* Posts by John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

23 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2007

Dell offers 'Windows Vista Bonus' to frightened customers

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

My Grandpa Smoked 2 packs of Camel Non Filters....

When I read the Vista defenders arguments, why am I hearing echoes of:

"Yes, my Grandpapa smoked 2 packs of Camel brand non filtered cigarettes per day so all you guys who say smoking is bad for your health are nuts !

If you have a machine that runs Vista with no problems ....great.....but accept the fact that, like ole grandad, you are more the the exception than the rule. Ole gramps made it to 85 but smoking puts thousands of people in graves each and every day. Gramps might still be here if he was a non smoker.

There's only 4 relevant questions:

1. On identical hardware, which runs faster ?

2. What has highest software compatibility ? (30k to 2k)

3. What has highest hardware compatibility ? (lost count)

4. What one has more DRM, more bloat and more annoyances ?

Bugs casts shadow over Firefox 3

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

Reviews

Tom's Hardware has weighed in with their review.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Firefox-3-review,review-1099.html

Apple update trick triples Safari share

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

Blacked Pot calling Kettle black again

So let me get this straight .....

Including a box checked by default is a big evil thing now with Safari.

..... but none oif these things are evil

1) bundling IE in Windows.

2) Making it virtually impossible to remove IE

Talk about bias.

And how come it wasn't quite so evil back in the 1990's (in pre "IE Bundled with Windows" days) but when we installed Quickbooks and a half dozen other programs which installed Internet Explorer and I had no opportunity to uncheck any box and not have it installed.

I still have an NT4 box running 24/7 and remember quite well the procedure I ahd to go through.

a) Reinstall WinNT and wind up with IE installed whether I wanted it or not. Then go to add / remove programs and remove it.

b) Install Quickbooks and wind up with IE installed whether I wanted it or not. Then go to add / remove programs and remove it.

c) Install AutoCAD and wind up with IE installed whether I wanted it or not. Then go to add / remove programs and remove it.

How come fanbois all feel this is such despoicable behavior when someone else does it but it's just all fine and dandy when you fav does the same exact thing ?

But MS took another step.....they don't let you remove it anymore. I won't defend Apple for their marketing but no people who live in crystal houses should be quite wary of throwing stones.

Seagate ships 1 billionth drive

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

Pick One, dang it !

I don't care which way you go but adding a 500 GB drive as a 2nd drive in a system should not increase your storage capacity by only 465 GB. The point is not whether or not what HD manufacturers call a GB is right or wrong or whether what the OS calls a GB is right or wrong. The point is, there shouldn't be "two sets of rules". Pick ONE !

Or shalI we start having to buy 20 gallons of gas to fill up an 18 gallon gas tank ?

New York lawmakers approve 'Amazon Tax'

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

People Willing to Pay for Value

I think the problem people have with it is that private industry salaries have stagnated while public service employees are pretty much guaranteed 4 % a year. For example, here on Long Island a married teacher and policeman here can clear $250k a year ... the median income BTW is about $45k. Many retire with pensions that have a higher take home pay than when they were working full time. That an all the "patronage" jobs, funny expense account charges and all have people fed up....which is unfortunate for the many hardworking public service employees that don't have strong unions and spaghetti spined politicians.

I think the biggest beneficiary of this will be "Mailboxes 'R Us" of New Jersey as peeps ship to a NJ PO Box and have their stuff forwarded.

Seagate ships first 1TB HDD of the SAS persuasion

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

MTBF ain't reallly "Real"

MTBF is a useless indicator for anyone other than "bean counters" estimating warranty costs and has no bearing on "reality". To give you an idea, take two identical drives, label one for home use and label one for server use and the formulas change such that the home one will have an MTBF and the server one 1.2 million MTBF. Simply "changing the sticker" doubles MTBF.

US allows visual inspections of nipple rings

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

JOb Applications up at TSA

Since this article appeared, TSA has received 234,678 applicants for the job of inspector.

Apple orders 10m 3G iPhones - analyst

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

Not a fan, but impressed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Iphone_sales.svg

With 2.32 million sales in 1st quarter 2008, 10 million doesn't seem "out of bounds" by the end of year. I am seeing the things all over the place. I thought it would be the iPod high school crowd that were the primary purchasers but it seems it's hard to visit an airport without seeing dozens of them.

