The Heavens align...

I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy a new PC (with Vista, natch --- read the tagline) and now this happens.

ION: I've been reading Neal Stephenson's classic essay In the Beginning was the Command Line.

Let me just review my real reasons for not just using Ubuntu:

1. I use Dreamweaver and Photoshop, and I see no reason why I should install a completely different operating system just so I can run two of the three applications I actually use in WINE.
2. That's it.

What I really need to do is buy a new hard drive for the 'ol lappy and fire up Ubuntu on that.

Aha. A plan.

New PC

I have a new PC. It is joygasmically fast. It is one of these:


The keyboard supplied didn't work, irritatingly, but the company are sending a new one and I bought a cheap one for £7.96 from Tesco for the time being.

[image from Arbico]

And You're Only Just Realising This?

There comes a point in every man's life when he realises that he is almost certainly never going to create one of the fundamental circuit elements of electronics.

Also: one of the things that struck me as odd about the recent discovery/invention was how old-fashioned a discovery it seems.

We are no longer used to "fundamental" breakthroughs in areas other than the biological sciences, as Charles Stross comments in this interview:

"We seem these days to be seeing new ground-breaking theoretical developments at a rate of one every six months to a year: breakthroughs on the same order as general relativity or quantum theory. (You don't see such breakthroughs routinely in physics, which is a relatively mature field, but if you look into the biological sciences equivalent breakthroughs appear to be coming thick and fast.)"

There is something wonderfully retro-1950s-buttoned-down-white-labcoat-brylcreme- and-horn-rimmed-glasses about the invention/discovery of the "memristor."

Sadly my knowledge of electronics is ever-so-slightly too limited to truly grasp the theoretical implications of this. However the practical implications look extremely interesting:

"Today, most PCs use dynamic random access memory (DRAM) which loses data when the power is turned off.
But a computer built with memristors could allow PCs that start up instantly, laptops that retain sessions after the battery dies, or mobile phones that can last for weeks without needing a charge."

I spend at least ten minutes every morning waiting for my PC to power up at work (yes I know I could agitate for a better PC... but [deleted due to imminent curtailment of career prospects - free speech go hang]).

Imagine all the time you've spent waiting for a PC to power up: adding up all those two to three minute gaps could make a lot of difference in the world. You probably wouldn't even notice power cuts.

Of course my reading of this is that "instantly" means within a second or two and that the computer would retain the current session.

Anyway there's another thing off my list of things to do before I die...

C'est la vie.

The Asus Eee, Google and Cloud Computing

I saw an Asus Eee in an electronics shop today. It is qualitatively different from any laptop I have ever seen. It has the feel of a child’s plaything, and carries the same air of cheapness.

As Charles Stross says, the laptop and PC are both heading for a period of commoditisation. As the cost of laptops, PCs, and consumer electronics in general start to fall they will become as expendable as pocket calculators and digital watches.

Aside from the size, the two things that struck me about the Asus Eee are how quickly it starts up, and the operating system. The OS is some Linux derivative. Because the Eee has a solid-state hard-drive and no disk drive it has no moving parts (except for the hinge and keyboard) and as such immediately feels less fragile than a normal laptop. There are no air vents either. Altogether it gives the impression of something you can pour tea on and drop on the floor and it will still work.

The OS is pretty straightforward. There is no messing around with desktop metaphors. There is a simple tab-based menu system with applications grouped into web, office, games, education etc. A great deal of the Eee functionality is based on connections with the Internet, and specifically with the web.

As I said, the laptop restarts in seconds. One of the single biggest causes of minor stress in my life is slow computers. It is a joy to finally discover one that starts in less than ten seconds.

These days most laptop/PC functionality for the casual user is connected with the Internet. Even office programs are now being brought online. Games are now played online. Programs can be developed online (I can’t actually bring an example of this to mind but I know they are there).

Would I buy an Asus Eee? Yes. If I had the disposable income, and if I actually needed one, and if I didn’t know that before my current lappy conks out there will be many cheaper and better laptops in the same league of cheapness and niceness as the Eee.

Google and Cloud Computing

If the Eee teaches us that laptops will become (even) cheaper and (more) ubiquitous then other movements in the world of technology show us even more about the nature of the world ahead.

One of the big buzzwords of recent months has been the idea of “cloud computing” where instead of running programs on a box on your desk, you just enter the data and the commands and they are actually processes in a big “cloud” out on the Internet. Eee-style computers will presumably one day be connected to the Internet via high-bandwidth links and farm out surplus processing to large servers many kilometres away.

