If Windows Vista Beta 2 is so great, why do regular people have to wait for it?

Related to my previous comments on this topic, and filed under, "if Superman is so smart, why does he wear his underwear on the outside?", I have to question Microsoft's faith in Windows Vista Beta 2.

I previously predicted that Windows Vista would be delayed beyond January 2007. I'm now revising that to: Windows Vista will be delayed beyond January 2007, or it will be a bad product. You can never underestimate the stupidity of incompetent management, and it is quite possible that it'll be released whether or not it's fit for consumption; they've done it before with Windows Millenium.

Historically, "Beta 2" for a Windows operating system has meant that it's nearly done and that all that remains before it is considered complete and ready for release is the removal of the last lingering bugs that they haven't caught yet. That's a bit presumptuous because it's only just become feature complete with this release. To suggest that all features are now in and that they'll only have minor bugs is unrealistic. Also, I've had a peek at beta 2 and it still has a serious vision problem. There are some very useful additions as compared to XP, but they're not particularly unified in any way, and most things about the system in general are quite confusing. Technical enthusiasts can figure it out, but will "regular people" be able to? Thankfully for Microsoft, technical enthusiasts are the only ones reviewing it at this point in time.

Beta 2 has been released to technical enthusiasts who can now proclaim to the media that Microsoft met their most recent beta 2 target. But, it's not available for the general public, as it was supposed to be. Why? My assumption is that they're not confident enough in its quality to unleash it on a group of people who will be more judgmental and not just happy to use new technology for the sake of using new technology. One indicator of whether or not this is true is whether or not beta 2 is "refreshed" with a revised version before being released to the general public. If it's the same version as was released last week to technical enthusiasts, perhaps I'm not accurate in my thinking about this. Otherwise, I think it shows that they are off-track.

Unofficial internal timelines show no further betas and completion of the product in October (for release to businesses in November and home users in January). This should be worrying for those who want the January release to be met, because regardless of how stable it is, it seems that the pieces in Vista just don't fit together, and you can't resolve issues like that in less than 5 months. We can't take the word of technical enthusiasts about the state of readiness of Windows Vista because they've likely been following it from when it was terrible; lately, it has not been so terrible, but that doesn't mean that it's ready.

In the past, I'd have surmised that perhaps Microsoft was sacrificing the interests of the existing user base for the interests of new users -- making computers easier for newer users at the expense of more experienced users. But, I don't think they're that stupid. The existing user base is a lot bigger than it has been in the past. They can't ignore that user base, and I don't think they intend to. I think that they just don't know what they want Vista to do. A long time ago, it was meant to do something; but now, after feature and functionality cutting in order to make it fit for release on some kind of realistic schedule, it's become a shell of its former self and it's probably been difficult for them to reassemble the pieces into something meaningful. I don't think they've been successful.

From my perspective, there is very little penalty to delaying Windows Vista beyond the current targets. Vista will make a lot of money for computer system manufacturers whose sales are energized by the new features offered by a new version of Windows, and for other hardware and software manufacturers who help fill the gap between what hardware and software Windows XP can function with versus what Vista can function with. But, having missed the Christmas 2006 window, a big selling opportunity was missed. Who really goes out looking for a new PC in January? Are you really going to start a marketing campaign in January, right after Christmas, to try and sell a new operating system when everyone is just starting to pay off their Christmas debts? And, what business is going to roll out Windows Vista over the Christmas period? Very few of significance, if any, will do it. That's why I stand by my original belief that the new timelines were only intended to soften the blow of a further delay. "See, we ALMOST met our 2006 target". And by the time January comes, the 2006 target will be a foggy memory, and nobody will really care, anyway, because they're not ready to spend money a new PC or an operating system with its associated upgrades just yet. It's a game of politics.

We'll see, I suppose. I could be completely wrong. At this point in time, I don't see how that could be so. Either way, I'm sure that it'll be released by next summer, just in time for the back-to-school period, and just in time for the end of the corporate summer vacation period.

Technorati: Windows Vista, Windows

James Howard Kunstler's Y2K predictions compared to peak oil predictions

Peak Oil Debunked has a post highlighting James Howard Kunstler's Y2K predictions that never came to pass, and suggests that this gives him little or no credibility in the peak oil arena.

I disagree.

There are some obvious similarities between the Y2K and peak oil situations, but there are also some very important differences:

• the targets were well-defined, and there was a clear deadline that everyone had to meet. There was uncertainty about which systems needed fixing, but there wasn't any uncertainty about when they had to be fixed by. Many companies had all hands on deck when the time change occurred so that any problems that did occur could be dealt with immediately.
  
