Using Firefox instead of IE

I switched over to Firefox during its beta releases, completely captivated by the "tabs instead of windows" method of browsing. As has been documented elsewhere, it is just a faster, more secure, more feature rich browser than the 7 year old IE.

One of the unintended consequences of that change however has been that I don't often look at my own web site or this blog using IE. A few days ago, I did happen to load the blog in IE and was surprised to find that the sidebar had disappeared.

Actually it turns out that it was still there, just dropped to the bottom of the last entry. Since the sidebar contains all the profile, navigation, and link information for the blog, this was pretty serious. After contacting Blogger technical support and persisting through the auto responder "go away" messages, I finally got someone to help.

It seems that if a piece of text like a URL exceeds the width of the column, IE can't handle the wrap-around gracefully, and just pushes the whole sidebar down. A very helpful person named Sarah managed to pinpoint the offending entry, and everything is now back to normal for people using IE.

My only question to someone still using IE would be, "Why haven't you switched to Firefox yet?

Blogger
Firefox

UOB Singapore - When is a line of credit a "Fund Transfer"?

One has become somewhat inured to the mangling of the language in pursuit of profit, but I was taken aback by the latest promotion by UOB bank in Singapore - " Fund Transfer - The smarter way to get cash in your hand!"

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has been trying to rein in the banks operating in Singapore which have been aggressively selling credit cards and lines of credit. There is a long standing rule that banks may not extend more than twice the monthly salary of the borrower in credit.

The banks have tried a number of semantic twists to get around the rules, including debit cards that allow overdrafts. Um, isn't that a credit card?

Now comes "Fund Transfer". Looking at the application form, it is just another way of advancing funds against a credit card. I would have thought that one would have to HAVE funds in order to do a fund transfer, but apparently this is no longer necessary.

In a perverse way, one has to admire the creativity:

• debit=credit
• derivative contract=structured deposit
• debt=fund transfer
• time deposit=perpetual deposit.

And while we are on the topic of mangling language, how come everything gets a superflous "s" (staffs, softwares, hardwares) except when it is needed as in Funds Transfer?

Singapore
Banks

StarHub - Bad website, bad service

I recently activated SMSemail on my mobile phone account with StarHub. This is a free value-added service that allows a subscriber to receive an email sent by Internet to his phone. Most mobile operators provide this, and the addressing is usually something like mobilenumber@operator.com. In the case of StarHub, I received an SMS telling me the service was activated, and to use the format mobilenumber@starhub.com.sg.

Only one problem. It doesn't work. The same SMS told me to look at a web page for further instructions. It doesn't exist.

By using search, I found a web page where there are instructions on how to use SMSemail. It says to use the format mobilenumber@starhub.net.sg.

This does not work.

I called the 1633 helpline, a fancifuly named facility which specializes in music on hold, and eventually spoke to the call agent. It took a couple of tries, but she finally got the point and said she would check. She came back on line after a few minutes and said the service was down for maintenance.

Since it had been 5 hours between my first and most recent attempts, this sounded bogus. I suggested that this was not a correct answer. She then said she would log the fault and have an engineer call me back. That was the last I heard from 1633.

Since intellectual curiousity had been stirred, I gave it another shot during the following business day, and managed to reach a live tech support guy. He immediately said the correct format for SMSemail was mobilenumber@shsms.com.sg, and explained how to send an outbound email by SMS. I told him the introductory SMS was wrong, and the web page link was wrong, but he didn't seem particularly interested. I have no idea if any action will be taken.

In a fit of civic duty, I attempted to report all this using StarHub's cleverly constructed self-defense system, also known by the confusing name of "Customer Care". This diabolical system is designed to prevent any contact with the company. It requires many fields to be filled out, has drop down menus that don't drop down, and if you get past all that and actually press the submit button, you get an SQL/OLE error and are dumped.

Nowhere on the entire StarHub web site are there any contact details for departments, management, phone numbers, fax numbers or any other evidence of human life. The sole way of contacting them is through the voice call centre at 1633, or the non-functioning "Customer Care" form.

I really wonder if this form of commercial enterprise could exist anywhere else in the world other than Singapore or some sort of communist dictatorship.

Oh, and in the hope that no one else has to go through all this nonsense, you can send an email by SMS using the phone number 7801, and the format -

S#emailaddress#subject#emailbodytext

However, and this is just great, the return address on the email is mobilenumber@starhub.net.sg
which, inevitably, does not work.

