Technik News

Das Blog zu IT, Mobilfunk & Internet

So Macs cannot cut and paste files, either…

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Bother of the day. For the two months I have been using my MacBook Pro, I hadn’t really looked into this one, but today was when it became “peeve of the day”. You cannot cut and paste a file in Finder. And Apple’s decision is final.

How can they honestly ask Windows users to switch, when extremely basic features that have been in Windows at least since 95 (I believe in 3.1 too, but cannot confirm this) are simply not there. In this thread at macrumors.com some explanations are “this is not present in order to prevent lost files”, and “what if you forget to paste?  the file is gone” – if this had ever been a problem in Windows, do you think it would not have been fixed? In Windows, if you “forget” to paste a file you have cut, it is never deleted. It never goes to the trash without passing Go and collecting $100. It just sits there, until the OS decides you have indeed forgotten to paste it.

Whatever you do next, Steve, get yourself a copy of Windows XP and copy all the features people find normal, before you ask them to switch. Oh, and I still love the Mac.

Punycode ?

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Punycode is a simple and efficient transfer encoding syntax designed for use with Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA).  It uniquely and reversibly transforms a Unicode string into an ASCII  string.  ASCII characters in the Unicode string are represented  literally, and non-ASCII characters are represented by ASCII characters that are allowed in host name labels (letters, digits, and hyphens).

With this tool you can decode and encode the multilingual domains that use the ACE encoding.

Digi – an example of excellent costumer support

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What do you do when you need to embed WiFi into a project really quick? You look for OEM modules – one of the best manufacturers being Digi. They make, amongst other variations, the Wi-ME, a small box that has a RTOS chip (it can be made to run Linux apparently) and the WiFi adapter, with a serial interface and GPIOs that go to your application. In essence, you can bridge a serial port to a TCP or UDP port and stream data to the internet, all without messy wires!

After looking at the ordering page, I duly contacted the spanish distributor Matrix. I needed two modules by this last Monday, and so I requested to have the devices shipped by Friday last week. It all turned out into one big mess, with vague excuses about not being able to ship due to warehouse problems, or that the proforma could not be generated – and so I could not pay, and they could not ship…to cut a long story short, I got the units on Tuesday.

It usually is not a problem to have a shipping delay, but in this case, I arranged a meeting with the mechanical engineers working on the project, in order for them to see the device and fit it into the 3D plastics project. They actually measure the parts, as they say working from datasheets can usually spell trouble, so ideally they would take them away after the meeting. Had Matrix simply said “we cannot send it until Monday”, I would have arranged the meeting on Wednesday – no worries. But, as it frequently happens, they wanted to look good, without having the solid ground under their feet to do so.

When a company makes a commitment, whatever it may be, it has to stick to it. And when the costumer calls, obviously pissed off at the poor performance and the mount of problems he has landed on, you have to be hellbent on fixing the situation. If the person answering the phone cannot handle the situation, he/she must be trained to transfer the call to someone who can.

What did I do? I emailed the CEO, Joseph Dunsmore. His email address is not published on Digi’s site, but if you look on the Management Team page, and scroll down a bit, Jan McBride’s email is displayed. It was a case of formatting Joseph’s name in the same manner as Jan’s email, send the diatribe, and wait. The next day, I got a reply from Joseph, telling me he would follow up the case with Digi’s Managing Director in Europe. Not three hours had passed, and I got a call from Digi’s top man in Spain, who was very supportive and understanding. By this time, I had been so smoothed over, that I really didn’t want to complain anymore! The conversation ended up very well, with Digi offering their full support on our development, and a visit arranged sometime next week.

Would I recommend Digi to anyone deciding about whether to use their products? Absolutely!


AllPeers: Suckiness 2.0 (Beta)

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Finally, after months and months of hype and excitement, AllPeers launched. In Beta of course, lest it not be considered a Web 2.0 company.

Me and a friend installed the FireFox plugin, and fired it up. To start with, the buddy search mechanism is terrible. I actually typed my friend’s name, got a result, and added it to my roster – turns out it wasn’t even his profile. You cannot see details about the search results, which is a problem. With Skype, for example, sometimes you can turn up a dozen of hits on a buddy search, but at least you can get an idea of who is behind each result.

