When news first broke of the new native file formats coming in Office 2007, doom mongers predicted that it would quickly lead to a yawning communications gulf between those running the new software and those using older versions of Office, with Microsoft milking the situation to encourage upgrades.

Even darker motives were suggested for Microsoft's XML Paper Specification (XPS), a new file format for distributing and archiving documents introduced in Windows Vista. This is a direct stab at killing off Adobe's Acrobat .PDF standard, if you believe the rumours.

Perhaps the cynics were right after all. Microsoft has just made available a comprehensive feature-by-feature guide to the new Windows Vista, information that might prove very useful for those pondering an upgrade to the new operating system.

The catch? It is only available as a Word 2007 document, or in XPS format. There is, of course, a downloadable XPS viewer available for those with time on their hands and, indeed, the user priveleges to install such things, but otherwise you will have to be running either Office 2007 or Windows Vista itself– two products only just officially available – in order to view the document.

Microsoft is often quoted as saying it is committed to industry standards, so why release upgrade information in a non-standard format that virtually none of the intended audience can read? It seems like yet more evidence that the old saying holds true – a leopard's spots are fixed for life.

November 30, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sneak was horrified to learn that school science lessons might be sullied by talk of intelligent design. Supporters of the creationist viewpoint argue that biological life in all its complexity could not have arisen without a guiding hand. Sneak, however, would point as counter-evidence to Microsoft software, which is highly complex but shows all the hallmarks of having self-assembled from primordial ooze without any guidance at all. On a deeper level, Sneak is uncomfortable with the whole notion of intelligent design. Just look around at the world today. It might have been designed, but where's the intelligence?

November 28, 2006 Religion, Science | Permalink | Comments (0)

With official Windows Vista shipments just days away, Sneak is surprised that there is so little consensus about the pros and cons of the new platform. Microsoft executives will no doubt have been pleased to see the InformationWeek story headlined: “No Surprises With Vista--Thankfully”. Meanwhile opponents of forklift software upgrades will have been less pleased by the story over at IT Wire, headlined: “Plenty of surprises with Vista -- thankfully”. Well, they may be a contradictory bunch these IT publications, but at least they remember to say thanks. The real story, of course, is that there will be a surprising number of surprises in Vista. But Sneak reckons you'd be wise to say “no thanks” until SP1 ships.

November 27, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

A new BBC poll highlights that a lot of people are switching off their TV sets and turning to the web for news and entertainment. And of course a lot of the news now consumed on the web is user-derived, blog-based Web 2.0 loveliness. An increasingly sceptical audience refuses to listen to the vacuous sound-bite news served up by the BBC and other official channels, instead opting for gritty, coalface reporting by people who might not be able to speak clearly, spell or punctuate but sure aren't in the pay of shadowy corporate and/or government agencies who have all professional editors in their pockets. So, given all the above, Sneak does wonder. Why are we still suckered by the official weather forecast? Why is the wisdom of crowds not being applied to this vital thread of day-to-day information. Sneak demands open-source weather forecasting now, free of the cold fronts, frost, high winds, flooding and hail that the Met Office is only too willing to serve up on the orders of its government paymasters.

November 27, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

Nokia mobile phones have come over all green, it seems. No, they won’t be offered only in a viridian to emerald range of hues, but will instead scold the user for wasting energy. Instead of simply saying “charge complete” at the end of the battery charging cycle, the phone’s screen will instead say, “Charge complete, now unplug the charger you power-profligate wastrel!” Or words to that effect.

Still, Sneak can’t help noticing that it’s Nokia that provides a charging brick without an on-off switch. And without a sensing circuit to decide when the phone is plugged into the charger (which could toggle the mains juice on and off), thus removing the otherwise pointless wall-toasting warmth of an idling mains transformer. Better yet, the charger could call you on your mobile to let you know when the charge is complete.

No, hang on...

November 24, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak was aware that excessive gaming can be hazardous to health, but it seems the risks run much deeper than simple eyestrain or RSI-afflictions of the trigger finger. In the US, the launch of the much-anticipated PlayStation 3 has left numerous games fans hospitalised even before they’ve grasped the controller. An Associated Press report lists the litany of violence. In Indiana, a man was stabbed after he and a friend decided it would be good idea to rob two other men of consoles they had queued for 36 hours to buy. In California, a crowd waiting to buy the new games machine surged forward and trampled on fallers. Police were called to subdue unruly crowds outside shops with limited supplies in many other states. In Massachusetts, a shopper was beaten and robbed of his unit minutes after he bought it. And in Ohio, two men wearing ski masks stole five consoles from a shop at gunpoint.

Fortunately, the European release of the PS3 has been delayed until March 2007, giving UK fans a few months yet to polish up their real-life combat skills.

November 21, 2006 Games | Permalink | Comments (0)

What does Vista share with London buses? No, not being large, unwieldy, expensive and sluggish. Well, not just those things – it's that you wait ages for one Vista and then two come along at once.

Mere weeks before the "we've been waiting so long we're already bored" debut of Microsoft’s Windows Vista, management software specialist Aperture launched VISTA 500, the latest version of its VISTA suite for monitoring the physical assets of datacentres.