StarHub
Singapore

LibraryThing - Books meet social networking

Having purchased Book Collector to manage my book collection, I was intrigued by a relatively new web site that is combining some existing ideas into a new twist on social networking. The site is called LibraryThing.

In their own words, "LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. Because everyone catalogs together, you can also use LibraryThing to find people with similar libraries, get suggestions from people with your tastes and so forth. "

I really like the approach. One of the nice things about browsing in a physical bookstore is that the books are normally arranged by subject, then by Author. Which means you tend to meet people with the same interests if you hang around that section. In the days of the independent small bookstore, you could also count on the owner and staff to be a source of suggestions.

Amazon uses a similar concept to suggest books by looking at the patterns thrown up by the books people buy, then making suggestions - "People who bought X also bought Y, so we think you will like it".

While mega-stores like Borders and Kinokunyia are welcome additions to the Singapore scene due to their huge and varied inventory, the staff appear to be functionally illiterate, negating one of prime value propositions for a bricks and mortar bookstore..

LibraryThing goes further by incorporating all the latest Web 2.0 technologies. Using open API's from Amazon, and the Z39.50 protocol, you can look up book information and retrieve cover images, just like Book Collector. You can also use Tags to categorize books according to how you think of them, giving you a convenient way of remembering things the way your own mind works, rather than being forced into the Library of Congress classification for instance.

All that would be worthwhile, but there is more. Becasue all data is kept centrally instead of on the user's PC, LibraryThing can do a lot of pattern recognition. This can be seen on the Zeitgeist page, where there are list of things like "most owned book", "most reviewed", and my favourite, "most contentious" which list the books with the highest deviation in ratings between reviewers. I personally find that I ofter love books that others hate, so this is a good place to start.

The business model, according to the "About" page, is straight subscription. You can maintain a library of 200 books for free, then it costs US$10/year or US$25 perpetual for an unlimited number of books.

The final seal of approval comes from the ability to import and export data. I have written before about the need to be able to move data between devices and formats, and LibraryThing says it supports import and export. No kidding. With an absolutely fuss free interface, LibraryThing basically sucks in any data source and intelligently looks for ISBN data, then goes and looks it up.

Wow.

Highly recommended.

Social Networking - Back to the future

Social networking is one of the big "next things" that is attracting VC money and user interest. Sites like MySpace, LinkedIn, and Friendster have had huge growth, and there are more than 200 social networking sites now operating according to Wikipedia's article on the subject.

What strikes me though is that these web-based sites have not drawn on lessons from the past. Early social networks were created when Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) were put up by individuals and clubs, allowing forums and file sharing. These systems were either single subject, or organized into topical forums.

In the commercial world Compuserve was very successful with its targeted forums moderated by people with knowledge and passion to keep things lively and interesting.

Now we have Web 2.0, which seems to start from the presumption that nothing existed in the past. I say that, because all the old lessons learned seem to be ignored while the same mistakes are made all over again. Put it down to the arrogance of youth, or more likely, the lack of any history to consult. Unless you lived it, you don't know about it.

Any BBS operator could tell you that moderation (editing and dispute resolution) were necessary to maintain a healthy community. The current sites tendency to disclaim responsibility for content allow unhealthy things to take place - stalking, grooming, and luring of kids by predators for instance.

It seems the site operators want the profits of content provision with the overheads of bare telecom provision. A nice game if you can pull it off, but the resulting harm is generating calls for increasingly strict regulation.

Canada's cost advantage second only to Singapore

Now here's a headline I never expected to see:

Canada's cost advantage second only to Singapore
KPMG's global competitiveness study ranks country top among G-7 industrialized nations despite rising dollar
STEVEN THEOBALD, BUSINESS REPORTER, TheStar.com

Despite reports to the contrary, a strong dollar and perceived high corporate taxes are not hurting Canada's global competitiveness, says a new study from an international consultancy firm.

Canada remains the most cost-competitive economy among the G-7 group of industrialized nations, and second overall to Singapore, according to the latest KPMG Competitive Alternatives survey of nine countries released yesterday.

It's a "misconception" that the strong loonie is marring Canada's ability to offer cost-effective opportunities to potential investors, said Mark MacDonald, who led the study."We can't say the value of the Canadian dollar is not important, but it is not as important as some people make it out to be," he said in an interview following a news conference in Toronto.

