Upgraded the OS on my home computers recently after getting tired of the limitations of the old versions.

Asus EEE 901:
The original Xandros was OK I suppose for an attempt at a mass-market OS, once one figured out how to run a terminal and use it properly! It’s main limitation was the backup/restore system which froze the original OS files on the 4GB OS SSD, even after software upgrades were installed, resulting in the OS partition soon becoming full. This not only prevented further updates but caused some system stability issues. Also, it seems as if Asus has gone off Linux on netbooks. Time to move on.

New choice is Eeebuntu. I went for base 3.0 and it is excellent. The good:

• Proper linux interface
• More sensible OS disk management means I have more software installed and still reasonable space left
• Most things Just Worked, including Wifi, Vodaphone 3G broadband and Skype (but see below).
• Wider range of software available? Certainly seems easier to find and install things, e.g. banshee.

Minor hassles:

• The install didn’t notice the 16GB user SSD, which I didn’t want to touch during the update, hence Eeebuntu set up a new user account on the 4GB OS SSD. Some work required to mount the 16GB SSD and shuffle files around, but all working OK now. Perhaps I missed something during the install process?
• Camera didn’t work in Skype. Must be enabled in the BIOS for Eeebuntu (so how did it work under Xandros? Never mind).
• Boot time seems slower than Xandros, but still very fast.

Dell laptop:
I’ve used SuSE for many years at work and at home. Installed openSuSE 11.1 on the new desktop, but to be honest I’ve used Vista on that a lot more[1]. It is only with upgrading my laptop from openSuSE 10.3 to 11.1 that I have fully appreciated how much better it is. The good:

• NetworkManager 0.7.0 is a vast improvement. Previously I had a lot of trouble connecting to Wifi points. The newer version is better for managing different wired configurations as well. Must try the 3G broadband. That never worked under 10.3.
• zypper used to cripple the system at login. Never could understand why an online update program would want to do so much work before there was a functioning internet connection. Now updates happen properly (i.e. are suggested to me to approve) with much less overhead and fuss.
• Banshee was the last straw that made me update from SuSE 10.3. New version (1.4.0) in Suse 11.1 is much better at importing CDs[2] and is also quite a decent video player. Still don’t like Amarok at all.

The not so good:

• Firefox3.0 is slow, and acroread 8 is glacial. They need a lot of performance optimisation.
• Sound quality and volume control are not as good in smplayer and banshee. It seems a lot more difficult than it was to get the volume consistent across different files, and to get some files loud enough without losing quality.

Overall though, very happy with the updates.

[1] For those critical physics simulation applications (Call of Duty 4, Crysis, …).
[2] It’s always a pain when it reports the new CD as Unknown Album from Unknown Artist[3], but at least some thought has gone into improving the efficiency of inputting the meta data by hand. Can’t find an easy way to send this data back to their repository though, even just as a suggestion for someone to check.
[3] Currently loading All the Ghosts by Gwyneth Herbert, 12 hours after the album launch gig. Come on internet, do try to keep up!

Today is Memorial Day in the US. Here are just four of those who should be remembered. Why Jason Cunningham didn’t get the Medal of Honor beats me.

The new Oxford Jazz Festival has been running this weekend. Am I glad I checked the gig listings on Daily Info on Friday morning! I hope this festival survives; apparently many others around the UK are dying. I caught three of the acts. First was Andrea Mann, with a excellent mix of jazz standards, covers of more recent pop songs and one new original piece. The last was Sara Mitra. who was simply phenomenal at mostly 30’s jazz and blues numbers, despite being extremely pregnant.

Difficult to choose between them as their styles are quite distinct, but I think overall the best was Gwyneth Herbert. Mostly original jazz-folk songs (plus a couple of covers) with Hackney attitude. Damn but she can sing. Tremendous stage presence and rapport with her band as well. If you were anywhere else in Oxford last Saturday night, you were in the wrong place.

Google is sometimes said to be the only company that makes significant amounts of money from advertising online. This comes from two basic sources, ads that accompany search results on Google (AdWords) [1] and the money Google makes from running ads on other websites (AdSense).

Google money machine defies common sense, according to The Register. I’ll leave the finer details to those more knowledgeable about the inner working of Google’s ad system. There is a more basic point that puzzles me – why does anyone ever click on the AdWords ads?

Clearly PageRank will never be perfect, but people must have a high degree of confidence in it, else they would not use Google as a search engine. Thus, when searching for widgets, if a particular widget vendor doesn’t appear high up in the PageRank results, why click on its paid Ad? It’s obviously not the best choice. AdSense ads on other websites (e.g. newspapers, blogs, etc) may make sense, but if any website shouldn’t have ads it is a search engine.

[1] Apparently these are the links that appear in a column on the RHS of the screen, underneath where the red ABP stop sign normally is in Firefox.

An article by Bethany McLean from last October.

While for a short period in the aftermath of Enron, we did understand that short-sellers serve a good purpose, we have also forgotten that. Short-sellers were the first to warn there were problems at Enron.

