An ancestor of Monty Python's famous Dead Parrot comedy sketch has been found in a joke book dating back to Greece in the 4th Century.
read more | digg story
Thursday, 13 November 2008
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
My suggestion to Dell
Following my post about encouraging people to learn to program, I've posted the idea I had about including development tools and guides in PDF format on Dell's IdeaStorm website. If you like the idea, please promote it!
Saturday, 8 November 2008
The IT Crowd
I'm a huge fan of the geektastic Channel 4 comedy series The IT Crowd, so I was really pleased to find this link today, confirming that it's returning to our screens in the UK at the end of November. For those who haven't yet discovered it, I urge you to check out this link for a taster of this hilarious sitcom (unfortunately it's no longer possible to embed this clip).
But I was even more pleased to find this spoof website for Reynholm Industries, the company which is the setting for the series. With a little searching around, you can find a way to log into the company's Intranet and download wallpapers and images from the series(I won't spoil the surprise by telling you where to find the login details, you'll have to find them yourself!). Top marks for this brilliant comedy website!
But I was even more pleased to find this spoof website for Reynholm Industries, the company which is the setting for the series. With a little searching around, you can find a way to log into the company's Intranet and download wallpapers and images from the series(I won't spoil the surprise by telling you where to find the login details, you'll have to find them yourself!). Top marks for this brilliant comedy website!
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
Getting a new PC...
My sister told me today that the IT department at her employers have a load of old desktop PC's they no longer need, so they're going to be installing Ubuntu on them and selling them on for about £5 each. I'm guessing that they have some kind of licensing deal with Microsoft that means they get to use as many copies of Windows as they like, but if they sell them on they have to remove it, so they probably can't keep Windows on them.
I'm actually quite impressed with this, for several reasons:
I see little point in sticking with the Ubuntu install already with it, as I run Ubuntu on one computer already and Kubuntu on another. So what to run on it? I have several candidates in mind:
I've never actually owned a desktop before. All my computers right now are laptops (a Dell Inspiron, a Philips X58, an Asus Eee PC 2G Surf, and a Santa Rosa MacBook), and much as I love them all, certain things, such as coding, are really better done from a desktop. It's a simple matter of ergonomics. So I'm looking forward to having a desktop computer of my own because I anticipate that it should improve my productivity.
I'm actually quite impressed with this, for several reasons:
- It means perfectly good hardware can be reused and made available to someone else. In contrast, my own employers, who shall remain nameless, apparently have a deal with a company to break up all their computers and dispose of them, which I think is a staggering waste, and this is a BIG company that's in the FTSE.
- People can get a working computer that's perfectly good for surfing the web, emailing and basic office tasks, for a pittance. It'd be ideal for people's kids or elderly relatives, neither of whom will care that much whether it runs Windows or not.
- It's probably actually cheaper to do this as it must cost money to have them disposed of.
- Plus, it exposes Linux to people who otherwise wouldn't try it.
I see little point in sticking with the Ubuntu install already with it, as I run Ubuntu on one computer already and Kubuntu on another. So what to run on it? I have several candidates in mind:
- Sidux
- Xubuntu
- Damn Small Linux (I've grown to love DSL in the last few months)
- Slackware
- Gentoo
- Linux From Scratch (it'd be a hell of a challenge though!)
- PC-BSD
- FreeBSD
- Debian
- Linux Mint Fluxbox CE
- Or I could use Ubuntu Mini Remix to create my own remaster based on Ubuntu, but using a lightweight window manager. I've done this in the past to try to create something that worked better on my Eee PC (unfortunately it didn't work out too well!), but the end result was perfectly useable. I'm actually very keen on the one I created purely for the fun of making it look as 1337 as possible (it's basically Fluxbox with the Matrix theme, a black GTK theme, and an abstract green-and-black background). I'm also interested in trying out some more window managers - I like IceWM a lot, I also like Fluxbox, I'm interested in trying FVWM, FVWM-Crystal and FVWM-95, and I may give some of the tiling window managers like awesome and Xmonad a try.
I've never actually owned a desktop before. All my computers right now are laptops (a Dell Inspiron, a Philips X58, an Asus Eee PC 2G Surf, and a Santa Rosa MacBook), and much as I love them all, certain things, such as coding, are really better done from a desktop. It's a simple matter of ergonomics. So I'm looking forward to having a desktop computer of my own because I anticipate that it should improve my productivity.
