The Ghost of CompuServe haunts the web

During a recent address book transfer I came across a CompuServe email address.

I'd forgotten about CompuServe. They were giants once. I had a CompuServe address in the 80s of course. I used their services on amber DOS terminals, with DOS and OS/2 character mode clients, and I think even with some form of Windows and Mac Classic GUI terminal.

That was around the type of Telenet and Tymnet and Fidonet and GENie and BIX and BBS services and the first version of Apple's many online services -- the one that became the basis for AOL (Mac only at first).

There's more, but it's a long, long time ago. Longer in experiences than mere years.

So I tried www.compuserve.com and I was redirect to - webcenters.netscape.compuserve.com/menu/default.jsp.

Yes, Netscape. Where the Search is "enhanced by Google" and there's an awkwardly formatted portal. The page is "Copyright © 2009 CompuServe Interactive Services, Inc". There's an "about" link (emphases mine) ...

CompuServe.com

CompuServe Interactive Services provides complete and comprehensive products and access for Internet online users at home, in the workplace and around the globe. With the launch of CompuServe 7.0 in 2001, CompuServe reached a new milestone by making the gathering of information and exploring the Internet faster, easier and more convenient than ever before for its worldwide membership. Since its acquisition by AOL in 1998, CompuServe has continued to enhance its core service to meet the needs of one of the fastest-growing segments of the Internet: value-driven adults going online for the first time.

An Internet Pioneer

Founded in 1969 as a computer time-sharing service, Columbus, Ohio-based CompuServe drove the initial emergence of the online service industry. In 1979, CompuServe became the first service to offer electronic mail capabilities and technical support to personal computer users. CompuServe broke new ground again in 1980 as the first online service to offer real-time chat online with its CB Simulator. By 1982, the company had formed its Network Services Division to provide wide-area networking capabilities to corporate clients.

CompuServe also led the interactive services industry overseas, entering the international arena in Japan in 1986 with Fujitsu and Nisso Iwai, developing a Japanese-language version of CompuServe called NIFTYSERVE. In 1989, the company expanded into Europe where it grew to be a leading Internet service provider.

A Key Brand

Since February 1998, CompuServe has been a wholly owned subsidiary of America Online, Inc. As part of the AOL Web Properties group, CompuServe plays an important role by providing Internet connectivity for value-minded consumers seeking both a dependable connection to the Internet and all the features and power of an online service.

The Ghost of CompuServe lives in the Ghost of Netscape within the still living corpse of AOL.

For a young world, the Net has a lot of ghosts.

Primates in zoos are not quite sane ...

Primates in zoos are mostly insane.

That's the lesson I take from Carnivorous gorillas | The Economist. It wasn't the point of the essay, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that they're not having much fun.

In a similar vein our local zoo has run through several psychotic Polar bears. They seem "ok" when they start out, but they show increasingly abnormal repetitive behaviors. They're going to get a much more impressive residence soon, so maybe the next batch will be merely neurotic.

Smart animals, shockingly, don't do well in confinement under continuous observations by history's most terrible large predator.

Let's not mention dolphins.

Google books is the best way to request library books

I wrote bout this two years ago, and again six months ago, but I think it’s worth a reminder. Google has a fantastic service for requesting books from my local library – and probably yours as well.

I’m not being selfless here. I’m worried Google is going to drop this lovely service; they’ve already removed the Google Profile “My Library” integration. Some more traffic might help.

It goes like this:

1. Search in Google Books.
2. Select your book (for example).
3. Click “Find this book in a library”. That takes you to the WorldCat entry for the book. (What is WorldCat?)
   I don’t think you even have to create an  account on WorldCat [1]
4. Enter your zip code (it remembers the last entry) and browse the list. It showed the book in several local libraries. I clicked on the Saint Paul Public Library link and went immediately the request page.

Unfortunately I still had to use the silly Saint Paul Public Library authentication procedure. That’s the one where one enters a longish ID number that’s masked during entry.

It’s faster and much more elegant than going directly against our library system.

[1] You can export WorldCat cites to reference management software. That takes me back.

