Happy about blog

Today I happily noted that no-one is reading or following my blog at all. This made me relieved because I sort of have a paranoid disposition and hate criticism.

But ok, I've read that most blogs don't get read.

New mouse

As I mentioned, I was planning on buying a new mouse and possibly keyboard. In the end, I went for a MS Intellimouse and a MS keyboard of some kind. This post will be about the mouse.

The name is Intellimouse Explorer 3.0. It cost the equivalent of ca 40$, which I consider my limit for a mouse. It had gotten some good reviews on the net, which I read on my iPhone while at the store. But the reviewers -- except one guy on a forum -- failed to mention that the new "improved" mouse has a seriously defective scrollwheel. I use my scrollwheel a lot. Mostly on webpages of course, but also heavily in Visual Studio, and to some extent in other programs such as the Windows Explorer. The problem is that is is clunky. It takes too much effort to use and sometimes gets stuck.

The guy on the forum suggested to fix the mouse buy bending one of the clips inside the mouse. I tried that but it didn't work. He was right though in that the hole for the right side of the wheel is too large.

My solution was to put a small piece of paper on the bottom of the hole. It is important to make it exactly as wide and thick as it should be. If it is too thick, the wheel won't scroll at all. If it is too thin, it won't be much of an improvement. To make it thicker use layers of paper. Put the layers in your mouth to make them stick together.

It is also important that the part above of the middle mouse button is slightly thicker. Otherwise you won't be able to press that button. Also make sure that the piece is not so big that it covers the right mouse button.

It may take some time to get the piece to the exact right size.

The image is not of great quality but you can see the reddish piece of paper underneath the wheel.

It is also important that the paper is glossy so that the wheel slides. Here is an actual example of glossy paper.

By the way, after some effort on my side, sending mails and sms, I will be getting my wall mounted coat rack back next week! It's important to know what one is entitled to.

About my computer

Hia,

figured I should continue posting, but just call them "rants" and not anything else. Hope you understand!! There are less intelligent blogs around. Enjoy my posts for what they are and don't take me too seriously.

Just moved into new apartment, the first one I bought for my own money and thus own. Feels great. Everyone should own their own apartment/house. I believe George W. Bush said that too. No wonder there was a housing crisis -- I consider it to be essential to be able to afford your living before buying. Is it the banks or the people that are stupid? Ok, that's a question for the economists.... Speaking of my apartment, the previous owners appear to have taken the wall mounted coat rack with them! I'm going to try and get it back. They had no right to take it.

Anyways going back to the topic -- as I might have mentioned, I own a HP dv9000. The same type that has its dedicated fanpage http://www.notebookhingecrack.com/.

The computer is 3 years old, but I bought it one year ago in a good as new condition, for the equivalent of ca 900 $. I actually think it is a generally decent computer!! As a programmer I find the keyboard peculiar to say the least, but I accept that since I should avoid programming at home.

Speaking of keyboard, it amazes me how many ways there are to produce a bad keyboard layout. At work, I have a Dell keyboard. It is alright except for one thing: the Shift key is insensitive, and requires you to press harder than on a usual keyboard. I've counted to at least 20 times per days I have to go back and correct letters that weren't capitalized, or - supposed to be _. After having complained to the manager, he was kind enough to give me a new keyboard (thank you, I appreciate your effort to satisfy this demanding programmer). It was a no-name keyboard, so I won't mention any names. But after having used the new keyboard for a few hours, I had to give it up (I still left it on my desk for a couple of weeks, not wanting to be one of those whiners).

What was wrong with it? First of all: the keys had a weird height angle, they were sort of leaning upwards in a strange way. Secondly, the distance between Left Shift and F5 was just slightly to large for me to reach both keys without over-extending my fingers. And Shift-F5 is a combination that any Visual Studio programmer would/should recognize. I can't remember exactly what it does now that I am writing out of context, but I know I use it alot. So I'll stick with my Dell keyboard for now... but I have my eye on a logitech desktop which I hope will solve all my woes without costing $$$$.

Back to my HP... I have a vague memory of having complained about my HP keyboard before so I'm not going to do that again. Instead, I will write about the touch pad. If you surf into the afore mentioned page, you will see that the HP hinge cracks because of wrong constructions that with time makes it too hot and cracking. In fairness I should mention that it hasn't happened to my computer yet, which is good because HP only extended their warranty to May 2009! If it cracks now, I'll have to live with it until I buy a new computer (and I will think twice before buying an HP again).