Saturday, 25 October 2008
IT Guy vs Dumb Employees Video
I couldn't help laughing at this great video! Check it out!
IT Guy Vs Dumb Employees - Watch more Entertainment
IT Guy Vs Dumb Employees - Watch more Entertainment
Friday, 24 October 2008
Encouraging the programmers of the future
I found this interesting article on the BBC News website today about the British gaming industry, and how the UK has long been punching above its weight in the gaming industry. This has always been put down to the generation who grew up with BBC Micro's, ZX-81's, and so on. These computers generally had a BASIC interpreter build in, and you'd have to use that to run programs from tape or disk.
Thanks to these native, inexpensive computers, the UK was for years a strong player in the gaming market. Programmers cut their teeth by entering listings from a magazine, progressing to writing their own games. OK, the machines were arguably harder to use than a modern machine, but they were well documented, and there was more of a culture of programming with them - if you wanted to use one, you had to learn at least a few commands.
Now, contrast it with this article from earlier in the year, which makes for somewhat more depressing reading. Few people are learning about programming, and schools are concentrating on teaching kids how to use Word and Excel. No wonder so many people are reluctant to even consider switching to OpenOffice!
I'm nearly 30, and got my first computer (an Amstrad CPC 6128) aged around nine or ten, so I consider myself to be at the very tail end of the generation that grew up around the first home computers. Like many others, I worked my way through the tutorial in the phone-book sized manual to build an address book application, and spent hours typing in and debugging games from magazines. Being a kid at the time, I was regularly distracted from it, but I got to be OK at it.
The 90's were arguably a bad time for the computer industry in many ways, despite the fact that the Internet appeared during this decade. Commodore went under, Apple only survived by the skin of their teeth, and within the space of a few years, Windows came to dominate the desktop. Pretty much everyone else disappeared.
While Windows undoubtedly did a lot to make computers more accessible (much as I hate to admit it, as I am a Linux user!), it also relegated them to being something used for writing letters, making spreadsheets, and later, surfing the web. To a certain extent, it made a computer into a black box, as people weren't interested in learning to code.
At the same time, the games consoles began to draw much of the gaming market away from home computers. While some genres (RTS, for example), have long been strong on the home computer, and remain so, others switched almost wholesale to the console. Platform games such as the Mario and Sonic games are a good example of this. So people who in the past would have bought computers for gaming and got into programming later were rarer.
Nowadays, if you buy a Windows PC, you certainly don't get encouraged in any way to get coding. There's no guide of any kind included, nor do you get a BASIC interpreter (or any other interpreter, for that matter). Modern PC magazines don't seem to do anything to encourage people to learn to program, and I find that a little sad.
With a Windows computer, it seems to me that you actually have to be interested in coding to start with, and to know that you're interested in it, to be able to get to use it as a programming platform. By this, I mean it gives no encouragement whatsoever in learning to program in any language. Microsoft don't include any kind of programming tools at all as far as I can see.
The frustrating part is that they already have a pretty decent tool in the shape of Visual Studio Express Edition. OK, I'd rather people learn an open-source language than be tied to Windows, but I'd much rather see people encouraged to get programming in the first place. Why couldn't Microsoft include at least one of the Visual Studio Express Edition IDE's (I expect they'd probably go for Visual Basic, although that wouldn't be my first choice), and a manual (in print or pdf format), with every copy of Windows? They could place a link on the desktop that says "Start learning to program!", and let people's curiosity take over naturally. If people don't want it, they can delete it, and that's fine. As it is now, you have to go looking for it on the Microsoft website. They should be encouraging people to learn about their software and develop better applications for it.
I think that in many ways, Apple have done better in this respect. By including the Xcode IDE with every copy of OS X, they've provided a powerful tool with their computers. Also, OS X is at heart a form of Unix, making it well suited for programming. However, the fact that Xcode isn't preinstalled does mean it's not there by default, making it less likely that people will try it out of curiosity. Also, although Xcode does have loads of documentation with it, it doesn't include any kind of "beginners guide", it seems to be all for people who are already programmers. They could definitely do more to encourage people to start learning to program. I also think that OS X's polish counts against it in this case, as it means you never have to delve into the terminal to accomplish every day tasks. So again, I feel that like Windows, OS X does little to encourage people to learn how to program.
