HTML and Flash
by Siv on Jun.18, 2010, under IT Stuff
HTML 5 and Flash
Just lately there has been a lot of froth surrounding the Apple iPad and its lack of Flash support, Steve Jobs seems to be the main voice against the use of Flash, particularly on his company’s mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad. In his now famous letter “Thoughts on Flash“, if you read through that document you can see that there is a lot of the “pot calling the kettle black” a lot of the claims about Flash being a proprietary closed system applies in truth to most of what Apple does on the web through its iTunes system and their Mac computers are extremely closed unlike Windows PCs where you can at least build one yourself and install a copy of the closed Windows operating system on it.
On the other hand I am in part in agreement with him (which is unusual for me!) in that using Flash to play videos on low powered devices is not brilliant, also Adobe have a terrible record with fixing bugs in their software. I for instance have recommended that all my clients remove Adobe Reader and replace it with Foxit Reader which you can get here (http://www.foxitsoftware.com) it loads much faster than the very bloated Adobe Reader and uses a fraction of the disk space of Reader. Also it doesn’t stick a quick start application in your start-up items that is loaded on your PC whether you are using Reader today or not!? The last time I looked on someone’s PC, Adobe Reader was taking 208 MB of disk space where Foxit uses about 10 MB, go figure! The main reason though is that Adobe reader still has a an unpatched vulnerability that they supposedly fixed around the beginning of 2009 and it’s still causing problems today. Admittedly they have just fixed the same problem in Flash but their Reader software is still open to attack. Microsoft would be absolutely panned if they left a vulnerability open for this length of time.
Clearly the performance of Flash has been being worked on for some time this report in Ars Technica back in July 2008 shows Adobe trying to get it to work better on the Mac:
H.264
The trouble with replacing Flash with HTML 5 is the other heated debate that seems to be raging and that is in relation to H.264 the video codec that browsers will probably implement to actually do the work of displaying the HTML 5 video on HTML 5 web pages. The problem with H.264 that Apple seems to be claiming is the best codec for the job is proprietary and closed like the Flash that Jobs is moaning about. Also it has the added sting that if you use it on your web site you will probably run the risk of MPEG-LA who are the company that owns the patent to H.264 coming after you for royalties in using their codec, which if this article is correct is very likely to happen. Indeed if you post your video clips on-line you are in breach of MPEG-LA’s licence agreement that came with your camera or video camera as the author of the O/S News article found out to his shock.
All in all it’s a bit of a mess and the poor old end users just want the best way of viewing movies on the web without all the patent rubbish and royalties that go with it. The people who are against H.264 initially pointed to Ogg Theora, an open source alternative that by its nature is completely free of any patent problems and can be freely used. Steve Jobs doesn’t like this codec probably partly due to its performance and partly its quality and battery usage on low powered systems. Microsoft seems to be supporting H.264 as well, but I am concerned that if it gets implemented in browsers like Safari and Internet Explorer the sleeping dragon that is MPEG-LA might awaken and clobber all of us web site owners and builders with a very large bill that would knock a lot of websites off the web altogether!
More recently Microsoft has changed its initial stance that the new IE9 browser would only support H.264 it has now said that it will in fact support VP8 which is a new codec owned by Google and which Google itself has said won’t be encumbered with any patent liability, you will have to download and install the VP8 codec, but as a free codec it will be no different than the way flash or Reader is installed but differs in that Google have released it as free software. The preceding link details the licensing details, but the good news from my perspective is that this would be the preferred choice as it is unencumbered with any danger of patent comebacks so we can all build our websites using standards and our site viewers can playback video without needing to purchase anything .
So goodbye Flash and hello VP8?
Time will tell! Watch this space.
Windows 7 Godmode Folders
by Siv on Jan.16, 2010, under IT Stuff
In recent weeks there has been a bit of hoo-hah about so called “God Mode” folders. Basically the developers at Microsoft have built in a way of quickly creating certain control panel features by naming folders using special globally unique Identifier (GUIDs). These codes when tagged onto the end of a folder name after a dot will convert tht folder effectively into a shortcut to the feature the GUID represents.
I decided to create each of the GUID folders which I got from an article on CNET (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10426627-56.html?tag=mncol;mlt_related) to see what each one did, so here are the codes and a letter that I allocated as the folder name. The letter isn’t significant, you can give your folders a more meaningful name as long as it is followed by a dot and the GUID:
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} this is the main GodMode GUID.
A.{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33} Creates a default location dialog for GPS and address settings.
B.{0142e4d0-fb7a-11dc-ba4a-000ffe7ab428} Biometric Devices.
C.{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D} Select a Power Plan.
D.{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9} Select which icons and notifications appear on the taskbar.
E.{1206F5F1-0569-412C-8FEC-3204630DFB70} Store Credentials for automatic logon.
F.{15eae92e-f17a-4431-9f28-805e482dafd4} Install a program from the network.
