Rubénerd!

I'm surprised at the amount of scorn and jokes being levelled against Acer for their threat to stop manufacturing Windows hardware if Microsoft releases their Windows 8 tablets. You don't all have that much of a short term memory, surely?

Image from Engadget's coverage of the Courier.

Couldn't be responded to in a tweet, so here we are!

According to a report by Preston Gralla for ComputerWorld:

Acer is considering abandoing [sic] the manufacture of Windows hardware if Microsoft releases its Surface line of Windows 8 tablets. So says the company's president of personal computer global operations. Is it a real threat or just empty bluster?

A good question. It seems Twitter has already made up its mind, most comments I've read include jokes at Acer's expense.

If you think about it logically though, they're in a perfect position to comment. Unlike Apple that ties software to hardware, Acer are at the mercy of what Microsoft produces. When they start selling machines with Windows 8, they have to conform to what Microsoft wants. In addition, with Microsoft selling hardware, they're also in direct competition with their primary software supplier.

Haven't we seen this somewhere before?

I'm glad you asked!

This is similar to Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility, and the position that puts their hardware partners. If you were Google or Microsoft, wouldn't you give your internally developed hardware priority access to code, before handing it to your hardware competitors to sell? Samsung are a shining outlier and an unstoppable juggernaut because people have fallen in love with their hardware, but there's no escaping the fact the general outlook for OEMs is bleak.

Even if we just stick with Microsoft, remember how they got their hardware partners to adopt PlaysForSure, then abandoned them with the Zune?

Don't get me wrong, Microsoft have put out some solid good hardware over the years. It's just not what their hardware partners want to see. Acer's president of personal computer global operations isn't making a threat or shouting bluster, he's just being honest.

If I could be further impressed with my crypto-hero Bruce Schneier, I would be. Richard Stallman on the other hand, I find myself vehemently disagreeing with him for the first time in a long... time.

Siemens Simatic S7-300 PLC photo by Ulli1105 on Wikimedia Commons.

For those who haven't been following, it's been widely reported that the Stuxnet worm was developed by the United States government. Stuxnet took advantage in a vulnerability in Windows and certain Siemens PLCs that Iran used in their nuclear facilities. Of course, it affected plenty of other people as well.

Why am I bringing this up now? Because it's a fascinating look into the brains on two different tech luminaries.

Richard Stallman

Richard Stallman, the champion of the copy-left Free Software Foundation, hasn't made a secret of his policical leanings. While I've largely agreed with his stances on warrentless wiretapping, security theater and the like, I was a a little disturbed by his take on Stuxnet. From his March-June 2012 archives (emphasis added by me):

Stuxnet was made by the US and was approved personally by Obama.

I don't think such an attack against Iran is necessarily wrong. However, it can backfire.

So the man of uncompromising principals lets slip that he condones state sponsored attacks, despite even admitting they can backfire. Not only that, this remark is included on the same page where he asks for diplomacy to resist "being pressured into war".

Hacking a foreign government's computers constitutes diplomacy and doesn't pressure us into war? For once, I find myself unimpressed sir.

Bruce Schneier

Let's take the other side. In the context of proposing a cyber security treaty, Bruce Schneier appealed for restraint in one of his recent posts, which serves as a useful counterpoint to Richard's stance.

We're in the early years of a cyberwar arms race. It's expensive, it's destabilizing, and it threatens the very fabric of the Internet we use every day.

Specifically regarding Stuxnet, he addresses my concerns exactly. Forgive the large blockquote, he just lays it out perfectly here.

[C]ountries are engaging in offensive actions in cyberspace, with tools like Stuxnet and Flame.

Arms races stem from ignorance and fear: ignorance of the other side's capabilities, and fear that their capabilities are greater than yours. Once cyberweapons exist, there will be an impetus to use them. Both Stuxnet and Flame damaged networks other than their intended targets. Any military-inserted back doors in Internet systems make us more vulnerable to criminals and hackers. And it is only a matter of time before something big happens, perhaps by the rash actions of a low-level military officer, perhaps by a non-state actor, perhaps by accident. And if the target nation retaliates, we could find ourselves in a real cyberwar.

