Lock up your Mac!

Another rant about BBC Technology news - this time, I found an article posted on 2005-12-23 entitled 'Give Mac Explorer to the people'. Strap line - "As Microsoft drops the Mac version of Internet Explorer, technology commentator Bill Thompson offers a modest proposal."

Ok - first things first - Microsoft officially dropped Mac Internet Exploiter several years ago (2003 actually), the only thing they have said recently is that "you've had your chance to move to something else since 2003 when we told you to do that, you've done that... good, don't ask us about support for Internet Explorer on the Mac ever again". This is nothing new.

Second, to address the points raised in Bill's personal opinion posted on a Journalistic news website -

1) ActiveX is a Windows PC based technology - and so IE on a PC has it. Mac IE has never had it, though this is inferred in the article.

2) Mac IE was never the same as PC IE - sites designed for IE on the PC did not immediately work on Mac IE - this was because Microsoft built it differently. The version number of Mac IE did not mean that it had similar functionality and support as a PC IE with the same version number. For example - Mac IE version 5 was very different from PC IE version 5.

3) Root Certificates - for security all major browsers have information about the root signing authorities of SSL certificates - this allows your browser to 'go secure' (little padlock, or the like) and use HTTPS to encrypt your communications. This is for ecommerce applications like eBay, Amazon, British Airways, EasyJet... and every other selling online. Now, Mac IE had a serious problem with this - first having a serious Root Certificate bug a few years ago (I can't remember the date of that bug, but I can certainly look it up) - causing users of Mac IE to be unable to 'go secure'. Two things from this - many users looked to alternative browsers like Mozilla (at that time Firefox wasn't around) and Netscape. I found many Mac users using Netscape - as it was pre-installed on their Mac next to IE. Since the days of the Root Certificates bug the security and stability of IE hasn't been very good as Microsoft stopped delivering upgrades, merely serious bug fixes. Mac IE stagnated years ago! Also - any open source version of Mac IE would have to negotiate with those root signing authorities to embed their signatures - I have no idea how that would be perceived if only a handful of developers and users were actually using this Mac IE open source.

4) The DOM is broken in Mac IE. Always has been. This, plus a list of other problems (including a major memory leak bug, when using dHTML to re-write the HTML of pages, that can't be fixed by simple patching) really says that Mac IE should be killed off. Mac IE doesn't come anywhere near to supporting the web standards we all shout about these days. An open source development of Mac IE would clear take some time (maybe years) to get the Engine inside it sorted out to bring it to the standards support of Gecko or Konqueror? (Yes, PC IE too - ok, I'll give you that... it's a hundred times better than the Mac IE ever was)

5) Another browser? Look - how many different browsers, with different quirks, do you want? We've got IE (PC only), Gecko based browsers (I class them as one because they use the same underlying layout engines - so that includes Mozilla, Firefox, etc), Opera and Konqueror based browsers (that includes Safari, OmniWeb, etc). That's enough surely? Apart from the current itteration of IE on the PC, the standards support is great... but throwing a new Open Source Mac IE browser into the mix would destabalise things - who in their right mind is going to build a site that works on it when it doesn't support the standards?

Goodbye Mac IE, and good riddence.

Apple's PodCast Chart?

According to this recent article, the BBC are under the impression that Apple's iTunes Podcast chart is the thing to watch to see which Podcasts are popular. According to them...

"While no definitive podcast chart has yet been established, Apple's Top Subscribed Podcasts chart is seen as a good indicator of each show's popularity."

So, can I just ask - 'seen' by whom? Apple's Podcasts chart is still in it's infancy, and considering that it will take some time for most Podcasts to make it into Apple's closed-garden style chart system it is _not_ a good indicator. Also, given that it's iTunes only and isn't open to any other networks, it's likely this will cause similar suffering as the 'Downloads-part-of-the-Official-Top-40 chart' problem did with AIM (a major UK organisation that looks after Independent Music producers/artists/labels of which many don't make it onto iTunes music store as downloads).

I can do design, me.

