Tech Grievances

Freedom of expression

2010-03-03T10:50:00.003+01:00

Recently (~ 2 years) I have been considering small, usability-related changes to the UI of modern systems. In particular, I have thought along the following lines:

Not mouse dependant: I don't like to switch from keyboard to mouse and back often. I would like to see better use of the keyboard in graphical interfaces.
Minimalistic, yet eye-candy design: Some strides have recently been made in this direction.
"Advanced" window management: And I don't mean live previews or transparency - details below.
Filesystem changes: Isn't it about time we used some of the knowledge painstakingly gained in the last few decades?

I shall now describe some of the "features" I would enjoy seeing.

1. Getting rid of icons and shortcuts

Desktop icons and shortcuts are old-fashioned. They provide (at the same time) both too little information and too much information. Too much information because of various "document preview" features around, which attempt to render a representation of the contents into a small image. Try to distill a movie (or better yet, a song) into a 64x64 icon and see how well you do. Similar for text documents.

And even as we get richer, bigger and nicer-looking icons, all we learn from them is that it's a video/music/picture/document/text file and its name.

"But how will I launch my programs then?"

Simple: Take a look at the dock in Apple operating systems or the new Start Menu in Windows. Type in a few letters of the program name and get a (short) list of matching items.

"But what if I can't remember the program name?"

Either: a) include description in search database, or: b) fall back on some form of menu structure.

Frequently used list also helps.

"How about my documents?"

Similar principles as above.

2. "Advanced" Window manager

A lot can be said in this topic, but I will limit myself to a few examples of usability features that I, personally, would like to see.

Window positioning: When I start a new application, I would like it's window to open a little more intelligently than "where it was the last time". If the desktop is empty (ie: starting the first application of the day, or having minimized everything else), the new window should open maximized on the primary monitor. If there are other things happening, the window should open somewhere "out of the way" - below everything else, on a secondary monitor, in a large free area on the desktop, etc. The rules for determining whether I want the window to pop up in the center or not are relatively simple:

- Did I wait for the application to open or did I immediately click somewhere else?

- Am I continuing my work in another window while the new application is loading?

- Did I minimize a lot of stuff before starting the new app?

- How did I use the app previously? Did I switch to it immediately as it loaded, or did I leave it in the background for a while?

One of the key problems right now is "focus stealing" - Windows that open while I am doing something else tend to take keyboard and mouse focus and thus disrupt my work.

Message queue: I don't like flashing (or shaking, or blinking, or noisy) windows and buttons. If a background program needs my attention, I don't want it to flash in an annoying color until I click it - because it distracts me and I end up switching to it _immediately_, disrupting my work. Flashing and similar should be used only for ground-breaking-world-shattering-computer-on-fire emergencies. Nothing else. Windows which have important information for me should put themselves into a line - queue - which I can check periodically to see if there is anything new. The order could be based on time of the message with possible added priority. The queue would look like small live-previews (or program icons) in a nice bar, which could be configured to be always visible or hidden under a small icon, which would change unobtrusively when it had something to say.

In short, I would like to think along this pattern:

"Hmm, I wonder if anything new has happened to my programs, lemme look in this corner.."

rather than:

"I just finish typing this-... *ding* WTF?! Why did [insert app name] jump at me just now?!?"

Window work stacks: I often have to open a bunch of windows related to a task, perform a series of steps in each of them and then close them. A nice example is setting up a classroom of computers - installing new software.

So I am able to start all the computers via script and copy the files to them over the network with another script, but as the installation is only a few steps I am too lazy to script that too and decide to "click it through". So I open a bunch of VNC connections and start clicking through the installation on each machine. I go a few steps at a time, because sometimes software takes a while to install and I don't like to wait on it while I could be setting up another installation somewhere else.

At the moment what happens is: I start a lot of VNC windows and begin the installation process in the first one. While waiting for something to finish, I switch to the second window and start the installation there as well. So on till about the fourth of fifth computer, which has a "Pendind restart because of updates". It needs to be restarted before I can install anything on it, so I initiate the shutdown and move on. This usually happens on a few more computers.

While they restart, I finish the first install steps on most computers and start the finalization steps on the first few. Meanwhile, the restarts are done and I start the first installation steps on the newly restarted computers. But whoops, one of them needs a component that somehow wasn't installed over the domain group policy, so I need to do that before installing the program. Meanwhile, the rest of the computers have finished installation and need finalization steps, while the first few computers need testing to check if the new application is adequately installed.

Let me see you try and keep in mind the states and progress of ~20 machines while performing approximately the same tasks on them.

Solution? Window stacks. Create a "dock", "area", "margin", "however-you-wanna-callit" on a part of the screen and designate a few "piles" (Init, Prereq, Progress, Final, Test). The names would be chosen by the user when he creates the stacks. Use all the VNC windows in maximized mode and simply when a part of the steps are done "throw" the window into one of the piles appropriately. When you're out of windows, click on one of the piles to get a small preview of everything that's in it, pull out one of the windows and continue - from the pile name you know exactly where in the process that particular window is and where it should end up after you are done.

I am sure you can come up with many examples of where such dynamic distinctions would come in handy.

Meta (database) filesystem: DBFS is nothing new, the idea has been around since 1998 (as far as I am able to determine from various published papers). A short description:

Use a flat file space (all files in one directory - the root of the filesystem) and use descriptive metadata tags to enable fast and easy searching among the files. Some of the tags would be appended by the operating system automatically, such as:

- Date created, modified, used

- File type (image, sound, etc)

- If image, sound or movie, tags for specific codecs used

- Author/user

- Source (from URL address, USB key, CD,...)

- Operation flags (Executable, library, cache, index, readonly...)

- Associated program name (so it's easy to find all files related to a program)

- Opens with "program"

Additionally, the user could enter pre-defined tags, such as:

- If image: where was it taken, who is on it, name of the event

- Documents: Title, summary..

- (more depending on file type)

On top of all that, the user could create own meta tags to mark the files in any way imaginable.

Locating files would be done through search - all-in-one search bar that searches for all tags (see above commend on locating programs), or an "Advanced search" that allows the user to select only desired tags to search by.

Let's take it a step further: Replace the word "file" with the word "object". If searching is usable enough, we do not need a "flat file namespace", but rather an "object store". We can use advanced database techniques that are being employed (successfully) all around the world to create and index the contents of a disk.

"But how can I copy all the files related to my project to another machine?"

Either you search broadly and click through the list selecting only what you need, or you were smart and used a tag with the project's name on all the objects belonging to it. The IDE could help us here by appending the tag automatically. Then simply exclude the objects with tags "temporary" and "generated" and you're set.

"How to delete all the files with user settings?"

Search for tag with program name, then exclude all objects tagged "settings".

"Won't there be entirely too many tags on any given file after a while?"

Perhaps, but if the OS sets nice, usable policies and programs stick to them it should be fine. Plus, with advances in hardware and databases this will not take a lot of space or slow things down significantly. I for one am willing to risk it.

FREE Windows 7 upgrade

2009-12-29T13:39:00.002+01:00

So, here I am picking up some new gear for my company. The bigwigs decided to go all-out with IBM (currently Lenovo), because it 'is a big company', it is 'more stable, reliable and secure' and the 'black boxes look kinda neat'. [List more stupid reasons here].

So the overpriced computers we get come with Windows Vista licenses (business or ultimate), which we never use. I wonder how those negotiations went:

Bigwig: "Um, we'd like to buy 250 PCs please."

Lenovo: "You must take *these*. Windows Licenses included."

Bigwig: "But we don't really need Windows, you see... We have this Volume Licensing-"

Lenovo: "Silence! I have SPOKEN!"

Bigwig: "Okay" :O

And there you have it. After a few years there are about a thousand license for Vista just lying around (you're not allowed to use them on anything but the original hardware they came with).

So, today I figure I might try and get a Windows 7 upgrade for a few of them, so that I can start testing some of our applications. There might be some legal/licensing issues here, but I figured that I may be able to get a CD-KEY that would work for a bit until we have to go out and buy more volume licensing to include Wind0ws 7.

Luckily Lenovo is offering *!_FREE_!* Windows 7 upgrade for certain customers.

If only it were so easy.

It seems they are handling their upgrades through another company - Mentor Media Corporation, who take your information, serial numbers, proof of purchase, etc, and then send you a DVD over snail mail. Guess what? Costs 18€ apiece for my country. I hear that it's even worse for some (up to 35$). Each has to be ordered separately, and each needs its information filled out.

Last time I checked 17.47€ != 0€. In fact, 17.47€ > 0€.

So, the !!#*_OMIGOSH FREE_*#!! upgrade of a crappier OS to a merely crappy OS is not really free. Sure, you don't pay Microsoft, but you pay someone else. That's not my definition of free.

*GASP* so Mentor Media has some postage expenses. SO?! Give me my ISO over HTTP (use bittorrent if you're poor on servers) and then send me the CD-KEY in my email, sheesh. What is this, the middle ages?

