Author: D'Arque Bishop

Scratching below the Surface of Microsoft’s apparent “Me Too” syndrome…

D'Arque Bishop3 Comments

Two days ago, Microsoft announced the Surface, their new in-house tablet. Running Windows 8 or Windows RT (depending on the architecture), it appears to be a standard tablet with an interesting unique feature. The screen cover is in fact a keyboard, supposedly capable of detecting the difference between typing and when an arm or hand is laying across it.

Microsoft posted the announcement trailer on YouTube for all to see.

Right off the bat, I noticed two problems. The first is that according to reports, the Surface will not be sold everywhere. It can only be purchased online and through the Microsoft Store’s retail locations, as opposed to the iPad’s wide availability. The second is that Surface is a quickly recycled name. Until recently “Surface” was the name given to what is now called PixelSense, which is a technology used for touchscreen displays in large environments such as furniture. Harrah’s and Microsoft, for example, made a big deal over the fact that Microsoft Surface/PixelSense displays were installed in the iBar at the Rio in Las Vegas.

Of course, cries from some started coming out that Microsoft was ripping off Apple once again. This prompted an image meme I saw on a friend’s Facebook page yesterday.

To be perfectly honest, there’s some truth in both sides of the argument.

I don’t think anyone can seriously argue that Microsoft isn’t the first to market in some areas of technology, like tablets and phones. The “rip off” (if one wishes to use such a loaded and inaccurate term) is quite a bit more subtle than that. What happens is that Microsoft is the first to market, but its implementation of the technology is clunky at best. Eventually, Apple brings its own version to market, which becomes very popular due to their attention to quality and usability. Microsoft then looks at what Apple did, and re-engineers its products to fix the problems that Apple’s implementation corrected.

For example, let’s look at cell phones. I’ve personally used three different cell phones that used Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system: the Cingular 8125, the Cingular 3125, and the AT&T Tilt. While I enjoyed using the phones because the available software was more varied than the Blackberry devices of the time, the interfaces themselves tended to be awkward, and stability was never a sure thing. Once the iPhone 3G came out (the first version with Exchange ActiveSync support), I switched over and marveled at how intuitive it was to use. After that, Windows Mobile devices seemed even more painful to use. Since then, Microsoft has abandoned Windows Mobile and released Windows Phone 7, which is a far more efficient phone operating system using the Metro UI planned for Windows 8.

Tablets are another example. I’ve seen tablets as far back as 2004, when we purchased a tablet PC for the COO of the company I was working for at the time. To say that the tablet was terrible is, in my opinion, an understatement. While the unit had a touchscreen, a special stylus was needed in order to be able to write on it. Also, the operating system on the tablet was Windows XP Professional. While Windows XP is a great desktop OS, it’s absolutely miserable to use on a touchscreen. I’m not sure how the COO tolerated using that machine outside of a docking station. Of course, once the iPad came out, Microsoft’s tablet ambitions started gearing towards Windows 8/RT with their Metro interface.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that Microsoft’s Surface tablet will be a success like the Xbox 360 or a failure like the Zune. I personally admit to some trepidation, if only because of Microsoft’s OS strategy. Unlike Apple, who has one OS line for its desktop/laptop machines (Mac OS X) and another for its phones and tablets (iOS), Microsoft is using Windows Phone for phones only, while Windows 8 will be used on tablets and desktops/laptops. I’m not sure how well that will work out for them; while Metro works great for a touchscreen interface, I’ve tried it in a desktop environment (VMware virtual machine running Windows 8 Consumer Preview) and it was absolutely terrible. Worse, Metro is the default UI and disabling it is not possible. With a keyboard and mouse, Metro is unintuitive and frustrating to figure out.

Of course, only time will tell whether Microsoft’s strategy will work out for them. Unfortunately, while they look to Apple to fix where they went wrong beforehand, I fear they didn’t learn the proper lessons or implement the proper corrections.