What better way to celebrate Britain's Presidency of the EU by displaying a flock of sheep swans. That's right, according to this report, the team at 'Johnson Banks Design' was paid £30,000 to do this. (just over $53,000 USD)
Apparently it's to symbolise leadership and the countries pulling together. To me it just promotes a presidency where everyone else rides in the slip-stream of others - an hierarchical team?
It all sounds a bit dictatorial to me.
The EU Flag is made up of stars in a circle, all the stars are the same and because they are in a circle none of the stars is 'above' any other star. The stars symbolise the countries originally making up the EU membership.
What a complete waste of time and money, can we not focus? £30,000 obviously bought some graphical swans, but what about the Common Agricultural Policy or the proposed EU Constitution? (Did someone say 'gravy train', anyone?) More to the point, it doesn't actually say 'who' paid for this - the British Tax Payer or every tax payer in the EU?
Oh, and one of the selling points of this logo is that it's animated - according to the BBC article UK officials proudly pointed out that this is the first time the EU presidency has had an animated logo. Give me £1,000 and I could come up with a logo more suitable.
Sorry for those expecting another Technology Rant... I decided to get a little political today.

Microsoft tries to hijack RSS

Microsoft are hijacking the RSS format... or at least that's not what they would say. In a recent talk to Gnomedex, and posted on their Blog they explain that IE 7 will have auto-discovery support for pages that present an RSS feed. Just like Mozilla/Firefox/Safari does right now. However they then went onto explain that they are also extending what you can do with RSS. [Anyone get a sinking feeling yet?]

That's right... Microsoft will be implementing their own extension to RSS... hey, it's another 'Microsoft Standard'. This time, they seem to be trying their 'we'll make it heavily used by big corporates' (eg. Amazon) and then the RSS format will just have to accept our extension. Mean-time, whilst the standards are being discussed, IE 7 will have another bash at monopolising the Internet Browser. Truthfully, I doubt this will work - people (especially IT administrators who roll out updates to entire networks) aren't so gullable nowadays.

I think people will ignore Microsoft's non-standards, I for one wouldn't start using an RSS extension that isn't ratified for use by the developers of RSS... and if it every manages that, then we could start using it. That's the point of having standards. A mistake made early on in the Internet Browser wars, I don't think that'll be happening again.

Technology news and/or political comment?

You decide - Bill Thompson's latest blog entry appears on the BBC Technology News website.

Basically it's a rant about Bob Geldof, using the media hype surrounding the eBay + live8 ticket touts issue.

Whilst many have commented on the outspoken nature of Sir Bob, and I myself think he is taking things a little too far, to have this listed on the Technology part of the site strikes me as a bit odd... there are plenty more decent journalistically balanced articles surrounding this issue. The only reason I can think that this appeared on the Tech website is because Bill's blog often appears there no matter what it is about.

You know what Bill? In your eyes it may be "sanctimonious preaching" by Sir Bob - but show a little respect, he has certainly raised awareness in the events by constantly being in the media for his outspoken nature! (eBay, Maritime Commission, Edinburgh Council, etc, etc) Good on him for using/abusing the media - of which you are part. Why not do an article on how technology helps Oxfam, or some other charity? Bob's clearly had enough publicity.

Ethernet over Power - novel idea?

I'm just not entirely convinced that 'features' should appear on a 'news' website, especially when they cover a subject that is several years old. I'm talking about the article 'Home network on electricity wires' that made it's way onto the BBC Technology News page today.

Ethernet over Powerlines has been around for quite a few years, I know I've spec'd it for clients/friends before now. You can get anything from bridges to routers, wifi access points to networked security cameras.

Whilst I agree that this subject is something that consumers haven't really bought into as yet, and the BBC's 'Click Online' (a 'technology lifestyle program' broadcast on BBC World/BBC News 24) is right to cover it, I don't necessarily agree that this should be on the News Page. If it was about some new advance within the technology, fair enough... but it is just a review of how it works.

True redundancy?

Nature's article covering self-reproducing robots (and also covered on the BBC Technology news) is exciting news.

Although the actual abilities of the robots are severly reduced, it doesn't matter, the idea is at least prototyped and working. The robots (can you use a plural where things are 'cloned') look rather like a worm, able to activate spare parts they find littering their environment. The parts are then integrated together to form copies.

