LostCarPark's Journal

I was taking a bus to pick up a car from servicing, and typing on my Psion on the way. When nearly at my stop, I packed up to go, but instead of sliding the Psion into my bag, it must have slid down outside, landing somewhere inside the bus.

I didn't notice until the morning. The first sign that all was not well was the alarm not going off. Normally it goes off about a minute after my phone. But I wasn't panicking, as it's not uncommon for me to leave it downstairs. I checked before leaving for work, and there was no sign of it. Alarm bells were going off at this point, or rather, they weren't.

I knew at this point that the last time I'd had it was on the bus, so first thing after getting to work, I called the Dublin Bus, who were very helpful, and gave me the number for lost property. However, before I got to call them, I received a call from them. They had it, and their lost property office wasn't far from where I work. I called down at lunch time to collect it, and happily handed over the princely sum of €2 for the privilege.

Thanks to lproven for getting me to put a password screen on it, which shows my name and phone number to anyone who opens it. For one thing, it makes it difficult for anyone who picks it up to decide to keep it for themselves (though if they took out the main and backup batteries it would reset). As the guy said, "the recovery rate for these things isn't great".

I think the title says it all, but I'll try to explain how I feel about it.

From day one, I have been asking "what is it for?" and I'm still not sure what the answer is. It can be quite useful for finding old friends, then looking at their friends to find out who on their list I also know. There are a few people from school and college I've got back in touch with that way.

The various applications are supposed to make it useful, but I find most of them are just annoying. No I don't wantto be a zombie, a vampire, a warewolf, or whatever else someone thinks of. If I want to buy someone a pint, I'll do it down the pub where it's a lot more satisfying. And what's with all these wall things and other messengy things?

My problem is that I get a message saying someone has sent me a message, but in order to read this message, I have to install an application to let me read it. The first thing this application does (after insisting I share my personal information with it) is to spamall my friends and ask them to install the app too. Excuse me, but I respect my friends too much to ask them to install something I haven't even tried yet. Once I've got through all that, I find the message is a puppy dog and it wants me to see what happens if I forward it to all my friends. Thanks.

Could you imagine if we got emails telling us we had a message, but in order to read it we needed to download and install an application. We'd say, "no way, it's probably virus-infested spyware." However, when it's on a website it's supposed to be okay. The only difference is that it's our personal information rather than our PC that's at risk.

As I've hinted already, I have privacy concerns. Their privacy policy makes interesting reading...

Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.

Well, I'm sure they're only trying to be helpful, but this sort of thing makes me feel a little uneasy.

But even if we assume that Facebook themselves are completely trustworthy (which is a big assumption), what about all the third party writers of FaceBook applications? I expect the vast majority are honest and above board, but it only takes one bad lemon to write a "useful" app, then leave it sitting harvesting data for a couple of months, then they have a nice little stockpile of information to do as they see fit with. They probably can't access email addresses directly, but there's plenty of personal information they can access directly through Facebook, and more they can collect through the application. Believe me, there will be a big story about a rogue Facebook application developer in 2008.

Of course, Facebook will be collecting this post to provide me with a more personalised experience.

Thanks to tragenza for posting this...



The 2007 International Privacy Ranking

Ireland scores a pretty poor 2.5 out of 5. Barely a passing grade. Which seems to make it one of the better places to live as far as privacy is concerned. I suspect that at least part of this (such as information sharing between government departments) is a mixture of incompetance and grudge bearing (as in the head of one department not liking the head of another) rather than any grand design.

The more worrying aspect is the general downward trend, with not a single country improving its privacy standards.

...was rather good I thought. Lots of new characters, but managing to keep them all believable. I love the idea of everyone abandoning London because it's Jinxed at Christmas!

I won't say any more for fear of spoilers.

If you haven't seen it, get on Bittorrent and download it (but then buy it when the DVD comes out - I wouldn't advocate piracy).

My new camera arrived yesterday, the Olympus Mju 710, and it's lovely. Much slimmer than the old one, and lighter, with a huge screen. They've really come a long way since I got my now defunct Mju 300 about 4 years.

The battery was charging for most of the evening, so it was this morning before I got to take more than a couple of test shots.

The only thing I miss is a viewfinder, but I'll have to learn to live without that.

I'll try to post some photos on Flickr tonight.

Microsoft say they will have sold 100 million copies of Vista by the end of the year. Not bad, eh?