• the environment in which Y2K changes needed to be made (computer systems) was entirely man-made, and searchable. Much of what needed to be replaced or fixed was stored in intangible assets that were easily discovered, modified, and distributed -- there was sufficient public awareness of the problem, and enough attention given that this alone may have helped make it a non-issue
  
• it didn't require individual non-professionals to take any personal action; it was in the hands of professionals. You didn't have the problem of requiring the general population (who, generally, didn't understand the problem) to conserve, cut back, or anything like that.

There were those in the technology community who also had their reputations severely harmed by their pessimistic Y2K predictions never becoming reality; Ed Yourdon, for example. I think that such technology professionals are perhaps more worthy of having people turn their backs on them, because they are speaking from a position of technical expertise.

Kunstler is not simply repeating his Y2K predictions, but is analyzing the new situation with respect to peak oil. He is making a valuable contribution because he provides great attention to detail with respect to what could go wrong. His scenarios are valuable food for thought, whether or not you agree with him; it you do not agree, simply having the opportunity to hear what he has to say, consider it, and reject it, is a valuable thing to behold because his scenarios are not unrealistic (the scenarios are outlined in his book, The Long Emergency, and are very sobering).

Fact is, by raising awareness of a predicament and talking about what could happen if action is not taken, you motivate thought and, in turn, motivate solutions. If those solutions avert disaster, your "could happens" will not happen, yet you will be dismissed as someone not worthy of further attention. We shouldn't dismiss such people because they are a valuable part of the overall solution; the same was probably true of Yourdon, to some extent: if nothing had been done to solve the Y2K problem in advance of the date rollover, many of the doomsday predictions may have been realized. Wouldn't we then have wished that someone had spoken up about what could have happened if we'd have been more proactive?

Personally, faced with the "peak oil" question of whether or not everything will be OK, or whether we'll meet apocalypse, I'm a fence sitter on this issue and can see the reason in both sides of the argument. If I lean even slightly to either side of the issue, it is in the apocalyptic direction. I am almost certain that there will be pain and suffering, but the degree of such is one of my current questions. Regardless, I think that Peak Oil Debunked, which takes a "don't worry, be happy" approach that I have problems with, is a valuable contributor to the discussion for its rational responses to the apocalyptic foreshadowing from others in the community.

Technorati: peak oil, Kunstler, energy

A glimpse of how serious an issue peak oil really is

To those who are generally up-to-speed on the low-level details of western history of about 100-150 years ago, there won't be much news in this post. But, there are vast quantities of people, particularly younger people, Generation X and prior, who have no or very little knowledge of the recent past, despite the efforts of a now-hopeless western education system. I writing this entry for them, in the hope that one or two will stumble across it and obtain value from it.

Pick up a short book like Rosemary Neering's The Canadian Housewife and just skim through it. It's an easy read, and you don't need to read it all; browse through it and see what life was like less than 150 years ago.

Read about how housewives tended the laundry in a wood-fired cauldron in the back yard using the soap that they made themselves. Read about how bread baking and cooking was accomplished with a coal or wood fireplace that must be tended to throughout the day, and that the cast-iron coal/wood stove was an improvement not enjoyed until about 130 years ago. Read about how butter was churned manually by the housewife, and how wool was spun from fleece in order to make the family's clothes. Read about mattresses made of corn husks or (as a luxury) feathers. And, read about the homesteads that were reasonably self-sustaining with occasional inputs from merchants traveling by horse-drawn cart through the country. This was all very much a reality less than 150 years ago, and a great many were doing it only 100 years ago.

Now, consider what 150 years is in the context of the history of the world. Consider that everything that has happened since then has been a product of an abundant supply of cheap oil. Consider that the world's population has expanded from about 1 billion people to over 6 billion people in that time, accommodated by an abundant supply of cheap oil (fertilizers and pesticides, which must be input because the soil is otherwise infertile), and the ability to allow more people to survive on a smaller area of land.

Now, consider that the earth's oil supplies are or will soon be in decline, and we have no workable plans to replace their utility. Before decline, we have a sharp ramp up in price. It's still affordable for many, especially when faced with the alternative, but it's out-of-reach for a great many more, and this segment can only increase.

This isn't a matter of, "I'll just ride my bike to work". It's a matter of not being able to afford to heat, maintain, and pay the property tax bill on your house, all of which are affected by oil inputs (or other energy sources that are also in decline). It's a matter of not being able to afford the food that you and your family needs, or being able to afford enough of the nutritious food that keeps you and your family healthy, rather than resorting to junk food.

It seems to me to be a lot more urgent than we are led to believe; it's an emergency.

