adir1

This is amazing demonstration by Microsoft Office Labs, what they called vision for 2019.

For me, the main focus in this demo is on computing interfaces. Notice how many different ways of interacting with the “computer” are shown. Amazing ones are on little cards/devices, that “sense” the motion of the device and respond by showing you different parts of the content, zooming in, etc. Actually, this is something easy to develop on the smart phone today, though I only know of very few apps that do that.

Interfaces are something I am always excited about discussing and improving. Also, you can’t make this vision a reality without a ubiquitous network availability and backed by some Cloud infrastructure somewhere. And we all know how Hot the Cloud discussion is these days. For more more complete story around this video, check out the blog where I found it.

[via i started something]

I watched another excellent Nova show today, called The Spy Factory. It is an excellent in-depth investigation of the failure of US Intelligence when it came to preventing the 9/11 attack. I won’t go further into details, as the entire show is available for online viewing right on the official PBS.org site, so I recommend you watch it. Once you finished (or perhaps you already seen it on TV), come back here for some more afterthoughts of mine.

Can we have it all? Must we compromise privacy in order to gain safety? Is the constant flow through giant NSA “filter” makes our personal communications insecure?

I vote for safety over privacy any day. Beyond the sheer benefit of safety, I believe that the “privacy” proponents are comparing Apples to Oranges when raising concerns about the classic “Big Brother” sense of the word. In many countries around the world, if you say “Stupid President”, or “Dump Oppressive Government”, and the government actually hears you – chances are that you are in trouble. But in USA, clearly the freedom of speech rules above censorship and oppression. Thus, as long as strong Freedom Of Speech laws in place, I say we should all be willing to compromise on our privacy a little.

What troubles me, from a professional angle, is the fact that we spend so much time and resources on Information Security. This is a valid and critical issue, with rampant rise of hackers and computer data & credit cards theft. In the process, we develop methods by which anyone can securely communicate, thus also avoiding our Big Brother, who is trying to watch over us. Or, Big Brother is successful in intercepting our “secure” communications, and likely, so are the hackers.

I just couldn’t resist the title, it’s just too funny. But on a serious note, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform is in serious trouble. Rumors flamed up again about Microsoft making their own MS branded hardware device, presumably with Zune functionality built in.

In my opinion Microsoft really can’t blame the OEM’s this time (like they tried with the Media Player Plays-for-sure fiasco) and “Come Out with their own Phone-Done-Right device”. I think OEM’s tried as hard as they could, over the last few years, to Make Windows Mobile Work. They developed their own additions and enhancements to the Windows Mobile, trying desperately to “prop-up” the ailing platform. But, no luck thus far – Today I can’t recommend any of the Windows Mobile smartphones, after experiencing the iPhone and RIM’s offerings…

I think it is really a combination of issues, from the slow display drivers/response (bad for UI overall, especially video and navigation), to seriously lacking Internet browser (where is their Deepfish?). But the biggest issue of all, ironically, is their openness, allowing problematic plugins (that consume CPU and Memory) to run on the Phone’s front page and allowing the many programs to run in the background, slowing phone down to a crawl. I say Ironically, because this is the biggest thing that iPhone disallows – only single running application and very controlled “3rd party software”. Of course it is also biggest complaint about the iPhone, since we can’t have our “gTalk” running in the background for people to reach us, which seriously cripples the usefulness of the whole “Unlimited Data Plan”.

Meanwhile, Android to the Rescue! Yea, more on that to come, stay tuned!

I think as any responsible techie, I downloaded both 32 Bit and 64 Bit editions of Windows 7 beta, the first day it came out (naturally). Got 2 keys also (one for each edition).

Shortly thereafter I installed 32 Bit version, on 2 very different computers. One was old Athlon 64 processor, 1gb ram, barely alive computer that my daughter insists that she still likes. The other was good Quad Core system. The new optimizations really shine, as old Athlon 64 computer felt as snappy as the new shiny quad core system! My daughter loves it now, and discovered several favorite features already, like that rotating desktop wallpaper (kitties galore!) and the sticky notes on the desktop. Most software she tried so far, worked properly and performed very well! We hit few minor bugs, but it’s beta after all, so we promptly reported them.

In light of this positive experience, I finally got the courage to install 64 Bit version of Win 7 on my Primary computer with 4gb of Ram, as dual boot, of course. However, most strange thing happened, sad thing, annoying thing or even Disturbing thing.

DVD with 64 Bit Windows 7 booted fine, though seem to take longer to reach first screen than I remembered on other installations. And from there, it only got worse. Win 7 Setup took 10 or 15 minutes between each “installation” step, and on screens where I had to type something, I would press a button and see it reflected on screen only 20 seconds later.

7 Hours later, it was still on First install step!!! Though, it wasn’t stuck, you could see percentages going up, I think it was as high as 80% by then, so I left it running overnight.

In the morning, the whole computer was completely “Off”, for whatever reason. Trying to boot into Win 7 (which now appeared on dual-boot menu), did nothing, just black screen. Safe startup mode was no help, hanging at some driver that didn’t seem related to my hardware…

I didn’t give up, wiped that partition and tried again… After second time, I gave up.

Strangest thing is that I don’t even know how to report this to MS. They have crashes and Feedback reported from within Windows 7, everywhere. But what if it is a case like mine, where Installer doesn’t even work?! I wonder if there is some log somewhere.

Another strange thing is that Windows Vista and Ubuntu work flawlessly on that same computer. Go figure…

But, it’s beta, so I am not holding it against folks at Redmond. I’ll keep trying to figure out how to submit a Setup log or something like it, in hopes that they will find time to analyze this issue.

Final words on Windows 7 – I think it is critical that in these hard times Microsoft prices Windows 7 properly. It should be cheaper, have LESS “editions” and allow for multi-PC license for home (like Mac does!).

Yep, I am talking about New York Stock Exchange Computer System here! Actually, I am not laying any blame, but Google Finance and MSN Money both show a quote of 28.67 for AMD (NYSE:AMD), which translates into an increase of 946% – Overnight!! Meanwhile, Yahoo Finance is still correct!

Actually, on the NYSE web site itself the quote seems correct, but looks like whatever feeding many other systems is messed up! And this is not the only quote, I found many others to be strange and incorrect!!! Some showing down 95% overnight, others up, and so forth, all over the place. Not clear if those prices are something from history of few years back, or just random glitch…

Makes you wonder, how safe is our financial system? Hopefully this is no hacker, but just a small bug, we all know those happen, and fortunately today is not a trading day!

UPDATE: OMG!!! While I was typing, it already got fixed! KUDOS (though we are still worried)! I have Photographic Evidence above! I checked several others that were broken, they appear fine also now… Hmmm…

UPDATE2: For proof that I am not crazy, look closely at Google intra-day chart (comes up by default, or click on 5d). Look at Jan 10, it shows some fluctuations of AMD stock (for example) with stock in $26 range, and moving in price – STRANGE!