Except that the PC industry were predicting sales of 250 million PCs. That seems quite a big discrepency. Especially when you consider some of those copies would be people who upgraded PCs bought before 2007.

I'm assuming Macs and computers running Unix/Linux are included in the PC figure, but I can't see them accounting for more than 10% of the total. That still leaves well over 200 million, which presumably means that well over half of the PCs sold in 2007 shipped with XP.

It could just be that sales started slowly in the first half of the year. It would be quite interesting to see figures for the second half of the year when Vista could be considered "established".

No, not "Read the 'effing manual" but the even more annoying "Reduced Functionality Mode".

This "feature" was introduced with Windows Vista as part of WGA which is short for "Windows Genuine Advantage". It should be noted that so far this seems to be mainly an advantage to Microsoft. I have experience in XP of the system deciding it's not genuine because of a minor hardware change and been quizzed by a Microsoft employee as a result. But at least XP lets things run relatively normally until you get around to fixing the problem.

Vista's RFM disables all applications except Internet Explorer until you fix the problem, as well as shutting down after an hour of use. Supposedly this is to force you to get the issue resolved quickly.

I fully respect a company's right to protect its revenue, but not at the expense of legitimate customers. So if you're going to implement something like that, you'd better make sure it works. Reliably. All the time. Otherwise you're saying "we're not going to let you use your computer because we think you're a thieving b**tard."

Unfortunately for thousands of users, that's exactly what's happened, and naturally a lot of users haven't been happy about this.

So what a surprise when it's revealed that Service Pack 1 will remove RFM and go back to the lower level annoyances of XP's WGA.

Of course, machines already in RFM won't be able to install it.

My last post on Windows Vista generated more anonymous comments than I think I've ever had. Clearly I must do some more of that!

I accidently discovered that the old Windows menus are still available in Vista, simply by pressing and releasing the Alt key. personally I find this quite useful. I haven't had a chance to check if this works in Office 2007 yet.

I have also been getting more up to speed with the Linux desktop, which I'm liking more and more. My feeling now is that I'd like to get to the point where I can do everything I want in Linux before XP stops being useful.

But rather than knocking Vista, I thought I'd post something constructive. Like some advice to Microsoft on what would win me back to a post-Vista version of Windows.

My first advice is to look at what Linux does well. Microsoft have always been good at looking at their competitors achievements and mimicing them, so why not Linux?

The most obvious area thet could learn from is the whole area of software installation. The Windows way tends to involve finding an application, downloading an installer, running the installer which then does all the things necessary to make that application work. This usually works, but sometimes things conflict and either the application won't work, or something else will stop working. In extreme cases I've seen apps that had entrenched themselves deeply in the system get in a huff with each other and leave the system unbootable. Even when everything works, the system is fiddly, and requires the user to figure out how to download the application, where to save it, and how to run the installer. There can also be complications that you need to install something like the .NET framework to make it work, leaving the software the choice of including it in the installer (making the download bigger than it needs to be) or reqiring extra steps prior to installation.

Contrast this with Linux, where you have a package manager. You simply tick a box for the application you want to install, and Linux takes care of all the grunt work of finding everything needed to install and run the application, and making there are no version conflicts.

How nice it would be to have a package manager for Windows, though I'm sure the supreme court would have a field day when the arguments started over accusations of favourtism over whose applications were included in the package manager. I'm sure there are ways it could be worked out.

While I'm on the subject, the package manager could replace the rather tired Add/Remove programs control panel, as well as the many versions of Windows Update. The beauty of this is when I ask it to check for udates it would check for updates to all applications on my system, cutting out the need for every application to have its own update checking feature, which must add a fair bit of overhead to an average PC.

I also think this could benefit security. if there were a number of package repositories that vetted the packages they include, it might dissuade users from installing every bit of spyware offering a flashing mouse cursor that came their way. Of course, this would favour larger software producers, but I'm sure someone will come up with som,ething to help the little guys.

I was expecting a longer list than one item, but I have gone on a bit. While this would help win me back to Windows, Linux already has it, so it's not going to do it alone. So I'll add some more items here soon. In the meantime, feel free to add your suggestions.

Mark Minasi asks Why exactly does everyone hate Vista?

He comes to the conclusion that it was the same with every new version, and that it will pass and we'll all be happy with Vista soon.

I have to say I beg to differ. I have used almost every previous release of Windows since 1.0 (I was 16 when that came out), and while there have been versions I have had reservations about, I've always been able to see the improvements. I might have waited for a service pack to fix the bugs, but I've generally migrated eventually.