Not the Great Recession

The name has been taken … repeatedly …

Let’s Call It a Flump - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com

… the emerging favorite, the “Great Recession,” was struck down in a neat piece of research by Catherine Rampell, whose careful combing of the archives revealed that “Every recession of the last several decades has, at some point or another, received this special designation.”…

I suppose we shall have to defer the official name until 2012 or so …

Nokia never again - mobile phone unlocking lessons

I don't love Apple. I don't even love my iPhone, though I admit to occasional flirtations.

On the other hand, I really don't love the rest of the mobile industry.

My latest experience with unlove started with an unused AT&T issued Nokia 6555b. It's been sitting in the phone bin since I bought my iPhone, but recently I decided to use it with a Pay-As-You-Go account. It's to be a child phone -- especially for one son who tends to get lost.

Easy, I thought. It's GSM, so I'll just order the $10 T-Mobile kit and swap cards. I could have gone with AT&T's Pay-Go plans, but, I don't trust 'em and their plan looked typically squirrely.

Yes, for those of you of a certain age, that is the theme music from Jaws that you hear.

To cut to the chase, I've spent time with T-Mobile's automated phone activation system (very much unlove), T-Mobile customer support (surprisingly good) and AT&T's local store (saintly, really. Lousy company, but good staff).

Turns out Nokia has their own special phone locking procedure; they're supposed to make an unlock available for every phone that's been in use for more than 3 months.

Nowadays every Nokia phone is locked with a unique code, and supposedly only Nokia can provide it. The AT&T rep spent 30 minutes (this is the rep, not poor old me) working through the AT&T/Nokia system to get to the point where, in a week or two, they'll send me the unlock code. To a handwritten email address (and what's the chance that will work?).

Then, if I can find the original AT&T SIM card, and I can follow the bizarre series of incantations I was given, then maybe this Nokia phone, which I paid for, will be usable outside of AT&T.

I ain't buying Nokia again.

Apple, I unlove you less than the rest.

Update: Of course this isn't a new problem.

• A 2003 O'Reilly article has an extensive Nokia unlocking tutorial (though that's unlikely to work now - from a current Wikipedia article on SIM locks: "The algorithms used in earlier Nokia brand phones (based on IMEI and MCC code) have been reverse engineered, stolen or leaked, resulting in many people offering Nokia unlock codes for free or for a fee. Newer Nokia phones have more robust encoding algorithms and permit fewer attempts at unlocking and are not unlockable by these free unlocking programs."
• A Nokia unlocking calculator claims to be able to generate the unlock code
• In 2006 the Stanford Law Center for Internet and Society was suposed to be looking at this behavior in the context of the DMCA. The site is now gone.
• WikiHow has a tutorial on Nokia unlocking
  "Typically when you purchase a cell phone, the company that sold you the phone (ex: AT&T) 'locked' the phone before you bought it, so you can only use it on their network. This means that you can't use your phone on any other network, even if you change the SIM (which is an abbreviation for Subscriber Identity Module) card..."
• Wikipedia article on SIM locks
  

So why is it that today's NYT article on the virtues of unlocked phones overseas glosses over the varying policies of different phone manufacturers? Why doesn't Nokia get more flack for their obscure unlocking procedure -- even when AT&T is asking for the unlock?

And, for extra credit, how is this wee little episode deeply connected to the collapse of the global economic system?

Update 3/27/09: Astonishingly, it worked. The two reps, Nokia and AT&T alike, managed to get the email right and work through the process. Technical directions are on tech.kateva.org. AT&T and Nokia are lousy companies, but they do have some good employees.

Update 7/28/09: I get quite a few comment submissions for this post linking to unlocking sites. Many of these sites are vectors for injecting trojans into visiting computers. I won't allow any of those comments.

Olympian coding - a snapshot from iPhone game development

Daring Fireball recommends the story of John Carmack's iPhone Wolfenstein 3D development.

I second the recommendation. My jaw dropped when he casually mentions restarting with a DOS 286 code base. The attitudes towards code reuse, and the distinction between "commercial" and "modern" development are revealing.

A lot of respect for very old code that's proven good, but also a willingness to ship good-enough stuff.

Garrison Keillor's mother

Is Garrison pulling our leg?

The real American dream | Salon

...I took my mother fishing last year and discovered she'd been in the Johnson & Swanson Circus. She did backflips on a tightrope and swallowed flaming torches and exhaled a stream of flame 10 feet long. Recently we found a photograph of her in spangly tights, a hibiscus in her hair, standing blindfolded on the trunk of an elephant with a lit cigarette in her mouth which a swarthy man in a gypsy outfit is about to shoot out of her mouth with a pistol aimed over his left shoulder using a small mirror with a mother-of-pearl handle...

