I’ve been wondering today if I actually think enough to call this weblog “Angus Thinks”?
Is there a requirement to think a certain amount to be able claim that I do think and does the subject matter actually matter?
I can see I’m going to have think about this a bit more…
Well by now everybody probably knows about this, but I thought to follow up my previous post.
Apple launched the most amazingly large flat panel screens on Monday. The largest is a 30″ lcd panel.
There was also a demonstration about Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) which is looking quite promising. It is promising to be a 64 bit operating system offering full contextual search facility and a new widget/desktop accessory thing with shades of Konfabulator.
There was no indication of a new iMac at that presentation though. Which is odd given the story about the supply chain.
Perhaps the following days will bring more rumors (false of course) which I can think about.
I just got finished adding a few new links. It’s getting to be this sort of six-degrees of weblog kind of thing. How can I get from here to any other page on the internet via only the links on this page? I don’t think that can be done from my blog yet but there are weblogs that it probably will work from.
Yet the odd thing about weblogs is that they’re moving away from the main web at speed. The design and technology powering them is diverging quite rapidly. RSS seems to be the preferred way to read web logs and the styling is becoming quite unlike traditional web pages. Content is typically not even on a unique page.
What purpose does the keypad actually serve on a mobile phone? Most people these days are not typing numbers on it. Numbers are usually stored in the address book. People type sms messages on it, but is that efficient? T9 predictive text input is ok but it really isn’t as efficient as a proper keyboard.
I wonder if it’s faster or slower than graffiti like pen based input systems? Would a screen based keyboard be better? Maybe some kind of thumb-board?
Mobile users have been carefully trained to type at speed on a very poor keyboard. Could they become used to a different and more efficient arrangement or are we permanently stuck with the legacy of the 12 key number pad?
Dhruba posted a review of the Nokia 6600 a while back. He also let me borrow it for a few minutes to play a game on it and it is beautiful to use. Smart phones definitely seem to taking the place of the PDA.
I definitely want one 
I was thinking the other day about whether you actually need physical manifestation of media content. Does a movie gain something by being physically on a DVD rather than being stored digitially on a computer?
There is definitely one advantage in actually storing the movie on some kind of physical object because you can pick it up and move it around, even take it to places where the network infrastructure doesn’t exist. The obvious disadvantage is that you do actually have to take it physically to wherever you actually want to watch it.
It is also somewhat less impressive to give a gift of piece of paper representing a piece of content rather than an actual CD or DVD.
So I was wondering if the answer might be in tokens. The token would represent the digital media and identify ownership but the content itself would be stored digitally on the network. It would solve some of the problems of trying to squeeze more and more content onto smaller disks although it certainly wouldn’t solve the disconnected problem.
The token would be used to actually read the media, so there would be no problems with damaged content affecting the film. Tokens might be damaged but they could be replaced in that situation and since they would be simple anyway the survivability would probably be high. I carry around a collection of plastic cards everyday that are replaced about once every three years. That is somewhat more robust than video tape and probably better than DVDs too.
I see the token as being a smart card like object of some kind and perhaps the tokens might even reusable.
It’s a thought anyway…
It must be delightful for the banks to be able to get away with taking 4 days to clear a cheque. The interest that they earn on the money in the meantime must be significant. However there is some slight justification for cheque clearance delays, in the UK at least, the cheque seems to have to be physically returned to the bank of the person who wrote it.
Much, much worse is taking 3 days to make an electronic transfer. I suppose they probably write them out on paper and send them to the issuing branch as well.
This really shouldn’t be allowed in the 21st century, but maybe everyone will switch to paypal for immediate transactions?
AppleInsider is saying that a new iMac is coming soon, while Think Secret is saying that there won’t be an iMac at the wwdc which starts next week.
So what (apart from the fact that it is probably a bad idea to belive everything you hear) does this tell us. Currently I’m tending towards the appleinsider view that something will happen soon, because they have evidence that retailers are not being restocked. You don’t restock if if you’re replacing the product next week, it’s bad for retailer morale and worse for their profits.
Think Secret on the other hand is saying that no iMac will turn up at the wwdc. This might be true as well, Apple might ship a new iMac just after conference, but why? It doesn’t make that much sense.
Who knows?
One thing that is essential however is that the new iMac must be cheaper than the current one. It might just about get by at the current price, but when you compare the current units against offerings from Dell as I did only yesterday, the Apple machines tend to look overpriced. This makes me sad to some extent, but it shows how a company like Dell that essentially doesn’t innovate can offer lower prices. The inovative companies tend to charge higher prices (Intel,Microsoft,etc).
