Wayne Hartman

What is 'The Cloud'?

Wayne Hartman — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:38:46 GMT

Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, tells it as it is, tongue in cheek, of course.

Our industry is so bizarre. They just change a term and they think they've invented technology. You can't just come up with "let's just call that 'cloud'" and it sure beats innovation.

Ars Walks The Copyright Walk

Wayne Hartman — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:19:00 GMT

Good to see Ars Technica walking the walk on copyright law. Abuse is rife by both sides of the copyright debate, so it's good to see them take a stand that reflects the true nature of the law:

But of course, you can reproduce and distribute and cache much of this information for a variety of reasons under US copyright law. We told readers that we would look into the issue, and Editor-in-Chief Ken Fisher agreed to ask our corporate lawyers about making a small change to the notice.

Wired And The iPad

Wayne Hartman — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:36:28 GMT

Really interesting short video from Wired, showing off some user interface designs for iPad-centric content. While the demos appear to be running on Adobe Air (as in, not capable of running on the iPad), the concept is powerful and compelling. The sound bite of the video:

"We also think it's an opportunity to reset the economics. For the first time people may value this experience so much that they'll pay for it."

Wow, isn't that what creating a product is all about? Hope the music, movie, and even traditional print industries are taking note, because Wired has figured it out.

'Getting' The iPad

Wayne Hartman — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:18:53 GMT

People are quick to throw stones at something they have never experienced. With the iPad I'm going to leave the rocks on the ground and take what I've seen at face value. Many have mocked its lack of certain features and 'simplicity'. It's not so much about simplicity, as it is another aspect of that. Maybe it's because I write software for a living, but I like to pay attention to the user experience of what other people write.

As many of you know, people don't like to think. It's not because they're lazy, stupid, or unintelligent. It's that when you are using a tool (by 'tool' I mean in the most generic of the sense), you don't want to have to focus on *how* to use it, or maybe even what it is doing. People want to focus on the outcome that the tool is supposed to provide. When people use a computer, they don't want to have to focus their energies on how to use it or be impeded because the tool seems like an unnatural means to the goal.

The iPhone software takes commodity hardware that all competitors have access to and makes it a *joy* to use. Now, that may sound silly to your ears, but when was the last time you drove a car, or road a bike, or sat in a chair, or cut a steak with a knife and thought that you just had an experience that far surpassed doing those things than with other capable, if clumsy, ways? The iPad is about taking that iPhone experience and not only making it *bigger*, but changing the fundamental way in which you consume media and interact with this tool called the computer.

We like the computer as we know it now just the way it is because it has always been that way for most of us. As much as we cling to it, the interface is clunky, doesn't work exactly what seems natural to us. We have shoehorned ourselves to fit it, not the other way around. The iPad is about changing that. And as someone who likes exploring new, better ways of doing things, that's exciting to me.

So, tell ya what:

I will be an early adopter for you. I will suffer the rotten tomatoes and eggs and name calling you throw at me. I will be a martyr of the new way of experiencing the world. And if I was wrong, I will take my tongue lashing and the missing chunk of change from my wallet, shut up, and go figure out what other 'joys' are to be had in the world.

But if I was right, I will relish in knowing that I found that joy before you and focus my energies using the tool in finding more joy in the other things in life as well and experience them in ways you cannot.

iPad: The Unanswered Question

Wayne Hartman — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:09:30 GMT

Now that the hype has died down a bit over the new Apple iPad, there are quite a few questions that linger over the yet to be released device. The forefront on my mind (and the question no one is asking) is this: Who can publish on the new iBookstore? Apple's Chief Operating Officer, Tim Cook, commented about the new device's revenue generator, hinting that it would 'inspire a whole new gold rush' for publishers. While certainly comforting for those already established, what for those who may now want to get into the market of ePublishing?

Like the much maligned recording and movie industries, the publishing market is fraught with the Good Ol' Boy mentality of crowding out competition. I can hardly think that Apple struck deals with the announced publishing partnerships to let small fry publishers, or even start-ups, to get a large chunk of the iPad pie. Paranoia aside, it would be incredible, like the AppStore, to allow anyone to step up and develop content for the iBookstore. The iPad is supposedly a revolution for distribution of the written word, why not allow the common man to compete against the Old World juggernauts of publication?

Apple only has one shot with this device. No Flash support, no web cam, no multi-task are massive detractors for purchasing this device, so Apple must win a core audience early on with its eBook strategy. Creating a level playing field for people to distribute quality publications will attract the masses in a way that the Nook and Kindle have not. Failing to deliver, on the other hand, could drive that pent-up publishing supply to those less-sparkly, if cheaper, devices.

