Columns

May 1 2012

The Northern Spy — Of Tools and their Wielders

The Spy’s tools

provide this month’s entertainment, both for his consistency and their diversity. You see, his two sons recently had their birthdays, and predictably, they got tools. After all the well-equipped householder needs his drills, saws, screwdrivers, hammers, power strips, sockets, the box to organize it all, a good work bench and proper ladders. Now, no matter that one is a software engineer, and the other a high school math and history teacher–how else can they get jobs done around the house?

The Spy himself has built two houses for his family, helped construct a church, and assisted said sons and others in reno projects on various scales, particularly with electrical work. He’s also done not a little auto and tractor maintenance. So he’s acquired hand tools, power tools, air tools, and mechanic’s tools; tools for building, wrecking, and repairing, for house, car, lawn, and garden; tools for plumbing, electrical, framing, finish carpentry, drywall, siding, brick laying, floor installation, shelves, and woodwork. His parts drawers number in the hundreds, yet most projects do seem to require at least one trip to the hardware department. Buy a few extra of that oddball machine screw why not, just in case. But at that, his shop is modest, even for a hobbiest. Home made router table yes, shaper and planer no, small compressor yes, framing nail gun no, compound sliding mitre saw yes, floor mounted drill press no, portable table saw yes, but professional cabinet maker’s version no, small tractor and tiller yes, front end loader and harrower no.

Now, to the point. Why does he have seven kinds of hammer, five staple guns, four drills, a dozen or more saws in both hand and power, numerous chisels, and more screwdrivers than you can count? Because in tools, simplicity and specialization matter. A good professional’s tool does one or two jobs better than any known alternative. If you want to do something else, use another tool. You don’t use a ball peen hammer for framing, a staple gun to loosen bolts, a reciprocating saw to make fine cuts in mouldings, a quarter inch drive socket on wheel nuts, a large propane torch for soldering a circuit board, welder’s pliers to press ethernet outlets, a garden rake for grass, a chain saw on gyprock, a Robertson bit in a torx screw, or a fine knife as a screwdriver or prybar.

A hammer drill has a different problem domain than a brace and bit, an impact driver, or a wood drill. Ditto a laser level and a bullet level, a wood chisel and a cold chisel, a machine screw, gyprock screw, deck screw, and indoor wood screw, interior and exterior paint (and stain), a putty knife and a taping knife, a notched flooring mastic trowel and a bricklayer’s trowel, a finishing nail, spiral nail, ring nail and a common spike (bright or galvanized)–never mind that a half inch number eight wood screw and a number seven metric five centimetre machine screw ain’t the same wee beastie as a self drilling cap-style sheet metal screw or a set screw, and a lag bolt is a screw that isn’t even called a screw.

Yes and there are dozens of types and grits of sandpaper, nearly a hundred varieties of screwdriver bit, and more than that of sockets, the latter coming in metric and SAE for numerous bolt head measurements, four drive sizes, at least four different points, two or more lengths, and both impact and non-impact rated. Throw in articulators, hex style bits, stars, extenders, adapters, half a dozen ratchet handles and a breaker bar or two, and you’ve overflowed the largest roller chest drawer. Moreover, there are many other kinds of wrenches, not to mention pliers. In his parts drawers, the Spy must have at least thirty kinds each of roll bar, key, cotter pin, and o-ring, and half a dozen spray heads for his pressure washer.

 

It should be obvious that

by contrast to the simple speciality tool, bit, or part that is best at its one (sub-)job, general-purpose multi-tools are things you slip in your pocket or glove compartment for quick-and-dirty work in emergencies or going camping. They don’t rate precious space in your tool belt or box for serious projects.

Equally obvious ought to be that having multiple programming languages does serve a purpose, despite appearing like a zoo to the historian of such matters. Fortran still has a following, if for no other reason than its extensive numerical analysis, linear algebra, and other mathematical libraries. Likewise APL/J for its plethora of built in operators. Despite the diminishing problem domain, PROLOG is still useful in AI, and simple languages like Pascal, Modula-2 and Java for teaching. There may be more functioning lines of code in COBOL than any other language, and people still use JCL and RPG.

Ada failed not because it came out of the military establishment, but for the same reason as PL/1. By trying to be all things to all people, it failed the test of a focused, and therefore useful tool. C++ has a similar problem, and is today used only because of its enormous installed base and because it grew into its unmanageable complexity. Had it begun where it is now, it wouldn’t have been accepted. Even a general purpose language ought to be simple to learn, teach, and use. It should at minimum be reasonably orthogonal, reasonably context free–for the lack of which VBA earns honours as the least well-defined notation of them all.

The same is true for our computing hardware and software tools. In the long run, the Swiss-army-officer’s knife approach to computing can only be taken so far before it is doomed to failure. On the hardware side, this means that, despite some convergence and overlap, there will always be different uses for pocket devices, under the arm slates, portable computers, and larger iron desktops. Where we keep and use these different devices in part predetermines the problem domain for which they are capable of being useful.

One might tinker away at some writing on the airplane and in the hotel room, but for day after day serious writing of 10K words or more, the comfortable desk chair, ergonomic keyboard, large trackball, and the biggest, highest resolution monitor one can afford are so incomparably better they put the mobile little brother in the shade. On the other hand, web browsing shouldn’t even be done as work. Catching up on the news via a collection of RSS feeds into a reader is an ideal occupation to redeem a pot stirring, bus wait or train ride. And, a pad or pod is a perfect container for those twenty English Bible translations, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew with notes, and half a hundred references commentaries with which you dissect the sermon on the fly, instead of having to wait till you’re home and done Sunday dinner. Adding another hundred volumes weighs nothing in the briefcase, and if you’re on vacation, throw in a few dozen novels to while away the time while soaking up some rays. Who takes a desktop to either venue?

A medical professional making rounds in a hospital needs something bigger than a pod/phone, and the iPad (no other slates are worth mentioning) is the perfect replacement for the bound notebook, for it can connect to the hospital database, whose memory, unlike the human–another specialization) is at least usually more consistent, even if it may not always be correct if not updated properly by all involved.

Thus, there will also always be differences between pocket and professional operating systems and applications, and between varieties of applications for purposes that are only loosely similar. Writing letters, memos, and small documents ain’t the same problem domain as writing novels, or creating code, and its not likely that a text processor optimized for one will be comfortable for practitioners of another. It is even less likely that anyone could produce an application to do all three even passably well.

Indeed, this is why the Spy uses BBEdit for code production and web sites, NisusWriter Pro for the bulk of his general purpose documents, including this column, and Scrivener to write novels–and unless travelling to a board meeting, does all these things on a desk, not with an iDevice (yet performs much of his browsing on the latter). It goes to the heart of why he regards Excel as best in its speciality class, but cannot abide Word for its bloated and confusing attempts to be all things to all writers that render it mediocre at best for anything.

It probably explains (in part) the genius of Steve Jobs, who though he ostensibly dictated closed box one-size fits-all devices, actually differentiated his product line so that one size targeted all parts of a specific problem domain, but not every problem domain.

An iPhone isn’t an iPad isn’t a portable Mac, isn’t a desktop. Ditto apps. Converge features all you want, but there are several tools there, each with their own uses. Buy the ones useful for the kind of problems you want to solve, and leave the others on the store shelf.

