D11: What's Wrong with Devices Everywhere?

Reports coming back from D11 indicate that most companies are focusing on (according to a report attributed to Mary Meeker)  "Wearables, Drivables, Flyables, Scannables".

Simply put, I tend to disagree still. 

While all these brilliant minds are gathering, I think the feedback leaking out feels as out of touch as the iPhone...  I'm not sure it even sounds different anymore.

With respect to wearables, I believe the pre-backlash against Google Glass is telling, and has more to do with the fact that people are very comfortable with their smartphones... and not so comfortable with the Borg-like assimilation of them.  

I think Apple will run into the same sorts of issues with the iWatch.  I'd rather put an iPhone on an arm- or wrist- band than have both an iPhone and an iWatch...  that makes two devices to manage the care & feeding of...  this goes directly against the premise of the SmartPhone... the idea that *one* device is your buddy and your complete "away-mission" kit.

The idea of drivables is similar.  Computers in cars is one thing.  I don't want to have another computer interface in my car. 

Blame it on R2-D2 and the Borg.

No one wants to be assimilated. 

Further, why carry an X-Wing (or Y-Wing or B-Wing) fighter around when you can have your astromech (smartphone) follow you from fighter to fighter?

While I fully agree...  any company worth their salt should be looking at making everything have a well connected computer in it,  they should not, necessarily, be looking at having a human interface on those devices.  These should be control & reporting processors built into devices, not redundant smartphones built into devices.

Let the interface be our beloved astromech... I mean smartphone.

I love where some auto manufacturers are going with things like Ford SYNC.

The ten year cycle on the smartphone is only just beginning, and wearables, drivables, flyables and scannables probably won't work as stand-alone products, but as extensions of the smartphone era.

Virtual Gambit

What a pain.

A few weeks ago I posted a bit about how Windows 8 is not killing the PC market.

I'll now take that a step further and argue about the one thing in Windows 8 that is really making me regret not having new hardware...  an actual compelling reason to really think about a new PC, for me.

Around the time I wrote the original post, I was looking at taking advantage of Windows 8 Pro / Hyper-V on my home PC...  mostly because emulators for devices such as Surface and Windows Phone 8 make use of it.  I have Hyper-V on my work system, and it's fantastic for a variety of reasons.

I'd all but forgotten that my home PC didn't have a processor that supported VT-x technology, meaning no Virtual Machines... so when I went to add the Hyper-V role, I was somewhat disappointed to discover it was a no-go.  

"Maybe it's time to upgrade something," I thought.   I could get a new machine... but it's pretty hard to justify the chunk of change based on this one feature.  (Never mind that it's not so easy to liberate that kind of money from the budget.)  "I'll order a new processor that supports Virtual Machines."  VT-x.

So I dropped the $200, instead.... placed an order for a dated, but still more feature-rich chip.  I waited for the thing to arrive, and finally sat down, lifted the old CPU out, and dropped in the new one.

After the successful screw-top surgery, I pulled up the dialog to add Hyper-V only to discover that...  the new CPU doesn't have the guts to run Hyper-V on Windows 8 either.

Seriously miffed, (because I know VM technology is older than Hyper-V, and I just burned $200 for 2-3 more FPS in WoW) I started looking into what the deal was.  Turns out Hyper-V on Windows 8 requires an additional virtualization technology in the processor called SLAT.  

None of the processors that fit my home PC support SLAT. 

If I want Hyper-V, (which is highly desirable for coders like myself who want to use Microsoft tools for the latest MS platforms) I *must* replace the vast majority of my PC's components... but, really... economically speaking.... I need a new PC.

So it's an interesting conundrum that I can't help think was designed around boosting hardware sales....  Seriously...  I can do a lot with Virtual Box and VMware Player in terms of running VMs.  I could even install Windows Server 2012 and run Hyper-V from the server OS (without SLAT) on the very same hardware.  (Only Windows 8 Pro Hyper-V requires it.)

I can't buy a new PC for less than $2k that will outperform my current system...  so, when it comes down to it, the ONLY reason I can think of to upgrade would be for Hyper-V... what a pain.

Here's a comparison between my PC (Hyper-V no-workey) and a much more modern i7 (Hyper-V workey)...  note that the i7 is an Intel i7-720M, but it's processor score (6.9) in the Windows Experience Index is less than the experience index of my older Yorkfield Core 2 Quad-Q9400 (7.2).   (both systems are hobbled by their disk platters).

Cloud or Windows 8 Killing the PC Market?

