Distracted eGovernment

So, this week Microsoft and our government[1] announced the "E-Government Browser"...

First of all, it's not a browser, just a browser plugin or toolbar. It does not add any functionality to anything. No new e-gov app... nothing.

Then, please make up your mind whether you want to call it "browser" or "explorer"... seems that Microsoft had their say with the naming here... "browser" (wrong as it is in the first place) seemed to be too generic a name for Microsoft, so they had to bring in "explorer" (as in "Internet Explorer") as well.

And by the way... WTF... it's just a toolbar with shortcuts to some Austrian e-gov and non-e-gov applications... I don't need that all the time around... wouldn't a simple link collection[2] with a proper easy-to-remember URL suffice.

And ... please... if at all you have to do this... why IE8 only?
And why in the same interview exclude the iPhone and Apple with a very bogus reasoning:

Wir möchten als Verwaltung selbst entscheiden, was wir an Inhalten dazufügen oder wegschalten können" , begründet Christian Rupp, Sprecher der Plattform Digitales Österreich
["We as the [federal] administration want to decide ourselves which content we want to add or remove", says Christia Rupp, spokesman for the platform "digital Austria"]

Well, then... where's the toolbar for IE7, Firefox, Opera, Safari, ...

Why not spend your time and efforts in getting the e-card to actually work?! Still does not work for me.

Why have anyone (in this case Microsoft) spend "a significant 5 digit Euro amount" ("hohen fünfstelligen Euro-Betrags") on this, instead of using the money for e-gov applications that work?

I wonder what the EU commission has to say about this, when they just forced Microsoft to open up the windows default browser installation with the browser ballot[3] and then one of their member states goes endorsing IE8 all over again.

*facepalm*

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[1] OK, not the federal government itself but their "Initiative Digitales Österreich" - initiative [for a] digital Austria... same-same
[2] call it "portal" or "planet" if you like
[3] no, I don't like the ballot either

HP and WebOS - pt II

Last week I mused about the HP Palm acquisition being not so much about Palm (the hardware) but webOS...

Here's what (HP CEO) Mark Hurd hast to say about it... via cnet.

He told the audience that HP did not "spend billions of dollars trying to go into the smartphone business; that doesn't in any way make any sense," according to a ZDNet report.

We didn't buy Palm to be in the smartphone business. And I tell people that, but it doesn't seem to resonate well. We bought it for the IP. The WebOS is one of the two ground-up pieces of software that is built as a Web operating environment...We have tens of millions of HP small form factor Web-connected devices...Now imagine that being a Web-connected environment where now you can get a common look and feel and a common set of services laid against that environment. That is a very value proposition.

I rest my case :-)

HP and WebOS

So, after acquiring Palm just recently, HP seems to draw a more clear picture[1] about its intentions with Palm.

Or should I rather say "with webOS".

Two headlines from the past two weeks or so that caught my eye... the more recent and more obvious from the Register:

HP exec confirms WebOS tablet • reghardware:
"According to Monty Wong, VP of PCs at HP's Taiwan operation, WebOS will be used in smartphones and tablets, but not in netbooks, DigiTimes reports."

and the more surprising one where Ars Technica quotes Mark Hurd:

When we think of printers, you’ve now got a whole series of web-connected printers that, as they connect to the web, need an OS.

in their article "HP: introducing the webOS... printer?"

webOS for printers? Does make sense... doesn't it?

• you need an OS that is capable of a proper rich user interface on a small screen/LCD
• you are still connected to at least a local network, quite likely to the internet as well
• you can have a market for (3rd party) apps that handle output, connectivity, etc, etc directly on the printer

So HP was actually looking for an app-ready operating system for their series of connected gadgets and devices, rather than for yet another hand-held (HW-) manufacturer...

This now makes a lot more sense[2].

As Ars Technica sums it up quite nicely:

In other words, webOS gives HP its own lightweight, Web-savvy client operating system for all of its consumer-facing gadgetry up through netbooks.

Don't mind that Ars Technica and The Register contradict each other regarding netbooks... that's beside the point I think. Every device that has the size and hardware capabilities of a netbook will run Windows and/or Linux anyway. The more exciting area here is tablets / pads / printers / gadgets.