As it happens, I have recently tried upgrading a friend's laptop (no legal issues here, since it is personally bought from a store). Acer also uses Mentor Media. So does HP and most others I could find.

Did the guys at Mentor Media land a sweet deal with these upgrades or what? Quite likely the PC distributors pay them some "fee" for their "service", then the users pay them some "postage and expenses". Maybe even Microsoft pays them something as well. Quite lucrative.

So, in conclusion... Your *!FREE!* Windows 7 Upgrade is not really free. (It is however, somewhat cheaper than a store bought version. Remains to be seen if there are any "special cases" in those EULAs, though.)

Remember - the software companies and their "subsidiaries" are not really there to help you use your computer more productively. There are there to take as much of your money as they can. And some hard data about you as well, cause that sells nicely too.

Some things I don't like about Windows 7, Part 1

2009-06-24T11:23:00.005+02:00

Hey all, I'm back after a prolonged absence. I have acquired some fresh material for my rants and I will start with the hot topic: Windows 7.

If you haven't heard of it yet, you must be living under a rock, because Microsoft is desperate to sell sell sell. The sales pitch certainly paints a rosy picture, but what is it like live?

Well, I have been using it seriously on my home (gaming) computer and at work. In fact, I have completely replaced Windows XP. Below are listed some of the nice improvements, which should have been made years ago:

Driver installation - Aside from the network card, Windows Update now provides most drivers you are likely to need. There are still some strange pieces of technology around, so don't throw all your driver discs away yet. But the most common configurations are supported.
Networking stack - Windows has finally become less open on the network side. No longer will you be exposed to all dangers of the internet world when you connect to that free, open wireless at the airport.
User interface - Although still plagued by stupid decisions, the GUI is at least a bit more usable, especially if you use the hardware accelerated features - previews and smooth animations. Let's face it, now Windows at least looks modern.
Installation - The installation wizard doesn't require constant supervision anymore. Now you can set the settings and leave it to work. It is much faster as well.

But, unfortunately, the Windows version number isn't 7.0 (at least at the time of this writing), but rather 6.1. This means that the actual programming code you receive is slightly improved Vista (which is in itself heavily modified XP). Some oddities have persisted and there is a number of new problems. Let me try and capture some of them.

Slow, large and unstable

For the past couple of years I have felt as if speed and efficiency don't matter anymore. Windows 7 continues this trend of "If it isn't massive, it isn't complete" mentality. The installation is supposed to take 16 GB for 32 bit and 20GB for 64 bit version. That is huge. The amount of information in 20 gigabytes is phenomenal. You can save 5 full DVD quality movies in that without compression. In estimation, that is 20.000 thick books, without compression again. So, what is in Windows that takes up so much space?

Here are the biggest folders in Windows directory:

Assembly - approx 1 GB. These are the libraries of objects and functions for the .NET platform. Amazingly, if you install .NET 3.5 on Windows XP, the download takes about 120 Mb.
System32 - approx 1.7 GB. These are supposed to be core operating system files. At 1.7 GB that is some fancy operating system indeed.
SysWOW64 - 1 GB. The name is completely misleading, as there are no 64bit DLLs and executables in here. All code, 32 and 64 bit is in the System32 folder. WoW64 stands for "Windows on Windows 64", meaning that this folder holds the necessary files to run 32 bit applications.
WinSXS - 5.8 GB. This is a copy of the entire installation DVD. The idea behind this is to make it easier to install additional windows features and components without needing the original media.

So, if we exclude the installation files and hope for the best case scenario, Windows 7 installation boils down to about 9 GB. That is larger than many triple-A games on the market. I have for you one simple acronym to describe this state of affairs: WTF?!

Lots and lots of shiny graphics plus bad programming equals lots and lots of stuff in your computer's memory. That is why Windows 7 likes to have about 1 GB or RAM for itself.

I've seen it go as low as 700Mb (at startup), but that was on a laptop with only 1.5 GB of RAM in total. On an average computer with 4 GB of memory, Windows 7 will never start with less than 1.4 GB. I have tried disabling everything I dared, completely crippling networking and GUI, but the memory usage at startup never went below 1.2 GB. How is it that the same 64 bit version of Windows 7 takes up almost twice the space on different computers? Do I need 700Mb worth of drivers? Someone seriously failed here.

Interesting fact: Ubuntu linux on default installation with desktop effects enabled takes up 200Mb of RAM when it is done loading - and the number doesn't vary by machine. It clearly is possible to look shiny and be memory efficient.

As for speed, Windows does look acceptable at first, but with a few months of installing tools and programs and with some disk fragmentation it takes forever to do simple tasks. During a certain period of my experimentation with Windows 7, the laptop took noticeably longer to start up every day. But I will not go into detailed performance benchmarks - for me what matters is that I get stuff done. So the speed I am measuring is not related to hardware, but rather the speed with which I can work. This kind of speed has everything to do with GUI design. Let me give you an example:

Upon connecting the Windows 7 laptop to my home network, it asked me what sort of firewall profile should apply. Not paying it much attention, I pressed enter to accept the default. This is the most restrictive setting and as a result, no way of sharing worked. This is good - it saves the inexperienced or stupid users from themselves. But then I wanted to change this setting, upon which Windows refused to "recognize" my network and insisted it should be public, since it is clearly unknown. No GUI option that I have become used to seemed to work. The problem was apparently caused by my router, which isn't IPv6 compatible, so after disabling IPv6 for that network connection, it suddenly was recognized. I ended up spending 30 minutes searching for a problem and then correcting it, because Windows 7 is so safe that it protects me from myself, even if I know what I am doing and how to do it.

Going on with another example: Living in a country with a non-standard character set you can expect that all the keyboards I am able to buy are modified. They use the SI layout, which I don't like very much. But occasionally I need those special characters for typing formal letters in my language. In Windows XP, we could press Left Alt + Left Shift to change the layout. In 7, I somehow ended up with 2 "locales" - EN and SI, which both have the US keyboard layout. The only way to change the layout now is to click the keyboard icon in the tray and select the layout I want. I have been unable to correct those settings, so changing the layout takes me a bit longer.

You'll say: "A few clicks? That's nothing." But as my other computers work properly, those few clicks turn out to be a few minutes as I forget this anomaly and try to use the old shortcut method, only to be baffled by it not working. A few minutes spent in such a ridiculous fashion every day doesn't improve my mood.

Stack together just 10 or 15 of such time-wasters and you end up doing nothing except battling with your operating system so you can do your job.

I am running out of time here, so the next part with contain a short paragraph on the amazing stability of Windows 7 and the continuation of this rant.

Oh yea, by the way, this is a rant, or didn't you notice? :)

SharePoint Server 2007

2008-09-16T10:45:00.002+02:00

You may have caught my "scepticism" about Microsoft technology. To say the least, I am not "wildly enthusiastic" about anything that comes from the big M.

So, a couple of weeks ago I was asked by my company to try and make a specific web application in MOSS 2007. (Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007). It was a fairly simple matter, so I agreed. It being the latest and greatest version of the particular software, I went into the project with an open mind and high expectations.

To my surprise, the install went pretty smoothly:

Windows Server 2003, Adding it to domain, MOSS 2007.

So I made a first draft of the application using nothing more than web-based editing tools of the MOSS. Great job.

The first request by the users was to "translate" the pages into the local language, since people aren't exactly fluent in english.

A long and exhausting search over the microsoft website led me to believe that I needed to buy the language pack, but a short and painless google search led me directly to the file on the microsoft website.

Install it, then look for the option to change interface language.

Another long search later I find out that a Web Application language cannot be changed after it has been set up.

Luckily, there wasn't very much work put into it by that point, so I erased the whole thing and started again, this time selecting the correct language option when creating the site.

It was running in 3 days (total), but there was something odd going on with the server:

Every morning when I came in, the thing was freshly rebooted. Event logs showed me mysterious BSOD crashes. It took me over a week to determine the fault: CPU.

Yes, a bad CPU which worked fine under moderate loads but caved in under stress. So, my first question was: "How to move the entire MOSS + application to antoher PC?"

I quickly made backups (new ones) and uploaded them to a safe spot. Then I figured I would use the corporate Symantec Ghost, my company had purchased.

WRONG!

After booting into the new PC with old system, I discovered that the Domain was unaccessible, since the PC name didn't match the machine account in the ctive Directory. Well, remove PC from domain, change name, add PC to domain.

Sharepoint dies. The web application names are wrong, database server is wrong.

A few days of trying to find the settings and all, reinstalling MOSS, trying to restore from backups - to no avail.

Lacking other options, I wiped the machine clean and went about reinstalling the whole thing.

Windows 2003 Server, Domain, MOSS 2007.

Gues what? It doesn't work from a clean install!! (not even the basic pre-loaded sites)

A few reinstalls of MOSS 2007 somehow hacked it together (dunno why it started working all of a sudden).