Everyone's busy scratching their heads as of late, and then pointing.  Who's killing the PC market?  

Slashdotters are loving the idea that it's Windows 8 ( http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/04/11/002200/windows-8-killing-pc-sales ).

...but I fully call BS on that.  (Thankfully, Slashdot corrected itself to some extent.)

Then I came across this article by ZD Net blaming the cloud:
http://www.zdnet.com/whos-killing-the-pc-blame-the-cloud-7000013954/#postComment


The CLOUD?

That's kind of like saying the Boeing 787 is killing the auto industry.

The cloud may be killing the server market, but that's not the PC market...  the server market is busy supporting the cloud providers, though, so I don't think they're too bad off. 

If Windows 8 is holding the PC market back, it's this:   I have upgraded every PC I touch (and then some) to the latest Windows 8 Pro, with no need for additional hardware, (because you were ill advised (or unadvised) if you're a Windows user who didn't take advantage of the $40 PRO edition upgrade offer from MS while you could.)

What's killing the PC market is rooted in applications... especially games, on a couple levels:

1)  the fact that there's only ever been one reason to have heavy iron at home:  games.  Games have gotten to the point that spending a few thousand dollars on a new machine won't significantly improve your desktop gaming experience... so... unless you have that kind of scratch to waste, why bother?

2)  The games people want to play are on mobile devices.  As much as I love my desktop games, there actually have been a few mobile titles that have been engaging enough that I have taken time off from raiding to play them.

There is also the fact that the economy in general sucks, and while older PCs can continue to function, newer PCs are discretionary purchases that can (or must) wait.  

I can say from example, I'm aware of someone who has a laptop that, through what appears to be planned obsolescence, has broken in a couple of "expensive" ways... the display and keyboard are both dead.   Rather than pay a grand or more for repairs that would cost more than a new machine, or even pay the money for the new machine, the solution was to pick up a USB keyboard, and a cheap monitor... it now serves quite adequately as a desktop...  (and it was also upgraded to Windows 8).  (In any case, I'll never waste money on that brand of laptop again.  :)  )

If the hardware market wants me to spend, they've got to do something that will get me to feel like I'm not burning bucks for 10 additional frames per second, or... change their model... radically. 

Or... show me my favorite desktop title with an improved experience through touch screen...  but even this can be overcome with something like a LEAP Motion sensor for less than $100.

Bottom line... I think what we're seeing is, for the first time, honest to goodness inflation hitting the PC market, and it's choking on it.

Hedging Against The Risk of Becoming A Monopoly

First Microsoft with their late entry into the mobile market (and flubs leading up to it)... then Apple... now Facebook...  anyone notice that they kinda suck lately?  

Apple, clearly getting bored with it's iPhone, is now turning its attention to it's iWatch... which doesn't make much sense to me;  I purposely gave up all other devices, including a wristwatch, in favor of a single unified mobile device.  It will take a lot to convince me to add a wristwatch back in, and I'm sure having to pay for it will be a deterring factor.   (Next thing you know, they'll add electroshock notifications, and make it so that authorities will have the ability to lock it to the wearer's wrist and cause it to electromagnetically bind to the nearest metal object in order to detain people... (but that's another whole story)).

I'm always toying with social media, so when I ran across a Facebook post from an entrepreneurial acquaintance recently, wondering if his content was being suppressed, I had to check it out.   As an experiment, he posted a really cute puppy, and it picked up a fair number of responses.  His concern was that his regular posts were not getting the response he'd grown accustomed to.  To add yet more anecdote, there was recently a post on the New York Times' blog about similar observations, tied to tweaks Facebook has made recently.  It seems posts that are engaging or paid for are prioritized, and posts that are not quite as popular are at best "deprioritized".  It seems likely that even engaging posts tied to commercial products are likely suppressed unless paid for.  Anyone who dabbles in trying to build an audience through Facebook must pay or make sure their content is very engaging.   I like knowing about the books friends of mine are publishing.  I like knowing about their small mom & pop shop.  These posts are getting hidden from my newsfeed.  It's not the most engaging stuff, but it's part of what I use Facebook for.  Having this stuff drop off my radar makes Facebook start to suck more.  Yes, they want to make money, but I think there may be even more to it.

I digress.

But I have to ask...  with all the Big Data that companies like Apple, Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Facebook, Google, and the rest have...  and rest assured, they have it... the analytics.  How can they really not recognize the things that are hurting their business? 

Is it intentional?

