Category: Technology

Things Not Looking Good for the HP TouchPad

Things keep looking more and more glum for Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) TouchPad. Best Buy has had such a hard time selling the poor devices that they’re apparently requesting that HP take them back:

According to one source who has seen internal HP reports, Best Buy has taken delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has so far managed to sell only 25,000, or less than 10 percent of the units in its inventory.

[…]

Best Buy, sources tell us, is so unhappy that it has told HP it is unwilling to pay for all the TouchPads taking up expensive space in its stores and warehouses, and wants HP to take them back. HP, for its part, is pleading with Best Buy to be patient. We’re also told that a senior HP executive, possibly executive VP Todd Bradley, is slated to travel to Minneapolis soon to discuss the matter with Best Buy executives.

Sadly, I’m not surprised. WebOS seems destined to be the operating system that has many great features but is doomed to failure by poor hardware and lack of polish. I managed to handle a TouchPad some time back at Best Buy and I wasn’t impressed. HP is coming into the tablet game late meaning they need to find some way of persuading customers into buying their new tablet instead of the already established devices released by their competitors.

The TouchPad was originally released with the same price tag as the iPad, a move which I said was rather stupid. Apple is able to sell their iPad at that price because they already have market recognition (people want them) and their devices generally are very well built and polished to an almost mirror shine. Companies releasing Android tablets are able to sell their devices because many people dislike iOS and/or Apple causing them to look elsewhere. On top of that Android has a lot of great features that separate it from iOS (it’s open source nature being a big boon for those who like to tinker and hack). As Android is free manufacturers can also create some very reasonably priced devices.

The TouchPad on the other hand lacks polish in many regards. First the device feels cheaply built with everything being made of plastic. Second WebOS 3.0 is buggy and includes some rather glaring problems that any quality assurance team should have caught before release. Battery life on the TouchPad isn’t great, coming in at roughly half the battery life of the iPad. Another problem is WebOS isn’t open which doesn’t help attract attention to the hacker crowd who are always looking for an OS they can add functionality to and improve (although there is a strong hacker community around WebOS, it’s not nearly as strong as Android’s). Thus the only other factor HP could hope to compete on is price, which they failed miserably at by setting the price at the same level as the iPad.

HP flubbed the TouchPad in every way, shape, and form so it’s not surprising to see that it’s not selling well. I would go so far as to say the TouchPad is a great lesson for other manufacturers to learn from, how not to release a new device.

Google Acquires Motorola Mobility

When I woke up this morning I wasn’t expecting to see a story about Google acquiring Motorola Mobility but that’s exactly what they’ve done:

Since its launch in November 2007, Android has not only dramatically increased consumer choice but also improved the entire mobile experience for users. Today, more than 150 million Android devices have been activated worldwide—with over 550,000 devices now lit up every day—through a network of about 39 manufacturers and 231 carriers in 123 countries. Given Android’s phenomenal success, we are always looking for new ways to supercharge the Android ecosystem. That is why I am so excited today to announce that we have agreed to acquire Motorola.

I think this was a very smart move on behalf of Google. Motorola has been producing some great phones as of late and Google really needs to start manufacturing their own line of mobile handsets. The biggest problem with Android in my opinion is carrier and handset manufacturer customizations to the operating system. These customizations make the user experience different from handset to handset but more importantly they require additional work when a new version of Android is released. In order to update their phones manufacturers have to waste time customizing the new version of Android to their likings. I would be more willing to purchase a handset made by Google as it would likely come installed with vanilla Android and updates would be released frequently.

This is Why You Shouldn’t Rely on Third Party Services

There have been a few stories lately about people getting booted out of Google’s Google+ service. I haven’t covered it because I honestly don’t give a shit, that is until now. A Google likes to tie all of their services to your Google account it is possible for you to get booted from all of your Google services if they decided to kick you off of Google+, and that’s what apparently happened to one person:

Marcheschi had the last seven years of his digital life stored on various Google services, and he lost access to all of it two weeks ago when Google mysteriously killed his account and refused to tell him why.

Two days ago, as public pressure on Google to explain itself mounted, Marcheschi found out why. A Google bot that automatically scans Picasa for illegal images flagged something Marcheschi had posted as child pornography. And that was all she wrote – goodbye Gmail, Blogger, Calendar, Docs, photos, and all the rest.

