Internet Explorer 7

iscrosoft are slowly letting users of older Windows versions ‘off the leash’. Put differently, old machines are left out there, exposed as easy prey in a world of predators. Windows 98 has not been supported for over 6 months or a year (as far as my recollection goes). Windows 2000 (and ME) support will possibly be conceded too, but maybe it was just rumoured in UseNet. According to a recent survey, half of all businesses in the United States still use Windows 2000. The implication: no patches, no software updates, which lead to saturation of viruses, Trojans, inability to open proprietary (e.g. Office) documents and so forth.

Internet Explorer 7, a recent project that touched the headlines, will be compatible with Windows XP (or later) only¹. This essentially pushes, if not forces, many Windows users to buy new computers or purchase new licences for an operating system that offers merely no added value beyond flash. Since XP is widely known to be a memory hog, an ‘upgrade’ from Windows 2000 will often require new hardware too.

A long-time Windows advocate refused to accept this move by Microsoft and recently urged his readers and followers to stick with Mozilla Firefox. He also noted that Internet Explorer 7 will continue to disobey compliancy requirements. It probably will not pass the Acid 2 test, which most other browsers (all major ones) have passed successfully. Even the humble Konqueror passed the test around June or July this year.

There exists a solution to this platform compatibility issue, but Microsoft loathe it. The solution is Java Runtime Environment (JRE) — the fear of any company whose aim is to monopolise using dot net, much as they did with VB last decade. Java (or any other cross-platform, virtual-machine language) is the reason I can run Firefox 1.0.4 on an old Windows 98 laptop. Java is also the force that motors much of the Open Source movement with products like Thunderbird and RSSOwl (an RSS aggregator).

¹ Some argue that this will motivate all Windows 98, 2000 and ME users to install Firefox. Quite importantly, the words regarding IE7‘s XP-only compatibility still need to be spread. Firefox 1.5 is due to come out next month.

Slashdot on my home computer

ood old Slashdot is one of the heaviest hubs on the Web. What distinguishes Slashdot from most ‘Internet Authorities’ is that new items get added in a linear form (reverse-chronological, much like a blog) and contain links to external sites.

It is common knowledge that once an external link appears in the front page of Slashdot, it can ‘kill’ that external site within seconds. This is known as the notorious ‘Slashdot Effect’. This deadly side-effect can have an impact on many sites if they are hosted on a shared server. Slashdot will cripple such a server, if not bring it to the brink of total collapse. That is the expected outcome when a surge of (tens of) thousands of surfers hits the same server simultaneously. Large sites with multiple servers can endure the load, but otherwise, nobody benefits — neither the sites and hosts which are linked to, nor the ‘Slashdotters’.

As time went on and Slashdot grew, the need for mirrors was realised. If local (temporary) copies of the destination sites can be retained quickly enough, the bandwidth barrier is somehow circumvented. Certain site mirrors (The Network Mirror is one such Slashdot-bound/ripoff site) can gain PageRank as high as 6 without any original content, but only the reflection of Slashdot content with a crawling depth of 1 (i.e. front pages and all pages linked from the front page).

Earlier today, yet another site bit the dust. As soon as small and modest sites appear in Slashdot, they vanish from the face of this Earth. Even the mirrors to do not appear to work unless they cycle for updates frequently enough (before the servers collapse). I sometimes wonder: “News that matter, but where’s the news?”

By the way, schestowitz.com was once cited by Slashdot and endured the load thanks to its excellent Web host, Catalyst2.

here is a well-known issue with the Palm Tungsten E, which appears to have been resolved with the release of the Tungsten E2. A large number of users are have reported a continuous buzz, which makes the use of the handheld quite unpleasant, especially in low-noise environments. An on-going discussion in UseNet reveals more details.

Only yesterday, a group member stated:

The E2 doesn’t have a screen buzz, at least the two I’ve tried in different stores didn’t!

On the contrary, Colleen confessed that she was a victim of this fault:

My E2 has the buzzing noise, but only when I have my headphones in. I must admit, if I could hear it all the time, I would rip out my hair…

Yet another reader adds an opinion:

There have been a number of reports of the TE2 having screen noise also. Like with the TE, it is a rare occurrence. But when millions of units are sold ‘rare’ occurrence can mean a substantial number of units…

Lastly, let us add possible solutions to the mix:

I remember reading the buzzing sound had something to do with the processor speed so I tried out LightSpeed but it wasn’t stable enough to use on my TE. When I tried the two E2 units at two different stores I just figured that the increase in processor speed corrected the problem.

…when I changed the clock speed of the processor the buzzing went really low, almost to the point of being undetectable but the software I was using wasn’t stable…

There were more messages involved in this large on-going thread, which keeps developing at this very moment. The bottom line is that this buzz is endemic in the Tungsten E, but may affect the Tungsten E2 as well.

Cited by: PalmAddict

n interesting story from Wired Magazine explores the early days of Google, the foundation of PageRank and some human interactions in Google. Primarily it addresses the personal lives of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

When he first met Larry Page in the summer of 1995, Sergey Brin was a second-year grad student in the computer science department at Stanford University.

