I want some Sezmi! I'm really tired of cable, since its the second time in a week its gone out completely.. Internet and TV! Comcast... I really hate you. Qwest... not a big fan of you either... but at the moment... your my only other option really... Oh City Council... how narrow minded you were in not going with Utopia.
According to an article I found today... this is the case.. I would have to concur to a degree... I would however say that my "low" was more last year than this... As this one has been more of an upswing... slowly but up none the less. I still don't have the time any more to collect my thoughts and thoroughly research things as much as I would like. Also the reason I haven't rewritten my blog or changed the way it looks in years. However... this will change... soon. It may not be prettier... but I will have written it all... and... I will be modifying it and adding new as I see my own needs for it change.
I've had the Motorola Cliq since the day it was released... and well... its "ok" I would say over all. Hardware wise I would say its great. I just really don't like their software choices for Android and, well I don't like the motoblur interface... why will they not let me change it? I understand fully why I can't remove the apps I don't use, because they're part of MotoBlur. However, why does that mean I'm forced to root it to get a plain Android build on the phone? Why not provide the option Motorola? WHY?!!!
Anyway, since it is Android... it is only time before we have it rooted, and as such, I'm linking to boost up the site that wants what I do... and most android owners want... FREEDOM! Anyway, http://cliq-development.com Check it out if your in the same boat as me.
I have to be honest... the Motorola Cliq... is fairly nice hardware, but whatever they've done to android... isn't flattering... Motoblur is a huge waste of resources and apparently requires so much modification to andrioid that it must take months to modify it. Which is why it still has Android 1.5 on it, instead of the much needed 1.6 release which has a lot of speed and other improvements. But what really chaps me, is the fact that Droid has 2.0 on it... which Verizon must have paid off someone so they could get the exclusive for a while... So, sorry Moto, but I'm going with a C.. maybe a D rating on your software choices for the phone... its horrible. Maybe its because I don't care about facebook? or any other social networking... but the fact I'm locked into a subpar sms app, can't remove facebook, and the email apps are also quite horrible... I've installed new apps for these.. but I still get pop ups and such for them as well... anyway... Android is an Open Platform... why must these people lock it down? We want android for the flexibility it offers, not for you to force us into your horrible software choices! Moto... I gave you another chance... and you failed... I will be looking forward to another phone within a year or so.
So... I've been wanting a new phone for a while... and I want an Android based phone. After seeing the G1, while I believe its nice... its not worth the move just yet... But after seeing the announcement from Samsung that they will be releasing sometime in Q2 of 2009.
Its rumoured to resemble the Samsung Omnia... which from the looks of it: I love it.
[caption id="attachment_328" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Sweet Looking Phone"]
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I upgraded to Intrepid Ibex long before I should have... Hardy Heron(8.04) is an amazing release, where 8.10 seems to have a lot of fine tuning still needed. I reinstalled back to Hardy yesterday on my laptop because of some issues with wireless (Intel 4965 - 802.11n), suspend wasn't as great any longer, and vpnc wasn't working. I also had upgraded my Mythtv/Router box as well... and now I wish I could take that back, however that ones not an easy reinstall, so I'll work with it for now.
anyway, after my reinstall back to hardy, my vpn is still not working, and I get the error: vpnc: receiving packet: Message too long
After some googling and not turning up anything, I decided to launch wireshark on my laptop and watch while I ran my vpnc-connect. Turns out the Message too long is a rather obscure way of saying that it was getting an ICMP fragment error... the IPSEC packet was set not to fragment and the packet was to large for some MTU setting on my uplink some where. I thought I'd check my router box... which has three nic's in it... one for wireless, one for wired lan, the third is my internet(eth0). Since it was doing the same thing on both wired and wireless, I checked eth0 which is where it plugs into the cable modem. Sure enough the MTU size on eth0 was set to 576 bits. I ran "sudo ifconfig eth0 mtu 1500" and tried my vpn connection again and it connects. My cable has been up and down all week (Thanks Comcast!), it could be an issue with the cable modem or it could just be the new kernel in intrepid ibex... so, for now, I'll add the following line in /etc/rc.local
ifconfig eth0 mtu 1500
this sets the MTU to 1500 on boot(if it wasn't DHCP I could add an mtu 1500 line for the interface in /etc/network/interfaces)
I have AT&T and a first gen iPhone... and I want a G1.
Because of AT&T's brilliant use of contracts... that I didn't know I'd be agreeing to... but none the less... my used iPhone automatically extended my plan by 2 years... I'm stuck paying to get out of it or, just get an unlocked phone and use it on AT&T's network. Some will complain that using an unlocked G1 on AT&T's network is dumb... I disagree... and let me tell you why.
It is true that the 3G network will not work with the G1 on AT&T, and the reason is purely technical (not a software/vendor restriction). T-Mobile's 3G network runs in the 1.7Ghz and 2.1Ghz ranges... Where AT&T's 3G runs in the 1.9Ghz range. For a phone to work on both 3G networks, it would need a radio able to talk on all of those frequencies. Not typical of a cell phone.. as that adds to cost.
So, yes I'm saying I would like to have a G1 on the old slower EDGE network. I figure, why not... that's what I have currently, and while painful when I'm out and about... Its not that bad, and the WiFi abilities are nice and are around in placed I usually roam.
Why would I be willing to put up with it when I have an iPhone? Well... if you knew me, you'd know I only use a Linux Laptop, and iTunes, being windows/mac only.. is lame anyway you look at it. I also don't like the fact that they lock down the rigntones... I loved my Sony Ericsson because I could just bluetooth transfer my mp3 ringtones (self made) from my laptop, as well as txt documents and notes I would need while out. Sadly, these two options are the things I miss most and I'm willing to give up my iphone for.
I do like the email and web browsing of the iPhone, but thats not enough to keep me a satisfied customer.
I know I currently have an iPhone, however... I must say... I don't like the requirement for iTunes. Its not that I don't like iTunes specifically.. (for the most part I dont find anything wrong with it... other than the proprietary formats for music that you typically buy off the iTunes store...), but my main complaint is that I run Linux, and only Linux on my desktops and servers. Yes I have a virtual machine of windows XP, however, getting USB to pass through to it for iTunes and syncing my iphone just isn't really what I Like to do. I really want something to integrate. I want what windows and mac have had forever, but on my linux desktop. Don't flam and bitch that I could if I just used those other operating systems... thats not an option. I love my linux desktop so much that my latest laptop (Lenovo ThinkPad T61) I bought with SuSE preloaded simply because I have no need for windows outside of the stupid iPhone sync process. The Linux desktop is amazing if you ask me... I however am not a Linux elitist that I try to force my personal preferences onto others. It just works for me, allows me to work and perform my job very well, so I don't plan on going to any other OS for myself... ever.