Sadly, this is also true:

Which leads to the most sobering repeat lesson of all. Most of the believers in the free market only believe in it when it is going their way. When it doesn’t, it’s someone else’s fault.

Is more regulation the answer? No. (BTW the Iceland article linked at the bottom of that post was very interesting as well).

Charles Murray on The Happiness of the People.

Finally, lots of other blogs are linking to a recent speech by Daniel Hannan. Might as well join them.

Novelty is, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the computer industry’s oldest invention.

Perhaps the most important element of the deal lies in Sun’s potential for cloud computing. This emerging technology lets people and businesses buy processing power as a service, over the Internet, rather than having to purchase, own, and manage their own expensive machines. Cloud computing consumers pay monthly fees for services provided by companies that specialize in operating computers super-efficiently in vast data centers. “Cloud computing is a different way of consuming and delivering computing,” says Erich Clementi, general manager of enterprise initiatives at IBM, who spoke to BusinessWeek two weeks before news of the Sun negotiations was made public. “It has the potential to transform nearly everything we do.”

Emerging? Different? Transform? Rubbish. I’ve nothing against Cloud Computing per se[1]. I just wish companies, no doubt staffed by industry veterans, would stop pretending this is something new. It’s not. It’s just the 40+ year old idea of a computer bureau with a fancier interface, and less COBOL. Of all companies, IBM should know this!

Hopefully at some point we, as an industry, can acknowledge and celebrate the achievements of past generations, rather than denigrate and ignore them just to make our incremental improvements seem more revolutionary to the venture capitalists.

[1] Though I do love this quote.

I’m willing to be convinced, but I wish the arguments of those in favour were more precise. From the Economist:

Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters

No it won’t, and not only because

Legalisation would not drive gangsters completely out of drugs; as with alcohol and cigarettes, there would be taxes to avoid and rules to subvert.

Sure, it will greatly hurt their finances[1], but they will simply try to increase their other criminal activities to compensate. The “war on major criminal gangs” will continue, probably forever.

Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use on the one hand,

In the legalisation camp, some argue for taxing and selling it, some for giving it on prescription to addicts[2]. Which is it? Surely not both, where people could buy it for a while until they can claim they are addicts, and then get it free on the NHS?[3]

… and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and prostitution to which addicts now resort to feed their habits.

I have sympathy for those in prostitution, as they usually end up doing far more harm to themselves than anyone else. Zero sympathy for the thieves. These are not desperate acts they resort to, they are crimes against innocent people they freely choose to commit.

Drugs are not really the problem. Failing to hold people responsible for their actions is.

[1] They could always become the newly legit suppliers.
[2] Strange how we don’t prescribe whiskey to alcoholics.
[3] Never gone for any of these drugs personally. I am however addicted to fillet steaks. Can I get help for this on the NHS?

A couple of posts on technology innovation here and here. From the second:

With the 3G iPhone, Apple not only outdid Nokia and RIMM, they outdid their future selves. They created the acme, the Nazz of the smartphone, and some sort of new undiscovered technological innovation is needed to proceed to the next level. Meantime, we will see next week that most everyone has caught up. There’s a word for what happens next: commoditisation. When no substantive competitive advantage exists, prices contract, margins tank, customers get to boss you around, and no-one is nice to you any more.

Does the Onion have the answer? (probably NSFW).

Gillian Tett:

The Lehman collapse has sown a sense of terror about creditors losing money on any bank bonds they hold. The only way truly to remove that terror would be for the government to persuade investors that banks are so healthy they cannot collapse – or promise to protect creditors if they do.

I would humbly suggest another option, namely that the banks should actually be so healthy they cannot collapse. International Monetary Exchanges are certainly not the solution, they will just create an even bigger mess next time.

Sippican Cottage talking about his father (via TimW). My condolences.

… doesn’t seem to apply any more, according to Harriet Harman and John Prescott. Shameful. Dangerous for all of us, but also for them – the court of public opinion may not be too keen on their pension arrangements, and that could be the least of their problems.

PS: I support Fred Goodwin’s rights, not him. If he had any honour, he would give up more than just his pension. Given the scale of his failure, and the harm it is doing to innocent taxpayers, in a past age he would be expected to commit suicide.

David Blanchflower wants to change the MPC’s remit:

Professor Blanchflower also questioned whether the benchmark CPI index was the right tool for the MPC to measure inflation, because it does not take house prices into account. He suggested that including house prices could have helped the MPC to justify rate cuts sooner

I wonder if he made a fuss about this when appointed in June 2006? When interest rates should have been significantly higher?

Given the light taxation of, and stupid attitudes towards, property in the UK, house price bubbles are to be expected. Not including them in the inflation measure used by the MPC was always a stupid idea. The blame for that belongs mostly to Gordon Brown, but also to all current and past MPC members who were either:

• incompetent, and couldn’t see the danger
• realised it was a bad idea but lacked the integrity and moral courage to do anything about it
• corrupt, and profited from hyping up property prices