Another thing with both Apple and Microsoft is that they do emphasise IDE's over text editors. I've had a brief try at using Visual Studio Express Edition, and tinkered with Xcode, and I subscribe strongly to the view that an IDE is the last thing you want to use when you start programming. Learning a brand new and extremely complex application at the same time as learning to program is a bit too much for most people, whereas anyone can use a basic text editor. Even a more complex one, such as Vim (my personal favourite), is far easier to use than most IDE's. There's no doubt that IDE's offer a lot of features to experienced users, but they can be extremely overwhelming when someone takes their first steps in programming.
This is one of the things I like about Linux over OS X and Windows. While these days you don't actually have to use the terminal for everyday tasks in a modern distro like Ubuntu, there's a strong culture of doing so and you're encouraged to use it in solving problems. I think part of this is because the main support is through forums, and it's easier for someone to post a command for you to paste into the terminal than to say "Click this, then this, then this...". Also, the bash shell is a lot more powerful than its Windows counterpart. By and large, while there may be a learning curve, using bash is often the quickest and most convenient way to accomplish a task, and it doesn't take long for this to become clear. From using bash and changing settings by editing text files, it's not a great leap to then go on to write shell scripts or to learn to code using Perl or Python. Most distros also include a lot of documentation for the included languages. Also, languages used in Linux are almost invariably ones that can be written with a simple text editor rather than forcing someone to learn to use an IDE, which I feel makes them more accessible.
However, I still feel even Linux can do more to encourage people to learn to program. The last thing I'd want to do is to force people to learn to program when they don't want to, but I do think we should be taking more steps to encourage new programmers. Maybe just a nice handy pdf file in your /home directory called "Learn to Program" will be enough.
Having recently taken my first few steps in learning Python, I'm enjoying learning it tremendously. It's probably a more powerful language than BASIC, but I find it just as easy to get started with. Having had a go at Perl and Java in the past, and finding these a bit of a struggle for a first language, I was pleasantly surprised by Python. So it would make an ideal language to include with a new computer. OS X and most Linux distros include Python already, and I see no reason why Microsoft couldn't distribute a copy with Windows. Just add a pdf guide or two and sit back. If for some reason they didn't want to use Python, we're certainly not short of other good languages for beginners either.
How else can we get people interested in learning to code? What languages should we push? Should we encourage them to use an IDE, or go with a text editor like Vim? All answers welcome!
Thanks to these native, inexpensive computers, the UK was for years a strong player in the gaming market. Programmers cut their teeth by entering listings from a magazine, progressing to writing their own games. OK, the machines were arguably harder to use than a modern machine, but they were well documented, and there was more of a culture of programming with them - if you wanted to use one, you had to learn at least a few commands.
Now, contrast it with this article from earlier in the year, which makes for somewhat more depressing reading. Few people are learning about programming, and schools are concentrating on teaching kids how to use Word and Excel. No wonder so many people are reluctant to even consider switching to OpenOffice!
I'm nearly 30, and got my first computer (an Amstrad CPC 6128) aged around nine or ten, so I consider myself to be at the very tail end of the generation that grew up around the first home computers. Like many others, I worked my way through the tutorial in the phone-book sized manual to build an address book application, and spent hours typing in and debugging games from magazines. Being a kid at the time, I was regularly distracted from it, but I got to be OK at it.
The 90's were arguably a bad time for the computer industry in many ways, despite the fact that the Internet appeared during this decade. Commodore went under, Apple only survived by the skin of their teeth, and within the space of a few years, Windows came to dominate the desktop. Pretty much everyone else disappeared.
While Windows undoubtedly did a lot to make computers more accessible (much as I hate to admit it, as I am a Linux user!), it also relegated them to being something used for writing letters, making spreadsheets, and later, surfing the web. To a certain extent, it made a computer into a black box, as people weren't interested in learning to code.
At the same time, the games consoles began to draw much of the gaming market away from home computers. While some genres (RTS, for example), have long been strong on the home computer, and remain so, others switched almost wholesale to the console. Platform games such as the Mario and Sonic games are a good example of this. So people who in the past would have bought computers for gaming and got into programming later were rarer.
