More from the ‘You couldn’t make it up’ department

“There was only one way Microsoft could screw up its dominance among Web browsers, and by golly, those clever folks up in Redmond seem to have come up with it: Allow a neverending string of increasingly dangerous security flaws to scare users away. And when a government agency posts what amounts to a public service announcement on behalf of the competition, you can almost hear the self-destruct mechanism clicking down. Last week was particularly rough for Internet Explorer, with the disclosure of a nasty, data-snatching Trojan that exploited a combination of vulnerabilities that had gone unfixed for months. Then Microsoft issued a work-around that didn’t really solve the problem. Now comes word that there’s yet another hole through which this evil can creep. But IE still has a few things going for it, namely ubiquity and inertia. “Mozilla has shown itself to be a capable browser and has only gotten better with each release, but until something bad happens to more people, then the interest in moving to that is not going to be that high,” said Dennis Barr, IT manager at civil engineering consulting company Larkin Group Inc., in Kansas City, Mo.

That’s right — the perceptions are the problem: From Steve Ballmer’s annual State of the Empire memo to the Microsoft troops: ‘We must also work to change a number of customer perceptions, including the views that older versions of Office and Windows are good enough, and that Microsoft is not sufficiently focused on security.'”

Truly, you couldn’t make this stuff up. Thanks to Good Morning, Silicon Valley.

The prius of progress

One unintended side-effect of buying an offbeat car is that it encourages one’s friends to make outrageous puns. I’ve already been asked if I will become ‘Prius sensitive’. And someone has even adapted Oscar Wilde’s crack about a cynic being “someone who knows the prius of everything and the value of nothing”! It’s tough being an innovative consumer. Sigh.

Latin tag

Quentin wants to know what’s the plural of Prius. The answer, surely, is Prii. (Just like alumnus and alumni). Er, Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

Textual versatility

According to an AP report, a Singapore student, Kimberly Yeo, 23, managed to type a complicated 26-word message on her phone in 43.66 seconds. This beats the existing text message record of 67 seconds, set last year by Briton James Trusler in Sydney, Australia. Contestants had to type: ‘The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.’ Using predictive text was not allowed, and the punctuation needed to be spot on, too.”

Geek transportation

Yesterday, after the kids had bounced up and down on the back seats and checked the HiFi, and I had solemnly examined the electronics, we bought a Toyota Prius.

It’s got a daft name and is nothing to look at, but it’s revolutionary (well, for the automobile industry anyway) underneath the surface. It’s the only hybrid drive car available in the UK (Honda make one which is available in the US, I think), has sensational fuel consumption (65.7 mpg) and very low emissions (104 g/km — low enough to exempt it from the London Congestion Charge) — and the government gives you money (£700 I believe) if you buy one. We’re collecting it on July 5.

I bought it mainly because I’m feeling increasingly uneasy about sitting in traffic jams doing little other than warming the planet. I’ve driven Saabs for 25 years and loved their safety and reliability, but when I looked to see what they could offer by way of fuel economy and emissions in their new cars, it became clear that they haven’t even begun to think about the problem.

One reason I investigated the Prius was that prominent members of the geek community in the US (e.g. the NYT’s David Pogue) have been extolling their virtues. After I’d announced our decision, I was told that Harrison Ford drives one. Not sure this is much of a recommendation. But Quentin has just pointed me to Matthew Wilson’s Blog. Matthew is a serious geek and has bought the top-of-the-range model — “A black 2004 Prius with all of the options. I mean everything. GPS navigation, bluetooth phone hookup, speech recognition, in-dash 6 disc CD changer (tape too), driver and passenger airbags, side impact airbags, side curtain airbags, HID headlights (you know, the annoying blue ones, like on BMW’s), smart entry and ignition (no keys, just the fob, and you don’t take it out of your pocket)”. Mine’s just a modest T4, and I feel envious already. Sigh.

Go to Google, enter “out of touch management” (without quotes), and click I’m Feeling Lucky. Talk about being hoist with one’s own petard … [Source:Technology Review RSS Blog Feed]

Bug update

My new DAB radio is indeed interesting. Apart from the ‘rewind’ caching facility, it also has a slot for a Secure Digital card (the kind that many digital cameras use), so one can record off-air. (Er, for one’s own private use, of course.) And it has a USB port. Which at 128kbps makes for good quality MP3 recordings. Hmmm… this has intriguing possibilities. Somebody’s put a lot of thought into this little gizmo. In fact, if it weren’t such a terrible joke, I’d say s/he was a dab hand at design.

The Bug

This, believe it or not, is a really neat DAB radio.

What makes it really interesting is that it has local storage — so it caches the current programme, enabling one to do instant rewind. It’s the beginning of TiVO for radio. Oh, and it’s also an alarm clock.

Anyone for coffee?

A nice moment snatched at my meeting in RAB today.

How I feel just now

While putting out newspapers for the recycling men, I noticed this cover from the Guardian Magazine.

Needless to say, I had been too busy to read it at the time. Interesting also that the computer is a Mac. And only 251 unread messages. Hmmm…