Blog Currents – 2012 Feb 15

This is why people turn to piracy. The day after the death of Whitney Huston, Sony and Apple doubles the price of her albums on their pay sites. There are sites, easily found, that will give you her discography for free, in high def sound. As I have been writing for many years now music makers and distributers don’t understand people, they don’t understand markets and they don’t understand digital media. If they had halved their prices perhaps people might have ignored pirate sites, doubling the price simply tells people not to buy from suppliers like Sony and Apple.

I have been working away at my book on Business Intelligence SQL Server 2008 and the more I read the more things are really the same, just new tools and dressed up to make things easier. That being said it also reinforces my view that given enough time Microsoft can eventually come up with a good set of tools. Many don’t like the Ribbon but Office 2010 is a very powerful business suite. Do you need it at home? Probably not and Open Office could be put in a large number of organisations and do everything they need.

For many years I used DTS (data transformation services) to move data between databases, typically to and from Microsoft ones. The Intelligence Services (SSIS) suite takes DTS, pumps it up with steroids and adds all the tools I ever wanted and most of the tools everyone else also wanted or need in an ETL (export transform load) product. SQL Server has also evolved into a reliable, fully featured database system supporting both relational and cube based functionality. No, I have not been taken over by aliens and while some of my newspaper article readers may be surprised by these sentiments they should remember that I would always write good things about good products. It was just that for many years Microsoft had little that made that grade.

My BIOS problems for example were the result of the Microsoft policy of “if anything changes in the hardware platform then throw a tantrum and freeze the system.” I finally managed to get things up and working and it was not the BIOS but Windows 7’s reaction to the BIOS upgrade. In the end I had to reinstall Windows 7 during which it never complained once proving that it was the “oh my god things have changed” issue rather than a bad BIOS. Of course as soon as I got everything back up and running my Internet went down, not related. It has been four days now with a possible two more before I get back up. In today’s world that is a long time for Internet access to be down and the problem is Australia, where I am now. Service standards are very poor and people don’t work on weekends here.

Not something that would happen in Bangkok any more but in Australia the service is rubbish. On the positive side I use TPG whose service group has easier access to the exchanges than others. I was told by someone in the know that if I was say on Optus it could take at least week to get back up. For an IT professional that relies on e-mails the only real; option appears to be to have a backup redundant connection with a competitor to cover any down time. Remember this if you need good and reliable service or if you work from home. So I am writing and research this week’s article on a computer at the office, not where I work but at least one with a working Internet connection. It also means you get to see it a bit earlier this week. It could be worse I could be in Iran.

Industry News

While I may complain about not having Internet access for a couple of days consider say the Iranians who may have Internet access but little access to Internet material. A week ago the country put a block on all the SSL based VPNs it could find. This was done to make sure local Iranians could not bypass restrictions by using the well known TOR Project. They also found that access to Google Mail, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail was also cut off. There were a number of other services blocked as well effectively cutting Iranians off from any open news services so that the local authorities could control all information to the people. Yes these are the people that most Leftie, Greenie, woolly headed thinkers believe should have access to nuclear weapons.

As I write this some restrictions are being lifted, mostly e-mail access, probably because it is affecting the remaining business with Russia and other sympathetic nation states. The term for this being used, and quite appropriately, is the Halal Internet. This would essentially be a closed Internet system using a NAT firewall around the whole country that will block all haram sites. Best estimates still put this 4 years away and Iran may become a glowing pile of ash in the meantime.  

In a couple of weeks the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is due out and they can no longer abstain from telling people what they are in for. It looks like Windows 8 will generate an environment where the operating system has a big impact on the way that application are written. This will affect how an application is written and how it is delivered. The first problem will be to convince all those who write fro Microsoft that they will need to upgrade the way they do business.

Windows on ARM is another new proposition. Yes there will still be lots of Windows on Intel and Windows on AMD but there is a definite shift to ARM in the future because the mobile platforms are the biggest growing markets. First problem for readers, most current Windows x86 apps will not run on Windows 8, with the exception of Microsoft ones of course. In particular Office 15 and IE 10 will be OK. There will be no plug-ins for IE on the new platform, none at all. No Flash, No Silverlight and so no business apps, web media or advertising will be allowed. WOA will be a locked down system that will probably go the way of iOS i.e. only a small select group of people will ever be interested in it.

The reasoning is to stop bloatware and third party apps clocking up the operating system. ROTFL as it was mostly the Microsoft apps that fitted into that category. Not quite sure where Windows on ARM will end up but I suspect it will never appear on any of my devices. Also not quite sure why Microsoft is trying to take back the role now owned by Apple, i.e. the Evil Empire who controls your every digital experience, but it is not a good look fir the future. 

Not really news but Anonymous and associated groups have been busy attacking the CIA, the Mexican Senate and Interior Ministry websites, Alabama.