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Me, I just shake my head. I already have a cellphone that works just fine, and I’m not so cool with the idea of plopping down six bills just to get a prettier one, even if it’s a media player and a day planner too (I have two other perfectly good gadgets that do those things for me — a Muvo Slim and an old monochrome Palm V).

It’s kind of sad that our society has progressed to a point where being first in line to get a new electronic gadget is our greatest motivator. Are we really a people of such shallowness? Is there nothing else important in our lives? More importantly, do we have nothing better to spend our hard earned money on?

I’m not certain that I would use an iPhone even if I was given a free one. It’s not that it isn’t feature-packed or appealing looking, but because like most of Apple’s stuff these days, too much emphasis seems to getting placed on owning one for the sake of owning one. That’s not the kind of person I need to be.

Perhaps seduced by the idea of notoriety and celebrity, all kinds of people are rushing out to get an iPhone. Soon everyone is going to have one. And when everyone has one, they aren’t going to be cool anymore. That brief moment when you were almost as cool as George Clooney will quickly fade, and then you will be just another joe with a $600 cellphone in his pocket. Then you will look to the next gadget to fill the emptiness you feel.

And gadget makers will laugh all the way to the bank.

It’s a first! The Microsoft Product Activation hotline has finally saved me time.

Well, time saved on an activation of Windows which is actually a huge waste of time, but what can you do? Modern versions of Windows force you to do it and so, on behalf of our valued customers, we do it.

The hotline is a toll-free number you have to call to activate Windows when Internet activation fails. What’s activation? Not a feature really, even though they try say that it is, no, it is a copy protection scheme. When activated an individual computer is bound to a unique Windows licence key. Try to put it on another computer and it won’t activate. If you fail to activate in 30 days your computer stops working. Isn’t that a great feature!

We do like 10 installs of Windows in a week (the record is somewhere around 30), and at least one of the Windows XPs fails automatic Internet activation. You call the hotline and a female (always female) computer voice answers.

Welcome to Microsoft! I can help you activate Windows XP, Server 2003, Microsoft works… blah blah blah

Are you calling to activate Windows XP?

Yes.

Okay. Please read me your installation ID…

And on it goes. I read it the really long number broken up into sections of six. Typically it will say that doesn’t understand me at some point and I’ll have to repeat at least one section of it. Maybe I mumble, I dunno. Then it thanks me, tell me it’s looking up my installation ID and then it will say, in the sweetest, consoling, condescending voice:

I’m *sorry*, I couldn’t process your installation ID. Please stay on the line for a Microsoft representative.

Keep in mind that none of this is actually necessary. This entire scenario, indeed this entire post, is because of a copy protection system. Ya know, because you — yeah you — are a cheating shit who puts one copy of Windows on all three of your personal computers.

So now we’re off to a call center in India, where a nice girl with a name like Sachi, Hansai or Bani (though once I had a Kate) answers the phone and I have to re-read the number to her. Now and again you get a guy, but some of those fellas can be very hard to understand. A couple of questions are asked then the representative will read a long confirmation number to me so I can manually activate Windows.

Or that’s what has happened to me on the last, say… 100 times I’ve had to call. On average it wastes 10 to 15 minutes of my life. Been thinking of sending Bill a bill for it all too.

But today, instead of telling me that it couldn’t do my activation the computer said something completely different:

I need you to answer a few questions about your Window installation. Is this the only computer you have installed this copy of Windows on?

Yes.

Is this first time you have installed Windows on this computer?

No.

Has your computer recently had a hardware change or repair?

Yes.

Has your computer recently had its mainboard replaced?

No.

Okay. I’m ready to read you your confirmation ID. Use your mouse to place the cursor in box ‘A’ and say ‘go on’ when you are ready.

This is a first for me, until now I have never had an activation not go to the call center humans. It reads me the number, I key it in, Windows is activated in less than five minutes. Exactly what is supposed to happen! No call center, no person with the thick accent, just me and the fembot. How slick is that shit!

I’m not even sure why I’m elated by this five minutes saved. We poor buggers in IT get abused by software vendors for so long we delight in the simple pleasures I guess.

When I finally go mad, I hope I don’t turn into this: a freaky dude talking to himself on a bicycle.

I’m on my way home when I see this dude on a bike yelling at someone on his mobile about whatever it is that people yell about. Only he doesn’t have a cell phone. When he rides around me I can see there is no cellphone in hand and no headset in either ear. He is just talking at the ghosts.

He sees me, stops his yelling and rides along ahead, looking back. Nervously?

I am dressed as I always am: Docs, black jeans, black Thinkgeek t-shirt — my uniform, such as it is, at the shop. I have my thin litttle sunglasses on. I carry a six-pack at my side in a yellow liquor store bag. I walk with purpose. (I’m hot…I want to get some beer in me).

He takes off in front of me like I’m the devil himself. He begins to frantically pedal away, looking ahead sometimes, but looking mostly at me over his shoulder. Me, I keep walking at the pace I have trained myself to walk on hot days, around 100 metres every minute. Why rush?

Fella doesn’t see the pole for the stop sign at the end of the block.

