At last, a contact lens I might actually want. (Hat tip to fellow uber-geek Sean Williams.)
I’ve spent too much of the past two days dealing with tech support people. Firstly because one of my laptops has died (blown power supply, which I suspect is integral to the motherboard) and secondly because of the totally crappy Microsoft remote access software that one of my client uses. And the reason this has taken too much time is because of the process.
There is no point, any more, in telling a support technician what the problem is, because they are trained to completely disregard anything you say to them, and start from first principles. So in both cases I have gone through the loop of saying, “this is the problem, what do I do?” And then spending half an hour or more on the phone with the technician while he walks me through a bunch of idiot questions which finally leads to him saying, “your problem is,” and me saying, “that’s what I told you in the first place, now what can I do about it?”
Now I’ve done tech support myself, including for people who really did need to be asked whether their computer was plugged in. So I know why this happens. But I’ve been programming microcomputers since these kids were in nappies, and sometimes their condescension gets a little wearing.
Though you never know what skills people out there may have, so…
Anyone out there an expert on Latin Hypercube Sampling, and can recommend a software tool for running such analysis (preferably a cheap Excel add-in).
So there I was happily working away on a piece of code, I clicked the mouse, and the screen on my laptop went blank. It still had power, but it wasn’t displaying anything. Various obvious controls didn’t do anything. Plugging in the external screen from my desktop didn’t do anything. So I rebooted, and it is all fine now. I have no idea what happened. But I think I’ll go have lunch and a walk while I calm down.
Today has been a complete bust. It is one of those days when you set out to do a small and simple housekeeping task on your computer and 12 hours later it is still unfinished. This is not the sort of thing you should be doing when you have urgent work projects to complete. Except of course that I don’t have all of the data I need right now so I can’t really make a lot of progress anyway. But it does mean that I’m unlikely to make BASFA tonight, and I’m probably looking at canceling any plans I might have had for Thanksgiving weekend.
Still, I did get to the SF in SF reading last night. Karen Joy Fowler and Molly Gloss were fabulous, and it was good to see a lot of friends.
Meanwhile, back to work.
My brain seems to be slowly emerging from the jet lag fug, so maybe I will be able to be productive today. Certainly I need to do some work. I also need to make progress on the pile of mail that was waiting for me here, finish unpacking, and generally do some housework. That latter, of course, starts with the computers. I have discovered that running a full-system virus scan on my desktop now takes more than 24 hours, which is not good if you have one scheduled to start every day.
The British Press Complaints Commission thinks that we need a voluntary code of conduct for blogs. The idea, of course, is to provide people with a means of recourse that does not involve the courts or heavy-handed government regulation. As to whether it is needed, “If you want to see how the newspaper industry would look like if it was unchecked, then look at the internet”, said Commission director Tim Toulmin. Ouch. That does mean that the Internet is worse than The Sun.
A recent ruling in the California Supreme Court will come as much relief to bloggers everywhere. It reverses an earlier appeal court decision that held web publishers liable for anything published on their site. The Supreme Court decision makes is clear that web sites are not liable for libelous material posted in comments, or as quotes from other people. Do be careful though. I haven’t read the judgment in detail, but I suspect that if you paraphrase someone else’s libel, thereby presenting it as your own words, then you can still get into a lot of trouble.
The BBC reports that Second Life has been closed down temporarily due to it being attacked by a worm called Gray Goo. Sadly the worm merely “planted spinning gold rings around the virtual world” rather than eating it wholesale. These virtual vandals have no respect for SF traditions.
I see from the BBC that it is possible to get a refund from Dell if you buy a computer and don’t actually use the copy of Windows you get with it. This is good news. Sadly I have to use Windows for work, but I’m wondering if it is possible to also pressure Dell into not forcing you to take the latest piece of awfulness from Microsoft. One of the reasons I’m so annoyed about the new desktop dying is that I’m very keen to get any new hardware purchases out of the way now, before it becomes impossible to buy a computer that doesn’t have Vista on it.
I’m quiet because my computers are all tied up running models. You can’t do a lot else when one program is hogging 95%+ of the processor capacity. I wish I had the new desktop, but it is still dead. The engineer came yesterday and replaced the motherboard, but when he turned the machine on he asked, “why did they send a new motherboard, the power supply is dead?” To which we could only reply that we’d spent half an hour on the phone to Dell tech support answering their questions and they said it was a motherboard problem.