Can't wait to see if they manage to get that done properly...
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[1] at least more clear to me, sorry, if this was all obvious to you ...
[2] Ford and Microsoft are already going for an app-ready OS for cars... the Ford SYNC.

[wired] Top 20 Ways to Provoke a Geek Argument

Yes...
yes... and
yes...

Top 20 Ways to Provoke a Geek Argument (GeekDad Wayback Machine) | GeekDad | Wired.com

So true.

VirtualBox 3.2 released

Apart from the kind of obligatory yearly re-branding attempts[1] by the respective new owner, VirtualBox finally comes with some cool new features...

• Latest Intel hardware support
• Large Page support
• In-hypervisor Networking
• New Storage I/O subsystem
• Remote Video Acceleration
• Multiple Virtual Monitors
• Hot-plug CPU's
• Virtual SAS Controller
• Online Snapshot Merging

Details and explanations here, download here.
and, as they guys from ElReg say in their article,

With VirtualBox 3.2 (and no one is ever going to call it Oracle VM VirtualBox, so let's get that straight), the software engineers have tweaked the type 2 (meaning hosted) hypervisor so it can run on all the latest "Westmere" variants of Intel's Core i5 and i7 processors for desktops and the Xeon 5600s for servers and high-end workstations.

VirtualBox 3.2 also sports acceleration for the Remote Data Protocol if you are using a Windows 7 client in a VM, and the hypervisor can emulate an LSI Logic SAS controller for storage as well, which is common in high-end x64 workstations and entry servers and midrange x64 servers.

VirtualBox supports just about any x64 operating system you can imagine: Windows NT all the way back to 4.0 and Windows all the way back to 3.0, plus DOS, OS/2, Linux 2.4 and 2.6, Solaris, and BSD Unix - and now Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.5 and Canonical Ubuntu 10.04 are added to the long list.

So, away with the just-installed v3.1.8 and lets got 3.2...
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[1] Sun Virtualbox, Sun xVM Virtualbox, Oracle VM VirtualBox, ... come to mind

eCard still not working

Still no progress with accessing the pension and social security applications with my e-Card.

Federal pension plan (PVA) still gives a $fourletterword about the new Mocca client.

And Austria (or its government) still brags about being #1 in e-government.... yeah, right... 'course...

VirtualBox 3.1.8 released

...and I'm already downloading it.

Coder's Revenge

via Geek&Poke

Thunderbird 3.1 beta 2 out

Finally the beta2 for the new Thunderbird release (no, just an update, actually) is out[2].

It brings 2 important features:

a) the Lightning nightly updates only work with TB3.1 beta for a couple of weeks now... so finally I am up-to-date again with Lightning as well.

b) the fully indexed search introduced in Thunderbird 3 was great, but what annoyed me ever so slightly, was that they used the same search field for filtering and searching and you had to select from the drop-down what you actually wanted to do (filter the current folder view or search all over the mail boxes).

Cumbersome, at least.

Now with TB3.1 they split those into two... a filter bar and a search bar.

Search is hot-keyed [1] with Ctrl-K (kind of a standard anyway) and filter with Ctrl-F (which is mnemonically OK).
Although the filter bar takes away some space from the folder pane, it is worthwhile (to me). You can always hide it again. Not sure if I can make use of the quick filters for unread/starred/contact/... but let's just see.

What still strikes me as odd, that in the ... uhm ... message pane action area (?) ... not sure what it's real name is... you know, that one here, the one that way introduced with TB3...

Ok...that one. So well they are still missing a "File" or "Move to" action there. Do I really have to hack it into TB with an extension ?

Also they are still missing the Favorite sub-menu in the Move to context menu... only recent folders there... what would be so favored with my favorite folders, if not being a frequent move-to-target.

Still, TB3.1b2 seems quite stable... production grade, it'd say...

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[1] not sure if this is a verb... well now it is.
[2] download here

Date - sortable

This is to all the people who include a date in a file name or document name (and there are good reasons for doing so... simple way of versioning).

Is this really so hard to format a date so that it is sortable?

That would be year first, then month, then day (of month) - just like ISO 8601 says it should be. year-month-day or year/month/day ... whichever separator you prefer...[1]
And please - numeric only.

So please, do not include a name of the month, because then April appears before February. And the sort order would be locale/language dependent. Not a good idea.