Technorati: peak oil, oil, energy, history, wife, family

The day the music died

Well, it's fairly well known that blogs are a dumping ground for incomplete thoughts and in-progress revelations. So, why not apply the same to music? A music blog, if you like. I've always been a bit more interested in the process than the final product, and since I'm not an artiste (or an artist) and don't have any particular hangups about the finished product, I am going to post on my blog a collection of (very) amateur music clips (mostly loops) that I've created over the years.

I have used a number of synthesizers over the years, but these were all produced exclusively on a Roland XV-5050.

[ update: I have since moved these to my homepage at http://www.buckley-golder.com. The links are all on the main page. ]

[ update #2: here's a link to a post referencing some solo piano from the Yamaha S90ES: link ]

Technorati: music, improvisation, synth, Roland, XV-5050, piano

Trouser DRP

Slacker Manager poses a good question about what traumatic experience someone must have been affected by in order for them to wear belts and suspenders to keep their trousers up so securely.

Technorati: DRP

Ethanol is not a renewable resource

The bright-eyed, bushy-tailed folks who want to keep driving their SUVs and minivans have a deep interest in perpetuating the myth that they will be able to sustain their consumption on the back of an endless, renewable fuel like ethanol. They're not the only ones; farmers will get heavy subsidies to keep growing their corn that nobody seems to want, politicians will get votes by dispensing public money to those farming communities, and energy companies benefit from the higher market prices for fuel that has a mandated ethanol component.

Why isn't ethanol renewable? After all, it comes from the ground, and we can grow corn indefinitely, can't we? And, it's better for the environment, isn't it? No, we can't and it isn't, because:

• corn is grown with natural gas (fertilizer) and oil (pesticide) inputs, and those inputs produce runoffs which end up in our watersheds
• land that is used to produce corn for ethanol is taken away from the supply of land available for growing food, we are struggling to feed the population that already exists on the planet, and the planet's population continues to increase
• corn is only affordable for ethanol production because of government subsidies
• abusive corn farming practices lead to soil erosion, which eventually lead to soil being of no use to anyone (i.e. dust bowls)
• if you take nutrients from the land and don't give anything back, you have a net loss of nutrients. Eventually, you won't be able to grow anything at all.
• corn is an inefficient producer of ethanol; sugarcane is better, but North American climates don't allow it to be grown in large quantities and those that grow it can get more money from it when it is used to produce sugar
• in Brazil, rainforests are being cut down in order to make room for plantations of crops destined to produce ethanol, and rainforests absorb carbon dioxide
• there are too many stages involved in the production of ethanol, and energy is lost at each stage of any type of production
• you may well input more energy into the ethanol production process than you reap from burning the ethanol, resulting in a net energy loss

So, try again, folks. We can produce ethanol with all of the above negatives and still not make a dent in gasoline consumption that would be equal or even close to the dent achieved by picking up the twerp from the SUV or minivan and dropping him or her into a vehicle of more civilized proportions.

And, after all of this, the ethanol problem is just a scratch on the surface of the challenge that lies ahead. I hope that eventually we will collectively come to the conclusion that we're an incredibly greedy, wasteful lot with far too much self-esteem that just has to use fewer of the planet's resources. Whether this will be done willingly or by force, it will have to take place. And this doesn't mean foregoing plastic bags at the grocery store or replacing your SUV with a Smart car. That's not good enough. No, the changes will need to be much more fundamental than that, and they'll have to be broadly applied to many different facets of your lifestyle. Of course, in these matters, if I had to predict an outcome and I had to choose between sorrow on one hand and, on the other, collective free choice resulting in an improvement of our situation, I'd almost always forecast sorrow.

Technorati: peak oil, ethanol, energy

Apple and the paradox of choice

More on the paradox of choice; but, this time, on its application to Apple's strategy.

Maybe I'm just slow, but it's only just recently occurred to me that Apple's effective management of the paradox of choice is what makes their products so endearing to their users. The ecosystem that supports Apple's products is designed so as to limit your choices to only those that can produce a positive result. Their products do less than the competition, but they do less with features that have a high probability of success; by reducing the probability of user failure, they appeal to the desire of their customers to have that "I rule!" feeling as quickly and as consistently as possible.

You can, of course, do the same things on PCs that you do on Macs. You often have many more choices about how to get from point A to point B, and you have many more possibilities in general open to you. But, there is also a higher probability that you'll take the wrong path by, for example, choose the wrong software feature or selecting a bad combination of hardware components and end up feeling the "I suck!" feeling, rather than the "I rule!" one.