The eMac is probably the right way to go. It’s a common thought but if Apple offered an eMac without the screen for $50 or $100 less I would probably buy one immediately. Even if it only had a G4 processor. The bottom end of the market is where I and quite a lot of other people permanently sit. So it’s worth making sure that there is something there for them to buy.
I only hope that people will learn to appreciate their macs more and be willing to pay the premium for the stuff.
I’ve been working away on my method for making popcorn at home in the microwave.
I realised after a while that leaving the popped popcorn in the microwave after it has popped just causes it to burn, go brown and taste bad. So my current method involves removing all of the cooked popcorn aboout half way through (as soon as a good proportion of the kernels have popped). Then putting the rest of the (unpopped) kernels back into the microwave.
This seems to give a much better result, the popcorn is removed fairly quickly after popping and the whole lot tastes much better. If only there was some way to remove the kernels without stopping the popping. I begin to see why people have these hot air machines. I still think this method is slightly cheaper though.
I have sucessfully managed to make a purchase from the iTunes music store. Oddly enough I didn’t enter the start date for credit card and things went much better. I have no idea why that might make a difference. It could even be that there was previously a technical problem that has been resolved.
Anyway good news for me
Annoyingly there are technical problems with the iTunes store. I’ve made several attempts now to buy music but I always get a form inviting me to re-enter my payment details. Completing the form and clicking OK then either takes me back to the main page (without any music being purchased) or a box pops up stating that the purchase didn’t complete.
The whole thing is odd. However it looks like I’m not the only person to be experiencing issues. Comments on Apple’s discussion boards suggest that the problem is happening to others, particularly with switch cards but also in some cases with credit cards too.
It’s unfortunate that Apple didn’t test the system better, but this is something that seems to have been happening a lot with new Apple stuff recently.
However I’ll give them a few more days to get over the teething problems before I write off the whole thing. Difficulties often happen during the first few days.
The Apple (UK and Ireland) homepage is showing that the iTunes store is now open. I haven’t actually bought any tracks yet though.
Pricing is reasonable, 79p a track is below what the 86p a track that some people were thinking. That still makes it about 40% more than the US iTunes store. (79p is worth about $1.43 at today’s exchange rate). However it isn’t too bad and is somewhat better than the 99p a track some people were suggesting.
(Currency conversion at xe.com)
Fun thing to do:
Try a search for “photoshop” on ebay.
I was looking to see whether it was a realistic way to buy a copy but it really isn’t.
Most of the auctions are fradulent or offering pirated software. There are the usual collection of “bid and get information on where to buy for £20″ kind of auctions. Then there are the ones selling manuals or something but appearing initally to be the real product.
Finally there are the pirates who are selling copies of software in various formats, sometimes with a disclaimer that the customer “should only buy if they already own a copy of photoshop”. Then why bid on the auction?
Overall not impressive. I feel sorry for the few genuine sellers who are offering boxed and sealed copies or older versions. They are being honest, most of the sellers are not.
Ebay really needs to clean up its auctions because the current situation is getting really bad.
Just a quick note to say that I’ve upgraded the site to wordpress 1.2. Hopefully there shouldn’t be any problems. Send email or make comments if you have any problems.
Chris Hampton at Serve Radio has asked me to give a brief presentation at a meeting of volunteers next week. I’ve been doing some work on internet radio broadcasting and he was looking to explain this to the volunteers. I’m still thinking of what exactly to say to them. Any ideas?
Well it’s election day. We won’t know the results of the European parliament elections until Sunday and there weren’t any local elections happening here, so there is a gap before we know what happened. The exit polls can now be published though which may make interesting reading. I took part in a yougov poll early this morning and that’s one I’m interested in reading. As I write this there are about 2 or 3 hours until tomorrows newspapers become available which will probably print the exit polls.
I think the European parliament elections tend to have an odd feel to them because the parliament is so far away politically and geographically. I think the turnout is estimated to be between about 25% and 30% which seems ok. More needs to be done to get people to vote though. And not, as I said before, by changing the system. People should want to vote, not vote because it’s suddenly easier.
On a side note I managed to loose my polling card, but the nice people at the polling place were able to look up the correct details so everything worked well. Not many people there when I went, which was about 5.30pm, but I heard that some polling places experienced late rushes after people got back from work. At 5.30pm there were still four and half hours remaining until close, so plenty of time at that point.
