IBM announced its financial results for the 4th quarter of 2006 late last week. Digging into the earnings announcement a bit, IBM revealed that System z was a bright spot, performing extremely well. Yet again. (Dear industry analysts: when you see these sorts of results for years running, could you all please acknowledge that mainframes are growing in popularity? They're the most sophisticated and capable general purpose business computers, and they run just about any software you care to name, so it makes sense.)
In my own little part of the world we saw two brand new mainframe customers sign with IBM, one of them in a brand new industry for System z. Although mainframe Linux is especially popular among new mainframe customers, it's worth noting that both these new customers will run z/OS. (No, z/OS is not too difficult. Let's drop that canard.) It's very exciting and gratifying when my colleagues experience these successes. And if I can help, great.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Matt Harding Dances Around the World
I travel a lot, and I have a lot of stamps in my passport, but this guy has quite the impressive video scrapbook:
Sunday, January 21, 2007
What's the Rent for a Tokyo Airplane Hangar?
At Chofu Airport it's a mere ¥150,000 per month ($1,237 at today's exchange rate) to rent space in a community hangar for a single engine airplane.
I mention this fact because I'm trying to figure out if I can bring my airplane over here. Hangar costs may not be the only issue.
I mention this fact because I'm trying to figure out if I can bring my airplane over here. Hangar costs may not be the only issue.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
My Top Macintosh Annoyances
Now that I've had several months to enjoy my MacBook I've had time to discover its flaws. The Macintosh is very, very good, but it's not perfect. Perhaps someone knows how to solve at least a few of these annoyances, which are not necessarily in priority order. So, "Dear Apple..."
1. Resuming from suspend. Occasionally Mac OS X won't come back after closing and then opening the cover. Closing and reopening the cover seems to work around this problem.
2. Open versus secured wireless networks. The little wireless control (right side of the top menu bar) doesn't display a symbol or other indication about which wireless networks are open and which are closed (WEP, for example). Apple, please add little padlocks next to the secured network names. The sledgehammer solution seems to be to get a third party Dashboard widget to do the job.
3. LEAP wireless networks aren't remembered. Apple published a workaround, but this issue should be fixed.
4. No standard backup program. For shame, Apple. Why is it going to take until Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) to fix this? You're helping your customers put their precious files at risk.
5. Volume and brightness controls often do not respond immediately. That's because these are "softkeys," governed by software drivers in the operating system. ThinkPads don't seem to suffer from this problem.
6. Why are the USB ports on the left? Just to make sure the mouse cable needs to stretch as far as possible? See if you can put a USB port on the right, and that'll also solve the problem of having the two ports too close together.
7. There are several hotkeys available at bootup. Would it be possible to list them on screen?
8. Please don't put the eject button next to the F12 button, with the same shape and size as all the other function keys. At least shave about a quarter key width off the left size of the eject button. Also, please put some sort of dimple on the F1 and F12 function keys, like the F and J keys.
9. I like TrackPoints. Could you license them? They should be pretty cheap by now. A one button trackpad just isn't cutting it, and it takes a lot of space. Speaking of which, any chance for a subnotebook? I don't mean the iPhone or a funky tablet.
10. Allow buyers to delete the built-in video camera with build-to-order models. There are corporate security environments that ban cameras (and thus MacBooks).
11. Please investigate better plastics that are easier to clean. If the New York City subway can resist graffiti, surely MacBooks (even white ones) can resist stains and fingerprints better.
12. The MacBook's memory configuration is awful. Even the low-end ThinkPad R series now supports up to 4 GB, but a MacBook tops out at a paltry 2 GB. Please fix this with a firmware upgrade for all MacBooks, at least like you did the MacBook Pros. Yes, we understand you used a crappy video chip that runs a bit slower when you put in different sized memory modules (e.g. 3 GB configuration), but we'll suck it up.
13. When you ship a standard MacBook, don't ship it with two 256 MB memory modules. You're just filling landfills that way. Ship only a single 512 MB memory module (or at least make it a build-to-order option). Yes, we understand the crappy video chip will be slightly more crappy that way, but again we'll suck it up.
14. If you do ship a MacBook with only 512 MB, spend some time tuning Mac OS X to behave a little better in its limited playpen. (Maybe you'll solve this issue with Leopard?) A System Preferences checkbox or button ("Optimize Mac OS X for limited memory") would be sufficient.
