A Google State of Affairs

In light of recent announcements and blog posts from TechCrunch and other online resources of mine, I thought I should talk about the current state of affairs at Google (or at least, my perspective). As this is partly included in the series of posts on old tech, introduced in the preceding post, lets make sure we know where we are coming from (to quote a famous song) and to give my possibly technologically inferior readers a good starting point for this post.

For all those oldies out there, remember Alta Vista? That old, crappy, insignificant search engine? Well, that was once everyones port of call when it came to internet search! Google Swiftly, and without a trace, murdered it and took over, after its launch in 1998. The company expanded into more areas and is now, as you should now know, developing a phone OS called Android, which I personally believe is flawed from the ground up, to be rationalised later.

Now thats out the way, lets start on the interesting stuff. Google have ventured into the smartphone business, but they have also invested in many other technologies, largely web based, such as Gmail, Chromium projects, Docs, Calendar and most importantly, computer operating systems. The soon to be released "Chrome Books" are running the latest version of Chromium OS. This is largely based on the fact that everything is online, and one only needs a browser. For the most part on netbooks, this is true: how many of you store your documents, or calendars, or contacts, or mail, and the list goes on, online, "in the cloud" in some form or another? Many people already do this, like me, so the idea is not all that bad.

The Ongoing Pinnacle of Human Achievement

After 12 long years of ferrying labs, modules and transport vehicles up and down, The International Space Station (ISS) was completed last week by members of the Endeavor STS-134 NASA Flight crew. When they had attached the final part to the ISS, the space walker “stepped” back and said, “Wow. This is a big Space Station”. All this, I watched on the NASA TV live stream from the space station onboard cameras. The quote will stay with me for a long time, as one of the greatest human achievements within my lifetime.

NASA are about to retire their 30 year old Space Shuttle program. The last flight of Discovery launched in February, Endeavor launched 3 weeks ago, and Space Shuttle Atlantis will grace our skies one last time on July 8th on STS-135, the 135th Space Shuttle mission since the program started 30 years ago.

As NASA look into the future of space flight, I would like to dedicate a series of posts, albeit a very short one, to the ancient history of technology as we know it.

Enough of the serious talk for now. My class were asked to “make notes about how you find things out, how you discover and share information, and how you then store or remember what you've learned. Then turn the notes into a well-written blog post.”

Being myself, I had been making some notes, very flimsy ones, during exam time as well as free time (I seem to have way to little to do these days). Compiling these notes into a well-written blog post is challenging for me, as my teacher’s standard of “well written” is a list of examples. I don’t do that. Lists are useful, but boring in a blog post. I do paragraphs, and within them, make my futile attempt to convey my point, in an often entertaining and amusing way, I hope.

The Full Oxford Dictionary in Nine and a Half Millimetres

Its now possible. Think, less than 10 years ago, the full 20 book Oxford dictionary would take up nearly 1 metre on your shelf, now we have the internet, our mobiles, tablets, and [pause here for effect] eBook readers.

To start, let me tell you the amusing story about how I came to write this post. It was Thursday morning in an ICT lesson, and the issue on discussion was eBooks. The homework was to work together in pairs and blog about an assigned topic, such as publishers or libraries. As my teacher was going around the class, assigning the topics and pairs, he came to me, being last in the register. He said, “and Nic, you’re on your own and your writing about [dramatic pause] everything!” So, in my customary way, I am sitting here on a Friday evening, typing whatever comes into my head. I always like a challenge! There was another post planned, but that will have to wait until next week.

eBooks, what are they [was one of the questions asked]? They are electronic books, capable of being read where a device supports it. The most popular examples, the Amazon Kindle and the Sony eReader. The latter kinda failed, being a Sony product, but the Kindle took off like the Saturn V rocket. I personally own one. I choose a book, pay for it using the “family” Amazon account, of which I only know the password, and am reading within seconds. To be honest, I only take my kindle on holiday; most of the time it is underneath my bed, hidden from the annoying, little, devious troll that is my sister. I always, however, have 3 things with me: my MacBook, iPhone and iPad, on all of which I can read the book I downloaded on the kindle. Huge benefit for me, considering I always loose the physical book. I am also a lazy person and I do not like going out to buy things. My philosophy: “Buy it on Amazon”. Unfortunately, up until now, I was unable to implement that philosophy if I needed a book urgently. Now, instead of lugging myself to the bookshop, I buy it from Amazon! Oh, and its cheaper as well, considering we need to pay for parking at the shopping center. Also, out of copyright books are available for free, such as the Iliad and Odyssey. One more final thing, I can sync bookmarks and notes! Yay!

