April 25th, 2010

Xauth Overload

April 25th, 2010

The Story Of X:

  • In the beginning was xauth, a command-line utility that let you set which machines and users had authority to connect to your X windows display.
  • Then there was XAUTH, part of the authentication mechanism in IPSec secure connections.
  • xAuth, on the other hand, is variation on the OAuth protocol. It’s being proposed by Twitter as a more convenient way for apps to authenticate with online services.
  • And now we have XAuth, a platform developed by Meebo to allow one website to see which other online services you might be logged into.

Come on guys! It’s time to start using some other letters!

Otherwise, we’ll have to think of a way of pronouncing the different capitalisations, so that when geeks say to each other over coffee, “Why don’t we just use x-auth?”, they don’t then all go and implement incompatible things…

No related posts.

April 24th, 2010

Ex-books and eBooks

April 24th, 2010

Two rambling thoughts this morning about ebooks.

Mmm… an aside, before I’ve even started: How should I capitalise or hyphenate e-book? Quentin’s Law of Technological Pervasiveness says that a (non-proprietary) technology has been truly successful when it’s no longer capitalised. There are those who insist that ‘internet’ should still be ‘Internet’ but I don’t tend to bother, any more than I would talk about the Electricity Grid… now, where were we? Ah yes…

  1. Unlike their predecessors, e-books have no real reason to go out of print. This is encouraging if you’re an author who has poured years of your life into a work and can now take comfort in the idea that it will always be accessible, even if only a few continue to read it.
  2. Many publishers have made downloadable versions of their books freely available, confident in the knowledge that most people, if they like more than a chapter or so, will splash out for the paper version because it’s so much nicer than reading on screen. Will the advent of the iPad and similar, really rather nice, portable PDF viewers put an end to this practice?

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April 9th, 2010

Early multitouch input device

April 9th, 2010

A couple of days ago I had the pleasure of meeting Walter Taucher. Among other things in his Seattle office, he has a card-punch machine from the thirties.

Yes, kids, the connection between your keyboard and your computer used to be, not a USB cable, but a stack of cards that you’d carry across the campus to the computer building. This was the thing that punched the cards. Part of the intrigue for me was that this came from a company we know well, but which now has a rather different logo.



The machine still works, apparently…

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April 7th, 2010

The Times, they are a-fellin’

April 7th, 2010

There’s a widely quoted trivia fact on the web: that the publication of a typical Sunday edition of the New York Times takes 63,000 trees.

Wow. That’s pretty striking number, if it’s right. But does anyone have a source for it?

There are about 1.5M subscribers to the Sunday edition, so I’m guessing they sell about 2M copies in all. That means a single tree gives you only about 32 copies. Does that sound right? The paper is pretty bulky on a Sunday, but still… I don’t think the economics would work out if that were the case. How much does a tree cost?

Of course, they may be very small trees…

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April 4th, 2010

Coffee Table Computing

April 4th, 2010

Coffee Table computing

Apple has created a new kind of device – the coffee-table computer. This is not to say that it isn’t an incredibly valuable tool for day-to-day life, but some of the early apps which are appearing for the iPad are simply capitalising on the fact that it is just a beautiful medium for displaying content, in its full-screen, uncluttered simplicity.

The Elements is a perfect example (and yes, it does include Tom Lehrer’s song), as is the Guardian Eyewitness app which is a glorious showcase of the paper’s photographers’ work. They’re both examples of things that would previously have been attempted using large-format hardback books (which wouldn’t have included music and video).

I have no doubt that there will be many more to come…

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Ihad a little iPad…

April 4th, 2010

This post is here to tell you little more than:

  • I’m in Seattle
  • I have an iPad
  • It’s lovely
  • I’m using it to write this post

Things that I’ve found particularly pleasing in the very brief time I’ve had it include the fact that the keyboard, in landscape mode, is very much better than I would have imagined: I’ve brought a Bluetooth keyboard over with me but I think I may not use it much. Rose’s books are available on the iBooks store. And the Kindle app is already iPad enabled.