So, restore the web application from backup? Nope.

The restore process fails at random points due to:

Cannot connect to DB server
Wrong permissions on Filesystem/DB server
Random .NET exceptions, which I didn't note

Plus the very annoying thing about backups and restores:

When you choose the settings for backup/restore, it inserts a "Timer job" into the scheduled tasks and tries to exec it about 30 seconds later. If it fails, you need to find the log of the timer job somewhere in the guts. So you correct the error and try to re-do the backup. The Job cannot be restarted, so you go into "Operations" and try to create a new backup/restore job.

WHOOPS... AFTER entering all the data, it tells you that _A_ backup/restore job already exists, and you need to delete the old one before creating a new one.

It is amazing how counter-intuitive that is. (I had to enter the restore details about 17 times with only about 12 restore attempts)

Finally, by a miracle it works.

Do you think that was the end of my problems?

Read on...

A couple of weeks into operation, I decide to upgrade the RAM on the machine, since it is working dreadfully slow.

I add 1Gb, unaware that one of the modules is bad (it was fine a week ago in another PC, tested with memtest86).

I get a BSOD while loading windows, I quickly shut it and remove the RAM for testing. Finally, having no more supply I decide to stick with 1Gb from before + 512 module that works.. better than just 1Gb.

After booting the machine up - MOSS site almost works. By almost I mean that some elements display OK, others show "" (in my local language - which is a great help in searching for the error). Some people had similar issues, but they were either a) not similar enough to apply to me, or b) Had no answer as to the solution.

A full day of hacking later, trying to make it work, I find the problem:

Sharepoint Server can't log on to SQL server, but ONLY for the Configuration Database, the rest seem to work ok. The user in question is NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE, and after checking all the permissions and mapping and server roles, I am unable to make it work.

So here I am, reinstalling MOSS and hoping it will work, but I'm 90% sure that I will need to reinstall the entire thing from scratch again. In both cases I will need to do the backup restore hassle again, I think.

In my own words: Installing Windows 2003 Server & Sharepoint 2007 is like pushing a ball up the pyramit to the very tip.

Maintaining such a configuration is basically trying to keep the ball on the pyramid tip.

With the latest correction: It's not a pyramid, it's a freaking cone!

Give me Apache any day of the week.

Support pages in need of support

2008-07-12T16:21:00.003+02:00

As a hardware and software user I enjoy being up-to-date on all things. Staying updated in the hardware department is just a matter of money, so I will not write extensively about that. The primary concern right now is the software.

The source of new (and, in some cases, improved) software is usually the vendor's website. As a rule, I never install the drivers from the CD or DVD that arrived with my hardware. I also never keep "archives" of drivers which I can re-use when re-installing the OS. What is the point of keeping a CD around for two (or more) years just to install the outdated software on it, which usually causes problems with newer versions of OS, when there are perfectly good 100M and faster internet connections available to me?

And here come the problems.
To make sure you understand: I don't mind the pages changing, I don't care that the company was purchased by another company and I can also live with radical changes in the software itself.
The things that do annoy me are these:

Definately top: pages not working, files missing, wrong links, etc.
Companies forcing you to download a huge amount of irrelevant stuff, which you then have the option of not installing.
Drivers not being "signed" by Microsoft Certification after 6 years that the OS has been around.

Let me explain these in more detail.
A certain database vendor (a large name in the database business) offers a free version of their product with some limitations. Being a conscientious student, I wish to install this so I can study (yes, my college requires me to learn how to use commercial software instead of open alternatives - it stinks). Comes the first "catch": I need to be "registered" user, before I can even get a glimpse of their free product, which usually means giving them all sorts of information and then opting out of the many announcements, product updates, news and similar that would otherwise drown my mailbox.
Comes the next problem: Wanting to follow the link to register, I am asked for the username and password to access the site (which I do not, as of yet, have), after which I am told that "I am not authorized to view that page". Great fun.
Well, they did say that the pages are being re-constructed, so I might as well try at a later date.

The homework is due, so I really need that product by now. Figuring that the pages are now completed (and working), I try to do the same again - with similar results.

After some searching on forums (not the company's, since I cannot access them without registering), I learn that it is my browser that is the problem. Switching to IE makes the pages work flawlessly.

So, is it so much to ask of a multi-billion dollar company to try their pages on more than two browsers? (Firefox and IE are the ones that are usually tested) I am a fan of Opera (leightweight and blindingly fast) and I often have problems with websites not working on it. But I'd expect more from the "leading developers of DB and web applications for the past 200 years".

Moving on.
I have been complaining about this one for years, and the problem is only getting worse, it seems.
Wanting a driver for my new hardware (or old hardware, new OS), I go to the vendor's website and try to download it.
Whereupon I get a 150Mb+ exe file. This is not a nice thing.
Yes, I do have access to 100Mbit internet lines, but I rather use that capacity for stuff that I may actually need. Aside from the driver only being about 3-5 Mb in size, the installer package offers to install for me: Adobe Reader (newest), Firefox with the special company toolbar, TV application, Demos, Screen savers (shareware version), Antivirus (shareware version), etc...
Not only do I have to download all this, but I also have to watch the installation wizard quite closely so I dont accidentally install it. (See my post on Installing).

- Just a note: I'd like to express my joy at seing a large hardware vendor who offers me the choice of downloading the "bare minimum driver only" (16.7 Mb) or the entire package (43 Mb).
Thanks http://ati.amd.com!

Imagine here the "hypothetical" scenario:
Pop the OS install cd into a PC which you need to re-install (not your own).
While the thing does it's work (and it requires frequent user interaction, which I shall mention again in a later post), you have some free time in which to retrieve the drivers and software which is to be installed on the PC. Having a few tricks up my sleeve, I simply share the folder over my network, so that I can avoid USB drives or CD burning.
Once the base system is installed, I enable Remote Desktop on it (since my own workstation has two monitors), and I can continue working while the drivers and software are being installed. (This saves a lot of time, believe me).
So, what happens if you forget to copy the driver install files over the network and just run them from the share?
OUCH
Here is a reconstruction of what I believe happens:
The OS wishes to open the file \\workstation\shared\drivers\Driver.exe (200 Mb).
The antivirus needs to check the file for viruses, so the OS must fetch the file through the network, while the antivirus checks it and you are waiting with a blocked Explorer.
Rather than keeping the file in memory (or temporary space), it is entirely discarded.
In order to execute the file, it has to be read into the memory (or at least scanned to the end), which means that it is fetched again, while you are waiting with a blocked Explorer.
Finally, some action! The setup dialog opens, and begins to "check the file contents" (another fetch over the network), then "extract it" (yes, another fetch), whereupon it starts the "real" setup.exe from the extracted folder.
The AV needs to check that file as well, but fortunately it is usually small - the rest from here on goes smoothly.

If you have been counting, that is 4 downloads of the file over the network. Imagine having only a 10Mb non-switched network with an average transfer speed of 400Kb/s (due to activity).
Yes, it is faster to download the file from the internet again.

I leave it as an excercise for the reader to find out what is wrong with all that.

As for the third point...
I shall not elaborate on it, the point being (hopefully) self-apparent.

Whiners and flamers

2008-06-24T22:50:00.002+02:00

It happens to all of us, even the greatest. There comes a thing we must do, and we do not yet know how to do it. (In actuality, it happens a lot more often than gurus admit, the thing is to hide your ignorance until you have replaced it with knowledge.)

A lot of the problems are in the form: "How do I make this bloody X work with/in/on/along that stupid Y?" or "Why doesn't Z work?"
In such cases, I use my favourite knowledgebase - Google!
And I come accross non-gurus, with similar problems, but who cannot find a solution to them, it seems. The first 20 odd pages of google results are forum posts about my topic, and with luck one of them has an answer as well - it just takes a bit of reading.
Here is where the "whiners" come in. They usually start with something like:
"Uh, hi, I have XYZ like so and so, and I tried to do W with it, but it doesn't work? Why, WTFOMFGLOL? I really think those hardware/software/misc companies {insert name here} should work harder for me, their consumer. They should already go and fix that problem I am having.
Incidentally, has anyone found a solution?"

To be admitted, there has to be at least _one_ such post, or the people with solutions won't be able to reply to it.

The next problem encountered is the "flamer response". It goes something like this:
"LOL ur such a noob, u don't know shitt, the companies wont do that and that just for u and some other jerks who dont wanna spend sum money 4 upgradez - get a job/life/girlfriend and stop wasting every1s time already sheesh u so stoopid"

The debate is joined by a few more people, some defending person #1 from the flame, others supporting the arguments made by person #2 in his/her flame.
And the debate very quickly sidetracks to something completely irrelevant, like politics.

