Earlier this week chip giant Intel launched a new edition of its Centrino platform, which had previously gone by the codename Sonoma - a label that looks related to the word "melanoma" in some way. But for once Sneak is not intrigued by the name but the game. What exactly was Intel up to at the Sonoma launch, given that it had invited not just seasoned technology professionals such as Sneak, but had also asked along tabloid muckrakers from The Sun and The News of the World. And, indeed, appeared to be suggesting to these two earnest publications that Sonoma was the perfect platform for speed-dating. Sneak is not sure of the precise connection between accelerated wooing and a slightly better laptop, but looks forward to reading the headlines. "Get your chips out for the lads" must surely be a goer.

January 28, 2005 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

The powers that be behind the SamPoll.com web site have set their sights on resolving a seemingly intractable duality of opinion: should there be a hyphen in the word "email"? As regular readers of Sneak's definitive prose will be aware, there really should be no debate. Email is email, but e-mail is a misspelling - in Sneak's book at least. Anyway, the SamPoll site plans to collect votes from 10,000 visitors, and will then declare the result. As the pollsters point out, there's no point in asking Bill Gates, given that one of his recent electronic missives bears the title, "Executive E-Mail: Preserving and Enhancing the Benefits of Email..." But then equally, Sneak feels that there is no point asking the people of the internet either. As a quick encounter with Google will prove, they don't know anything. Roughly 100,000 hits reveal that a sizeable minority of the web's population thinks the word email really ought to be spelled "emial". 

January 27, 2005 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

MIT boffins Zeynep Inanoglu and Ron Caneel have come up with a handy-sounding voicemail system, Sneak hears. By analysing volume, tone of voice and rate of speech, software is able to sort messages into categories that should help business people prioritise their time. Obviously a system that can say "You have one irate message from your boss, and eight pointless rambles from your mother" is more useful than one that says "You have nine messages that will sap your will to live". The current prototype hasn't got quite that far yet - according to a report in New Scientist, the software can currently spot happy, sad, excited and calm qualities, but has a bit of trouble telling the difference between formal and informal situations. But then that's common enough. Haven't we all turned up at a black-tie ambassador's reception wearing fancy dress made entirely from strategically-placed Ferrero Rocher wrappers? Or is that just Sneak...?

January 25, 2005 Science | Permalink | Comments (0)

A contributor to the Risks mailing list has reportedly found another of those pesky computer glitches in - yes - some Microsoft software. "When going from Haugesund, Norway, to Trondheim, Norway, be aware that following Microsoft MapPoint's directions will take you through England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and finally back into Norway," Adam Shostack alleges. "While this may be culturally sensitive and respectful of historic Viking routing, or looting, it is somewhat less efficient than other routes, as a quick glance at a map will show." The conventional straight-line route is about 500 miles long and, according to the RAC, should take about 12 hours to drive. MapPoint's creative suggestion is three times as lengthy and takes two days. But Sneak suspects that most Microsoft customers are probably willing to put up with these minor inconveniences for the sake of a nice GUI.

January 24, 2005 Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)

As Oracle and PeopleSoft customers will no doubt be aware, Oracle yesterday spent quite some time talking up the prospects of its new merger plan, wheeling out not only its own top brass for a live webcast but also a select group of handpicked customers. It goes without saying that these third parties were selected for their positive opinions, but Sneak can only assume that finding such individuals must have been tricky, given that one of the tame users - Rob Bohnenkamp, chief information officer of United Health Group - cheerfully likened Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison to Star Wars villain Darth Vader. And then proceeded to do an impression of Ellison/Vader, complete with iron-lung breathing noises...

January 19, 2005 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

If in doubt, blame the computer. It's an old enough excuse and one that has come in handy for one US firm, the Play Along toy company, that sells Cabbage Patch dolls. As even Sneak was aware, Cabbage Patch Kids arrive complete with a set of charming adoption papers to create the illusion that the child receiving a doll as a birthday gift has adopted a baby, rather than simply been handed a homunculus-shaped conglomeration of fabric and plastic. But one family in the US discovered that the fanciful paperwork didn't exactly help foster this cosy illusion, given that the adoption code on the certificate ended with "UCKME" - and that the letter immediately before this string was an F. But it was all the fault of the software tasked with randomising the code, apparently. In the old infinite-monkeys manner of such things it just so happened to come up with an obscene phrase. Nothing to do with childish pranks or - heaven forbid - inadequate forethought on the part of the manufacturer, then.