 

The Fourth Civilization (wo)man,

is that semi-mythical someone the Spy has talked about many times before, most notably in his September 2004 column and in the article on the compleat human being at the Sheaves URL mentioned below. (Caution: the latter site contains graphic and explicit Christian language of a kind some readers may deem offensive. If in that category, rely on your memory of Heinlein’s discourse on the human being elsewhere and skip the Spy’s elaboration to the Christian Human being.)

In brief, Heinlein at some length described the Human being as a generalist, and concluded “Specialization is for insects.” The Spy offers a new version (now to be the Spy’s eleventh law) adapted for technology, whether low or high.

 

Effective fourth civilization professionals are educated as generalists. They train and specialize via their appropriate choice of tools.
 

Intentionality is assumed in tool choice–one reason why the Spy sides with Penrose rather than Minsky of the issue of artificial intelligence (computing tools will always be just as dumb as a bag of hammers). Note also the part on education. In general, this means a Liberal Arts education so the citizen of this age is a broadly literate, informed, and capable problem solver. In the specific instance of a programmer, it means that the one-language hacker who learned his skills at Joe’s computing school (meeting Tuesday nights above his garage and machine shop) may be able to work as low-level code slingers in the industry for a time, but will never perform like, promote so easily, or even outlast the liberal arts university graduate with a broad problem solving and software engineering mindset and a degree in computing science. That’s why the Spy plies his day job as professor of computing science and mathematics at Trinity Western University. Hey folks. It’s not too late to sign up for the fall.

 

–The Northern Spy

 

Opinions expressed here are entirely the author’s own, and no endorsement is implied by any community or organization to which he may be attached. Rick Sutcliffe, (a.k.a. The Northern Spy) is professor and chair of Computing Science and Mathematics at Canada’s Trinity Western University. He has been involved as a member or consultant with the boards of several organizations, including in the corporate sector, and participated in industry standards at the national and international level. He is a long time technology author and has written two textbooks and six novels, one named best ePublished SF novel for 2003. His columns have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers (paper and online), and he’s a regular speaker at churches, schools, academic meetings, and conferences. He and his wife Joyce have lived in the Aldergrove/Bradner area of BC since 1972.

 

Want to discuss this and other Northern Spy columns? Surf on over to ArjayBB.com. Participate and you could win free web hosting from the WebNameHost.net subsidiary of Arjay Web Services. Rick Sutcliffe’s fiction can be purchased in various eBook formats from Fictionwise, and in dead tree form from Amazon’s Booksurge.

 

URLs for Rick Sutcliffe’s Arjay Enterprises:

Arjay Books: http://www.ArjayBooks.com

The Northern Spy Home Page: http://www.TheNorthernSpy.com

opundo : http://opundo.com

Sheaves Christian Resources : http://sheaves.org

WebNameHost : http://www.WebNameHost.net

WebNameSource : http://www.WebNameSource.net

nameman : http://nameman.net

General URLs for Rick Sutcliffe’s Books:

Booksurge: http://www.booksurge.com

Fictionwise: http://www.fictionwise.com

URLs for items mentioned in this column

Heinlein and Sutcliffe: http://sheaves.org/sheavings/thecompleatchristian.html

BBEdit: http://www.bbedit.com

Scrivener: http://literatureandlatte.com

Word: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word

By rsutcliffe • Columns, The Northern Spy • 0 • Tags: , ,

Apr 1 2012

The Northern Spy — To Build or Not To Build

There are 10 kinds of people in the world–
those who understand binary, and those who do not; programmers and users, the differentiators and the integrators; those who put people into categories and those who do not (which are you?)–and that’s as far as the Spy’s April Fools’ Day will go this year.
More important, there are the self-absorbed and the empathetic, the honourable and the dishonourable, the wise and the fools, the noble and the ignoble, the theoretical and the practical, the secure and the insecure, the saints and the sinners, the technophiles and the technophobes, the just and the unjust, the repentant and the defiantly self-righteous, the builders and the destroyers–one may categorize the the whole sweep of the human race (the only race of humans, BTW) in a series of such bifurcations. All of us are from time to time in one or the other of such polar opposites, or perhaps both at the same time. Such is the canvas of characters on which life is lived and from which novelists draw.

Shameless Self Promotion
And such is indeed the human pool from which the Spy has drawn (or dredged, depending on your viewpoint) his novels in “The Interregnum”–tales of alternate history and choices in technology–Christian science fiction with a decidedly Irish flavour. With the publication of “The Builder” in March 2012, this series has reached six volumes, and the Spy regrets to advise that the seventh may occupy more than one physical book (see below).
The basic premise of the series was provoked by a long-ago editorial in Analog magazine, in which the editor mused about the Fermi paradox–to wit, that given the vast number of solar systems in the universe, there must be many other intelligent races in the universe, so surely several have attained at least to the human level of technology and could be contacting us.

So–where is everybody?
Now, setting aside for a moment the perhaps quite reasonable possible conclusion that there never has been and is not now any other intelligent race that could contact us, let us consider this hypothetical question. Perhaps, goes the reasoning, no one wants to or is able to dial us up, send an eMail, or Tweet. Perhaps they already have, and this is what UFOs are all about. Or perhaps, there is no one out there any more because every sufficiently advanced technological society has the means of self-destruction readily available to sufficient individuals so that sooner or later someone pushes a button, whether chemical, nuclear, or biological. After that–poof! and no more civilization to contact anybody. Perhaps no more life on earth.

The latter idea posits an interesting question, because it is obvious (or ought to be) that the human race is either rapidly approaching such a state or is already there. A madman (or woman–the Spy won’t discriminate) could very soon, if not already, be easily capable of collecting the resources to destroy the entire human race. This might require co-opting a whole nation in the case of a nuclear “final solution”, or perhaps no more equipment than a kitchen sink and a few store bought ingredients for some of the others. In the former case, think of the Middle East where countries pursue “peaceful nuclear programs” while threatening to bomb Israel down to the bedrock. In the latter consider how easy it is already to set up a drug lab and distribute deadly substances on the streets. In either case, think of the true-believing terrorist who would earn a place in paradise by murdering the largest possible number of other people–whatever (s)he may define as “other”.

Now, those who know the Spy at all well, know that he is decidedly a minority contrarian on a few issues. (Read a column or two.) In the instance at hand, he is confident the human race lacks the authority to destroy either its collective self or the earth over which it was given stewardship–that power residing only in the hands of the Maker, and never having been delegated. Still, the question deserves an answer, independent of that conviction. Besides, quite a piece of awkwardness could be caused the survivors short of total destruction.

And, it is paradoxically in majority conviction that an answer may be offered. What restrains the hands of most people from “pulling the trigger” excepting a widespread conviction that it would be the wrong thing to do–if not morally wrong, perhaps dishonourable, or at the very least pragmatically inconvenient. Whatever one thinks of Judeo-Christian moral theory, until fairly recent times most in the Western world at least paid lip service to its behavioural (ethical) ideals, and this consensus has, in the Spy’s view at least, provided much of the glue that has kept or society from self-destructing. Oh, we have come close, and the twentieth century saw numerous would-be apostles of human wastage in the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and others of lesser renown, if no less ambition. But there were always those with a will, the means, and (seemingly at least) the Divine help (think of the odds before the Battle of Britain) to stay the hand.