It is clear where this could be heading - towards truly redundant technology that can fix itself

Well done to those involved, looking forward to your next robot (will it be like an ant?).

BBC opens up?

Hey, just noticed that the BBC has opened up the usage policy on RSS Feeds from their websites.

"But in reality, said Mr Clifton, policing all sites in any substantial way would be restricted."

'It is only right we build in some safeguards so that if they appear on sites we feel are completely beyond the pale, we can act; although we can't ever claim we are going to be watching every use of it,' he said."

<sarcasm>Kinda stating the obvious - policing the Internet? Is that the policy of the BBC? Does the licence fee pay for that? Wow - I'm glad Master Clifton understands that it isn't possible.<sarcasm />

Anyway, considering that it has taken this long, and the BBC news feed is distributed pre-installed in most RSS readers you can download... it's nice to see that the BBC is really bang up to date!

Top of the Security Pops?

The independent team at SANS, just issued their top 20 list of security risks on Windows and Unix. BBC Technology news also reported on this. Seems like they both missed the Number 1 Security risk - Users. (and I'm including myself in that)

If it weren't for Users, lots of exploits simply wouldn't happen. Since it is down to the Application providers to fix the security problems in their software, I think it is only just that someone attempts to fix Users. Education? (I spoke about this before in 'How to make a stupid headline, and not have any relevant pictures?')

Wheeee.... WEEE?

Art installation draws attention to consumer waste. This has just been installed on the South Bank, London. My view - artistic, and draws the attention nicely to the problem. Top marks to those who thought this one up.

Google Maps - UK seems to be coming along

Looks like Google is starting to roll out UK maps. Go to the Google Maps page, and search for 'London, W1' (or similar). It also works with full UK postcodes.

Bugs? In Firefox - no, surely not!

Just reading Bill Thompson's recent posting for the Radio show 'Go Digital'. He quotes the company Secunia - who said:

The Firefox open source browser is full of bugs, some of which are rather serious...

In fact the little red button that tells you a "critical" update is available appears almost weekly, sending users off to the website to get the new version and fix yet another bug or security hole.

Which I have a problem with. Yes, Firefox has bugs (doesn't everything). Yes, the update process leaves a lot to be desired. But No - the little red button has only appeared on my machine (Mac OS X) a couple of times with reference to an update to the actual Firefox engine... excluding any updates to extensions.

I've got a feeling, Bill, that this is somewhat unbalanced for Secunia to say this (and I understand that Bill was trying to be ironic) - lets face it, Microsoft offers updates to the Windows kernel/Outlook Express/Office (which usually has a knock on effect to IE) several times a month.

I also think that the audience for Firefox usually are experienced enough not to click on dodgy phising schemes, or such like. So once more people start using Firefox, no doubt more problems will appear. Also - let's not forget that Firefox is built on Mozilla... and Mozilla came from Netscape... and many ex-Netscape employees work on the codebase - so, I guess what I'm trying to say is that Firefox's pedigree is a good one considering that Netscape invented many of the underlying services that even IE leverages.

In terms of the update procedure - yeah, it would be good to provide some sort of patching software to update code incrementally (a la Microsoft's installer service that runs under the Update service). But then it would have to work across all the platforms that Firefox works on - not exactly easy perhaps. Right now, I can live with it - that's why you have a profile directory that is different. Currently when a new Firefox comes out - all I do on my Mac is open the image and drop the new Firefox file on top of my old one. Simple as that. Ah... no DLL hell!

More about Bill's article on his blog.

[Edit: minor rewording based on comments - 2005-04-25 20:49 GMT]

Bailout for ex-employees at Rover?