But after a fair bit of experience of Vista on other people's computers, I can't see myself wanting it on my computer. Not now, not at the first service pack, not ever.

There isn't a single reason for this, but rather a multitude of things that contribute to a general feeling of unease.

First are the user interface changes. Microsoft have regularly introduced user interface changes in the past, but they've always made an effort to accommodate their old user base. I knew people who used the Windows 2 file management thingy for years on Windows 3 because it was what they were used to. And there were plenty of people running the Windows 3 file manager on Windows 95. And I still know lots of people who run the Win2K look and feel on XP.

But Vista has dumped the old menu/toolbar system and replaced it with a new "ribbon" system. How much contempt do Microsoft feel they can treat their existing users with? Lots of "power user" commands are just gone. There may be other ways of achieving the same thing, but they take time to figure out, when the old command wasn't doing anyone any harm. A small one I found quite useful was the "Help... About" command. You could open any Explorer Window and use it to find out how much memory the computer had. It's not the end of the world that it's gone, but I found it quite handy and there was no real need to just nuke it.

Office 2007 is, of course, where the real fun begins. It's not part of Vista, but the two are closely related, and shows what MS now think of their existing user base. There should be an option to turn off the new interface and switch back to the old one, but there isn't. Even an option to put the old menu above the new ribbons would give existing users a half-way house. There are some very pretty things in the new UI, but if you're an experienced user and know how to do something the "old way" it can be very frustrating. Where is the "Save As" command on the new interface? The irony is now that the free OpenOffice suite is now easier for an existing user to adapt to than the new version of Office.

But aside from all the user interface changes, there are the new security "enhancements". I can't help feeling that many of these create an illusion of security without actually making the computer any more secure. Take the constant stream of "Windows needs your permission to do this" requests. How long before users stop reading them and just click yes on auto. I know a thing or two about them and I still find myself doing it. I have on occasion clicked without thinking then realised that I shouldn't have, but for many users there is no understanding or realisation. When will Microsoft realise that running in administrator accounts will never really be secure. The only real solution is to use restricted user accounts. It may take a little user training for users, but I don't see how the result could be any worse than what users are put through now. It will also take some thorough beating around the heads of application vendors to get them to produce applications that can work, and preferably install, in user mode accounts.

Finally there's the new swooshy graphics effects that Vista does. They look cute (unless you happen to be one of the not inconsiderable number of people who hate them), until you realise your 3D graphics card is running at full tilt, your CPU is at 97% and your laptop's battery life has been cut to about 7 minutes...

Well, I say finally, but there's probably a few other things I haven't thought of. I hear rumour of some new DRM stuff that I haven't had a chance to check out properly, for example.

I hope never to have a computer with Vista installed. I'm somewhat relieved that the company I work for rolled out XP to desktops last year. Our previous desktop upgrade was to NT4 in about 1998, so I think we're safe from Vista for a while. I still use XP at home, but I'm finding Ubuntu increasingly usable, and if some of the big software vendors realise that there's money in releasing Linux versions of their apps, it could be bye-bye Windows.

Alternatively, maybe Microsoft will one day stop treating their users with contempt and I might like the next version of Windows.

Now all I have to do is wait for the replies telling me I should switch to a Mac.

This week it was announced that from 2009 it will no longer be possible to travel between Ireland and the UK without a passport, and that we will have an electronic border with a requirement to submit personal information prior ro travel.

While it may be claimed that this is to prevent terrorism, we all know that it's really about controling the movement of illegal imigrants.

Personally I'm not terribly happy about this. In the past I have travelled to the UK with no identification whatsoever. Probably not advisable, but in the past one had the right to.

However, if I lived in Northern Ireland I would be absolutely livid. This effectively makes residents of the provence second clss citizens of the UK, as they will no longer be able to travel within their own country without carrying a passport and submitting personal details about themselves.

I feel that we are heading the wrong direction with this. We should be looking at a wider European common travel arrangement. As far as I know, France, Germany and the Benelux countries still have a common travel policy. We should be looking at merging it with the UK and Ireland one, and gradually bringing in other EU countries. We should be looking at making it easier to travel within the EU, not at erecting new barriers. If necessary, strengthen the external controls, but once within the EU movement should have as few restrictions as possible.

How do you think the Texans would react if you told them they'd need a passpord to go to New Mexico?

Not very well, I think, and why should we be any different?