So, in the Spy’s novels, a suggested alternate answer to the Fermi paradox question is indeed a general consensus for society around at least honour, if not morality, and around the idea that certain technologies are too dangerous to be used, lest such use be what permanently fouls the nest. His characters all pay at least lip service to the “Covenent of the Living”, adopted after the worldside eighteenth century collapse into chaos following biological and nuclear warfare.

Really? The eighteenth century? Well, in an alternate Ireland, Brian Boru survived the battle of Clontarf and established an enduring throne over a united Ireland with his rescuer(s) as succeeding him. That Ireland by calculated policy in turn assisted the Duke of Kent in 1066 to defeat the Normans, ensuring they would not take over England, and leaving fragmented into many fifedoms, thus guaranteeing Ireland alone would become the major world power. The scientific revolution began in Northern Ireland in the early 1300s, the industrial revolution occupied the next century and a half, Trafalgar and Waterloo were fought by 1440 with Ireland as protagonist, and by 1700 the whole planet was called Hibernia. But in the next hundred years after that nearly everything came apart as the use of technology very nearly ended all life. The remnant have rebuilt, but avoid contaminated lands, have a low birth rate with many mutations, a small population, and an absolute ban on all weapons except those that can be wielded without leaving the hand.

By choice, modern battles are fought with sticks and swords, with generals and politicians who authorize them at the forefront, and on foot. A throwing knife or sling can be exceptions, but can only be so used to prevent a cowardly or dishonourable use of weaponry by others. Use of a gun triggers a court martial, and unless sufficient provocation can be proven, a prompt death sentence results. The Spy tries out the idea of equality for women in the Royal Army. Are the consequences what you want? Oh, yes, and Brehon law prevails. It is a capital offense to practice law for money.

By the mid-twentieth century, the high nobility (in theory and traditional practice a meritocracy) supposedly polices compliance to the covenant, and the High King of Ireland provides a check on them. Alas, at the height of the “Three Worlds’ War” in 1941, a racist and power-hungry oligarchy of nobles deposed the king, and banned his family from the throne for a sixty year period called The Interregnum. Those six decades provide the meat of the stories–largely played out in conflicts between the elusive King James and his descendants on the one hand, and the xenophobic and racist MacCarthy clan on the other. Meanwhile, wild card Thomas Monde pursues banned genetic modification experiments, and the secretive Builders and elders of Meta (a third alternate earth of the six known) manipulate affairs of state in the background on all of them.

The Interregnum novels so far have been The Peace, The Friends (Best SF of 2003), The Exile, The General, The Nexus, and now, The Builder.
These novels follow scholar and military genius Mara Meathe, described by peers as an “elemental force of nature”, her supposedly deceased father of uncertain parentage himself, mysterious multi-Ollamh Rhiannon, her close friend, beautiful military poster girl General Cath Maguire, hard-nosed skeptical Roger Hanlon, the fly boy-engineer wanting to advance the prestige of his two military corps, his friend and committed Christian Mike, Tadgh O’Kelly the sometimes Senchus and always brilliant musician and forensic specialist, Donal XII, the former Sean Reilly, who’s sat on the chair of state longer than any dictator of the Interregnum by being the most devious manipulator of his generation, and Lord and Lady Kildare, heirs to two of Hibernia’s three wealthiest families. These interact with scores of saints, sinners, priests, soldiers, heros, villains, nobles, and hoi polloi in a complex series of story cycles that take us back and forth in the historical affairs of Hibernia, with occasional forays to Tirdia (our earth), Meta (Builders World), Babylon, Desert, and Waterworld (Ocean).

Into this volatile mix come a few characters from our own earth, including Mara’s close friend Nellie Hacker, angst-ridden orphan prodigy Lucas Caine, and Tiffany Friesen, who rescues from drowning in the Vedder Canal a man who is Hibernia’s most wanted man, and also clan MacCarthy’s only legitimate general.

Who is King James, really? (The Builder has a partial answer.) Will acclaimed pilot and engineer Roger Hanlon, who helped build a space railway and whom people call the Builder of Tara, save his city from destruction? Will he  discover his true origin, or that of his friend? Will he be saved himself? Why does Mara defect to the MacCarthys? What is the Donal up to? What has happened to the new earth generated in the nexus of 2000, and then deliberately “lost” by Lucas in the Timestream. What will become of Ireland once what Mara already calls “The second battle of “Glenmorgan” is fought in the new year? What will be the Afghan Khan’s contribution to that battle? Where has The Builder of Meta vanished to? What really became of his daughter Eider, and his ward Lucas? And, what is this fantastic story of the first three nexi and the original builder of Meta that the daughter of his eleventh century successor (or is he?) wiggled out of him?

Oh, yes, and when both the “good” guys and gals and the bad ones (can you always tell the difference?) have access to Tirdia, nuclear weapons sometimes become available after all. And there is that high armory up there in orbit that temptingly contains a lot of them. All you would need to do is steal one of the latest model space planes and persuade a CRAF pilot to fly it up there…

Well, as author of this latest 305K tome (The Builder), the Spy hopes his fan has survived the five-year wait since the last volume, which was The Nexus (Tirdia divided and a new earth was formed, and it was all Lucas’ fault. Sorta.) The Spy wasn’t been well for a time, hence part of the delay. Publishers take their time, which explains more. However, there are lots of new stories here, and some major loose ends still to clean up for the final installment.

The Spy’s largely Mac-oriented audience will be particularly interested in the state of computing art on modern Hibernia. It does use a ten-state “dit” rather than a two-state “bit”, a ten-dit byte, storage capacity of data cubes has been in the ten terabyte range for decades, the planetary metalibrary is well-developed, and those sword hilt-cum-throat mike interfaces are quite nifty. Alas, it badly lags ours in other respects, for the seventeenth century standardized on something much resembling UNIX, there was no Apple to challenge this monopoly, and even though that very reliance on a single vendor was one cause of the Collapse, neither operating systems nor programs have changed much since, and programming is all but a lost art. See where we might have gone? Perhaps once Nellie Hacker imports Macs from Tirdia, she may begin a revolution. On the other hand (or is it the same one) outsider Mara Meathe has already introduced some startling technological innovations, and she’s not the only one with a flair for technology.

Where do you run to get these novels? The Spy’s books are readily available (first five in paper; all six as eBooks) from publisher Writers Exchange ePublishing, from Fictionwise, Smashwords (iOS, B&N, etc), Amazon, and other fine eBook retailers. For locals, the Spy can retail copies, and the TWU bookstore carries them. Expect to pay three to five bucks in eBook format, eighteen to twenty-five in paper. The Builder won’t be available in paper for another six months, and some retailers may not yet have it in eBook form yet. (It’s only been out for a couple of weeks as we type.) Note that the Spy does drink his own root beer. He’s been publishing in electronic format since a time when it was the wave of the future, and still is now that it’s the wave of the present. That’s where the majority of sales are these days. Head for your nearest keyboard or touch screen.