It would be like him.

It is also true, however, that even as a young doctor I knew some of those "spry" aged women with the proverbial twinkly eyes had stories they weren't about to tell me.

The problem with Afghanistan - we're broke

Kaplan has a good summary of the intelligent debate about how to approach Afghanistan (CT is counter-terrorism, this approach is said to be favored by Joe Biden) ...

Obama must choose this week between two radically different Afghanistan policies. - By Fred Kaplan - Slate Magazine

... Some in the CT camp realize that the COIN-dinistas (as critics call them) have a point. Their real gripe with counterinsurgency is that it costs too much and promises too little. Even most COIN strategists acknowledge that a successful campaign, especially in Afghanistan, would require lots of troops (way more than President Obama has committed so far), lots of time (a decade or so), and lots of money (wiping out most or all of the savings achieved by the withdrawal from Iraq)—and even then the insurgents might still win.

A "targeted" CT campaign, its advocates say, would at least demonstrate the West's resolve in the war on terrorism and keep al-Qaida jihadists contained. It's a type of fighting that we know how to do, and its effects are measurable. One might also argue (I don't know if anyone on the inside is doing so) that it could serve as a holding action—a way of keeping Afghanistan from plunging deeper into chaos—while we focus more intently on diplomatic measures to stabilize neighboring Pakistan. If Pakistan blows up, curing Afghanistan of its problems will be irrelevant and, in any case, impossible.

Some in the COIN camp have sympathy for this argument—especially for the part about the high cost and the uncertainty of success—but they would argue back that a purely CT approach is sure to fail in the long run...

I think we ended up going the COIN route in Iraq. It's too early to know how well it worked, but it seems to have been an improvement on than every other approach that was tried there.

One thing we know, however, is that we're financially and militarily exhausted.

So the real debate is between containment, and a Pakistan stabilization strategy, and a big investment in Afghanistan.

I sympathize with everyone, and especially the people of Afghanistan.

The one consolation is that I think we have a good team struggling with the problem.

Is it time to listen to customers again?

For the past eight years or so my friends and I have been saying things like "the customer is the enemy".

This is a joke.

What we meant is that if you painstakingly listen to customers, and give them what they ask for, you end up with stone soup. With real stones.

The joke was a necessary antidote to the "customer is always right" product management mantra of the 80s and 90s. It's a tough road, and I'm not a master at it, but there has to be a conductor for the orchestra, a writer for the book, a vision for the product. "A" as in "one". There are a thousand paths to most goals, but you can only take one of them.

So do listen very carefully to customers, but don't take their advice as is. Use what you hear as a clue to what's wrong, maybe even to the solution -- but remember the road.

Or at least that's what I used to think. Problem is, now everyone is channeling the spirit of Steve Jobs ...

Hate Facebook's new look? You'll like it soon enough. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine

... Zuckerberg sent a memo to his staff telling them to ignore the latest cries because "the most disruptive companies don't listen to their customers." That's not very politic, but if Zuckerberg did really say it, he was only describing recent history...

Hmm. If everyone is saying it then it can't be right.

Maybe it's time to listen to customers again.

Minnesota's Michele doesn't disappoint

Michele Bachman is Minnesota's Loon ...

Michele Bachmann: Constitutional scholar - How the World Works - Salon.com:

...The look of disgust on Bernanke's face? Priceless. You could practically hear him thinking: 'I've got an economy on the edge of disaster to save, and I have to spend precious moments of my time answering questions from Michelle Bachmann?'...

Well, not my district of course. She was elected by an exurban district that's solidly GOP, but even the GOP tried to dump her last go round.

The good thing about Michele is that besides being entertaining, she shows that voter stupidity is alive and well in the midwest too ...

Ecco Pro on Amazon's VM

I never used Ecco Pro much, but I used a distant relative, MORE 3.1, very heavily. [1]

These were fantastic software products, usually coded in Pascal, C and maybe some C++. The extraordinary power of modern software platforms doesn't seem to translate into qualitatively better products -- in fact, few modern products have the reliability and performance of those old apps.

Incredibly Ecco Pro is still in use, twelve years after it was sunset ...