Here are a few thoughts I had on this matter:
First. whiners:
- List your spects AS DETAILED AS YOU CAN, down to P/N, if you can find it.
- Append the lists at the END OF YOUR POST
- Write a summarized description of your problem.
This is wrong: "I have a problem," this is also wrong: "I went in to a store about a year ago and bought my first home PC... ... (...)"
This is right: "I have X and Y and they dont do Z."
- Don't complain about "someone up in the sky who should have seen this and fixed it so that it worked perfectly by the time I got to the same problem." The companies try (granted, not too hard sometimes), things get missed or unsupported or whatever, YOU ARE ALREADY LOOKING FOR A SOLUTION, SO STOP DEMANDING THAT IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DELIVERED TO YOU ON A SILVER PLATE BEFORE YOU EVEN HAD THE PROBLEM.

And flamers:
- People dont want to throw nearly new stuff away just because it is "nearly" new, and spend a lot of money for "new" new stuff, like you do. Not everyone has rich parents.
- If you cannot help with the solution, DO NOT REPLY. All you are contributing to is PAGES UPON PAGES of useless spam for future readers with a similar problem, who will have to read through your spam and the replies to it and your counter-arguments, etc etc... - before they get to the end of posting and find no solution for the problem.
- If the problem has already been solved, do not spend more than _1_ page saying so and commenting on the mental state of the person asking. Include a link or copy the solution - that'd be infinitely more useful.
- Just because 2 out of 3 friends haven't encountered the problem, that doesn't mean it isn't widespread.

So, a bit more politeness and we may shorten the search for solutions down to 18, maybe even 16 pages of "real" spam.

Thank you already.

Shutting down

2008-05-24T14:45:00.002+02:00

What do people expect from their computers when they've clicked the "Shut down" button?
I have asked around, wanting to get a more complete idea than my own, rather limited thinking.
The answers were, amazingly, more or less unanimous, along the lines of:
"I want my computer to power off."
The more technical savy friends of mine explained to me that the "powered off" state means that, _allthough_ the computer still uses some electrical energy, it is not 'active'. The CPU and memory are using no power at all, the disks are silent and no fans should be turning. The bit of electrical juice is taken by the motherboard in order to be able to 'detect' when you wish to power it on.

I apologize for that rather detailed description, but it is necessary to provide contrast to some of the experiences mentioned below.
So, what do the operating systems (or maybe their designers) think of the phrase "to power down"?
In most of unix and BSD clones, as well as the venerable z/OS from IBM, the idea behind the button (or command, as the case may be), is to _safely_ discontinue everything that the computer is doing and then with the aid of hardware to achieve the above mentioned "off state". The reason for 'safely' is that, presumably, you would like the computer to work at those tasks again in the future and do not fancy an idea of re-installing everything or correcting mistakes in data that come from sudden power loses. The IT industry invests massive amounts of money into insuring that power is not suddenly lost to big important computers.

But here comes a 'different' system. Windows (specifically the XP version).
I admit that it has occasionally happened to me that after commanding my Linux computer to shut down, it has failed to do so and stopped in the middle of that process. That usually signifies a large problem in the inner workings of the system, which bears investigation, or a large problem in the computer hardware, which is also a serious matter.
On the other hand, if everything worked perfectly and no hardware failures occured, the PC successfully shut down _EVERY SINGLE TIME I WANTED IT TO_. (Note the emphasis.)

Whereas, it is, I understand, a quite common occurence in Windows XP computers to simply.. stop in the middle of shutting down. Most of us have seen those nice "End Task" dialoges, which pop up when a stubborn program refuses to die quietly when ordered to.
The idea behind theese is that the OS is kind enough to wait for the task for a bit, and if it still refuses to cooperate, it will end the task 'forcibly'.
Naturally, that is not to be desired, as such scenarios lead to the afore-mentioned 'corrupted data'.
What confuses me, though, is that after the time limit is up (as indicated by the nice progress bar), the Windows OS asks you to kill the task, or abort shutting down. And it waits there, quite patiently.

Imagine a scenario: You are downloading images from the digital camera just before rushing off to your vacation. You click the shut down button and run off, confident in the knowledge that Windows will do the rest. Two months later you return home and find that: a) the computer has been on all this time and used up a not-inconsiderate amount of electricity, b) The image of that friendly little dialog is burned into your monitor, which you now have to replace and c) when you click any of the buttns in the dialog (after replacing the monitor), Windows continues shutting down, after which you need to turn your computer back on before you can start using it again.

Also, there is another thing:
If you have ever used a Windows computer in a networked environment with a file server, you will know about the so-called "offline files". It can be turned off, I understand, but in my experience, it never _stayed_ turned off for long.
The idea is that some files that you use often are copied to your computer and used from there, in order to decrease the load on your network.
The problem with this arrangement is (aside from conflicts and such that can appear when more people are changing the same files at the same time, the details of which I shall not mention here), that the files have to be uploaded back onto the server at some point. In Windows XP that happens when you turn your computer off.
If, for some reason, the connection is no longer available, the "synchronization dialog" will stop in confusion and tell you that it can't be done, waiting patiently for your click.

And, here is the third problem:
If the Windows XP in question has downloaded automatic updates and hasn't had time to bother you about installing them, it will do so before it shuts down. The idea seems fine on paper, but all too often it has happened that the updates failed and the computer got 'stuck' on the "installing updates - do not turn off your computer" screen.

Here are just three eventualities that result in your Windows XP not shutting down on their own, _AFTER_ you clicked the 'shut down' button. I imagine there are more out there which I haven't (luckily) come accross yet.

So, remember: Before going away from the computer, _WAIT_ for it to shut down completely, because you apparently _CAN'T_ trust Windows XP to do so on it's own every time.

Windows Vista: The Game

2008-04-02T10:26:00.006+02:00

What are the functions you expect from your operating system?

Let me list the bare minimum:
-Allows management and access to hard disk drives (and other storage devices)
-Manages hardware so that it works
-Allows me to run programs

Added to this are optional stuff like security, networking and an efficient user interface. It is also helpful if the system is responsive (fast) and looks nice.

Based on that, I rather use (and I _did_ for a long time) a rock-solid, text only system than a fancy "crash or not to crash when I touch it" 3d graphical OS.

It constantly surprises me how efficient a text system can be, if you know the key combinations.

Which brings us to Microsoft Vista - it puts the "ow" in "wow". The desktop looks spectacular, I will grant it that, but it fails miserably on most other accounts.

Let us, for the sake of argument, put functions of the Os into two categories: "bare-minimum" and "extras". Common sense dictates that a decent Os would need to fulfill the "bare-minimum" functions flawlessly and a great OS would need to fulfill "bare-minimum" functions flawlessly and the "extras" quite well.

So. let us distribute the functions:
1-storage of files -> BM ( bare - minimum)
2-hardware and drivers -> BM
3-running programs -> BM
4-secure networking -> nowadays BM
5-quick and efficient user interface -> E (extras)
6-nice looking -> E

Here are the flaunted features, straight from the Microsoft's site, and which category they tall into:
Accessibility - (5)
Ease of access - (5)
Quick access to common tools - (5)
Recommendations to settings - (5)
Explore settings by category - (5)
Magnifier - (5)
Narrator - (5)
On-screen keyboard - (5)
Speech Recognition - (5)
Mouse keys. sticky keys, filter keys - (5)
Aero - (6)
Flip 3d - (5)
Internet explorer 7 - (4)
Sidebar and gadgets - (5)
Backups center - (1)
Parental controls - (5)
Drive encryption - (1)
Media center - (5)
Find files quickly - (1)
Windows defender - (4)

Distribution:
1: 3 (15%)
2: 0 (0%)
3: 0 (0%)
4: 2 (10%)
5: 14 (70%)
6: 1 (5%)

Please note that these are only the features that Microsoft thought they were worth mentioning. Supposedly the reliability, performance, hardware support and similar were left out simply because they are se self-evident that they needn't be mentioned at all. Though I doubt it.

Which leaves us with a very unpleasant conclusion. It appears that the extra features were more focused upon than the absolutely necessary "bare-minimum" features that every OS needs.

I can confirm from personal experience that this is, indeed, true. But if you fail to believe me, please type into Google: " Windows vista problem" and read through the distressingly long list of results. There are already about 25% more hits than a similar query for windows XP, which is the closest comparison to Vista. All this despite the difference in OS age. Note the new Service Pack 1, which contains over 500 various fixes and patches (the published list has 500 entres, at least - who knows how many fixes weren't mentioned there).

In conclusion:
I feel like the latest from Microsoft is an attempt to sell a game as it's Premium Operating System. The features on the site give me "desperate" feel, as it they were searching hard to find good things to say about Vista. Or, as if their intended audience are people with disabilities. It is similar to the way people deliberately neglect to mention the bad engine of the used car and focus instead on the way the seat lining is perfectly preserved.

Thanks, but I need an OS that works, not a $200 (USA) or $700 (Europe) game.