What comes next? The Throne, volume seven of The Interregnum, was planned a long time ago. This story cycle was to contain the tale of  the conclusion of the Royal vs MacCarthy civil war and restoration of the monarchy in the hands of the winners (if any—second Glenmorgan was a really bad affair), a second journal following Lucas and partner on a quest to find the earth he lost, make amends to John Dominic, and try to find himself, and a third tale recounting the history of Hibernia from 1014 onward, and telling us more of her kings and queens.
Alas, the latter project was going well at one to three chapters every century and a half, with promising tales set in 1014, 1320+, 1500, the 1700s and the 1800s (in some order), and a couple more planned, when the Spy took an unexpected detour in the 1415-1441 era of tall ships, great armies and navies, and their battles over control of Europe at Trafalgar and Waterloo. That account alone (working title “Mother’s Girl”) is now 572K words and will top out at 600K. So…the book that was to be “The Throne” will likely become the simultaneous concluding volume of two series, rather than one. However, the good news is that his fan might see two or three of those new books in the next year, if the publisher lag time can be kept down.

Characters, once well-developed, have a tendency to get out of hand as well. By the end of The Builder, Mara wants to run away and join the circus, another character wishes he had, a third is pig-headedly going straight into life-threatening danger, two have died, and there’s been a grand triple wedding. The folks who won volumes two and three finalist status for “Best ePublished SF of 2003″ (The Friends won.) will all have to be rounded up for one more go, and the Spy isn’t sure how many will survive yet another story cycle.

And why write novels? To entertain of course. To provoke thought also—why make certain technology choices, and what are their consequences? What indeed would have happened if different ones had been made, and at different times? What of moral choices, and how they affect history?

Get your copies before the professor bumps them all off—excepting of course Nellie, who’s probably too ornery even for him to mess with. Oh, two warnings first. First, these books may provoke the reader to think. Second, they are Christian in orientation, so if mixing the Gospel with Alternate History Science Fiction is too unpalatable for you to conceive of for whatever reason, don’t buy them after all.

–The Northern Spy

Opinions expressed here are entirely the author’s own, and no endorsement is implied by any community or organization to which he may be attached. Rick Sutcliffe, (a.k.a. The Northern Spy) is professor and chair of Computing Science and Mathematics at Canada’s Trinity Western University. He has been involved as a member or consultant with the boards of several organizations, including in the corporate sector, and participated in industry standards at the national and international level. He is a long time technology author and has written two textbooks and six novels, one named best ePublished SF novel for 2003. His columns have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers (paper and online), and he’s a regular speaker at churches, schools, academic meetings, and conferences. He and his wife Joyce have lived in the Aldergrove/Bradner area of BC since 1972.

Want to discuss this and other Northern Spy columns? Surf on over to ArjayBB.com. Participate and you could win free web hosting from the WebNameHost.net subsidiary of Arjay Web Services. Rick Sutcliffe’s fiction can be purchased in various eBook formats from Fictionwise, and in dead tree form from Amazon’s Booksurge.

URLs for Rick Sutcliffe’s Arjay Enterprises:
Arjay Books: http://www.ArjayBooks.com
The Northern Spy Home Page: http://www.TheNorthernSpy.com
opundo : http://opundo.com
Sheaves Christian Resources : http://sheaves.org
WebNameHost : http://www.WebNameHost.net
WebNameSource : http://www.WebNameSource.net
nameman : http://nameman.net
General URLs for Rick Sutcliffe’s Books:
Booksurge: http://www.booksurge.com
Fictionwise: http://www.fictionwise.com

URLs for items mentioned in this column
The Interregnum Series: http://www.arjay.bc.ca/Fiction/interregnum.htm
The Builder—Volume 6: http://www.arjay.bc.ca/Fiction/TheBuilder/TheBuilder.html
Series Reviews: http://www.arjay.bc.ca/Fiction/interregnumreviews.htm
WEE-The Publisher: http://www.writers-exchange.com/search.php?mode=search&sutcliffe
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_b/?search-alias=stripbooks&unfiltered=1&field-keywords=&field-author=Richard+J.+Sutcliffe
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ricksutcliffe

By rsutcliffe • Columns, The Northern Spy • 0 • Tags: , , ,

Mar 7 2012

Bytes From The Apple — What We Expect From Todays Apple Event

By Bill Martens

With Apple poised to introduce the Apple iPad 3 or it’s equivalent, we decided to sit down and write a short laundry list of items we figure we will see today.   Many of the rumors running the mill this week have been everything from the outlandish to the absolutely hilarious and it is time to put a bit more of a cap on it all and bring the rumors back to a bit of reality.

The first thing we will see is a lot of updates to the iBooks and Apple’s educational efforts.  The iPad is an integral part of the educational effort and Apple really wants to grab even more of the market as they roll out the next version of their iPad.   These changes will include some changes to the EULA allowing more friendlier terms but they will still control the core of the technology.

The second thing we will see is the Catalogs section fleshed out in its entirety.  Apple showed glimpses of the catalog section this week, but the reality is that they are going after every major department store and seller in an effort to put them right up there with Amazon in reach in the market.   Amazon has long been pushing to over run all the other sellers, but Apple is looking to bring them totally int he fold.   I see the catalog bit not just being the catalogs, but eventually the products as well, with Apple obviously getting a percentage of the sales from that as well.

The third thing obviously will be the iPad 3 or the iPad HD or what ever the iPad will be called.  We are seeing signs that the configuration will be the 32/64/128 gb units with the top end only offering the typical Apple slight increase in memory.  It is highly doubtful that we would see 256gb on the iPad for two reasons.  The first is the cost of the memory alone would push the top end model well over the $799 range that Apple likes to keep their top end model at.  The second is the fact that Apple really wants the users of the iPad to use the iCloud service.  However, that is not really a realistic approach since syncing movies between the devices can take days at times.

The display on the iPad 3 will likely be a retina display, complete with it’s high capabilities as well as the high definition cameras that are currently on the iPhone 4S.  While many people have been pushing for Siri on the iPad, I for one dont see it happening.  At least not in any major way as that would undercut what Apple is trying to do with the iPhone 4S.  While we will see a faster CPU in the iPad 3, we will not see the mythical quad core CPU as it would price the iPad right out of peoples hands and it would also produce so much heat that Apple would have a new issue on hand with people suing them for burning their hands.

The other thing we will see this morning is an update to the Apple TV box.  While many folks are expecting more, it would be absolutely disastrous for Apple to take on the TV industry full force right off the bat.  What we do see instead is a marked improvement of the Apple TV box with more HDD space and a better remote control, allowing users to have the type of viewing experience envisioned by Steve Jobs.   This will include the ability to not only watch the TV shows and the Movies but also to watch streaming television, likely incorporating some of the major cable companies.   Slingboxes have become popular devices in the past few years and Apple may target that as well as the standard cable box, wanting to become the primary distributor of the box that people will want instead of the typical cable box or digital box.  Apple will introduce it as the logical next step.