Scott Rosenberg’s Wordyard -- Ecco in the cloud with Amazon

... Regular readers here know of my dependence on and infatuation with an ancient application called Ecco Pro. It’s the outliner I have used to run my life and write my books for years now. It has been an orphaned program since 1997 but it still runs beautifully on any Win-32 platform; it’s bulletproof and it’s fast....

It's also a testament to Microsoft that it still runs.

It's surprising enough that Ecco Pro is still around, but it get stranger. Rosenberg got it running on Amazon's VM service ...

[1] Ecco Pro was closer to GrandView, the DOS equivalent to MORE.

New resolution: No signup without an account removal option

I sign up for a lot of online services. Some I abandon quickly, others, like bloglines, I use for years before moving on.

I'm more aware now of the security risks of leaving account information in corporate servers that may end up in bankruptcy proceedings, perhaps to be purchased by the Bank of Ferengi.

So these days I try to cleanup when I quit. Today that meant Bloglines (no account removal option) and Ustream's Watershed ...

... After my initial testing I was never able to get it to work. Tech support was responsive, but it didn't clear up the trouble I was having. I decided to step back and wait until there are more players in this market. Then I discovered there was no way to remove my account information...

I can delete the "account", but when I log in it still shows my sign-up information and the "valid credit card" is still there.

So now I have a new resolution.

I don't sign up for services that lack an appropriate account deletion function.

If we all followed that rule the world would be a better place.

Aaronson stomps Rand

I really need to try to at least skim Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged or the Fountainhead. I've only read bits of the originals; the stupidity burned.

I think I was too old when I came across them, they need to be read in early adolescence.

I need to read them now because, like Intelligent Design and climate change denialism, they're a form of pseudo-rationalism with impressive cultural persistence. If I read them, I can join the rationalist counter-attack with a clean conscience.

In the meantime I can only point to Scott Aaronson's monster takedown: Shtetl-Optimized - The complement of Atlas Shrugged.

I can't recall such as smash job outside of the, well, the past 8 years of reviews of the Bush administration. Aaronson doesn't merely rend Randism, he burns the shreds in a plasma canon.

Number 3 is just one of 10 ...

... Family. Whittaker Chambers (of pumpkin patch fame) pointed out this startling omission in his review of 1957. The characters in Atlas mate often enough, but they never reproduce, or even discuss the possibility of reproduction (if only to take precautions against it). Also, the only family relationships portrayed at length are entirely negative in character: Rearden’s mother, brother, and wife are all contemptible collectivists who mooch off the great man even as they despise him, while Dagny’s brother Jim is the wretched prince of looters. Any Republicans seeking solace in Atlas should be warned: Ayn Rand is not your go-to philosopher for family values (much less “Judeo-Christian” ones).

If Rand had had to deal with the disability of childhood, injury, heredity or age her stark brutality would have been inescapable.

The non-existent iPhone Calendar API - it's Android's fault

This is the fault of Android and of Palm.

A developer of mobile software solutions shares my dismay at the lack of an iPhone Calendar API ...

Mobile Open Source :: Fabrizio Capobianco

...My goal was to find the new Calendar API (we need it to provide calendar sync with Funambol). They claimed 1,000 new APIs in the slides ... It must be there, I thought.

Unfortunately, it is not there ... 1,000 new APIs and none to give access to one of the two basic data elements in a smartphone (the other being the address book)...

The problem is that Apple is not feeling much competitive heat these days.

Android has been very slow to take off. There's no buzz. There are zero Android phones among the geeks I know.

The Palm Pre sounds wonderful, but there's lots of doubt that Palm and Sprint can deliver -- and nervous rumors that they can't.

Nokia and Microsoft aren't in the competition. RIM is growing, but after 9 months with Emily's BlackBerry Pearl I admit I don't understand how they can play outside the enterprise.

Apple is precisely as open as it needs to be. It's not feeling much need these days.

Update: Another praiseworthy app that needs the calendar api.

The Sci Am robot roudup - classics from Moravec and Kurzweil

In honor of the Robot issue Scientific American has assembled some classic articles ...

• Hans Moravec - sentient robots by 2050
• Ray Kurzweil - artificial sentience by 2020

Later in 2008 Kurzweil moved his armageddon out to 2045. If I personally had to pick a date I'd go for 2100 or so.