PS: Excuse the possible typos, since Iam using the Tablet PC pen input and it gets odd ideas about my handwriting.

ISO Images

2007-11-06T18:14:00.000+01:00

People: What is wrong with ISO images?

It happened to me that I wished to download "yet another bootable cd utility" and, upon a painstaking 600Mb download, have recieved a file named 'bootutils.susd3dcdf'.
Searching the google for a few hours I have discovered that the file type is 'Special Ultra Super-Duper 3D CD Format', for which, naturally, I need the 'Special Ultra Super-Duper 3D CD Format Converter and/or burner', which is only $19.95.

Following the philosophy that it is good to have different options, I would install onto my computer the following suite of tools:
- PowerISO ($29.95)
- MagicISO ($29.95)
- Blindwrite ($29.99)
- CloneCD ($39)
- Nero 7 ($59.99)
- InstantCD ($18.65)
- DiscJuggler ($49.99)
- ...

Total value of the software: $257.

This would allow me to open (and burn) about 70% of the possible disk image formats.
Not to mention that there are some free programs out there with their own image formats.

The important question to ask is:
"What do these formats _offer_, that makes them worth adopting?"
And my answer:
"Absolutely nothing."
They are all formats to store raw binary data from a CD, with a few exceptions that can also record 'hidden' or 'copyprotect' tracks. The only use for that, however, is ability to copy movies and music illegaly.

Aside from that, the formats perform _EXACTLY THE SAME FUNCTION AS ISO_, with the exception that I cannot burn them without propriatery software.

So, people, please _PLEASE_, if you have to deliver your software in a CD image format, USE THE BLOODY STANDARD! THAT IS WHAT IT IS THERE FOR!

Thank you.

Time-outs

2007-09-04T10:52:00.001+02:00

As the more technically advanced readers may be aware, the software programming includes many timers, used for various reasons.
From the simple ones in your BIOS to keep the current clock to high-precision CPU clock counts for real-time applications.
One of the more common uses for timers is the so-called 'time-out'. What does it do, you ask?
Well, imagine that you someday decide to grab a file from your company network. Now suppose that the co-worker's machine, which has the file is turned off. Your trusty OS will ask for the file and then wait for the response. Naturally, you want it to give up at a certain point and tell you that you simply can't have what you want.

Here is what irks me when using Windows and networking together:
- While the explorer window is waiting to refresh it's contents from the network (whether it is a list of computers or a list of files on one of the computers), most of the other functionality of the system is blocked. So, in essence, while the PC sits idly and waits for things to come you have to sit idly and wait as well - since you can't do much else on most occasions. What happened to the so-called 'multi-threading'?
- The timeout length is insanely long for LAN. Here is my reasoning: For quite a while (including windows 95 and onwards) local network have been quite fast. Starting from the popular 10Mb ethernet and 16Mb tokenring, it has so far progressed up to 100Mb and 1000Mb equipment. To calculate this, let's assume that your PC has to send a packet to ask for some file list and receive the response. In a worst-case scenario, the packets are both 'full', taking the maximum 1492 Bytes that most networks support. On a regular 100Mb network, it would take about 0,000228 seconds for the packets to be transferred, add a little something of processing and the timing is still on the range of _MICROSECONDS_. So I ask you... WHY DO I NEED TO WAIT FOR ABOUT 60 SECONDS FOR WINDOWS TO GIVE UP AND DECIDE THAT THERE IS NO REPLY COMING? I think a 10 second timer would be quite sufficient on even the most congested LAN.
- On similar note, the timeout length for Internet communication (specifically DNS resolves) is insanely short. I noticed that if there is no reply from DNS servers the Internet explorer will time out and report an error in UNDER A SECOND for most cases. That may be okay with modern DSL broadband connections, but it was a large problem for the Windows 95 modem-connected people.

At least let us (the advanced users) set our own timeout intervals, no?

Memory

2007-08-26T19:34:00.000+02:00

Here is a very beautiful thing one tends to notice on a windows computer.
Imagine that it is a regular day (Sunday), in which you had planned to quietly download a few informative videos, distributed through the bit torrent network, which requires (naturally) use of a bit torrent client. Personally, I prefer 'Micro Torrent", due to it's small size, CPU efficiency and an impressive list of features.
The download would take most of the day on a regular DSL line, so it would be running in background, among some other constant friends: MSN, Anti-Virus, keyboard and sound card drivers and a ton of Windows-kernel stuff that we aren't supposed to know about.

A nice readout on my keyboard's led display tells me that the CPU is currently 0% utilized and memory about 65% full. That leaves me my entire CPU power and 170Mb of memory, which I suppose _should_ be enough for one instance of firefox.

You see, it happened that I needed a printout of my bank account traffic and as I use firefox exclusively, all my digital certificates are there. It loaded in it's usual 15 seconds flat and took the normal 5% of my memory. CPU utilization didn't budge above 2%, but I can understand that as most of the work was getting the program and its data from the hard drive.

So, it is now loaded and I happily browse to my bank account page and filter the records to only include the specific month I need.
Here is where the pain starts.

When I click the "Print Preview", which is a fairly regular and common task that a lot of people use, I guess, I don't like to be kepy waiting for 7 bloody minutes for the window to open. Furthermore, when I am satisfied with the look of the thing and click the "Print" button, it is not polite to leave me waiting for another 4 minutes before I see the "Print" dialog.

Still, I do enjoy sitting in front of my PC and watching the fancy hourglass icon while my system is COMPLETELY CRIPPLED, so much, in fact, that redrawing of the screen stops.

All the while, I see absolutely NO CPU USAGE, RAM CHANGE or DISK ACTIVITY WHATSOEVER.
I heard about 'hidden processes', but COME ON!

In short, the very advanced features that make Windows so dear to our hearts (dynamic use of free memory, preloading, delayed unloading, paging, etc) happen to really destroy performance in very specific circumstances. (Downloading a file on bit torrent and trying to print a webpage at the same time).

Alas, I fear, this cannot be remedied, as computer software complexity grows even faster than the hardware boom can match it.

I'd only wish to see the statistics on my various system monitoring utilities (such as the Microsoft's own Performance Analyser) to show me the real values.

P.S:
In case the values I do see are real, then please tell me why, OH WHY, doesn't Windows use all that free CPU and memory to finish loading the dialog boxes faster? It's not like the CPU was completely devoted to some critical other task, was it?

Drivers, Drivers, Drivers

2007-08-16T07:19:00.000+02:00

How often do you re-install your Windows?
Unfortunately, after a certain time, Windows gets old and slow and it's time to replace it with .. Windows. Why this must be so, nobody knows, for my Linux installation has no such problems.
Well, aside from the fact that Windows XP installer always overwrites the boot records which means that I need to boot Linux from a CD later and restore things.
Microsoft, your's is (contrary to your belief) _not_ the only OS out there, so please either:
a) Make a boot loader that recognises this fact, or
b) Add an option _not_ to replace the boot loader.

Still, once that it done, the only thing left is to configure the system in a way I like it.
Swap files, disable error reporting, system restore, disable security center, watch the "windows xp tour", remove MSN, Windows Catalogue and some other useless icons that find their way into every new install's Start Menu.
Then comes the most tedious task: Installing drivers.

In the olden days, we had a driver CD (which a hi-tech friend burned for us) and we'd simply click through the exe files and restart about 50 times. All in all, it was done in about 3 hours or so.
But nowadays, with all the internets and security vulnerabilities, you have to have the _latest and greatest_ drivers and right when windows is freshly installed is the proper time to install those to. So, you open the ugly Internet Explorer 5.5 and head over to google, only to discover that your network card isn't working.
So you take an USB key and head over to the parent's/neighbor's/friend's computer and download the network card driver.

Which is 69Mb. It will not fit your 64Mb Kingston USB key. The friend has no CD burner. You are then forced (if you are smart) to split the file into two parts and add a utility to 'un-split' it later. Then just make two trips.

Finally, network card working and you can get online with your 512Kbps cable modem and search for other drivers.
Here is an average list:
VIA chipset: 12Mb
Intel chipset: 2Mb
NVIDIA chipset: 70Mb
ATI graphics card: 35Mb or 14Mb (but the smaller one is second on the list, so most people select the larger one)
NVIDIA graphics card: 46Mb
Creative sound card: 40Mb
HP Printer: 50 - 150Mb

And this is mostly all you need for the basic system to work, on average about 200Mb to download. Which with the aforementioned line takes 60 minutes to download and about half an hour of restarting to install.
It seems better, no?
But wait, there's more. After all that is done, Windows asks you to please install the following 90 windows updates, which take a few hours to get and you don't really dare to use the computer without them, lest you get a nasty virus or adware.

The point I'm trying to get across is that sometimes I don't have the luxury of 100Mbps fiber connection and am instead on a relatively slow line. Sometimes I even need a particular driver or update on the road, which limits me too about 128Kbps cell phone connection.
In such cases in particular do I find it rather irritating that I should download more than 20Mb for a single driver.