Anyway... I ran off on a tangent... My new phone will run Android. I'm hoping for a new one sometime this year... maybe they'll release the HTC Dream by then and I can get it for my birthday.
Anyway, in case you don't know what Android is... there are youtube videos all over about it. Look it up. Looks just as amazing as my linux desktop. I honestly cannot wait.
My blog will probably become unlisted from Google for this, but it needs to be said.
Polyserve from HP or as its now called "HP Clustered Gateway" is the biggest pile of crap software ever.
I normally don't like to post about work stuff on my personal blog. However, I've noticed that HP seems to be wanting to cover up and hide the fact that this software is the most worthless pile of crap that they have ever purchased and released.
Backing it up, worthless, you'll get file locking issues that can't be rectified short of taking snapshots of the volumes. When you have 12TB volumes... those snapshots aren't THAT small.
Anyway, I really just wanted to start creating some links around to start getting the word out that Polyserve is Junk so it become googleable
Heres a link to a blog with the same info: http://polyserveisjunk.blogspot.com/
My boss decided I should have a company purchased laptop, instead of using my own. Since we had another guy starting at the same time, he wanted us to purchase one for each of us. I went with another Lenovo, but this time a ThinkPad. A ThinkPad T61 with a Core2 duo 2.5Ghz, 4GB RAM, and the WSXGA+ screen, and 250GB drive. I went with the 15" one just for the screen res. I also ordered it preloaded with SuSE. It was $200 cheaper than the one with windows, and I just wanted to add to the tally of the demand for Linux Pre-Loaded. I will be reloading it with Ubuntu once I get it, but not a big deal.
The great news is that it was saying it wasn't going to ship until the 16th of June, well I just got an email saying it shipped today! I ordered 2 Business day shipping which is what I did for my last lenovo, and it came from Hong Kong in 2 days. So, I should have it by thursday, or friday at the latest.
Why is it that the linux community publishes screen shots of their desktops? I'm not really sure... however... I do enjoy watching how my own evolves... or lack there of... Have a look at mine for yourself.
Well, I've had the macbook pro for a couple weeks now, and while I personally don't have a problem with Mac OS X... its just not Linux. I like mac fine and all... When I'm using it however... I miss my ubuntu laptop. Browsing the web and doing email works just fine on the mac... also I generally would prefer the mac when doing movie stuff, however it was a pita to get xvid working. (it only took me 20 minutes or so, but that was still way to long, my "aptitude install gstreamer-*" works much nicer) And ports on the mac... what a joke, its an even bigger pita. It attempts to be like linux's package managers, however, you have to install all the xcode tools before you can even run those, and that took 45 minutes or so. Over all... the Mac interface is definately nice, thats not my complaint, its just I like my open source tools, and the mac is just to proprietary for me to really work on. So..
I believe I will be repartitioning this mac... or maybe, i'll try out the partition resizer built in... don't really care if I corrupt the data on it... By this time tomorrow hopefully, I'll be abe to dual boot the latest ubuntu 8.04 (yes, i know currently still beta)
I don't talk about work much on my blog, mostly because I don't feel like it is appropriate. However, there are things that I learn while at work that would be appropriate to write about. The purpose of this post is just such a situation. I currently work as a network system consultant and I've been doing work onsite for a company for the last 8 months or so. They move large files around, (they're a printing company) and have also put in a huge investment into gigabit ethernet equipment everywhere. However, most of their buildings are fairly old, and the last time they were cabled was around 1998. Most things are run with your standard Category 5 cable (not even Cat5e). Now the sharp person will know immediately that Cat5 is not supposed to run gigabit. Someone forgot to tell everyone else here, because they put the swithes in place and put gigabit ethernet on the desktops as well... and they negotiated at 1 gigabit.... so it should work right? Wrong! Gigabit ethernet is *very* sensitive to the type of cable being run over it, so much so, that technically you can run it over Cat5e, but if your really shooting for gigabit to the desktop, I wouldn't go less than Cat6 and making sure you do not run the cable closer than 3 feet from florescent light blasts, and keep it the same distance from all power runs as well. We had a situation in one of the buildings, that they've been fighting speed issues for months/years, and in no way did they think it was possible to get faster speeds out of Cat5 cable if I were to drop their speeds to 100Mbit full duplex. Instead of the 1Gbit it was currently negotiating at. Finally we got the ok to force everyone in the building down to 100 Full (actually the switches are HP Procurves, and they have an option to set ports to auto-100 which allows the port to negotiate between full and half duplex and speeds of 10 or 100Mbit, essentially leaving out the option for gigabit). And sure enough speed times increased 3 fold. Imagine that.
My boss has been into macs for a couple years(after the release of OSX like most unix converts) and the result has been lots of mac purchases. This brings me to my new stuff, he had bought an iPhone when they first came out and the release of the new 16gb ones spurred a new purchase of one along with a new MacBook pro. So I got the left overs. A 4gb (newly replaced under apple care) and his old 15" macbook pro
In fact I'm writing this on the iPhone right now!
This past week was my birthday and for my present, I got a new hard drive for my laptop. Its a 160GB Western Digital I bought from newegg to replace my now full 80GB drive. So I've been copying over data off and on all day today from my old drive. The plan eventually is to place my 80GB drive into my PS3, and then I'll use the 60GB PS3 drive in this drive cage I got at a deal with the hard drive. On my birthday I went go go-cart racing with my brothers. Which was also quite fun, I enjoyed it a lot.
Its been a while since I've posted, and in the time I've been out... I was on vacation, where my wife and I, along with her brother and sister, drove back home to New York to see their brother graduate and visit with the family. I couldn't begin to describe how horrible the drive was... the rental we had was really bad... not that it had problems, it just was incredibly uncomfortable. But other than that, I had a relaxing time atleast.
Now for the purpose of the post. My next Cell Phone. I've seen this phone before, but I didn't really like the colors that were shown before. Now that they've changed the colors, I love it. And I going to buy one. Even tho they're still not really ready for the general public yet... :) Its called "OpenMoko" and its awesome. The specific phone I'll get is the dark one probably, unless I can get the dark one with the orange ring, that would be sweet.
Anyway, have a look.