Nowadays, if you buy a Windows PC, you certainly don't get encouraged in any way to get coding. There's no guide of any kind included, nor do you get a BASIC interpreter (or any other interpreter, for that matter). Modern PC magazines don't seem to do anything to encourage people to learn to program, and I find that a little sad.
With a Windows computer, it seems to me that you actually have to be interested in coding to start with, and to know that you're interested in it, to be able to get to use it as a programming platform. By this, I mean it gives no encouragement whatsoever in learning to program in any language. Microsoft don't include any kind of programming tools at all as far as I can see.
The frustrating part is that they already have a pretty decent tool in the shape of Visual Studio Express Edition. OK, I'd rather people learn an open-source language than be tied to Windows, but I'd much rather see people encouraged to get programming in the first place. Why couldn't Microsoft include at least one of the Visual Studio Express Edition IDE's (I expect they'd probably go for Visual Basic, although that wouldn't be my first choice), and a manual (in print or pdf format), with every copy of Windows? They could place a link on the desktop that says "Start learning to program!", and let people's curiosity take over naturally. If people don't want it, they can delete it, and that's fine. As it is now, you have to go looking for it on the Microsoft website. They should be encouraging people to learn about their software and develop better applications for it.
I think that in many ways, Apple have done better in this respect. By including the Xcode IDE with every copy of OS X, they've provided a powerful tool with their computers. Also, OS X is at heart a form of Unix, making it well suited for programming. However, the fact that Xcode isn't preinstalled does mean it's not there by default, making it less likely that people will try it out of curiosity. Also, although Xcode does have loads of documentation with it, it doesn't include any kind of "beginners guide", it seems to be all for people who are already programmers. They could definitely do more to encourage people to start learning to program. I also think that OS X's polish counts against it in this case, as it means you never have to delve into the terminal to accomplish every day tasks. So again, I feel that like Windows, OS X does little to encourage people to learn how to program.
Another thing with both Apple and Microsoft is that they do emphasise IDE's over text editors. I've had a brief try at using Visual Studio Express Edition, and tinkered with Xcode, and I subscribe strongly to the view that an IDE is the last thing you want to use when you start programming. Learning a brand new and extremely complex application at the same time as learning to program is a bit too much for most people, whereas anyone can use a basic text editor. Even a more complex one, such as Vim (my personal favourite), is far easier to use than most IDE's. There's no doubt that IDE's offer a lot of features to experienced users, but they can be extremely overwhelming when someone takes their first steps in programming.
This is one of the things I like about Linux over OS X and Windows. While these days you don't actually have to use the terminal for everyday tasks in a modern distro like Ubuntu, there's a strong culture of doing so and you're encouraged to use it in solving problems. I think part of this is because the main support is through forums, and it's easier for someone to post a command for you to paste into the terminal than to say "Click this, then this, then this...". Also, the bash shell is a lot more powerful than its Windows counterpart. By and large, while there may be a learning curve, using bash is often the quickest and most convenient way to accomplish a task, and it doesn't take long for this to become clear. From using bash and changing settings by editing text files, it's not a great leap to then go on to write shell scripts or to learn to code using Perl or Python. Most distros also include a lot of documentation for the included languages. Also, languages used in Linux are almost invariably ones that can be written with a simple text editor rather than forcing someone to learn to use an IDE, which I feel makes them more accessible.
However, I still feel even Linux can do more to encourage people to learn to program. The last thing I'd want to do is to force people to learn to program when they don't want to, but I do think we should be taking more steps to encourage new programmers. Maybe just a nice handy pdf file in your /home directory called "Learn to Program" will be enough.
Having recently taken my first few steps in learning Python, I'm enjoying learning it tremendously. It's probably a more powerful language than BASIC, but I find it just as easy to get started with. Having had a go at Perl and Java in the past, and finding these a bit of a struggle for a first language, I was pleasantly surprised by Python. So it would make an ideal language to include with a new computer. OS X and most Linux distros include Python already, and I see no reason why Microsoft couldn't distribute a copy with Windows. Just add a pdf guide or two and sit back. If for some reason they didn't want to use Python, we're certainly not short of other good languages for beginners either.