It turns out that the image he posted, though admittedly disturbing, was not technically porn. In fact, he says his reason for posting the image – to a collection he curated called “The Evolution of Sex” — was to make a point about how you can post images of minors being sexualized without breaking any laws. (Marcheschi says Google deleted the image, he has no other copy, and doesn’t remember where he found it on the InterWebs, so there’s no way to judge for yourself.)

Luckily for Marcheschi, a Google human stepped in, determined that Dylan was not a kiddie porn merchant, and turned his account back on.

But what if something similar happened to you, and you weren’t so lucky?

What if you owned an Android phone, which uses your Google ID to access all kinds of data services, and Google killed your account? Would you have a brick in your pocket

Situations like this are why I’ve moved my needed services onto computers I personally control. In the case of Marcheschi an automated bot incorrectly flagged something he posted as illegal and killed his entire Google account. If you’re running an Android phone getting your entire account killed is basically a death sentence for your phone as well.

Android phones backup everything to Google’s services including the applications you’ve purchased, contacts, calendar events, e-mail, etc. You would lose all records of every application you purchased from the Android Market meaning you’d have to repurchase them all again. Basically you’d have to start from square one again as the phone is unable to make backups to local machines.

Relying heavily on third party services is a dangerous endeavor. If that services goes away or kicks you off you lose everything that was dependent on that service. This nice thing about my iPhone is that I can tie it to my self-hosted services meaning if Apple every killed my iTunes account I’d still have all of my personal information safely stored on my server safe and sound. This is why I want CalDAV and CardDAV support in Android so badly, at least then I wouldn’t have to rely on Google’s services to sync and keep my personal information.

Either way this should be a lesson as to why it’s best to do it yourself (not just in technology but in anything you possibly can).

OS X Lion, Full Screen Applications, and Multiple Monitors

Full-screen mode in OS X Lion seems like a gimmick feature to me so I’ve basically ignored it. After a while I thought about the fact that many of the applications I run are opened on their own dedicated virtual desktop which is kind of like full-screen mode so I thought it would be worth experimenting with the gimmick.

My conclusion is that this feature is still a gimmick. Why? There is no support for multiple monitor setups. If you put an application in full-screen mode on a computer with multiple monitors hooked up the application will be displayed on the primary monitor while the second one will be greyed out. This part makes sense but when you put a second application in full-screen mode is basically creates a new virtual desktop with the application on the primary monitor and the second monitor greyed out. It would seem to me having an option to have the second full-screen application open on the second monitor that isn’t being used by the first full-screen application would make a whole lot of sense.

I’m really hoping VMWare Fusion doesn’t being utilizing Lion’s full-screen API because as it currently sits I can have a virtual machine in full-screen mode on one monitor and other applications on a second monitor.

My Top Android Gripes

Although I’ve switched over to an iPhone as my primary mobile communication device ever so often (usually when a new version of Android drops) I grab my Android handset and test it to see if any of my problems have been resolved. With the release of 2.3.5 for my Nexus S I decided to give Android another run through and I’ve found the following glaring problems:

Virtual Private Networking (VPN) still doesn’t work: How long as Android been out? Something approaching three years now I believe, and it still lacks functioning VPN capabilities. VPN isn’t exactly rocket science as Windows, Linux (which Android is bloody based off of), Mac OS, iOS, Palm OS, and WebOS all have functioning VPN capabilities. Why can’t Google get it working properly in their mobile OS?

No support for CalDAV or CardDAV: CalDAV and CardDAV are open standard protocols for remote calendaring and contact management. Once again I find that almost every other operating system on the planet, including iOS, have support for these two protocols. It seems trivial to me that a company the size of Google couldn’t just download an already completed CalDAV and CardDAV Linux client library and use it to add built-in support for both in Android.

No support for public-key identify certificates: I use self-signed certificates for my mail, calendar, address book, VPN, and HTTPS needs. Although Android has full support for IMAP (although using a separate e-mail client from their star GMail app) Android doesn’t have any way of importing identity certificates (which was a bitch I might add). Although I’ve been able to import my identify certificate Android seems unable to use it to identify TLS connections. When I connect to my IMAP server Android informs me that it can’t establish a chain of trust for for the server’s TLS certificate. Well the public key that establishes that chain of trust is right in the fucking certificate store, why not check there?

No method of encrypting data stored on the device: You know what’s nice about iOS? All of your data can be stored in an encrypted format meaning somebody can’t just grab the phone and download everything without knowing your password (it also makes wiping data from the phone quick as you can just erase the encryption keys). You know what’s not so nice about Android? There is no way to full encrypt everything stored on the phone. Once again full disk encryption isn’t exactly rocket science as Windows, OS X, and iOS all have that capability built-in.