Richard Stallman and a growing cohort of technically minded people don't necessarily see a problem with exploiting security holes for political reasons, even if they acknowledge the potential for escalation and "collateral damage".

I find that... disturbing.

Why comment on the name when there's already a prefabricated meme? ;)

Editional Redundancy

Having bought myself a large cup of caffeinated beverage at my local café without even specifying what I wanted (I've always wanted to be a "regular" somewhere!) I dug into Microsoft's news about the upcoming release of Windows 8.

According to the Window Steam blog, which I can only assume discusses how best to clean panes of glass, Microsoft will be releasing Windows 8 in three versions; a regular, a premium and one specifically for ARM tablets dubbed Windows RT.

Two quick asides about the hardware. First, isn't it a fascinating historical twist that an Apple spinoff eventually became so successful Microsoft had to break their Wintel model and release a version of Windows for it? Windows on different architectures isn't new; Windows/386 was specifically targeted at that CPU and Windows NT Workstation was offered on the DEC Alpha and PowerPC, but it shows even the once invincible Microsoft wants to hedge their bets in this emerging market.

Secondly, you've got to think Intel are keeping an eye on this trend!

Back to the Editions

Microsoft have been very successful in convincing people that having editions of their operating system is a great idea, though fortunately they're only releasing Windows 8 in three versions. It's still too many, but it's a start. See what I did there?

Why is it still too many? One word: encryption. With the need to artificially differentiate products in order to charge people differing sums of money, certain features have to be removed from the final product in order to entice people to upgrade; again a practise plenty of people are willing to defend for some reason.

While Microsoft seem to have been fairly consistent with only including enterprise and more advanced features in their higher end Windows versions, some features that really should be part of the base product have also been removed at times. Not being able to change desktop wallpapers in Windows 7 Starter, for example. You can't make this stuff up.

Unfortunately, the feature they've decided to leave out of the standard version of Windows 8 is far more critical than whether or not you can put a cute anime girl as your desktop background.

Encrypting File System

Okay, I used this entire post as an excuse to show Madobe Nanami again. Honestly, of all the reasons I've had given to me to move back onto Windows, this adorable Windows 7 mascot is the most convincing one so far. True story.

Anyway, when I saw the lack of an "X" under their "Encrypting File System" for the standard version of Windows 8, I was lucky I didn't regurgitate the mouthful of otherwise fantastic coffee I was sipping on. I wanted to reach through the screen, pull out a Microsoft engineer and ask them why not!

Certainly it's not a technical limitation, as far as I can tell. Mac OS X has it, most Linux distributions have it, even Google's ChromeOS (remember that?) has it. The pro version of Windows 8 has it.

Putting people's privacy and data at risk for the sake of product differentiation seems reckless to me. I hope — nay, implore — Microsoft to reconsider.

Tin foil hat!

That is... unless they're leaving it out for other reasons. Perhaps the prospect of default whole drive encryption on virtually every new computer around the world was scary enough a prospect for law enforcement that they leaned on Microsoft to not include it on the most popular version. Heck, the rhetoric in the US has long been about how difficult encryption is making certain investigative jobs.

Of course I have no proof of this, but the speculation is irresistible!

The least you need to know: if you receive the above error when extracting Windows NT 3.51 Service Pack 5, use the /b flag while extracting.

More detail

For those of you running Windows NT 3.51 (the last version of Windows that separated the kernel and UI subsystems), running the self-extracting SP5_351I.EXE file in a temporary directory from the likes of File Manager will result in the following error:

PKSFX: (W18) Warning! OEMNADAP.INF already exists. Overwrite (y/n)?

Typing Y here will extract the rest of the files, though when you run UPDATE.EXE you'll be given the following error.

The solution is to use the /b flag, which extracts files into a tree of directories, rather than just putting them all into one place:

SP5_351I.EXE /b

Why Microsoft decided to use software that doesn't extract in this fashion by default for archives that clearly have files with the same name in different places is nothing short of baffling.

Microsoft identified this bug in their Knowledge Base article 149306.

A question for someone more in tune with Microsoft licensing. Is it acceptable under the terms of the Microsoft EULA to run an OEM copy of Windows XP in a virtual machine, provided its still being run on the same hardware it came on?