Whats up with people not seeing what the big telco's are up to? Even more disturbing both political parties should be outraged at this same behavior as both of their founding values would denounce the telco's behavior. But alas, the FCC has killed build-out requirements for telco's, allowing them to enter only the most profitable areas of a city, instead of the whole city.
I'm all for letting companies be profitable, and even with letting the market forces have their way with as little government interaction as possible. However, the governments job is to handle specific instances where someone else's rights might be infringed by the actions of another. In this situation, the FCC is allowing telco's to dig up and make a profit from using public land. The problem is, this decision allows the telco's to "selectively" use public land in their best interests, and ignore the rights of all of the citizens of these cities. Each resident of a city has the right to have a say in *ALL* dealings with *ALL* public land within the cities boarders. This FCC ruling, over rules this, in favor of the telco's. Even more so, it also gives the telco's more rights than the cable companies currently, at least until the cable companies rework their contract with each city. Whats even more disturbing is the fact that the telco's only had to convince three people in order to gain this favor. Three people that are not voted on at all by the public. This is just one more reason the FCC needs to be gutted and striped of any type of authority, assume or actual. They need to be cut back to what their original purpose was for, to prevent chaos on the airwaves.
Wow... its been a month since my last post... I have a couple posts sorta written in my drafts but, they're mostly political since we had elections earlier this month. I'm sad to say my vote didn't seem to matter much. The unbelievably retarded Orrin Hatch won again. Man, I really don't like him. So I've been trying to lay low a bit and not let politics bug me... which doesn't seem to work for long... there's always something going on and its outragous most of the time. Lately however the tech scene's been the same. Novell struck a deal with the devil (Microsoft) over "intellectual property". The biggest scam of this century. Ballmer is out in force with his FUD machine, making even more claims of IP in Linux that MS owns... We'll see, cause after all, if they had something, I'm sure it would have surfaced in the SCO ordeal. Which was also obvious that there wasn't anything. The only thing that could be possibly infringing is the use of Mono (aka C#/.Net). Which I don't think is going to bear much for MS either... I mean, everything thats been implemented in Mono as far as I'm aware, is whats been published by MS and with that... goes to public domain. However i'm not a lawyer so don't quote me on that :) Either way, I could do without mono as I dont' think its really that nessisary and Fedora is probably going to pull anything written in mono out of the distribution. Life goes on tho.
Well, I'm going to wrap this up... its really late and I need to go check on the turkey I have cooking in the oven...
Seems as if the infamous DRM is back in the news again. I have to say, I am not a fan of DRM, much like I'm not a fan of gun control as they're both from the same breed of illogical thought. DRM(digital rights management for those not in the know) like Gun control only prevents and causes problems for consumers doing legal things. The fact remains (and has been proven time and time again) those that wish to do ill and don't care for the "laws" such as those saying you can't circumvent DRM, and even those that say conviced fellons cannot buy guns (least I believe thats part of the current gun control laws). Will always find a way around it and continue with their ill ways. So I ask you, what part of DRM says it will stop music/software piracy? As I've always said, if you can play it, you can pirate it. Prevent people from playing it and you might be able to stop them from pirating it, but then you also stop people from wanting it as well. So, whats left? If only the people that are going to go about things the "proper" way, are the ones that buy whatever these media types say... then they'll believe that if they want to play a song in their car, in their house, and on their poratble device, then they have to purchase three copies. When the law (see Fair Use) says that if you purchase it once you can use it in all of these places.
Again, so who is the DRM for? Its not to stop piracy. I would even dare say that DRM (especially to the scale Windows Vista is going to take it to) will actually encourage more Piracy. Why? Why will so many current consumers turn to a supposidly "illegal" activity such as this? Media types are going to far, I believe people will eventually notice they don't like paying three times for the same thing. Who's at fault? Ultimately we the consumers are responcible for DRM, if we wouldn't have bought off on it, as a way to "make sure the artists get paid"(which is also one of the biggest lies in the industry), then we wouldn't be in the current situation. Secondly, the providers of this DRM are at fault. Microsoft (and even Apple to some degree tho they do get very minor props for giving alot more freedom[far from being actual freedom], considering the era, than anyone prior and since) certainly has enough clout to have said "No, we won't do it", however, that would only be looking after *THEIR CUSTOMERS* best interests... but I guess we can all figure out who's their real customers can't we?
Well, I was very supprised that Oracle actually has a .deb package for Ubuntu Dapper Drake believe it or not! I didn't, but I was using google, and noticed a page on oracle.com that had ubuntu listed... was wondering what it was about and, I got to the oracle download page with a package for ubuntu for Oracle XE! I was shocked! I mean... all this time and all I had to do was just go to Oracle website and actually look at what they supported. This is new within the last few months as I don't ever recall it being there.... but it may also just be that I wasn't ever looking for Ubuntu when I was going to download something from oracle. Anyway, It installed without much problem, I was missing one package for X, and my swap space was only 1022MB instead of the package required 1024MB, so instead of going through a new install yet again, I just added a swap file off the root partition and added that to my available swap for the install. After that, everything is working perfectly.
Nice and clean. No icons on the desktop!
Why is it these hardware manufacturers have such a hard time letting go of this idea that they'll loose something if they were to let the linux community distribute their drivers, or even more... if they'd just release the specs for their wireless hardware and let the open source community develop the drivers independantly. Anyway, I'm documenting my setup on my Lenovo N100 page. Check it out for my final how-to on getting wireless to work in hopefully an easily maintainable way.
I know I've written about this alot, mostly because I'm very concerned about it. I for one do not want the big ISP/Content provides such as the telco's and cable companies making toll roads on the internet. As such, I was of the opinion that a Net Neutrality law would restrict that. However, after watching some very funny bits from the Daily Show, and actually seeing these people I'm trusting to create this law... I've completely lost all faith that they could ever do it right and I'd rather have to deal with the technical pieces and public awareness pieces of the situation instead of trying to get them to fix their broken law. I was reading Pete Ashdown's Blog today and noticed he has written about a new opinion about the whole debate.
Which comes from the point of view of "labeling". As Pete puts it:
labeling laws are a good way to inform the consumer and keep economic playing fields level. For instance, the “juice†vs. “cocktail†labeling law informs purchasers of the content of their purchase, but keeps regulation low.
Also the organization that is backing this new idea is located at: http://dpsproject.com/ and they also have my support.
