Tagged: rant

The Problem With RFID

RFID is like cold fusion. It will revolutionise everything - and it's only five years away!
Terence Eden

And, much like cold fusion, NFC will permantently be just around the corner. It's been "The Year of NFC" since 2008. Just like it was in 2009 and in 2010.

Today the news came that Google may be abandoning QR codes in favour of NFC for its business places service. I think this is a mistake and that NFC is too far away to be of any real use. Indeed, I think NFC will permanently be too far away.

That said, NFC technology is awesome. It has a serious cool factor going for it which is best expressed in George Nimeh's seminal post on the subject.
NFC Magic

The Shortcomings of NFC - A Rant In Several Parts

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Quoting Page Numbers from eBooks Considered Harmful

It emerged this morning* that the Guardian newspaper has realised that the way it writes is unsuitable for the web.
*Source: Guardian Newspaper, 18/11/2011, page http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mind-your-language/2011/feb/18/mind-your-language-day-date-time

By using non-specific language, I have introduced a degree of ambiguity which makes it hard for reader - both in the present day and the future - to understand the ideas I am trying to convey.

For example - the above text doesn't state which of the many Guardian newspapers is under discussion.
The words "this morning" are highly subjective depending on timezone - and the date at which the article is read.
Finally, the source link is separate from the text making it hard for an automatic process to understand what words relate to which website.

The above chould be rewritten as...

The Guardian has realised that the way it writes is unsuitable for the web.

We can, of course, extend our markup to make it easier for both humans and robots to understand what it is we have written. Using the ideas behind the Semantic Web we can embed information about the relationships, dates, times, locations, etc, in a meaningful way.

Page Numbers

This leads me into the bizarre decision of Amazon to introduce page numbering for its Kindle eBook reader.
Amazon Page Numbers

I hope this post will convince you that this move is philosophically wrong and - potentially - dangerous.

Why Do Paper Books Have Page Numbers?

Paper books (not "real books" as some people term them) are physically printed on individual sheets of paper. Page numbering is a limitation with non-digital media to allow semi-rapid and predictable access to pseudo-exact locations.

For example, a paper book may say

"For further information on the Infinite Improbability Drive, see Adams 1979, page 42"

It doesn't tell us where on a page unless it also introduces a paragraph number. As a paragraphs aren't usually numbered, this makes locating the exact reference hard for both machines and people.

Furthermore, different versions of the same text may have substantially different formatting - larger print, more images, smaller paper, etc - so every time a book is republished all page references have to be recalculated.

Page numbers are a hack. They are an illusion designed to give humans the impression that an imprecise reference is specific.

Why Don't eBooks Have Page Numbers?

Because they don't need them! An eBook is a digital document which may be marked up in a many ways. From the humble text document as an unbroken stream of characters - to a meta-data rich ePub full of syntactic markup.

An eBook never knows the size of the screen upon which it will be displayed. Even if it did, it wouldn't know how large its text would render, nor what font would be used, nor if the screen orientation were to change.

The idea of a page number for a digital document is an absurdity. Page numbers are only needed for an item that may be printed out in the physical world. Even then, they still suffer from the above problems.

Why Use Page Numbers In Quotes?

The idea is simple. To use the Harvard Style as an example - other styles are equally useless - we see this.

Lawrence (1966, p.124) states "we should expect..."

So, assuming we can find the exact copy of "Lawrence's" paper, printed in exactly the same font and size, on exactly the same shaped paper, and typeset identically, we can simply flip through to page 124 and scan through the page until we find the quote we're looking for.

Rubbish! Utter, unmitigated, total and utter rubbish. A long, boring and error-prone process which does little to help us find the information for which we are looking.

The Role Of Computers

We have computers for one simple reason - they perform boring jobs with speed and accuracy.

If I want to find where Alan Turing declared "It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence" within "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" I can do one of two things.

  1. I can click on a link which takes me straight to the sentence or chapter
  2. I can hit "search" or "find" in my document viewer

Having documents which are correctly marked-up is the key to successful linking of data. Manually marking up a document is tiresome and problematic for humans. Where we fail, computers make up for our shortcomings with their incredible speed at searching through documents.

My Kindle is a fairly slow as far as modern computers are concerned. Yet it has no difficulty searching through millions of words in hundreds of documents to find the single sentence I'm looking for. And it all takes less time than it would for me to flick through some pages.

A Changing World

Page numbering as a system of referencing relies on such an unlikely series of events as to be worse than useless. If both reader and writer do not have identical copies of the quoted work, there is a real risk of confusion and misunderstanding.

Page numbers are an ugly hack which fail to achieve the precision they so desperately crave. Let's remove the hack and replace it with something which actually works.

People who quote a page number from an electronic book don't understand how the modern world works. Documents have evolved - so must our citation styles.

How Sony Ericsson Killed Android

(Yes, the title is link bait.)
Broken X10
Sony Ericsson have announced that their Xperia X10 range of Android handset won't be updated to the latest version of Android. They'll be stuck on Android 2.1 with no hope for any bug fixes.