15. Maybe not your fault, but why does Firefox sometimes lose contact with the keyboard? Fortunately closing and reopening Firefox reestablishes keyboard control.
16. How do I use the keyboard to select different buttons in a dialog box? I still haven't figured that one out.
17. I know it's thoroughly entrenched in the Macintosh user interface, but is it really necessary to run a mouse marathon all the way up to the top of the screen to reach the menu bar?
18. Is there any true window maximize option (to fill the available screen real estate)? Shift-Zoom (Zoom is the green button at the upper left of each window) only sometimes works.
19. The spinning beach ball.
20. Why isn't there a proper set of extra large mouse pointers? Increasing the mouse pointer size results in a pixelated pointer. Not cool.
1. Resuming from suspend. Occasionally Mac OS X won't come back after closing and then opening the cover. Closing and reopening the cover seems to work around this problem.
2. Open versus secured wireless networks. The little wireless control (right side of the top menu bar) doesn't display a symbol or other indication about which wireless networks are open and which are closed (WEP, for example). Apple, please add little padlocks next to the secured network names. The sledgehammer solution seems to be to get a third party Dashboard widget to do the job.
3. LEAP wireless networks aren't remembered. Apple published a workaround, but this issue should be fixed.
4. No standard backup program. For shame, Apple. Why is it going to take until Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) to fix this? You're helping your customers put their precious files at risk.
5. Volume and brightness controls often do not respond immediately. That's because these are "softkeys," governed by software drivers in the operating system. ThinkPads don't seem to suffer from this problem.
6. Why are the USB ports on the left? Just to make sure the mouse cable needs to stretch as far as possible? See if you can put a USB port on the right, and that'll also solve the problem of having the two ports too close together.
7. There are several hotkeys available at bootup. Would it be possible to list them on screen?
8. Please don't put the eject button next to the F12 button, with the same shape and size as all the other function keys. At least shave about a quarter key width off the left size of the eject button. Also, please put some sort of dimple on the F1 and F12 function keys, like the F and J keys.
9. I like TrackPoints. Could you license them? They should be pretty cheap by now. A one button trackpad just isn't cutting it, and it takes a lot of space. Speaking of which, any chance for a subnotebook? I don't mean the iPhone or a funky tablet.
10. Allow buyers to delete the built-in video camera with build-to-order models. There are corporate security environments that ban cameras (and thus MacBooks).
11. Please investigate better plastics that are easier to clean. If the New York City subway can resist graffiti, surely MacBooks (even white ones) can resist stains and fingerprints better.
12. The MacBook's memory configuration is awful. Even the low-end ThinkPad R series now supports up to 4 GB, but a MacBook tops out at a paltry 2 GB. Please fix this with a firmware upgrade for all MacBooks, at least like you did the MacBook Pros. Yes, we understand you used a crappy video chip that runs a bit slower when you put in different sized memory modules (e.g. 3 GB configuration), but we'll suck it up.
13. When you ship a standard MacBook, don't ship it with two 256 MB memory modules. You're just filling landfills that way. Ship only a single 512 MB memory module (or at least make it a build-to-order option). Yes, we understand the crappy video chip will be slightly more crappy that way, but again we'll suck it up.
14. If you do ship a MacBook with only 512 MB, spend some time tuning Mac OS X to behave a little better in its limited playpen. (Maybe you'll solve this issue with Leopard?) A System Preferences checkbox or button ("Optimize Mac OS X for limited memory") would be sufficient.
15. Maybe not your fault, but why does Firefox sometimes lose contact with the keyboard? Fortunately closing and reopening Firefox reestablishes keyboard control.
16. How do I use the keyboard to select different buttons in a dialog box? I still haven't figured that one out.
17. I know it's thoroughly entrenched in the Macintosh user interface, but is it really necessary to run a mouse marathon all the way up to the top of the screen to reach the menu bar?
18. Is there any true window maximize option (to fill the available screen real estate)? Shift-Zoom (Zoom is the green button at the upper left of each window) only sometimes works.
19. The spinning beach ball.
20. Why isn't there a proper set of extra large mouse pointers? Increasing the mouse pointer size results in a pixelated pointer. Not cool.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
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