For those that don't know, the "Last Mile" refers to the connection from the end user(consumer's residence) to their ISP's backbone. This is also the portion that the Net Neutrality debate is talking about. There was recently an article in the column I, Cringely on pbs.org, talking about a "solution" to this whole debate. A thought I believe I've mentioned previously on one of my rants. Essentually the article is calling for a community owned Fiber To The Home (FTTH) network, paid for by the home owners in the community. While I personally agree with this, this also would be impracticle in more urban areas, where better wireless access would be much easier and cheaper. As I've said before I would love to have UTOPIA in my house. It simply is a FTTH infastructure built and backed by the City. Its operated by a non-profit organization, and they allow anyone to provide services over it. However, since the city I bought my house in, did not support UTOPIA when they were looking for cities sign up. I'm not sure when the next time will be that they can join, and if its a long way away, I'm going to look at what it would take to just get the community I live in to join up with UTOPIA, since I never thought that just a community could before. Which also reminds me... I need to look up the transcripts from any and all meetings the city counsil had with regard to UTOPIA.. So I know who not to vote for come elections.
I support UTOPIA just as I support the city maintaining city roads. The city controlling the fiber infastructure is the best solution because that puts the city council immediately in control of the "last mile" of their infastructure, and could allow the citizens to vote to keep it current and working. Also allowing as many providers as they feel they need to keep up competition. This situation also provides exactly what the anti-net neutrality people want to do, let the market figure it out itself without legislation. However, this still doesn't account for the credits and such that the Telco's were given to "upgrade" the nations infastructure. And maybe we should make them help pay the cities to pay for this community owned FTTH.
The issue is getting bigger and bigger, and more and more blown out of proportion... I am not for the government steping in and "regulating" the internet, because I know that will only cause more problems. However, I do not like the fact that the Bells (Verizon, AT&T, et. all) are contemplating prioritizing bandwidth to whoever pays them the most. People are clamoring all over this thought that we should just "let the market figure it out" and that if people don't like this prioritizing they're getting from the Bells, that that they could just switch to a different provider. In a free market with lots of competition this would be possible. The fact is there is very little in the way of competition in the broadband space. Thanks for the government kick backs and sponsored monopoly the Bells have been enjoying over the years, all with the promise of using the extra money to build a better infastructure to better serve the needs of their customers... ya know... the TAX PAYERS that footed the money to build this infastructure.  And here we are 2006, and we still don't have much more than we did in 2000. We have maybe slightly better speeds, but overall, nada. So, if we do decide to leave it to the market like these Bells would like. I say we remove all their government sponcership as well... truely open them up, force them to remove all barriers and fees that they charge the the little guys that want to supply DSL service. Or, better yet, we need more projects like UTOPIA Where there is an infastructure built from the ground up on fiber, and then allow any provider to provide service on the network. Level the playing field for infastructure and let the providers compete based on the service they provide and price.
For those that haven't heard about the issue, at the heart of it, the Bells are wanting more money. Currently they don't think they would be able to get more money of of Joe consumer without a huge outcry (and they would be correct), so they're looking for other places. They are wanting to charge (for instance) Google, for "improved service" or since they view themselves as providing Googles customers, if they don't want degraded service, they should pay up(ie: they're threatening to purposely degrade their customers access to Google, if Google doesn't pay up). Now, this is simply absurd... Google already pays their uplink providers (they have multiple), for an internet connection. You, the consumer, pay your internet connection fees... now why should you have to pay extra to connect to say Google? (I know, technically it would be Google paying... but believe me it all comes back around)
I know what your saying... you shouldn't have to right? Right! you definately shouldn't have to. The bells are making plenty of money (record profits from what I hear...) Oh and they're not the only ones all for this Tier'd Internet, Cisco among others are all for it. And why wouldn't they be? If the Bell's have to upgrade network equipment to micromanage everyones bandwidth usage... Yeah thats right, it all comes down to money, but doesn't everything?
Anyway, on to the purpose of why I'm writing. I came across a quick writeup from a group called "tele-truth" their mission is simply: "TeleTruth is a national, independent, customer advocacy group, dedicated to fixing the problems in telecommunications -- from customer overcharging and harm to competitors, to the customer issues surrounding Broadband deployment and competition." Their website can be found at: http://www.teletruth.org. They have written a book that looks awfully interesting and a quick Ad/summery for it can be found here: $200 Billion Broadband Scandal. Which poses some interesting questions... I would definately need to read more on the subject to know for sure, but at first sight I'm more apt to believe them. After seeing how hard Qwest fought against UTOPIA. When it was the hot topic here... And the rumors I hear of Qwest having lots of dark fiber laying in the ground. And nothing forbid Qwest from providing service on Utopia either... they just had to play on the same playing field as everyone else. Its sad really... All the more reason why I *hate* Qwest. So far, they haven't gotten any money from me, and I'm going to keep it that way as long as I can.
I will start pushing for Utopia in South Jordan as thats where I will be living now, and Net Neutrality is in the best interests of the people and for the people! But don't just believe what I say... do the research for yourself so you will know exactly why... but if you must just believe something... you can believe me, I won't mind :)
I've been looking for a laptop recently... and I'm disappointed at the options to be honest. My preference is for one with an AMD proc (see previous posts for my reasons why), but its not my main preference. I want a "notebook", a laptop that will fit on my lap. I don't want one of the borderline desktop replacements that most people want. I currently have a Dell D800 from work... and its a tank frankly... Its way to big/bulky for me to comfortably carry around. My main grip with laptops, is I want one thats roughly the same size as a piece of paper (lenght and width... ~8.5x11) Now I've been really interested in the HP/Compaq V2000z. It fits both of my mentioned requirements, however, something that also came to my attention while looking at them is screen resolution... I do like to get as much screen realestate as possible. Being a widescreen laptop helps, but why are the resolutions still so small? Why isn't there an option to upgrade the screen to one that can do a higher resolution? I know its possible... as the higher end laptops have the type of resolution that I would like... or did I just answer my own question? Performance wise I don't demand much, just want at the very least 512MB RAM, and a 5400RPM hard drive (size isn't of that much importance as I'll sync and store stuff of my desktop's 160GB drive...) so 60GB disk will be plenty. (since I will still be dual booting on it) and proc speed... anything recent will be fine. Its just the screen resolution... why oh why isn't it an option in these "customizable" laptops? Because they don't want people to know how much the screens cost? I don't see how it would be that much more work to trouble shoot and warrantee two different screens than it is for multiple processors, ram or hard drives. If it was an option... I probably would have bought the laptop already...
