Opinion

I’ve been to the German Bakery with old friends many times over the course of my time in Pune. I haven’t been there recently but I drive past it virtually every day. Yesterday terrorists planted a bomb there and it killed (at last count) 8 people, and injured several more. So, this is terrorism close to home. Reactions from the social networks (which always have the drama dialed up a couple of notches) are along the lines of “I can’t believe this would happen in my city” or “The cops failed miserably”.

Really? This is the reality of living in the world today. While you’re not so likely to be killed by, oh I don’t know, the Bubonic Plague, you could be attacked by a terrorist. If you expect the police to catch every terror plot that some sick mind dreams up, you would live in a police state. You would lose the freedoms you hold dear and the same people clamoring for the police to do more would be the ones screaming that they have too much power. The balance between security and freedom is precarious and swings both ways. I think we (India) do a pretty good job of balancing those two ideals. The cops were there quickly and seem to be far better prepared than we give them credit for. The government has moved swiftly and clearly the lessons of the Taj have not been forgotten. I call that progress.

Any place in the world worth living in is a place worth targeting. The reason these places are worth living in is because they value an individual’s freedoms. Removing those freedoms makes the people sad and hands victory to the terrorists.

The other prevalent sentiment in everything I have read on the TwitBook (or Faceter, if you prefer) is one of helplessness. “Is there anything we can do besides post empty words on social networks?”. Yeah, you could go out and celebrate Valentine’s Day. If you genuinely want to help defeat terror and terrorism the answer is simple. Don’t get terrorized. For a terrorist to succeed, he must deliver terror. If you don’t get scared he is impotent. By being afraid we are all willing contributors to terrorism.

The likelihood of dying (especially in Pune) from a road accident is several orders of magnitude higher than getting blown up by a bomb. One could even argue that a few bus drivers have malicious intent. Yet we don’t call them terrorists, because we don’t get terrorized. The unfortunate truth is that if you’re unlucky enough to be there when this sort of thing happens, you will die. Is your need for safety greater than your need to enjoy your life?

A life you don’t live is still lost.

After a couple of years without a dedicated Windows box (I used my previous MacBook Pro for everything) I got a new PC when Microsoft released the public Windows 7 release candidate ultimate evaluation download version thingamabob doohickey. The rig was built primarily so I could catch up on all the games I missed out on during my self-imposed sabbatical from the platform (thanks, in no small part, to the terrors of Windows Vista). Secondary applications include it being my .NET development environment which barely sees any use any more and more recently it has also morphed into a file-server/RAID. For the next couple of months the days were full of work on the new MacBook Pro and the nights were a flurry of Fallout 3, Mass Effect and Team Fortress 2.

I have had to run OS X and Windows side by side and shuffle between them before. It is jarring when I switch from one to the other: things are in the wrong place, I keep trying to trigger Expose or get to the desktop by using Active Screen Corners, finding applications in the goddamn Start menu takes an age, I stare blankly at the Control Panel trying to figure out what the hell the icons mean (they renamed Add/Remove Programs for God’s sake), the hideous system tray stretching out to infinity chills my very soul. You get the point.

What I realized during this heavy-duty play is that much of this annoying nonsense that Windows XP humbly began and Windows Vista took to unfathomable depths was magically fixed in Windows 7. In my view the last good operating system out of Redmond, WA was Windows 2000. That is until, they switched back to actual version numbers.

Microsoft, true to form, fixed Vista by flat out copying OS X. Now, contrary to the traditional Mac fanboy’s reaction to this, I am a a firm believer in stealing everything you can get away with. After all, Apple is no stranger to this sort of “borrowing” of ideas. Remember when they ripped the still-beating heart out of Xerox PARC and sold it as Mac OS back in 1984?

So the new Taskbar in Windows 7 looks more like the Mac OS Dock than the old Taskbar. You can even rearrange the icons while the program is running ala OS X. I don’t use the Start menu any more, and even then I’ve taken to using it like I do Spotlight on the Mac. Even the system tray has monochrome icons now, I wonder which other OS uses monochrome icons in the tray? And look! moving your mouse into the bottom right corner shows the desktop just like Active Corners! You don’t quite get Expose but hovering over an application icon in the Taskbar allows you to see the windows that are open in the app. It’s a nice touch (that Snow Leopard promptly copied, by the way).

