Year: 2006

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Health and Safety idiots

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These days, we live in a culture where health and safety is considered to be of paramount importance above all else. Everything is secured and sanitised in order that the possibility of danger is kept to an absolute minimum, and for the most part, this is entirely correct. However, often health and safety rules, regulations and restrictions, dreamt up and put in place by well meaning lawmakers and council officials, are impractical, expensive and inconvenient. Nonetheless, they are forced upon us by these health and safety Nazis under the principle that “it’s for our own good” and that we need to be protected from danger (including ourselves) at all times.

Fine. It’s inconvenient and annoying but the principles are at the end of the day difficult to argue with, so I have to accept it. But there’s one area in which this culture of health and safety seems to be completely ineffectual, and I want to know why. I can’t speak for other places, although I suspect it’s much the same, but in Manchester there’s another annoying “culture”: Stupid pedestrians.

Why are the health and safety handwringers not doing anything to stop people from wandering out in the middle of the road without looking? Where is the council worker with his clipboard and his rulebook when there’s a mother with her push-chair standing between two opposing lanes of traffic waiting to cross the road 50 yards away from a pedestrian crossing? Where is the fat-pensioned civil servant from the Health & Safety Executive when the group of drunken tarts from the University with all their skin hanging out choose to walk along the double yellow lines of Oxford Road in the small hours of the morning instead of the empty pavement? Where is the patronising government advertising campaign that many people quite clearly need to tell them the purpose of and difference between the red man and the green man at traffic light crossings?

Stupid pedestrian culture is clearly very very dangerous, much more dangerous than not having a contrasting border around your electrical sockets, or having your kitchen worksurfaces above a certain maximum height, or not recording every single little bruise and graze in a fucking “accident book”. And yet, nothing is done about it. Why?

I know why. The question was rhetorical. It’s one thing to create rules, regulations and restrictions, it’s quite another to enforce them upon the unwashed masses. Controlling the public as they walk through the streets will be seen as an infringement on civil liberties, and the civil liberties/human rights handwringers can wring their hands a lot harder than any health and safety handwringer could possibly ever dream of doing.

It’s still not right though, and it fucking pisses me off.

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Explorer Destroyer

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Slashdot | Explorer Destroyer – this is an extraordinarily bad idea and will most likely lead to another inter-browser jihad similar to that fought between Netscape and Internet Explorer in the late 90s, and trust me, nobody wants to go through that shit again. The trouble is, the pro-Firefox and pro-Opera and pro-not-IE zealots fail time and time again to understand the practicalities of developing sites and applications for modern web browsers.

The central issue is “web standards”. The W3C sets and maintains web standards which govern the specification and use of the various markup languages and how browsers should interpret said languages. This is all well and good, but only in theory. And it’s a good theory, make no mistake, but unfortunately we have a little thing called “real world” to contend with.

The trouble is that browsers are not standards compliant, which means that website coders by extension will waste their time by coding up a 100% standards compliant website, because the likelihood is that it won’t work, at least not fully, in any browser. Militant (read: non-commercially minded) developers stick to their guns on this, proclaiming that their site is 100% compliant, and to hell with the browsers, it isn’t their problem. Again, they do not live in the real world.

Some browsers are more standards compliant than others. Firefox and other Mozilla based browsers are more standards compliant than Internet Explorer. Safari and other KHTML browsers are more standards compliant than Firefox et al, Opera is more standards compliant than Safari et al, and so on and so forth. But none are 100% compliant. So, when coding up your website, you have to make allowances for this, which often means compromising design and/or functionality in some way. You either do this by changing your overall design, or you make browser-specific hacks. The former is the preferred method, but sometimes you’ve no choice but to do the latter, dirty as it may be.

Then there’s another issue in that some of the official web standards aren’t actually that sensible, with some bordering on pretty awful. Internet Explorer’s interpretation of the W3C standards is very flexible in some areas, and while this is technically not correct and it’s wrong of Microsoft to insist on their on take on the standards (another relic from the Netscape/IE war, anyone remember “Netscape tags”?), some of the modifications they have made are actually pretty reasonable, and really should be in the offical standards.

For example, the IE “box model” (how the browser calculates the dimensions of rectangular areas) in particular makes far more sense than the flawed and illogical W3C version, standard or not. The web development community recognises this particular issue, albeit reluctantly, so Microsoft aren’t all bad, even if their unilateral execution of the modification seems abhorrant to some.