How else can we get people interested in learning to code? What languages should we push? Should we encourage them to use an IDE, or go with a text editor like Vim? All answers welcome!
Friday, 10 October 2008
My project for this weekend...
I have a little project I've decided on for this weekend. I've previously set out to learn a programming language from scratch (most notably Perl, PHP and Java), and failed! I do have a fair grasp of HTML and XHTML now, though, so I'm pretty confident I can learn an actual programming language given half a chance.
I've long heard that Python is very easy to learn and today I read a passage where a programmer said he was able to learn Python in a weekend through just online tutorials. I've found these to be patchy at times so I invested in a new book, and I'm going to make a concerted effort to learn Python from scratch this weekend.
OK, I may not be able to get through the whole thing, but I reckon I should be able to make a lot of progress. I'm particularly interested in learning to use Django to create web apps as I'm planning a new career in web development.
Wish me luck!
I've long heard that Python is very easy to learn and today I read a passage where a programmer said he was able to learn Python in a weekend through just online tutorials. I've found these to be patchy at times so I invested in a new book, and I'm going to make a concerted effort to learn Python from scratch this weekend.
OK, I may not be able to get through the whole thing, but I reckon I should be able to make a lot of progress. I'm particularly interested in learning to use Django to create web apps as I'm planning a new career in web development.
Wish me luck!
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
A new Amiga OS
I came across this fascinating article today on Ars Technica about a new version of the AmigaOS, AmigaOS 4.1. It's well worth a read. AmigaOS 4.1 looks to be as polished as any modern operating system.
I'm really surprised the Amiga didn't survive to the present. I always hear great things about AmigaOS in terms of how powerful it was, and it always had a fantastic range of games (apparently it was very easy to develop for). And, of course they were used with Video Toasters to create the special effects in sci-fi series such as Babylon 5. It was a powerful but inexpensive computer that did it all - gaming, multimedia, you name it. In fact, it was arguably a better gaming platform than a Windows PC at the time. I can't think of a single game available for the PC that wasn't on the Amiga at the time, while I can think of plenty of Amiga games that weren't available for the PC.
Put it this way, when I was a kid loads of people I knew had a Commodore Amiga, whereas I didn't know a single person who owned a Mac (and I never used one until 1995, when I was at sixth fom). Surely, if Apple survived, Commodore should have thrived.
I'm really surprised the Amiga didn't survive to the present. I always hear great things about AmigaOS in terms of how powerful it was, and it always had a fantastic range of games (apparently it was very easy to develop for). And, of course they were used with Video Toasters to create the special effects in sci-fi series such as Babylon 5. It was a powerful but inexpensive computer that did it all - gaming, multimedia, you name it. In fact, it was arguably a better gaming platform than a Windows PC at the time. I can't think of a single game available for the PC that wasn't on the Amiga at the time, while I can think of plenty of Amiga games that weren't available for the PC.
Put it this way, when I was a kid loads of people I knew had a Commodore Amiga, whereas I didn't know a single person who owned a Mac (and I never used one until 1995, when I was at sixth fom). Surely, if Apple survived, Commodore should have thrived.
Thursday, 18 September 2008
ReactOS is very much like Windows...
I was just trying ReactOS (an open source clone of Windows) in VirtualBox, and got this rather familiar-looking screen...
I was hoping it was a close copy of Windows so I could use it in VirtualBox to run some games that don't work very well in Wine, but this was something I was hoping it hadn't copied!
I was hoping it was a close copy of Windows so I could use it in VirtualBox to run some games that don't work very well in Wine, but this was something I was hoping it hadn't copied!
Sunday, 7 September 2008
Large Hadron Collider Rap
A new distro for my Asus Eee PC
For a while now, I've been dissatisfied with the Xandros installed on my Asus Eee PC. It's quite easy to use, but for an intermediate Linux user such as myself who's a bit more comfortable with getting my hands on the command line, it's a bit frustrating. It's slow and unwieldy, lacks many of the development tools I wanted such as gcc, and just doesn't meet my needs, so I was considering alternatives. Unfortunately, I went for the cheapskate's 2GB version, so my options for a replacement were severely limited. This is too small to run Ubuntu, which would be my first choice, so I had been tinkering with Minibuntu, customising it to add everything I want, but it was difficult to get it installed on the Eee without a USB CD drive.