…

As Page had learned from his father, a computer science professor at Michigan State, a dissertation can frame one’s entire academic career. He kicked around 10 or so intriguing ideas, but found himself attracted to the burgeoning World Wide Web.

The story appears to focus on the algorithms at a relatively technical level. It is made ever more interesting because it speaks of social aspects like ambition and aspiration. For example, it turns out that there was friction among the founders at times, but we all know that the story ended up as a smashing success. On a related note, there in another item from Wired News which suggests that AJAX can steal control from operating systems and take everything from a Windows-centric world over to the open Internet.

Software experts say recent innovations in web design are ushering in a new era for internet-based software applications, some of the best of which already rival desktop applications in power and efficiency. That’s giving software developers a wide open platform for creating new programs that have no relation to the underlying operating system that runs a PC.

Also see: Towards On-Line Operating Systems

ignificant news (particularly to ‘WordPressers’) have come out from Matt Mullenweg, Co-Founder and Lead Developer of the open-source publishing tool some us know as WordPress. In his recent message he announces that TinyMCE, a JavaScript-based WYSIWYG front-end to HTML code, will be incorporated and set as default editing mode in future releases of WordPress (version 1.6).

TinyMCE in action

There is a real danger in moves such as this one. Even though ‘raw code mode’ should still be available, only few among the large ‘WordPress pool’ will opt for it. By hiding details from the user, a certain level of ignorance is permitted and standards begin to be compromised and degraded.

As one example of the very principle, Google Groups allow people to participate in UseNet without any knowledge of UseNet and without news reading software. The result is poor netiquette, the many faces of which include top-posting (replies at top of threads), multi-posting (duplication of messages across groups without indication of this) and spam. Some Google Groupies have become hit-and-run guests who ask a single question; once happy with the answer/s, not even a thank-you. As a matter of fact, this drove many newsgroups moderators as far as killfiling (removing) all messages posted via Google Groups. Needless to say, this reflects badly on Google.

As yet another example, it is not entirely rare for Average Joe to save horrific Microsoft Office documents as HTML and then publish the Microsoft-only HTML code on the Internet, thereby breaking the Net. Likewise, a certain proportion of Web programmers and developers bother to test their scripts and sites only under Internet Explorer, which is notorious in terms of standards compliancy and support.

It is rather worrying to know that hundreds of thousands of WordPress-driven sites will wind up automatically generating HTML code. In Matt’s defence, the WYSIWYG tool is said to produce “top-notch” HTML output. Knowing that Matt is also a real standards fanatic, I trust him when he approves the the quality of this WYSIWYG package, which was very recently added to WordPress.

I would be a hypocrite not to admit that I use L_yX, a cross-platform front-end to L^AT_EX, when composing my thesis. The result of PostScript/PDF compilation, however, does not suffer from unoptimised source.

n article on the dot-com fallout comes from CNET. It has just hit Slashdot and it makes an excellent story that is highly recommended to any computer or business enthusiast:

The most astounding thing about the dot-com boom was the obscene amount of money that was spent. Zealous venture capitalists fell over themselves to invest millions in Internet start-ups; dot-coms blew millions on spectacular marketing campaigns; new college graduates became instant millionaires (albeit on paper) and rushed out to spend it; and companies with unproven business models executed massive IPOs with sky-high stock prices. Of course, we all know what eventually happened to this world. Few of these companies actually made enough money to recoup that cash, and when their investors fled to the hills, these start-ups died dramatic deaths. These are the celebrity victims of the new-economy bust.

It is worrying how rapidly things get overvalued given the will. Wishful thinking is all it takes to live in a bubble, which is bound to explode one day. There were talks about a second dot-com boom recently, but they all appear like an overstatement.

Also see: Internet and Nature

KDE‘s Konqueror menu bar

Firefox menu bar
Firefox is Mac OSX-themed (Download/install)

t is no secret that various software vendors use similar conventions for menu layouts, icons and so forth. As an instance, have a look at the one-to-one correspondence in the screenshots above (Edit, View, Go, Bookmarks, Tools, Help) where even menu accelerators are identical. It is inevitably so because consistency needs to prevail. Users who moves from one piece of software to another must be able to re-orientate quickly by identifying familiar phrases and labels (terminology) or images.

What impact does that have on innovation and diversity though? The most rational interface will not necessary make it easiest for the user to adapt to. For example, Windows users are accustomed to going to “Start” when they want to End the current session. Is that not preposterous? Yet, if this convetion gets changed, this will probably result in confusion.

Software that is most usable is one which implements control interfaces that most users are familiar with. Familiarity of the novice users is influenced by high-impact software such as Windows or Photoshop. Due to the nature of this trend, imitation becomes easier to claim. In fact, this would be one reason for the scare among anti-software patents activists. The main sufferer would be the user who needs to master different distinct interfaces and ends up in a lock-in situation, whereby migration between software packages become an ardonous experience.

Finally, let us consider a practical example where the damage of patents is apparent. Xerox sued Palm for the use of Graffiti — a one-stroke method for inputting text, which they claimed they had patented. As a result, Graffiti 2 (see criticism) emerged so Palm users had to throw away years of experience, learning a new ‘handwriting’ method, which involved 2 strokes rather than just one.