Lots of fun but I’m jet lagged and need to go to bed. I’ll try not to take it with me…

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March 31st, 2010

The Mistaken Wife

March 31st, 2010

Yes, I know all the jokes about “anybody who would marry Quentin…”

This to let you know, gentle reader, that Rose’s book of that name, the third in the Mary Finch series, is officially published tomorrow. We’re having a launch party tonight…

The Mistaken Wife

However, rumour has it that it’s already available in certain fine bookshops – Waterstones in Cambridge being an example – and you can also find it at the usual online booksellers. Readers in North America will need to order from the UK, or wait until the US edition is published in the autumn…

Links and more information at RoseMelikan.com…

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March 29th, 2010

An audible shrug

March 29th, 2010

Book LogoAyn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is one of those books I’ve been meaning to read for years. Its Wikipedia page says that, “according to a 1991 survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club, Atlas Shrugged was second to the Bible as the book that made the most difference in American readers’ lives”.

I’m now reading it, or, more precisely, listening to it. Since I seem to have less and less time for reading, I’ve become something of a fan of audiobooks, and this version is magnificently read by Scott Brick. Unfortunately, it’s only available in the US Audible.com store, and not on Audible.co.uk. I have an account on both, which is foolish, but I can never quite decide which one to give up.

Having never actually seen the book in its physical form, though, I hadn’t gathered just what a massive tome it is. As I saw that I was approaching the end of the 8-hour audio file, it took me a moment to realise that this was just the first section. The first of eight. Yes, folks, this unabridged narration is 63 hours long! And you can get it for one Audible credit, which would be exceedingly good value even if it wasn’t so nicely produced.

I’ve only listened to the first 13% or so, but so far it comes highly recommended.

If stories of dystopian industrialism are not your thing, or you think you can’t quite stomach 63 hours of anything, let me recommend another really excellent book: Robert Kurson’s Shadow Divers, which is available in both the UK and the US. Another great way to make better and more enjoyable use of that time you spend shaving, driving, or washing up…

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March 24th, 2010

Unlock 02 iPhone

March 24th, 2010

Now that’s something I didn’t know… O2 customers in the UK can request to have their iPhone unlocked. At any time. Which means that affordable use while roaming is presumably now possible using a local SIM, though those tend not to give you data as well… still, I’d rather settle for phone capabilities and data via wifi than for no phone at all…

Good stuff. Have filled in the form and will see what happens… it can take a couple of weeks, apparently.

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Arbury… sorry, Orchard Park

March 24th, 2010

To the north of Cambridge a new housing estate is being built. Well, it was being built, though things seem to have slowed down a bit recently, presumably because the property market is in the doldrums.

I’ve seen some of the houses, and actually been inside one, and they’re not bad, as modern buildings go. But I have to wonder at the intelligence of the developers.

At first, they named the estate ‘Arbury Park’ – a delightful-sounding name unless you happen to ask a local, in which case you’d discover that Arbury, the estate next door, is, shall we say, not deemed to be amongst the more desirable areas of the city.

After building a large number of houses, I presume that they cottoned on to this because some months ago it was renamed ‘Orchard Park’, a ‘mixed use development including 700 prestige homes’. And they’ve managed to convey just some of this prestige in the proud sign that announces the project to passers-by.

I assumed this was a temporary sign. Very many months ago.

I like the comment on the District Council web site – a wonderful example of dangerous punctuation:

The site will provide 900 quality homes – 270 of which will be ‘affordable’.

Update: Have a look at the comments for some interesting background to the story… and in the afternoon of the day I posted this, I drove past the sign again, to find that it had finally, after many months, been replaced a couple of days before. Which makes it look much more professional, but now, knowing the story, I can’t help but feeling the old one was rather more fun!

Orchard Park update

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March 10th, 2010

Codility

March 10th, 2010

On Monday I met the guys behind Codility – quite an interesting system designed to help with the recruitment of software developers.

Basically, it lets you set simple programming tasks for developers, which they can perform online and in the language of their or your choice, and then sends you a report of how their code performed against a variety of edge cases, for large datasets, etc. If you’re a programmer, try out the demo – I found it quite fun!

I think there is real value in this in a couple of areas, beyond its obvious use to those hiring developers. Firstly, as a way for teachers of programming to set coursework. And secondly as something that would give recruitment agencies a bit more credibility when they’re bombarding me with spam. I would be much more likely to look at their candidates if I knew they had gone through a preliminary level of filtering, especially if they had completed tasks in more than one programming language.

Anyway, very nicely done – worth checking out.

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