I really want to like Android but Google makes it so damned difficult. If you’re willing to simply use Google’s service Android is decent (although you’re still fucked on the VPN side of things). But when you want to move off of Google’s services and use your own then Android becomes completely unusable. Why should Google care since they want people using their services? Simple, many businesses also need the very things I’ve mentioned. Without these capabilities Google is lacking the ability to make headway into many market sectors that Apple is currently moving into. In addition to that all the problems I’ve listed are gripes that people have posted in the Android support and development forums meaning I’m not the only one wanting these features.

On top of that I’m of the firm belief that a feature advertised in the operating system should work. Android has a preference pane to enter VPN settings and it has a preference pane to import certificates but neither feature works. It looks damn sloppy when your operating system advertises a feature that isn’t functional. Hell, it’s not just that these features aren’t functional, it’s that Android has been out for roughly three years and the features still aren’t functional.

Once again I’ve given Android a chance and found it lacking. I’ll patiently wait for the next Android release where I’ll start this cycle all over again and hope that some of these features are actually working then.

A Rather Pointless Endeavor

Sometimes I look at a newly announced product and simply ask, “Why?” This is rare for me because I recognize that there are many different people with many different needs but sometimes even that fact doesn’t explain the reason a product managed to see the light of day. Canon just announced a new device that is an amalgamation of a Bluetooth laser mouse and a 10-digit calculator.

You know what program all computers have on them? A calculator. It’s true, even your damned cell phone has a bloody calculator built in. Since our computers already have calculator programs included what do we want a mouse that also has a built-in calculator? I could think of a great many other, more useful, gadgets to include in a mouse.

I’ve Been Saying This About Bitcoin For a While

As I hang out with a large circle of liberty minded people the topic of Bitcoin comes up frequently. Generally there are two schools of thought when it comes to Bitcoin; the school that believes Bitcoin is our salvage from government controlled money and the school that thinks Bitcoin is a fad that will die out soon enough.

Although I find many things to like about Bitcoin anonymity isn’t one of them. People often tout Bitcoin as being anonymous and state that as a huge plus. The problem comes from the fact that every Bitcoin transaction ever made is forever stored in the Bitcoin network. This means if somebody is able to tie a Bitcoin wallet ID to a person they could begin the process of tying other walled IDs to people. This can be done pretty easily through data mining (or, if the first wallet ID was discovered through computer access, potentially looking through the user’s Bitcoin address book).

Well somebody finally did some experimentation and demonstrated what I’ve been saying:

Anonymity is not a prominent design goal of Bitcoin. However, Bitcoin is often referred to as being anonymous. We have performed a passive analysis of anonymity in the Bitcoin system using publicly available data and tools from network analysis. The results show that the actions of many users are far from anonymous. We note that several centralized services, e.g. exchanges, mixers and wallet services, have access to even more information should they wish to piece together users’ activity. We also point out that an active analysis, using say marked Bitcoins and collaborating users, could reveal even more details. The technical details are contained in a preprint on arXiv. We welcome any feedback or corrections regarding the paper.

Arguments about the merits of Bitcoin as a competing currency to currently government controlled monies are still relevant but please stop claiming the advantage of anonymity. If you want the most anonymity in your transactions use physical commodities. Any electronic currency system needs to ensure transactions are valid in order to prevent counterfeiting, and thus devaluation. The only way to do this is to know the entire history of each monetary unit which necessarily involves keeping records of every transaction. As transactions occur between individuals some method can always been used to tie a specific monetary unit to a particular person.

Physical commodities aren’t reproducible without physical effort which negates the need to have some kind of record of every transaction that commodity has been through.

OS X Lion Server Admin Tools

When I upgrade my machines to OS X Lion I noticed something of importance was missing, Server Admin Tools. For those who don’t know Server Admin Tools is a package of applications that works as a front-end for maintaining OS X Server installations. These tools aren’t necessary as you can managed everything from the command line if you desire but, being a naturally lazy person who isn’t too fond of manually editing a 500 line text file to change one little thing, I prefer using a quick graphical interface. The administration panel that is included with OS X Lion Server is a toy that doesn’t allow any real manual configuration so that’s out as far as I’m concerned.