As I discussed last year in "The Future of Android - And How To Stop It" there is a fundamental tension between users, manufacturers, Mobile Networks, and Google when it comes to the Android Operating System.

First up, a common misconception...

Some Android Phones Are Too Slow For Updates

Bull. Shit.
The HTC Magic - the second Android phone to be released - has been updated to 2.2 (Froyo). By any measure, the Magic is slower compared to the mighty X10 - but that shouldn't matter. My dog-eared old laptop can still receive updates for Linux. Apple's ancient iPhones still, I believe, get some bug fixes.

So, for how long should a phone be supported?

The Lifetime of a Phone

The Magic was released in mid-2009 - and it is still being actively supported 18 months later. This is important. Most smartphones (in the UK) are sold on 18 - 24 month contracts. That means the customer expects them to be supported while they are still under contract.

Given that the Magic was probably sold by Vodafone for ~6 months (including at 3rd party retailers), the consumer will expect this device to be supported at least until the beginning of 2012.

The Xperia X10 was sold in the UK from March 2010. Sony Ericsson haven't even given it a year's worth of support. Barely 10 months after release and it has been abandoned.

Even if you bought it on a 12 month contract, the day it was released, Sony Ericsson have decided you're not important any more.

The question now is, see that shiny SE Arc - do you want to buy it knowing that within a year there will be no more enhancements, no more bug fixes, no more love for you?

Old Phones Don't Die

It's rare that a phone just goes into a drawer when a customer gets an upgrade.
Let's take a look a the typical life of a mobile phone.

  • 6 months sitting in a warehouse waiting until the customer can afford it
  • 24 months being used on a contact
  • 3 months used out of contract until a good upgrade has been found
  • 3 months sat in a drawer
  • 12 months given to a kid / niece / nephew who doesn't mind an old bit of kit
  • Sent to the developing world where the cycle starts again.

At the very least, that's 3 - 4 years use for the average phone.

Now, you may change your phone ever 12 months whether you need to or not. Recognise that you are the exception. Most people are not rich enough to get a new phone whenever they feel like it. Most people can't ring Nokia's press department and ask for a review model.

Phones need to be supported for their lifetime - even if it is just fixing bugs.

The Community Will Fill The Gap

I am in awe of VillainRom, Cyanogen, XDA Developers and all the other Android hackers. The amount of (often unpaid) work they put in to developing custom ROMs for Android handsets is incredible. They've got the latest version of Android - with all the bells and whistles - for nearly every Android handset out there.

Surely X10 owners can just use these guys for updates?

Well, yes, with two caveats.

  1. Technical Know-How. It's hard for the layman to find these sites, let alone risk their warranty by invoking the command line magic needed to perform the update.
  2. Fragility of the Eco-System. Who tests these mods? What happens when something goes wrong? What happens when VillainRom decides he has better things to do with his time?

The community should not be treated as an unpaid help desk when a corporation decides to divest itself of all responsibility.

Android Updates Are Fundamentally Broken

If you've ever used Linux - you'll be familiar with this sort of screen.
Ubuntu Updates
Windows and Mac also behave in a similar fashion.
Rather than updating the entire OS - only parts of it are updated. If there is a bug in, say, the way timezones are calculate - only the timezone program needs to be updated.

If FireFox needs updating on your computer - that's all you need to update. No need to reload your entire software suite.
In some ways, Android is like this. The email, maps, and market all act as standalone apps and can be individually updated.

I think Android should go further.

A Proposal

We're now in a crazy situation where a critical flaw in Android SMS capabilities will be fixed - but may never reach customers' phone because manufacturers and networks have decided to no longer support a particular device.
This time it's an SMS problem - what happens when it's a serious security issue?

I suggest the following way to mitigate it.

  • Google should develop, test, and release updates to core Android components - including security fixes. These should be updated directly to the Manufacturer.
  • Manufacturers should do the same for their customisations (UI etc). Then release to the customer.
  • Mobile Networks should be responsible for testing and releasing any radio firmware.
  • If a manufacturer won't release an update, Google should do it directly.

Google needs a way to send critical updates to customers without waiting for 3rd parties to muck around. Microsoft don't wait for Dell to test a patch, and Dell don't wait for PC World to monkey around with it before it hits you - the customer.

I'm aware this approach is not perfect, and I'd be very pleased to hear any suggestions on how to make it better.

...There's Always A But

Imagine you just bought a lovely new SE Arc. A software update comes along which bricks your phone.

Who do you ring / sue?

  • CarPhone Warehouse who sold you the device?
  • Vodafone - to whom you pay £40 per month?
  • Sony Ericsson - the manufacturers?
  • Google - the developers?

Who do you think cares most about you? Who do you think can fix your fault? Who approved the update and did QA in the first place?

It all gets very messy, very quickly.

I think Android will thrive in 2011 - but it will be despite Sony Ericsson.