An unexpected weekend activity…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, this past weekend was more fun than we expected.

On Saturday, Jennifer and I had planned to see the play Noises Off! at the Alley Theatre, using tickets given to us as wedding shower presents given to us by our friend Julie’s parents. That in and of itself would have made for a wonderful evening, but I managed to find a nice surprise on Twitter. One of our favorite authors, John Scalzi, announced on his Twitter feed that he was going to be doing a reading, a Q&A, and a book signing at the Brazos Bookstore that day at 4 PM. His newest book, Redshirts, had just been released, and this was part of the publicity tour. Realizing we had plenty of time before the play to go to the book signing, we decided to go ahead and go. We briefly considered bringing one of our Old Man’s War books for him to sign, but decided that we would just buy a copy of Redshirts there and have him sign it.

This was our first visit to the Brazos Bookstore, and we rather enjoyed their product selection. Whenever possible, we like to shop and eat at local places instead of chain stores, so we resolved to start shopping there for new books we want. Unfortunately, when we got there, their entire stock of Redshirts was out. However, the people there were nice enough to take down people’s info so that when new copies came in, they’d send them to Scalzi for signing, and then sell them when they arrived back at the store. Jennifer and I both left our info (as we both wanted signed copies), and sat down to watch the talk.

The talk was very interesting and amusing. Apparently he had promised that if someone brought a ukelele, he would sing the theme song to Redshirts (originally written and performed by Jonathan Coulton), and someone obliged. He did a reading of some material, plus did a skit that explained the literary theme of Redshirts (namely, how screwed up the world of Star Trek was from a safety standpoint). When it came time to do the actual book signing, we obviously didn’t have a book to give him to sign, so we decided to browse around the store. Admittedly, I thought of asking him to sign a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey, simply to see what his reaction would be…

In the end, Jennifer bought a gift for a friend, and I got a copy of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. We had a great time at the bookstore, and truly enjoyed being able to go out and see Scalzi talk about his craft. Afterwards, we went to Hillstone (formerly Houston’s) for dinner, and then we went to see Noises Off!, which was as hysterically funny as we expected.

All in all, it was a wonderful day, especially with the added treat of getting to see John Scalzi. I just wish every weekend had that kind of pleasant surprise. :-)

An uninformed meme at a coincidental time…

D'Arque Bishop

It’s no secret that Jennifer and I watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on a regular basis. He may be a comedian, but he tends to have some of the most insightful commentary on current news items. That said, we found his piece on Florida’s governor Rick Scott yesterday to be both hilarious and insightful. I’ll post the embed here so you can get caught up on the gist of what was said.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Purge Overkill
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

 

By sheer coincidence, one of my friends on Facebook shared the following photo this morning:

Of course, my first reaction was to think of what Jon Stewart said in the above clip. My friend Joseph also made the observation that it doesn’t help anyone, simply because there are not any alternatives for people who fail the drug testing other than losing public assistance, at which point they turn to crime to get their fix.

However, the problem with the system is a lot more fundamental. As reported in the news recently, only 2-3% of welfare applicants in Florida failed drug screenings, and less than half of those canceled their drug screening. Worse, as the state was required to reimburse applicants for the cost of the screening, the state actually ended up spending $46,000 more than it would have if it had simply given the people who failed the drug screening the welfare money in the first place. In other words, the state ended up spending more money on a program that did not have a significant effect.

In fact, the only winner in this situation is Rick Scott, who can claim to be tough on “welfare fraud”, even though this program has been proven ineffective. Supporters of the bill claim that it was never about saving money, but was to keep welfare from being used for drugs. Even if that is the case, isn’t a tenet of Tea Party dogma (Scott ran under a Tea Party platform) an abhorrence for wasteful government spending? Would this not be a perfect example of wasteful spending, if it’s doing nothing yet costs thousands of dollars?