I've been running Windows 7 for a few retro games and Visio for about a year, and have finally had enough.

Coming to you live from the Mac tables on the ground floor computer lab in UTS building 10, it's time for another instalment of everyone's favourite blog post series of which there is only one post: Blogging from University! Today's post, the Mac tables on the ground floor computer lab in UTS building 10.

Was as far as I got, rest written on the train

I'm a people watcher. Not in the stalkerish way that creeps victims out and poses quite the legal challenge when you're caught doing so, but on occasion I've been known to observe people as they go about their daily lives while I'm in a coffee shop or similar locale with my laptop.

So picture this if you will, or if you dare. Dare is a brand of coffee milk drink in Australia, and though its tastiness falls short of the invincibly amazing Farmers Union Iced Coffee of which I got thoroughly addicted when in Adelaide, Dare is rather good.

I had just finished one of my evening classes when I decided to check my email on a computer terminal. I had yet to configure my iTelephone with the [horrid] Microsoft Exchange email system UTS provided, and I preferred not setting up forwarding as I wanted sent email to originate from UTS rather than a disposable account. I'd also been informed from various lecturers that they -- and the spam filters -- place a higher priority on incoming messages from .edu accounts, particularly those from UTS. But I digress.

A mix tapier

Strolling onto the ground floor computer pool in UTS building ten, I noticed bank after bank of plastic fantastic HPs or Dells or whatever they were, complete with 15 inch TFT displays. Most were vacant, so I had no problem finding a machine to use.

Suddenly, as I'd just logged into Windows 7 Extreme or whatever the version was, I noticed a row of shiny new iMacs. And they weren't just iMacs, they were the monsters with the 27 inch IPS displays that by themselves likely havd more resolution than all my displays at home combined, minus their plastic bezels. I rebooted the Windows 7 machine that had taken an age to load the desktop, and made my way over.

The machine accepted my credentials and presented me with the desktop in no time, and they even had Firefox preloaded on the dock ready for my use. It almost seemed criminal to use such an amazing display to read email!

It was then I observed some interesting behavour. Despite the computer lab having an entire row of these shiny 27 inch iMacs, the few people who were still there were hunched over their Dell or HP (or whatever they were) plastic fantastic towers on the other side of the room, complete with their 15 inch TFT displays and long Windows 7 boot times.

The curse of "good enough"

Clearly, while Apple continues to make strides in market and mindshare, more people still feel more comfortable on Windows, so much so that they'd rather use a slow machine with a tiny screen than a clearly superior piece of hardware. I don't mean for that to sound fanboy-ish, but even a Windows aficionado would be hard pressed to claim a budget Pentium tower compares to a current iMac.

A friend from one of my classes put forward the theory that those who spend multiple hours in computer labs at university are more likely to have less disposable income, and were probably more likely raised on cheap Windows boxes. Another chided that they had to use Windows because Macs can't run the right software, a claim I found harder to believe given most of the people were merely using Firefox in that computer lab late at night.

I suppose that while generally people will take the time to learn a new system if they can see tangible benefits (Mac, Linux, so on), most are still perfectly fine with whatever version of Windows they happen to be using. I suppose it's akin to those who's idea of coffee is Nescafé; if you've never had real coffee and are comfortable with your dehydrated granulated mediocrity, more power to you.

And hey, it has its benefits... it may be more likely those iMacs are free again in the future ^_^.

That silly story that Internet Explorer users have lower IQs than others may have obviously been a hoax, but even comical exaggerations need a kernel of truth to them to be funny, however small such a kernel is. A microkernel, if you will.

I see your Linux, raise you a Mach

For those who haven't seen the story, a report recently surfaced and went viral that Internet Explorer users have a lower IQ than those who use competing browsers. Opera users were graphed as being the most intelligent, and IE6 users the least.

The story had all the hallmarks of a successful viral campaign. The story exploited existing preconceptions about people who refuse to move to newer versions of IE or to more standard compliant browsers, and successfully played on the anger and frustration web designers and developers feel when having to bend over backwards to accommodate Microsoft's browsers. All the story needed to be perfect was a couple of quotes from a mental healthcare professional working in Minnesota.