Time will tell; I'm hoping for the best.

How To Install Windows 7 x64 & Boot Camp 3.1

Wayne Hartman — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:55:56 GMT

Yesterday I ventured to get Windows 7 running on my Mac Mini and naturally ran into quite a few problems (quite unlike installing XP). Unfortunately, I could not get the x64 version of Boot Camp 3.1 installed; it would try to install the nVidia driver and then silently fail thereafter. I also ran into the road block of not being able to install the x64 version of Boot Camp 3.0 from the Snow Leopard installation media, but found a work around. You will need the following items:

Snow Leopard installation disc
Boot Camp 3.1 x64 installation package

First, insert your Snow Leopard installation disc and open a CMD prompt As Administrator. Access your disc drive and navigate to the Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple directory. Now execute the following command: msiexec /i BootCamp64.msi This will install version 3.0 of the Boot Camp software. This may take a few minutes, but after it is done, follow the prompt to restart your machine. For the most part, everything should be installed correctly, sans Apple's most recent hardware like the Magic Mouse.

After you have rebooted, you should then be able to run the Boot Camp 3.1 setup without any problems.

King of the Invertebrates

Wayne Hartman — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:28:05 GMT

Research has found that a certain species of octopus have the ability of using tools, in this case, two halves of a coconut. One Slashdot reader, upon hearing the news, decided to rewrite a favorite Monty Python skit:

OCTOPUS GUARD #1: Halt! Who goes there?
PULPO: It is I, Pulpo, son of Leggus Tentaclus, from the castle of Cephalot. King of the Invertebrates, defeator of the Squid, sovereign of all the Ocean!
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: Pull the other one!
PULPO: I am. And this my trusty servant Sucksy. We have ridden the length and breadth of the ocean floor in search of invertebrates who will join me in my court of Cephalot. I must speak with your lord and master.
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: What, ridden on a horse?
PULPO: Yes!
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: You're using coconuts!
PULPO: What?
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're bangin' 'em together.
PULPO: So? We have ridden since the Titanic sunk onto this land, through the kingdom of Laurentian, through--
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: Where'd you get the coconut?
PULPO: We found them.
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: Found them? In the Laurentian Abyss? The coconut's tropical!
PULPO: What do you mean?
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: Well, this is a temperate zone.
PULPO: The dolphin may swim south with the sun or the humpback whale may seek warmer climes in winter yet these are not strangers to our land.
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
PULPO: Not at all, they could be carried.
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: What -- a dolphin carrying a coconut?
PULPO: It could grip it by the husk using its blowhole!
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple question of grasping ability! A dolphin has no means to carry a 1 pound coconut.
PULPO: Well, it doesn't matter. Will you go and tell your master that Pulpo from the Court of Cephalot is here.
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: Listen, in order to maintain the ability to breathe, a dolphin needs to keep its blowhole free from obstruction, right?
PULPO: Please!
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: Am I right?
PULPO: I'm not interested!
OCTOPUS GUARD #2: It could be carried by a Great White shark!
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: Oh, yeah, a Great White shark maybe, but not a dolphin, that's my point.
OCTOPUS GUARD #2: Oh, yeah, I agree with that...
PULPO: Will you ask your master if he wants to join my court at Cephalot?!
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: But then of course Great White sharks are not migratory.
OCTOPUS GUARD #2: Oh, yeah...
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: So they couldn't bring a coconut back anyway... [clop clop]
OCTOPUS GUARD #2: Wait a minute -- supposing two dolphins carried it together?
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: No, they'd have to have it on a line.
OCTOPUS GUARD #2: Well, simple! They'd just use the stipe of a bull whip kelp!
OCTOPUS GUARD #1: What, tied to the dorsal fins?
OCTOPUS GUARD #2: Well, why not?

Review: Intel SS4200-E NAS

Wayne Hartman — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:21:44 GMT

I have been looking for a NAS for a long time, so when Newegg had a deal on the Intel Entry Storage System SS4200-E NAS Server, I jumped right on it. Selling itself with four internal SATA connections, two external eSATA ports and USB up the yin-yang, I thought this would be a good buy for my purposes. My primary intention was to create a 6TB (yes, terabyte) array where I could have all my ripped DVD, Blu-Ray, music and computer backups but still have plenty of space to grow into. To cut to the chase, I have had nothing but disappointment.

First off, you can only do configurations of two or four drives in RAID. What this means is you can do a simple mirror (RAID 1) with two drives, or a mirrored-stripe (0+1) or parity (RAID 5) with four drives. Those other eSATA ports? Just stand alone and cannot participate in the RAID array. This was disheartening because it dropped the maximum array size from 6TB to 4.5TB (using 1.5TB drives). What's worse, though, is that the eSATA ports would not recognize my orphaned 1.5TB drive plugged into it. After SSHing into it, I could see that the drive was mounted, but the web interface and SAMBA would not share it out. Plugging in a spare 500GB showed up just fine.

Security controls are very coarse grained. It's sad that this is running on Linux, but the web interface only does simple read/write/deny permissions. This device purports to support Active Directory integration, but it only supports up to Windows Server 2003. After digging into see what version of SAMBA it is running, I found bugs that were fixed in the next minor release that allowed joining to a Windows 2008 or 2008 R2 domain. Too bad the device does not make it easy on you to do the simple upgrade.

If those issues were tolerable, the actual performance of the machine was certainly not. While reads could almost saturate my gigabit network (which was very cool to see!), writes were woefully slow. When not doing anything but a dedicated write, maximum speeds topped out at about 20MBps (~160Mbps). Since this is primarily a machine for streaming media content, that wasn't too much a concern, however if I were streaming a Blu-Ray movie or even a DVD on the device while trying to write to it, the experience would become completely untenable. The movie would get really choppy and then outright fail. This was a completely unacceptable outcome, given I was transferring small photos to the device. Watching the CPU get maxed out for writes shows that this has a weak software RAID controller, which tax the CPU beyond usability. Granted, since this an x86 platform, you can upgrade the CPU and memory on the device, but I would opine that throwing incremental hardware upgrades would only produce marginal results. These dreadful results were experienced on both RAID 5 and 0+1 configurations. All in all the experience could have been greatly enhanced if the device would enable some sort of QoS so that streamed media received greater CPU priority, even if that meant that writes were slower.

I could have learned to deal with some of the other feature drawbacks this device has, but given its performance (or lack thereof) I cannot recommend this device for any storage need.

Atlas Shrugged: 50 Years Ahead Of Its Time

Wayne Hartman — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:14:10 GMT

I'm only four chapters into Atlas Shrugged, but the parallels to modern events are startling. The main industry that this book involves (at least so far) is the railroad business:

Then it was said that large, established railroad systems were essential to the public welfare; and that the collapse of one of them would be a national catastrophe; and that if one such system had happened to sustain a crushing loss in a public-spirited attempt to contribute to international good will, it was entitled to public support to help it survive the blow.

Substitute railroad for bank and we have just read the news for the past year or so. Scary isn't it?

Death of the Dedicated Device

Wayne Hartman — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:34:08 GMT

Today Google announced free navigation for the new version of its mobile software, Android 2.0. Seems like a pretty innocuous announcement until you consider who the players are in the market. TomTom and Garmin are two of the biggest players in the hand held consumer GPS market, so it came as no surprise that their business model might take a hit. Consider today's stock graph following the accouncement:

Ouch! It doesn't take a stock analyst to point out that anyone in the handheld GPS market is going to have an interesting time staying relevant in a marketplace where a once valued (and pricey) product is being given away for free. TomTom and Garmin are feeling the pinch, but they're not the only ones. The writing on the wall here is that the days of dedicated hand held devices are numbered. Even Apple themselves are seeing it amongst their own product lines. The iPod Classic and even the Nano are seeing shrinking sales all because people have discovered that having an iPod Touch or iPhone, which in addition to being able to play music or making a phone call, offer users a vast array of useful applications that fulfill any number of functions.

Who's next? I target eBook readers. The Kindle, Nook, and Sony's dedicated reading devices are the obvious choice for extinction. Though the iPod and iPhone do not necessarily make a comfortable book reading device, one could only imagine what the rumored Apple tablet will bring. If Apple were to combine the power and extensibility of their current iPod Touch/iPhone application experience and marry it with a slick interface for reading electronic books, then it would certainly obviate the need to carry an eBook reader on your person.

Look forward to the future, kids. The power and knowledge of the world is at your fingertips and it is only going to get better.

UPDATE: Right after I post this, I read an article highlighting a Twitter dedicated device. Wow. I am astounded. So what do people do when they have this device and people embed a link to a web page? While I agree that Twitter or Twitter-like communication is the wave of the future (heck, it's already here!), why would I carry such a clunky, one-trick-pony device in my pocket? 1996 just called, they want their glorified pager back!