Like most people, Sneak feels life is at least three-score-and-ten years too short to bother reading the details of software licensing agreements, and simply assumes that vendors are writing themselves a blank cheque at Sneak's expense, should a licensing dispute ever wind up in court.

Most companies achieve their evil ends by burying onerous terms among yards of blather. However, with its Windows Defender security tool, Microsoft is taking the opposite tack. The box containing licensing terms, which Sneak had to accept before proceeding, was entirely blank. Presumably Microsoft will fill in the bit about forfeiture of the soul later, at its own convenience.

October 27, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak has long been a fan of Oracle big cheese Larry Ellison and his entertaining rants about the evils of Microsoft, but could his days as the billionaire best at baiting Steve Ballmer be numbered? Step forward Dr Jim Goodnight, mild-mannered CEO of business intelligence vendor SAS. Asked recently if he had any concerns about Microsoft’s entry into the BI market he responded, waspishly, "If their BI has as many bugs as the rest of their software it won't be very good, will it?" Ouch.

Just to make sure Sneak hadn't missed this not-so-subtle jab, Goodnight then hammered it home by expressing his amazement that any company could produce "such garbage" and get away with it, before rounding off by claiming that Microsoft has been arguably the least innovative company in the world, has appropriated all its ideas from others, and that the only thing it has ever been any good at is sales and marketing - and that it isn’t even very good at that any more.

Glorious stuff, particularly given that Sneak only asked about BI. Now come on Larry, surely you can top that...

October 27, 2006 Business intelligence | Permalink | Comments (0)

For the man-about-town who knows how to get noticed; the new diamond-cut accessory for the modern man of today*. Impress that special lady: you’ll look suave, sophisticated and in control as you slide the cover off your polished ST Dupont USB memory stick and slip it in her socket. You’ll also look like you have money: lots of money. More money than you know what to do with, given that you’re prepared to drop $520 on a 1GB stick. Time waits for no man, so what are you waiting for?

*Cravat, dark glasses, handlebar moustache and pin-stripe flared hipsters not included.

October 23, 2006 Top tips | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak read an interesting article in The Guardian recently, about harvesting otherwise wasted energy. For example, the 34,000 pairs of feet that pound across the concourse at Victoria Station every rush hour could generate a burst of many kilowatts if the floor were tiled with piezoelectric crystals, allegedly. Of course it’s not obvious what to do with this brief surge of the sparky stuff - perhaps it could be fed into cattle prods to clear a path for busy people like Sneak? Apparently many other human activities could also be tapped to generate juice, ranging from fingers pounding keyboards to the flexing of elbows. Sneak suggests mounting piezoelectrics on the top of monitors in time for the launch of Windows Vista - and an expected upturn in the pounding of fists.

October 18, 2006 Science | Permalink | Comments (0)

Is it just Sneak, or does the new Cisco logo, adopted officially earlier this month, look a bit familiar? Ironically, given Cisco’s reputation for being about as cheap as having your chips cooked for you individually by Gordon Ramsay, Sneak reckons the new identity calls to mind the no-frills, anti-design Tesco Value brand. Of course both Tesco and Cisco enjoy a leadership position in their respective markets, leading to plump (some might say obese) profits. Hence the vertical stripes. They’re slimming, don’t you know.

October 17, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Normally Sneak tries not to open email missives that have things like “Burning Love Pouch” in the subject line. But Sneak is only human, and sometimes curiosity gets the better even of those who are aware that it’s often fatal to felines. In this case, the message proved to be an innocent press release about a new range of iPod cases - or in fact iPod cosies - resplendent in very furry fake fur.

They look very nice too. However, now that Sneak is the proud owner of a knobbly back-to-nature stick-based USB stick, and since IT Week has come over all green these days, Sneak worries that the manufacture of acrylic fur may well be more harmful to nature than, say, whacking a squirrel on the head and stealing its skin. After all, there are plenty of squirrels, but we only have one biosphere.

So, anyone know where Sneak can get a Pod-cosy made of genuine vermin-fur?

October 16, 2006 Music | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak is very impressed by the products of Dutch design company Oooms. Need a place to sit unseen, to observe humans in their natural habitat (or is that just Sneak)? You need the foldaway, flat-packed City Hideout - a big cardboard box that looks exactly like an anonymous lump of galvanised industrial street furniture. Need something to sit on while you watch the world go by through the slats of your cardbox box? Try the Lo-Res Chair, a piece of furniture inspired by crappy digital pictures of chairs. And finally, need somewhere to record your observations? How about a USB memory stick made from, well, a stick. Sadly, while the hideout and chair seem not to be for sale, the attractively knobbly sticks are, but at the kind of prices that will not see Sneak rushing to fetch one. Instead a no-brand USB key, a pot of glue and a hacksaw might all be having a midnight rendezvous in the local park this evening.

October 13, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

A while ago Sneak highlighted the world’s most unpronounceable web address, and now reader Andre Gorvel thinks his site should be recognised as the least accessible. An official document from UK registry Nominet confirms that he has registered the domain “.” until “0blank Blank 0000”. Whenever that is.

October 13, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak finds it all too easy to forget that not everyone has their finger pressed as firmly on the new-technology pulse as Sneak. So it was arresting to spot a couple of people of, let us say, advancing years sitting on a London Underground train yesterday assessing a headline in the Evening Standard. "What is YouTube?" asked one. "Some kind of music download, I think," replied the other, sagely. Which was nearly right. At least they didn't decide that a YouTube was a urinary catheter, which is what a doctor means by the term U-tube.

Meanwhile a company called Universal Tube and Rollform Equipment, which happens to own the domain name uTube.com, is suing YouTube, seeking damages for the vast increase in visits to its web site by people who can't spell YouTube. According to the court documents, many of these visitors have managed to master a dazzling array of four-letter words, however. As one charming visitor put it to uTube, on seeing a site full of information about industrial tubing: "WHERE THE F*** ARE ALL
THE VIDEOS???" Only without the asterisks, obviously.

October 11, 2006 Current Affairs, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (9)

With the introduction of Unique, the fixed-mobile convergence thingy from Orange, Sneak wonders why the carrier has not opted to extend the animal metaphor it has previously used to stuff its customers into different pigeonholes. People tend to warm to animals, and so don’t object when called a Panther, whereas labelling them Type D, say, might suggest they belong in the corner wearing a conical hat. However, Sneak is baffled by the logic behind the labels, assuming there is any. Panthers apparently like “all the extras”, whereas in real life Panthers are somewhat single-minded, picky eaters who prefer plain dead meat. Similarly, Dolphin is for “people who love to text”, whereas real Dolphins don’t have any fingers. Anyway, why is Unique a good name for a product that’s not unique and is in fact a hybrid? Why not be honest and call it Mongrel?

October 5, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak is pleased to note that the term PUA is gaining some traction, given that even the mighty Microsoft has had legal trouble trying to classify what’s spyware, what’s adware, and what is in fact a legitimate and helpful generator of relevant popup adverts. That you never knew you installed. And that seems to think you need Viagra. Or is that just in Sneak’s case? Anyway, the nicely politically correct “potentially unwanted application” is a lovely coverall to describe annoying things that eke out a living on the margins of your hard-disk. It also has a nice ring to it, sounding vaguely excremental when spoken aloud. Of course, the range of applications that are potentially unwanted is actually rather broad. For example, Sneak would rather listen to a pair of fingers than use the execrable Windows Media Player 10 that shipped as part of Windows XP - surely qualifying it as a prime piece of PUA.

October 3, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)