opinion – Page 12 – Vinko’s Thoughts On…

October 27, 2006

Track Day

Today was the first time I ever had a chance to drive a sports car on a race track. For someone who loves driving and cars this is definitely a special day.

I was invited to Richburg Lotus, Hong Kong’s first ever Track Day to launch their status as the official dealer for Lotus in Hong Kong. The whole day’s event was held at Zhuhai International Circuit in Zhuhai, China.

I had the opportunity to drive a Lotus Exige S through a gymkhana (timed slalom course). The fastest time of the three tries was considered my time for the course and was competed against other drivers for prices.

Being my first time behind a Lotus and a gymkhana, I did not win any price to say the least. Although, the experience was good. I really enjoyed the experience and the opportunity to see what a Lotus can really do in the hands of professionals.

I also received pointers from professional drivers from UK and Hong Kong on handling techniques for the Lotus, which was great.

October 27, 2006

Track Day

Today was the first time I ever had a chance to drive a sports car on a race track. For someone who loves driving and cars this is definitely a special day.

I also received pointers from professional drivers from UK and Hong Kong on handling techniques for the Lotus, which was great.

October 21, 2006

CSIs in the Dark

I am sure most of you have seen the TV shows “CSI” (Crime Scene Investigation) or either of its spin offs “CSI: Miami” and “CSI: NY“.

What I don’t understand is why do they always work in the dark at the crime scene? If you have not notice, each time they are in a house or apartment, they never turn on the lights but use their flashlights to search for and find the most minute evidence.

I do understand that the light switches and lights themselves are possible evidences, but wouldn’t they process those first so that they can lite the room?

Another thing is, how come they are not wearing full body suits to avoid contaminating the scene? I’ve noticed other criminalists, the ones who are not the leads in the show, do indeed wear full body (“white”) suits.

I think they should be as accurate as possible for the simple things in the show, especially when some of the technologies used are simply Hollywood magic.

Having said all that, “CSI” and its sister shows “CIS: Miami” and “CSI: NY” are all my favorite TV shows.

October 20, 2006

Penalties to Discourage

If fines are there to discourage potential offenders, then why do they say:

Maximum fine $1500…

Shouldn’t they be posting the minimum fine, and making this amount high enough to discourage potential offenders?

Posting a maximum fine, will give potential offenders the opportunity to say:

Well I can afford $1500, so I will commit the offense

In Hong Kong the Health Department has a hotline for citizens to call to report offending drivers who throw garbage out their vehicles. I ask, what is the purpose of such a hotline?

Is the fact that someone else call to complain the government will automatically fine the owner of the vehicle in question?
How does the government expects to prove that the individual had committed the offense?
How can the government determine who is the actual driver who committed the offense?

You see, it appears that once again the government has not thought though the process before they spend the time to implement it.

Now the HKSAR (Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region) is about to implement a citywide smoking band, but there are yet to be clear and simple published process in place to enforce these band. I hope the government thinks this through and most of all put into consideration the actual individuals who will be enforcing the band. In most cases these individuals will be establishment owners or representatives rather than government employees.

October 14, 2006

Another Attempt from Microsoft

Another attempt for Microsoft to further break the web sites around the world.

Before you start to call me an Apple bigot and start to bombard my Inbox with hate mail, please take the time and read my full article before posting any comments. That’s because as always I totally welcome comments from all my readers.

With the pending release of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), Microsoft has published a “warning” on the Microsoft Developer’s Network to web site developers.

Prior to deployment of IE 7, we strongly recommend that you test your Web sites, extensions, and applications to make sure they are ready. Microsoft recommends that Web sites and applications are ready for the release of Internet Explorer 7 this month.

Michael Calore of WIRED has a good article that points out how ridiculous Microsoft’s request is. In the same article there are also a few comments from WIRED readers that I too agree with. I will add my two cents worth here.

Being the largest software manufacture in the world, for many years Microsoft has enjoyed the benefits of the layman computer users’ ignorances of alternatives solutions. This fact of general acceptance through ignorance does not equate to an official Standards.

Instead, Microsoft should use this dominance to come right out and inform the layman end-users that past versions of IE have been flawed and non-compliant to the W3C Standards. With the release of IE7, Microsoft is starting to be W3C complaint and has yet to complete this transition.

Standards are set and outlined by Standards bodies. In the case of the web, W3C is the official accepted body, which Microsoft is part of, that outlines the behaviours of browsers for every element of a web page and beyond.

As Calore and others have said, IE7 is moving towards compliance to the W3C Standards, but this forthcoming release is well behind those of its competitors (Firefox, Safari, Mozilla and Opera) who had Standards compliant browsers for many years.

Microsoft’s insistence of web site developers add conditional codes to their respective sites to accommodate IE7 is absolutely unacceptable, especially for web sites developers who are already W3C Standards compliant. If IE7 complies to W3C Standards then these web sites will just work. The fact that these sites do not behave as expected in IE7 is 100% the fault of Microsoft.

I strongly believe that web site developers around the world should stick to the W3C Standards and use the W3C validators to ensure compliance. Especially for the larger and more popular sites: Digg.com, Del.icio.us, Flickr.com, YouTube.com, etc.

The web site developers who need to change their codes are the ones who are not yet W3C compliant. These developers had blindly follow the behaviours and interpretations of Internet Explorer (IE) and coded their sites to work with specific versions of IE for years. This sort of expectations and demand of the end-user is only acceptable in a controlled environment, as in within a corporate computer installation. Even in the latter case, web site developers should work towards the W3C compliance, since today’s leader can well come tomorrow’s loser.

So I hope that the introduction of IE7 will encourage more web site developers to be W3C compliant. Resulting in web sites and web applications that are truly platform, operating system (OS) and browser brands agnostic, which is my definition of what a true web enabled service should be.