Agreed or Disagreed?

To quote from one of my many informative friends: “The biggest lie ever? I Agree”.

Oh yes, I agree. Admit to it. Everyone at least once has encountered a piece of software, which prompts you to “read” the privacy policy and terms & conditions, then agree to it. Apple requires you to agree to one of them every time they make a small change. Only the paranoid lawyers will read 60 pages of legal crap, which no one understands, to download an app. Apple is just the start, there are websites, email services, twitter, Facebook and every other possible online and offline service ever created in the history of mankind, who do the exact same thing. I will guarantee that even the ancient Greeks had some form of long legal contract to sign, which no one read.

Why do all these companies make them so long? Why do they make them incomprehensible? Why, why, why? The simple, blatant answer is,

They know you will never read it.

Sony and Microsoft: What I forgot (Plus a Bit Extra)

If you read my Microsoft and Sony posts, or if you are a regular reader, you will know that I hold a “slight” grudge against these two companies. Well, “slight” is a bit of an understatement: I hold an unbelievably huge grudge against them, and for good reason, apparent in the two posts. However, there were a few things I missed out in them, partly because they would have exceeded 1500 words and partly because I had forgotten about them. Anyway, I plan to include a few more stories of deceit, amusement and interest.

Let’s start with Sony. Crappy Sony. Unfaithful Sony. Insecure Sony.

That sparked some interest, didn’t it? Insecure Sony? We all know what has happened with the PlayStation Network (PSN) and the Sony Entertainment Network (SEN), who make those useless Facebook games. If not, let m fill you in: Once upon a time, there were a few million users on the PSN and the SEN. One day, an evil (or in my opinion, appreciated) group of witches (hackers) who broke into the house of the PSN/SEN and stole everything (yes, everything, including credit cards). PSN/SEN were very sad and told no one for 3 days, until guests started to complain. And the story goes on and on, but its becoming weird typing in a Disney fairytale way.

Customer Support

Yay! Another airplane post filled with many subordinate clauses and one sided opinions, with a good topic to do it with. For those of you who do not know, an airplane post is a blog post, which I type up on any European flight. These are usually about topics I care a great deal about, typed up on my iPhone or iPad, as I have nothing better to do. Let us get started with a subordinate clause, customary in an airplane post.

While sitting on a Swiss air flight next to my dad, on the way back from the long weekend, with no more than a few centimetres between me and the seat in front of me, I decided to write about the well known (and hated) customer support services, after my dad had a slight falling out with BT.

A Final Word on Copyright

Unfortunately, this will be my final post about copyright. I am sorry, but keeping up with the ridiculous amount of suing going on between companies has become almost impossible. I am well aware that these recent "copyright, infringement and stupidity" posts have been mainly based on patent infringement, however, that was just to widen the extremely narrow topic of copyright. So, why did I choose this topic to talk about [for those who do not know, I was writing about this topic for my school ICT project] instead of something more "juicy"! The reason? I have absolutely no idea! I just liked the challenge of making an unbelievably dry topic interesting and I think I succeeded, sort of, even while going on a massive tangent towards patents.

Moving on, as a final assignment from school, I was set the task of making my own copyright law. Being the last in the register (and possibly the fact that I posted a lot on copyright over the past month) I was given the title "Tzar of copyright"! So, to fulfil my duty as Tzar, I shall divide this post up into distinctive parts (unlike my previous posts) to be topped off with a final copyright rant full of passion, as usual!

Microsoft

Oh yes, its time…

I have been wanting to write this post for a while now, actually, ever since I started bloging. Over the course of the past 10 years, I have had several, let's say, interesting experiences when it comes to Microsoft. Very many "interesting" experiences. My regular readers may know that I hold a grudge against Microsoft and the long-time readers will know a bit about why I hold this grudge. I hope to shine a bit of light upon how this grudge came about in this post.

This post consists of two parts:

   1) My many interesting experiences + a bit of history.

   2) Facts (Wait for this one...)

So, lets get started. To cover The history bit: Microsoft developed programs for the early macs then stole everything from Apple. Got it? A short and sweet "History of Microsoft in a Nutshell". Moving on to my "interesting" experiences (you will see why i am using that phrase repeatedly soon).