The upgrades to the Apple TV box will likely be a 500gb HDD internal to the box.  This would make it compete directly with those Mac Mini’s for the users living rooms.   As a true believer in the Mac Mini’s capabilities, I too have one as the primary box in my living room and not the Apple TV box that everyone thinks should have similar capabilities to the Mac Min.  However, Apple will likely bring that change about today and we could see the revolution in the living room take place beginning today.

While we would obviously like to see more than this, it is highly unlikely that we will.   The One last item will be the pricing of the iPad 2 with Apple lowering the iPad 2 price to match the Kindle Fire and other android tablet devices in a more concerted effort to totally drive them out of the market place.   This is a move that Apple could make up costs with by the contracts and they could even get the phone companies to take them on to give them away for next to nothing if not for fre with two year contracts.

With 15 Minutes to go until game time, errr….I mean Event time, well, that is what we see.  I hope everyone gets what they want out of this event and I, for one, am looking forward to what Santa Cook is bringing us.

By admin • Bytes From The Apple, Columns • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

Mar 7 2012

Open Apple Podcast #13 Now Available

Ken Gagne and Mike Maginis’s Open Apple Podcast issue #13 is now available on the Open Apple website.  This month’s issue includes a discussion with Marinetti curator Andrew Roughan.  They discuss a host of issues int he Apple ][ world including the forthcoming Kansasfest as well as Brian Fargo's current attempt to re-create the Wasteland franchise with a kick starter project.   Other topics include the Uthernet, Lim Thye Chen's Apple ][ programmin iBook and Kim Howe's software reclassification.

You can listen to the podcast on the Open Apple website at:

http://www.open-apple.net/2012/03/07/show-013-roughan-marinetti-karateka-ebooks/

By admin • Columns, Open Apple Podcast • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

Mar 1 2012

The Northern Spy — To Excel or Not To Excel


March 2012

The Spy has become a cautious adopter
rather than an early one. As the reader of this space well knows, he has been unwilling (and unable) to upgrade from Excel 2004 because of his very heavy dependance on macros, which the 2008 version lacked. This in turn meant that he could not use Lion, as 2004 would not run at all in that environment.

Nor was he willing to convert all those macros to one of the open source competitors, even though VBA is a textbook example of how not to design a language, if for no other reasons than its complete lack of orthogonality and wretched documentation. The 2011 version has been out some time now, with the macro facility  restored, and this has to be run on an Intel system, of which he has two (out of nine total). Since his main spreadsheet file is production bookkeeping software, harbours mission critical data, and he’s had little time for experimentation, the process of certifying 2011 for this purpose was glacial.

The first time he read a copy of his four megabyte workbook file into 2011, the program reported a file error and possible data damage, but appeared to have read it intact despite the message. So, he saved another copy without making any changes, opened that in 2004, made some minor changes, and saved it again as a third copy, which read into 2011 without incident, everything still intact. Further detailed experimentation pointed the finger at a complex graph embedded on one page of the original, but could produce no clue as to what 201 originally flagged as wrong.

All macros have now been thoroughly tested, and appear to work. Files edited in 2004 and/or 2011 make the round trip intact, and everything appears to be in order. Further, 2011 appears to crash less often than 2004, which under Leopard routinely died after half an hour or more of data entry–possibly a memory de-allocation problem, which is common to C++ programs. At least when it did crash, the recovery file usually had most of the data intact, and rarely more than ten minutes was sacrificed rectifying the situation.

There was a recent incident where, following such a 2004 version crash, all the formulae on one page of the workbook vanished, and then only numbers remained, as if there had been a secret copy-all-paste-special-values-only operation performed on the entire page (all other pages were intact). This required a Time Machine rescue of the formulas from a backup. However, so far, few crashes and no data loss can be attributed to Excel 2011. The Spy has run it only under Snow Leopard thus far, and he also still prefers the older look and feel, but is so far satisfied that 2011 is the side grade that 2008 should have been, and that it strikes an compromise he can live with between the two in look and feel.

The spreadsheet, not the word processor, is the single most important small computer application. The original VisiCalc drove the Apple ][ computer to dominance. The ability to combine database functions, financial reporting, and forecasting with “what-if” scenarios into a single application was ground breaking. It created the small computer revolution, and is responsible for its development into a far more useful and versatile tool today, in which the spreadsheet plays a proportionately lesser role than it once did.

The Spy had one of the first hundred copies of VisiCalc produced, would later test and reject Lotus 1-2-3 as bloated, but adopt the Apple Puget Sound Program Library Exchange (A.P.P.L.E.) entry “The Spreadsheet” as his workhorse software for many years, switching to the vastly superior Excel when MS first released it for the Mac. It is quite possible that his current models still contain code from the late 1970s.

Excel was, until 2004, the best of category, and thus, in the Spy’s lexicon, the most significant (and the best) application across all software categories, despite the display, printing, and VBA quirks that require so many workarounds. He is cautiously optimistic that it has now by restoring the lost 2004 functionality regained at least a share that crown, but advises those starting out in spreadsheets to consider carefully the open source alternatives to save money. He will himself, should he ever be up to rewriting his many macros in a better language. (How does he know the open source language is better without using it? It could not be worse, even on purpose.)

He also expresses his concern that if MS were again to require seven years to complete an update, Excel would inevitably go the same was as Lotus 1-2-3, and for exactly the same reason. What indeed will happen if Apple changes to the A6 chip or similar for the Mac, as seems reasonably likely? Would MS be able to produce a new version, or simply abandon the effort?

The astute reader will note however, that the Spy’s high praise for Excel does not by any means extend to other MS products. Word, for instance, is bloated, non-intuitive, prefers a proprietary file format, does not exchange files well, and has difficulty with the very large files (300K words+) he often handles. He has tested dozens of word processors over the years, and of them all, rates it ahead of only the ill-fated, bug-ridden, and badly-written Word Perfect for the Mac (which he could never persuade to walk, much less run, for more than a few minutes at a time).

He has happily used Nisuswriter Pro (and the OS9 version before it) for many years now as his workhorse for the vast majority of small documents, and for final proofing of assembled large ones. It recently caught up with the pre-version ten Nisus product, and is marginally better today by now having collaborative editing facilities, mail merge, the ability to read some .docx files, and an improved macro facility in the most recent versions. Nisus also offers a stripped down Express version of the program for those with lesser needs and fewer dollars to support them.

However, Literature and Latte’s incomparably excellent Scrivener, with its support for multiple chapters, outlining, storyboarding, composition notes, research sections, multiple format export, thematic editing, and other composers’ tools for book and screen writing, is by far his choice (and deserves to be everyone’s) for the initial composition of large documents and books. Frankly, Word has nothing to offer someone who splits his time between Scrivener and Nisuswriter. Oh, and did you know? Literature and Latte has now released the program for that other OS. What is the world coming to?

As for browsers, Explorer was the poorest offering on the Mac by far before MS abandoned it as a lost cause, to the great delight of web site authors and users both. The same action is overdue on the PC, for Safari and Firefox are all a surfer needs.

Likewise, FileMaker Pro is the current champion of small-computer cross-platform database managers, and MS simply has never had anything  comparable to offer. Finally, the Spy still prefers the long-in-tooth but reliable old Eudora to any mail program seen since, including all offerings from MS and even from Apple. However, when he finally does switch to Lion this summer, he will have to move elsewhere. Extensive research appears to give a marginal preliminary nod on Apple’s Mail over Thunderbird, with everything else far in the distance, though he remains reluctant to give up the tried, the true, and the working. (He’s had issues with Apple Mail in his consulting work, though most appear to have been resolved in current versions.)