So no "Apr-27th" in a file name please (I've seen that).
Just make it "2010-04-27".

That's sortable. Everywhere.

Come to think of it: in that regard the rather awkward American way of writing a day (month/day) does make sense all of a sudden... still month/day/year is totally pointless.

Thanks for listening.

You can go back to what you were doing.

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[1] but stick to it. No point in using - in one file name and / in the other.

Update for eCard configuration for Oracle's Sun Ray

There's an update for the new Austrian eCards for the Sun Ray[1] Server... the 2010 card... you know, the one that does NOT work properly as a citizen card.

The update can be found and downloaded here on the Sun Ray User Group wiki.


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[1] yes, they are called the Oracle's Sun Ray Clients now.

Book: Daemon - by Daniel Suarez

I just finished reading Daemon by Daniel Suarez. It was recommended on twit a couple of weeks ago as an audible book. I still chose to read it on paper.

What distinguishes this novel is the technical accuracy... Suarez does not just throw buzzwords up in the air. The are accurate, then he talks about IP/network characteristics and effects, DDOS attacks, ... etc etc

Totally nerdy & geeky.
But really good.

Palm and 3Com re-united

So, HP bought Palm... not Apple, as has been rumored over the last couple of weeks.
Palm and 3Com [1] finally re-united.

IMHO (and as a former Palm fanboy) this still does not give Palm/HP a chance in the smart phone market: HP/Compaq never managed the iPaq to smart phone transition - with the help of giant Microsoft - so why should they be able to manage it now without any help, when they are up against Apple and Google (and. yes, Nokia, but they are an easy target).

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[1] Sorry, "HP networking" as they are called since last week.

James Gosling to leave Sun/Oracle

Well, this kind of sort of in a way was to be expected. James Gosling left Sun Oracle, as he reported here.

eCard problems continued

Well, the problems with my healthcare card (eCard) as an Austrian Citizan Card (Bürgerkarte) still continue.

1. My old card had problems, so it was replaced with a newer version last December...
2. Then the availabe citizen card software (Bürgerkartenumgebung) was not compatible with the new type of cards, and I was told this would be fixed in January.
3. It was not

However, now there is a new citizen card software called MOCCA: it is Java based (finally) and available through webstart...
Works quite well for the one application where I would not really require the Bürgerkarte: Finanzonline - the federal tax return/claim application. It does not require a citizen card login... but there it does work.

For applications that require the login, like my (federal) pension plan, it still does not work.

Error code 2006:
HTTP/HTTPS binding: Incorrect parameter encoding.

Seems that they are not ready for MOCCA yet (after about 2months).

Could someone out there please coordinate the government agencies? What about synchronized releases of obviously interdependent pieces of software?

Annotations

via geek & poke

Flickr language - could this be any more embarrassing

Remember how I ranted about how Fickr changed the language to German for my account, and I could not find how to change it back to English...

Oh this is sooo embarrassing.... really... but I have to admit this...

Anyone ever take a look at the bottom most bar in flickr?

Yeah... that one.

Turns out, that when you click on English, it changes the language to English.

Another example, if you click on Deutsch, it changes the language to German/Deutsch.

Funny stuff, really.

Flickr language

And why exactly is it, that Flickr fall of a sudden talks German to me?
I did not change any preferences, still have en_xx way before de_xx in my browser language settings, ...

But starting last weekend, Flickr is German.
And no option[1] to turn it off.

What the f%&/( ??
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[1] none that I could find, anyway.

April 3rd - I'd rather stay offline

So, the iPad will hit the stores on April 3rd this year...

I think I'll stay offline that day, because all the blogs, twitter, facebook and whatnot will be full with love and hate messages, and Why the iPad is the best device ever, and Why it is total crap...

The usual fight between Apple fan boys and the Apple haters, as well as those who expected a thinner/smaller MacBook with a full OS and those who love the idea of a larger iPhone...

I'll just stay offline ....

Google Acquires Online Image-Editing Tool Picnik

Odd .... Google Acquires Online Image-Editing Tool Picnik (see also here)
I know Picnik mainly from / for Flickr, which now is a Yahoo company...

So, did Google just grab Picnik before Yahoo had chance?

Then again, it was also available for Picasa et al... still surprised me.