Well... my 3 year old monitor is having issues... kinda wish I would have bought the warrantee now, but oh well. My wife was gracious enough to allow me to buy a replacement because its giving me headaches... It's slightly fuzzy and it makes trying to read text difficult at best. Which is what was giving me headaches. I read alot, and lately all I've wanted to do at the computer while at home is watch the show's I've recorded or downloaded. Since I'm kinda a weird case when it comes to my vision... Direct sunlight it will give me a headache too(and what self respecting geek wouldn't claim such a thing anyway?)... so while outside I will almost always have my polarized sunglasses on. Its about the only way I can stand it. Anyway, back to the monitor, I found a pretty good deal for a ViewSonic 19" Widescreen LCD, and it is set to be delivered tomarrow! I'm excited. It was on its way up from Vegas last I checked. I love newegg.
After being at my new job for more than a month (they still haven't gotten me a phone), Elissa and I went out and added a line to her current plan and I got a new phone out of the deal :) Its freaking awesome! I got the Sony Ericsson w600i. It has a builtin MP3 player with 256MB Flash storage, a 1.3MB camera and best of all a FM tuner! It also has a slot for sony media sticks so I can add more storage at anytime. I love it, who ever came up with the idea of having a phone/mp3 player/fm tuner in one, is a freaking genious. My next question is if it has a voice recorder as well... that would completly round out the package deal. Anyway I'll try to remember to take more pictures now, since we have unlimted voice and photo messages... but only 1000 text... (seems dumb to me that you can get unlimited photo messages, but text they charge for... as the images are going to use more bandwidth than text ever could.... but what do I know :) )
I'll look into seeing if theres a way I could upload the photos I take with it to the web page here could be kinda fun :)
I didn't write over the weekeng like I would have liked (my wireless doesn't seem to like the centrino/linux/linksys combo... for some reason..), but I did feel prompted to write some more. I've recently descided to give up on Intel(kinda ironic eh, but I have a Dell Laptop from work and I'm not liking it, I will be buying an AMD based laptop soon enough), and here's some more fuel for the fire. Intel as struck a deal with Skype allowing Intel based PC's(and probably devices) a 10 way conference call, whereas any other chip will only be able to do a 5 way. Seems Intel is defaulting back to its WinTel counterparts tacticks where, if you can't beat them technologically, make deals with other software vendors to keep them out of the picture. To bad, as it seems Intel is missing the larger picture in this new era. SIP is the protocol of choice for most VoIP providers(because its a standard), and Skype's proprietary protocol will be null and void within 5 years. Not only that, but this further subjects themselves to giving AMD more ammo in their current anti-trust procedings against Intel in a couple different countries. Anyway, I am swearing off Intel for any sytems I recommend, and I definately will not buy one myself for the forseable future. (Things would have to drastically change before I will even consider them for home use.)
I don't profess to be any kind of network design guru or anything, but I do consider myself very familiar with routing and protocol concepts. I am just wondering why is it that I feel like most people are inept when its their job to do such things? I read alot, and I understand what I read, to the point I could regurgitate what I've read, and even apply it to other situations I have encountered. Am I asking to much to expect other people to understand network concepts better than I do when its their chosen profession? I've never been in the position to actually design a network, and I'm wondering if budget really forces these (bad) dicisions... which I don't quite understand either... because if the said engineer knew how networks were supposed to be designed... I don't think they would accept much less... they might go buy cheaper (used?) hardware if it came down to money. I just don't see a network engineer building a network in an adhoc fashion soley becasue of lack of funds.
I could be completely wrong in these assumptions, as these are just thoughts I've been contemplating lately(and even over the last couple years)... I am taking a Cisco class at school, and I've just had network design on my mind. The class is supposed to be for the CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Administrator, or is it Associate?), but I'm more inclined to want to study for a CCDA (Cisco Certified Design Associate?) as administering network hardware really isn't something I want to do, but knowing how critical the position is, I feel I really should know alot of what is going on in that area(atleast in a higher view). Especially since architecture is my overall carreer goal. I love designing, and not to be cocky, or self promoting, but I feel I really have a nack for seeing the bigger picture, forward thinking that allows me to think through a situation and picture all these logical concepts that pertain to network and systems design, making sure its scalible and practical for future maintanance. I guess the real key now is to get other people to see that I am capable of architecture and design of systems and networks... Yet I find some people get threatened by me if I start getting to close to their "baby" and challenging their decisions about it. I must say I loved how my old boss handled this... he saw (or atleast started to) my potential, that I do have a nack for it, and even asked for my opinion on how I would redesign a web based photo editing product they were marketing(it is based on PHP)... I explained what I would do, he understood and liked it... then it seemed he did some research on his own and liked it even more after he understoop PHP better.
Anyway, I was just making some observations and expressing some thoughts I've been having lately... I should have more to write by the weekend to...
Its a sad day... Peter Quinn, CIO of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is resigning effective on the 12th of January. Seems the personal attacks hes had in the media and else where, when politicians decide to play dirty, have over whelmed him. Its horrible. Why must we result to such tactics? Is Microsoft this affraid of the results of one state switching to a format (their welcome to support I might add...) thats free for *everyone* to use? I really do try to be fair, even though I'm not a fan boy of Microsoft by any sense of the word, about the goings on in the IT world. But, honestly... this all started when the commonwealth stated that Microsofts 'Open' XML Document format did not meet the requirements they setup. They even went out of their way to answer Microsofts question about what they needed to do to be considered. Since then... Microsoft's kinda half-assed their way to meeting the requirements... tring to meet them by the letter of it, not the spirit of it. The commonwealth saw this and luckily they worded their requirements such that its hard to streach those two apart. So they didn't cave to the presure. After all, I really don't think its much to ask Microsoft, if they want to compete they need to meet the same requirements our current format choice does. They really don't even need to open their own format up... for their software to be considered when procurment starts, all they need to do is support the ODF standard(if they refuse to open up their own format to the requirements set forth). So, when the technology wrangling didn't work so well... then the political games started. And spats with the local media, which crafted personal attacks on Mr. Quinn. I don't have kids yet, but this sounds an awfull lot like a kid kicking and screaming when their mother took something away from them because it wasn't theirs. Is this really the grown up world we live in? Doesn't anyone believe in honor anymore? Or do we all just follow the money?
Listing what I got for christmas would be so prosaic, I decided not to. However, I did want to say that I absolutely love the wireless access point my little bro got me! I love it. I've been trying to convince Elissa that it would be nice to have one... but shes not so easily convinced of my need for geek stuff. :) So my bro, hooked me up with a Linksys WRT54G. Hopefully they figure out how to hack the newer revs of these so I can get more linux lovin from it. :)
Once again, thanks bro!