I don't know if it is related to the bad design of the hinge, but my touch pad has always been unpleasantly hot. It's hard to measure but I would estimate it to be at least 40^o C, or for those illiterate in Celsius degrees: serious fever.

The 17" monitor is not bad. I can't distinguish some color, such as light grey from white, but I think that't the same with most laptops?

It is a multimedia computer and I would say the sound is not bad, and it has some nice features such as playing a DVD without starting up windows, by pressing a button next to the ON button.

Oh, almost forgot -- the battery doesn't work. When I bought it, it never got loaded. I sent a mail to support, and they soon sent me a new battery free of charge all the way from some central Europe country such as Austria. However, that battery soon died too, and is now completely worthless. If I unplug my computer it dies within a few seconds. I would still like to know why? Did they send me a flawed battery, is my computer unable to load batteries, or did I make something wrong? Anyways, I won't bother with their support again. Support is evil.

My computer has many nice features. The graphics is not bad. I can play computer games and do whatever I want (until it cracks).

I think one shouldn't be too picky about laptops. The components have to be carefully balanced to give as much power as possibly, without being expensive, draining power or overheating. In my last school class, we bough our computer ourselves. Some of my classmates used them while in bed and what not, and were surprised when they stopped working. Well, you tell these kids "don't block the air intake, the computer will overheat", but they don't care, do it, and suddenly their computer breaks and it's everybody's fault but their own.

Ok, that was all about my computer for now. I have my eyes set on the LOGITECH EX 100 cordless desktop. I've had good experience with Logitech previously. Bye-bye.

Why I don't like open software

Some people are very enthusiastic about open software. I had a techer in a linux class once who was all fire about it and of how great it is and of all the advantages of working in a team with other developers, etc etc.

Personally, I use few of them. And every time I try one, I am enthusiastic for a few weeks or months, but then things don't work as they should. There is no support, and when asking or requesting for simple fixes to obvious problems, you at best get a reply such as "it's not a bug, it's a feature", sometimes get no answer at all, and often get an answer such as "quit bitching, it's open software, fix it yourself".

This is just a natural way of open software. There's no trying to change it. In an open software project, people do what they want to, and they don't do what they don't want to. That's why free linux projects so often suck. They are built by nerds why want to implement their own features, and don't care about the 40-year old accountant who just wants things simple. That's why 2001-2008 have all been declared the year of the desktop linux, but still hovers around 1% market share.

I used to edit Wikipedia for a while, and it was the same thing. There are guidelines there about being nice, but the motivator at Wikipedia is ego, so being nice serves little purpose except to not violate the guidelines that would put sanctions on you. Just trust me, there's a horde of people and administrators that are just below the threshold that would get them in trouble -- although they still often get into trouble in the end, and complain and leave under big fuss. Rudeness, unfounded critizism and plain dumbness are things I really despise, maybe I even have a personality deficiency to handle such things, but when I waste my time doing such unpleasant things (in my spare time!), my blood pressure rises, I get anxious and I even suspect I'm losing my hair.

But Wikipedia works, you say? It may looks so at the moment, unless you've tried being an editor to a greater extent. Open software are great as startups because they require little money. But after a while, it's chaos.

Rather than having to put up with insults, no support, and being asked to spend my own working time fixing things that you'd think be obvious, I think I'll chose at proprietary software. Money is an efficient expedient for achieving things, it's a way to value other people's work, and to have your own work valued by others. I'd rather pay people to write good software and answer my questions politely.

Refreshing real programming

I'm doing a bit of JavaScript currently. It is refreshing to do some "real" programming as compared to how programming is done in Visual Studio. Now for JavaScript I am typing in a text editor and write every statement. In Visual Studio, after writing each statement, the program formats the lines and the text, checks the variable and function names and puts in underscores if it doesn't like them. I feel much freer in just a text editor were I don't have the feeling that someone is constantly looking over my shoulder and pointing out things it doesn't like...

Is this feature useful?

I am using the free RealPlayer from Real Networks. I recommend it: It is a good player with some nice features.