Interestingly enough, Scott cofounded a company called Solantic, who does drug testing among other services it provides. While there is no link that I’ve found linking Solantic to the welfare drug testing, it is linked to drug testing state employees. According to reports, Rick Scott is legally in the clear because he moved his financial stake in the company to a trust his wife oversees, but I would argue that it does not ethically put him in the clear. That is mostly a point for another discussion, but it does strike me as more than a little coincidental that Scott is gung-ho for this policy when he has a financial stake in a drug testing firm.

In any event, the fact is that this policy ended up being a colossal failure when implemented in Florida. Moreover, a Federal court has granted a temporary injunction against the law while waiting for it to go to trial. The judge in that case even made the point that she would likely find it unconstitutional. My advice to those thinking of posting this meme to your Facebook walls is this: take a look at its effectiveness so far, take a look at our courts are looking at it, and ask yourself if it’s really worth the time and effort on something that appears to be an ineffective waste.

NetherRealm is giving us Injustice.

D'Arque Bishop

So, NetherRealm Studios has officially announced their next game. It’s called Injustice: Gods Among Us, and it’s a fighting game based on the DC superheroes.

Of course, this isn’t NetherRealm’s first foray into DC-based games. The last game they made as part of Midway was a crossover with their Mortal Kombat series called Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, and they recently released a companion game to Batman: Arkham City for iOS called Batman: Arkham City Lockdown. However, this looks like this is the first time they’ve been given their own property to work with, as Lockdown was essentially a prequel to Rocksteady’s game, and the DC side of MKvDCU was very by-the-book.

It appears (according to an interview with Ed Boon) that whereas MKvDCU used the concept of a magical “rage” to explain how characters such as Batman and the Joker (who is not an announced character in Injustice; Harley Quinn, on the other hand, is) could go toe-to-toe with heavy-hitters such as Superman and Wonder Woman, Injustice separates the characters into two types: “power” characters (like Superman), and “gadget” characters (like Batman). Environments appear to be a big factor in the game as well, with items in the arenas able to be used as offensive and defensive weapons.

Not much is revealed about the storyline, other than a tagline given during the trailer: “What if our greatest heroes became our greatest threat?” It sounds like they’re going for a variation of the Justice Lords storyline from the Justice League episode “A Better World”. In it, the Justice League of another universe become the fascist Justice Lords after the Flash is executed by President Lex Luthor, who is then himself murdered by Superman to keep him from starting a world war. Another option is a variation of the Young Justice story “Auld Acquaintance”, where the Justice League fell under the mental control of Vandal Savage and Klarion, and were used to cause devastation offworld. It should be interesting to see where the storyline goes, especially after the critically acclaimed story mode that Mortal Kombat had.

In any event, it definitely looks like this will be a must-buy for me; since parting from Midway, the guys at NetherRealm have done a superb job with their games, and I admit I’m a sucker for DC-related media. It’s just too bad it won’t be coming out until next year.

Hey, “Political Survey Group”? Stop calling my cell.

D'Arque Bishop2 Comments

I admit to annoyance.

Over the past week or two, I’ve been receiving several automated calls to my cell phone. The message is the same on each one: they claim to be with a group called the “Political Survey Group”, that they know I must be frustrated with the direction the country is going, and asking me to take part in a quick political survey, after which I will be compensated with a free cruise. The first time I got the call, I listened to the message long enough to get to the “free cruise” part, and promptly hung up, figuring it to be a scam. Since then they’ve called a few more times, but never on my home line. Each call has been to my cell phone, which last I checked was illegal (as it’s from a robocall).

After doing a little research, I found that it is indeed a scam. The automated survey is only a few questions long, at which point they direct you to a representative with the cruise line. It’s at that point you’re told that in order to get the “free cruise”, you’re required to pay a port tax up front.