I liked his letter so much, I thought I'd link it up from GrokLaw. I must say I agree with his statements 100%. I loved the how simple he made the explination. Makes the reasoning straight and to the point, why people don't understand this is beyond me. Why the commonwealth is still debating over it is even more beyond me. Microsofts always made promises... who knows if and when they'll actually come through with it. The best way to keep them honest is to make them use ODF too. (Not through laws/restrictions) Simply, market presures will be fine. After all, if you let them win with their 'Open' XML format standard, he who makes the rules can always change them. Pardon the skepticism, but they've done it in the past (even recent past), whats to stop them from doing it again? It needs to stop, Mass. has a chance to make a stand and really show Redmond that we're serious, that we want them to abid by rules of the industry not whatever they feel like. To actually do whats in their *customers* best interests. It really shouldn't be this hard to fathom.
When will the Record labels stop? Treating *legal* customers like criminals, and disabling their computers if the consumer trys to gain control back over their PC? What is wrong with these corporate types that will stop at nothing to protect their 'intellectual property', if that means destroying *your* computer and *your* data, and even possibly costing someones life because of their attempts to stop you from pirating music. Call it what you like, but last I checked teenagers which the media calls 'hackers' have been put in jail for *much less* than this. What will happen to Sony? Nothing, other than the outlashing of conumers upset at the tricks that they're not supposed to care about. In case you haven't heard, Sony had paid a company to write some digital rights management that they embeded into their CD's, heres the original linked up from Groklaw. And then an update to the original that poses some more interesting ideas. So these "big anti-virus companies" that are supposed to protect you from root kits as well as other malware seemingly only work when theres an interested party with money that wants to keep it installed on your computer? Now, who is keeping your best interests at heart now? I don't want to sit and blow the Linux horn, however, I do want to point out that these situations are only just beginning. If these companies that are supposed to *protect you* but can be bought.... dosen't sound like much protection to me. The companies that have already shown to have their own best interests in mind(which means they want to maximize their profits), already have lots of money to assure that happens. And know where to use it. Which means they want to take away rights givent to you by fair use, and treat the everyday consumer like a criminal. Know your rights, and don't give them up lightly.
I've been back and forth between creating my own System Trending app using RRDtool, and using some other prepackaged ones like Orca and Cacti. I love the look of cacti, however it wasn't exactly intuitive the first time I tried to use it. So I gave orca a try, and I really didn't like the idea of having to scp off the log files, to a collecting host. I would much rather have the collecting host poll hosts its configured to watch. With that in mind... I don't like SNMP either for a system. For appliances and network devices its great, quick and easy. Because the vendors usually have specific MIB's that can be used. There are generic ones for systems, but I would like to extend this to track applications on the system as well, this will require custom scripts, and with SNMP, custom MIB's as well. Which I really don't want to mess with. Keeping the monitoring system as basic as possible, using one monitoring system to grab all of this is what I had in mind. After spending a week or so creating some custom python scrypts to perform both functions of gathering data and pulling it to a central location, and creating graphs was quite extensive, and I really would like to atleast somewhat finnish this project within the next couple weeks. Creating my own solution proved to be a bit more complicated than I would have hoped. So, going back to using an existing project I took another look at cacti. This time around it proved to be much easier to understand. Not sure if its because I took the time to learn more about rrdtool specifically or what. However, this time I was able to create some data gathering scrips for cacti to execute and an xmlrpc server that answered the requests on the other end. They seem to be working currently and I've only really been working on them for a couple hours over the last day or two. I *hope* to have working client scripts and gathering server written by the end of the week for most of the basic functionality. Just need to do a little more reading and playing with python and the parseconfig module(?). Should hopefully have something by this time next week. I'll keep you updated.
My little brother who's blog is availible at http://shawn.metauser.net, told me that he's unable to access my blog(at school), and his because of it. Says its blocked because its labeled as a "Forum/Discussion Board" web site. Which it is I suppose, blogs kind of stemmed from this. I'm not so much upset at the label their web filtering software has given my site. I'm more upset at the fact that they're blocking those types of sites period. This is an education institution, their *job* is to teach kids how to learn. Learning is a two way street, in that for kids to learn they need to interact, and blocking web sites that inspire this interaction inhibits the learning of the student. In all honesty, I wouldn't be where I am today without this interaction. Admitidly, I'm not very social in person(the reasons for that I'll leave for another day), online however, I'm constantly reading through posts of personal opinions, learning from posts of others experiences in whatever subject has my interests at the moment. I also used to frequent IRC channels, and currently read through hundreds of emails a week from various mailing lists, replying when I have something to contribute. These things are what makes the internet community work, they're the meaning of making the world flat again. Allowing people to communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world, without ever leaving the classroom. Socializing and new ways of thinking, expanding the minds and possibilities for anyone that learns how useful these mediums of communication can be. Why are educators compeled to remove these possibilities from students? Because they need to be protected from porn? Heres a thought: Teach them of the Internets possibilities and show it to them. I must admit that I don't think its the kids that have trouble realizing this. Its the educators. Living in such a conservative state most adults here seem to fear change, fear things they don't understand. Resulting in blocking everything out of their lives that *might* harm them. However, kids arn't this fearful, and because these *adults* refuse to learn anymore about this technology than they absolutely have to, because its set in their minds that its evil and their kids shouldn't be on it at all. Kids therefore are becomming the teachers, they're learning more about this technology than the adults because they are open to it. Kids are then able to get around any kind of counter-measures an adult would put in place to protect their kids from some of the evil things of this world.
Kids, to some degree, early in their development need to be protected and taught right and wrong through the values of the parents. Only as they mature should they be exposed to more and more of the world around them(this will happen with or without the guidance of the parent, so a note to parents, follow along this path *with* your *student*). However, when the students understanding of this technology exceeds that of the teacher, when the proper grounding hasn't yet been finnished, who then is the student going to learn from? Do you, the teacher, understand that making a stand and sticking your head in the sand is not going to stop the student's curiosity? Life is about learning and growing, if you ever stop this process, or try to stop someone elses, you *will* loose.
