tannoy
twenty thirteen
more searching …
I don’t like the various operating system search engines. Windows search misses results out. I gave up using it not long after the introduction of XP. I’ve not seen any research since then showing it’s started to work yet, and I’m certainly not wasting my time doing that work myself. After all these years, I still use Cygwin when I want to find something. Anyway, the Mac has something different, called Spotlight, which I don’t like because it’s an even bigger resource hog than Windows search. When it decides it wants to reindex everything, I lose two days of computer usage. Still, after six years of owning a Mac, I finally had reason to use it. I have a large directory tree, in which, somewhere, are some files. I want to know where those files are, so I told spotlight to go find them. It found them. But the fucking stupid software opened a window containing the files with absolutely no sodding context information. I have no clue where they are in the tree. So it’s found them, but isn’t saying where they are. WTF?! Even Windows search provides that information. What’s the point of finding something then keeping the results secret? It’s not like the files are a buried box of treasure and Spotlight is the thief. Is it? Fortunately, the Mac comes with the unix command line, which, like cygwin, returns correct results, so I can easily get the information I need. But it’s not something suitable for non–geeks. Why, Mr Microsoft and Mr Apple, not simple write search engines that find everything sought, and say so? It’s not like you have to write something like that from scratch; the old unix tools have being doing this correctly since the 1970s (which is why I use them, and clearly have to keep doing so). Their licences are so open you don’t even have to acknowledge as you copy. I really don’t understand this Mr. Biggie value subtracted approach. It’s as though the big names are trying to convince me their name stands for ‘fuck things up’. They take a good idea, add their big name, use lots of resources, & get it wrong. Why?! 24.12.13 |
The decline of Google search
Google search used to be very good at returning results related to the search terms. But this is no longer the case. I just asked it for “statistics by country sea area controlled”. The first result returned is the wikipedia page on the West Bank. This page is not a comparison, it is not statistics, it is not about a number of countries, it is not even about one country (the West Bank is part of Palestine, Israel, or even Jordan, depending on your politics). Of course, the West Bank does lie on the Dead Sea, so the hit isn’t 100 percent wrong: Google Search only ignored the primary search terms. An important point is that my search terms weren’t the best. But, even so, the results returned should be connected to the search terms given. I could then refine my search to get the exact results I wanted. But that doesn’t work when the results are unconnected to the request. Part of the problem used to be that Google didn’t have serious competition. They had no external pressure to maintain standards. For example, their main competition, Bing, used to return results that had no connection with the search terms. But that’s changed. When I put the same search terms into Bing, I got directed to NationMaster, a site that specialises in statistics about countries. Admittedly, it didn’t link directly to the results I wanted, something Google might once have done, but, it was a correct result. Bing also seems to have sorted out its language problem. It used to return results based on where you were searching from, not your preferred language. That’s fixed too. Today, I got results in a language specified by my browser settings. I wonder if Google is trying to outguess me, to presume it knows what I want better than I do? That would certainly explain why it gets it wrong. Presumptions are a motorway to mistake. It’s why I often find myself mocking them, by pretending to make silly presumptions and following them through to their insane conclusions. I do it mostly to try and stop myself making the same mistakes. Interestingly, more than a few people don’t suss this. It’s as though they’re comfortable with insane conclusions from silly presumptions, as though they live with them all the time. Perhaps they do. Anyway, it looks like I now have to take Bing seriously. 1.12.13 |
Internet Explorer & certificates
Q. Running Internet Explorer? Got a problem with a certificate? Want to solve it? A. Run Firefox. Basically, IE says there’s an issue with a certificate when you visit a website, but refuses to tell you want the issue is. If you don’t know what a problem is, you can’t solve it. IE denies you the information you need to work out what’s gone wrong. It prevents you from making an intelligent response. It presumes you are stupid. Firefox doesn’t conceal this information. It has this weird idea that problems are for solving, not scaring. It presumes you’re not stupid. Firefox helps the user be intelligent, rather than forces them to be stupid. And you know what? Firefox users make far fewer errors with certificates. I doubt this is a coincidence. Incidentally, to understand why I haven’t linked the above point to the research supporting it, read the section above on the decline of Google Search. 1.12.13 |
engineering ego
As an engineer, I’ve had to learn to control my ego. I have to: programs don’t suddenly start working to avoid hurting my feelings. Unfortunately, I tend to presume the same of other people. So it’s a shock to me when a critic takes criticism of a project as a personal insult. Now, clearly, my criticism could be wrong. But, if that’s the case, the points made can be countered, or left alone by agreeing to disagree. In fact, I’d rather like to know the source of disagreement; I really could be wrong. But I can’t correct a mistake if I don’t see it. Of course, that goes both ways: that’s the point of such a discussion. It's not an ego–bashing, it’s mutual self–improvement. The issue of dispute is whether a suggested tour of the UK should consider a visit to Dublin. I advocated it, my opinion was rejected with the price and distance argument. That argument is false, and I said so. For example, the price of standard open return travelling the next day on the train from London to Edinburgh is £304, whereas London to Dublin is £76. Of course you can get cheaper prices with restricted tickets, or with other transport, but the basic point standards: the price argument is false. Why pointing that out is a personal attack is beyond me. 