*Whack*

Now he’s lying on the ground beside his bike. Now this could be interesting. I don’t quicken my pace exactly, but now I am definitely walking toward him, mostly to see if he’s all right. If it’s bad, I’ve got a very powerful piece of life saving technology on me — a cellphone. Well, and I know CPR too, but this guy is nasty looking so I don’t want to go there if at all possible. Duty to fellow man, yes, when icky, hoping not.

I don’t have to do either. He gets up, shakes it off, sees me, gets on his bike and books it around the corner. By the time I get to the corner he’s long gone.

Damn odd. Not my place to question what drugs people are or aren’t on, but riding a bike when you are having an trip or an episode is perhaps not optimal. I never figured I was scary at all, who knows what he saw in me. or around me. or on me. or with me. or behind me. . .

Should I care? Welllll… freaky dude rode away from me. His choice, not mine. I’ll blog it and forget it. Soon I’ll be in my air conditioned cave with a cold beer. And the only freak there will be me.

An interesting image from my collection of interesting images.

A Canadian soldier is expected to shoulder some 70 pounds of equipment when he’s on the march (he drops it to fight, obviously). Other NATO forces are similar.

Now imagine that it’s summer, you’re in Afghanistan, it’s 45 degrees in the shade and you are on patrol. Must feel like being a pack animal some days.

from the Canadian Forces Combat Camera

This is funny. Or at least I thought so.

This computer is dirty, filthy mess.

Luckily, we have recently struck up a deal with the local computer Gnomes to help us out with such things. The gnomes always get the job done and rarely complain. Solid work, all in all.

Naturally, our gnomes take their job seriously.

This is sort of a follow on to a series of posts I gave up on called Windows Vista: Pretty But Underwhelming. After a number of months of playing with it and really trying to use it, I have come to a conclusion.

I don’t like it.

Am I old-fashioned? Are the operating systems of the future too much for me? I have a number of philosophical problems for not liking Vista (DRM, product activation, copying Apple), but I’m willing to put those aside for the sake of fairly appreciating the new user experience. It’s a pretty big step, this new Areo Glass UI, it’s the part of the OS that ultimately matters to the regular joe.

I just don’t like it.

—–

I’m writing a blog post in my head as I try lamely to use Vista on a new laptop. After nearly an hour with the laptop, I keep thinking over and over that I don’t understand how users put up with it. I honestly don’t. Pre-installed on a typical computer Vista is this visually cluttered, sluggish disaster. Slow doesn’t even begin to describe it. This is a brand new laptop with a gigabyte of RAM and a 1.8GHz processor and it takes four minutes to get started. My five year old Windows XP box takes 35 seconds. Same box under Fedora Core Linux, 25 seconds.

Four minutes to started. Or at least I think it’s started. I can never be sure because the hard drive light never stops flashing. It doesn’t. Even when “loaded” Vista is always hacking on the hard drive. As an experienced user, I look to the hard drive as a kind of indicator that something I clicked on is now happening. With Vista, you never know. It’s not like that little swirling circle tells you anything about whether the program you wanted is actually loading. One of things I find myself doing is highlighting something and then pressing the enter key. Why? Because I could never be sure if the double tap on the touch pad had actually took. This leads to accidentally launching two copies of something because after 30 seconds of nothing you usually conclude that you didn’t double-tap fast enough so you double tap again.

Part of the reason the laptop is so slow is because it is filled to the gills with dumb Lenovo shit. Seven different pieces of software, none of which are needed!  Commercial offers. Customer care. Update thinger. A little bugger that puts an icon in the system tray and I have no idea what it does. Worse, there’s a trial copy of Norton Internet Security. The biggest, fattest, slowest piece of software ever invented by mankind. I don’t know about you, but I consider having to wait a full minute to bring up the Norton control center thing to be absolutely ridiculous. The removal of Norton takes — and I’m not kidding here — 22 minutes, frees up 250MB of hard drive space and shaves an entire minute off of the system bootup time. It took less time to download and install AVG Antivirus than it took to remove NIS. Unreal.

Now with the system somewhat responsive, I must contend with Vista itself. As I said before, I tried to like the new UI, I really tried, but after working with Vista for a few months I have concluded that it sucks. Some of the elements are pretty, but stick them all together and you have yourself a cluttered mess.

Perhaps because I also use Linux, I have become used to the idea of a screen that only changes when I tell it to. I like the idea that my screen looks less like a hardware review site and more like a book. I don’t want it to shimmer, shine and shake. I want it to be still and quiet like a pond, until I put my hand in.

The UI, particularly in Vista Home Basic which I swear was made only to con you into getting at least Vista Home Premium, is this cluttered mess of animated elements. Everything has an animation to it: you hold the mouse over something and it lights up. Taskbar objects light up as if they are being lit from below with a cheap blue LED. Progress bars constantly pulsate with inner light from left to right even if they are not advancing!

And then there are the popups. Little toaster popups in the bottom right of the screen, wanting this, and demanding that. I used to think XP was bad, but Vista is worse. I suppose this isn’t entirely Vista’s fault. Half of the popups I got when I turned on the Laptop for the first time were from other pieces of software.