If modern history has shown us anything, it's that free markets do not tolerate monopolies.  In every case, any time a company takes advantage of its own strength in the market, the market has pushed back, forcing one of a number of "bad" things upon the company.  Just about every global company has seen this.  I recall hearing about the Rockefeller oil breakup, but in our time, it was the Microsoft / Internet Explorer shakedown.... and there have been many others.

I long suspected the reason Linux existed and was not thoroughly stomped on by the powers that be (Microsoft) was to allow Linux to be a "competitor" in the market... something that would never have a unified corporate focus that could actually unseat Microsoft.  I know that Microsoft even supported some Linux components, which anecdotally supports my theory.  I'm sure they supported it as much as they felt they necessary in order to make sure Linux was a viable competitor.

When it became clear that Linux's strength was flagging, a more corporate competitor became necessary.  It seems Apple filled that gap very nicely in the PC market for some time.

While Apple began to dominate the mobile market, Google stepped up to become a competitor there, partially because Microsoft wasn't committed to the market space.  (It wasn't enough of a threat to the PC market.)  Android has the same problems as Linux... too decentralized to be a lasting threat, so while Apple had it's heyday and now lets itself slip in the market, Microsoft will target Google.  Eventually, I predict Apple and Microsoft will take turns with market dominance with Google there to provide another safety net.

So back to Facebook...  It seems like Twitter has become a haven for market bots, but not much more of real use to the average person.  Facebook's power grew to near monopolistic levels over 2012, but I predict that Facebook will actually allow this unhappy situation to persist for entrepreneurial folks, encouraging them to explore Google+.  This leadership transference to Google+ will bolster Google+ as a competitor, enabling Facebook to remain free of  the shackles of being a monopoly.  I suspect they'll both start taking turns with market dominance, but despite the market competition, I bet both will claim better results in their marketing campaigns, thus leading to higher advertising prices on both.

The nasty part, here, is that the reason for preventing and sanctioning monopolies is to prevent them from strong arming their markets.  Unfortunately, what it seems like we're getting instead is very small oligarchies taking turns to be the dominant, but not quite monopolistic force in the market.  They take advantage of each other to develop brand loyalty which improves their profit margins and gives them near monopolistic power among their followers, yet they maintain their monopoly-free, unsanctioned status.

#quotehack of the day

The other day, a friend of mine posted a quote by Oscar Wilde.*   It went like this:

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

The coder in me immediately was reminded of code review sessions where we looked for ways to improve the codebase in really nitpicky ways.  Almost instantly, I hacked up the quote in my mind and posted the following:

I was working all morning on a code review, and added a comment.In the afternoon, I took it back out. #quotehack (Oscar Wilde)
— Jim Wilcox (@poliTechnosis) February 19, 2013

Like the original, it's an exaggeration, of course, but there's always that kernel of truth... sometimes you get caught up in little things that don't pan out. 

That got me thinking of a few other favorite quotes, and how an over-dedicated developer like myself might better relate to them.

Only developers who will risk overflowing arithmetic can possibly find out how badly they can crash their app.#quotehack (T.S. Elliot)
— Jim Wilcox (@poliTechnosis) February 19, 2013

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

foreach(object you in whatever) you = (good)1;#quotehack(A. Lincoln)This is a better version of the previous.:)
— Jim Wilcox (@poliTechnosis) February 20, 2013

"Whatever you are, be a good one."

 

The hardest job rookie programmers face today is learning best practices without seeing any.#quotehack (Fred Astaire)
— Jim Wilcox (@poliTechnosis) February 20, 2013

"The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any." 

The hardware determines what's possible.The software surpasses it. #quotehack #dev (Pilar Coolinta)
— Jim Wilcox (@poliTechnosis) February 21, 2013

"The mind determines what's possible.  The heart surpasses it."

Going forward, I'm challenging myself to do a #quotehack of the day.  I might even be inspired to do a breakdown blog post for some of them.

In any case, I invite you to follow along... I'll probably continue to post from my phone, which cross posts to Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In all at once, so you can catch 'em from any of those & see if you can spot the original quote.  Maybe it'll be something you can relate to yourself .

* Joe Pace, author of a really cool sci-fi book called "Minotaur".

No Kid Hungry, Resolution To Renew My Commitment

It's New Years Day, 2013. 

My kids made a comment, this morning, about how commercials on the TV were the same today as they were yesterday.  Without thinking about it, I flatly told them that it doesn't really work that way; that today isn't really much different from yesterday. 

I realized right away, even without my wife's reproving look, that I'd blundered a bit as a dad just then.  I remember being disappointed when I was a kid by how things failed to change over night between New Years Eve & New Years Day.  I had to explain to my kids that the real difference between 2012 and 2013 was not the messages in TV commercials, but what they, themselves, resolved to change.... and the work they put into making that happen.

