VER the past few years I have come to loathe telephones. At first, it was just plain disdain for cellular communication. That kind of disdain dates back to the day when it was first introduced to in the public sector (as opposed to prestigious businesses). More recently, I decided to disconnect my phone or refuse to answer, having already avoided giving out my numbers. Snail mail likewise, but it’s an entirely different topic, which I will attempt to steer away from.

Why have I chosen to abstain from verbal communication that is job-related? For starters, electronic form saves space. I tend to scan every important paper anyway, but it is not searchable and it is time-consuming to acquire a copy. It is also difficult to file sensibly.

Moving on to a major pitfall of telephone-based comminication, negotiating tasks over the telephone is not efficient in terms of time. Moreover, nothing is logged in textual form, despite the rapid and rich communication, which is vocal. On top of that, vocal output from streams of consciousness is unorganised. It is the flawed way of talking, which results in serialisation of improperly-correlated ideas. In practice, this means that TODO lists that are agreed upon over the phone will be unpolished and badly written.

One more important issue is uncertainty and inaccuracies. I am inclined to prefer E-mail as it can be re-polished before the point of despatch. It can also looked at as a reference later. It can be duplicated, even forwarded to other people without any effort. Think about an E-mail containing “I spoke to Fred Bloggs yesterday and he said that…” versus just a forwarding of some mail within seconds.

Finally, to balance this discussion and give an opposite viewpoint, research suggests that textual communication can be damaging to relationships between peers. It conceals sensible tone and manner and adds tremendously to ambiguity.

According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I’ve only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they’ve correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.

Can Google and Microsoft ever walk hand-in-hand?

UMEROUS notes have accumulated on my Palm, so I decided to publish them in a logical (not necessarily chronological) order. The notes are all associated with questionable practices and controversial moves, which have been embraced by the Internet’s largest forces, putting Yahoo aside for the most past.

We all wish to gaze into the crystal ball and see what Google comes up with. Moreover, Google remain the centre of attention to many of the media sources. This happened for a reason. Public opinion is rather negative when it comes to Microsoft, primarily due to their shady past and unethical paths, which involve misuse of their monopoly in desktop computing, including a customer lock-in strategy. Then come Google, which seem like a Luddite to Microsoft who perceive Google as their giant threat. Many eyes look at up Google as if it was the knight on the white horse — the one to save the world from a vicious ruler.

The reasons to dislike Microsoft do not only involve exploitation of their monopoly-like state-of-affairs. Microsoft’s CEO once made some derogatory statements about competing operating systems. In reference to Linux he once said “are you going to trust some guy from China?”. It is not just midleading, but also racist and disrespectful. It also comes to show lack of sportsmanship in this competition over the operating systems market. Steve Ballmer of Microsoft used similar types of FUD in reference to Google, saying it would disappear within 5 years. That was a couple of years ago and, ever since, Microsoft have only played catch-up on the Internet, merely copying everything from Google. If controversies ever arises (as in the case of book scanning), the will stipulates that Microsoft will embroil their counterparts into the very same mess, detracting them from victory. Aggressiveness and deep pockets remain in Microsoft’s valued arsenal.

Apart from Trojans, spyware and viruses, I see no real motion in Microsoft Windows. Neither do most existing Windows user, who begin to glance elsewhere. Even when properly protected, the platform has many critical flaws and suffers from the saturation of nagware (homonym of nagger), which we also know as shareware or freeware. Any alternative can be rather pricy. To make matters worse, large quantities (intentional storage room vocabulary) of computers are made captureable from afar. Zombie networks (or BotNets) are constantly being formed. Suddenly, a seemingly harmless and innocent existence of an O/S — one with hijacking vulnerabilities and viral complications — can attack and bring down large Web sites. The flaws are simply infectious. They hurt the entire Web, which is unacceptable.

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Separating ham and spam

RE you familiar with the misfortunate ordeals where you must cope with uninvited mail from a solicited source? What happens when this recurs, as in the case of getting mail that is directly or indirectly bound to a ‘newsletter’? Such newsletters are often hard to unsubscribe from.

