Daily Archives: June 11, 2006

The advantages of legacy software

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My MacBook Pro has arrived. In general, I’m impressed by the smoothness of the transition Apple has made to the new processor architecture. The Rosetta emulator does a good job of running software written for the PowerPC processor, and the new native applications are indeed noticeably faster. The only big snag I’ve hit so far is that Adobe PhotoShop CS won’t run — it launches and then quits. This is a pain, since PhotoShop is a key application for me. A spot of Googling failed to unearth any obvious solution. But then I remembered that I also had an old copy of PhotoShop 7 in my Applications folder, so I launched that and it runs perfectly. And although I’m sure CS is a more sophisticated program than its predecessor, a naive user like me can’t honestly tell the difference.

Update: Lots of helpful suggestions from readers — for which many thanks. One suggested that there was a known issue which could be solved by updating to QuickTime 7.1.1. But I was already running that. Quentin suggested creating a test account and logging in on it to see if CS ran properly in those conditions — in which case the problem would be something connected with my CS plug-ins or preferences. I did this and CS ran perfectly. So then logged in as myself and — guess what? CS runs perfectly! I give up. (But I’m not complaining, either!)

The class system…

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… is alive and well in Cambridge — c.f. this notice outside the Master’s Lodge at Churchill College, supposedly one of the university’s more modern colleges! Interesting that the architects didn’t think tradesmen were worth even a brass plate.

That political bloggers’ convention

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If there is an emerging consensus among much of the Democratic Party establishment, it is that blogs are an important, potentially crucial emerging power in American politics, as reflected by the turnout of Democratic leaders here this weekend. What is less clear is how mainstream politicians like Mr. Warner — or the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, who was scheduled to address them Saturday night — will grapple with an audience that has defined itself in part by its dissatisfaction with mainstream politicians.

Indeed, there was evidence of a gulf in the way the two sides view their relationship. For the 1,000 or so bloggers at the YearlyKos Convention here, the mission is nothing short of trying to transform the way politics are done. For some of the political leaders who stopped off for a quick panel or reception, the visits seemed more along the lines of another constituent box to be checked on the campaign circuit, whose value does not extend beyond its checkbook or voter turnout operations.

Steve Soto, who writes The Left Coaster blog, said that the Democratic leaders running the campaigns to win the House and Senate “are still treating the blogs and some of the advice from them about message and focus as unwanted solicitations from crazy relatives.”

From the NYT report of the convention.

The Observer also has a report by Paul Harris on the convention.

Telecos pray for time when the Skype finally falls in

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This morning’s Observer column…

When many of the current crop of senior telecoms executives pass away, the word ‘Skype’ will be found engraved on their hearts. Skype, as every teenager knows, is a system for making free telephone calls over the internet.

All you need is a computer and a broadband connection at either end. If you want to make calls from your computer to an ‘ordinary’ telephone, you can pay Skype a small ‘Skype-out’ fee. Now you can also sign up for a ‘Skype-in’ service, which allows folks with ordinary phones to call you on your PC.

Since its inception in 2003, Skype’s subscriber numbers have followed the time-honoured exponential curve. The company now claims to be adding 150,000 registered new users a day. And yes, you read that correctly: 150,000 a day. For telecoms, these numbers are bad enough. But what’s worse is that Skype is adding all those new subscribers without investing a cent in plant and equipment….