G.{17cd9488-1228-4b2f-88ce-4298e93e0966} Choose the programs that Windows uses by default.
H.{1D2680C9-0E2A-469d-B787-065558BC7D43} Folder showing Dot Net Assemblies.
I.{1FA9085F-25A2-489B-85D4-86326EEDCD87} Manage wireless networks.
J.{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D} Network.
K.{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} Computer.
L.{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} Printers.
M.{241D7C96-F8BF-4F85-B01F-E2B043341A4B} Connect to desktops and programs at your workplace.
N.{4026492F-2F69-46B8-B9BF-5654FC07E423} Help protect your computer with Windows Firewall.
O.{62D8ED13-C9D0-4CE8-A914-47DD628FB1B0} ??
P.{78F3955E-3B90-4184-BD14-5397C15F1EFC} Rate and Improve your computer's performance.
So to create one on your Windows 7 system, decide which folder on your system you want to create the links in and click the “New Folder” option in the toolbar:
Once you have the folder selected as above replace its name with one of the GUID folder names. I will create the main God Mode folder using the folder name:
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
Remember to include the curly braces and the full stop.
Once you have the GUID folder name typed in or pasted in as above press “Enter” or “Return” to create the new folder, at this point it will change its look as below:
As you can see above the icon has changed to a control panel style icon and if you then double-click the folder you will be taken to this page:
Here you now have pretty much every aspect of the settings of your Windows 7 system in one convenient location.
There are some rumours that these codes work on Vista as well and that there are problems with Vista 64 bit crashing, so if you are trying it on Vista 64 please ensure that you have a system restore point before making any changes in case it does cause problems.
Have fun!
Siv
Windows 7 Tested Against Windows Vista
by Siv on Dec.16, 2009, under IT Stuff
I have just been reading a neat post over at Tom’s Hardware where they reviewed the final versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 Ultimate and it makes very interesting reading. Have a look t the results on this page:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-7-performance,2476-9.html
As you can see there are marked improvements in Windows 7’s start up times and hibernation etc. These are the activities that really get your goat if you are in a rush to catch a train and you have to sit waiting for the laptop to shut down or whatever. In these instances Windows 7 is your friend.
Sometime over the hols I will try and post some stuff on the new features in Windows 7 as a lot of people are using it and not really taking advantage of its user friendly features.
Siv
Siv – Christmas Hols
by Siv on Dec.08, 2009, under Non IT Stuff
Hi,
Just to let my clients and anyone else who might be looking in I am working until close of play on the 18th December and will then be closed for Christmas and New Year over the next two weeks. I will be back at my desk on the 4th January.
I am not going away during that period though may be out during the day visiting relatives or friends. I will periodically check my voicemail during the day. If you should have any major disasters I will get back to you as soon as I get your message.
I won’t check my voicemail on Christmas Day, Boxing day and New Years day, but I expect you will not be at work on those days either, so hopefully we’ll have a quiet time.
If I don’t speak with you before, have a very merry Christmas!!
Santa on Christmas Eve
Holidays 2009
by Siv on Dec.07, 2009, under Non IT Stuff
This year we went to stay up in Great Skalkeld in Cumbria and had a week’s fly fishing, unfortunately we picked a bad week as far as the weather went, but we had the odd day when the weather was not too bad. The following picture is of the cottage we stayed in and although quite basic, was comfortable for the week we were away:
The house in Great Skalkeld
SSDs
by Siv on Nov.30, 2009, under IT Stuff
I have been keeping an eye on the latest hard disk technology called SSDs, these are basically hard disks for use in your computer that use the same sort of technology as USB storage sticks or flash cards. SSD stands for “Solid State Disk”.
I have thought for a long time that for PCs to be as good as they possibly can be we should be moving away from any moving parts and at the moment the last two remaining moving parts in a PC are the disk drives and the cooling fans.
With the advent of SSDs we now can knock one of those two last items off the list. Finally we have a permanent storage solution that is impervious to knocks (particularly important in laptops and other mobile devices) and which is literally hundreds of times faster than traditional hard disks.
Issues With SSDs
It’s not all rosy though, one issue that beset early SSDs is a pronounced drop off in performance once the SSD starts to get filled up. This is caused by the way SSDs write data when the disk is getting short of free space.
The amount of free space is affected in SSDs quite dramatically because of the way the SSD tries to level the wear on the drive. I have always been worried about SSDs as I remember when USB thumb drives first started appearing many years ago there was a lot of talk about them having a limited re-write capability. Basically unlike a rotating magnetic medium like a hard drive which can be written to and from almost infinitely, SSDs and USB sticks have a limit of about 10,000 writes. With USB thumb drives (”whizzy sticks” as my wife Lynn calls them) you tend not to be using them as a regular read write storage medium, most people only tend to copy stuff onto them for transport from one computer to another and then only use them again when they do the same sort of task.
