July 2007 - Posts
"I Could Care Less about that"
Read that carefully and explain to me how it works.
Now substitute the word "Couldn't" - doesn't that work better?
Back when I started this blog, I wrote that I didn't really expect anyone to read it. Partly because I wasn't sure if I had anything interesting to say, but mostly because I made a conscious decision not to go after ratings, page ranks or to measure the usefulness by weight of comments. In part, I started blogging as a personal development project to force me out of my introverted comfort zone. Perhaps as a result, the comments I do get tend to be really worthwhile. I tried a few experiments along the way, to see if I could attract traffic by using google-magnets and by being deliberately controversial. In the end, as I suspected, the few people who occasionally comment are, by and large, members of the blog ring of people I know in real life and whose blogs I subscribe to.
Joel has quite a long explanation of why he thinks comments on blogs are a distraction, while Clay Shirky responds that it is all a matter of scale. By the way, you'll have seen me mention Clay Shirky's paper "A Group is its Own Worst Enemy" a few times before, it is just about my all time favourite work on social technology - really insightful and well worth a read.
So all in all, I think I'm happy to be a quiet backwater C-list blogger, read and occasionally commented on by people I know and respect. I get a better conversation that way. So much of Web 2.0 is all about numbers. It's about time we focused on quality over quantity. The good quality information is getting harder to find all the time.
I found this article by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which claims some laser printer manufacturers are using a form of steganography to essentially 'fingerprint' each page of output, so that it can be traced back to the original printer and, by implication, the owner of the printer. This is quite an old story, circa late 2005, but this is the first I've heard of it.
I wonder what kind of incentives these companies could possibly have been offered in exchange for compromising their products? I can't imagine they would sell out their customers just for the hell of it.
The EFF is conducting investigations into which printers are doing this. They've produced a list of the models surveyed so far and surprisingly most of the well-known brands are doing this. Next time you are buying a printer and can't decide between brands, maybe you can take a look at which vendors value your privacy.
In February, while discussing Tape vs. Hard Drive backup, I speculated that if [wikipedia:Moore's Law] continued to hold, then magnetic media would be obsolete within 5 to 6 years. Then, in April, I blogged about the new 32Gb solid state memory drive being supplied in some laptops and revised my prediction to say that I expected 500Gb flash drives well within five years.
Well folks, in just a few months, we've gone from 32Gb to 64Gb kicking [wikipedia:Moore's Law] into touch. They doubled the size in just a few months! This is now larger than the hard drive I have in my primary workstation. Today, right now, I could directly replace my hard drive with a solid state device.
Given that the access times of these flash memory devices (~0.1ms) is about two orders of magnitude faster than a conventional magnetic hard drive (~10ms), I think we are now on the edge of a technological discontinuity. That is, a new technology that delivers not just incremental benefits, but orders of magnitude greater than what was achievable before. This could do for storage what fibre optic cable did for telephony and the Internet. I believe we are about to see the demise of the magnetic platter hard drive as the primary storage medium and I now believe this will happen within 2 years. Amazing! Click on the image for a larger view or visit Sandisk to find out more.
David Overton - someone well known to UK SBSC partners - has started publishing a series of demos on his blog. I've watched a couple of them and they are really good, concise SilverLight videos packed with useful hints and tips. These would be great training aids for our customers or might even form the basis of an IT training class. David has offered these videos to the community to do with as we will, even to re-record the soundtrack to stamp our own personality on it (though I rather like the way David does it).
Here are the installments so far:
How to find and use an Accounting template to use with Office Excel 2007 and then change it from US to UK currency, change the formatting of dates and drag lists (or Excel Tips and Tricks 1) - all in a Video presented with SilverLight - David Overton's Blog
How to copy files to a DVD / CD, Use the recycle bin, Use previous versions for files and Use the built in Vista backup tools - all in a Video presented with SilverLight
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Susan B mentions Dean Calvert and his Vegemite Croissants and gives a link to where you can purchase the product, however I would like to propose that you try an alternative but similar product, Marmite. Don't think these products are equivalent - oh no, very different. Made from almost the same stuff (yeast) but quite different.