Personally, I’m considering it a particularly slimy scam, especially as they’re using a political survey as the lead-in during a rather heated election season. More, as I said, they’ve been calling cell phones, which means the recipient of the call has to pay for it. I know there are exceptions to the National Do Not Call Registry for political messages; I wonder if they’re using the “political survey” as an end-run around the rules.

In any event, do yourselves a favor. If you get a call from these people, hang up on them immediately, or better, don’t answer at all (especially if the call is from the 360 area code).

Twice nothing is still nothing, and an interesting rephrase.

D'Arque Bishop

http://www.khou.com/home/TSA-wants-to-double-security-fees-for-round-trip-flights-155434915.html

HOUSTON—A Senate committee has approved a plan to double the fees charged to airline flyers to help fund the Transportation Security Administration.

Every flyer pays a $2.50 federal fee each way to help fund the TSA.

The proposal that just passed out of a US Senate committee would make that $5 each way or $10 per round trip.

Most federal agencies are trying to avoid the budget axe but the Transportation Security Administration is looking for direct revenue.

Adding an increase to the TSA budget would not be a problem if we got anything out of it, but the problem we face is that we’re getting nothing from them except for extra hassle at the airports. Even experts such as former FBI counterterrorism experts and the former security chief for El Al Airlines have said the TSA is remarkably ineffective, providing an illusion of security while doing absolutely nothing to make us safer. If the added money were to be used for more effective procedures, that would be one thing. However, there is no indication that that is in the cards; they even asked a Congressional panel to rescind their invitation to security expert and TSA critic Bruce Schneier, keeping him from testifying about the TSA’s problems.

I’m not one for conspiracy theories, mind, but I noticed something interesting yesterday morning when watching the local CBS affiliate’s early news. I happened to walk by the TV when it was showing the news story about the fee increase, talking about reactions from viewers on their Facebook page. At the end of the piece, one of the two anchors, Ron Trevino, said, “Well, if it makes people feel sa… if it makes people safer…” I thought that was a fascinating self-correction; as stated earlier, one of the biggest criticisms of the TSA is that it engages in what Schneier aptly calls “security theater”, providing an illusion of safety while not actually making people safe. Saying people “feel safer” leads into the question of whether people actually ARE safer. If one didn’t know better, one might think the station might be pushing the current status quo and toeing the TSA’s public line that they are making travel safer, when the evidence states otherwise. The anchor’s rephrasing would fall under those lines, if one bought into that theory.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into it. However, it just struck me as interesting that such a correction would be made.

It all boils down to Ticketmaster’s evil.

D'Arque Bishop

Right now, I think Jennifer and I deserve to feel like we’ve been ripped off.

Two nights ago, we went to go see Styx and REO Speedwagon at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, better known in these parts as the Woodlands Pavilion. For those people not familiar with it (which won’t be anyone in the Houston area), it’s an open-air concert venue about 30 miles north of downtown Houston. One of its most defining features is the lawn seating; the back half of the audience area is a grass area where you can just sit anywhere you want. You can bring in your own blankets to sit on, or you can rent a lawn chair for $6 apiece. We almost always choose the lawn option, as you can get good seats there while still able to see the stage.

As we were driving up to the Woodlands Pavilion, we remembered that we had seen emails from both the Pavilion and from Ticketmaster that a pre-sale for Journey, Pat Benatar, and Loverboy was going on. I admittedly have a soft spot in my heart for Journey, as I consider them a bit of a geek friendly band. Not only did they provide two songs for the soundtrack to Tron, they were the first band ever to have a video game based on them. Jennifer loves their music, too, so we decided to buy tickets. We picked two lawn seats priced at $32.50, bought them, and were good to go.

Fast forward to this morning. I was checking Twitter, and the official Twitter account for the Woodlands Pavilion announced that tickets for lawn seating were on special for $20. Feeling more than a little annoyed, I replied asking if there was anything I could do to get the $20 price, and they said there was nothing they could do, but that they wished they could do something to help. I ended up contacting Ticketmaster asking for help. They were very unhelpful and unapologetic, saying our tickets could not be refunded or exchanged, and that they were not responsible for changing the prices. According to the representative I spoke to, those changes were done by the promoter or venue, and was not up to Ticketmaster. I ended up thanking them for nothing and hanging up.