I find it amazing that on just one carrier they have managed to outsell all WM phones combined from all carriers and from all vendors in the US Market. I think Apple's strategy was brilliant. They didn't come outta the gate competing with RIM, Palm, HTC for the business crowd. They got their feet wet in the technologically less saavy crowd and created an entire new market among people who would never do a Crackberry.

Having their non business unit compared to every business oriented techno-squawkbox on the market was however inevitable and they now have a "todo" list of what they gotta do to chase that market. Personally, I was figuring on holding onto my Treo 650 until it's 4th birthday in February and switching to the Linux version. But after seeing such a wide swath of people using the iPhone, it's gonna be hard not to at least consider a new business oriented one.

I had clients stop by my office (I'm doing design work for them "in Da Hamptons") who are a couple who is ....well shall we say eligibl3e for social security .... they both had iPhones. Another client of same age out there now has one, my 18 year old son has one...... all these are people who would never, ever have owned a Treo or BB as "they are too complicated".

I don't like the battery thing and I want more freedom with regard to 3rd party apps.....but everything I do on my phone, my son has been able to dupe on his iPhone so, although I myself am not likely to choose it for my usage, I have to say I am impressed.

Mac is the first to fall in Pwn2Own hack contest

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

Er....Wrong Target

Hello ! With all the attacks on the Mac OS, did no one perhaps notice that the OS was not cracked ? Criticize Apple if you will, they deserve it, for leaving the hole in Safari but if you bother to read the article, none of the machines were cracked on Day 1, the day that the rules said you have to crack the OS. None of the OS's were cracked.

Now Windows users might not realize this since MS demanded to integrate it with the OS, but a browser is not part of an OS, it's an application ! If ya gonna rant, rant at the right target.

From the reporting side, I would have loved to know:

a) what happens is Safari is installed on Windows ?

b) what happens if both OS's are set at the same security level (both firewall's on or both off) ?

Microsoft rolls out Vista SP1

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

Superfetch for Dogs ?

Superfetch is a pretty good thing .... if you are robotic in your work.....and most people are. You arrive at work and 1st thing check your e-mail so that's not a bad thing to have it preloaded. If you load the same things at the same time every day, it's a great idea. It's just another extension of MS's "If we can't actually make it faster, let's make people it appear faster" strategy. It doesn't really make anything load faster, it just time shifts when it loads. If it can predict your behavior, it speeds things up, if it guesses wrong it DOES have to unload stuff before it can make room for new stuff so there is small performance hit.

But.....First off after booting to Vista you have to sit and wait for 45 seconds or so while the dog goes and fetches all this stuff. You'll note that benchmark program instructions actually call this out saying you have to wait at least this long so that pre fetch doesn't adversely affect the benchmark scores.

Again, this is an extension of the ole quickstart stuff that they had in previous OS's. Boot Win98 and up and you have a good part of IE that gets pre-loaded so it "appears" that IE magically loaded quickly. Ya would open any MS Office files and find that they also appeared to load quickly as installing MS Office put a little thing in ya start / run group that preloads part of MS Office at boot. Even Lotus and WordPerfect copied the technique to try and not "appear" to be slower. Doesn't really change the time it takes things to load ..... 4 seconds at boot time + 4 seconds when you click an icon is still 8 seconds.

If ya think there's no downside, do a search on "gaming / prefetch" and you'll see the benchmarks that show significant impacts on game performance of having prefetch on. In response MS has promised an easier way of making the changes defined below which now require registry edits:

http://dotnetwizard.net/?p=147

Apple US retail sales leap past PC par

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

Underlying Causes

Speaking as one who doesn't own any Apple products (no iPod, no iPhone, no MAcs), but exposed to them just about every day.....

People often make choices on "coolness value" rather than business sense. The guy in the hotel lobby thumb typing on his Treo / Crackberry for 30 minutes is sitting there wondering just how cool everyone who passes by thinks he is while the more productive person just spent 10 minutes in the hotel's business center accomplishing just as much with a full size KB and screen ..... in 1/3 rd the time.

As for the "hate" that is mentioned, why do people hate the iPhone ? Too many people have their identities tied to their gadgets. They buy the latest and greatest smartphone every 6 months, popping their old ones on ebay at $300 losses so they can show it to everyone and get people to pay attention to them for a few seconds. Then when they get cut off by the objects of their "look at me" presentation with "Oh, my wife has an iPhone" and are summarily dismissed it's an ego blow.