Once added a friend, it was time to share some files. I added a couple to my shared folder, and the files showed up there. My friend could not see them. I refreshed, and the files dissapeared. By the time I ended the test and decided to remove the plugin, I still hadn’t managed to get the files to stay put. My friend shared one file. It showed up twice on my screen (?!). The actual download of the file went well, but after that, the files also dissapeared from his screen.
There are a lot of bugs as it stands – at one stage, I had a buddy selected, but the screen showed “When ABC shares some files, you will see them here”, where ABC was my nickname. When I removed a buddy from my list, I could still see his shared files until I changed the folder view!
Frankly, platforms such as Pando work much better in terms of stability and ease of use. I am sure AllPeers will eventually iron out the issues, but right now, the service is a non-starter. This post also talks about the system being built upon a bug in FireFox, which when fixed will kill its ability to work as a P2P endpoint – any confirmation on this?

Google: time to start being a little evil

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I was reading an article over at The Register, an excellent tech news site (don’t forget to check the BOFH!), that explains a plan by Google to use a microphone connected to your PC to record the ambient sound, extract information about what you are watching on a nearby TV, and then deliver targeted advertising to you based on your selection. I wonder what would they deliver if you are a horror movie fan, or if you are watching Sir David Attenborough’s nature documentaries…but I digress.

In my book, this is plain and simple espionage. There are laws in some countries (also at state level in the U.S.) that govern wiretapping and conversation recording; in some cases, recording as long as you have the consent of one of the parties involved is OK, in others it is just plain illegal. Of course, Google would argue that they do not send the actual sound anywhere, but only a mere derived “signature”. Jim Atkinson’s tscm.com site has some really good information on the subject, as he has been dedicated to hunting down the spies for decades.

All this brings me to a new subject, which is the amount of information that Google may already be collecting about you – personally. Do you have a Gmail account? Do you know about something called Google Analytics? Some of you will have already put two and two toghether (answer is not three). Gmail privacy statement mentions:

Google scans the text of Gmail messages in order to filter spam and detect viruses, just as all major webmail services do. Google also uses this scanning technology to deliver targeted text ads and other related information. This is completely automated and involves no humans.

OK, so they have the contents of every email you send and receive, classified in terms of what sort of things you may buy if they present you with targeted advertising. On the other hand, Google Analytics is a statistics tool widely used by people and companies to track usage of their websites with a great deal of precision. Information collected by Analytics includes the IP addresses of visitors, every action they take, and every navigation path they follow.

Now, combine the two bits of information common to your Gmail account, and somebody.com’s tracking data of your browsing session – the IP address used to send the email, or to browse the site. It can be argued that in many cases, these IP address can be dynamic, or belong to a large organization behind a proxy – but hey, Google is now potentially handling millions of bits of statistical data, so they could eventually learn a great deal about what you do online. Now they only need what you are watching on TV, and your assimilation will be complete. Resistance is futile.

Can anyone say separation of powers? If you are really concerned about your privacy, you probably know what this will do, once placed in your hosts file:

# [Google Inc]
127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 ssl.google-analytics.com

If you don’t, then welcome to the era of privacy deprivation..

[Edit: I have changed the post’s title, as it looks like the strike tag was causing problems with indexers…sigh]

Downloading music over the SGAE’s WiFi

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The SGAE (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, or General Ass. of Authors & Editors), is Spain’s equivalent of the RIAA. I was rather amused by this video, where a couple of members of a TV show attempt and succeed at connecting to the SGAE’s WiFi network (it had no encryption enabled!), and download music – alledgedly pirated. They then add an extra twist by actually walking into the SGAE’s offices and asking to see someone, laptop in hand, saying they have just had an attack of good will and want to turn themselves in…

The audio is in spanish, but you will get the general idea even if you don’t understand the talk. My oppinion is that they shouldn’t have done this, as connecting to WiFi networks without the owner’s permission is illegal in most countries, Spain included – so they have actually provided potential prosecutors a perfect piece of evidence.