I also tire of the shortsightedness of users of alternative browsers. On asking them why they prefer Firefox or whatever over Internet Explorer, their answers are generally one or more of:

  • $my_browser is more secure!
  • $my_browser has tabbed browsing!
  • $my_browser supports transparent PNGs!
  • $my_browser isn’t Microsoft! F/OSS! (free open source software)

The first one in that list is understandable, IE does have some problems with its security. But that’s nothing to do with how it renders web pages, and that’s the crux of the “standards” arguments. The same applies to the second item. Tabbed browsing is an application feature offered by the browser, and again, nothing to do with the page rendering. It is NOT REQUIRED by the W3C standard.

The third item is a cosmetic extravagence that frankly nobody needs and everybody has managed perfectly well without since the inception of the web. Granted, it would be a nice thing to have, but let’s face it, the web isn’t going to wither and die without it. Then on hearing the fourth item I stop speaking to the person because it’s then clear to me that it’s not about browsers and standards, they just want to bash Microsoft. Yawn. Move on.

IE isn’t perfect, not by any means. It’s old and it’s unsecure and its liberal take on published web standards can be infuriating. But it is a good, solid and above all popular browser, which 90% of the world uses. So while that’s still the case, developers working to a budget and who have to deliver return on investment will more often than not develop a site for IE, and then see what they can do to get it to work in other browsers, and even then they’ll probably stop at Firefox, the second most popular browser. Beyond that it’s just not commercially viable to spend time satisfying the various levels of standards compliance demanded by every subsequent minority browser. Sorry, but we don’t live in web standards utopia yet, we live in the real world, and we’ve all got to try to earn our keep in it.

This is a quite insightful comment regarding the perception and reality of standards:

I think you’re mistaking a standard for a formal specification.

I agree with you that it would be great if the whole browser world followed W3C recommendations, given their popularity outside the IE world, and the fact that they are formally specified. However, the word “standard” implies a widespread acceptance, and the only player in that game today is defined by “what IE 6 does”. Calling most specifications about the web from the W3C “standards” is, unfortunately, rather misleading; you cannot have less than 1/5 of the market share and claim to be any sort of standard, and AFAICS the W3C themselves rarely use that term.

You don’t like it. I don’t like it. But it is the way things are, and for the foreseeable future it’s the way things will be […] .

Returning to the subject of the referenced article, Firefox isn’t the holy grail of web browsers, so promoting it in such an invasive way is, in my opinion, no better than site that won’t let you in unless your’re using IE. Firefox lacks features just as Internet Explorer does, and it certainly does not have halos for standards compliance or security. Want a list? Be my guest.

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Ubuntu trial over

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The Ubuntu trial is over, and I regret to say to all Ubuntu fans that I have returned to Windows. I have reasons, make no mistake, and my time with Ubuntu isn’t over.I really wanted Ubuntu to work for me full time, and I tried my hardest with it, but I was pushing it to the limit and it couldn’t cater for me in the end. Reasons in a pinch:

  • Whilst Ubuntu could connect to various sorts of network drives (SMB and SFTP), accessing those drives was frustratingly slow and more often than not, access to them was not offered by applications when loading and saving data. This meant that I frequently had to copy a file from the network drive to the local filesystem, do whatever I needed to do to it, then copy it back. Most inconvenient.
  • Ricey pointed out Crossover Office to me, which allows certain Windows applications to run under Linux, including Internet Explorer, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Adobe Photoshop. They all installed and ran, but were very slow due to the emulation engine under which they ran (WINE, one assumes). They also suffered from the inability to access my network drives.
  • Crossover Office also did not support Adobe Illustrator or Quark Xpress, so I was still missing my vector graphics and DTP software.
  • The whole system seemed slower. Memory usage wasn’t a problem, so it wasn’t swapping that was slowing it down. Programs seemed to take a long time to load and the processor fan always seemed to be working hard, even when I wasn’t doing anything in particular. The kernel that shipped with Ubuntu didn’t recognise my hyperthreading processor (probably because it wasn’t an SMP kernel), although I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. People call Windows a processor hog, but it seems to give my CPU much less of a hard time in comparison.
  • The iTunes equivalent “RhythmBox” software really couldn’t get its act together. Once I’d convinced it to recognise my MP3 stash, it then went overboard and indexed it twice. It would also frequently lock up, sending the CPU fan spinning into oblivion.
  • The open source office suite OpenOffice.org shows promise, but did not properly display 80% of the office documents that I opened with it. This was particularly prevalent in the word processor; the spreadsheet software wasn’t so bad.
  • I had to go through a complex process just to get it to play MP3s. Apparently, because the MP3 codec isn’t “free”, it doesn’t come with Ubuntu by default, and you have to install it separately, but that means adding unsupported repositories and other such nonsense. It seemed an unnecessary bit of red tape just so that I could play my Massive Attack album. I know all the arguments about “free” codecs versus those encumbered by patents, but this is supposed to be an out of the box OS, and what’s one of the most popular things that people use their computers for these days? That’s right.