Well, I feel much better today. I’ve thought about it a bit more and I realise how very lucky I was that I found about the bug before the thing got a public release. I’m already working on some ideas on how to fix it. More on that as I think it up.
This really shows the importance of testing stuff. So thank you to everyone who has tried SQLEditor in its various versions.
Yet again the fact that I’m developing on Mac OS X 10.2.8 is causing problems. Bruce tried out a copy of SQLEditor (Cocoa) on 10.3 (Panther) and it doesn’t seem to work at all. You can’t seem to add objects to the canvas which is the key requirement. Most of the other functionality is based on this particular activity. I’ve looked quite carefully at the code and I really can’t see where the problem is. There isn’t anything odd going on.
This is really bad news, especially after the previous problems that occurred with the java version on 10.3 (which was the reason I wrote a cocoa version in the first place). I’m really not sure what to do.
This has made me a bit depressed because I’ve been working really hard on SQLEditor recently to prepare it for release.
It’s really annoying that there isn’t better compatibility between Mac OS X versions.
I’ll try to write some more about what I’m going to do about this tomorrow.
Yes, I know I said Sunday or Monday for the new beta. But instead I’ve been fixing more bugs and various things. So it should be better. There is now a new way of showing foreign key links which adds shading to the source and destination of the link. There is also an option to disable internet version checking and a new facility that catches connection failures so you don’t keep getting error messages if there is no internet connection available at all.
So the new beta version is coming soon, really it is, honest. Really and truly.
Good news everyone!
It’s the European parliamentary election on Thursday.
Given the amazingly high turnouts of previous european elections (perhaps as much as 25% last time), I’m sure the effect on democracy will be significant.
Or perhaps not.
The elections here use a proportional representation system which is relatively complicated to understand anyway.
In addition many areas of England have adopted entirely postal ballots. Postal ballots are inherently less secure as a means of voting. It is obvious that making people vote in person at a fixed location overseen by election officials is going to be more secure than sending out pieces of paper, getting people to fill them in and return them by post.
The most obvious thing is voter inducements. What is to stop a crooked party from offering inducements to people to vote for them. For instance offering a cash sum to anyone willing to fill in the form and then show the completed form to a party agent.
I believe the majority of people to be honest enough not to do this, but most people aren’t voting in this type of election anyway. If the small, dishonest element, can all be persuaded to vote in this way then I greatly fear for the state of democracy in this country.
Given the overwhelming advantages in security for polling station based elections, why are postal voting schemes happening at all?
Some people say that postal voting is cheaper, but democracy should not be cheap. If we want a democracy we must be willing to pay for it.
Another reason is that of turnout. The claim is that postal voting will increase voter turnout. I’m somewhat sceptical of this idea. If people are unwilling to take 20 minutes out of their day to vote at a polling station then why should they take 10 minutes out of their day to vote by post, especially given the requirement to find an unrelated person to counter-sign the document.
We will of course see if this all postal ballot does increase turnout. I will be somewhat surprised if it affects things significantly.
An important point to note here of course is that previous elections cannot be used for comparison. Only other (similar) regions that are not using postal voting.
Turnout in elections is to some extent driven by the political mood in the country and so it is probably not correct to compare turnout figures between elections and state categorically that changes in election technique have changed turnouts.
The real reason for poor turnout of course is a lack of excitement in the political process. People are not inspired by their politicians. When the choice is between three different gray suited men with policies that differ only in the details of the third footnote, why bother voting at all?
Forced voting is definitely not the answer. Some have suggested it as a solution but not voting is a choice that must be respected. Some people do not wish to vote as a protest, others may have other objections. Forcing people to vote seems to me to be anti-democratic and quite wrong. In practice in tends to lead to spolit ballot papers. There is also no particular evidence that it leads to better results. It also has overtones of communist countries where the glorious leader achives 102% of the vote against a turnout of 109%.
The government needs to be educating people more about the importance of voting. People also need to be told about the significance of the European parliament. It is the highest elected body for all european countries, yet it is hardly discussed at all in newspapers or television news. There is no regular coverage of the chamber, little understanding of how it works and no clear idea of what it actually does. This has to change.
We are either in Europe or we are not. Since we appear to be in Europe, we must either accept the situation or act to change it. We cannot just ignore it and hope that it goes away because it won’t.
That is not to say that I am an anti-EU person. I simply wish for people to understand the great importance of the European parliament to the lives of everyday people across Europe.
So the key points: