Daily question: Foot. Bullet. Trigger.
Thu, Jan 15, 09
From The Crystal Reports® Underground, SAP resurrects the “screenshots” issue:
Business Objects claims that no one can use a Crystal Reports screenshot in a book without their approval. They sent letters to courseware vendors (including me) telling use that we need to get permission to use screenshots in our books. Most vendors ignored those letters and nothing more was said in the three years since. Now it appears that more letters are going out from SAP (who now owns Business Objects). I read one of the letters this past week and it talks about screenshots and adds a new warning about using SAP trademarks like the term “Crystal Reports”. The letter was very impressive, with majestic references to various sections of US copyright and trademark law. Sprinkled throughout the letter was the Latin incantation “inter alia” to make it seem almost pontifical. It sounded so ominous that it brought to mind the blustering Wizard of Oz (“ignore the little man behind the curtain”).
Large-scale enterprise vendors like IBM, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft sell complexity and arbitrage general IT cluelessness, fear and risk adversity. It’s good business if you can get it.
Does anyone still wonder why they go out of their way to not make their products less user-hostile when the obligatory training, support and maintenance taxes are integral profit channels without which some of these products may not even be viable?
Noted: Your coffee maker. Running Windows. Again.
Wed, Jan 14, 09
From Ars Technica, “Microsoft’s new vision: a computer in every… coffee maker?”:
If you need your alarm clock to do double-duty as secretary for your day’s appointments, or you want a coffee maker that knows you’re grinding the beans too fine, Microsoft and Fugoo want to talk to you later this year. The two companies are working on “the next generation” of household appliances, gadgets, and accessories that are not only connected to the Internet, but also utilize a standard API for communicating with each other.
Microsoft touts a few fictional devices in its announcement of this technology and was showing off two concept products at its CES booth. The first is a “net clock” that can display stock information, local traffic, and weather reports in addition to, you know, actually telling time. Another is a digital photo frame that goes far beyond slideshows to display news headlines, sports scores, or full-length movies.
Fugoo interface:
One of the reactions to the announcement, mac the naïf:
An x86 seems like a rediculous CPU to use in a coffee maker, unless Windows is a requirement.
Plausible scenarios:
Coffee machines come with a mandatory exclusive 2-year contract with Starbucks, which tracks your coffee consumption and sells the information to your health insurer.
Hackers break into your coffee machine and substitute 0xdecaf.
Your coffee machine tries to upgrade its software and fails, flooding the kitchen with packets and taking down the refrigerator and microwave in the process.
The milk in your refrigerator spoils, and it responds by ordering 65536 gallons, with the attached side-of-0xdeadbeef upgrade.
In Why Apple doesn’t do “Concept Products” I tried to explain why removing real-world constraints from (prototype) design often results in marketplace failure. Of course, only if Microsoft could actually learn from failure. Remember Microsoft’s Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT)? Hint, hint. Not even the Fossil Microsoft Wrist Net MSNDirect SPOT Watch from half a decade ago?
Daily question: The Ripley Scroll
Tue, Jan 13, 09
A small section from the amazing Ripley Scroll at Bibliodyssey:
The remarkable Ripley Scroll is, in simple terms, an alchemical manuscript that shows in pictorial cryptograms the production of the philosopher’s stone (the elusive ingredient that produces incorruptible gold out of lesser metals; and/or the elixir of life).
Part of the upcoming exhibition “Book of Secrets: Alchemy and the European Imagination, 1500-2000″ at the Yale Beinecke Library, from January 20 to April 18, 2009.
When the modern alchemy of Enrons, Satyams, Madoffs, Ponzi schemes, opaque derivates, VC exit strategies and the like are captured someday in a long stroll, will it be as masterfully depicted?
Daily question: Focusing on the margins?
Fri, Dec 12, 08
In the picture you can see how the Ecofont is created by omitting parts of the letter. At the shown size, this obviously is not very nice, but at a regular font size it is actually very usable. Naturally, the results vary depending on your software and the quality of your screen. The Ecofonts works best for OpenOffice, AppleWorks and MS Office 2007. Printing with a laser printer will give the best printing results.
The Ecofont is based on the Vera Sans, an Open Source letter, and is available for both PC and MAC.
It’s hard to be against motherhood and apple pie, but
would you still use ecofont if you found out, for example, that your PC and printer had to work harder to render so many curves in the form of holes and thus ended up wasting more electricity?
Daily question: Parking your mind
Tue, Dec 9, 08
Mimetic architecture is not entirely new. But Jonathan Moreau captures a rather unique confluence of surprise and sensibility at the Kansas City library parking garage:
What’s ironic here is the fact that this is the part of the country where not too long ago “the board of education – then dominated by conservative Republicans – voted to reject evolution as a scientific theory and erased most references to it from the state curriculum,” as reported in Los Angeles Times. Form follows function: those pesky books…in the middle of the city.
Do you have a mimetic structure where you live?