PCs can be as stable and as well-functioning as Macs when configured properly, but the sheer number of possible combinations of both hardware and software, and the larger number of fly-by-night vendors of poor quality products who can make quick money off the volumes involved in the PC business make it a risky business to assemble such a configuration unless you are well-versed in the technology involved. Macs don't do much, but they do enough, they do what they do well, and customers who don't have an intrinsic interest in computers won't care that they could have done it better, faster, cheaper, or more uniquely on another system, if only they'd known how; they want to feel that they possess greatness with as little individual input as possible, and that's why Macs are so lovely to the people that use them. Its users are, perhaps, how computer users should be: they demand that, after an initial training period, that the technology vacate the path, behave consistently, and allow you to get your creative work done.

Technorati: Apple, Mac, paradox of choice

Energy companies are not unreasonably profitable

Just a link and a follow-on, because R-Squared says much of what I want to say about it. But, the point is that, compared to other industries, energy companies are not excessively profitable, despite the increase in energy prices. Stored energy in the form of fossil fuels is getting harder to find, and harder to extract from the ground when it it is found; the low-lying fruit has been plucked. There is much risk involved, and a lot of discovery required before a profitable stream of supply comes online.

I don't think that we should deny these companies their profits. We need their product, and we need them to keep finding new sources of energy. If it costs more to produce, we have to pay more. Yes, some people will get rich. Many people (particularly CEOs) will get rich unfairly. Live with it. Get past it and start doing your part to reduce your consumption. Continue to participate in the free market that you used to love so much when it was responsible for supplying you with the cheap energy that you've enjoyed for so many years.

When I see arguments to the counter, I keep coming back to the thought that too many people don't understand what is involved in running a business and developing a product for sale, nor do they understand basic economics. A profitable product doesn't come about overnight, and often requires years of research and development and incurred loans in order to bring it to a point where it can be mass-produced. The fact that, once developed, it is produced very cheaply, does not have a direct bearing on the price that should be charged when the product is sold. You don't see many people complaining that it costs 8 cents/KWh to buy energy produced from wind, yet wind is a resource above ground and is easily discoverable. You don't see the majority of people complaining that software should only cost 50 cents because that's all the plastic disc that it's delivered on costs. So, what's the difference?

I've come to the conclusion (but, as always, reserve my right to change my conclusion at any time) that complaints about the price of energy have little rationalization behind them. It is as simple as, "I've made some bad decisions, and I'm feeling a bit uncomfortable here -- who can I blame with a high likelihood that I'll have someone agree with me?" I hate to be simplistic about anything, but at this point in time I really do feel that it's as simple as that; reasoning is fabricated to justify an emotion.

As long as governments don't pay attention, I suppose I can live with it.

Technorati: peak oil, energy prices, gas prices

"Technorati", "blog" are spelling errors in a blog tool

Why would a blogging tool such as Blogger consider the words "blog", and "Technorati" to be spelling mistakes?

I know why: they didn't write the dictionary themselves. But, it's not a good excuse.

Technorati: spelling, blogs

Insecure security questions for protecting your secure password

An increasing number of online services will offer you the apparent benefit of extra security in case you forget your account password; they will ask you a "secret question" and, upon receiving a correct response, will reset your password or provide you with your password by some other means.

I'm tired of this very stupid password "safety measure". If accounts are truly private in the absolute sense, this means that only I should have access to my account. This excludes my "best childhood friend" (who presumably knows who he/she is, and may no longer be a friend), my family members who know the "name of my first pet" (and in the age of broken homes and overbearing parents, it's not unthinkable that someone wouldn't trust their own family, although thankfully that doesn't apply to me), and it also should exclude anyone who knows other frivolous details about me, such as my "place of birth", or "mother's maiden name", which too many people do not consider secrets and may even have posted on their blog at some point in time.

So, try hard to generate unguessable passwords. Don't use the same password on every account. But, protect these passwords with knowledge that is both designed to be guessable, and which can't be unique.

It's made worse when it's forced on you as being mandatory to opening an account or changing your password. If you want proper security, you're then forced to put a wrong answer to a "security question", increasing the chances that you'll forget the "secret answer" and won't be able to prove to anyone that you are who you say you are if you really do forget your password.

Technorati: security, passwords

Investing your time in walking for a healthy return

I can already think of a number of counter-arguments to this post, but it's nonetheless an interesting point: for every x minutes you walk, you add 3x minutes to your life. So, maybe walking somewhere doesn't take the amount of time out of your "busy lifestyle" that you think it does; as the author says, time you spend walking is time you'd otherwise spend dead. And, you can do other things while you're walking (listen to music, listen to podcasts); you can do these while driving also, but I bet your attention isn't as well-placed.

On the other hand (and these are just "what ifs"):

• maybe minutes in your younger years are more valuable to you than those in your older years
• maybe driving to the gym, where you do gym-like (more vigourous) exercise, adds even more time to your life than does walking
• if you take public transit, maybe you can combine walking AND reap the benefits of public transit (such as being able to read while in-transit)

Technorati: walking, exercise