Like I say, I really wanted this to work out for me, because Linux on the desktop has come a very long way from the days when you needed to be a sorcerer to even have a hope of getting a half-decent graphical desktop setup on a Linux machine, but unfortunately, it’s still not come far enough, at least not for my day to day work requirements. I will however attempt to get it onto my laptop and use it on there. I only use my laptop for web browsing, e-mail and SSH access, and Ubuntu can do all that just fine.

Other good points that I really liked:

  • Seems to support my laptop’s wireless network adaptor out of the box, but I can’t get it to display all the networks available, including my own. I expect I’ll be able to do it via some command line tool, but I shouldn’t have to do this.
  • This isn’t down to Ubuntu, but I was impressed at the ease of which I downloaded and installed the manufacturer supplied graphics card drivers, which allowed me to use my multi monitors with no fuss.
  • 98% of the system management functions are available using the graphical user interface, which is good. There is, however, still the 2% remaining. I suspect that use of the command line will never be fully eliminated, since at the end of the day it’s a UNIX-like operating system, and that means commands.
  • I liked the range of “familiar” looking software that shipped with it. For example, evolution looks like Outlook, RhythmBox looks like iTunes and OpenOffice.org did its best to use the good parts of Microsoft Office’s interface. The developers have made a very good attempt at trying to cover all the bases and not scare newcomers by inflicting unfamiliar software on them.
  • The installation procedure is marvelous. It’s quick, doesn’t ask any complicated questions, and seems to have no trouble in detecting and installing drivers for most if not all hardware that’s thrown at it. This is crucial if it wants to poach Windows users, newcomers won’t accept anything less.

Ubuntu is a very solid, if relatively limited, operating system distribution, and it’ll work a treat for the likes of my laptop and my Dad’s PC. The developers have done a fantastic job, especially as it’s been made available for free, and must keep up the good work.

Unfortunately, in my case, it can’t support my day to day work, and I don’t have endless time to hack it and tweak it, and even if I did I would still have to make compromises. I don’t expect it to 100% look and act like Windows, not only is that unrealistic but it would completely defeat the object of offering an alternative operating system. Windows, for all its fault and reputation, is fast, responsive and very well supported in terms of software, and that’s what I need, at least at work.

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Ubuntu Linux

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I’m trialling Ubuntu Linux for a period. I didn’t plan it, but a series of particular events lead me to begin such a trial.

It started when Dad’s installation of Microsoft Word broke. He can still use it, but every time he loads it a series of dialogue boxes come up, along with Windows Installer. It’s just a question of cancelling each one, but it’s frustrating and confusing nonetheless. So I planned (and still will) go down south this weekend to generally update and fix his PC, since it’s running Windows Millenium (something that we’d all rather forget about). I could just install XP, but I don’t have any spare legal licenses for it, and neither do I have the same for Microsoft Office. Added to this, I thought I’d take the opportunity to replace the OS with something else, since installing XP would just give Dad more of the same thing, which he doesn’t fully understand.

So at the weekend I posted a message on a techie mailing list to which I’m subscribed asking for suggestions about a possible parent-friendly Linux distro that could easily offer basic computing tasks, such as word processing, web browsing, e-mail, picture downloading and viewing, and printing from all of the above. The overwhelming response was, that if I didn’t want to by a Mac, that Ubuntu Linux was a fair bet, so I downloaded the live CD.

I was well impressed with it. It worked out of the box on both my desktop PC and my laptop, even going so far as to kindly connecting to my neighbour’s unsecured wireless network for me. So that’s going on Dad’s PC at the weekend. I can make it ultra-simple for him, and while obviously using any computer requires some thought, there will be less to confuse him. There’ll also be the added benefit of not being susceptible to all the viruses and spyware on the Internet that target Windows machines.

The subject of which brings me to yesterday. Somehow, and I don’t know why, my PC contracted a spyrus (malicious software that is both a virus and spyware). Don’t ask me how, because I don’t know. I am the most careful person in the world when it comes to running hooky software and my PC is well firewalled. It’s the first time I’ve caught anything like this in all my years of using Windows (12+).

Try as I might with an armada of anti-virus and anti-spyware tools, I couldn’t get rid of the damned thing. The cleaning software would detect it, delete it, and consider its job to be done, but then when I rebooted, it was back. I searched through the registry, the filesystem, everything. Then it started to download some of its virus and spyware mates, and before I knew it I had half a dozen different infections, popping up adverts on my screen, etc. One even installed a Sudoku game, which suddenly appeared in my start menu.

It’s possible to spend days and days trying to eradicate this nonsense, as a colleague discovered to his peril some weeks ago, so I decided to cut my losses and dump the whole Windows installation. All my data is saved on various servers, so it’s not a big deal to do that, assuming of course you can spare a day to reinstall. So I thought what the hell, let’s give this Ubuntu a go, since I’m going to be inflicting it on Dad.

