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HardCopy

The magic of the app

27 Feb 2012
Computing, HardCopy
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This is my editorial from the Spring 2012 issue of HardCopy magazine:

It has long been the case that we view intellectual property – software, the written word, music or film – differently to real, physical objects. This stems from a feeling that copying intellectual property without paying is somehow different because it doesn’t actually deprive the author or the distributor of anything: steal a TV, and the owner can no longer watch television; copy a song, and the owner has still got the original.

This attitude was compounded by the growth of the World Wide Web through the 1990s. Right from the start, one of the big benefits of the Web was that – once you’d paid your phone bill – everything else was free. However, once we’d got over the novelty of it all, many of us started wondering how we were going to make a living in this brave new world. Companies like Amazon and eBay didn’t have a problem as they were selling ‘real things’, but those of us in publishing, music and eventually even film had to face the fact that no-one seemed to be prepared to pay for what we produced.

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Windows Azure

24 Nov 2011
Computing, HardCopy
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This article originally appeared in the Winter 2011 issue of HardCopy magazine.

Cloud computing is entering a new phase, moving beyond simple ‘servers in the sky’ to something rather more sophisticated and even more useful. Microsoft has thrown huge resources into this new arena and come up with Windows Azure.

Of course cloud computing itself is not new. It has long been common for small and even medium-sized businesses to host their Web sites externally, paying a monthly fee to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) for access to a Web server and perhaps a database on which they can run their Web applications. This could be an ASP.NET application talking to SQL Server, or something written in PHP or Perl that interacts with MySQL. The ISP looks after the operating system and the hardware, keeping it updated and properly backed up, leaving the customer to look after the application.

What is new, and quite genuinely changing the landscape, is the application of virtual machine technology to such services. Microsoft Hyper-V, for example, allows a customer’s installation to run in a virtual machine that can be scaled in terms of memory and virtual processor cores according to demand, or seamlessly moved between servers or even data centres for the purposes of load-balancing and maintenance. This is cloud computing in a more literal sense in that the physical location of the server is less well defined and can change moment-to-moment. This is what Microsoft is using to deliver Windows Azure.

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The power of Apple

22 Nov 2011
Computing, HardCopy
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What follows is my editorial from the Winter 2011 issue of HardCopy magazine:

Just recently I discovered a couple of things that brought home to me just how much this industry is changing, and just how much Apple’s influence has grown. The first concerned Amazon’s Kindle. I have been using the Kindle eBook app for some time on my Windows Phone and, more recently, I’ve been using the Kindle itself. One thing that has impressed me is the ease with which I can browse the Kindle Store for books and ‘1-Click’ buy straight from both the device and the app. However, this experience is no longer available to owners of the Apple iPhone or iPad. This is because Apple has changed the rules governing the applications available through the iTunes App Store, explicitly prohibiting apps that have “external mechanisms for purchasing content… such as a ‘buy’ button that goes to a Web site to purchase a digital book.” Read More

The benefits of competition

11 Nov 2011
Computing, HardCopy
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What follows is my editorial from the September 2011 issue of HardCopy magazine:

IBM launched the IBM PC in 1981, bringing the microcomputer into the office and simultaneously opening up a whole new market for IBM ‘clones’ from companies such as Compaq, Ericsson and Tandy. The IBM PC used Intel’s 8088 processor and introduced an architecture that allowed a full megabyte of memory to be addressed; so when Intel launched the 80286 processor a year later, which could directly address 16MB of data, the industry waited to see what IBM would do. Two years later, IBM responded with the IBM PC AT, which again was widely cloned.

Then in 1985, Intel introduced its first general-purpose 32-bit processor in the 80386, and IBM hesitated. The company was frankly fed up with the clone manufacturers, whose ranks now included Dell, Gateway, Olivetti and Zenith, and was looking for strategies that would enable it to reclaim the market. Furthermore, the power of Intel’s new processor meant that a PC based around it might well compete with IBM’s own lucrative minicomputer range, which did not seem like a good idea at the time. Read More

Putting a value on your identity

17 May 2011
Computing, HardCopy
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What follows is my editorial from the May 2011 issue of HardCopy magazine:

Identity is a funny thing. We all have one, and at some deep level we all know how important it is. Witness our panic at the thought of approaching a border post unable to find our passport, or the idea that someone else might have access to our bank accounts. On the other hand, we’re happy to give away considerable amounts of personal information with little thought as to how it might be used – until, that is, something goes wrong.

Two events have brought the issues that surround personal identity and privacy to the fore recently. Firstly, there was the Sony PlayStation Network hacks in which the personal details of over 100 million users look to have been compromised. This was a case of straightforward identity theft, with the added frisson that it might include your credit card details. Exactly how much this was down to lax security on Sony’s part is not known – although as I write this very question has become the sharp end of a class action suit seeking $1 billion in damages. Read More

How Windows is shooting itself in the foot

24 Feb 2011
Computing, HardCopy
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What follows is my editorial from the February 2011 issue of HardCopy magazine:

I recently bought myself a brand new notebook PC. It’s not something I’ve done for a while but the battery life and performance of my previous model, a dinky little JVC number that seemed so sweet when I bought it some eight years back, was no longer tolerable. I wanted Windows 7, I wanted dual-core, I wanted light weight and I wanted something with a battery that would last at least a return trip to London, if not a transatlantic flight. I dabbled momentarily with the idea of an iPad, but I needed something that could integrate seamlessly into my Windows-centric world, and I baulked at the lack of keyboard. Netbooks seemed tempting but under powered, so in the end I plumbed for a very natty-looking notebook from a very respected manufacturer who shall, for reasons that will become apparent, remain nameless. Read More

The future of computing

17 Feb 2011
Computing, HardCopy
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What follows is a cut-down version of the cover feature of the 50th issue of HardCopy magazine, originally published Nov 2010:

Any attempt to foretell the future is fraught with difficulties, to say nothing of the potential for the sort of embarrassment embodied by Thomas Watson’s apocryphal 1943 statement, “I think there is a world market for about five computers.” Nevertheless, let’s give it a go.

Perhaps the safest place to start is with Moore’s Law. This was formulated by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, and states that the number of components that it is economic to put on a single chip doubles every two years. It has remained true from the Intel 4004, introduced in 1971 with 2,300 transistors on the chip, up to Intel’s latest Quad-Core Itanium processor which crams on over two billion.

Up until 2004, Moore’s Law had been synonymous with processing power, although this had more to do with increasing clock-speed than transistor density. However in 2004, Intel realised that it could not increase clock speed any further with existing technology, and that the best way forward was through multi-core processors able to execute more than one instruction at a time. The Intel Core Duo was introduced in 2006, and the Intel Core 2 Quad in 2008. At the time of writing, Intel’s Core i7 range includes two models boasting six cores, while Intel has talked about introducing processors with 64 cores sometime next year. Read More