As a last word, take W*nd*ws (please take it). The Spy has never been able to understand why anyone would use a cheap, buggy imitation of Apple’s slick OS when they can have the real thing. He, for one, cannot afford the down time. This, like the stock market, merely goes to show that decisions in the land of business are made primarily on the basis of emotion rather than reason.

And on that latter note, the Spy closes with a word of caution. He did think Apple’s stock undervalued in the $300 range. But $200 or more in increases later, at a PE ratio of over 15, and as a $500B company (sixteen times that of Dell) it appears to have excelled (sic) to the point that it is fully valued under current conditions. Since on the upside, investors buy on rumour and sell on fact, we should assume that the prospect of a dividend is nearly fully priced in, though institutional purchases would, in that event, support a high valuation for many years to come. Anything beyond the current price is all for future considerations, of which there could be many–eventually. (Not that he gives investing advice or would expect anyone to take it if he did).

Oh, and excellent fortune, if he may use the terms, to the about-to-be-launched iPad 3.

–The Northern Spy

Opinions expressed here are entirely the author’s own, and no endorsement is implied by any community or organization to which he may be attached. Rick Sutcliffe, (a.k.a. The Northern Spy) is professor and chair of Computing Science and Mathematics at Canada’s Trinity Western University. He has been involved as a member or consultant with the boards of several organizations, including in the corporate sector, and participated in industry standards at the national and international level. He is a long time technology author and has written two textbooks and six novels, one named best ePublished SF novel for 2003. His columns have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers (paper and online), and he’s a regular speaker at churches, schools, academic meetings, and conferences. He and his wife Joyce have lived in the Aldergrove/Bradner area of BC since 1972.

Want to discuss this and other Northern Spy columns? Surf on over to ArjayBB.com. Participate and you could win free web hosting from the WebNameHost.net subsidiary of Arjay Web Services. Rick Sutcliffe’s fiction can be purchased in various eBook formats from Fictionwise, and in dead tree form from Amazon’s Booksurge.

URLs for Rick Sutcliffe’s Arjay Enterprises:
Arjay Books: http://www.ArjayBooks.com
The Northern Spy Home Page: http://www.TheNorthernSpy.com
opundo: http://opundo.com
Sheaves Christian Resources: http://sheaves.org
WebNameHost: http://www.WebNameHost.net
WebNameSource: http://www.WebNameSource.net
nameman: http://nameman.net
URLs for Rick Sutcliffe’s Books:
Booksurge: http://www.booksurge.com
Fictionwise: http://www.fictionwise.com

URLs for items mentioned in this column
Microsoft Excel: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/
Nisus: http://www.nisus.com/
Scrivener: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/
Firefox: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
Safari: http://www.apple.com/safari/
Filemaker: http://www.filemaker.com/

By rsutcliffe • Columns, The Northern Spy • 0 • Tags: , , ,

Feb 20 2012

Bytes From The Apple — Is Proview Black Mailing Apple over Name

The trademark dispute in China between Proview, a bankrupt supposed owner of the iPad name and Apple, the known manufacturer of the iPad, is now widening to a point where Apple is being black mailed for 2 Billion USD by Proview.  While Apple purchased the rights to the name several years ago, Proview is now arguing that that sale did not cover mainland China where the iPad is made.

Apple was initially being asked for 1.6 Billion in addition to the 55,000 USD it paid to the Hong Kong office of Proview when it purchased the name.  The purchase of the name in 2009 should have ended any challenges to the Apple ownership of the iPad name.  Hong Kong courts agreed with Apple on this accord.  However,   China, long known for its blatant copying of the worlds goods, now also seems to have a court system now where it is acceptable to use black mail and under handedness to take money from western companies. The chinese courts over ruled the Hong Kong courts and is saying Proview owns the name.   It is sad that Proview is just the latest example of this type of underhandedness.  The company is by all rights, bankrupt.  The sold the name when they were trying to get rid of assets for cash.  Now they are seeing dollar signs and thinking Apple is going to buy them out again.  If this court case is allowed to proceed in addition to the seizure of iPads prior to a conclusion of the court case and appeals especially in local areas in China, then no company will ever be safe in the Chinese market.

In China, it also seems to be the norm to attempt to file the iPhone and iPad name for other products not related to anything in the technology field, with companies filing the claims saying that the names are not well known in China. This includes everything from clothing items to food product.   This in essence a total scam of the system, with the Chinese courts and local governments in cohorts with the companies, all to garner money from the world’s most famous and most valuable brand.  This is the type of activity western companies have long feared about doing business in China.  While everything on the surface seems to be copacetic, scammers in the country will try anything to get money out of a system that they have no real part in or any real business in.

If the Chinese courts don’t wake up and realize their mistakes, correcting the illicit activity with the copyrights and trademarks in the country as well as respecting international trade deals,  they could well find that Apple will no longer be manufacturing there.  At this point, other countries such as Brazil and Malaysia hold a much more appetizing state where the cost of building goods, also is not nearly as costly or as ridiculous as China has become recently.  Another thing that China needs to realize is that they are only an assembly plant and that a good majority of the actual technologies and items put into the iPad are are made in other countries, putting China in a very vulnerable position.  The stand to lose a trillion dollar conglomerates business to greed and stupidity.

Sources: Washington Post,  IBN Live, Wall Street Journal

By admin • Apple Inc., Bytes From The Apple, China, Columns, Global Markets, Lawsuits • 0 • Tags: , , , , ,

Feb 12 2012

What is an App Worth?

by A.P.P.L.E. Staff

This past week, the controversy over the price of an iPhone App has once again raised its ugly head.   Many people seem to think these days that all apps should be free or as close to free as they can be.  Apple did not help this thought this month when they introduced their iWorks application for a mere 9.95 for the iPad.

The 1000 dollar BarMax seems to set the standard for apps when it comes to what qualifies to be a $1000 app.  Of course, there are other apps such as the Wolfram Alpha that is mentioned over and over as not being worth the $50 that the company wants to charge for the application.

There is also all the trivial programs like the supposed NASA pic viewer from a guy in India that is infringing on NASA’s copyrights, even using the  meatball logo to sell his app that costs $5.  This is not the first time Apple has let this kind of garbage slip through the process.

But these days there are many freee apps and people just cant get enough of them. However, it does not mean that every programmer wants to produce an application and sell it for nothing or next to nothing when they have put in hundreds of man hours programming the app.  But then the world these days demand cheap software due to the fact that many people have been following the open source method, including this programmer.  While it may be fine for apps that were developed in a mere amount of time or that were just school projects.

When it comes to apps that will be used in the professional environment or ones that are commercial apps, then the programmer should be allowed to set a fair price for his or her app.  It seems however, Apple is not willing to help that process and actually only cares about the number of apps in their  online store.   While they do make money on the App store, they make a lot more on selling the hardware.  What sells the hardware?  The apps, clearly and concisely.

