matt-helps

Google recently introduced a new feature to their google.com search engine. As you type google will give suggestions to the question you might be asking. These suggestions are based on popular searches that other users have made. There are some highly amusing ones out there but I notice that the initial phrasing of the suggestion is important:

“When did” returns the suggestions: elvis die, michael jackson die, michael jackson turn white
“In what year did” returns the suggestions: did the US declare independence from Britain, England defeat France in the battle of Agincourt

“How does” returns: it work, skype work, twitter work, swine flu kill
“Under what conditions” returns: can potassium bromide conduct electricity, does a patience need to be on a drop of glucose, does matter create light.

So if you want intelligent suggestions you need to use intelligent phrasing! It seems the old adage is true: Ask a silly question, get a silly answer.

Edit: There’s now a website dedicated to it: http://autocompleteme.com

Windows strikes fails again, this time on an ATM where I was planning on getting some cash out! Strictly speaking it is McAfee that failed with a pure virtual function call (C++, when you somehow manage to call a pure virtual method of an abstract class), and one has to ask: is an ATM really in need of anti-virus software? But it happens on a Microsoft box and that’s enough for me!

Microsoft Windows Fail

Click the picture for large version.

Windows 7 became available for pre-order today. There are positive reviews around the place though I think it is a shame that they’re not offering it free to Vista customers considering how bad Vista was. Still, Microsoft have to keep the money coming in to support their massive infrastructure. The timing is good too, designed I guess to take the focus from Google’s new OS that they are going to release.

Google’s OS will be won or lost based on 2 factors - its office suite (likely to be a shiny version of Google Docs), and whether they can get mainstream games publishers to use the linux platform that Chrome OS is based upon. I can’t see how they will swing the 2nd point without investing heavily themselves in a linux version of DirectX/3d. Much as I dislike Microsoft one thing they got right (eventually) was DirectX and that got the game publishers on board. I’m an ex-games programmer (Gremlin Interactive, Infogrames entertainment) and it helped no end having almost identical XBox & PC versions of whatever game we were working on, not to mention not having to do things totally differently depending on what graphics, sound or input device a user had. DirectX unified the lot and people (and teenagers in their garages) started spitting out games much more quickly. Google will need their DirectX - they must take games seriously if they want to capture the home/Desktop market.

Anyway, if you’re interested in pre-ordering Windows 7 see the links below for US/UK via Amazon. Amazon (UK at least) has a set number of Windows 7 for pre-order each hour and it seems to be sold out for that hour by 5 minutes past the hour (does that make sense?) - so check it on the hour whilst we’re in early days!). Note also that the UK does not have upgrade options, but must purchase the full package:

US: Amazon.com
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Upgrade
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Upgrade

UK: Amazon.co.uk
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium E (PC)
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional E (PC)
Windows 7 Ultimate E (PC DVD)

I bought this Sony Bravia TV on a Tuesday, it was delivered by Friday and I have to say I am so happy with it (Amazon UK link on the right, Amazon US link is at the bottom of the page).

It is an absolutely brilliant TV, futureproofed (full HD, accepts 24p, and 1080p input through any of its 4 HDMI inputs). Will show pictures from a USB stick, or watch other movie files when running as your laptop’s 2nd monitor. I also have it hooked up to the network (the TV has an ethernet port) so we can stream family pictures over the network to show our extended family pictures of the little ones - the quality on this TV is MUCH better than a standard TFT computer monitor.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

The programmers behind gnome-terminal seem to have changed something to do with the way ctrl-c works. Now if you want to cancel a program that has the focus of the terminal and you hit ctrl-c then nothing will happen. That’s because the gnome terminal is trying to copy text to the clipboard - perhaps your gnome-terminal’s “copy to clipboard” command is set to ctrl-shift-c in which case you won’t notice this problem!
[Read the rest of this entry...]