I think the underlying issue here is tribalism. I’ve noticed that when I’m living in a country, travelling in the country seems reasonable, but travelling outside is far far away. What amuses me, though, is the size of the country doesn’t change the perspective. So an American might be willing to travel in the US, but will see crossing the US as a long voyage. So, in the same way, a Flemming will see about Belgium. They’ll both see leaving their respective countries as a great journey. Of course, the irony is the relative sizes of the countries makes a nonsense of the perspective. Their feelings apply to the borders, not to the distance. I think this is what’s underlying the price and distance argument, what isn’t being said. It’s not price and distance, it’s being unwilling to go beyond the tribal territory. The price and distance stuff is just an excuse to cover tribalism. Tribalism is defined here as “loyalty to a tribe or other social group especially when combined with strong negative feelings for people outside the group”. I now understand why people give this duff argument, and I now understand why they won’t accept that it’s duff. To admit that it’s duff is to admit their tribalism, is to admit they dislike foreigners, is to admit bigotry. So when the price and distance argument is shown to be wrong, & they’ve nothing left, they resort to anger to cover their exposure. They feel insulted, but the person doing the insulting is they themselves. Well, it’s an argument. It explains what I saw. The trouble is, it’s a pop–psychology argument, and so is probably wrong. Such arguments usually are. The ego flouncing could simply be immaturity. Oh well, whatever: the fact is I got someone wrong. People usually get each other wrong. Much more to the point, if they’re going to feel insulted when criticised, then I no longer have faith in their project. How can they fix what goes wrong if they can’t accept something might be wrong? 24.10.13 |
gender binary
Does anyone feel, like me, that using the word binary in the context of gender is rather like using the word superior in the context of race? The modern use of the word binary comes mostly from a type of mathematic logic, with two values, one and zero. Which gender is one, which is zero? In computing, binary has two values, true and false. Which gender is True, which is False? In electronics, the values are On and Off. You get the picture. Given gender does not have two values, rather it is a huge range of difference, any use of the word binary to describe it is to oversimplify it, so much so that it denies people, who don’t happen to fall at either extreme, their identity. Worse, its use unavoidably introduces superiority and inferiority to those two extremes: true and false, one and zero, on and off. Is male true, female false? Male one, female zero? This implication really gets my goat. The use of the word binary in the context of gender is plain wrong. I know it’s used innocently, but I hope I’ve shown why using it is wrong. Please, people, change your language. 14.10.13 |
ubuntu linux
I’m researching targets for some multi–platform software I might one day write. I want to include some Linux flavours in this process. In order to run Linux, I need to use VMWare, so I have to be able to install VMWare tools for Linux. This requires a command prompt, such as bash. Now here comes the rub. I just tried Ubuntu 12.04. It does not offer a command prompt anywhere on its pretty pretty desktop. I even went to the help command and typed in “command prompt”, but it didn’t understand the term. If I can’t get to the command prompt, I can’t install VMWare Tools. If I can’t install VMWare tools, I can’t run my virtual machine properly. If I can’t run my virtual machine properly, I can’t develop in it. If I can’t develop in it, I can’t develop for Ubuntu. Thus Ubuntu 12.04 is useless for me. Sorry, Ubuntu, but I’m not going to waste my time working with pretty pretty crap. Get the basics sorted out so your pretty pretty interface is actually sodding usable, and I might change my mind—so long as the change includes an apology. 15.8.13 |
stumble upon
I used to have a stumble upon account, but left when the user interface became unusable. I went back today to see if it was any better, but, no, it’s just as borked. Let me illustrate:
Whoever put the site together has no clue about usability. It’s not practical to scan it to seek something interesting. I didn’t bother to go any further. Stumbleupon is clearly still borked. That’s a pity, because it’s a good idea. I’m going to see if someone has done the same thing, but effectively. 3.8.13 |
glass
Now google glass looks like it might be rather interesting, but I do foresee some problems. First of all, it’s not going to be possible to wear it most of the time, well, not until the price is very low, unless you have a particular liking for being mugged, or, for that matter, showing off your ego problems. This means it has to be foldable, so it can at the very least be put back in the pocket when wearing the thing is inappropriate or even downright dangerous. I very much like the potential for photography, particularly video. I do hope google have solved the technical problems with getting a decent lens into something that small, and storage for holding a decent amount of footage. I suspect they’ve getting there, given those demonstration videos. The user interface, though, using voice control, threatens to be exceptionally naff. Everyone around will know exactly what you want to do with your computer. I’m presuming they’ve not got subvocalisation sorted, admittedly, but I’ve not seen an example that clearly uses it. It must be pretty sophisticated, though, if it works when there’s a lot of background noise around, so subvocalisation might not be too far off Of course, being an aging nerd, I want access to a bash shell using glass. It ain’t going to happen, mostly because of the vocal interface. I’m not spelling out each letter of a command individually, unless I have to. I have a problem with remote use of bash at the moment: phone screens are too small for anything but emergency bashing, and tablets are too big to carry around in the pocket. I probably need to find a small, pocket friendly, tablet. None of the Apples will do, and Android is so dependent on product manufacturers going against the grain and doing a good job of maintenance, that I find myself wishing Microsoft would make a pocket surface, one with an intel chip (otherwise I might as well use android). Aha, I have it with that statement: check out google nexus. Google, for their faults, do understand that products should be kept patched & secure. 26.2.13 |
explorerIt’s taken me a while to realise it, embarrassingly, but Windows 7 explorer has even more bugs than Windows 95 explorer. Windows 8 repeats these errors. 