After all, some of us are perfectly comfortable with the way Windows XP settings dialog boxes look and their functionality and I don't particularly need 150Mb worth of software for a printer that allows me to print at a 4,78 degree angle (I very rarely do that).

Cut the crap away and produce nice, 2-5Mb basic drivers (I just need the *.inf, *.sys, *.dll and probably a few others. I don't need fancy installers with hot images of naked women parading the latest and greatest network card. And sound in installers is not nice either.)

Incidentally, this will also get rid of any automatic updaters, driver control panels, assisting processes and similar, which I'd be very grateful for in order to clean up my Task List.

Oh, and _please_ cut us some slack with product names, okay?
There are two extremes I noticed. One is the overly-abundant-imagination names, such as (i.e.) "Deathmatch Ultimate NetExtremity 2.0 Bloodshed Fatality enhancing accelerator". The other extreme is purely numeric, such as "Graphics card 3.456 v2 S/N: 68rty8456".

Both are rather useless. A special note to some WiFi network card vendors (I'm thinking of you, Linksys and Netgear), who replace the entire chipset on a wireless network card and simply change the revision from A1 to A2 (a tiny tiny marking on the side of the 3rd contact pin).
Try getting one with a particular chipset from some store where they can't even distinguish between different cards from the same vendor. If you replace the whole freaking chipset in a card, please, please, change the name a bit more than in the last digit, okay? Some people _need_ to know what exactly the card contains.

Thank you for your attention.

Balloons

2007-08-13T14:17:00.000+02:00

A thing I find very useful in windowing operating systems is a 'notification' area, which shows you things that you may want to see, but aren't as important as to bother you immediately. It should be a place to display a few lines of text with (possibly) a nice icon somewhere out of the way.
In Windows 2000 and forward, this has been solved with the so-called 'balloon' pop-ups. You have probably noticed them in the past. They say such interesting things as "Local area connection is now connected" or "No wireless networks found" and, my personal favourite, "Updates are ready for download."

All this is just fine and dandy, were there a few less annoying design flaws.
Let me list them in no particular order:
1. Any program may use the balloon pop-ups, with a few restrictions. The main restriction I have in mind is the 30 second timeout. The program is required to remove the balloon in 30 seconds or sooner, otherwise it will be removed by windows.
Why don't some Windows programs and servies adhere to that time limit?
I have a DSL net access at home which disconnects and reconnects once every 24 hours to reset the router. When that happens, I see the balloon for "Local area network : Cable unplugged" and a minute later "... is now connected." Great. But that last little pop-up doesn't go away. Ever. At least on my windows XP SP1 machine. I woke up one morning to see that friendly balloon and thought to myself: "Well, whatddya know, it just reconnected. Great!" Only to discover when checking my own statement that the line had been connected for over seven hours! Which, incidentally, means that the balloon was on the screen for that long. Now imagine what it's like when this happens while you're working.
You will need to stop typing, take the mouse and close the balloon, otherwise it will keep hanging there and disturbing you, catching attention and all in all mocking you.

2. Have you seen balloons such as: "See the Windows XP tour!" or "You firewall may be out of date!" and, of course, the "Click here to clean up your desktop"? Not to forget the infamous "Hard disk space is low on drive C:"
When I said 'notifications' above, I meant relatively important stuff which (preferably) doesn't happen very often. And even if the balloon does appear, I may wish to acknowledge it and think about it later, not have it pop up again with the same message about 15 seconds later. There should be a sort of filter to select which messages are displayed and which aren't.

3. No offense to 'bright' people, but the yellow in the balloon hurts my eyes, especially in the middle of the night, when I work with all screens dimmed down as low as they would go. There should be a way to change the colors of the balloons, their duration, position and size. Why isn't there? Not all people like the defaults, you know?

4. Why do the balloons queue up while my computer had been in stand-by or hibernation? (I know they don't actually queue up, but rather all the timers expire instantly when Windows wakes up.) Usually, when I start my computer I would like to begin working on what I had in mind, instead of the following procedure:
Click start, close the balloon about security center. Click start again, point to All Programs, close the balloon again. Click start, point to All Programs, start Mozilla Thunderbird, close the balloon about "Windows XP Tour". Click one of the new mails, begin reading, close the "Low disk space balloon". Begin reading again, close the "Clean up Destop" balloon. Ignore the "New updates are ready" balloon, click "Reply to Sender", close the "Updates balloon", see that the focus is in the "new message" window, start typing to the chorus of Windows XP alert 'dings', as focus really wasn't there. (See my post on input focus for details about this one.)... etc

The account is slightly exaggerated, but certainly possible if you have a messy computer. I _DO NOT_ wish to keep closing balloons for the first five or ten minutes while I work.

Luckily, here is a solution:
-------------------------------------------
1. Click Start, then Run, type in "regedit" and press enter.
2. Find the key "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows
\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" in the structure.
3. Right click the empty space on the right side of the screen and create a new value of type "String".
4. Name the value "EnableBalloonTips" (no quotes).
5. Double click the new value and type in 'NO' (no quotes).
6. Close the registry editor and live a life free from balloon tips.

Microsoft 'Shortcuts'

2007-08-13T13:31:00.000+02:00

I have just returned from an user with a very interesting problem in Microsoft Outlook 2003.
The user had just been transferring his files to the new PC (which I am very grateful he can do by himself), when he discovered that even after exporting all his mail and contacts from Outlook 2003 on the old PC into Outlook 2003 on the new PC, the email address auto completion didn't work.

Looking through the information on the web - the main problem being discovering how Microsoft named that feature, I learned that it's called 'Nicknames'.

It seems that when you export all the mail and settings and contacts that little thing is not included.
A brief search on Microsoft help sites reveals a tutorial for 'transferring nicknames to another computer', which includes approximately the following steps:
1. Change explorer settings so that you see hidden files and folders and file extensions.
2. Find the file in c:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Profile.NK2
3. Copy the file into the same location on the new computer.
4. If the profile name on the new computer is different, rename the file.
5. Start Outlook again, woila, now it works.

The fact of the matter is that it really does work, but I find it tedious to perform this procedure for such a simple task, which should have been included in the 'Transfer all my mail and settings' in the first place.
What bothers me most are two things: that this is not an isolated incident, and people have grown used to similar tasks.

Let me provide an example.
Suppose that you wish to change a setting on a Linux or FreeBSD box. You look the thing up with google and the tutorial tells you to go and modify some settings files. There are no GUI setup tools (except for rare programs - the number is increasing quite quickly over the past few years, but for many tools the conf files are the only way still). Incidentally, all the configuration files are saved in the same place, under the user's home folder.
Such is life, people are used to it.

Then look at Microsoft. See their 'flaunting' of Graphical User Interface(tm), which removes all need for command line. Guess what? Most of the 'tricky' settings require either a special program to change them (which often costs money), or rummaging around the system registry. I'll admit that the system registry has a nice gui, but that's simply not a nice way to change settings, especially as it is bloated and slow.
Some settings cannot even be changed in that manner and still require file editing (example: hard-coding DNS resolves for local machines).

Well, this, dear Microsoft, just won't do. If you are going to have a purely graphical user interface, I'd expect the instructions to go like this:
"Open control panel. Click Administrator tools. Open the user rights management console..."
And not like this:
"Click Start, then Run. Type in 'gpedit' and press Enter..."

Can you imagine how confusing it gets when you learn how to change a myriad settings in slightly different ways?

Please choose one way or another, just not something in between that tips to either side, depending on how the specific programmer felt like when implementing it.

To give a real world example:
C - customer, S - support person
C: "So, how do I lower the window on the driver's side?"
S: "Simply press and hold the switch on the door with the small arrow on it."
C: "Okay, so how do I open the passenger's window?"
S: "Not a problem. Take a 7/26 wrench, unscrew the car door screws on the inside, remove cover. There you will see a few wires. Refer to your manual to see which two control the window motor, then simply cross them. They have already been peeled for your convenience. Don't forget to replace the cover afterwards."

Somehow I don't see it happening.

GPLv2 simplified

2007-08-10T10:29:00.000+02:00

As promised, I will now attempt to understand and simplify the GNU General Public License v2.
The original license is here:
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html)

GNU General Public License v2.0

0. This license applies to any program, for which the author decided to use this license. The license only specifies how you may copy, distribute and modify the program, matters of running the program or using it's output are not restricted, unless the author says so.

1. You may distribute the program's source code in any way you like, but you must tell people in some way about this license. It is especially important that you inform people of lack of warranty for the program. You are allowed to demand from people payment for the CD or diskettes or bandwidth cost (whichever costs you incur by giving the source code out). But you may not ask people to pay for the program itself. You are, however, allowed to run support for the program for which you may charge people.