When I sell my apps, I charge what I feel is fair and what the market will bear.  Does this make me a mercenary?  No!  It just means that I would like to be paid for my work like the rest of the population of programmers.  So all those nay-Sayers out there can just fork over the money for the app or do without.   That is the market.

By admin • Columns, Editorial • 0 • Tags: , ,

Jan 31 2012

The Northern Spy – Tempus Fugit


February 2012

or, “Time flies like an arrow,”
if we would marry Virgil’s observations on its irretrievability to the unidirectional dictum of modern physics. “Time’s a wasting,” is an apt observation in any day and age, and for all that a week now seems a relative eternity in Internet time, we assume that the flight of time still takes place at the same speed in some external time-inertial frame of reference, call it eternity or what you will.

Certainly investors seem to have concluded that time has already flown for RIM, which benighted company resolved to solve its market share problems by appointing a company insider to be its great helmsman, only to see its shares plummet. Excuse us, but the Spy fails to see how someone who’s been part of the problem these last several years can suddenly morph into the solution. It is for situations like this that the expression “changing deck chairs on the Titanic” was coined.

Frankly, the Spy doubts that Steve Jobs himself could save RIM now. If the greatest catastrophe that can befall a teacher or other person in authority is loss of respect, the greatest that can befall a high technology company when time is flying this fast is perceived irrelevance. The fifteen seconds of fame is over. The Spy’s Fourth Law implies a corollary. Loss of mindshare precedes loss of marketshare, but the lag time is much less. Months will tell the tale, and the most strenuous efforts can only delay the inevitable. You did read here first about the impending Kodak bankruptcy, did you not?

Speaking of which, the former film company’s woes (what is film, anyway?) have now been compounded by Apple’s claim to own the firm’s digital patents in view of joint work done on those projects. Kodak may not be able to raise much money under the circumstances, and is left hanging by a thread.

Oh, and there is a parallel aphorism that the Spy frequently uses in his classes to illustrate the difficulty of teaching the English language, with its confusing overlap of words sometimes used for nouns, adjectives and verbs in vastly different contexts. In the spirit of “Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo”, it goes:

…and Fruit flies like a banana.
which is likewise a propos of the slowly rotting MS hegemony, so well brought out in ironical relief by the Wisconsin decision to use money obtained from antitrust proceedings against MS, not to purchase more MS product at penitently self-serving reduced prices as they might have done a decade ago, but to purchase Apple product instead. The corpse of W*nd*ws is not yet cold from the self-inflicted wounds of arrogance and lack of innovation, but it’s already starting to putrefy. As RIM illustrates, the canonical next step is to fire the CEO and replace him with an insider who will say “We are already on the right track; all we need is a little time to do more of the same a little louder and people will re-embrace our vision.” Sorry, but the enterprises has begun to follow the general public and embrace Apple instead. The movement has become a mass migration.

Simply put, we’re getting little from anyone outside the Apple camp because there’s nothing much to give. Nemo dat quad non habet (sometimes loosely translated as “A Scotsman cannae give ye his pants.”).

Apple’s startling (to some) quarterly results and its consequent propulsion into first place in market capitalization (ahead of Exxon) is but further evidence that the cusp has passed. The Spy expects Apple’s share of the overall computing market to accelerate further over the next couple of years into the twenty percent plus range for desktops and laptops combined (though it will be far larger than reported if you call handhelds and pads computers).

The Spy does believe that Apple and the Google allies will have to come back together to negotiate patent sharing eventually rather than continuing to hand hundreds of millions to lawyers, but the cold hard reality these days is that Apple innovates and everyone else imitates. Microsoft got away with copying Windows from the Apple OS because of loose licensing, but the shameless coping going on now is doomed to failure.

Errare humannum est,
but to really foul things up it takes a computer. The Spy was recently chided at Church because a mailing of popular devotional books abruptly ceased (and he’s the guy who arranges such things.) Enquiry elicited the explanation that a Canada Post computer program checking address validity of the mailing list in question had inexplicably removed large numbers of correct addresses due to a “glitch”, and the mailer had no way of knowing which ones had been removed unless the affected individuals contacted them. Supposedly we’ve been added back in, but won’t know until we see them. Even if entirely true, the incident reveals an over-reliance on the computer software. There oughta be a backup scheme.

For the Spy, said redundancy is sometimes in the form of paper. He was reminded of the value of this recently when twice in a week he clicked on an old file only to discover that he had no program that could read it. Spreadsheets from before about 1997 can no longer be opened, and his older mark books kept in a proprietary program written in Pascal back in the eighties are also no longer readable. Good thing he has a filing cabinet full of paper copies, the ultimate backup.

And, lest you chuckle, consider the fate of data on other media such as tape, floppy disk, CD, and even Blu-Ray. The first two are gone, the third is going, and the last will never pick up all the business. Data, including music and video, is stored and retrieved from the cloud these days, not via physical media. The Spy does not expect any computers to have physical media readers five years from now, except for solid state “drives”, and they likely built in. What will that do to your backup strategy?

Nothing remains static,
including one’s software experience. (and if you were expecting a proverb that starts “the more things change”, it’s French, not Latin.) The Spy has previously praised commercial backup program GoodSync, and been cautious about donationware competitor Carbon Copy Cloner. However, he has discovered that the speedy former has slowed down with time, taking ever longer to complete a backup (can’t tell why), whereas the even speedier and much lighter latter has added features to the point where it is a worthier contender for backup honours than before. The only thing it now lacks is the ability to create jobs that can be run with a simple click (it has timed jobs, so this is a curious omission).

Likewise, things are shifting around a little among Bible programs for the Mac. Accordance is still the nine hundred pound gorilla, especially for scholars, but Logos is coming on, adding features and convenience. Their iOS reader took a huge step forward recently with the addition of the NIV to the basic package. The Spy uses that translation enough so that its omission made the package unattractive, compared with the better established (on mobile platforms) Olive Tree software. He still prefers the latter, especially for its ease in side-by-side comparisons. Being able to pull up the Greek or Latin on the same page as an English version is a great advantage. And yet…and yet, on his Mac, for basic quick searches when preparing his adult Bible class lessons, he uses the simple Online Bible, which plugs along after all these years just being…indispensable.

As to cost, Accordance and Logos will set one back a grand or so depending on which book package you purchase. The Logos iOS reader depends on your PC/Mac purchase and is of little value with out it. Olive Tree and Online Bible give away the reader along with assorted public domain Bible versions and other books, then of course charge for individually priced modern translations still in copyright. In the end, the latter model is far less expensive, even if less comprehensive.

One more caveat: The latest Olive Tree package for the Mac runs only under Lion, and the Logos package requires an Intel processor.

Speaking of change and processors,
have you got an office pool going on the date Apple will dump Intel as it did the PowerPC, and only sell hardware with A-series chips of their own design (and possibly manufacture)? The Spy has a sneaking suspicion it will be this year.

Do you have a pool going on the date Apple’s share price will pass $500? $600? The month Apple becomes a trillion dollar company? On the date Apple will announce a dividend? Buy or build a chip fabrication plant? Announce their own network? Introduce a radically new television product? Buy a slightly used country out of bankruptcy?