Photo of the Mayo Clinic by Nephron on Wikimedia Commons

Wasn't Alexander Downer from Mayo?

As you probably did too, I didn't buy the story from the start, but it did get me thinking. We all know IQ is as effective at gauging intelligence as the BMI is at calculating your health (Adolphe Quetelet would probably have endorsed Atkins), but what does browser use say about the person using it?

Since IBM handed Microsoft their monopoly in the early 1990s, and since Microsoft decided to illegally leverage their clout to drive browser competitors out of business, most internet users accessed sites through a flavour of Internet Explorer. That's now changing, on three fronts:

1. Since Firefox (arguably) ignited the second browser wars and Microsoft realised they were no longer able to rest on their laurels and stifle the growth of online applications that posed a competitive threat to their expensive desktop software, most technically advanced users have jumped ship to Gecko and Webkit.

2. Windows, the system that Microsoft used to move people to IE, is under threat on the consumer desktop. The profitable, high end market has been secured by Apple now, and technically advanced users run flavours of [GNU/]Linux. Neither of these platforms run IE natively; at least not any more!

3. In the mobile space, the fleeting dominance Windows Mobile and Pocket Internet Explorer had is also over, and their efforts to break out of this rut are largely being ignored in the face of iOS and Android devices.

The slip is the dip

For all but the most die hard Microsoft fans, it's pretty obvious to us what's happening here. With the high end and tech savvy markets slipping away from them, users of Internet Explorer now mostly consists of those for whom the blue e is "the internet" because it happened to come with their cut throat priced beige box, or for those who have no choice on their business machines.

While Microsoft's sudden change of heart with regards to standards has convinced a few to move back, for others its too little, too late. It's hard to find a nerd now not running either Firefox or Chrome, and to a lesser extent Safari and Opera. Web stats on many high profile technical sites are all being reported as favouring these browsers. Not to put too fine a point on this, but those who claim otherwise are ignorant of this, wilfully or otherwise.

What browser a person uses now says nothing about their IQ, but its a safe bet it speaks to their technical proficiency (knowing of alternative browsers, running [GNU/]Linux) or income (Apple hardware), something advertisers might be very interested in.

ComputerWorld is reporting the US Department of Justice's supervision of Microsoft ends today; this ends the case that started in 1998. Slashdot has a thread.

As many of us have said: remember when Microsoft used to be scary? They're still abusing their market clout (OOXML), but a combination of irrelevance and incompetence has blunted the knife. After commanding the direction of the industry in the 1990s, they've either missed the boat or played catch up to most of the important tech trends of the 2000s.

Granted I was a primary school kid at the time, but I said breaking up the company wouldn't make much difference. This was when I was a Visual C++ developer though ;).

Another afternoon, another person appeals to me for help with their Windows laptop. Regardless of whether its a Windows XP, Vista or 7 machine, the problem is always exactly the same: viruses and spyware.

Steals some of his old man's blood pressure pills

Since I was a kid I've been the go-to guy in our circle of friends and family for fixing computers, and I've done my fair share of them. Anecdotal evidence should always be taken with a grain of salt, but in my case the problem has been near universal. People treat their computers as appliances, download material without knowing what it is or where it came from, and treat the subsequent slowdowns as a fact of life. Almost every machine I've looked at has been riddled with spyware or viruses, and the problem simply isn't going away.

To quote my sister Elke who was a casual Windows user until 2008: "They're just used to it, its not unusual!".

Forgive any undue disrespect if you're a Microsoft guy or girl, but we've been hearing from many of you how secure Windows is now and how 7 is the greatest OS of all time. While I'm sure technical users have no problem keeping their systems running well, they're completely deluded if they think they're a typical use case.

Did I mention it's fact?

Other OSs are by no means perfect, but despite their own specific limitations Macs or Linux boxes[1] I've looked at simply don't have these issues. Full stop. This isn't a case of unbridled fanboyism, its cold hard fact, and I wish Windows fans would simply admit it, just as a Mac user[2] I admit I pay a huge premium for hardware, or that my Linux boxes[2] have less (or far more complex) hardware support.