About a year ago, Netflix had teamed up with TiVo to announce that they were going to offer a downloadable Movie rental service. I believe I blogged about it back then, if not I should have..., which I thought was a really good idea. However, it seems the studios have yet to sign off on it. Arstechnica has a write-up on it. And I must say I agree with Eric that the entertainment industry needs to rethink their distribution methods. However, I believe I disagree with him on his point about the industry not keeping up with technology... they're all about keeping up with it for the purpose of making that next *blockbuster* with all the special effects and CGI stuff included. With the advances in technology that allows the studios to do these types of effects, comes consumer goods and expectations in other forms as well, like the Sony PSP, Video iPod, etc. Which I believe is what he was referring that they do not keep up with, because these devices are much more decentralized than their current methods. Somehow, it seems, they think that these devices are going to cost them more than they would make. Given the alternatives however... I don't see much else in the way of choices. My wife an I haven't been to the movies nearly as much as we did a year ago. Not sure if its specifically been because even I (normally I'll do anything to go see a movie) haven't been to excited about many of the movies comming out. Or if its a cost thing because we usually spend around $20 to see a movie. Its probably a little bit of both, and possibly other factors I can't think of at the moment. One thing is for certain... I rent alot more movies now than I ever used to.
Let me start off by giving props to them for being bold enough to stand up to Microsoft for whats right. Currently Microsoft seems to be pulling out all the stops and using the media to try and further influence Massachusetts to their way of thinking. Some how microsft doesn't understand the word "open" in this case. They claim that their new Office XML format is open, however the two or maybe three problems with it, is 1) Microsoft controls the format. One of Massachusetts requirements is that the format should be in an open forum for discussion. If you don't have that, then your only sligthly better than running any other Microsoft office format, which currently changes with every new release of Office with no warning, simply to force people to upgrade from what I can tell. 2) Documents you create arn't solely owned by you *the creator*. Its kinda of a joint relationship with you and Microsoft, and guess who can trump the other? :) 3) The license is crafted in such a way that prohibits opensource (namely GPL'd software) from supporting the format. There is also pieces that require any implementation written to read the file format must support the full format. Now why would you included that? I really have no idea, just asking the question. However, you can tell that anyone drafting the license has never really coded much in their life. For some things writing some code to support the very basics of the format is all that is desired. Such as a web page that allows you to download office documents and instead of forcing the uploader, or whoever is setting up the site and files, to have to manually add in the documents title... why not just write a little piece of code to read the title from the document itself?
I can't grok what it is they're trying to accomplish unless it boils down to the fact that they really don't think that they could play on a level playing field in this arena. I still find it interesting that they can still, with a straight face, say they're trying to do whats best for their customers. Ideally, whats *best* for their customers is choice. An open document format is what is best for their customers.
I ran accross this article today and find it very interesting that the employees of the IRS are just willy nilly giving away passwords. This is your tax information people! And for those that don't know, IT personel *NEVER* need your password. Why you may ask... if they *really* needed to get into your account they'd reset the password themselves. Generally they have known test accounts however, and these are used for situations that call for them. So everyone knows, never give your password to anyone, over the phone or through email, IM or anything else. There really is no need for such situations. The Idea of computer security has been on my mind for a while now. Its a constant battle over how much do you really entrust to users, if they're just going to give away passwords to the first person that asks no matter what the excuse. Some system administrators take this very seriously and watch every move users make, others take a very lax approch to it. I'm still on the fence at what I will be, and since I don't have any 'users' other than myself on my systems, its very easy to know whats going on on them :)
I'm sorry, but I'm laughing about this one... I mean this is like the age old "Pot calling the kettle black". I mean... The purpose of this is nothing more than to trump their own horn. Make people more optimistic about their situation in China. After all, this is the only source Microsoft has left to grow into... (Along with India... but they've fought that battle already... and lost) The article is up on zdnet.co.uk. Funny stuff I tell ya. I laughed through the whole article.
Heres a couple quotes... I think they speak for themselves:
"I think Linux in China really has an issue with their business model," said Tim Chen, the chief executive of Microsoft China, in an interview with The Seattle Times this week. "The Chinese [Linux] companies, are not making money," he said.
Interesting... really? The chineese government doesn't think so... in fact, they rather like the fact that the money they spend on Linux in China, *stays* in China. The also don't like enabling foreign powers to control how they use software, which is why they regulated the use of foreign software.
Chen also claimed that the growth rate of Windows on the server was faster than that of the open source operating system and that young people in China "really adore" Bill Gates, the founder and president of Microsoft.
.... I'm speachless... What the crap is this? I know quite a few Microsoft geeks, and I couldn't say any of them "really adore" Bill Gates...
Refering to the latest group of Microsoft defectee's:
"Actually that's exciting. We're being viewed as the company that has the best talent in China," said Chen.
Interesting point of view... However I would have phrased it more like "We're being viewed as the company that *had* the best talent in China". But whatever helps you sleep at night.
Anyway, I thought it was so funny I had to share.
For atleast a year, Microsoft has been announcing that we need software patents because they are needed to protect innovation(no doubt they mean their own innovation). However, I'm really having a hard time figuring out just what they've ever innovated? Apple... they have many to their name, and Windows Media Center is not an innovation... Its a best effort copy of Tivo. And MythTV has been extending that original innovation into more... which could be argued as innovation in its own right... What exactly has Microsoft innovated? Their new graphics rendering engine(Avalon) for Vista? Nope... at best it extends whats already in Mac OS X(cocoa?). A database that is the filesystem(when its eventually released), nope been done already, say IBM AS/400. As I said... having a hard time thinking of one thing Microsoft has ever innovated on (technology wise only). So if any of you know please let me know by all means.
Well... I completed a rough set of specs for a MythTV box. Processor/Mobo combo probably will change, and possibly the hard drive sizes. Currently I've listed one 40GB drive for the OS and a set of drives from 160GB to 350GB for the media drive (currently will only run one). Setup in a logical volume so future expansion is possible. This box would remain a MythTV box, and probably migrated into just a backend eventually. (this makes a difference for the type of hardware used). The rough estimate is ~$750 for the box. There are some areas I didn't skimp on the price of the parts. The power supply being one of them.