Something that has really wound me up, and I know it sounds kinda harsh - so please don't hate me for it. Why is it that a standard redundancy situation turned into a political spin crisis?
I'm talking, of course, about the recent MG Rover group trip-and-fall. Having followed the news reporting, I found it unbelievable that the spin placed on the situation by the Media and the Politicians turned it into 'saving jobs'. Why?
If a company has to do it, then they have to do it. There may be an enquiry about the MG Rover group's directors and accountants for letting the company trade whilst possibly insolvent. I know it's harsh but by the sounds of it the 500 staff who's jobs were on the line probably had a decent chance of being re-hired elsewhere - apparently they are highly trained in engineering-style manufacturing lines.
Anyway, my biggest problem was why did the government promote public money to pay for the wages for a week (and I'm sure this wasn't the only thing they did)? I'm sorry - but why should 500 staff of a company be supported like that. Is it to avoid the fact that 500 start claiming for DSS benefits? Really? I would suggest that the cost of providing benefits might actually be less than their salaries - but since we don't know how much that came to exactly, we'll never know.
Plenty of people are made redundent but I don't see the government running to help them every day. Actually - Littlewoods has just made this annoucement and over 3,000 staff will be made redundent across the UK - go on, Mr. Governement... go spend more public money.
Remember the Dot Com crash - how many people went redundent during that. Then there's the Miner's strike... anyway. I'll stop now. There are plenty of bad situations... but when it happens around the General Election people start spinning it.
Also, not that I'm a business analyst, but since it's the turn of the financial year (April 5th) - isn't there more companies that make dramatic decisions (like Littlewoods, for example) around this time? Perhaps the Election should be held in Autumn instead to avoid this?

Google Maps (US Only)

Another BBC News article that is basically a press release, at least the writer hasn't really looked around at the other Map / Aerial Photography crossover websites. Like the UK's Multimap (which is my favourite mapping tool for UK maps) - take a look at the Albert Hall in London and notice that there is an overlay map as you move your mouse over the photography - something that Google Maps doesn't [currently] do. Multimap released this version of their website a couple years ago (I think) - why the BBC's coverage of Google Maps makes no mention of it I don't know... one can only assume that it was just a press release.

MetaBlog: Microsoft's IEBlog starts to talk about the future of Internet Explorer

I've been reading Microsoft's IEBlog off and on, yes... I admit it. I suppose it's supposed to be the Microsoft Developer's editorial newsletter-style blog, targeted at Web Developers and such like.

Around the start of March 2005, a new posting about possible improvements to the standards support of IE6 began.

The poster, a developer at Microsoft within the IE team, seeks input about possible improvements from the customers (web developers, etc). What ensues is interesting to read but, in general, is complaints about 'why have you done nothing since IE3.0' and similar comments.

Let's hope that Microsoft listens, although it is a little late (as I mentioned before in my Blog regarding Internet Explorer 7 and why Firefox is popular.)

'Geek speak' - more acceptable

I see today that 'Geek speak' is being criticised. I'm not sure that's fair - why not criticise any other non-familiar register. The definition of a register is: any of the varieties of a language that a speaker uses in a particular social context. Hence 'Geek speak'... and further a Geek isn't necessarily related with the innards of the computing community - a Geek. (In fact there is quite an interesting discussion about what a Geek is here.) You could be a Language Geek, talking of only didactic synchronicities or something.
What I say is - learn the language, look up the meanings of things. Don't complain about your lack of understanding.

Blog: Random Sentence Short Story Challenge

Just thought I'd link to this here - a friend of mine has a great idea for a blog: Random Sentence Short Story Challenge

How to make a stupid headline, and not have any relevant pictures?

BBC's done it again - on their Technology News website an article entitled 'How to sell your self for a song' explains how, lo-and-behold, many computer users will happily give out personal information. Also, lacking any reasonable pictures to go with the story, the BBC has opted for a picture of a dog with the title - 'Many of those questioned [in the survey] revealed pet names too'. I mean - come on... find something relevant... I know it's often difficult on the BBC Technology News website, as someone in the know told me, but really - this is pathetic.
On to the topic of the article - the matter of users giving out information like this is nothing new. As most system administrators of large office systems will know - many computer users are often stupid. I'm not criticising anyone (although I suppose I am), they need more education about things like email-use... and companies should be providing that. For home users that don't have access to company resources, they should consider going along to some evening classes (although I understand the quality of many of these is currently quite poor - and people are simply told to 'click here' and 'drag there' without too much thought to what they are actually doing).
Maybe it would be worth the government creating some advisories for computer users in relation to this, rather than just offering services like the new publically funded Internet Security alert system (which, I note, has already told me of problems that happened days previously - so they've got that right, not!).
Perhaps - even better than that - have a banner on all Email Clients and Web Mail interfaces saying 'Email you recieve may come from users/organisations trying to trick you' ... which sounds just as stupid as they old American saying - 'things in the rear view mirror often appear closer than they are' which is engraved on some car mirrors in the US.
So, I suppose some lessons from this are: 1) computer users should be more defensive online, 2) BBC Technology News needs a good slap.