We can debate the reasons why (some of which aren't Microsoft's fault), but it's undeniable fact that in the hands of a non-technically proficient user Windows rapidly attracts junk and slows down like no other OS.

As a consumer operating system, the other issue is Windows is being pushed into places where it simply doesn't belong and is dangerous, such as ATMs, hospitals and critical process control systems, but that's for another rant post.

*calms down* *drinks tea*.

Footnotes

[1] Linux (or GNU/Linux, etc) is typically installed by a technically competent friend or family member, and I'm surprised by the number of them I'm encountering these days. It also lends a little credence to the notion that Windows market share is inflated, given that these machines were OEM-d with Redmond's OS and are counted as such. That's a topic for another post too.

[2] I grew on DOS and Windows machines right up to XP, but made the switch to Mac in 2001 and didn't look back. I also maintain several PCs running Arch and Fedora Linux, and my file and media servers run FreeBSD.

[3] Nanami Madobe is adorable, as too is the new mascot for Azure. We need some official OS-tans for Mac OS X, Linux and BSD. We already have a platypus, a penguin and a daemon, but a team of *nix bishōjo characters shouldn't be too hard!

I was going to refrain from talking about this, I really was!

The Site

In February, Microsoft launched IE6 Countdown, a site that gauges worldwide use of the archaic browser and encourages users to upgrade to newer versions.

Its been covered to death by Tweeters, Twitterers or whatever it is we're called, and many people have already voiced their opinions, which means I add a great deal of value by talking about it as well. Right? Don't answer that.

The Pirates

From a statistical perspective its interesting to see which parts of the world have moved on from the curse that is IE6, and who's sticking around. Presumably countries like China have higher usage owing to the fact pirated copies of Windows can't be updated, or at least not easily enough to be done by average people.

It's certainly an interesting philosophical and security debate, isn't it? I'm all for free software when their developers adopt FOSS licences, but I'm not for commercial software piracy; theoretically Microsoft has every right to deny unpaid customers their services.

Or do they? See, this logic works in isolation, but when we're all connected to the same network (Homer told me the Internet is on computers now) compromised machines affect all of us including, ironically, paid Microsoft customers. Botnet zombie Windows machines send most of the world's spam, they clog our networks, and they further spread worms that would otherwise find themselves harder to propagate.

This IE6 Countdown site serves as much as a testament to the effects of piracy and corporate policy on security than a simple gauge of who's using a creaky old web browser with giant toolbars.

The Browser

I sincerely applaud Microsoft for the IE6 Countdown website; people have been using this outdated software for far too long and if anyone can convince people to move off it (other than maybe Google!) it is Microsoft.

It rings a little hollow for me though. When they mention IE6 doesn't adhere to web standards, the site glosses over the fact it was intentionally designed this way. After Microsoft won the first browser war, IE was left to stagnate. By stifling standards, they were able to stunt the growth of internet applications for half a decade, a convenient coincidence for a purveyor of desktop software.

Much like my American friends are supposed to believe GM are suddenly concerned with the environment only after they ran themselves into the ground with light trucks and SUVs, the site also fails to point out that it wasn't until competing browsers started strong-arming Microsoft with increasing market share again did they start taking standards more seriously. Forgive some of us for being sceptical of their motives, and for thinking some of the language on their site is a little rich:

Its name was Internet Explorer 6. Now that we’re in 2011, in an era of modern web standards, it’s time to say goodbye.

This website is dedicated to watching Internet Explorer 6 usage drop to less than 1% worldwide, so more websites can choose to drop support for Internet Explorer 6, saving hours of work for web developers.

Uh huh

Finally, despite the assertions of otherwise smart people like Renai LeMay from Delimeter, IE9 still lags inexcusably behind in web standards, to say nothing of the previous versions after IE6, which leads me to my ultimate argument for the site: I believe it should be renamed from IE6 Countdown to IE Countdown. Make no mistake, we would still all benefit from IE not being used at all.

I last mentioned IE9 back in February 2011: Internet Explorer 9 relativity. The gist of that post in two sentences:

Progress is being made, but it still performs relatively poorly in standards tests and still feels like too little too late in my books. A company with Microsoft’s resources should have made this progress years ago.