January 18, 2005 Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chipmaker AMD has previously either amused or bemused the IT industry with the somewhat unusual names it decides to confer on its processor chips. Sneak has only just got over last year's Sempron, which sounded ideally suited as the brand name for a haemorrhoid cream.
Not to be outdone by Centrino, the umbrella name that Intel gives to laptops built around its Pentium M processors and wireless LAN adapters, AMD has announced its own laptop technology for 2005 will be called Turion. Sneak immediately assumed that this was a dreadful pun on Intel's name (as in Cen-Turion), but a Google search throws up some other possibilities.
According to the International Carnivorous Plant Society, a Turion is an 'overwintering bud produced by perennial aquatic plants', and is derived from the Latin word for 'shoot'.
So perhaps the name means that AMD is hoping for some 'green shoots' of growth in the Intel-dominated laptop market? Alternatively, it could mean that someone at the chip firm is a really big fan of obscure German progressive rock bands.

January 10, 2005 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

An uncanny but true story: by an amazing coincidence, years before Microsoft and Windows, the very first Shelby Cobra racing car debuted in 1962 with the legend "98 XP" emblazoned on its side. It's a combination of letters and numbers that will set off chimes of recognition - or perhaps alarm bells - in the minds of all IT users. Similarities with a certain piece of software run much deeper than the paint on the side, though. The Cobra is still highly praised in motoring circles for its beautiful proportions, but the sleek bodywork hid an ugly secret - it was built on a 20-year-old chassis and powered by a crude (albeit light and powerful) Ford engine borrowed from a pick-up truck.
Amazingly, car 98 XP clawed its way into the lead on its very first race nonetheless, run on 13 October 1962, building up a 30 second lead over the first 30 laps.
Then the really uncanny thing happened. Obviously, in those days, it was never going to suffer a blue-screen software failure, but it did the next best thing. There it was, powering along in the lead - and then a wheel fell off.

January 7, 2005 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

As developer Ron Avitzur observes in his entertaining history of the Graphing Calculator, a program he built for the first Apple PowerMacs, in all software development it's the first 90 percent of the work that's the easy bit, and the second 90 percent that wears you down. And the third 90 percent that separates good software from bad. What makes Avitzur’s story unique is not this creative approach to arithmetic, however, but that the final 180 percent was completed by sneaking into Apple's offices while no-one was looking...

January 6, 2005 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over the holidays Sneak was intrigued to read about the world's largest private yacht. Not a round-the-world, teeth-bared-in-the-wind sort of yacht, of course, but the gin-palace, I've-got-more-money-than-you variety of boat. Apparently the Crown Prince of Brunei is shortly to take delivery of the Platinum, a 525ft craft. That's 62ft longer than a Royal Navy Type 42 destroyer crewed by 300 sailors, by the way.
One person certain to be unimpressed by the Platinum is Larry Ellison, Oracle chief executive and owner of a 452ft yacht called Rising Sun. Apparently Ellison ordered his yacht stretched by 65ft during construction specifically to outdo a 414ft vessel being built by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
In the competitive world of erecting very tall buildings, it's commonplace for architects to add spires, masts and other tall pointy-bits to the top of their constructions in order to outdo a similarly-sized rival, so perhaps Ellison will be able to follow suit. Perhaps he will now buy a 78ft yacht, call it something like, say, PeopleSoft, and weld it onto the prow of the Rising Sun?

January 5, 2005 Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)

As you probably will have heard, the UK's long-awaited Freedom of Information Act is now in force, meaning that we, the little people, can now ask big public bodies pertinent questions relating to all the files they keep on us, the way they spend our money and exactly how long they've been in contact with little green men from Alpha Centauri. But while the act may well be good news for the makers of shredding machines and disk erasing software, Sneak has doubts about any other supposed benefits, due to the wide ranging list of excuses that a public body might cower behind. Say, just for a random example, you wanted to know exactly how the NHS managed to negotiate its huge, money-saving deal with Microsoft last year. An interesting question for anyone about to start negotiations of their own, but sadly one likely to fall foul of Section 43 of the act, which protects the commercial interests of third parties. Which makes the whole thing a bit of waste of time in Sneak’s book.

January 5, 2005 Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)