It is also stable. Sure apps crash and I’ve seen a couple of blue screens, but really I’ve seen about the same number of grey screens on my Mac. Compatibility with older apps hasn’t been much of a problem for me. Games have all worked really well. I can’t remember having downloaded any drivers other than the usual video card stuff. UAC is still a little annoying but it seems to behave itself and doesn’t constantly ask you incredibly stupid questions. In other words, Windows 7 is what Windows Vista should have been in the first place.

It is the first time since Windows 2000 that I have enjoyed using a Microsoft OS. And that boys and girls, is what a good operating system is all about. Making your computer fun to use by being easy, intuitive and responsive. I’m not giving up my Mac any time soon but at least I don’t cringe if I have to work in Windows any more.

Details are sketchy but Google is finally throwing their huge sombrero into the Operating System ring. After years of surveying the competition and developing online versions of all the popular office applications, Google is now going to tackle the foundation of the PC platform. We know it will be a new windowing system that will run on a Linux kernel. It will also be completely open source (the GPL wins again).

There are several obvious things that will happen here. Google is going to put it’s considerable marketing muscle behind getting Netbooks to use Chrome as the default instead of various other flavors of Linux. Microsoft is going to push these same vendors to use Windows 7 instead. Google is going to price this thing rock bottom, in all likelihood it will be a free download. Couple that with Snow Leopard’s ridiculously low upgrade price and it becomes clear that this OS cycle consumers are going to be the big winners.

I have long maintained that the only thing stopping Linux from becoming a viable desktop OS is that design (UI/UX or otherwise) doesn’t work by committee. But the community is perhaps the single most important part of the open source movement. By putting Google designers in charge of figuring out the windowing system Chrome is probably going to be the first linux flavor to be genuinely polished from a UI perspective (Even though Doug Bowman might disagree).

There is one big problem though. I can’t use it. Not as my primary OS anyway.

Google say the only way developers will build applications for it is through web technologies, taking a page out of Apple’s iPhone 1.0 marketing spiel. Given enough bandwidth you might be able to get away without access to the internals of the PC but as long as there is a need to run compiled code for applications/games like Photoshop or Fallout 3 this is not going to be my OS of choice. It will however be perfect for any number of people that just want a computer that does their email and web stuff. Throw in the occasional flash game for good luck.

Cower in fear Microsoft, this is the moment Balmer has been sweating for years (literally). Maybe Microsoft should sue Google for monopolistic tactics. After all, you can’t install a competing web browser when the OS is the web browser.

I recently attended the first show of Them Clones’ promo tour for the launch of their debut CD. The band have a bunch of great songs that they’ve been massaging carefully for a very long time. The result is a polished set of tracks and a really strong and tight live show. Everything went great at the Hard Rock, Pune and I have a feeling the show would have continued for at least another hour if it wasn’t for the ridiculous 11pm closing time imposed by the Maharashtra government.

After the show was wrapped I overheard a guy complaining to the bartender. Let me break it down for you. This guy is the quintessential (read cliché) Indian rocker, complete with a goatee, long hair, Sepultura t-shirt, dirty jeans, the works. His rant is probably painfully familiar to the band members (and managers) of any Indian rock band.

It went something like this (I’m paraphrasing because I was several beers in at this point): “What was that shit, man? How can I get into the music when I don’t know any of the songs? When they play big places like this they should only play covers”. That statement right there encapsulates everything that is wrong with your average Indian “Rock Fan”.

Our asshat at the bar there showed up for a free show, promoting an album and expected to hear covers. He has no respect for artists trying to create instead of regurgitate. He has no feeling of pride or ownership for local talent. He has no concept of the fundamental building blocks of good rock and roll: A band cannot survive, let alone grow, without its fans (even if it’s your 2 friends from school).

In any part of the world where great rock music happens it begins with the local fans: The small core audience that cheers, adores and provides sexual favors and drugs to the aspiring rock Gods. That entire culture is missing completely in the Indian rock scene from what I can tell. Until that happens bands will become great despite being from India rather than because they’re from India.