Companies like Google have recently been moving towards support of this sort of computing. The Register article where I first noticed this is here. Those at The Register use the charming phrase data smelters (coined here) to describe the vast powerhouses of computation that exist for the purpose of swapping bits in the service of the Net.

The problem for Google is that what they really have (and all they’ve ever really had) is a good search algorithm, a superb brand, and a lot of computers. The search techniques that made Google so successful have now been copied by other search engines. The brand remains as strong as ever, and will be crucial to Google’s long term survival.

The last point: the lot of computers, gives us our glimpse into the future, not just of Google, but of computing in the second quarter of the 21^st century. Vast data-warehouses connected via high-bandwidth links to thin clients like the Asus Eee.

Moore’s Law will probably chunter along for another few decades and then we’ll be left with ludicrously cheap laptop/mobile form-factor devices equipped with prodigious memory and processing power themselves, but connected via high-speed links to processing yards many orders of magnitude more powerful.

Every individual on the planet will own one of these cheap laptop/mobile form-factor devices but only the largest companies and states will be able to pay the huge costs of running the data centres.

Of course this could all be complete rubbish. It could be that swarm computing networks will emerge that reject the centralised client-server model in favour of a more egalitarian “flat” model without hierarchies.

Anyway: I’m willing to bet an Asus-Eee-equivalent of 2018 (i.e. £50 or thereabouts) that the next major upgrade of the MacBook family will involve a solid-state hard-drive.

Tom out.

UPDATE 21/03/2008: Goodness me I am such a fool. The most recent update of the MacBook family, the MacBook Air, does have a solid-state hard-drove option.

Ubuntu Update

This is by way of being an update, rather than a full blown review.

There are many aspects of Ubuntu that I like and there are some I dislike. The ones I like are:

1. There is no need for tedious and memory-consuming virus scans.
2. When new hardware is plugged in Ubuntu waits for me to do something about it, instead of trying (and failing) to be helpful by providing Autorun features as Vista does.
3. Change is good. It's refreshing to use something other than Windows.
4. There seems to be much greater scope for personalisation than with Windows.
   

All these things said, for the average and casual user there isn't a great deal in any of this. Most of the above points are more to do with the general crapness of Windows rather than anything good about Linux/Ubuntu.

Things I don't like about Ubuntu:

1. After dual booting Ubuntu with Vista I can no longer disable my Synaptics touchpad.
2. Ubuntu does not include native support for DVDs or mp3 players. I know that this is a niggle and shouldn't be a big obstruction, but for the casual and lazy user (like myself) it is just irritating.
3. New things scare me.
   
4. Ubuntu defaults to being so like windows that there doesn't really seem to be much point.
   
5. I've been prodding the bash shell or whatever it's called and it's all very oldschool and cool but to be honest I don't want to have to learn a whole new language just to get my PC to work when a GUI would do. And yes, I know that I can do pretty much everything through the GUI but I'm lazy.

OK - my conclusion so far is that there really isn't much point to Linux. If it's ever going to go mainstream it will be through things like the Asus Eee, which Charles Stross comments on at length here.

I'm still having trouble understanding the ubiquity of Microsoft Office in business, when OpenOffice is free and does exactly the same thing (at least as far as 90% of corporate users are concerned).

I think when I buy a new PC or laptop the first thing I'll do is install Ubuntu and use it from day one. This way I will avoid falling into the habit of using Windows.

Design and Writing

I disagree with nearly everything Jeremy Clarkson says, but I agree with him that there is some indefinable essence that certain items are imbued with. Good design.

Good design transcends the value it gives by way of looks and usability and becomes a joy - something to treasure and value simply because it exists. Human ingenuity overcoming the mindless perversity of the universe and converting matter into something that does something well.

Things like the iPhone, and the Nokia 6310i.

Similarly some people write so well that what they write is good simply because of the way the words are arranged and which words are used. Stephen Fry and Terry Pratchett spring to mind. (incidentally I've never been more affected by the news that someone I don't know was ill than when I read that Mr Pratchett had Alzheimer's - the content of his books speaks of a very pleasant and very wise person, it is very sad that he will be robbed of something he and so many other people enjoy so much).

Good design is to be celebrated as much as good writing. It doesn't provoke wonder so much as joy that we can make this difference and do this thing so well.

An Observation

Why is it that marketeers seem to think that people really use their laptops in grassy parks?

In every university prospectus on the "online" page there will be a picture of an attractive student sitting in a park using an Apple MacBook Pro.

For some reason these people also frequently barefoot.

Why would anyone be using the web in the middle of a public park without any shoes?