Let’s look at them. First of all, here’s a classic error from Windows 95 explorer that Microsoft have been unable to fix. Sort by type does not sort by type. Here is a directory listing, showing file types, supposedly sorted by file type. Notice that the sort order does not correspond to the file type (the bit after the dot in the file name, also called file extension). This image shows an extract of the order in which files are sorted by type: I D I M L T L. Now, it so happens I do know the British alphabet, and it is A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z. Microsoft don’t seem to this. Interestingly, this information is not subject to any secrecy laws, so Microsoft’s failure, over the last 18 years, to notice the order in which British people like to put their letters does not reflect well on them. A related bug, which might help explain their confusion, is that in other views of a directory, they incorrectly label the description as type. I don’t think they quite understand the language if they confuse these two things. It’s rather like confusing cows with horses. Here are some bugs introduced into Windows explorer more recently. Fixing output style doesn’t work. If you tell explorer to always display directory listings in a particular style, it doesn’t. I don’t like wasting space, I just want to see file names, so I tell explorer to drop the verbosity. I tell it to display all directories with the flab. It never does. It always forgets. This is incompetence. 
Menus: ok, this is a Microsoft fashion thing. It works if you’re the kind of person who likes to always wear stilletos, with all their use problems but with their undoubted style—well, that’s ok. But I’m not a lady of lithe, I’m a man of width. Stilletoes and me are not the best of friends. I bend them. Me, dear Microsoft, me, I use commands, and menus have lots of them, including those I like to use. A picture bar that contains a few very pretty if rather obscure pictures isn’t actually useful when it doesn’t contain the command sought. Microsoft’s habit of replacing lots of useful menu commands with a few confusing picture is not useful. I can read, I go straight to the command. I can never find the bloody picture I’m supposed to use, they are not obvious. They are not useful. They are a fat man forced to wear stilletos. That Microsoft hide the option to bring the menus back is irritating. That you can’t get rid of the hopeless command bars is irritating. I wish they didn’t presume their customers were so lightweight, to be honest. I guess they presume heavyweights use other operating systems. Then there’s the appalling mess that is libraries. Now these are things that explorer calls libraries; the’re not libraries. Real libraries are organised. They have things called rows, and in the rows are shelves, and on the shelves are books. This directly corresponds to directories and files. Yet Explorer’s libraries throw everything together into a confusing mess. It destroys the context of the files. It loses information. This is exactly and precisely the opposite of what a library represents. In this way, Microsoft are committing linguistic abuse, and I condemn them for it. 24.2.13 |
iCloud
With some surprise, I’ve discovered Apple are trying to trick me into using iCloud for private information. I don’t know why they’re doing this, it makes no sense at all, yet a number of their application (such as TextEdit) have save dialogues now default to iCloud when they used to default to the hard disk. One moment of inattention and my privacy has leaked. Saving a document in iCloud is potentially expensive, is certainly slow, and lacks any pretense of privacy. It would be very easy to save information there by mistake. I can’t understand why they’re doing this, as I’ve said. Given how easy they’ve made it to make the mistake, I’ve been forced to disconnect and delete my iCloud account. It was useful for backup when travelling, but it’t not exactly difficult to set up an alternative. They’re not the first people to attempt this con. I know Ceil were doing it in 2011, trying to get you to send your private tax accounts to their servers. That made no sense to me either. Information theft is a serious problem in the modern world. I don’t understand why the big companies, who supply software you need, are trying to make the problem worse. Surely they should be attempting to prevent information theft, not to commit it. 24.2.13 |
bits falling offI’m in my mid 50s. The only time I got on a decent training course that helped develop my career was when I ran it myself. 
You can’t presume bosses will put your interests before their employers’. I’m still working in the industry because, like most people in my position, I’ve made the effort to keep my skillset contemporary. That nice Mr. Gates stills pays my wages, indirectly, so I get MSDN subscriptions with permanent licences, and have done on and off for 20 years. I do something similar with Apple kit. Because my goal is self–education, not performance, I buy quiet, small hardware, that doesn’t irritate and doesn’t get in the way. My current servers are Soekris boxes for BSD servers, & Mac Minis, with maxed out specs, with virtual Windows and Linux servers. 7.2.13 |
grumpok, so I want to keep posting the grumps. Tannoy is revived so i can heartily eeyore. c–nerd keeps the nice … mmm … nice–ish stuff 29.2.13 |
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