I typically just bin such messages automatically rather than bothering to unsubscribe. Why? Experience suggests that it is the easier solution. Some companies voluntarily ‘decide’ to subscribe you and make unsubscription paths difficult and/or poorly tested. Call that “aggressive” if you will. Such messages ought to go to spam@your_domain, which can be emptied every day/week/month after a quick eye glance. Filtering based on headers is a true friend in such circumstances and, if done properly, no false positives (improper spam detection applied to real messages) should follow.

I do not like the idea the idea of re-directing mail to dev/null (i.e. deleting it immediately). Some people whom I know actually do that without hesitation; they particularly enjoy saving files under /dev/null as there is infinite free space there! The thought of something going amiss without the recipient’s awareness (perhaps a false positive) is worrisome. I tend to worry too much. I even check at queue of my BoxTrapper (Challenge/Response filter) at the end of each month, only to find merely nothing which is of use, among heaps of junk. That said, Challenge/Response filters have a few problems. On my domains, there are 5 accounts that which are protected by Apache’s BoxTrapper and merely all messages that get trapped are spam that refuses to verify its genuineness. So why should one bother? I still bother; I just punish no-one but myself.

Related item: Genuine Uninvited Mail

ICROSOFT have announced officially their intent to enter the anti-virus market a couple of months ago. They now unveil a service called OneCare (homonym of “wanker”) Live, which is paid for annually. In simple words, the customer gets protection for the operating system’s own flaws and pays $50 per year for the service from no-one but the O/S vendor. As reported by CNN:

Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday it plans to launch a new computer security service in June, marking the world’s biggest software maker’s entry into the fast-growing consumer anti-virus market.

Microsoft’s Windows OneCare Live, a subscription-based, self-updating service, will push the software giant into competition with consumer security providers Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc.

The article neglects to mention the controversy that is associated with this anti-competitive strategy. Microsoft exploits a monoploy in the desktop market and gives itself motives to create flaws intentionally, then offer the cure for a high cost. I believe Symantec filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft over a month ago.

Google and Firefox are everywhere nowadays

Firefox news:

• Firefox downloads hit the 150-million mark
• Firefox developer takes Internet Explorer 7 (beta 2) for a spin

Google news:

• BMW banned by Google
• Dell-Google partnership

Computer maker Dell said Jan. 30 it has quietly begun testing a new partnership with Internet search provider Google.

Related item: Google Reward for Firefox Downloads

Google continue to be the prime target of hoaxes which attract media attention in vain. Example of recent false publications:

• Opera/Gopera - Google for Web browser domination?
• Napster+Google - Google goes peer-to-peer?
• Goobuntu Linux - Google to enter the operating systems market?
• Low-cost PC - Google to sell electronics?

All of the above are recently-falsified and openly-denied rumours. Many of these rumours appear to incite hatred toward a company that is cautious about destroying its profile and has maintained a relatively ethical historical record. Are they a victim of their own success or perhaps a tool in the hands of investment sharks?

HAT if we ever reached a state where we had full ‘O/S freedom of choice’? What if we were endowed freedom as to which operating system got used on any machine whenever booting?

It wasn’t too long ago that Ubuntu made a version of Linux which is compatible with PowerPC, which made Ubuntu runnable on older (and otherwise legacy) Macs. It also wasn’t too long ago that Mac unveiled their Intel-based Macs, which makes them accessible to both Linux and Windows, or various different versions of Windows, or different Linux distributions. This also caters for seamless purposeless separation into several partitions, provided some partitioning software.

Some time in the past, shortly after Apple had announced their move to Intel chips, people ran Mac OS X on standard (non-Apple) hardware, which was not as expensive as that which is typically provided by Apple Computers. It is now reported that a certain proportion of all Mac users might opt to dual-boot their Macs. This way, they can run Windows, as well as the native operating system in tandem.

Dual-partition and dual-boot hard-drives have become rather common in recent years, predominantly owing to progressive and staged Linux migrations. It is probably only a matter of time until triple-boot machines become widespread. Such machines would run Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. It is an interesting vision. Legally, the three could only be run on Apple hardware, but in practice, who can tell?

Michael Dell once offered Steve Jobs to port Mac OS X and have it run on Dell hardware. Is the vision of Mac OS on potentially any computer (also legally so) nearing a reality?