I have been shopping around recently for a network attached storage device to see if I can come up with a better solution than my current linux server. One of the main features I am interested in is automatic volume expansion. Basically if I insert a new hard drive the NAS should just handle it and I won’t have to do anything.
Devices such as the Drobo and the ReadyNAS NV+ offer implementations of this but at £400 to £500 without any drives included makes them ridiculously over priced. So I looked back at my linux box and wondered what could be done in software.
The much hyped Sun file system ZFS offers these features and more but with it only being on Solaris and a Linux port not even close I ruled it out a while back. Then I remembered that FreeNAS is BSD based and that ZFS has been ported to FreeBSD 7. Well it turns out that FreeNAS is currently based on FreeBSD 6 but they specifically mention in the roadmap that ZFS support will be coming soon.
So now I just have to wait a bit and soon I will be able to build my own free software alternative to the overpriced Drobo.
It’s a huge undertaking but the Windows UI Taskforce are trying to detail every single UI bug in Vista. Just looking through the list serves as a reminder to how half arsed and rushed out the OS was.
The fact that there are still Windows 3.1 style widgets in Windows Vista is unforgivable, it’s the kind of thing that makes it feel cheap and mashed together when using it.
As much as I hate Sky, I hate ITV even more. And today is no exception with the announcement that ITV HD will be a Freesat exclusive. So rather than rolling out their channel to the largest established HD platform in the UK (Sky HD) they choose to go with the unproven service that just launched.
There is no technical need for it to be exclusive to Freesat. It all comes from the same satelite orbiting the Earth regardless of which service you sign up for. BBC HD which is available on both proves this. As far as I can see the only thing they need to do is maintain two EPG formats - thats it.
We all know how well it went the last time ITV were a platform holder (hint: horribly) and it looks like they are well on their way to screwing things up again.
Not that I watch anything on ITV.
I have been saving this rant since last week due to the blog issues. I still think it’s relevant.
When I read this blog post by the BBC’s Darren Waters last week I started to get very angry. Now that I’ve had some time to think about it I can make a cool rational judgement - something I suggest Mr Waters tries.
“The BBC’s announcement of a deal with Nintendo to put the iPlayer’s streaming service on the console makes something of a mockery claims by Sony and Microsoft that their consoles are the true multimedia machines.”
I don’t care which side he is on but the fact is that he and the BBC should not be taking sides. It’s all very well to brag about how amazing your online video service will be on the Wii but it’s another thing to shit all over Nintendo’s competion. It’s called impartiality buddy.
Now to the techie meat of the issue. Any browser that supports the latest flash can play iPlayer content. So that’s why Wii and PS3 support is on the way - they have browsers. The catch is that this is the low quality version, the high(er) quality video must be downloaded. Unlike that BBC blogger I have a PC connected to a large screen and attempted to watch Doctor Who via the flash player this week. It looked horrendous. I couldn’t watch it. The same video I couldn’t watch will be what is offered on the Wii and a download option can never be implemented that platform.
People don’t mind watching YouTube videos on their PCs in tiny windows but when you stretch it out on a huge screen they will not be impressed.
The Vista-capable lawsuit is finally yielding some facts about Nvidia’s record of horrendous driver support for Microsoft’s latest OS. This is of particular interest to me as last year I switched over to ATI after many months of problems with my Nvidia card under Vista (which worked flawlessly in XP). This caused me a lot of wasted time and my wallet was significantly lighter by the end of it. According to the newly released documents they were responsible for 479,000 crashes making up 29% of the total logged!
17.9% are Microsoft’s fault, those are the crashes that made me switch back to XP even after shelling out for the OS and new hardware for it.
Checking out the new content released by Microsoft during GDC this week hamered home that the Xbox dashboard and Live in general is getting rather complicated to navigate. Looking at my games folder it has 92 games in there including Live Arcade, demos and XNA stuff. Getting to what you want can be tricky and it’s not always obvious in which area the thing you are after will be located. Added to this many similar functions yield different interface concepts, just compare purchasing and running a Live Arcade game versus an Xbox Original game - completely different and sends my HCI alarm bells ringing.
Of course while I’m thinking of this comes the news that MS are looking to double Live’s user base and completely redo the way the content is presented. Maybe they should take a page out of Apple’s handbook on this one? I do like the new Apple TV interface.
Managing the sheer amount of content is daunting and MS don’t exactly have the best track record in UI design. I’ll be impressed if they even go ahead and completely refresh what they have now, its gonna take some big balls because the backlash from some parts of the community will be enormous. Good luck!
Charlie Brooker hits one of my little frustrations right on the head today,
I tend to assume other people share my obsessive need to examine the settings until everything is just so, and get genuinely enraged when I go to someone’s house and discover, say, that they’re watching programmes in the wrong aspect ratio. People over 50 are the worst offenders: they’ll blithely sit through a Dad’s Army repeat that is unnaturally stretched across the screen so that the entire cast look as if they had difficult births that left them with flattened skulls. Faced with this, I get acute back-seat-driver anxiety, and end up hectoring them like an exasperated pilot trying to teach a four-year-old how to fly a helicopter.
It’s not just the aspect ratio, when I go back home shows are being watched in standard def even when they are being broadcast in HD on the next channel and we are paying for the luxury of Sky HD. That’s not as bad as watching a whole nights TV with squashed or stretched heads but still makes me wonder why they pay for it.
The exception to the over 50 rule is my brother who couldn’t care less and is oblivious to picture quality. I’ve caught him watching analogue terrestrial with black bars (put on by the broadcaster for 4:3 correction) stretched across the 16:9 LCD. Ouch.
I am staring at the Windows XP installation screen as I type this. I just removed my Vista partition, formatted the drive and am going fully back to XP.
The final straw came a few nights ago. After trying and trying I simply could not get Vista to playback a 1080p video without slowing down, scrambling the picture or just cutting out completely. So I tested it on my MacBook - passed, tested it on an Ubuntu Live CD - passed, and then on a seperate XP partition - passed.
The fact that playback was better off a god damn live CD is proof enough that there is something fundamentally wrong with Vista. I’d stripped Vista down, tried different codecs, used different players but nothing worked. After trying out XP on seperate partion I started thinking why I actually need Vista. DirectX 10? Thats been a flop. Areo? More hassle that its worth (and not a patch on Leopard). Vista special features? Exactly.
Bye Bye Vista.
The time was right for a new venture so here it is, my new collaboration with Andy Griffiths is a site dedicated to Steam news and information that we like to call 
![Futurama - Bender's Big Score (with Limited Edition Lenticular Sleeve) [2008]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61THJCbOxwL._SL75_.jpg "Futurama - Bender's Big Score (with Limited Edition Lenticular Sleeve) [2008]")
![Futurama - The Beast with a Billion Backs [2008]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511PW90lDhL._SL75_.jpg "Futurama - The Beast with a Billion Backs [2008]")
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