The tale of the proprietory browser

Its been one of those evenings / mornings. I've been trying to make up a quick test application for my works phone - which is an iMate Jamin. Now it runs Windows Mobile 5.0, and creating any application for this is generally easier using Visual Studio considering it comes with Emulators and so forth.

So I set about installing it. Unfortunately I had IE7 installed as well. If you try and create any "Smart Device" project within Visual Studio 2005, you get run time errors, or it just doesn't work. I've spent at least an hour, combined, trying to work this out. Eventually something Chris said about IE7 screwing up some HP printer drivers made me wonder. After 20 seconds of googling, it looks like IE7 doesn't play nicely with Visual Studio. But there is a fix!

  1. Close VS, and open the Registry Editor (regedt32)
  2. Find the following registry entry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\PreApproved
  3. Add a new entry and name it: {D245F352-3F45-4516-B1E6-04608DA126CC}
  4. Close RegEdit

I'm starting to wonder its worth all the effort.

BF2142 Titan Crash "Hotfix"

It's a record for EA. The "Hotfix" is out for the Titan Mode crash in the recent 1.05 BF2142 patch.

Be aware its downloading at a poor rate (nothing unusual there). Fingers crossed.

Overpriced "non-Open, Common Music Format" FM Transmitters

Sorry I meant "MP3 transmitters".

It's not like it stopped many people, but short distance FM transmitters are now legal in UK.

Woohoo. Now all I need is a bigger amount of storage in my H320.

Data Dissemination

Van Jacobson did a talk at Google around about 30th of August, 2006. He brings up interesting ideas for true data dissemination.

The thrust of the talk is basically along the lines of; "we shouldn't care about where data is, but getting the data". This effectively leads on to a caching-like system. Now be aware, calling it caching does it a bit of a disservice, but its the easiest way to explain it without watching the talk. Effectively any device, connected to the network (by any form) should beable to provide data to any other client. In a time where we're up against things such as Net Neutrality, this is rather interesting. We shouldn't care where the end point is, but only getting the data and verifying its the real data. Pretty interesting stuff, in my opinion. Unfortunately I see a few issues, which I don't remember being explicitly brought up.

If you take a look at the system from a BitTorrent analogy, which Van Jacobson sort of does, the first issue is that it works very well, but only on large data-sets and on static content. Once you release data onto a BitTorrent "network" its very difficult to alter that data without scrapping it and starting from scratch. To combat this, you need to look at the system in a slightly different way; perfecting the analogy, if you will.

Compare the concept to DNS. There's a canonical source, which all secondary sources ping (even if via "proxy") to check if there are changes. Now the issue with this is that whilst it copes with dynamic content, it will often take some time before it is distributed through out the entire system. This brings up questions of data expiration and so forth. For private areas on web applications, how do you prevent it from being cached and then otherwise shared?

This leads onto data verification, which is presented as a slightly unsolved issue in my view. Then again, this is a talk on infrastructure, not the finer details.

Finally, the major issue as I see it, is how do you persuade people that sharing their storage space is worth it? If everything is acting as a "cache", then how much space do you dedicate to the system? How do you prevent leechers?

Overall, its a very cool talk and starts off with an introduction to how the ARPA network and TCP/IP came about, but from a very human stand point. If you don't care about networking concepts, but are interested in how things came about in a human way (including a brief overview of the arguments over what originally constituted a network), then it might be worth watching the first 30 minutes or so.

Concert Etiquette

Yesterday evening I went to see Muse, for the second time, at the Cardiff International Arena. As usual they put on a good show, and I had a laugh. I could've done without the drive home, but thats another story.

Unfortunately it seems as if some people don't have common sense or any form of "concert etiquette". A few of my biggest pet hates from last night:

  1. If you intend to be in the thick of things (read: at the front, or near a 'pit), do not bring a bag. It's fucking annoying, and will only cause your fellow people behind you to get very fucking pissed off and have the desire to open said bag.
  2. If you have hair longer than shoulder length, consider tying it up a bit. Really long hair should definately be tied up.
  3. If you're only there for the headliners, telling the opening band(s) on stage to piss off isn't called for. Quite frankly you can fuck off, there's going to be someone who wants to listen to them.

If you've not been to a concert of medium - large size, with standing tickets, don't rush to the front. Things do get very squashed as the main act are there. Live with it. Half of the problem is caused by the little 'uns and first timers wanting to get out, and the rest wanting to get nearer the front. To those I elbowed in the face, etc. to get the missus out last night, I apologise. To the bald guy (on the unlikely chance you'll read this), you're a fucking nice bloke; cheers for the helping hand. Pretty sure I met you at the Slayer gig too :)

Finally, bands with a larger demographic are going to attract more assholes. Quite frankly I've been to see quite a number of more "hardcore" bands, and they're always reasonably calm outside of the pit, bands like Muse, or System of a Down, will not be.

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