Now, keep in mind that normally I don’t have a problem with prices going down or specials later on that I miss. The problem we had was that we essentially paid $25 for the privilege of buying tickets “early”, for a venue that likely will not sell out. Worse, they dropped the price the day the tickets officially went on sale with no warning. From this point forward, why would I buy tickets early when there’s now a history that the price will drop the day they officially go on sale?

The worst part came after I got off the phone with Ticketmaster. I had tweeted to the Pavilion that Ticketmaster had blamed them or the promoter. Whoever was manning the official Pavilion Twitter account said they didn’t think it was them, but that they would check with the box office. Sure enough, they confirmed that it was the promoter that was behind the price change decision. The promoter, in this case, is Live Nation. Live Nation, for those not aware, merged with Ticketmaster over a year ago.

In other words, they changed the price and then used weasel terminology to absolve themselves of any wrongdoing.

Jennifer and I will still go to the concert, but the whole experience has been soured by Ticketmaster’s actions. I don’t blame the Pavilion at all; even though they couldn’t help us, they were still far more sympathetic to our plight than Ticketmaster was. I know now that we won’t be buying pre-sale tickets through Ticketmaster anymore, as they’ve shown there’s no benefit to it. I just wish there were alternatives to Ticketmaster out there, as most venues I know of use them for ticketing. I wonder if this could be used as an example of a monopoly that does not benefit customers.

It certainly didn’t turn out to be a benefit to us.

Consolidation via virtualization…

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

As I’ve stated in previous posts, I host servers at my house. I suppose I could just have email and web services for my domain hosted by services like what Google offers, but to be honest I like having full control over my mail and web services. After the incident a few months back that caused me to upgrade my main server, I started looking into upgrading my two remaining servers. I reasoned that if a total hardware failure on old equipment can happen to my main server, it could happen to my two other servers. After all, they were much older, as the DNS server was fifteen years old, and the test server was ten years old.

However, the main problem I saw was one of costs and resources. While the hardware for both servers was ancient in computer terms, it also still did the trick as far as requirements were concerned. Neither server ran anything that was resource-intensive, so buying two brand new servers seemed like serious overkill. It finally occurred to me that I could migrate both servers to one brand new box using virtualization. I originally planned on using VMware vSphere Hypervisor, which is free and I was very familiar with from my last job. However, I soon realized that in order to use it, I’d have to purchase hardware that was quite a bit more expensive than I was willing to pay for. In the end, I opted for KVM running on top of CentOS.

I ended up ordering an HP Proliant server from Newegg that was similar to the previous server I had purchased, albeit a newer model. In addition, I purchased 4 GB of additional RAM to install. Once it arrived, I ended up shutting down the test server and putting the new server in its place. Installing the operating system went fine, as did making sure virtualization was enabled. When it came time to set up the virtual DNS server, though, I hit a couple of snags. The first was that Slackware Linux (the distro of Linux I use for the DNS server) didn’t like booting after installation from KVM. I ended up finding this tutorial that helped me get around that problem. The second was that once the old DNS server was shut down and the new one started, the new one couldn’t pass any traffic to the internet. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized that simply power-cycling the cable modem (to clear the ARP cache) would fix the issue. As soon as the virtual DNS server was brought online, I quickly put together the virtual test server and shortly had it online, too. I’ve since done a secure wipe of the hard drives of the old servers, and have them in a corner of my office waiting to be taken in for recycling. The only part that isn’t going to be recycled is the test server’s 320 GB hard drive, and that’s simply because my father wants it for his home PC.