According to Aperture chief Bill Clifford, the company's legal counsel advised him that “since the spellings are different (Vista vs VISTA) and the market segments are different, neither Microsoft nor Aperture has any recourse legally”. He adds that his firm intends “to continue to invest in the VISTA brand globally despite the Microsoft transgression”.

Given that the only difference between Vista and VISTA lies in the shift key, not the spelling, and that both products seem to be somewhat undeniably software, Sneak feels that Aperture needs a new lawyer almost as much as it needs a new brand name.

November 15, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lots of coverage of today’s move by Sun, to open-source Java under the GPL, suggests that this is selfless, honourable Sun making good on its promise of six months ago. Sneak, obviously, has a different take. This is greedy, shifty Sun finally making good on its flaky promise of ten years ago to create a properly open version of Java.

Pundits with memories as long as Sneak’s will recall that Java was launched in 1995. Shortly afterward, in November 1996, Sun announced its determination to see Java made into an international standard through ISO. During 1997 Microsoft lobbied hard to prevent Sun being allowed to submit Java to ISO, but it needn’t have bothered. Sun’s interest in submitting anything to ISO waned in almost exact proportion to the increasing likelihood that Java might bring in some cash. In November 1997 Sun got the nod from ISO to submit Java - it had two years to do so, but it never happened.

Sun then dabbled with standardising Java via a different standards body - ECMA. This effort ended in March 2000 in acrimony, with ECMA secretary general Jan van den Beld labelling the effort “an enormous waste of experts’ time and companies’ money.”

Instead, Sun cobbled together its own Java “community” process, to its own rules, and carried on whistling.

Over the years Sneak has often wondered how much of Java’s rapid early growth was underpinned by Sun’s promises that the language would be made public property. Who would have guessed that ten years of procrastination would follow?

November 13, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Boffins from Google have been taking top honours in the tricky field of translation from one human language to another - even languages that the eggheads don’t understand themselves. Google’s trick is to use the internet as a vast Rosetta stone, reasoning that the millions of documents that are already available in multiple languages provide sufficient statistical evidence for mapping, say, Arabic to Chinese without any trace of comprehension along the way. Apparently the results are highly impressive, as long as you steer clear of the kind of loose, informal, freewheeling, jargon-laden chatter to be found in blogs and newsgroups. Alas, if Arab or Chinese speakers want a proper grasp of talking crap, they’ll have to learn English.

November 13, 2006 Science, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

A couple of weeks ago Sneak talked about the potential for harvesting wasted energy - using piezoelectric crystals to recoup the energy expended when pounding fists in frustration at shoddy software, for example. This clearly set reader Jonathan McColl thinking... “Dr Wilhelm Reich in the 1930s proposed harvesting 'orgone' energy released during orgasms. I notice that Googling for 'orgone energy' hauls up lots of articles on this jolly interesting subject including the sale of orgone-accumulator blankets. I'm not sure whether to wire up people in series or parallel, but finding out sounds more interesting than studying windmills.”

November 13, 2006 Science | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak was delighted to hear that tennis player Andy Murray is adopting a Web 2.0 haircut. No, not a poorly-sorted mop of barely connected strands, but a barnet decided by the wisdom of crowds. Or at least the wisdom of visitors to his web site. Or at least their votes. Anyway, Sneak wonders why Murray is wasting the wise crowd’s time with such inanities. Why not apply long-tail theory to managing his career? After all, while there are only a very small number of people who know what they’re doing negotiating a lucrative sponsorship deal with, say, Nike, there are a very large number of people who know very little about such matters. However, if Murray were to tap into all the millions of people who know very little, he might find that it adds up to a lot. According to long tail theory, anyway. And, while he’s running around the court without shoes the following week, he could ask the crowd what shots to play...

November 10, 2006 Sports, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sneak was recently persuaded to attend a briefing on the future of work by the Orange-sponsored Orange Future Enterprise Coalition - a self-styled panel of industry experts and opinion leaders with the delightful acronym of OFEC, which always makes Sneak think of Father Ted.

If anyone was hoping for some real insights, they would have left disappointed. Those who like to be buffeted by copious quantities of hot air and buzzwords like “empowerment'” and “brand challenges”, however, would have found themselves in hog heaven.

An OFEC report unveiled at the event outlined four possible future workplace scenarios, which Orange quirkily labelled “Disciples of the cloud”, “Electronic cottages”, “Mutual worlds”, and “Replicants”. These represented extremes extrapolated from the present day to a possible future world a decade hence.

It was Orange’s own representative at the event who ruled, quite early in the proceedings, that discussing technology was off the agenda. That's right - at a forum assembled to discuss the future of the workplace, participants were welcome to focus on everything and anything except technology.

Two hours of drivel followed, while various talking heads pontificated about the social implications of mobile working, all without a single mention about what kind of technology would be needed to make possible the level of collaboration assumed by the scenarios, or who was going to be expected to pay for it all.

The sole exception to this was when one attendee opined, “In future we'll all own our own laptops, so there’ll be no need for a company to have IT support staff.”

Sneak will not be attending future OFEC events.

November 9, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)