KPMG's current report is based on an 85-cent (U.S.) exchange rate. The loonie would have to approach par with the U.S. dollar, "or certainly somewhere in the high 90s," to erase Canada's cost advantage, said Glenn Mair, a director of MMK Consulting Inc., which contributed to the study.

The report shows the currency rose 13.6 per cent since the 2004 survey, yet, Canada still enjoys average operating costs 5.5 per cent below the United States. That's down from a 9 per cent advantage two years ago when the loonie averaged 74 cents.Canada held the top spot in both 2004 and 2002, when the 65-cent exchange rate gave the country a 14.9 per cent cost advantage over the U.S.

This is the first year Singapore was included in the survey. Low labour costs gave it a clear victory. As for Canadian taxes, it's simply not true that corporate tax rates are scaring businesses away, MacDonald said, adding that researchers claiming the contrary may have "vested interests" in the matter. In reality, the combined federal and provincial effective corporate tax rates in Canada are on par with U.S. federal rates, and that doesn't include state-level taxes, MacDonald said."The evidence is very clear."Canada's policy of offering tax breaks to promote investment in research and development has been especially successful, Mair said. "Personal taxes are another story, and not part of this study."

The study's conclusions:

Canada's key advantages include lower labour costs, especially for highly skilled workers.

Canada has the sixth highest average wages and salaries. But lower benefits costs, specifically public health care, vault it to second place in overall labour costs, behind Singapore. The U.S. is in sixth place, with labour costs 13 per cent higher than Canada.

Canada leads the pack in tax rates for research and development, with a negative 2.8 per cent. The United Kingdom is second at 0.2 per cent. The U.S. is fifth with 20.7 per cent effective income tax on R&D.

For larger cities, Singapore has the greatest cost advantages, followed by Montreal, Atlanta and Toronto.

Canada has the lowest average electricity costs, at 7 cents (U.S.) per kilowatt-hour, just below France and the U.K. The U.S. is fourth, at 8.9 cents.While the threat from a strong loonie and tax rates is exaggerated, rising electricity costs, particularly in Ontario and Alberta, pose "potential problems" for the future, Mair said.

Singapore
Canada

Jingoism is alive and well in America

The recent furor over the DP World buyout of P&O has taken many forms, but the underlying reality is that Americans find it acceptable for a British company to own their ports, but not one based in Dubai.

A recent column by Winn Schwartau in Network World poses the question "Would you hire Dubai to run your network?"

If I understand Winn Schwartau's thesis, he is arguing that it is unsafe to use people, equipment, networks and technology supplied by non-Americans.

OK, let's look at the same question from the point of view of every customer of American companies. As a Canadian, should I fear Cisco, Microsoft, HP, Dell, AT&T, and all the other technology vendors? Should I ensure that our RFP's state that only national vendors are permitted to bid? Am I at risk because the technology is American origin and may contain back doors or other mechanisms to prevent proper functioning if America gets pissed at my country?

Such behaviour will hurt America more than anyone else, as a global trade war ensues.

Let's get back to reality. The ports in question were owned by foreigners. The ships calling at the ports are all sailing under flags of convenience owned by shell companies that hide their true owners. The ships were built anywhere but the US. The crews are not likely to have a single US national.

So sure, go ahead and scream security. Just get ready for a really low standard of living.

And if you don't like/trust foreigners, just hide in your bunker while the rest of us get on with life.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 300Gb hard disk

This is going to be one of those entries where I wax nostalgic about the good old days. Except for the fact that these are the best of days when it comes to storage.

Putting aside the Osborne 1 for a moment, the first PC that I ever tried to add hard disk storage to was a home-built Hanafi 86 - an IBM PC clone with a dubious BIOS running an Intel 8086 chip at the princely speed of 8mhz.

The native storage on this beast consisted of half-height 5.25" floppy disk drives with a capacity of 360K. I was able to load DOS, dBase II, and WordStar all on one floppy, and keep data on the second. Now that was computing.

As software got more complicated and larger, the floppy became a major bottleneck. They were slow, noisy (you could hear the head move from track to track), and low capacity. The dream was to get a hard disk, but the problem was cost. A 10Mb (yes, megabyte, not gigabyte) hard disk was US$1,000, roughly half the price of the entire computer.