Ashton Kutcher’s victory over CNN is somewhat symbolic. Ashton called it the “changing of the guard” and proof that the web is a viable and already powerful media channel. Like the election of President Obama wasn’t proof enough. One could argue that it is easier for Ashton to reach an “internet-savvy” population of people since he was campaigning ON the internet, or that by buying in to the challenge CNN pushed enough people to vote for the underdog. All of it doesn’t matter, victory was claimed and conceded.

What happened afterward is actually more interesting, because Ashton went on Oprah. The number of twitter users, already growing at a monstrous pace, has seen the biggest boost in history. Twitter is mainstream.

So of course, there is the inevitable backlash from loyal supporters and early adopters. Is this really necessary with every single thing that becomes successful? Everyone from Green Day to Facebook have had to deal with this bullshit “sell-out” stereotype and it’s getting a little ridiculous. I don’t even see how having more people on Twitter is a bad thing. Twitter is by it’s very nature, completely immune to an influx of people. If anything it improves the service by giving you more interesting people to follow. If you don’t like them, don’t follow them.

It is easy to get excited about Mosso:

1. Run stock PHP/ASP.NET with MySQL/MSSQL in the cloud
2. Rackspace
3. Automatic scaling for processing, disk space and bandwidth
4. Pay only for what you use
5. 24×7 Support
6. Did I mention Rackspace?

So I made the recommendation to use them, the client happily agreed and we went on our merry way. 6 months later we’re switching hosting providers vowing never to return to Mosso. So, what went wrong?

Maintenance Windows

The first thing that hit us was the amount of maintenance. Maintenance happens often and with little or no warning. Worse for us, it almost always happens at the same time (late in the night US time). For an Indian company serving Indian businesses this is the equivalent of scheduling down time during peak business hours. We asked if we could be moved to a cluster that had maintenance at a different time, they said that option doesn’t exist yet. Why do they need so much maintenance? Because they are still building and refining the system. Make no mistake, it will probably be rock solid and stable in a year or two. Right now though, it is a petulant child in constant need of attention.

Platform Limitations

When building complicated web applications you often need to be able to do things that require custom services running on your servers to provide the features required. On Mosso, because of the way the environment is structured, you can’t run your own services. Cron jobs cannot be run in less than 5 minute intervals. You can’t use mysqldump, you have to get data from phpMySQL. You can’t replicate your data off-site because MySQL is already running in clustered mode managed by Mosso. All these limitations remind me of lower tier shared-hosting systems. If you’re used to root level access or running your own servers Mosso will lead to a lot of roadblocks and will require you to use workarounds. In many cases there is no way around these roadblocks. 

The SSL Screw-Up

Our SSL site was having some problems which were apparently due to a configuration error at Mosso. The fix included changing an IP address which they did without informing us. Suddenly our domain was pointing to a defunct IP. 

The Russian Auto Hack

Some clever person managed to fool Mosso’s routers or load balancers (as far as I can tell) into pointing all traffic to a Russian Auto site. For a while, anyone that visited our site was redirected to a shady Russian Used Car Listing. When you’re dealing with sensitive businesses a security breach of this sort undermines your entire operation. This was a big reason for the switch.

Unscheduled Downtime

Things went wrong with regularity, from PHP failures to load balancer configuration problems to write locks on MySQL. Seemingly anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. A quick glance at status.mosso.com will show you just how often this stuff has been happening.

I happened to be the 500th person to follow Mosso’s Twitter stream and have been given 1 year of free hosting at Mosso. I should have been a staunch advocate. As it stands I don’t think Mosso is ready for prime-time. Maybe we just had incredibly bad luck and other, luckier people will never face these issues. However, I do believe that you judge a service on its worst possible problem and how it gets handled. After raising a stink about our problems in Mosso’s highly public Twitter stream we got traction with upper management at Mosso, but by that point my client was already determined to move.

Mosso is a great idea and will probably turn out to be a great platform. But for the time being, if your site needs to be up all the time, Mosso is not reliable enough to bank on.

While pondering the effects of Google on the way facts and information are assimilated I realized that I’ve almost entirely stopped learning details. My memory now consists of search terms rather than the actual information. I remember the minimum necessary to be able to locate the item the next time around. The details live in Google. 