Contrast that with using an SSD as your main computer hard disk. Windows tends to be writing thousands of files to the disk all day long as the operating system goes about its business. This means if the SSD drive controller behaved like a standard hard disk controller writing to the same area all the time, the 10,000 writes would come up pretty quickly. To avoid this, the SSD manufacturers have created special drive controller firmware that ensures that the drive only writes to the same memory areas on the drive if there are no other areas that have been left unused. What this means in practice is that when a file is modified instead of going to the individual pages of the file and rewriting them all, the controller will go to the master file table which holds the information about where files are stored physically on the SSD and mark the entry for this file as deleted and then write the newly created version of the file to a whole new unused data area as though it was a completely new file. This is why the disk soon fills up with used blocks and a load of blocks that are marked as deleted files. As long as you have plenty of free unused blocks the drive performance will stay tip-top, however when the SSD gets to the point where there are no more unused blocks, the controller has to start really erasing blocks that contain deleted items to make way for new data that is to be written, this is the point where in the early days of SSDs the drive started to go slow.
The reason for this behaviour is because the write process is very much slower than the read process. Well, it is if there are no more unused pages left on the SSD. If there are free pages then it can write a 4KB page without any performance hit, however once there are no more free pages, the drive has to start erasing pages to make room for new data. The hit comes because of the way SSDs work and to erase data you have to do it in 512KB blocks. This is relatively a large chunk of data to move around even at flash disk speeds and causes a big hit in performance. If you want to change a file that is 10KB in size you have to identify the 512KB block that it is in, read the entire block into the controller’s memory, locate the 10KB file within that 512KB block, modify it and then write the whole 512KB block back to the SSD again.
Windows 7 and the TRIM Command
Once the stuttering effect caused by this imbalance between reading and writing/erasing became clear, it was soon realised that there needed to be some cleverness that could be applied to minimise the effect or SSDs wouldn’t appear in real world usage to be much better for day to day use than a traditional hard disk. Also at the moment SSDs are very expensive as the manufacturers recoup their research costs. Because of this the manufacturers, firmware writers and Microsoft came up with the TRIM command. This piece of cleverness ensures that the write/erase process does not suffer so badly. The TRIM command basically occurs after an erase is done, without TRIM the existing mechanism is in place, the SSD modifies the Master File Table to indicate that the file has now been deleted but doesn’t do anything with the data pages on the SSD they are still there and could be recovered with a file recovery program as is the case with traditional Hard Disk Drives. If TRIM is supported by the operating system, when a delete command is issued by the file system, and the Operating System knows the drive is an SSD not a standard HDD, a TRIM command is sent to the controller as well. This command tells the controller to not only do the entries in the Master File Table, it also tells it to effectively do a garbage clean up immediately. This then releases all the blocks and pages occupied by the file to be deleted and returns them to the free pool. With more pages being returned to the free pool immediately new file writes now have more free blocks available to use and thus performance stays higher overall.
At the moment only Windows 7 fully implements the TRIM command, Linux Kernal 2.6.28 does have some support but it is not fully implemented yet and according to some knowledgable Linux developers using it does slow down the operating system.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=63843
Things to Avoid with SSDs
At the moment if you install an SSD on any Windows System below Windows 7 be sure to turn off automatic deframentation of your SSD drive as leaving it on will cause the drive to fill up much quicker than by normal usage and in the absence of a TRIM command on those operating systems they will not be able to maintain the new state high performance as a result.
I think in the reasonably near future, SSD pricing will start to fall into line with normal HDDs and at that point we will no longer see standard rotational Hard Disks and they will be consigned to the IT history books like the 3.5″ and 5.25″ floppy disk drives. Also as the technology matures I predict that CD-ROM, DVD and BluRay will also disappear. Already you can buy USB sticks that will hold 16GB or 32GB for very reasonable prices and they are much more convenient as a storage medium for data. I fully expect to see you going down to the video rental shop with your USB stick and paying for a download of a HiDef movie to it for display on your home theatre or computer.
All good stuff, now if we can only get rid of the blasted fans in my PC.
Siv
Siv’s Blog is up and running.
by Siv on Nov.30, 2009, under Non IT Stuff
Hi,
A client asked me about Wordpress and how to install it on his website and I must admit to not being that savvy with blogging software as it’s an area I have never felt that bothered about. (Old dog new tricks etc!!).
As the client was interested in it I decided to get my head around WordPress and had a go at setting it up as it was a wet and windy November Sunday and I would rather be doing this than the paperwork I should be doing. Needless to say it is very easy to set up and configure and within about three quarters of an hour here we are.
I am sure there is a lot of other stuff I could do to make it look and perform better but this at least proves to me that I can install it and configure themes without too much hassle.
Rather than it just being something I set up and when understood I will pull down again I will maintain this and see if my other clients find it useful.
Siv