It’s the latest beta version (Dapper Drake or something), but it seems pretty sorted. The setup process was quick and simple and asked no complicated questions. It downloaded TONS of updates, which is good, nothing wrong with that. I found manufacturer drivers for my graphics card and got dual monitors working, so that’s good. All my other hardware was detected and installed automatically, with the exeception of the scanner, which I’ll sort out later (if I can). There are software equivalents to Outlook, MSN, mIRC, SecureCRT, Word, Excel and iTunes, which is all perfectly acceptable. It reads and writes CDs and DVDs and can read my flash drive. It has drivers for and has successfully connected to the office printers.

There are however a number of reasons why I still consider this a trial and not a done deal. Firstly, I need to get to grips with the Gimp, since I am now deprived of Photoshop. I’ve dabbled with this in the past and I frankly didn’t like it, so it’s going to be a difficult learning curve. I also still need to test stuff in Internet Explorer, which means I’m going to need a permanent Terminal Services window open, which is a little inconvenient. I’m currently downloading the Linux version of Zend Studio, so the jury’s out on that one at the moment, although I don’t imagine there’ll be much of a problem with it since it’s written in Java and therefore will be the same everywhere.

There’s also then the issue of software that I run less often, but still run nonetheless. I use Adobe Illustrator, and I know of no Linux vector graphics package, much less one that has the capabilities of Illustrator and can read and write Illustrator files. This is a potential problem. Following on from that, I sometimes also use Quark Xpress, and of course, that ain’t never going near a Linux installation. So I am faced with having to reboot into Windows when I want to use such software, which will be a right royal pain, unless anyone’s got any other suggestions?

I’ll also have to reboot into Windows to play games, but I’m not unhappy about that. Overall, this has been an eye-opening experiment. The Ubuntu developers really have managed to create a Linux based operating system that works out of the box and that can be operated by normal humans. I’d never use it for a server of course, but then I’d never use Slackware as a workstation. Different Linux distributions are suited to different purposes, this is by no means news.

I’ll let you know how I get on :)

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Transport Tycoon redux

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Recently I have mostly been playing an old favourite computer game called Transport Tycoon, a business strategy and construction simulation based around running a transport company. I played this game a lot when I was at university (and thus had the time to do so) and it’s immensely enjoyable. Up until last week I’d not played the game for many years since the original DOS version I had refused to run on Windows 2000 or Windows XP, and since I’ve been using one of those two operating systems for 7 years now I hadn’t kept up with its development.

So during my six days of doing jack shit last week I was delighted to find using the power of Google that not only is there a whole Transport Tycoon community out there, but that there are two open source projects that allow me to play the enhanced “Deluxe” version of the original Transport Tycoon, and there’s actually a successor game to it, written by the original author Chris Sawyer, called Locomotion.

Locomotion is on order (for £4.99, I might add), and so in the meantime I’ve been trying out the two ways of playing good old Transport Tycoon, TTDPatch and OpenTTD.

TTDPatch takes the original game executables and patches them so that they will first of all work with Windows XP, but also corrects bugs left in the original game and adds many new useful features that should have really either been in the original release itself or that are just nice to have. It’s fast and it’s stable but it has a couple of shortcomings over OpenTTD, most notably its inability to support larger screen resolutions (although this is apparently under development) and the lack of some labour saving tools.

OpenTTD is apparently ground-up rewrite of the original game code that makes use of the original graphics and sounds, although Wikipedia claims that it was only made possible by a disassembly of the original game binaries, which brings its legality into question, since the original binaries were a closed source commercial product. That notwithstanding, it’s undergone much of the same improvements as TTDPatch, except it handles all screen resolutions and includes some very handy labour saving tools.

This would be my game of choice were it not for the fact that you can’t upgrade railway tracks to monorail and maglev tracks (when they become available) because, unlike TTDPatch, the upgrade tool does not upgrade the locomotives and the rolling stock at the same time. You have to do it manually, which involves parking each train, selling it, converting the depot, then recreating the train and all its orders, and when you’ve got 100 odd trains that is a very long, boring and tedious task which I am simply not willing to undertake. TTDPatch has a magic code that does it all for you, instantly, although it’s technically a cheat.

Nonetheless, both are sterling, admirable and above all successful efforts to bring a much loved game back to life. I shall be playing it for a long time to come, and because it’s an old game it runs perfectly fine on my laptop without slowing down or hammering the battery, so I can play it at home in front of the telly and it’ll be perfect for long flights and other bouts of boredom when I’m away from my desk.

And since Chris won’t let me have a real trainset, he’s perfectly happy to let me play with a virtual one until my heart’s content :)

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