Fast forward to today, and I just picked up a new Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II 300Gb hard disk for the astonishing sum of S$195 from the folks at Fuwell. (and no, don't try to say the name really fast, you might hurt yourself)

This unit has a 16mb cache, and is rated as one of the quietest drives available. Performance is rated highly due to the cache, interface, and Native Command queuing (NCQ). The spec sheet is here.

Suffice to say that things have come a long way. The cache memory is larger than the entire drive of days past. The drive cable is now a stylish thin red part that looks more like a phone cable than anything else. Gone are the interface cards and ribbon cables of yore. More importantly, the cost per megabyte of storage has gone from $161/Mb to .065/Mb.

The disk drive industry has remained cut throat, with thin margins, rapid innovation, and frequent mergers and acquisitions.

Contrast that amazing price/performance trend with what has been going on with the operating system. Convicted monopolist Microsoft sold DOS for $50, Windows 1.0 for $65, and XP Pro will set you back US$250 minimum.

Seems like there may be something to this anti-trust stuff after all...

V-Gear Landisk Firmware Upgrade - 024

The folks at V-Gear have released another firmware update for the LanDisk. It is now up to version 024 and is supposed to fix some more bugs. I installed it without problem and everything seems to work well.

Firmware Update 024

V-gear
LanDisk

The People, Yes

Cnet has an article here, summarizing the recent South by Southwest interactive conference in Austin, Texas.

In particular, one of my favourite writers, Bruce Sterling, is quoted giving the closing speech. Sterling in turn quoted a passage from a poem by Carl Sandberg that I had not read before, called "The People, Yes"

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
Is a vast huddle with so many units saying:
“I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
And it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself and maybe for others.

I could read and study
And talk things over
And find out more things.
It takes time.
I wish I had the time.”

Carl Sandberg

The full poem can be found here.

Dedicated to all those who think it is easier to stay quiet than it is to take a stand.

StarHub - Smart TV Digital Set Top Box

StarHub is rolling out a trial of its new set top box and directory service which they are calling Smart TV. I managed to get one of the first sets which was installed today.

First impressions. The blurb says that it is a DVR, (recording to a hard disk) and somehow I just assumed that it would also have a DVD burner. It doesn't. The unit is advertised as being able to record 60 hours of TV, so I am guessing that means a 160gb hard disk. The manufacturer is Thompson, which means, like most everything else, made in China.

On power up, there was a perceptible whine from the hard disk getting up to speed, but then it was quiet. There was about 30 seconds of firmware loading, then a normal picture appeared. The overall look and feel is pretty cheap, with somewhat dated styling and cheesy buttons.

The remote is much larger than the one with the old digital box, and uses a clamshell design. The keys are similar to the old remote, with the addition of the record and play functions.

The size increase comes from the addition of a QWERTY keyboard which is inside the clamshell. The installer said this was not operational now, but would allow the use of iMail in the future. I thought the idea of doing email on a chicklet keyboard in front of a TV, was one of those "I could, but why would I" ideas that had been buried. Apparently StarHub wants to spend money learning the lesson again. In the meantime, what had been a really nice and comfortable to use remote is now an ungainly monster.

One of the really irritating failings of the current digital box is the lack of decent outputs. The new set fixes this with composite video and optical audio outputs. This should be a cause for celebration, except for the fact that the signal broadcast by StarHub is so highly compressed that is close to unwatchable on normal TV's. When displayed on a 43" plasma, it is a PhD in the art of recognizing digital artifacts.

The installer went through his spiel somewhat nervously, and I discovered I was only his second installation. He gave a reasonable intro to the features, but got lost trying to delete a recording. That was just a reminder that the user interface is the most important aspect of devices like this. Pioneer has done a wonderful job of creating an intuitive and easy to use UI for their range of DVR's.

Pretty much all the features have to be accessed through the menu key, which means everything is 4 or more keystrokes away. Since the whole point of an intelligent set top box is to have directory functions and recording, it seems odd that some of the vast real estate on the remote was not dedicated to keys allowing direct access to those functions.

Recording can be done by time or program. The same on screen program guide that is currently offered for digital subscribers is used to select the material to be recorded, which means lots of scrolling and clicking. Although the box displays a clock in 24 hour time, the schedules and recording are all in AM/PM. This seems to be a carry over from the old digital box, and is an unnecessary annoyance. I don't know of any other consumer electronic device that does not allow the user to set his preference.

