Diaspora, the self-claimed privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network. let’s examine each of those ambitious claims one by one.

Privacy aware. The question here is really: can a network be privacy aware? Is an infrastructure even able to make such promises? As long as this promise is just written, it makes only little sense to me, as privacy is most often not a question of the protocol or idea running a service, but rather of it’s implementation and mostly dependent on its users.

Personally controlled? Facebook is also controlled by it’s users. The problem is actually not control in the net itself, but control towards additional use of your data, e.g. for advertising or some other third party stuff. Again, a protocol or idea won’t be able to change that problem. Just by allowing a net to be just that, there is still a considerable chance of data being accumulated by one provider, like facebook, again. And, as long there is some data concerning you on a database server that is not exclusively administrated by you, your data is not personally controlled.

Do-it-all. I’d rather not comment on that one. But that’s what it is about here. Do-it-all. If it sounds too good to be true, it’s not. Doubtlessly, those smart guys are ambitious and gifted ( at least concerning PR ), but do-it-all is a bit.. over the top. Small steps. Just develop one application, show it, next one. It’s okay and cool and I really appreciate that the protocol can be used for anything, but that also implies complexity. And time.

Open-source. That’s just fine, but at the moment, it’s not. Neither the sources they’re working on, nor the protocol, which is, of course, the more interesting part, are available anywhere. Being a programmer myself, I really understand why the project source is not available at such an early development stage, but it’s crucial for this protocol to become published, even in an early version, as soon as possible.

The protocol, the heart of diaspora, is what invites other people to read and study it. Which may have some desirable consequences: I’d like to build a diaspora node, for example. And I’m pretty sure some other people like to as well. But even more interesting are the ones analyzing it from e.g. a security perspective, commenting on it’s scaling ability or just throwing in new ideas?

Diaspora is fine. I really respect the guys running this project, they are doing a great job, right idea, right time, nothing more powerful. But still, they should really take their time to consider changing some things. Let’s create a google group, let’s share some technical details with the ( really interested ) mass, let’s communicate.

First there is Microsoft’s ever green cash-cow, the Office Suite, selling in Germany for about 250€. This suite includes nothing that is not available for free in the OpenOffice Suite, compatibility is mostly ensured. Even worse, this Office suite fails to provide state-of-the-art functionality like wrapping text around the contour of an image. Instead of pushing this product to become even better, Microsoft seems to be happy to sell it. No need to improve it.

Same on the Operating Systems. Instead of inventing something new, useful, Microsoft seems to have decided that this is just not necessary. The eye-candy provided in Vista fails to provide some real usage advantage, and is therefore unnecessary. And while Mac OS is sold in one edition for 100€, Ubuntu and other Linux distributions are free, Vista is being sold in several stunningly expensive editions.

But Microsoft isn’t sleeping! They just lately presented the amazing new killer-app called Songsmith and the new Taskbar for Windows 7. The first one negates any use besides fun, the second doesn’t seem to be a revolution. Nothing break-through, as always, years behind.

Welcome to the browser’s section. While Firefox 3, Safari and Opera work mostly standards compliant and are kept up-to-date, Internet Explorer 7 is far away from rendering anything the way it should be rendered, and is also far from being up-to-date in any way. It seems Microsoft is just waiting here for innovations seen in other Browsers customers like and then implements them. Not what I expect from a global player.

Last but not least, it’s Microsoft communication pissing me off. Instead of presenting cool features or other breakthroughs, all the CEOs spitting out is related to Microsofts market position.

But with an attitude like this, it seems in question how long Microsoft is going to keep that. Office and some vintage Operating System won’t keep the value up. What is your opinion on Microsofts products?

So the question I’m asking is whether it’s that bad that there is no Java support? Yes! Absolutely! At least if you either use programs or build programs depending on it. Of course, most programs just work fine with Java 5, but there are some that just don’t. And so one of the main reasons for Java is obsolete: write once, run everywhere. And while Sun, the company behind Java, is providing Runtime Environments for Windows and Linux, it’s not for Mac. So it’s not Apples fault alone. But careless of who’s fault it is, it just sucks, clearly spoken.

The list was created in collaboration with major actors, like Microsoft, Cisco and other popular names. While not all of them are applicable to all kinds of applications, you will certainly find some that do, and this list is certainly a very good source to start reading on that topic.

Enough written, the document can be found here: Top 25 programming errors.

A Web site cannot set a cookie if the Domain attribute is in uppercase characters and has an odd number of characters in Internet Explorer 7

You can read find that bug in the Knowledge Base. This post features nothing else but this bold bug description, so here’s my question, to be answered in the comment: what do you think was the code that caused this bug looking like? Any languages ( even brainfuck! ) welcome..

Edit: I stumbled upon a video demonstrating that by getting the square root of 4 and subtracting 2 from the result, the calculator.. outputs some rather unique result. Any explanation here? Try it, works in any Windows version. Buggy times.

On the other hand, I guess that most people using really modern WebApps are nevertheless forced to use modern browsers. I don’t know, really not. A short yet true list of cons is presented here as well, and a rather radical point of view presented by nick cowie.

And there was this one thing. Imagine a system-wide menu bar featuring all your current apps, plus the one you are using most often. Of course, it’s up to you to decide what you want to place in that amazing menu-bar. You can even use a very, very hot ability to place items using the mouse called “drag and drop”. Finally, after using an application and closing it, the corresponding icon will just disappear. Unbelievable, I know. There is one other amazing ability this dreambar, as I call it, offers. The grouping of windows belonging to the same application. This is indeed something total new, something I have dreamed about for years, and now it’s finally happening. 

Well, in case you thought it sounds like the Mac OS Dock. It’s not. It’s the new taskbar in Windows 7, called “superbar”. It seems people at Redmond are a bit desperate these days, instead of being creative.. 

But let’s be serious, just for a moment. I’m really wondering where the innovation is. Even searching for “Windows 7 Innovation” doesn’t return much. There is the mentioned superbar ( wuhhzza ), some eye-candy and a multi-touch interface ( if I got that rumor right ). The multi-touch interface is a gift for hardware manufacturers, but not for people with ordinary PCs eating French Fries while surfing the web, the superbar is pretty much a bad copy of several already existing concepts and the rest? Is there still this ridiculous Flip-3D thingy that is so not boosting productivity? Oh it’s so spacy I can’t see the contents of the other windows..

Windows definitely has some fields where no one is at the moment able to compete with it, but not because of the superior technology but rather because of hardware manufacturers still keeping that platform up, and game vendors still building mainly for it, too.  

But actually, this hasn’t necessarily to be something bad. Mac OS simply is the best system when it comes to usability, consistency of an interface etc.. And Windows can only profit from … reinventing some stuff already present there. Calling it Superbar seems a bit exaggerated, but after the Zune disaster I guess it’s to polish some Egos.

Maybe you’ve heard that the music industry finally decided on dropping charges against individuals, and that from now on the strategy is to work with ISPs to simply cut off unprofitable users. This reminds me of ancient laws ( that are, unfortunately, still used in some parts of the world ) where a criminal would get his hand cut off if he used it to steal something with it. 

While some countries like France are already in the process of passing such a law, elsewhere lobbyists are still busy convincing politicians to do so. If you want to get into the topic, a good place to turn to is certainly the Electronic Frontier Foundation, featuring an article covering the topic.

If you are just like me, and many other folks, just follow a specially created twitter-user called #ourrights. This account will link nowhere, it’s just a statement to follow it. Please also spread the word by posting an update on your tweed. Thank you, and always keep in mind that we are the masses.