Only connect…

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Stephen Fry’s experience with Vista networking.

For those who think I was being unfair on either Vista or Sony, I should explain that I wasn't trying to set up a new network, I wasn't doing anything even vaguely complicated. There was a WEP security-enabled network in the room already to which a G1 phone, 2 Blackberry devices, iPhones, an iPod Touch and two Macs were all happily connected. A hotel room.

I introduce a brand new computer, fire it up and try to get it simply to connect to this already existing network. If it was tricky to create a network, to alter a router's parameters, to change SSID's Ð anything like that, I would buckle down and do it, certainly not blaming Vista, for it is always tricky to set up new wireless networks. What was so extraordinary in the year 2008 was that an expensive new piece of kit was unable to join a simple 40 bit WEP secured network. It saw the network, it agreed with me that it existed, I clicked to connect and it failed. Not surprisingly, as at no stage in trying to connect did it ask me for a password or offer a field in which to insert one. It offered to 'diagnose' the problem. Its diagnosis being that I was unable to connect. 'Doctor, I have a headache.' 'Mm. My diagnosis is that you have a headache. Leave your cheque with my secretary.' Bleugh.

Stephen’s posterous – Home.

The iPhone as a munition

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AMONG international outrages, depriving citizens of personalized maps seems far down on the list.

Still, that was the condition put on the introduction of Apple’s 3G iPhone in Egypt. The government demanded that Apple disable the phone’s global-positioning system, arguing that GPS is a military prerogative.

The company apparently complied, most likely taking a cue from the telecom companies that sell the phone there, said Ahmed Gabr, who runs a blog in Egypt, gadgetsarabia.com, and wrote about the iPhone’s release there. “The point is that using a GPS unit you can get accurate coordinates of any place and thus military bases and so on could be easily tagged,” he wrote in an e-mail message.

NYTimes.com.

The mouse that roared

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This morning’s Observer column.

The computer mouse was a key element in the icon-based interface that we now take for granted, and it was a great success in its day (though Engelbart did not make a cent from it). Last week, for example, Logitech, a leading computer accessories manufacturer, announced that it had shipped its billionth mouse. ‘It’s rare in human history that a billionth of anything has been shipped by one company,’ Logitech’s general manager Rory Dooley told the BBC. ‘Look at any other industry and it has never happened.’

Up to a point, Mr Dooley. What about paperclips, Bic pens and Faber-Castell pencils, to name just three? But it may be that the mouse has had its day. It’s not much use with an iPhone, and no good at all when it comes to controlling a video wall. The industry is moving towards new interfaces controlled by touch, gestures, voice and maybe even eye movements. In 40 years, Logitech’s latest gesture-based MX Air Mouse will doubtless look as quaint as Engelbart’s wood-encased wheel-mouse does today.

Not that he will give a damn. Mr Engelbart has always viewed technology as a means to an end, not an end in itself…

On this day…

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… in 1941, Japanese warplanes attacked the home base of the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, drawing the United States into World War II. More than 2,300 Americans were killed.

It was also the day in 1995 when Bill Gates issued his famous email to Microsoft saying that the company had to put the Internet at the heart of everything it did — and that he wanted a browser to compete with Netscape. (And that he wanted it by yesterday.)

The worm turns

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From this week’s Economist…

BATTLEFIELD bandwidth is low at best, making networks sticky and e-mails tricky. American soldiers often rely on memory sticks to cart vital data between computers. Off-duty, they use the same devices to move around music and photos. The dangers of that have just become apparent with the news that the Pentagon has banned the use of all portable memory devices because of the spread of a bit of malicious software called agent.btz.

This is a “worm”, meaning that it replicates itself. If you have it on, say, the memory card of a digital camera it will infect any computer to which you upload photos. It will then infect any other portable memory plugged into that computer (the cyber-equivalent, one might say, of a sexually transmitted disease). On any computer hooked up to the internet, this variant tries to download more nasty stuff: in this case two programs that access the hard-drive. Was it a humdrum crime of trying to steal banking details? Or something more serious? The trail has gone cold.

In any case, the malicious software (malware in the jargon) penetrated at least one classified computer network. The problem was severe enough for Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, to brief George Bush on it. Officials are saying little more than that…

The article goes on to say that at least one bank has blocked all the USB ports on its staff computers with glue, just to protect against this simple threat.

On this day…

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… in 1933, national Prohibition came to an end as Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing the 18th Amendment.

Just thought you’d like to know. Mine’s a double. No ice.

Blogging’s mid-life crisis?

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I missed this post by Nick Carr. Thoughtful, as ever.

I was a latecomer to blogging, launching Rough Type in the spring of 2005. But even then, the feel of blogging was completely different than it is today. The top blogs were still largely written by individuals. They were quirky and informal. Such blogs still exist (and long may they thrive!), but as Boutin suggests, they’ve been pushed to the periphery.

It’s no surprise, then, that the vast majority of blogs have been abandoned. Technorati has identified 133 million blogs since it started indexing them in 2002. But at least 94 percent of them have gone dormant, the company reports in its most recent “state of the blogosphere” study. Only 7.4 million blogs had any postings in the last 120 days, and only 1.5 million had any postings in the last seven days. Now, as longtime blogger Tim Bray notes, 7.4 million and 1.5 million are still sizable numbers, but they’re a whole lot lower than we’ve been led to believe. “I find those numbers shockingly low,” writes Bray; “clearly, blogging isn’t as widespread as we thought.” Call it the Long Curtail: For the lion’s share of bloggers, the rewards just aren’t worth the effort…

He also draws (and discusses) an interesting between blogging and amateur radio in the early years of the 20th century.