Finally, if all that Latin is Greek to you,
the Spy offers “Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur”–if you say something in Latin, it sounds profound..

–The Northern Spy

Opinions expressed here are entirely the author’s own, and no endorsement is implied by any community or organization to which he may be attached. Rick Sutcliffe, (a.k.a. The Northern Spy) is professor and chair of Computing Science and Mathematics at Canada’s Trinity Western University. He has been involved as a member or consultant with the boards of several organizations, including in the corporate sector, and participated in industry standards at the national and international level. He is a long time technology author and has written two textbooks and six novels, one named best ePublished SF novel for 2003. His columns have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers (paper and online), and he’s a regular speaker at churches, schools, academic meetings, and conferences. He and his wife Joyce have lived in the Aldergrove/Bradner area of BC since 1972.

Want to discuss this and other Northern Spy columns? Surf on over to ArjayBB.com. Participate and you could win free web hosting from the WebNameHost.net subsidiary of Arjay Web Services. Rick Sutcliffe’s fiction can be purchased in various eBook formats from Fictionwise, and in dead tree form from Amazon’s Booksurge.

URLs for Rick Sutcliffe’s Arjay Enterprises:
Arjay Books: http://www.ArjayBooks.com
The Northern Spy Home Page: http://www.TheNorthernSpy.com
opundo : http://opundo.com
Sheaves Christian Resources : http://sheaves.org
WebNameHost : http://www.WebNameHost.net
WebNameSource : http://www.WebNameSource.net
nameman : http://nameman.net
URLs for Rick Sutcliffe’s Books:
Booksurge: http://www.booksurge.com
Fictionwise: http://www.fictionwise.com
URLs for items mentioned in this column
Carbon Copy Cloner: http://www.bombich.com/
Siber Systems (GoodSync): http://www.goodsync.com/
OnlineBible: http://www.online-bible.com/maconlinebible.html
Logos: http://www.logos.com/mac

By rsutcliffe • Columns, The Northern Spy • 0 • Tags: ,

Jan 25 2012

Bytes From The Apple – Will Apple’s great Quarter push expectations too high?

Apple had a slam dunk, in your face type of quarter in quarter 1, 2012.  It’s profits were beyond that of any belief.   The stock price jumped to over 455 USD a share at one point after profits were announced.  The number of iPhone 4S’s sold were more than 4 million units beyond that of even the most optimistic analyst.  It was a huge success, but there are cracks in the mirror.

Supply is an issue for the iPhones, hard drives are still problematic for the desk tops, and really, the fiasco in Beijing cant be good for the next quarters profits.  Even Apple themselves were selling the good results this quarter as a one off type of deal.  But what is the truth.

At this point, Apple is the most valuable company in the United States.   It is selling products that customers wait in lines for days to get, and their corner on the Tablet Market doesnt look like it will wane any time soon.  This will especially be true if behind this great quarter, Apple comes out and announces the iPad 3. However, the iPad3 will need to have some major improvements in order to keep it on the leading edge of the market.  People are also expecting the iPhone 5 or something of the sort sometime within the next 12 months and that should also be a super star seller if it increases capabilities exponentially.

If all of these items are introduced this year, what will hapen next?  The stock go through the 1000 USD mark?   Or will we hear a large thud next quarter in Cupertino as Apple comes back to reality?  While Apple seems to be playing up the we are not going to do that well this quarter bit, it is doubtful that it will be any kind of crash to earth.  It will more likely be more modest profits, but profits all the same.

Many people are still attributing this quarters results to Steve Jobs, however, Tim cook has been in control for a while now really and if this quarter is anything to judge his tenure by, it should be a good one.   Apple still has tons of money and plenty of time for a few stumbling blocks along the way, but looking at the current state of affairs, it looks like the steps will keep spiraling upward.

And speaking of all that money.  97.6 Billion USD in cash.   No one can even really fathom that amount in their minds, yet Apple is still sitting on it.  While they say they are talking about how to use the cash horde, they really could just keep accumulating the cash and sit on it.  Investors might like some dividends but then I guess the stock price rising the way it is is thanks enough for the average investor. The way Apple will likely spend it is to keep producing the kinds of products we have come to expect, leading the way, spending on research and development and more factories.

By admin • Apple Inc., Bytes From The Apple, Columns, Quarterly Reports, Steve Jobs, Stock Price, Tim Cook • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

Jan 19 2012

What Apple Must Do To Make The Education Initiative Work

This morning, Apple announced their new initiative to make education one of their highest priorities.  This announcement has not really changed their stance on the subject of education, but the way in which they did it deserves merit.

The first thing that Apple did is to eliminate the physical books and the cutting down of trees to print those books.  This alone will save Billions of dollars each year and definitely help save the forests that are so important to our survival.  It will put lots of money back into the state coffers to buy equipment and to improve our schools, and perhaps even pay our teachers the money that they should get paid for educating our children.

However, in spite of the glossy apps and the wonderful tool that the iPad is, there is still one thing which is out of reach.  It is the iPad itself.  In Japan, the phone companies actually subsidize the iPad to a great extend with their “iPad for Everyone” campaign.  This means that anyone who can make a small monthly payment can get one.   Of course, this must be subsidized even further either by the states or by Apple themselves in order to put an iPad in the hands of every student within all of the states.  Students should be handed an iPad the minute they walk into the schools their first year with periodic upgrades of the machines as needed, say every three or four years.

They also need to be accounted for so that if they are stolen, they can be tracked down.  This means that the “Where is my iPhone” app will need to be turned on and Apple will need to get to the business of turning in the thieves to police.  Their current policy of non-involvement cannot carry over when we are talking about students machines.

The other thing that must change in order for this to work is the machine specifications itself.  While 64gb may be fine if you intend on doing absolutely nothing much with your machine, the minute you introduce books that could potentially take up to 2gb each means that people with a few dozen books will quickly fill their machines.  I currently only have 10 movies on mine plus my music library and it is nearly plum full.    This will be even more important as students implement the iTunesU app where the downloads of the lectures can take a great deal of space on the iPad in a hurry.

My recommendation would be that the iPad 3 (if that is indeed what Apple will call it) should have a minimum of 256gb and have all of the amenities of the iPhone 4S.  This would allow students to not only use the machines for their studies but potentially use their iPads for their projects as well.  This would especially be true if Apple comes out with a version of the iBooks Author App for the iPad.

While many folks are concentrating on the little failures of Apple such as the glare from the iPad and other such issues, the real issue is that in the long term this initiative could save states a ton of money and the students a lot of time, giving them more time to really learn what is necessary in order to be competitive in this high paced world.  Failure to make the iPad accessible and specification worthy on the part of Apple would be disastrous, not only for the initiative but also for the idea of the program itself.

Notes:  My own personal concerns about the problem of everyone having the same thing, the same books, the same machines smacks of the Orwellian idea of Big Brother.  I guess this comes from having been educated with books such as Animal Farm, 1984, Brave New World, and other utopian books which teach the dangers of such orderly society.   However, as long as we give the students the right to freely think about the topics they are taught, this idea of a single line of thought will never become a reality.

By billm • Apple Computing, Apple Inc., Bytes From The Apple, Columns, Education, iPad • 0 • Tags: , , , , , ,

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