The ability to have chase play is included, which is a really nice to have feature. You can have a program start recording, but then start watching from the beginning while it is still recording. A great feature for time shifting one's life.

As I completed the paper work, the installer was calling back to base to ask about the clock setting. I pressed the mute key but nothing happened. After some discussion, it was agreed that this was a fault, and they would get back to me.

UPDATE: The installer called back to say that he had incorrectly attached the AV cables to the VCR out instead of the TV OUT, which is why the mute wasn't working. The VCR output is not muted so that recordings are not affected.

The box costs S$399 during the early release program, plus an ongoing monthly fee of S$5 presumably for the directory service. I will hold off deciding if it is worth it until I have had more time to use it.

Singapore
StarHub

Book Recommendation - Mindscan

Continuing the "mind separate from body" theme, Mindscan by Robert J. Sawyer directly tackles the subject by postulating that the commercial development of mind transfer has taken place.

What starts off as an interesting description of the technology and the socio-economic realities that are likely to pertain (you have to be rich to afford the process) ends up becoming a debate on ethics at the cost of plot.

The ethics are indeed worth discussing, the problem is that the reader starts off with the promise and assumption of a good novel. That promise is somewhat diminished by the device of a court case, which the author uses to layout the arguments for and against changing humanity's definition of what constitutes a person. The ethical debate is compelling, it just sits awkwardly in the context of a novel in which the plot needs to progress.

All in all, worth the read for the thought provoking ideas.

Logitech diNovo Cordless Desktop

After many years of faithful service, my old no-name keyboard died, and I used the opportunity to try out a fancy new ergonomic Natural keyboard from Microsoft. My typing speed immediately deteriorated.

The problem was not only the change in typing position, but the bad key travel on the Microsoft keyboard. Unless you strike the keys directly in the centre, the keys tend to stick.

I am a big fan of the keyboard on the IBM (OK, Lenovo) ThinkPad laptops. I find that I can reach my full speed and that accuracy is also good. So it was with some curiosity that I noticed a flat, black keyboard on display in a local computer shop. The product in question turned out to be a desktop set (keyboard, mouse, and separate numeric keyboard/calculator) from Logitech.

There are two different versions depending on whether you want to use Bluetooth or regular wireless connections. The Bluetooth version is double the price, so I gave that a miss and went for the traditional cordless.

Fantastic!

My typing speed is back, the comfort level is great, and it looks sharp as well. The wireless connection is provided by a USB dongle that looks like a thumb drive. You just plug this in, and the keyboards and mouse connect. A travel pouch is provided to carry the mouse and dongle.

The idea of a separate numeric keypad with its own display and ability to function as a stand-alone calculator is really clever. You can leave it to one side when not required, freeing up desk space.

A very useful and enjoyable addition to the Haunt. Recommended.

Book Recommendation - Spin State

With work impinging on leisure time, it has been a while since I have been able to carve out enough time to tackle a full length book.

Spin State, by Chris Moriarty takes the reader on a tour of a future in which quantum physics has practical applications for travel, computing, and politics. I seem to be reading a lot of books in which the mind is separable from the body. Not sure if it is a reflection of my own ambivalence about aging pains, or a genuine movement in the SF world, but it has been interesting to see the different twists each author brings to the concept.

As a novel, Spin State suffers from two major faults for me. The first is that it is just hard to follow the plot when characters are sometimes themselves, and sometimes "channeling" somebody else. The second is that at least a third of the novel feels like a derivative version, if not direct lift of Outland, which itself is a space opera version of High Noon. The whole mining colony with the vicious manager willing to do anything to keep production going is a very old plot.

The compulsion to keep going is provided by the genuinely clever weaving of the hard science of quantum physics and the speculation about how artificial intelligence will manifest itself into a compelling whole that holds one's interest to the end.

The book ultimately addresses the question of whether a person can fall in love with an intelligence that is human in the Turing sense, but not human in the biological sense.

Any port in a storm

I am watching with some amusement the current political storm over the sale of P&O's port operations to DP World. PSA, the government of Singapore port authority was the other bidder for P&O, so there has been quite a bit of coverage here during the bidding war.

Does nobody in the US realize the ports in question were already owned by a foreign government? The comment by the House speaker that America will never permit its ports to be owned by a foreign government is just ignorant.

The tortured dance performed by politicians who lecture others on free trade and open markets while voting for trade barriers and racist protectionist legislation would be funny if it were not so hypocritical and sad.