2. You are allowed to change the program, as long as you:
a) leave notifications about what and when you did,
b) if you combine the program and your changes, the whole is also subject to this license,
c) if the program is interactive, it must tell the user every time it starts that there is no warranty (or that you provide it).

You are allowed to sell parts of the program that you wrote yourself under any license and terms you wish, as long as you don't include parts of the original program, which is covered by this license.

3. You are allowed to give people the executable version of the program (so that they don't have to compile it themselves), as long as you:
a) give them the source code as well,
b) tell them where to get the source code, or offer to give it to them for a price of a CD, diskette or bandwidth,
c) copy the original information about the source that you got with the program (if you re-redistribute the program and haven't bothered to get the source code)

Included in the source code are any scripts that help compile the program, but not included the compiler tools, libraries and operating system.

4. That above is all that you are allowed to do. But if you do things that terminate this license, people who have gotten the program from you will not be affected.

5. You don't have to agree with all this, but if modify or distribute the program we will assume that you do.

6. Anyone who recieves the program (even modified) from you, they are given the same rights from this license. You may not add your own restrictions. You also don't have to force them to comply with the license.

7. If distribution of the program would cause problems with other licenses or patents or similar, you may not distribute the program under this license. This applies if the program is later found to validate some license or patent, and requires from the users to pay royalties, you may not distribute it anymore.

8. If some countries don't allow the program to be distributed (because of the aforementioned patent problems), you can add geographical limitations to the distribution of the program.

9. You can choose any version of the GNU Public license for your program, and you can change it in the future. (But only to other versions of the GPL)

10. You can ask authors for permission, if you wish to include parts of the program in another program, which isn't covered with this license, but it must at least be free.

11. The program is free, so it doesn't come with a warranty.

12. The program may not even work, be buggy, unstable, incorrect. It may cause you to loose all your data or destroy your company's computer network. The authors won't be held responsible, and neither will the people who gave you the program. Unless you have a written agreement with them to guarantee the above.

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I cannot make up your opinion for you, all I can say: It's shorter than most Microsoft EULAs :)

Till next time

Installer annoyances

2007-08-10T09:39:00.000+02:00

So, being the experimental sort, I often install (and uninstall) new software. Using the myriad different install tools I find some tendencies that are - after about the 1000th time - quite annoying.

To give a short list:
- Company name. Almost _every_ installer out there assumes that I am part of some company, even if I am trying to install "Generic Solitaire Games Vol 2". And most of the time it is an obligatory information, so I am forced to enter something along the lines of "Myself" or "//", or even "--".
Developers, not _everyone_ is part of the business world. At least make the information optional, if you _must_ have it.

- Too many subdirectories.
When I install software, I like to be able to find it on my hard drive. For example, if I use the "Ultimate Back Scratcher 3", I expect to look under "C:\Program Files\Ultimate Back Scrathcher" somewhere.
I do not wish to search for 5 minutes and then go look at the shortcut icon, only to discover the program in
"C:\Program Files\YourLameSoftwareInc\OurDesktopProducts\ScratcherSeries\BackScracther"
And it is also tedious to keep changing the directories for every small tool that I wish to install.

- Too many shortcut icons.
Usually, at the end of install, I am presented with a screen that asks me where I would like the shortcut. The options are: Desktop, Start Menu, Quick Launch, Internet Explorer toolbar button, My Documents, Your other PC, Send it to mail to all your friends, Your car dashboard and a tattoo in your dog's ear.
I like my software to assume that _one_ shortcut in start menu is enough and I can then (supposedly) copy it wherever I want it myself, no?

- After-Install features.
So, I have finally succeeded in installing all parts of the software, and my computer is recovering from the shock. (If you ever had two firefoxes, visual studio 2005, dreamweaver and photoshop running at the same time, you can imagine how it hurts to install a small program.) And I usually do not read the last page, just click "Finish".
Unfortunately, there were the checkboxes to Run the program, Open the Readme file, Start the registration process, See the changes list and Visit the author's website.
All that at once - _hurts_. Please make the options _disabled_ by default.
I like to think I am competent enough to actually start the program after I install it.
Too much convenience is inconvenient.

- Rebooting.
This is a standard Microsoft practice. "Whoops, your system has detected that you have farted in the last five minutes. Please restart your operating system in order for it to continue functioning for peek performance."
Why do the installers _demand_ that I restart my computer after the installation, when it is clearly not necessary. (I never restart and my computer works perfectly.)
This also applies to USB devices. I plug in my new mouse, after which the drivers are installed and the mouse starts working. After a minute or so of using it, a friendly little box pops up and tells me that "The new hardware was installed, but it won't work until I reboot."
Who is the 'smartass' here?

- Progress bars
A progress bar has behind it the basic idea of visually informing the user about the progress of something. Hence it's name. When I see a progress bar, I know that as soon as it reaches 100%, the thing will be done and I will be able to continue. Right?
Not so. The fancy Windows installer (and some others) will fill up a progress bar, then start right over, anywhere from 3 to 7 times.
Why, then, is the progress bar useful?
"Well, you can see how far the installation had progressed, allthough it may or may not start over when it reaches the end."
Either use a "global" progress bar, or add another progress bar to track the entire progress.
It feels to me almost as if the installer can't tell exactly how much work it has left - which is odd, since computers are pretty deterministic machines.

And concluding:
Why do we even need all the fancy installers?
The example RPM or DEB package managers give us prove that it can be done in an alternate manner. (More on that some other time)

EULA simplified

2007-08-10T07:18:00.000+02:00

I had planned to carefully read some big important EULA's and try to understand what they are attempting to say to me. I finally got a bit of time and the proper mood for 'legalese' language.

In order for the community at large to benefit from my effort, I will write a short and simplified translation here:

I chose Microsoft as my first one, as most of the people use their software, so the targer audience is the largest possible.
(original: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/eula.mspx)

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (Retail) EULA:

You must read the EULA. The eula is important. By even so much as _looking_ at the CD you may be accepting EULA (depending on your local laws). If you don't like the EULA, you may return the product and you will get your money back. Maybe.

1. We kindly allow you to do the following, _if_ you agree to the rest of the EULA:
1.1 You may use the software which you purchased.
1.2 ... only for the first 30 days. Then you must call us and ask us nicely to continue using the software, which we probably will approve, if you really did purchase it. Oh, and every time you upgrade your computer you will need to tell us about it as well.
1.3 Only five other PC may connect to this one, so if you have more than five PC's in the household and they all wish to print or see your files, tough luck. They will have to get in line. Oh, and the software itself may use up some of these five connections, so you may not even get that.
1.4 The above restriction doesn't apply to Remote Assistance or similar connections, as you are sure to be needing plenty of those, naturally.
1.5 If you want to use the software as a server, you will also need to buy a license for every computer using the software over the network. (Except the remote assistance, again)

2. Terms you must agree to are:
2.1 The software will be infested with DRM, which means that you can't copy digital multimedia. Should the 'content owners' decide that their multimedia was stolen, Microsoft will prevent you from playing it. This means, in short, that you do neither own, nor have control over music and movies you purchased.
2.2 We accidentally added a software development kit for Windows media, but you may not use it. That is sold seperately.
2.3 The software also includes an Internet Explorer and similar 'online' tools, which you may use to use the internet. But we may upgrade such tools whenever we feels like.
2.4 If you update your games over the internet, we, or anyone we like, may take some information about you and your computer. We promise to only use this to 'improve' our services, but if people ask us nicely enough, we will give them the information. (But not your name or anything like that. We promise.)

3. Even if it is on your PC, the software is still ours. You are merely renting it, and not purchasing, as you may have mistakenly believed.

4. You aren't allowed to closely inspect our software by decompiling it. Believe us when we say that it's good.

5. You may not let others use this software you licensed, or rent it.

6. You agree that we may collect information about you while you use our software. We promise only to use this information to 'improve' our services. We may give this information to others, but not so that know whose it is.

7. We graciously allow you to use other internet sites beside Microsoft and MSN, but we aren't responsible if your children look up porn or download a virus. You were warned.

8. This EULA also applies to everything else of ours you use, unless specifically noted otherwise. We may stop providing services or software whenever we feel like it.

9. If you wish to upgrade the software, you must first own the software, then buy (we may also give it to you for free!) an upgrade. After that, you may no longer use the original software.

10. You may not sell our software, even after you stop using it.

11. If you can prove that you're a student of some educational facility, you may get our software a little cheaper. (But with additional restrictions.)

12. The U.S. government will tell the conditions you must agree to before using this software outside of the U.S.

13. You are allowed to install this software on another computer, if you completely remove it from the current one. You are even allowed to give the software to someone else, but remember the point 1.2.

14. If we decide we don't like what you're doing with our software, we may terminate the agreement, in which case you must destroy all your copies and uninstall the software.

