Phones

Comics like the below are exactly why I’m subscribed to XKCD’s RSS feed.

Imagine Cup

So, Matt and I have arrived at the top secret location for the Imagine Cup 2008 UK Final (80 Victoria Street, London) and finally managed to get the wireless working long enough to write a blog entry. The schedule for the day is….

11am – Keynote

12pm – Browse posters

1:30pm – A talk on Windows Live Search

2pm – "Working at a startup"

2:30pm "Adapting to a changing environment"

3pm – Imagine Cup Awards Presentation

7pm – Party.

The day seems geared more towards convincing the students that they want to start their own companies, rather than presenting the finalist’s ideas. In fact, I’ve been informed that the judging for the competition is already over and that there won’t be any student presentations today. That’s slightly disappointing, but the posters are looking good and we’ve already met up with this year’s Aberystwyth team. I’ll chat with them more about their ideas later and blog about them if I can get the internet working…

SQL – I don’t like it.

Imagine the following Database setup

TableA has an ID column, AID

TableB has an ID column, BID

Table AB has 2 columns, AID and BID which realte to the IDs from TableA and TableB respectively.

 

Now imagine you want to delete one of the references between an A and a B from TableAB, easy.

DELETE FROM TableAB WHERE AID = @AID and BID = @BID

 

Now tidy up so that any As that aren’t referenced by a B are removed

DELETE FROM TableA WHERE AID NOT IN (SELECT AID FROM TableAB)

 

You might want to throw those two lines in a stored procedure, call it DeleteAB. Now how do we delete all AIDs which are referenced by a specific BID whilst still keeping TableA as clean/empty as possible? One of two ways…

–Get a list of the used AIDs for the specific BID

DECLARE @AIDList CURSOR FOR 

  SELECT a.AID FROM TableA a INNER JOIN TableAB ab ON ab.AID = a.AID WHERE ab.BID = @BID

 

–Loop through the keyword list, calling the StoredProc (DeleteAB) to take care of the acutal deletion

DECLARE @Current_AID int

OPEN @AIDList
FETCH NEXT FROM @AIDList INTO @Current_AID
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
  exec DeleteAB @Current_AID, @BID

  FETCH NEXT FROM @AIDList INTO @Current_AID

END
CLOSE @AIDList
DEALLOCATE @AIDList

Or the quicker way…

DELETE FROM TableAB WHERE BID = @BID

DELETE FROM TableA WHERE AID NOT IN(SELECT AID FROM TableAB)

The thing is, whilst I much prefer reading the SQL code for the second version, I hate the lack of architecture behind it. If we make an alteration to the Database so that A is not used somewhere else, the first example need only alter the StoredProc, whereas the second solution would need an alteration for both the single deletion and multiple deletion methods. In the world of a normal programming language (C# as an example) we’d more than likely go with the architecturally sound version –

public void DeleteAB(int AID, int BID)

{

  //Code to remove AB

}

 

public void DeleteAllAForB(int BID)

{

  //Foreach AID related to BID

  {

     DeleteAB(AID, BID);

  }

}

Why do we get sloppy on the design with SQL? Because we need the performance of the inline code. Not that I like it.

Microsoft Surface in AT&T Stores

I was reading this article (Microsoft Surfaces finds home in AT&T stores) when I wondered how many people wont understand the idea of dragging an icon on a touchscreen. Think about it – a big icon on a monitor looks like a button, so you expect to press it. Thanks to the last 30 years of computing, we expect to be able to click/press most things on a monitor and although dragging might make a lot more sense from some angles (to put a ringtone on the phone you drag the ringtone to the phone) we’ve had too many years of clicking-not-dragging to expect this change to work overnight. Is this what’s preventing more touch specific applications for the tablet PC? And how did Apple manage to do touch so right with the iPhone?

Has Microsoft Lost Its Way On Desktop Computing?

Actually, I agree with this article on ZDNet (Has Microsoft Lost Its Way On Desktop Computing?) which basically says "yes", so this could be a very short "me too" blog post. And it is.

“La La La, I’m not listening” Part 2

Ok, so for those who may not have known the background behind the last post (Hi Mum), the CanSecWest Competition was a contest set up where people could hack into one of three laptops to win that laptop and $10,000. The three laptops (one running Apple’s OSX Leopard, one running Windows Vista SP1 and the third running Ubuntu Linux) were all left standing at the end of day 1 of the contest, during which time the hacks were required to not have the User do anything and the laptops were running a default installation of the latest version (all patches applied) of their OS. On day 2, the hacks were allowed to be kicked off by visiting a website, reading an email or some other normal user action. Within 2 minutes of day 2, the Apple laptop had been hacked into after being sent to a malicious webpage, which led to Roughly Drafted’s outcry of "Macs have no vulnerabilities", "of course it was hacked first – it was a more desirable machine to win", "the contest is flawed because it uses only undiscovered holes" and "the event is sponsored by Microsoft". None of those outcries explains why the other 2 laptops survived the rest of the day.