Thankfully Apple has posted Server Admin Tools 10.7 on their website. Why the OS X Lion installer didn’t automatically include this or download it from the website when it was upgrading my system I’ll never understand. It wouldn’t be that difficult for the installer to see that I have Server Admin Tools installed and thus it should either upgrade those applications or leave them the Hell alone. Simply removing them wasn’t my idea of funny nor entertaining.

Either way if you’ve upgrade your system to OS X Lion and rely on Server Admin Tools you’re relegated to manually navigating to the website and downloading the installer package.

NoScript Awarded the $10,000 Dragon Research Group Security Innovation Grant

It’s likely you’ve heard to praise the awesome Firefox plugin that is NoScript. NoScript is the primary reason why I’m still running Firefox instead of Chrome. That’s why I’m glad that the plugin was awarded the Dragon Research Group Security Innovation grant which includes $10,000.

NoScript is kind of a Swiss Army knife in regards to Firefox plugins. The main purpose of the plugin is to block scripting on all domains that you haven’t specifically white listed. This not only improves security by preventing malicious scripts from running but it also makes the web a much nicer place to visit since it blocks those annoying pop-over ads that block the site until you dismiss them. I’m honestly at the point where I can’t even stand visiting many websites unless I block scripting on those domains.

My Initial Thoughts on OS X Lion

I have successfully installed OS X Lion on both my Mac Pro and my MacBook Pro. I’m not ballsy enough to attempt the server upgrade until this weekend though so my initial thoughts are all going to be related to client software at this point.

The very first thing I want to point out is the fact having reversed scrolling enabled by default is the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever encountered. Seriously! When I scroll up on a trackpad or mouse I expect the screen to move up, when I scroll down I expect my screen to move down. This is a pretty basic concept that’s been with us for a while now. An operating system isn’t a fucking flight simulator, we don’t need to reverse the controls for moving up or down. Thankfully this can easily be disabled in the preferences but it seems like such an idiotic thing to have enabled by default.

That was by far my biggest annoyance which is to say I haven’t ran into anything that annoying so far. OS X Lion seems pretty stable outside of the box which is a nice change as most initial releases of new OS X versions have been rather buggy, sometimes bordering on unusable. For Lion the installation went off without a hitch and everything seems to be running properly so far.

The whole full-screen mode for applications is a rather pointless gimmick in my book. I have no idea why Apple saw fit to include such a feature in a desktop operating system but it’s optional and thus easily ignored.

I’m not at all happy with the new way virtual desktops are laid out. Previously you could have a grid of virtual desktops which meant accessing one desktop from another could be done quickly. I usually run with six virtual desktops and in Snow Leopard I had them arranged in a grid consisting of two rows and three columns. In Lion virtual desktops are all laid out linearly meaning you only have one row. This makes traversing from desktop one to desktop six a pain in the ass if you’re using keyboard shortcuts. I’ve not found a way to revert the desktop arrangement to a grid yet, nor am I even sure you can. Either way I find this extremely annoying as it really fucks up my workflow.

I have no real opinion on the disappearing scroll bars. I seldom look at or use the scroll bars anymore so the fact that they vanish when you’re not actively scrolling is irrelevant to me.

The new Mail application is light years ahead of Snow Leopard’s version. The layout feels much better and everything seems to move smoother. I also like that the System Preferences has a central panel to add e-mail, calendar, and address book accounts. It was a bit annoying having to open each separate application to add the appropriate account.

The new “natural feel” iCal and Address Book applications are just fine by me. They look a bit out of place but I don’t think they’re as ugly as many have made them out to be. Honestly I rarely interact with either application on my desktop or laptop so this is another thing that doesn’t really affect me.

Launchpad is pretty worthless in my opinion. I’ve been running with a Application folder stack on my dock forever now to launch applications. It’s actually easier for me to click on the stack icon, scroll to the application I want, and launch it than it is for me to launch an application via Launchpad.

Some of the new trackpad and mouse gestures are pretty sweet. I really like the fact that I can now use my trackpad and mouse to scroll, flip between virtual desktops, show my running applications, and many other things. Apple has done a great job realizing the utility of a trackpad with multi-touch capabilities and I hope other computer manufacturers follow in step.

The new interface elements in Lion are pretty as well. It’s a pretty meaningless change but I like the new look.

I’ll keep you guys apprised of my findings but so far I’m liking Lion even though I find most of the new features to be rather pointless gimmicks. It seems solid from the start which is certainly better than previous OS X releases.