As for the MS gets slapped w/ a lawsuit thing, you're not getting the point. I know of no one who actually ever objected to stuff being pre-installed on their machines....well it is an inconvenience but it can be undone. I didn't mind when NT4 SP's (so much) installed IE because I could go to add / remove programs and rid myself of the overhead by uninstalling it. That wasn't good enough for MS back then so their modus operendi became "Install it and then don't let people remove it". They took it further by even making it so that if you deleted iexplore.exe manually, it "comes right back". That is the difference between Apple and MS and why peeps don't get upset at Apple for pre-installing.

It seemed that MS was getting the hint after the disaster that is Vista with their supposed MiniWin approach to Windows 7 but we will just have to wait and see if it's actually happens or is all bluster.

Plastic bag campaign falls apart at the seams

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

Judicious Use

I find both bags to be useful and necessary but they each have their places.

Ya ever try and make an emergency rain coat out of a paper bag ?????

Standard concert going attire .... one Glad Hefty Bag folded up in ya back pocket. I keep a small roll in the SUV for when I'm on construction sites, camping trips, etc. Don't like jumping in car after inspecting a construction site with a mud covered raincoat nor bringing same inside a nice dry and clean car / tent. Having a plastic bag over ya body however does give the construction contractors another reason to call the Engineer a prick !

Pop arm and head holes in a Glad Bag and ya can keep dry and then if it's really covered with mud and grime, ya can toss into trash can before you enter a clean, dry place. If ya survive relatively clean, I take it off, tie of the bottom and use it as my "in vehicle" garbage bag until it's full. I usually save the last 5 or so bags in a roll and throw that under the car seat. Generally lasts me 2-4 years and takes up far less space and weight than a slicker.

As for grocery bags, they oughtta deduct 1% of the bill if ya bring ya own bags. Only then will peeps stop using them. I particularly like the peeps who can't decide paper or plastic and put the groceries inside a paper bag which then goes inside a plastic bag. Seems like they just wanna piss off both sides.

Steve Jobs unveils plans to dominate RIM BlackBerry, Life, the Universe, and Everything

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

Apple Got the Right Market With Their First Entry

There are 3 types of smartphone users:

1. The business user who actually benefits from the capabilities, needs to be in touch when "out of civilization". By "out of civilization", I mean unable to access their e-mail from a nearby PC, laptop, kiosk, hotel business center or other means.

2. The consumer who actually benefits from the capabilities of a smartphone, likes to be in touch all the time but also gets benefit out of its capabilities by using it as a multimedia / entertainment device.

3. The self important poser who wants people to pay attention to him and uses the device to try and get that attention. This is the individual who can't seem to take the device out of their hands and is always showing people all the cool things it can do. This user "must have" a new device every six months.

Apple quite smartly realized that the market sector with the least penetration by the existing smartphone club was the segemnent defined by 2 above. I have a Palm OS Treo and wouldn't get an iPhone. The Treo has served me well for over three years but I find I use it less and less as time goes on. Typing on a thumbpad is just not efficient and I find it more efficient to just wait till I drop "back into civilization" and can grab a PC at a hotel business center, client's office or whatever cause thumb typing is just too slow and cumbersome.

OTOH, my 18 year old son has an iPhone and for his normal communications (text messaging and 12 word e-mails) the iPhone is ideal. Comparing how it does the web with any other smartphone out there is like comparing a Porshe with the field from your local soap box derby. Apple nailed that market. Every high school kid with a part time job is saving for one if they don't have one already. One thing I notice is that most people at some point in their career reach a point where they get in the car and they don't even notice if the radio is on. These are your Crackberry users. Most everyone younger or at a lower career level .... the ones with iPods plugged into their car radio......are now buying iPhones.

Most thought that after an initial flurry the iPhone sales would crap out. But 2.32 million sales is 1st quarter 2008 alone is staggering. It would therefore seem that going after that untapped market with their first entry before jumping in and competing directly with Palm / Crackberry / PPC was a rather brilliant idea.

I once had a surgeon tell me he needs push e-mail in case he gets an important message while operating on someone....and that he would actually have his nurse take it out and read the message while he was operating. What critical message warrants not giving your full attention to the scalpel in hand I am wondering ? "Bring home milk and bread ?" ...... "My mistake, you had a gout infected toe removal scheduled this morning not a penile amputation....hope you didn't get this message too late."

