Friday, July 7, 2006, 06:31 AM
I find it amazing that ASCII files from the dawn of the computer age are still in use. The American Standards Association (ASA, later to become ANSI) first published ASCII as a standard in 1963. 1963 - imagine that. 43 years old and still in rude health. The media for storing files may have changed but ASCII is still here and current.
Compare this with proprietary formats. Most proprietary formats from 10 years ago are unusable, even where backward compatibility was guaranteed by the vendor. So a word to the wise - make sure your old files work with a new version of software before adopting it. Otherwise you could end up with the appalling vista that thousands of man hours of work are now garbage.
So when the city of Boston (MA) worries about data longevity and insist on the Open Document Format (ODF) they have a real issue. Imagine a paperless city where records are stored for future generations, it seems reasonable to insist on a format that is non proprietary i.e. Open.
David Howe
David is the Managing Director of Howe Systems. The views in this article are his own and do not constitute company policy.
| permalink
Friday, July 7, 2006, 05:58 AM
The Irish government has just published details of it's findings from a review of the E-voting debacle, which saw them spend €52million on a system that has never been used.
In a statement that was hailed as vindication for the government, the hardware was deemed suitable but the software was deemed to be unsuitable and would have to be re-written. This was after repeated attempts by the panel of experts to get access to the source code from the vendor. The source code is necessary to verify that the machines would operate correctly.
Some vindication! Its all a bad joke.
The Irish government have demonstrated that when it comes to technology they are numbskulls. The result - a mountain of hardware that is now in secure storage is now likely to gather dust.
What makes this all so amusing is that the electoral register is a shambles with thousands of dead people entitled to vote. And believe me in Ireland the dead vote! Remember to vote early and often.
David Howe
David is the Managing Director of Howe Systems. The views in this article are his own and do not constitute company policy.
| permalink
Tuesday, July 4, 2006, 05:04 PM
There is a paradox at the centre of the internet age. You must have heard of the "technology paradox". The technology paradox works something like this:
'If you can cheaply replicate a technology product (software is a good example) the rate of adoption of your technology becomes more important than what you charge for it. The aim of course is to achieve market dominance or a de-facto standard with your technology and once this is achieved you have gained the key to untold riches'.
Google and Adobe have both gained market share by giving something away at little or no cost to the consumer. Google of course offer you access to the best search engine for free but attract revenue from advertising. Adobe give their pdf document readers away for free but charge for the software to encode documents.
Microsoft own the de-facto standards for wordprocessing and spreadsheets and charge handsomely for them. A de-facto standard works because it is universally accessible i.e. can be read by others. So here is a conundrum - is piracy good for microsoft? The answer has to be a qualified yes. To make money a majority of law abiding users must pay a license but nearly everyone must be able to read the documents otherwise it would not be a de-facto standard. Imagine having to use a different format for every recipient, that would not work. In fact a law abiding person may receive a document from a pirated version of software and feel compelled to buy a license to read the document. So at some level piracy is indeed good for Microsoft.
David Howe
David Howe is the Managing Director of Howe Systems. Any views expressed are purely his own and do no constitute company policy.
| permalink
Tuesday, July 4, 2006, 07:27 AM
I find it extraordinary the length and expense people go to, to install the latest anti-virus software or anti-spyware package. Yet the best protection of all is inexpensive and foolproof. It's called doing back-ups.
Consider the following. Anti-virus software only protects you from known viruses. You have not done a backup of your key data and its wiped out by an unknown worm or virus. Will your anti-virus vendor fork out for the lost man hours or the damage to your reputation. The answer is a big NO!
Consider what happens when a hard disk has a catastrophic failure. The hard disk is the most vulnerable part of a modern PC. Have you backed-up?
But you can't sell common sense.
Doing back-ups is a chore, like washing the dishes or putting out the garbage. Back your data up today and on a regular basis. It makes common sense.
David Howe
David is the Managing Director of Howe Systems. The views in this article are his own and do not constitute company policy.
| permalink
Back