If you are going to fix something, fix it in the right place.

Today, BT publically announced that it's trials of an add-on piece of software to allieviate the problem of the 'modem dialler scam' problem. This is where a computer user downloads a piece of software that swaps in a new dialler for the internet with one of it's own - usually tied to an expensive premium rate phone number. It should be noted that this is aimed at Windows users.

Great - wonderful. Thanks for that BT. Surely Mr Microsoft should have instigated a fix within Windows rather than BT providing an add-on which, no-doubt, can be disabled by these rogue dialler installation programs. Why doesn't BT get Microsoft to fix this one... it really wouldn't be that difficult - just ask a user if their Internet connection settings should be changed.

As for BT upgrading their Billing system to look for unusual account activity - it's about time. BT were always very quick to bill you for anything on your account... and very loathe to give it back if they find that they were told about problems with a target telephone number on a previous occasion. This can only be a good thing, but the software thing isn't.

3G Radio Broadcasts? Why

This news report at the BBC Technology News website says Virgin Radio claims that "it will be the first station in the world to offer radio via 3G mobiles."
The article goes on to describe the situation where a codec is used, and basically - we're talking about radio being streamed as per usual Internet Radio stations (including Virgin Radio). This very situation was raised by myself in a meeting with independent record labels a couple of years ago - the main issue being : 'why would anyone want to listen if it's going to cost them an obscene amount of money?'
As it'll be classed as data, you'll be streaming data over 3G (and even 2G GPRS) - so the networks will charge you on average £1 a MB. Come on guys. This isn't news, again I have to ask myself who moderates the BBC Technology news site - this is just a Press Release from Virgin Radio, hardly a journalistic view.

No Googling please, we're Microsoft users

Really... so Google adds the beginnings of their 'AutoLink' feature into their new Toolbar, and everybody starts pointing fingers and shouting 'anti-competitiveness'. Good, because if Microsoft can't get away with that kind of thing (they call it extended Smart Tags, in the up and [never] coming Longhorn) then neither should Google. Google says that the companies that are currently benefitting from direct linking on the Auto Link service aren't paying them (eg. Amazon.com), but does that really make a difference. Come on Google.

Apple Powerbook 100 - Greatest gadget of all time?

Apple is always trend setting, from their Xerox Parc ventures in the original Finder interface and User Interface guidelines, to the latest iShuffle music device. It's not simply that these devices are cool, more so that they are actually inventive. What can you say about many of the IBM PC clones with Microsoft Windows (the thing that looks kinda like the Finder, but isn't - according to the legal system).

Why is Firefox popular?

We've seen the growth of Firefox as an installed browser, but how does this change the stats? After all - there are a finite number of users. I think it's actually other browsers like Opera that are losing out now - people that had IE and decided to change to another browser (like Opera) are the same people that will initially move to Firefox. In some ways, Microsoft may be glad of the competition, but is it wiping out the diversity in the competition?

Security scares sparks browser fix. Does it really?

Why is it that in this BBC News article it sounds like a Press Release direct from Microsoft? Why too is it that BBC News never has a 'Have Your Say' feature on Technology Stories - is it because they cannot support the moderation required to be able to manage a technical discussion? The only thing that Microsoft seem to say is because of security fixes they will release a new version of their Internet Exploiter browser - come on, how about some standards support (IE6 is four years old!).

Atom Feed Problems

I've been having a few problems with Blogger's Atom Feed posting interface.