I have to say, I’m pretty happy with how this has turned out. For one thing, shutting down the two older servers and replacing them with the one virtual host server has actually caused the temperature in my office to go down considerably, where it’s actually comfortable to sit in there for extended periods now. In addition, whereas the test server couldn’t sit on the battery backup due to load concerns, I now can have all of my servers covered by the battery backup. All in all, I’m spending less (in electricity due to power and A/C), have more stable and up-to-date hardware, the cart with my servers is less cluttered, and it’s working as stable as it did before. I can pretty much consider this migration a success. :-)

Reading is FUNdamental, and shouldn’t be procrastinated.

D'Arque Bishop

I’ve been getting a bit ashamed of my reading queue.

It’s not the books that I have in the queue, mind you. It’s the fact that I haven’t been reading much at all recently. It used to be where I would voraciously read books, but as of late I haven’t been doing much, if any, reading. It’s not so much a matter of time as it is just getting around to it. I tend to read books very quickly, where I can power through a good book in a matter of a few hours. I just need to sit down and actually do so.

That’s my plan for this week, anyway. Saturday night I finally sat down and read The Hunger Games, as Jennifer and I bought tickets to see the movie this coming weekend with her parents. I rather enjoyed the book, and am now looking forward to seeing it as a result. The next book in my reading queue is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson; I’ve seen both the Swedish and American films, but haven’t yet read the original novel. I feel bad that I haven’t yet, and am borrowing my mother-in-law’s copy to read this week. I plan to step away from the gaming this week to do so.

As for when I’m done with those, I still have a collection of H.P. Lovecraft’s works to read, From Russia, With Love by Ian Fleming, a collection of WarCraft novels, The Shining by Stephen King, The Warlords of Nin by Stephen Lawhead, and A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin.

The latter two are the main entries in my pile of shame. The Warlords of Nin is the second book of Lawhead’s Dragon King cycle; I read the first book way back in 1990 or 1991 in order to entertain myself through downtimes during standardized testing in my junior year of high school. Lawhead’s Dragon King cycle is pretty hard to find, and I only just found the second book a year or so back at the Pearland Half-Price Books. One would think that I would have read it immediately, but instead it went onto my bookshelf and I hadn’t touched it since. I’ve promised myself that in the next month or so, it’ll be read to completion as part of my current reading queue.

As for A Game of Thrones… one would think I would devour it immediately given my predilection for fantasy and science fiction and the fact that a TV adaptation has been airing on HBO. However, I’ve found it fairly difficult to get through. Whereas I’d power through most books pretty quickly, I’ve found A Game of Thrones fairly rich and slow going. I’ve only made it through MAYBE a quarter to a third of the book, and I finally got to a point where I decided to let it rest. My copy is now with my mother-in-law, as I’m letting her borrow it while she’s on a business trip to San Francisco. I figure I’ll finish it when she’s done and I can put it in my queue, but for now, it’s on the backburner.

It’ll be nice to finally clear out some of my reading queue… especially considering I know there are other books Jennifer has in her book collection I want to read. As I said earlier, I plan on keeping the Xbox 360 and PC shut down while I’m at home so I can concentrate on catching up on the books in my collection. Hopefully by the end of the week, if I don’t have my queue as stated above finished, I’ll have a significant dent taken out of it. :-)

A quick followup to the previous post…

D'Arque Bishop

Early last week, I wrote up a blog post arguing why we would not be seeing Mortal Kombat released for PC. Essentially, it boiled down to high piracy rates combined with low legal demand meaning that the projected proceeds would not be enough to cover the cost of porting. In response, several people argued that that there was demand for Mortal Kombat for PC, and that there would be enough sales that the “low” cost of porting the game would be covered. One item brought up by more than one person was that the soon-to-be-released PC version of Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection would prove that there was a high demand for Mortal Kombat on PC.

Well, yesterday, I was informed by a knowledgeable friend that Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection has been leaked to download sites by pirates, and MK fans have already been spreading the word about it.

Thanks, assholes. Way to prove me right.