I'd been tinkering with Sidux, a live CD based on Debian Sid. Being Debian-based, it's quite accessible to someone familiar with Ubuntu, and it also has great hardware detection thanks to the great fw-detect utility. It also has easy installation of the Madwifi drivers for the Atheros wireless card (as used in the Eee). While the regular KDE version of Sidux was too big, it also offers an Xfce version that clocks in at around 450MB on the disc, which when installed comes to around 1.3GB, which is enough to fit on the Eee 2G AND leave around 512MB for a swap partition. Also, it has an easy-to-use USB installer, so there was an easy way to install it on an Eee. So for a while I was considering putting it on the Eee.
This morning I finally decided to bite the bullet and install it. First of all, I used the dd command to image the Eee's flash drive and save a copy of the image to my 4GB SD card so I can restore it if necessary. Then I plugged in my USB pendrive with Sidux Xfce installed on it, and ran the installer.
Once it was installed it booted fine, and I connected it to my wireless router via Ethernet, then ran fw-detect, which told me to run the m-a a-i madwifi command as root to install the Madwifi driver. I then rebooted it and used the Ceni tool to get my wireless connection working. And that was it - it's now working flawlessly, and starts the wireless connection every time it boots up!
Sidux Xfce works great - Iceweasel is a lot faster than Firefox 2 in the default Xandros install, which is the main reason I wanted to switch. I'm very happy with Sidux Xfce, and it makes my Eee a lot more responsive and powerful, it's just a great distro for the Eee. I just wish I'd done this ages ago rather than struggling with Xandros for so long.
Has anyone else got a distro they've been using on the Eee that they want to recommend?
I'd been tinkering with Sidux, a live CD based on Debian Sid. Being Debian-based, it's quite accessible to someone familiar with Ubuntu, and it also has great hardware detection thanks to the great fw-detect utility. It also has easy installation of the Madwifi drivers for the Atheros wireless card (as used in the Eee). While the regular KDE version of Sidux was too big, it also offers an Xfce version that clocks in at around 450MB on the disc, which when installed comes to around 1.3GB, which is enough to fit on the Eee 2G AND leave around 512MB for a swap partition. Also, it has an easy-to-use USB installer, so there was an easy way to install it on an Eee. So for a while I was considering putting it on the Eee.
This morning I finally decided to bite the bullet and install it. First of all, I used the dd command to image the Eee's flash drive and save a copy of the image to my 4GB SD card so I can restore it if necessary. Then I plugged in my USB pendrive with Sidux Xfce installed on it, and ran the installer.
Once it was installed it booted fine, and I connected it to my wireless router via Ethernet, then ran fw-detect, which told me to run the m-a a-i madwifi command as root to install the Madwifi driver. I then rebooted it and used the Ceni tool to get my wireless connection working. And that was it - it's now working flawlessly, and starts the wireless connection every time it boots up!
Sidux Xfce works great - Iceweasel is a lot faster than Firefox 2 in the default Xandros install, which is the main reason I wanted to switch. I'm very happy with Sidux Xfce, and it makes my Eee a lot more responsive and powerful, it's just a great distro for the Eee. I just wish I'd done this ages ago rather than struggling with Xandros for so long.
Has anyone else got a distro they've been using on the Eee that they want to recommend?
Wednesday, 3 September 2008
Google Chrome - I add my voice to the chorus!
Like pretty much everyone else who's a serious Internet user, I was eager to try Google Chrome. For once I was glad I still have a Windows install! So I downloaded it to my Vista partition, and gave it a spin.
Holy crap, it's fast! Chrome on Windows not only beats Firefox 3 in Windows, it beats Firefox 3 in the Ubuntu partition on the same computer! You REALLY notice the difference on a JavaScript-heavy site such as Digg. And it's really easy to use, because it just gets out of your way.
It's pretty clear to me why Google have created this: Google want people to use the Internet more and more, because this strengthens them. The more efficient your browser, the more useful web apps such as Google Docs and GMail are. By raising the bar, Google are not only creating a great product, they're forcing other browsers to compete with them, even Internet Explorer. If IE doesn't step up to the challenge, they risk losing market share. If they do, then they're facilitating Microsoft's loss of market share for applications such as Word, Excel etc to web-based alternatives.