One annoying thing with it though, is that it has one of those helpfully idiotic features -- when putting the computer in standby mode, it shows this dialog box:

This may happen because there is a music or video paused, which there frequently is. Yesterday when I went to bed, I closed the lid on my computer, thinking it would go into resting. After 30 seconds, its blue button lights were still lightning up my room I realized why, because I've done it around tens before. RealPlayer had kindly prevented my computer from entering standby mode.

Why would the program designers ever implement that feature? Do they think I am thinking: "I really wanted to go to bed / go home from work, but now I realize I'd rather sit here and watch RealPlayer all night."? Or maybe: "Gosh, I didn't understand that I can't watch RealPlayer when the computer is in stand-by mode."?

This is an example of a feature that someone thought "cool" when it fact it is just useless. As a programmer, I've encountered that thinking many times, sometimes in myself. And I'm sure most people know programs that insist on being all too helpful... (remember Clippy?)

But you see, a programmer is often judged by what he can produce. If he can show the system manager something that he hasn't seen before, then he might impress enough to get a raise. It is well established that system managers generally don't understand the needs of either users nor software.

It takes guts for a programmer or programming team to spend time and effort on a feature and then have to admit that it probably wasn't useful. But that is the kind of guts you have to have, from management down, if you want to create products and web sites that are succesful.

I am currently developing an ASP.NET web site. The layout consists of a few window-like forms in different colors. One "cool" thing you can do with such windows is to make them movable and dockable. Here and here are some example. If you are using iGoogle, you have seen it. But why would I use that feature? Would it be useful for anyone? I don't think so.

Why does Microsoft keep making their programs bloated?

As I was on my way home on Friday, I got a call from my father. While trying to eat a sandwich, packing my stuff, and turning of my computer, I had to listen to him telling me that they had gotten an upgrade to "some Windows 2003 Office suite" on his job. I'm not convinced that they really upgraded to a version called 2003, but I didn't have enough time to ask...

In any case, he told me that this new Office Suite didn't run smothly on his computer. He had asked the computer technician what to do, who told him he had to get a new computer. My father asked me what the purpose was of Microsoft making their Office Suite so advanced that he needed a new computer to run it. I told him that the reason is that Microsoft works together with hardware manufactures such as IBM and Intel who want to sell new products. My father agreed that it might be a reason.

Now I am not actually sure that the connection with IBM is as important for Microsoft as it was in the past. (History of Microsoft Windows, Wikipedia article) But the tie with Intel is now well documented, (Vista lawsuit spotlights ties between Microsoft , Seattle Times, November 14, 2008) and the article also mentions ties to other hardware companies such as Dell and Fujitsu.

But there is another reason why he needs a new computer for his office suite. It is in the business strategy of Microsoft to make their programs as advanced as possible, as opposed to e.g. as smart as possible or as efficient as possible. If I had the time, I could have told my father that it is like American cars: not the most efficient, but big and cool, and guaranteed to work well for two or three years.

Well, that's just my own private joke...

However, I could actually have told my father that Microsoft has constantly forced consumers to buy new hardware. In an interesting book I just finished (The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition)), the author quoted a recent review of Word 6.0 that wrote how Word 6.0 was too big and slow and required a whole 4 MB of RAM. (p. 258).

I would like to add that new software often is clearly superior to the old. While I don't actually use any features in the most recent Microsoft Word that wasn't available in Word 6.0, I certainly don't want to go back to Windows 95. Windows XP, with its latest service pack, is a fine and well working system indeed... I hope to be able to run it for several years to come!

Smarter people than me have been writing about how software get bloated with time.

Sometimes, I wonder if the current commercial software model is doomed. The neverending feature treadmill it puts us on almost always results in extinction. Either the application eventually becomes so bloated and ineffective that smaller, nimbler competitors replace it, or the application slowly implodes under its own weight. In either case, nothing is truly fixed; the cycle starts anew. Something always has to give in the current model. Precious few commercial software packages are still around after 10 years, and most of the ones that are feel like dinosaurs.(Coding Horror: October 18, 2007 -- Are Features The Enemy?)

With that said, there is a reason why people still buy products from the company mentioned -- they are generally the best and fastest, are easy to use, and have a common standard so that a user who has learned one software easily understands others.