Every time I see a smartphone user in a hotel lobby or lounge typing for 30 minutes on his BB, Treo or whatever I can't help laughing. Here they are all smug about how efficient they are being while 20 paces away are full size keyboards and 19" screens available for free usage in the hotel business center. I'm not saying that my Treo hasn't come in handy when such an option isn't available, but if you are using a smartphone when you have full size resources 20 paces away, or a laptop up in your room, then I'm sorry, but you're a poser.

Vista SP1 kills and maims security apps, utilities

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

Borrowing From Britney

"Oops !...we did it again

I patched your PC, broke some things on the way

Oh baby, baby

Oops, you think you're secure

That I sent you a cure

But I'm not that competent."

Microsoft rejects Yahoo! rejection

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

Sounds good...

Just a few hours after Mexico rejected the state of Washington's $44.6bn purchase offer, the Redmond-based state has responded, reiterating that it "reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Mexican residents are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal."

In a statement released this afternoon, Washington called Mexico's rejection "unfortunate."

"It is unfortunate that Mexico has not embraced our full and fair proposal to combine our state with their country," the statement begins. "Based on conversations with resident billionaires in both areas, we are confident that moving forward promptly to consummate a transaction is in the best interests of all parties."

New England Patriots victims of trademark hubris

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

Cart B4 da Horse

Maybe instead of setting themselves up for a lifelong royalties income they should have watched a bit more tape and figured out how to play against the Giants. Instead they got rocked in every facet of the game....lucky ?....the Patriots were lucky the score wasn't 31 -14. Sacked 5 times, knocked down 9 times, a dozen or so more pressures, 45 yards rushing.....the Patriots offense was dismal.

Few noticed that he Giants had their two best defensive players on the sidelines during the Patriots 4th quarter drive. The young Manning missed two wide open receivers who could have easily garnered big gains. I watched the game as a fan of neither team but it was as one sided a 3 point win as I have ever seen. The Patriots are a better team than they played. The primary reason for the loss was that they were badly outcoached.

Toomer got away with a blatant foul on his catch but the Patriots benefited from a TV timeout which gave them the opportunity to offer a challenge on the 12th man on field call. There was also a lot of blatant forearms to the head thrown by Patriots defense which wasn't called. Not to mention the Patriot's interception where the Giant's receiver picked the ball from a few inches off the turf and tossed it into the Patriot's defender's hands.

A fan of either side could argue that the other team got lucky breaks but there were well distributed on both sides. The way I saw the game was an erratic Giant's offense managed to score points on a pretty darn good defensive team. The Giant's defense however completely overwhelmed and dominated one of the best offensive units ever and that's how the game must be remembered. It was the most watched SB of all time and they played a game well deserving of the designation. Bellichek walking off the field, with one second left on the clock, was not the big deal it was made out to be by the press but was the biggest sour note of the day.

Blu-ray winning in Europe

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

Old News

I don't think Sony's hurting as much as people like to believe. As for the US console sales, last I saw was:

PS2 & PS3 = 1.9 mil (1.1 and 0.8)

XBox = 1.25 mil

Wii = 1.35 mill

Worldwide:

PS2 & PS3 = 46%l (30 & 16)

XBox = 17%

Wii = 37%

Good summary here with a pretty unhealthy future slated for the X-Box.

http://dum.rd.macnn.com/2008/01/31/video-game-consoles-2007-wii-ps3-and-the-death-of-microsofts-xbox-360/

One thing I don't really get tho with regard to the HD-DVD versus Blue Ray thing is the "region codes" issue. How often to peeps run into a problem here ? I mean how many of us are trouncing from our NYC penthouse to our villa in the south of France and finishing with a month in Hong Kong before returning home to NYC ? And dragging our video collections with us ? Not that I understand why Sony bothers. Seems to easy to circumvent by either using region code stripping software or just buying a player from the region you wanna add. What am I missing here ?

I am much more concerned about scratch protection than region codes and with the ever increasing height of my "Leaning Tower of Pisa" scale model made from now unusable scratched game CD's, I personally lean to the more practical scratch resistance of the BR's.

Punxsutawney Phil predicts six more weeks of winter

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

It's winter ?

What happened to the 1st 6 weeks ? 44 F outside.

PS3 sales to surpass Wii's... in four years' time

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

Today's Consumer Better Educated

I think the article hits the point for several reasons....note that I am not a console gamer far preferring PC based games. I look at the console wars as this season's Betamax but the consumer has wised up a bit since then. Many game and video afficionados see the VHS / Betamax war as being won by the inferior technology because people didn't know any better when they were buying. They are reluctant to make that same mistake again.