Objections:

1. You'd get mugged.
2. Students that can afford MacBook Pros can also afford appropriate footwear.
3. Most grassy parks are not the sort of places you want to walk about barefoot in.
   

Space, Global Warming, and Technology

Sorry I haven't written anything for a while. As I mentioned before I've spent most of the past few weeks doing exams, revising for exams, and dealing with the usual stresses that accompany these activities.

As always, an awful lot of stuff has happened over the last few days. Gordon Brown got to be Prime Minister. I'm looking forward to seeing what he'll do.

NASA is planning to launch a spacecraft called Dawn this July to study the asteroids Vesta and Ceres. When it comes to space development asteroids are the first logical source of real cash. They are large reserves of useful materials and aren't sitting at the bottom of massive gravitational wells, like most of the useful material in the solar system.

Charles Stross recently blogged a long and interesting article on space exploration and the economic difficulties of delivering cans of apes to distant star systems. I suppose we can only assume that when human civilization starts to really affect matter beyond our immediate solar system it will be through star-wisp style probes, rather than massive generation-ships, as Stephen Baxter imagines in this month's edition of Focus Magazine.

The star-wisps would carry a small payload that would be capable of "bootstrapping" itself to a more useful state using energy and material it would find when it arrives at its destination star system.

Stross makes a very good point that living in space (even in habitats like O'Neill cylinders) will probably be as difficult and uncomfortable as living on oil rigs or in the Arctic or in the Gobi Desert.

I think it's fair to say that when and if civilization begins to have a large material impact on the solar system it will not be through homo-sapiens living in bottles. It will be through artificial machines controlled by homo-sapiens living in comfort on Earth.

Global warming: From my point of view, I don't mind (in fact I would welcome) giving up personal automobile transport, but cheap international flights is one area where I feel resentful of the necessary sacrifice. A recent article at Physorg suggests the development of an electric plane. I can only assume from the article that it does not refer to an electrical jet engine, but rather to an old-fashioned propeller.


This is disappointing: currently I think the best possibility for have your cake and eat it air travel is alternative fuels, like Richard Branson has been plugging recently.

There is also the wonderful Smartfish project. The sketches of the plane look wonderful.

As for cars, driving on today's roads is an affront to the dignity of man. A sensible, low-cost/free, integrated, information-saturated and nationalised public-transport service is a necessary component of any developed nation seeking to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

I'm still cynical of hydrogen-gas as an alternative fuel. It seems wasteful to produce electricity to electrolyse water to produce hydrogen (assuming you don't use fossil fuels), transport the hydrogen, and then use the hydrogen to power a car or bus. It would be simpler to generate electricity and use it to charge a more conventional battery or super capacitor. There's a fascinating story on Wired about the Tesla electric sports car.

With the current hype surrounding Web 2.0 (Twitter, for example, which I have failed to use and will probably remove if it doesn't become more interesting) there have been a number of articles on the future, and how you predict it. This fascinating article on Slate about the future of the computer is an example. For all the recent advances in computer technology and communications technology we haven't even started to scratch the surface of how these two areas will transform our lives.

As computational devices ooze into the background and interfaces become more intuitive and ubiquitous (for example, Microsoft Surface) the potential for Black Swan events will increase.

All this makes predicting exactly what life will be like in the future difficult. An interesting book Imaginary Futures - From Thinking Machines to the Global Village by academic Richard Barbrook suggests that our ideas of imminent utopia have more to do with Cold War spin than any realistic analysis of potential future technology.

My own feeling is that the world is likely to get better for everyone over the next century, even as we find new and ever more cunning ways of making ourselves miserable. I suspect that at some point over the next 50 years the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, like the Sudan, Namibia, and others will experience an enormous surge in quality of life, which will make things better for everyone. Global Warming is just crammed with potential Black Swans.

I read an inordinate quantity of science fiction. I've never been able to identify precisely what I like about it: it's probably to do with the mix of optimistic escapism and extraordinary ideas.

Another interesting component is looking at what people in the past thought the future was going to be like. It seems to me that we here in Britain started the 20th century with the spectre of a European War between colonial powers hovering over our heads.

Following several decades of predicted global catastrophe (WWI, WWII, the Great Depression, the rise of dictatorships of various flavours, the creation of atom bombs and the start of the Cold War) people turned to science and technology to create a bright new future.

After this there came various waves of science fiction, dealing mostly with how people felt at the time of writing. Now that the future seems bleak again, with global warming, climate change, peak oil, and all the usual problems of Getting Along, it will be interesting to see how our view of the future changes.

With regard to this, Henry Jenkins writes about how this change in our perception of the future has affected science fiction.

I can't wait for it to be the future!