That, of course, got me thinking about my resolutions for 2013..  I'd tweeted a couple cute ones last night, on New Years Eve...  but there's one that I've been thinking about for a while now that I've only hinted at otherwise.

In 2012, I saw how much deeper problems seem to be running, economically....  how even some of my extended family would consider my immediate family's lackluster financial situation to be a blessing compared to what they're facing. 

Media news reports that the economy is improving.  That may be true on Wall Street, but it seems hollow on Main Street.  Indeed, the so-called improvements of 2012 feel like they've come at the expense of folks who have been on the brink of needing help.  Clearly trickle down economics have failed.  News of improvement only means that people are slower to give... because we're not in such financial distress, anymore...  right?  Well... worse, with fiscal cliffs and inflation factors threatening to take hold in 2013, who can give?   Sadly, trickle up poverty seems to be in full effect.  

In the meantime, one thing that didn't work out the way I'd hoped in 2012, was the results from my charity project. 

As a product, I'm very pleased with what I was able to publish in my spare time.  It's an honest to goodness Sudoku puzzle game for Windows Phone...  no spyware, no malware, no ads, no personal information used or transmitted...   just the kind of game I wanted to play, and something I wanted to share.   I built it using tools that I wanted to work with.  I published it globally for free, and also for the U.S. for $5 with my own personal commitment to donate all proceeds to charity.  (Folks in the U.S. have a choice...  there's no difference between the free and the paid editions of the app... it's just if you want to donate to charity or not.)

As a tool for charity to raise funds and/or awareness...  well...  I'm hoping to change it's past performance.  I understand that it looks bad that I can't market the app with official cause logos & such from the charity I've committed to support...  I asked for permission for that, and for legitimate reasons, I couldn't.  My hope was that the app would earn the privilege by the contributions it generated.  It's been tempting to shoot first and apologize later, but in a world of "no good deed goes unpunished", I didn't want to take risks I couldn't back up.

After an experimental social media campaign that mostly just annoyed friends & family on Facebook, I gave up.  There was too much real work that needed my attention.  I couldn't let an effort that was getting nowhere cause me to fail at stuff like my job.  

I've decided to renew my efforts with the hope that it gains some traction at some point... I'm not fighting for the product; I have nothing to prove there. 

It's the cause.  Helping hungry kids. 

I have yet to figure out exactly what this means... I don't want to annoy friends & family... but the cause needs hands.

Even if you have no interest in my charity project as a fundraiser, please seriously consider contributing to the cause. Even if you can't do that...  please help spread the word. 

This is their website:
No Kid Hungry

Windows 8 Hyper-V Advanced Tips For ESATA

Here's a couple tips for a perhaps not so unique situation when using Hyper-V hosted in Windows 8 Pro with an ESATA spindle involved. 

1)  Moving a snapshot file to a different drive for performance reasons.

Hyper-V does not support keeping shapshot difference disks in folders separate from the base disk.  If you're like me, and store the main VHD on an E-SATA disk, performance isn't bad, but could be much better if you could move the AVHDx file to a different physical drive, preferably a full speed drive.  This issue is minimized with solid state drives, but if you don't have one, the best bet is to create your snapshot, remove the disk from your guest VM, move the AVHD file to an accessible location, and then re-attach it.  (Don't take my word for it:  back stuff up first!)  Once you re-attach, it should run your read/write activities in the avhd, and pull data from the vhd file as needed.

[Edit:  The trick to this part is figuring out where the config files are so you can modify them.  They live at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V\Virtual Machines\, but the files themselves are XML files with GUID names. 

I typically find the correct one by simply looking at the modified date... it's probably the one you most recently used. 

Before you can edit these files, you must shutdown the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service, and before you start it back up, you'll have to make sure that the account this service runs with has read/write access to the .avhd, wherever you put it.]

2)  If your E-SATA drive is hardware encrypted, shut off power management.

One issue I was running into that was hosing the host and beating on the guest OS...  My ESATA disk has a keypad that you have to tap out a PIN on in order for the disk to function.  Power management was shutting down that drive at about 20 minutes by default, causing the disk to reset and disconnect, even with a VM running off of it...  this is the computer equivalent of crossing the streams... suffice it to say it's Bad™.  So using advanced power management, I was able to tell the system to stop spinning down the drives while the power cord was plugged in.  (If I'm on battery, I typically won't be running my VMs on it.)