However, when day 3 rolled around and extra 3rd party software was loaded onto the two remaining machines, the Vista laptop was finally hacked into via a vulnerability in Flash. And at the end of day 3 (the final day of the competition) the only laptop which remained safe and secure was running Ubuntu.

This is a major moment for Linux since the result definitely suggests that Linux is the most secure of the three operating systems. Kudos. However, we can still assume that all three operating systems have security issues, and all the contest really showed is that Ubuntu’s were the hardest to find/hack in three days. Noone’s allowed to get too cocky in this world.

“La La La, I’m not listening”

I’ve never been a fan of Roughly Drafted, but their latest post takes the cake as far as Blind Fanboy My-OS-Is-Better-Than-Your-OS Crap goes. To quote (emphasis added) –

It is an uncontroversial fact that Windows PCs suffer under the threat of tens of thousands of real world viruses, are routinely infected by malware and often unwittingly participate in spam and adware botnets, while Mac systems have no viruses, and no significant real world malware, spyware or botnet problems. However, there is a constant din of pundits, researchers, and security product salesmen who insist that Macs not only have serious security problems, but may actually suffer from more vulnerabilities than Windows PCs. How can these two contradictory ideas possibly be harmonized?

Well they can’t because the first "idea" is a complete lie. There are viruses for the Mac, get over it.

 

To read the full Roughly Drafted ‘article’ – clickety.

IE8 Beta 1

I’m well aware that I’ve only installed IE8 like 3 seconds ago (visit http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/Install.htm to get it) but I’d have thought the Windows Live team could have tested live.com, Live Maps and all the other Windows Live websites against it… Still, www.benshouse.net works…

“With Friends Like These”

Tom Hodgkinson writes an article in the Guardian about Facebook and his thoughts on how it "disconnects us" from our friends. In truth, I haven’t read the entire article yet; Tom lost me when he said "Why on God’s earth would I need a computer to connect with the people around me?"

 

I don’t know Tom, maybe for the same reason you need a phone? Hell, if I were being pedantic, then a phone *is* a computer, but the point is that a computer offers another method of communicating with your friends. In fact it offers several ways of communicating with them – instant messaging, email, voice chat (including VoIP), video conferencing, blogs and many different methods for doing each of those. The point of these isn’t to prevent you from physically interacting with your friends, it’s to help you carry on interacting with them even when you’re apart.

 

Which is where a "utility" like Facebook gets abused. When an application such as Facebook gets overused and starts to replace physical interaction with friends, then you need to stop, look around and think about what’s going on. Tom, your friend spent a Saturday night alone on Facebook, drinking at his desk because *he* chose to. At what point did Facebook leap out of the computer and lock him in his house?

 

I’ll read the rest of the article later, but I couldn’t let a comment like that go without a response.

Bugger

Just got this email from the Internet Radio Service, Pandora. Damn.

hi, it’s Tim,

This is an email I hoped I would never have to send.

As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. It was a terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee. After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible. Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing to us as it is, we have to block the last territory outside of the US.

Based upon the IP address from which you recently visited Pandora, it appears that you are listening from the UK. If you are, in fact, listening from the US, please contact Pandora Support: pandora-support@pandora.com.

It continues to astound me and the rest of the team here that the industry is not working more constructively to support the growth of services that introduce listeners to new music and that are totally supportive of paying fair royalties to the creators of music. I don’t often say such things, but the course being charted by the labels and publishers and their representative organizations is nothing short of disastrous for artists whom they purport to represent – and by that I mean both well known and indie artists. The only consequence of failing to support companies like Pandora that are attempting to build a sustainable radio business for the future will be the continued explosion of piracy, the continued constriction of opportunities for working musicians, and a worsening drought of new music for fans. As a former working musician myself, I find it very troubling.

We have been told to sign these totally unworkable license rates or switch off, non-negotiable…so that is what we are doing. Streaming illegally is just not in our DNA, and we have to take the threats of legal action seriously. Lest you think this is solely an international problem, you should know that we are also fighting for our survival here in the US, in the face of a crushing increase in web radio royalty rates, which if left unchanged, would mean the end of Pandora.

We know what an epicenter of musical creativity and fan support the UK has always been, which makes the prospect of not being able to launch there and having to block our first listeners all the more upsetting for us.

We know there is a lot of support from listeners and artists in the UK for Pandora and remain hopeful that at some point we’ll get beyond this. We’re going to keep fighting for a fair and workable rate structure that will allow us to bring Pandora back to you. We’ll be sure to let you know if Pandora becomes available in the UK. There may well come a day when we need to make a direct appeal for your support to move for governmental intervention as we have in the US. In the meantime, we have no choice but to turn off service to the UK.

Pandora will stop streaming to the UK as of January 15th, 2008.

Again, on behalf of all of us at Pandora, I’m very, very sorry.

-Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)