Of course the engineer doesn’t carry spare parts. Dell change their parts suppliers more frequently than they change their underwear, so there’s no point in shipping a stock of spares to engineers. So the new power supply is in the mail. And maybe it will get fitted early next week. If it doesn’t the machine is going back to Dell under their 100% satisfaction guarantee. If I can get my money back, I can go buy an HP. I certainly can’t afford to be without the machine.
Last week I took delivery of a new Dell desktop. Bear in mind, at this point, that Kevin and I between us own four Dell laptops and they’ve behaved very well. I’ve never had any trouble with mine save for a rather old hard drive dying on me. So the new machine arrived last Friday and I spent the next few days getting it set up. Today it actually had some serious work to do. Hours and hours of running economic models. And after about 5 hours of this it died. Kevin and I have just come off the phone with Dell Tech Support (and interesting combination of accents: one US, one UK and one Indian) and guess what, we need a new motherboard. At this point I suspect that Karen Traviss and David Brin are laughing themselves silly and saying, “I told you so.” And you know, I think they might be right.
Anyway, the machine is on warranty. (I’ve only had it a week!) A technician will be calling me next week to arrange a visit. In the meantime, because I do have serious work to do, Spike and Temeraire, my two laptops, are going to be working their little backsides off.
Larry Sanger, one of the founders of Wikipedia, who broke from the project in 2002 because of his concerns over its accuracy, has announced that he will be creating a new online encyclopedia that will (shock! horror!) actually be edited by people who know what they are talking about.
Of course those people might actually want to be paid for their services, so you might have to pay to get at what they produce (or put up with ads, depending onhow things go), but then I’d rather pay for information I trust than get something for free that might be a load of crap.
It looks like we might have some progress in the question of third-party security systems for Windows Vista, although as the Symantec spokseman said, what Microsoft says in press releases and what they actually do can be very different. Still, at least they’ve acknowledged there is an issue. Say “thank you” to the European Commission, folks.
Surveys of Internet users have suggested that around 3% of users fall for phishing scams (you know, the fake emails from banks, etc. asking for your account details). But there has always been some suspicion that this number under-reported the size of the problem because people would be unwilling to admit to having been duped. So some researchers at Indiana University School of Informatics decided to create their own phishing spam and see how many of the people they sent it to were fooled. The answer: 14%. Oh dear. Do be careful, people.
Please tell me that no one who reads this blog is stupid enough to have done this.
I guess now we’ll get a bunch of squealing from LiveJournal types saying, “But it is my private email, just because I made it freely available online doesn’t mean you are allowed to read it…”
Newspapers in the UK are agog over the idea that the successful local grocery store chain, Tesco, is to launch a range of office software. Will they, ask the breathless hacks, be able to take on the might of Microsoft? Well, lets think. Microsoft has a strangehold on business computing, and few IT departments are likely to send their staff popping out the grocery store for new software. Also Microsoft is a global brand whereas Tesco products are available only where there are Tesco stores.
On the other hand, Tesco isn’t aiming at the business market, and its offering does have some useful characteristics. The idea is that the software should do pretty much all of the basic things office software needs to do, but have none of the feature bloat that Microsoft has added to its product over the years as an excuse to persuade people to upgrade. Also the Tesco product will cost around $40, whereas Microsoft charges at least an order of magnitude more. Then again, Microsoft has recently announced that it will be making cut-down versions of its Office suite available for free as online services.
The more I think about this, the more I think the Tesco product is doomed, but I did appreciate this article from a leading technology newspaper, if only for the honesty of one of they analysts they talked to.
David Mitchell, analyst at Ovum said that marketing and not price, quality or ease of use is the key reason why some software products gain dominance over others.
Yep, that’s the software market in a nutshell. And don’t we programmers know it.
Some of you may have heard about the ongoing dispute between the EU and Microsoft over “anti-competitive” practices. This might sound like just another EU-US trade war, but here is a graphic example of what the EU Competition Commissioner is concerned about. Not only will Vista come with a full suite of security systems (firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc.), but you won’t be able to disable it so as to replace it with another vendor’s product. No wonder Symantec are upset.