It's a hell of a strategy, and a classic Google one at that - Google don't compete, they change the rules of the game. They need browsers to get faster and more efficient to make them a match for Microsoft, so they've created Chrome to give them a platform for this. The fact that it's open source means that Apple, Mozilla, whoever, can pick out bits from Chrome to improve their own products, but also gives them a motivation to better it. Each browser that improves its performance like this means Google can compete more effectively with Microsoft.
Put it this way - I've heard that the reason IE spent so long without a new version being released (2001-2006) was because Microsoft were worried about the threat to their business model from the Internet. Now Google are aggressively pushing a new, faster browser that will change the game. I'm inclined to think Microsoft should be very worried.
Holy crap, it's fast! Chrome on Windows not only beats Firefox 3 in Windows, it beats Firefox 3 in the Ubuntu partition on the same computer! You REALLY notice the difference on a JavaScript-heavy site such as Digg. And it's really easy to use, because it just gets out of your way.
It's pretty clear to me why Google have created this: Google want people to use the Internet more and more, because this strengthens them. The more efficient your browser, the more useful web apps such as Google Docs and GMail are. By raising the bar, Google are not only creating a great product, they're forcing other browsers to compete with them, even Internet Explorer. If IE doesn't step up to the challenge, they risk losing market share. If they do, then they're facilitating Microsoft's loss of market share for applications such as Word, Excel etc to web-based alternatives.
It's a hell of a strategy, and a classic Google one at that - Google don't compete, they change the rules of the game. They need browsers to get faster and more efficient to make them a match for Microsoft, so they've created Chrome to give them a platform for this. The fact that it's open source means that Apple, Mozilla, whoever, can pick out bits from Chrome to improve their own products, but also gives them a motivation to better it. Each browser that improves its performance like this means Google can compete more effectively with Microsoft.
Put it this way - I've heard that the reason IE spent so long without a new version being released (2001-2006) was because Microsoft were worried about the threat to their business model from the Internet. Now Google are aggressively pushing a new, faster browser that will change the game. I'm inclined to think Microsoft should be very worried.
Monday, 25 August 2008
Richard Dawkins reads his email
Richard Dawkins seems to have become a hate figure for many religious fundamentalists. Here he reads his emails out loud - well, I suppose it's different from the usual requests for bank account details from the former Nigerian Minister of Finance I get!
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Sunday, 17 August 2008
The babysitter
Found this hilarious video! I never saw the ending coming! Be warned, though, this is a little NSFW!
<a href="http://www.atom.com/funny_videos/the_babysitter/" target="_blank">The Babysitter</a>
The rise of the instant-on OS
You may have heard of Asus's instant-on Splashtop operating system, which they are now beginning to roll out across their entire range. This is essentially a minimal Linux-based operating sytem which is built into the motherboard that's capable of getting online so you can surf the Internet, chat and read your email without having to boot into Windows.
Now Dell have announced they are offering a similar system known as Latitude ON, for their new range of Latitude notebooks. Again, it's an embedded Linux distro that can get online without needing to boot the main operating system.
Now, I spend the vast majority of my computing time online, reading emails and feeds and things like that, and I suspect a lot of other people do too. More and more, the browser is becoming the operating system. Web mail services such as Hotmail and GMail have huge advantages over more conventional email accounts, and most people now use these kinds of services in preference to the one offered by their ISP, and many ISP's offer a web interface to email accounts as well. And other services can't be too far behind - online productivity apps such as Google Docs are getting better all the time, and it's only a matter of time till they reach mainstream adoption for casual use, and services like Meebo are proving popular too. And for an awful lot of people, Facebook or MySpace is their main reason to go online. Services like Last.fm and Imeem can cover listening to music, and you've got services like the BBC's iPlayer and YouTube to handle videos. There's also plenty of casual Flash-based games if you look.
Under these circumstances, the operating system is largely irrelevant, it's just the foundation on which your browser runs, so you just want the fastest OS you can get, and the fastest browser. I can therefore see many people using these instant-on operating systems almost exclusively in preference to Windows. And why not? If it does everything they want, and is more secure, then it makes sense. You'd still have to boot into Windows for serious gaming or running something like Visual Studio Express or Dreamweaver, but it's not actually that many people who want to do this.
