-
2006-08-31, late at night
-
Tagged:
In my latest burst of catching up on the news (NewsFire, I want to bear your children), certain developments have caught my eye: either for being particularly good or for being (in my opinion) particularly bad.
- Flickr implements geotagging: good idea (even if no-one can seem to agree on how, if at all, the word “geotagging” is capitalised). My only concern about a feature like this would be that no-one would use it, but since one million photos got geotagged in the first day, that wouldn’t seem to be a problem. Such a cool feature.
- Apple settles with Creative over Creative’s “Zen patent” (US Patent 6,928,433, for the interested), paying them $100 million and letting them produce officially sanctioned iPod accessories. While I’m sure this is probably the easiest route for Apple (given the phenomenal cost of legal services in the States and the devastating effect of a potential injunction against selling iPods), it smacks of a bad patent system and giving in to underhanded business practices, so I’m going to file this one as a bad idea on general principles.
- Microsoft brings out a “Wireless Gaming Receiver”, allowing PC gamers to use wireless Xbox 360 controllers: even though I don’t currently have a wireless Xbox 360 controller, don’t currently play any games which would really benefit from one, don’t have the disposable cash to buy any, and am probably going to buy an Xbox 360 once I do, I really wanted one of these a few months back, so it counts as a good idea (if a rather late one).
- Microsoft partners with the CEOP Centre to implement an abuse prevention measure into MSN Messenger and Windows Live Messenger: I have my opinions, both on whether this is a good idea in principle and whether it’s going to be of any use, but this is a highly risky subject to delve into without being exceptionally well-informed, so I’ll just draw it to your attention and leave you to draw your own conclusions.
-
2005-07-06, late at night
-
Tagged:
Way back in the mists of this time last year, I was awarded £60 of book vouchers from my college for being a smart-arse git and getting a First. I waited until today to spend the first £25 worth of them. I bought a copy of the orange bible. I also have a book on loan from my dad which I’d prefer not to have to read but which should be useful for the job I might or might not be getting: a copy of Inside Windows 2000 Server.
Any recommendations for something to buy with my remaining £35 of book vouchers? I’m tempted by The Zen of CSS Design by Shea and Holzschlag in the hope that it might provide some inspiration for my perpetually imminent site redesign or possibly DHTML Utopia by Langridge. I could always do something really wacky and buy a book unrelated to web development, but where would be the fun in that?
-
2005-06-20, late at night
-
Tagged:
So, no blog posts in over a week: what’s happened of note recently and what’s slated to happen in the near future? In rough chronological order:
- I’ve been devoting rather more of my life than is healthy to San Andreas: it’s more GTA as we know and love it, but now with bikes! Oh, and dual-wield pistols, they’re fun too.
- Molly (yes, the Molly) came over to England and stayed in Bath with my sister and her girlfriend: much hilarity apparently ensued, as Flickr appears to testify. Elly appears to have entertained her as she does best: with syrup sponge.
- I’ve got two May Balls today and tomorrow: Trinity and Queens’ respectively. Both look like being astoundingly good, although I thought “Click to Enter” pages were meant to be hideously outdated by now…
- I speculated before about whether Microsoft’s new XML-based formats were too good to be true. It seems they were, as eWeek reports that the license Microsoft are using is not GPL-compatible, claiming something about software patents. I can’t really claim to be surprised, I’m afraid.
- On a research-based note, I’m intrigued by AJAX: seems to me like an interesting sandwich (or trifle, if you will) of technologies with a lot of potential (think GMail). Can anyone recommend any good AJAX resources to look into for an interested developer (who harbours an inherent mistrust of Javascript left over from all those irritating “you can’t right-click here” and “browser-jiggling” scripts)?
Well, brain-dump over. Until next time, kiddies.
-
2005-06-03, late at night
-
Tagged:
As reported by The Register, Neowin and (with cynical comments a-plenty) Slashdot, Microsoft are planning on using an XML-based format for its Office documents, the documentation to which they are making available for download. For free. And available to open-source developers:
Q. Can the licenses for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas be used by open source developers?
A. Yes. Open source developers who wish to participate in a community development project can enter into the agreements and then work in a collaborative fashion on development of a program or programs.
I’ll admit it, I’m stumped. For a company such as Microsoft, who have for so long based a lot of their policy around vendor lock-in and “decommoditizing protocols” to turn around and open up their file formats seems like such a complete volte-face that it defies belief. I therefore have two questions:
- Is there a catch and, if so, what?
- Why are they doing this?
Firstly, catch possibilities. The first of these is that an XML-based file format is not a panacea for all things interoperable. By way of demonstration, this is (as far as I can figure out) valid XML:
<?xml version="1.1"?>
<!DOCTYPE binarydata [
<!ELEMENT binarydata (#PCDATA)>
]>
<binarydata>
01001000
01100101
01101100
01101100
01101111
</binarydata>
I’ll agree it’s a rather contrived example, but you see my point: XML doth not a good format make.
The next catch possibility is that the schemas appear only to be free in the beer sense: they have some kind of agreement attached to them (which I can’t get to, as they’re in an MSI installer). There is, however, a link to a Danish government website which apparently offers more information (more on that later). An interesting question is whether this license is compatible with the GPL, but I’m not a lawyer so I couldn’t tell you.
The Danish website is perhaps the most interesting connection here: while the site itself isn’t overly comprehensible (with mixed-together English and Danish even in the ‘English’ section) it would seem to suggest that perhaps the Danish government have stood up to Microsoft and said “Open up your formats or you will lose high-value government contracts throughout Europe”. If this is true, it would appear to be good all-round for everyone: good for governments, good for Microsoft, good for the hard-working chaps behind OpenOffice, good for Joe Customer.
I’m afraid I will have to remain sceptical, however, until such a time if and when it all comes together. Will Microsoft become some benevolent force for good in this world? Is this some sneaky trick to undermine the open-source community? Will something come out of Denmark which is even better than those sweet sticky pastry things? Comments please.
-
2005-01-26, late at night
-
Tagged:
Disclaimer: this, contrary to appearances, is not an anti-Microsoft rant.
I saw a couple of stories on El Reg this morning regarding Microsoft’s latest R&D plans: a flying car!
(Précis for the lazy: some routing software produced by Microsoft has been found to produce some rather silly routes. For example, Haugesund (Norway) toTrondheim (Norway) via London (UK) and Brussels (Belgium), or Swansea (Wales) to Birmingham (England) via Cork (Ireland).)
From this, I draw three conclusions:
- Computers are stupid.
- Computer programs which attempt to perform some kind of AI are capable of making computers seem even more stupid, because we, as humans, expect the task of producing “obvious” conclusions to be easy.
- People who write commercially-available computer programs without testing them properly are also stupid.
Tag search: microsoft