Marmite. You either love it or hate it. That is pretty much the defining characteristic of yeast extract products. There is no middle ground. It is one of those things that polarizes humanity. Marmite is actually made from a by-product of whiskey distilling. It is made from the foam that bubbles up to the top of the fermentation vats. It has a very "meaty" flavour but contains no meat or meat products, nor any alcohol for that matter.
Vegemite seems to be the top brand in Australia for some reason. If you compare the ingredients, I think you'll agree that Marmite is the slightly more "organic" product.
| Vegemite | Marmite |
| Yeast extract, salt, potassium chloride, malt extract, caramel color, natural flavor,
nicotinamide, thiamine hydrochloride, riboflavin, sulfur dioxide | Yeast Extract, Salt, Vegetable Extract, Niacin (Vitamin B3),
Thiamin (Vitamin B1), Spice Extracts, Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Folic Acid
(Vitamin B), Vitamin B12
and, according to the label on the jar I have in front of me but missing from the web site - Celery Extract |
I think to appreciate Marmite, you need to have a Marmite Epiphany. Mine came when I was a schoolboy and one day I had lost my dinner money somehow. A friend offered me a spare Marmite sandwich and I was so hungry I would have eaten pretty much anything at that point. Ever since that moment, I have loved the stuff.
Now, a word to the wise. If you are down at the pub with the lads one day and they challenge you to insert parts of your anatomy into an empty marmite jar, I recommend that you politely decline the challenge, because it is a one-way trip, my friend. If you do find yourself in this predicament and need some suggestions on how to extricate yourself, you can find some ideas here.
Right, I'm off to make myself some Marmite on toast!
I got a pleasant surprise in my email tonight. Microsoft has bestowed a Most Valuable Professional award on me, under the competency of Windows Server System - Small Business Server. It's quite a surprise because I was critical of the nomination process a little while back and refused to fill in the questionnaire that they sent me, so I thought I had scuppered my nomination. So, I'm doubly pleased that Microsoft has chosen to do this. I hope I can live up to it. Thanks, Microsoft!
In the world of TV advertising, almost nothing is what it seems. One of my favourite pastimes is "translating" TV commercials. You need a healthy dose of cynicism and practice at the art of ignoring what is said and spotting what they fail to say. There are some really dirty tricks that I've noticed lately, concerning the small print that appears at the bottom of the screen. These abound for financial products but this one is from a pharmaceutical.
You know when you see an asterisk(*) in print that means you have to look elsewhere on the page for the small print. There is one commercial airing at the moment that uses the fact that video happens in the time dimension to hide their disclaimer. How? They show it right at the start, out of context:
*refers only to products that use X, Y and Z chemicals.
...some time passes while we see the rest of the commercial, then...
Works faster than any other product*
So you look for the asterisk, but they already showed it to you 30 seconds ago when you weren't expecting to see it! What did that say?
Translation: Works faster than any other product that is exactly the same as ours, i.e. we deliberately narrowed the field of comparison to make our product look best, even though it probably isn't, then we tried to conceal that from you by hiding our disclaimer.
Another commercial uses a zoom out effect so that you briefly see the disclaimer but then it zooms into obscurity.
I hate companies that basically try to trick their customers into spending money with them. Why not just tell your customers the truth? Does the end really justify the means? I encourage everyone to practice "translating" TV commercials.
It could be worse, though. In America, it already is. Having lived in California for a few years, it struck me how companies go after their competitors by name and try to discredit them. "Brands X and Y only have 20% - our brand has 40%". At least we don't allow that here in the UK.
The fundamental problem, I believe, is the unsustainable nature of capitalism. Shareholders demand growth even when a company has a mature product range and the market is saturated. At that point, the company has to innovate or lie. Lie, to customers, shareholders or regulators. It's a real wonder that there aren't more Enrons.