September 21, 2006

Ostrich Approach

Often dictatorship and communist governments would take the “turn a blind eye” approach to social issues. I call it the “ostrich approach”, what one does not see does not exist.

Just this past week the mainland China government passed a law to allow the government controlled news agency full control of the type of electronic information, which are allowed to be accessed from within the China borders, excluding Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Haven’t the mainland China government learned? We live in an information age with a global economy. Everything that happens, no matter where it is, will affects the lives of individuals elsewhere in the world.

It is time for China to open up its thinking and adopt the changes around them (their borders). Their citizens will eventually find out about these changes on their own. Attempts to close off information access to its citizens will only cause them to seek out other ways to obtain the information.

Remember when we were young? Our parents would tell us we cannot do something, it is our nature to want to do it even more. Or may be that’s just the rebellious side in me?

Have you heard of the TOR network? This was a system originally developed by the United States Navy, but now an opensource system/project. This service is now used by journalists, government agencies, law enforcement agencies and many more to avoid detection of their activities on the Internet.

TOR is like the traditional activist concept of “People Power”, it hides your electronic communications among the other users within the network. So the trail back to you is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to follow. More details can be found on the TOR web site.

So yes the latest law from the mainland China government is inconvenient to Internet users in China, but the informed users will have ways around it using solutions like TOR.

September 20, 2006

Technology Not Always the Solution

Having worked in the technology field for the past 17 years and an avid gadget guy, I am the first to admit that a technical solution is not always the best solution.

Some times a pen and paper is the right solution.

Take for example, a widow in Ohio, United States, rented a rotary telphone (remember those?) for 40 years and paid a total of USD14,000.00 for it over the period. AT&T was charging this lady USD29.95 a quarter for the service.

When her relatives found out, they helped her switched to the new digital service. Although the new service from AT&T saved her money every month, she insisted that she wants the rotary telephone back.

The moral of the story is that sometimes the best solution is not about cost savings. The right solution is what fits the needs and requirements of the end-user.

In my experience, the above concept is often very difficult to convince CFOs or Financial Controllers of companies. These individuals job is to reduce cost and increase revenue. It is human nature to take the shortest path or the path with least resistance.

I am not saying that all corporations are as I had described above but there are just too many.

Until more corporations figure out the balance the loser in this game are the end-users.

August 27, 2006

Zune gets Social

Microsoft’s new Zune player is suppose to have community features. Not very unlike what I had described in my Blog, “The Next iPod“, on July 23, 2005.

Here is what I imagine the future can be if Apple implements what I suggested above.

Your friend who wants to know what you’re listening to on your iPod or wants to share the music you have on your iPod. Will simply turn on the wireless connection s/he has on his own iPod, then using the built in “Bonjour” feature like that in iTunes, your friend will be able to locate your iPod and see the set of playlists you publish for others to view. S/he will be able either listen to the song you’re listening to or just choose among the songs you have published in the form of Playlists.

With built in Bluetooth enabled on your iPod, your friend whom you want to share your headphone with, will just have to pair his/her bluetooth headset to your iPod and s/he will be able to listen to the song or audio track you’re listening to.

Where I layed out a very similar social community feature that Apple should add to their MP3 player. Is Microsoft reading my Blog?

The IE7 Myth – is Microsoft shifting blame?

The article written by Steven Wittens infuriated me so much that I decided to Blog about the subject also.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not angry with what Steven had wrote. To the contrary, I totally agree with Steve in terms of Microsoft placing blame on the developers.

Sending out emails like these to developers/companies are just trying to support their own agenda of forcing everyone to switch out of IE 6 or earlier.

M$ is hoping that that switch, due to habit, will be IE 7, but as Steven had said these “CSS hacks” should not affect IE 7 if it was fixed correctly and fully compliant to the CSS standards.

Therefore, the fact that these pages are not displaying correctly in IE means that M$ may have corrected the CSS compliance issue, but they have missed out on the rest of the W3C standards for a browser.

So, my suggestion and wish is for all developers to do nothing to explicitly support IE 7, but rather continue to code to the W3C standards. So that more sites will break for the end-user, unless they are using one of the fully Standards compliant browser.

I personally think that M$ had been spoiled for too long. What I mean is that they had been the dominate player by default; end-users do not bother or care to install any other browser except the one that came with the computer they purchased or what was already installed with their OS. As a result of this unjustified dominance, M$ had slacked off and not correct issues/bugs that they should had fixed much quicker.

Therefore, if majority of the end-users cannot use majority of the Standards compliant web sites on the Internet, and these web sites clearly states the list of Standards compliant browsers that will work properly. M$ will be forced to finally stick to the Standards rather than forcing their own onto developers.

My Comments on Steve Jobs’ Keynote at WWDC’06

Just finished reading the Live coverage of Steve Jobs’ keynote at the Apple 2006 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC’06) in San Francisco.

There are so many new features in the new Mac OS X (code name “Leopard”), it will be even more exciting to be using a Mac starting in 2007.

Two of the features I definitely will use are “Time Machine” and “Spaces”. For the former, I had been trying to find a backup software that does incremental backups on my Macintel. I had been using Carbon Copy Cloner, but its incremental backup (synchronization) feature is broken on Macintels. Now with “Time Machine” built into the up coming Mac OS X, there will not be any more excuse for people to not have a back up of their Macs.

As for the latter, “Spaces”, I also currently use an application, VirtueDesktops, that does similar thing. But Apple’s Spaces is much more featured and some of which I will definitely be able to take advantage of, that is not currently available in VirtueDesktops.

So check out the various sites with coverage of the keynote and start salivating for the next Mac OS X this coming Spring.