I don’t even bookmark, I have some timesavers linked on my bookmark bar in Safari but those are really url shortcuts. The more I think about it, this is not because I’m lazy or forgetful (though I am definitely both those things). I genuinely believe Google can find something faster and more effectively than I can thumbing through bookmarks. Consider the pitfalls of a bookmark:

1. The page’s location might change
2. The information contained on the page might no longer be accurate
3. The very same search might yield a better, newer method of doing the same thing or reveal new information that was previously unavailable

So not only is it faster than finding a bookmark, it’s also more accurate and more up to date.

This got me thinking about a specific instance where what I had been taught in school turned out to be wrong. I was taught that gravity is a force that is based on the mass of two objects. The larger the mass, the stronger the force. Right? Well, sure it’s right but it turns out it isn’t a force at all according to a certain Albert Einstein. That text book didn’t contain the whole story and the facts weren’t updated later on in my memory. I had to discover this through Wikipedia and Google. The fact that Ekta and I just had a kid has made this lapse in the education system all the more troubling. 

Is it possible that rather than learning that information in school I could have been taught the basics of how gravity works and then just taught how to look it up in Google when I want the details?

I always drop down into what I understand best when testing out an idea, so obviously I go straight into software programming terrain. The knowledge of when and why to use a technique (like say, recursive loops) is much more important than the exact syntax to do so for a given programming language. So broad concepts are much more important than the actual technical minutiae. Knowledge of what to use is much more important than specific details of how to use it. Knowing how to drive a car is more important than knowing how every part of it works. When you need that information it’s always available through Google. What this amounts to is a kind of Knowledge Abstraction facilitated by Google. 

Google allows us this luxury because of 3 important things. Firstly, it is everywhere. I can access it anywhere on a suitable web device thanks to ubiquitous networking. Secondly, it is convenient, I’m not lugging around the Encyclopedia. Third, it is really fast, so the time spent hunting through documents on my hard disk or worse, the index of a book is gone. In almost magical fashion this means I don’t need to remember specific facts but at the same time know more than I did before. 

I firmly believe that our kids should be taught language, math and searching at the lowest level because knowing how to access information effectively is probably as important as being able to read a sentence. It is the internet age equivalent of learning how to count and is just as important for that kid’s success. Teachers need to concentrate on teaching large, broad concepts and let the kids explore the details. They would effectively abstract the world and how it works from the technical details. The kids will probably find out what they love to do and branch off in directions of learning that would otherwise have been inaccessible. They will not be limited by the text book or the teacher’s own knowledge.

http://www.portfolio.com/images/site/editorial/illustrations/2007/09/cartoon-brain.jpg

You got that right.

By now I’m sure everyone knows that Apple is going to be making macs using Intel’s x86 architecture chips. I’m not going to bang on about how surprising and impossible the whole thing is because its actually not that crazy.

OS X is built on FreeBSD. Now as far as I know FreeBSD will run on anything that can understand zeroes and ones including Intel’s x86. In fact I’d say 90%+ systems running BSD are on Intel or AMD chips. Why is it such a stretch then that Apple built this compatibility into OS X? You can’t change the core and the core is compatible. In fact, you could say it would be foolish NOT to support it… cause you never know when you might need Intel. So Apple have obviously had the warm blanket of being able to switch to Intel and have done a decent job of keeping quiet about it for the last 5 years.

Cringely weighed in with his usual wild predictions claiming that Intel and Apple are going to merge. In this case I think he’s wrong. In fact, I’d say that this time he’s absolutely batshit fucking loco. Why would big blue piss off 95% of their business? Just because they are unhappy with Microsoft’s tactics? Why would Intel cut off their nose to spite their face? Also, if Intel are even thinking about Apple it would be an aquisition, not a merger. They’d also need to pry control from the icy grip of Steve Jobs’ cold dead hands. He definitely wouldn’t be on stage hugging the CEO of Intel if he was going to be Jobs’ future boss.

No, the real reason is just what Jobs declared at the WWDC. IBM aren’t playing ball. This is hardly surprising given that they’re moving further and further from the desktop business and deeper and deeper into hardcore servers and gaming consoles. All the signs point to this, from the sale of it’s PC business to Lenovo to developing the Cell processor for the PlayStation 3, its obvious IBM’s focus is no longer on the desktop chip market. The only reason it has a tenuous foothold in the market in the first place is, you guessed it, Apple.

Sorry Bob. I think you got it wrong this time around.

It’s nice to see someone speak their mind once in a while. This guy should run for president.