales?)people joke in one organization about stats—“Only deadbeats use Firefox,” one core person remarked. While our tracking shows ALL IE 5.x versions in a gradual decline, from over 70% in 2003 to less than 17% today, december 20, 2004, Firefox peaked at 7% a few months back and has also started declining to it’s current 3%. IE 6 has peaked in the summer and remains a steady 75%.

    Was the Firefox blip just a test by our usergroup? Due to a seminar we held, did it perhaps represent a “different user” than normal? We’re looking through the logs now via Analog to see what component of the IE group is solely 5.0…it would make programming a little easier, but if we could upscale the entire group to open standards, we could offer better solutions. But that’s not going to happen for awhile yet.

    It’s a weird dance - you zig when they want to zag, or just stand still. And face it - if we’re biased enough to support the 8-10% of Safari/Netscape/Firefox users, we should cut the same slack to the IE 5.x crowd.

    But this much is sure - Firefox needs constant pushing. Pushing on your mother and father. Pushing into the corporate coffee clutches and gossip gaps that fill each hallway. It needs to occupy conversation, often and constantly, and needs to introduced to the bosses’ secretary personally. Don’t expect that one advert in the New York Times will change the world. Only continual education will.

    If you want to bury old browsers this year, just do one thing: Be “tech support” for Firefox.

    Posted by Admin on 12/30 at 02:56 PM
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