VHS won that war as customers rushed out to buy Granny and Aunt Bee an X-Mas gift. They weren't going to but a Betamax or to buy a VHS Player....they went out to but a movie tape player. And with the VHS one at $179 and the Betamax at $209, Granny and Aunt Bee pulled off the XMas wrapping to find a VHS player. Sony had then become the poster child for how to screw up a platform launch. But also it is oft presented as a prime example of customers choosing entry price over actual value.

Now again while not a console gamer myself, I do have 3 children. Not wishing to deal with the clutter of all 3 systems, Mom and I decided to have them settle on one. We already been thru the Dreamcast / PS 2 clutter. As you might expect, the answer I got 1st time I asked them which, one (oldest) wanted PS3, one wanted X-Box (middle) and one (youngest) wanted Wii.

Now being the neighborhood geek, and watching all the neighbors friends and relatives scramble each X-Mas I cringe a bit a sI know I gonna get called to hook all these things up. So i see a lotta peeps with new systems and hear about why they chose what.

Last year it was Mom's doing the shopping are coming home with the Wii cause it's got three things going for it. 1) the lowest price of the three and 2) the "buzz" on the controller (and mom's desire to see the kids get of their asses) and 3) more games.

But now the buzz is wearing off, the Wii controller fetaures are bing deadpaned in many game reviews, and they all see Wii owners going out and buying a 2nd or even 3rd console. Now a hard core gamer sees this as "wanting to have it all" but the Mom's and Pop's doing the purchasing are picturing the clutter of multiple consoles and thinking, "why don't I just get the "best" one in the 1st place....it will even be cheaper int he long run".

With the 40GB model, I am also seeing Mom's saying, "I'm not gonna be running out and standing on line trying to get one of those things, I'd rather just pay the extra $100 or whatever and let the brown truck deliver it to my door."

In many houses when they sit down to make that decision, the ability to play HD movies is going to also be a factor. Considering the cost of a separate HDTV or BR player, the ability to play 1080p content is going to be a factor. Mom and Pop are also now seeing the news of BluRay kicking ass and figure they can get themselves a "free" BR player when they "buy the kids" an XMas present.

One more nail is that monthly credit card bill which has little Johnie's WoW subscription on it.....Mom doesn't wanna see XBox Live or whatever being added to her credit card statement.

Another factor is that the people who wanted a Wii were not "given pause" by the price tag last season. The PS3 on the other hand debuted high but with recent price cuts, pent up demand is now responsible for the rush of current buyers. But in the long run, having had spent a year listening and reading about the topic, this holiday season's buyers are more educated about the difference between the systems. Whether the benefits are perceived or real, the PS3 is looked upon as the performance king, comes with a HD movie player and won't wind up w/ recurring credit card charges.

Apple lobs $100 credit at iPhone buyers

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

And this is different from everyone else how ?

Intel's latest CPU premiers at $990 and is slashed 60 days later

Nvidia latest and greatest vid card......

X-Box........

PS3.......

It's called "bleeding edge" not only cause you gonna suffer with 1st on the block technical issues but it also because it "bleeds" ya wallet.

Email has workers tearing their hair out

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

Title

Not surprised women feel it more. My wife will drop anything to pick up a ringing phone whereas if I am just doing something of no great urgency, I am perfectly fine letting answering machine do it. Many companies had learned over the years to limit phone contact to "production" employees to certain times of the day. Yet, they institute no such policies for e-mail.

To my mind, unless you are on "urgent call" or "immediate sales", anything more than twice a day is a time waster. If something is urgent and "can't wait", I'd suggest e-mail addicts consider this new invention called a phone.

iPhones, iPhones and more iPhones

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

We buy windows don't we

>So what you're saying is, that it's perfectly acceptable to purchase a product that does not work acceptably or as advertised, because "sometime in the near future, the supplier might bother to release an update that resolves this"<

Don't have any feelings one way or the other about the iPhone, other than complete confusion over the mindset which has people investing their time blogging about what it isn't. But isn't this akin to buying any Windows OS before SP3 ? Isn't this the same as buying a Treo (I own one) etc which just don't seem to work quite right until the 2nd or 3rd patch.

How to recover your 'unrecoverable' laptop

John W. Naylor, Jr., P.E.

File by File ?

And if this laptop HD is partitioned ? ... don't think it's gonna restore all the partitions ?