There's another advantage to these systems: What about for those times when Windows won't boot? You can't get online to research the problem, and you can't sort it out without being able to search, so if you don't have an alternative way to get online, you're stuck. A few months back my father's computer wasn't booting as the motherboard had been fried by a power surge, but I managed to use a copy of Knoppix to retrieve the files he needed, then once it had been fixed we reinstalled XP. Without a copy of Knoppix he'd have lost those files, but not everyone has a copy of this to hand, or knows about it. These systems would be just as capable of doing this, and they'd have the advantage that users would have already had the chance to become familiar with them.
From Microsoft's point of view, these systems probably aren't so great. Though they don't compete with Windows as such (I expect the systems will still ship with Windows), they may just break people's dependence on Microsoft Windows. People will realise you don't need to use Windows with a computer, and may be more willing to consider alternatives.
We'll just have to see how it plays out. One thing I will say: the more I see, the more I'm convinced the concept of the "Year of the Linux Desktop" and a mass migration away from Windows to Linux is flawed. The way it's actually happening is far more interesting. With embedded Linux distros like these built into motherboards, and Linux grabbing the lion's share of the netbook market while Microsoft were caught napping, but these are entirely new products. Preinstalled Linux in place of Windows does remain a niche offering, at least for the moment. These new products aren't challenging Microsoft's monopoly directly like Dell offering preinstalled Ubuntu, instead they are just making them less relevant.
Now Dell have announced they are offering a similar system known as Latitude ON, for their new range of Latitude notebooks. Again, it's an embedded Linux distro that can get online without needing to boot the main operating system.
Now, I spend the vast majority of my computing time online, reading emails and feeds and things like that, and I suspect a lot of other people do too. More and more, the browser is becoming the operating system. Web mail services such as Hotmail and GMail have huge advantages over more conventional email accounts, and most people now use these kinds of services in preference to the one offered by their ISP, and many ISP's offer a web interface to email accounts as well. And other services can't be too far behind - online productivity apps such as Google Docs are getting better all the time, and it's only a matter of time till they reach mainstream adoption for casual use, and services like Meebo are proving popular too. And for an awful lot of people, Facebook or MySpace is their main reason to go online. Services like Last.fm and Imeem can cover listening to music, and you've got services like the BBC's iPlayer and YouTube to handle videos. There's also plenty of casual Flash-based games if you look.
Under these circumstances, the operating system is largely irrelevant, it's just the foundation on which your browser runs, so you just want the fastest OS you can get, and the fastest browser. I can therefore see many people using these instant-on operating systems almost exclusively in preference to Windows. And why not? If it does everything they want, and is more secure, then it makes sense. You'd still have to boot into Windows for serious gaming or running something like Visual Studio Express or Dreamweaver, but it's not actually that many people who want to do this.
There's another advantage to these systems: What about for those times when Windows won't boot? You can't get online to research the problem, and you can't sort it out without being able to search, so if you don't have an alternative way to get online, you're stuck. A few months back my father's computer wasn't booting as the motherboard had been fried by a power surge, but I managed to use a copy of Knoppix to retrieve the files he needed, then once it had been fixed we reinstalled XP. Without a copy of Knoppix he'd have lost those files, but not everyone has a copy of this to hand, or knows about it. These systems would be just as capable of doing this, and they'd have the advantage that users would have already had the chance to become familiar with them.
From Microsoft's point of view, these systems probably aren't so great. Though they don't compete with Windows as such (I expect the systems will still ship with Windows), they may just break people's dependence on Microsoft Windows. People will realise you don't need to use Windows with a computer, and may be more willing to consider alternatives.
We'll just have to see how it plays out. One thing I will say: the more I see, the more I'm convinced the concept of the "Year of the Linux Desktop" and a mass migration away from Windows to Linux is flawed. The way it's actually happening is far more interesting. With embedded Linux distros like these built into motherboards, and Linux grabbing the lion's share of the netbook market while Microsoft were caught napping, but these are entirely new products. Preinstalled Linux in place of Windows does remain a niche offering, at least for the moment. These new products aren't challenging Microsoft's monopoly directly like Dell offering preinstalled Ubuntu, instead they are just making them less relevant.
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