15. We guarantee that the software will work for at least 90 days. You may get less, depending on your local laws. If the software fails (even during the warranty) which causes you to loose important data, you aren't entitled to any damages or refunds. But if you're lucky, your state or country may force us to pay you something anyway. Without that protection, however, the most you will get from us is a full refund of the money you paid for our software or a replacement software. You will pay shipping costs yourself. This warranty doesn't apply if the problem arose because of accident, abuse, abnormal use or a virus. Basically, whatever you do voids the warranty. In order to get the refund or replacement, you must prove to us that you really do own the software, after which we will kindly provide you with a refund or a replacement as soon as we feel like it.

16. Any sort of reassurance you heard in our ads is a lie, and the software is provided with all bugs inclusive. The software may not work, be unusable, unfit for a purpose. It will not be reliable, accurate, or complete even, it may contain viruses, and may be written negligently. If you use the software, you may not enjoy it, it may not be anything like we described and you may even do illegal stuff with it, without knowing it.

17. If your company suffers because you use the software, we (or our partners) will not be held responsible, even if it is our fault because the software is buggy. Even if we were informed of the problem beforehand we may not make an effort to correct the issue and you may not sue us because of it.

18. Again, if bad things happen to you or your company because of the use of this software, we will only pay you the price of the software or USD$5.00, whichever is greater.

19. Software provided to t he U.S. Government has a different license which only they may see.

20. Your local law determines how this license is treated.

21. This EULA is _the_ EULA for the software. If you have read other license agreements, they are false and this EULA holds.

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I hope this clarifies things a bit.

Widows and input focus

2007-08-09T13:35:00.000+02:00

Working with a windowing operating system is great. You get these rectangles that contain different programs, you move them around and resize them with a mouse and, all in all, have loads of fun doing it. Or so the box says.

The problems begin appearing if you are too quick (like me), or your computer is too slow (like mine). What happens is that I tend to get used to the programs I use and can for the most part predict where they will open and which input box I will be typing into, so I usually begin typing before the program had finished loading completely.
This is possible because the OS stores pressed keys into a 'buffer' and sends them to the program once it's ready to receive user input.

But, here's where problems start.
Let's say that I'm using the good old-fashioned multiplayer notepad, a.k.a IRC. I happen to remember at some point: "Wait, what if the friend I wanted to speak to is on MSN?" and so I click the friendly green icon. I expect the MSN messenger to load for a while, in the meantime I can type anywhere from 5 to 15 replies to people on IRC.
Alas, it is not meant to be, as the new program grabs the focus from me and, in case of the msn messenger, accepts the text I've typed into the 'filter contacts' box. What this causes is that the text I typed on irc is incomplete and all my friends on the msn contact list are gone. The horror.
Then I have to take the mouse, click into IRC again and figure out where my text stops, then finish it (if I can still remember what I wished to type).

Well, the trouble doesn't end there, of course.
At times I'm using Firefox to search the web, and click to start it loading. While it is opening, I check my mail, look at the time, see if my FTP transfer finished yet and, finally, notice that the program is loaded in the background. So I good-naturedly close the FTP window and see that the firefox had become the _active_ application and has the user focus, which is signified by the familiar blinking vertical line in the google search box.
Believing this evidence, I begin to type, only to learn a few words later that Windows had decieved me! The input focus is dangling somewhere in the wonderland and none of my keystrokes are coming across to firefox.
Repeat the procedure again: grab mouse, click, type again.

Do you see a pattern?
There are a few problems I have with this style of thing:
- I, _the Almighty and All-knowing User of this computer_, believe that I do, in fact, know which application I would like to use right now, and _even_ if something as breathtaking as an app finishing loading happens, I would usually still prefer to continue doing what I am doing just now and DEAL WITH THE NEW APP A BIT LATER. What happened to the "Customer is always right?"
- Why do I need to almost _constantly_ grab for my mouse? True, there are 'shortcuts' to switch windows and input boxes with the keyboard, but given the choice, I would rather take the mouse than use the shortcut of "Hold ALT, Press TAB TAB TAB TAB TAB TAB, Release ALT" (at which point the app I want is active, then to find the proper input box) "TAB TAB TAB TAB ...(27x)" And woila! No thanks.

What happened to UI simplicity?

Also, dear MS Windows, if I _do_ happen to minimize an application, the reason for it may simply be that I need room on my desktop for something else -momentarily-, and I would probably enjoy having the app I minimized back, in the near future. Why, oh why, do you have to begin swapping the application from RAM the same moment I minimize it? Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just leave it there, especially if my memory is only about 60% used?

Not to mention, some 'services' within windows XP can steal the focus from the current application even without the user wanting them. A perfect example of this is the IR driver, which most laptops used to have a few years back.
So it happened that I was sitting accross my friend's laptop just so that the IR sensors aligned. But wouldn't you know it.. waiting 10 minutes for the PC's to 'find' each other produced no result, so we were unable to copy a file conveniently, and had to send it all the way to america (via mail) and back, on a 6000 mile round trip. Well, guess what, I am later programming, having been too lazy to move, and suddenly I hear the sound of "IR connecting", at which point the application becomes "inactive" (gray title-bar, keyboard no longer sends keys there). As that happened in the middle of programming, the result was about 15-20 beeps as Windows didn't know where to put my keystrokes (since the input was again in the wonderland).
Figuring I accidentally switched focus away somehow (which is entirely too easy to do), I took the mouse, clicked, continued typing.
Only to have the same episode repeat itself again a minute later. You see, the PC's kept 'finding' and 'loosing' each other over IR, and with every transition the focus went away, which produced a chorus of beeps from me and my friend. Not even taping a piece of paper over the IR sensor helped. (And guess what - we still couldn't copy files through IR, because it quickly 'lost' the other computer as soon as we wished to exploit the newfound connection)

There are other programs and services that steal your input focus, but I am complaining about the IRFTP because it was _made_ by Microsoft _for_ Microsoft Windows XP.

Or am I the only one who complains about 'efficiency' in his UI?

Java update

2007-08-08T11:40:00.000+02:00

I sometimes find that I am forced to install the Java runtime on my computer, which I do not particularly like. Unfortunately, some programmers use Java (though the purpose eludes me).

Although the idea behind Java is commendable and the implementation finally seems close to the idea, there are a few things I particularly dislike.

Sun, I do not wish to have a process for "Java Update" running constantly. It bothers me seeing it in the task manager, which I try to keep as short as possible.
The reasons for keeping running tasks few are many fold:
- Easily find the task you wish to kill, without having to browse through pages and pages of the stuff. This comes in especially handy of the task you want to kill is hogging the CPU, in which case the task manager works _very_ slowly.
- Easily notice new things, which is good if you happen to acquire a virus or a similar nasty program. New entries can 'hide' among tons of programs.
- Less tasks = less cpu and memory used (I shouldn't have to clarify this one)

And especially relating to 'automated updates': Sometimes I have to connect via my cellphone, as I have no other network, and at that times the connection is slow and expensive. I _do not_ wish random programs to communicate and download updates at such times. This includes anti-virus and similar software.

So, back to Java. I remember being in the middle of some maintenance work on a pc when this pretty little pop-up said: "I wanna update Java!". Knowing that if I don't do it now, the thing will keep jumping up and scaring my users, I said "Fine, do your thing." I am still waiting for it to finish, 15 minutes later. (On a 3.0G pentium D, nothing less.)
I mean, come on, how much time does it take to download and overwrite a few files?

Also, Sun, thanks, but if I wished to have a google toolbar in my internet explorer, I would have downloaded it myself, you don't need to offer it to me through the bloody Java update!
Sheesh.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
As I promised, here is the solution:

1. Open start menu, click "run" (or equivalent in your language) and type in "msconfig".
2. Select the last tab "startup" (or whatever your translators called it) and look for an entry called 'jusched'. Remove the check mark next to it, click okay and don't restart.
3. Next time you restart your PC, a pop-up box will jump up and tell you that you have made changes to the startup files. (No shit, Sherlock!) Tell it that it's fine and you have it under control, and it won't bother you anymore.
4. Enjoy life free of Java Updater.

P.S.: There is probably another way to do this through some sort of java settings, but I principally don't use such techniques, as I don't like the programs calling home and telling Sun (or whomever) that I disabled updater on my machine.

Have fun, y'all.

Welcome

2007-08-08T11:36:00.000+02:00

As probably most of the people using a computer for any length of time, I occasionally see things that make me go "What?!" by their sheer stupidity or presumptuousness. I have decided to open a blog and make note of small, insignificant details about software and programs (my pet peeves, if you'd like), and see how long it gets. :)

If at all possible, I will post a solution or work-around to the problems I encounter for the benefit of others, and in return I would be happy of the readers told me how to correct the issues if I haven't found the fixes yet.

Though I imagine that for the most part the issues described will be due to the 'capitalist mentality' of large companies and corporations and, thus, unsolvable.

A shorter version of the above:
I'm going to rant and vent about stuff that annoys me.

Get a laugh out of it all, will you?