For laughs, I counted the number of dialog and toaster pop-ups I encounted in the one hour process of making the computer useful: 47. The trial copy of Norton Internet Security generated more than a dozen all by itself. Some of these are not dialogs the users should ever see like, “Should I disable the Windows firewall and enable the Norton one?” A regular user has no idea what the fuck is that is supposed to mean. Why even ask it?

Vista, for it’s part, requires your attention constantly. The whole User Account Control thing is really driving me up the wall because the shadowed background with the modal “Windows Needs Your Permission…” dialog really breaks you out of the any flow you’ve got going on. This may sound like a simple thing, but because I haven’t yet trained myself to disable it on every new Vista box I see, I am constantly pestered by it and it slows me down because it can sometimes take a few seconds to appear. At least with Linux, the prompt for a root password is… prompt. I’m not even convinced such schemes protects the user all that much anyway. Let’s think about this for a bit. If the user wants :)) FREE SMILEYS!!!! (unbeknown to them infected by spyware), are they really going to contemplate the UAC dialog? No, they are just going to click “Continue”. Of all the new features of Vista this one seems the most pointless and annoys me the most.

I could go on. The new filesystem organization irritates me.  Gadgets annoy me and seem of dubious value.  The shutdown menu has too many selections. Sure the Task Switcher is cool and the chess game is nice, but such things are superfluous at best.

I don’t think I’m that out of touch with computer users. I can’t believe that bling is what they really want. At the end of the day most users just want computers that do what they are told to do with a minimum of fuss and hassle. They want chat, web, email, media playback and maybe a word processor. Vista does none of these faster or better than XP. It’s pretty, I’ll give it that, but from a functionality standpoint, it is mostly underwhelming.

Although the Terminator had little to do with it, Prime Minister Stephen Harper did announce while Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was in town that the Canadian government intends to press forward with Bill C-59. The highlights:

• The recording of a movie in a movie theatre without the consent of the theatre’s manager, punishable by up to two years in jail.
• The recording of a movie in a movie theatre without the consent of the theatre’s manager for the purpose of selling, renting, or other commercial distribution of a copy of the recording, punishable by up to five years in jail.

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, the slide has begun. Canada has now begun the run down the nasty path the U.S. is blazing a trail on: the criminalization of copyright violation. Since politicians in this country don’t tend to come up with crazy shit like this on their own, I can only assume that American lobbyists put them up to it.

What I find hilarious about the MPAA’s lobbying effort is that even if it were true that 30% of all the early screeners on the Internet come from Canada, where do you suppose the rest all come from? The U.S.A., that’s where. Crazy intellectual property laws don’t seem to be working down there so why would anyone expect them to work up here?

Equally hilarious is that everybody on the scene knows where the best rips come from:

1. DVDs pre-released to critics,
2. telesync copies from theatre managers and projectionists,
3. masters from the places that do the DVD mastering, and
4. deliberate promotion from the studios themselves.

This isn’t to say that sneaky recording in a theatre shouldn’t be dealt with — I like motion pictures and they deserve a fair shake in a proper theatre — but putting people in the slam for it isn’t right. They are proposing to put kids with camcorders in the same league as thieves, thugs and drug dealers. Since when does a civilized, rational group of people do that? I thought we had entire civil court system to work that kind of thing out. To say nothing about the fact that the new law will not work, for reasons that should now be obvious.

Gotta think smarter than that Stephen. Gotta think smarter. Read the letter I recently sent to your man in my riding to better understand why we have to be smarter than the Americans on this issue.

Thank you Michael Geist

If you have ever wondered why your brand new Windows compy doesn’t seem faster than your old 386, check out this article.

In it, the reviewers find that for comparable everyday productivity tasks, a modern dual core system running at 2GHz loses to an old Motorola-based Macintosh running at 8MHz. Encumbered by the sheer bloat of a modern operating system, the Windows XP computer is unable to keep up to its twenty year old ancestor running MacOS 6.

Admittedly, the test was a little bit unfair: despite the bloat, a modern computer has a hundred times the capability of a computer from twenty years back. But capability wasn’t what was being measured. Speed of common tasks was.

There is a lesson to be learned for software designers. They need to understand that for a lot of computer users today, more features and fancy graphics don’t matter. As the above mentioned article shows, for many users, additional features can be a drain on productivity, because it’s that much more junk they have to load up before they get to what they really want.

I’ve lamented about the poor state of program bloat before, and if you are in the industry it’s hard not to notice: Windows Vista Ultimate requires 1000 times the RAM and 15,000 times more hard drive than does that old Mac. But is it really 1,000 times more useful? 15,000 times more productive? Doubt that.

“But the user interface has slick graphics,” the developers will say. And that makes the OS better, how? The old Macs had pictures too, they were just very simple and in black and white. Like a lot of things these days people, from the developers to the reviewers to the average joe, have conflated ‘bling’ and ’superior’ in their minds. As a result, we get pretty operating systems that are, from a user standpoint, actually slower than the ones from twenty years ago even though they run on hardware that’s over 200 times more powerful.