The Lurker

On the grim future of the web

Benjamin Mako Hill writes about staying at a hotel that provides free wireless with a very restrictive whitelist:

You can use Google search (but not click on the links), use GMail, Google Talk, Google Reader (but not see any images on the blogs you are reading), Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Checkout, Google Docs, and so on.

A few people at the conference seem only barely inconvenienced by the arrangement and most seem to be able to get work done! I can't help feel like I'm experiencing some dystopian version of the Internet from 10 years in the future.

I'm not sure I've got much hope that we can avoid a future Internet that looks a lot like the television industry does today. Danny O'Brien argues we find ourselves where Richard Stallman was a couple of decades ago:

If we want people to have the same degree of user autonomy as we've come to expect from the world, we may have to sit down and code alternatives to Google Docs, Twitter, and EC2 that can live with us on the edge, not be run by third parties.

Related topics: Mindless Link Propagation Web Quote of the day

ORM and the conventional wisdom

It's refreshing to see this Reddit discussion — Am I crazy to create a mid-sized web app without an ORM? — where the comments range from strong support for skipping ORM to very mild pro-ORM positions. When I saw the question I expected the guy would be flamed for questioning the ubiquity of ORM, since I have the impression that the majority of developers I've worked with wouldn't even consider accessing a database except through ORM.

Related topics: Mindless Link Propagation

From the "no fucking shit" files

You don't say:

THE first home buyers' grant has forced house prices up in recent years, working against its aim of making new homes more affordable, a Senate inquiry has found.

Urging an overhaul of the scheme, the Senate Committee on Housing Affordability found that the system of $7000 grants for all first home buyers had "benefited existing home owners rather than those seeking to enter the market". The committee, comprising Coalition and Labor senators, also found that negative gearing and state fees such as stamp duty were compounding the affordability crisis.

In other news, water remains wet.

Related topics: Mindless Link Propagation Politics Rants

A dead keyboard

I'm very happy with my Unicomp USB buckling spring keyboard. While doing some cleaning recently I decided it was time to get rid of its (now almost frighteningly dusty and grimy) predecessor, which was the worst keyboard I've ever owned. It was squishy instead of clicky, which was bad enough, and it had bad layout (the type where the Enter key spans two rows, leaving the backslash cramped in against the right Shift).

Occasionally people who can't touch type would have trouble using it because many of the keys were blank, their labels worn away over a couple of years of use (abuse?). What I found more disturbing, though, was...

... not only had the D key (like many of the keys around it) lost its labelling, it somehow ended up dented. I'm sure I don't type that hard...

Related topics: Mindless Link Propagation

Dear Telstra: stop helping

That's a good idea. Maybe you could start by, oh, let's say... not sending me this in a separate envelope on the same day as my bill. And by "me" I mean, most likely, "every single customer who receives a bill this month".

Apparently, At just two pieces of paper, the new-look bills will contribute to saving more than 30,000 trees... — unlike my current bill, which is already "just" two pieces of paper, which still seems excessive for a bill for four local and four mobile calls. (And it was only that many because of trouble with my recently replaced ADSL modem — hooray for VOIP!)

I suspected that this "streamlining" would not involve, say, better use of space (note the unused third of the first page, or the nearly two thirds of the second which is always blank).

I doubted that they would consider removing useless and misleading content — "Calling Number Display @ 6.00 per month" costs $3, apparently, as does "MessageBank @ 6.00 per month", the difference between the actual cost of $6 and the $12 the product description suggests being accounted for in a section titled "Discount Summary – for your information only" (except that it shows $5.45, not $6, because All Discounts have been taken off charges before GST was applied).

I expected that, knowing Telstra, they could simply make the bill less useful instead — and I wasn't disappointed: details such as call itemisation have been removed.

You can request a detailed bill instead of the new bill format. Given how little improvement this "streamlining" seems to offer, I suspect that it might even use more paper than the one I get now.

Related topics: Rants

Enterprise quality

It's an easy mistake to make:

In a nutshell: here is the problem with enterprise security products - they charge enterprise prices, but they do not deliver enterprise quality.

You misunderstand. That is "enterprise quality". All products and services sold to "the enterprise" are that bad.

Related topics: Rants Quote of the day

The uselessness of Microsoft's update descriptions

Advanced Micro Devices - Other Hardware - AMD Processor
Date last published: 2/21/2008
Download size: 52 KB

Advanced Micro Devices Other Hardware software update released in August, 2007

System Requirements

Recommended CPU: Not specified.
Recommended memory: Not specified.
Recommended hard disk space: Not specified.

I haven't got the faintest idea what this update modifies, nor why they changed it, nor why I'm receiving an August 2007 patch in February 2008.

And that's the "Details" page!

Related topics: Microsoft Windows Rants

A rare thing: sensible commentary on intellectual property

Generally, there are only two types of comment about intellectual property on the internet: inappropriate analogies to physical property (see every single comment by Martin McPhillips in that discussion), and arbitrary justifications of copyright violation (ridiculous "this is illegal, so delete it after 24 hours" statements and other silly rationalisations seem to be common).

I can't remember the last time I saw an exception to this rule, so I wanted to note this one from Timothy B. Lee at Cato:

The reason this matters is that if an injunction is granted, it can often drive the losing party into bankruptcy. In 2006, for example, Research in Motion, makers of the popular BlackBerry mobile device, was forced to pay $612 million to a company called NTP that had no employees, no products, and patents that were subsequently ruled invalid by the patent office. By rights, NTP shouldn't have gotten a dime (because there was ample prior art for its "inventions") but because RIM would have been forced to shut down its BlackBerry network before it had exhausted its appeals, NTP was able to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from the firm.

Related topics: Politics Quote of the day

On the futility of discussing Apple products

Amid an utterly pointless discussion of whether or not the term "lock-in" is an appropriate choice to describe the arbitrary limitations Apple's popular products all seem to have, Stuart Langridge wraps the real issues up in a neat little package:

There are plenty of people who hate the iPhone, and Apple, way more than they deserve, but there are equally plenty of people who flat-out refuse to hear a word against the device or anything else that comes out of Cupertino. If you're somewhere in the middle ground on this, like most people are, and you're prepared to put up with the restrictions that Apple put on you to get the good experience they provide, you go for it. If you get fucked, then that's the way it is, but hey: sometimes being fucked is nice. That's why the human race still exists, after all.

Related topics: Web Rants Quote of the day

Truth in advertising: homeopathy

FairDeal Homeopathy promises that Nothing acts as well as FairDeal Homeopathy:

Homeopathy works through a complicated interaction with the human body and mind known as the "placebo effect". Many homeopaths will try and explain any health improvements through made-up science such as "memory of water", "nano-particles" or other non-existant molecular interaction. [...] For some reason, many homeopaths feel they have to tell their patients lies and fairy stories, and try to baffle them with pseudo-science. Here at FairDeal Homeopathy, we treat you like adults, and only tell you the truth.

Don't miss the testimonials.

Related topics: Mindless Link Propagation Quote of the day