MythTV Box:
-Case
Name: Lian Li PC-60BPlus Black Computer Case
Price: $129.00
Url: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811112078
-Power Supply
Name: SeaSonic S12-430 430W Power Supply
Price: $99.00
Url: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817151023
-Hard Drive
--OS (may not be needed... probably will have spare for OS)
Name: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST340014A 40GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 - OEM
Price: $53.50
Url: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148013
--Media
Name: Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3300831AS 300GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 - OEM
Price: $165.25
Url: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148064
---OR
--Media
Name: Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3250823AS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 - OEM
Price: $112.00
Url: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148065
---OR
--Media
Name: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA NCQ ST3160827AS 160GB 7200 RPM 8M Cache Serial ATA150 - OEM
Price: $89.25
Url: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148034
-DVD Drive
--Using one just pulled out of Desktop
-Memory
Name: pqi POWER Series 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 (PC 4200) Dual Channel Kit System Memory - Retail
Price: $74.99
Url: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820141225
-Motherboard
Name: GIGABYTE GA-7VT600P-RZ ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Price: $47.00
Url: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128281
-Processor
Name: AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 400MHz FSB Socket A Processor - OEM
Price: $105.00
Url: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103394
-Heatsink_Fan
Name: ZALMAN CNPS7700-CU 120mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan - Retail
Price: $47.99
Url: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835118115
-Video Card
Name: MSI FX5200-TD128LF Geforce FX5200 128MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail
Price: $38.00
Url: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814127181
-Video Capture Card
Name: Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 500 MCE White box WinTV-PVR-500MCE Windows XP Media Center Edition - Retail
Price: $138.00
Url: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815116628
I've descided to do a new section on my blog here... I'm going to start uploading screenshots of my desktop every so often as a means of tracking general changes to it. As such, I've added one that I grabed the other day. Since I'm having to start from scratch again with all my themes I wen't and downloaded a bunch of stuff that day and was trying them out to see which would match my mood the best at the time. The dark brown colors mixed in with the blue's of the GTK theme really work for me currently... *shrug* anyway just thought it might be fun.
Recovery of data off my old hard drive (120GB SATA) didn't go as well as I would have hoped. I was able to recover a whole 1.4MB of the 107GB partion... yeah... good eh?
After trying for a couple days doing a "xfs_repair" and not finding out untill after I wasted two days trying, that xfs_repair dies as soon as it gets an IO error. The drive would kick one of those out every couple seconds when you were trying to access it. So, I waited two days for nothing... So, I had done a bit more reading and found that I should copy off the partion and then I will be able to perform a xfs_repair on the file that was coppied off. I used both dd if=/dev/sdb6 conv=noerrr of=PARTITION, and ddrescue /dev/sdb6 PARTITION and both resulted in the same 1.4MB file after all was said and done. So, it hasn't been a very good week. I lost everything... yet again.
On the bright side of things, I have a DVD burner on the way, and it will be here by friday :)
This question has been popping up lately... my thoughts: Its those dumb proprietary companies that feel the need to own. The answer: YES! without a doubt we still need the GPL. Why? because not everyone in this world stands for what the GPL does. The GPL is freedom, freedom from being controled by some corporation or government or person. The Internet is freedom, and it was built on free software. People by nature demand such things, however, people also get very greedy and will pervert ideas to where they make sence for why you need to give up your freedom. Clue to the proprietary companies that want to write software for Linux, Go ahead, but you need to follow the rules... if *you* don't write *every bit* of the code yourself, *you must* follow the rules laid out by the the license of the software you use. These rules are no different than what you end up doing in traditional software, Linux however has all the cool stuff thats free. Its easy to see why they want to use it, but for some reason don't think they should have to follow the rules (which can include giving away all your source code as well). If you don't like it, stay out of the kitchen. Those are the rules. Take it or leave it.
Heres a really good writeup on the subject: Qt, the GPL, Business and Freedom
Give it a read. Its worth it.
I've been able to rebuild my hard drive after a week of not having it... its really horrible not having a computer at home... Thankfully I work on them all day, and I do have a laptop that allows me to get through the rest of the day :)
Now on to more important things
My hard drive is schedualed to arrive tuesday, however I've noticed on FedEx's web site it was in Salt Lake yesterday morning... so I'm hopping it will be put on a truck to Orem tomorrow morning early, so it will make it on a truck out for delivery tomorrow. I've been using my laptop at home, and I must say.. I really don't like typing on a laptop when I have a keyboard right here... If I were to ever get a laptop, I'd need a docking station/port replicator for when I was at home. I'd just like to say NewEgg Rocks! I'm getting a SATA 160GB Seagate drive to replace my Western Digital 120 SATA drive, and I'm still hoping I can pull off my /home partion off the drive. Stability got alot better with an XFS file system on it over the ext3, so I'm going to use that again for this next drive. It should be good :) I'm also going to have extra space now that this drive is 40GB larger... so I think i'm going to leave 10GB or so for testing other distro's. I might even bring back Gentoo. Or really give Ubuntu a try. We will see.
It finally kicked the bucket... I've had a Western Digital SATA 120GB drive since I built my current home computer... and I've have a few problems with it. As you would see from a couple months ago, I lost everything on my home partion once, and I've had corruption problems on my root partion a couple times before that... This time it just died completly. While I was using my computer last night, the OS froze. Everything, it was hard locked. I powered it off and let it sit for a bit... and then booted it up to a restore disk and ran an fsck on all of the partions, all of which came back ok after a journal recovery. Rebooted... still having problems finding files on the drive. I thought this was just like any of the other times where a format and reinstall would fix it. I was wrong.... After I reinstalled Fedora Core 4, I brought it back up and started doing updates (without logging into the gui), and let it go over night. I woke up to find the console spewing out ATA Seek errors. From experience this tells me the drive is done. Its not completly dead but the drive heads are messed. So I'm going to take it back to my parents where I can hook it up to my brothers box(since he has SATA and enough drive space to spare) and copy over as much of my home partion as possible.
I'll let you all know how it goes.
The trolls are at it again... I've change my comment posting delay to 30 minutes to help thwart some of the comment spam. As a result of some people, that deem the internet as a new medium for their get rich quick scams. Such protection has become nessisary.
From The Register, the article talks about Sun's constant flux of wether or not they like linux this hour(yes they can change that often). Some people were excited when Sun said they were going to start supporting and selling linux(Java Desktop Anyone?). There were always the nay sayers who wouldn't give Sun a chance. Well I'm now officially going to stay on that side of the fence. I hate to say it (really I do). Sun sees the writing on the wall, but they *still* refuse to adapt to the changing market. They're bent on riding Solaris to the ground if thats where its going to take them. Maybe one day they'll wake up and pull a 180. IBM did... took them a while but they did it. Everyone else seems to be tip toeing around saying "maybe we will, maybe we won't... we're not sure". Getting on the boat would be great, but the ships not going to wait for them. It opens the door for more players to step up and take their place however. Which would be good, because we don't want everyone bowing out leaving IBM. Competition is a good thing.
Not sure why people seem to think its ok, but blog spamming (like email spamming) has to go. I mean... really. Why do people seem to think that it will make them more money? Sure in the short run it might be good... and earn some, but in the long run? I think it only does more harm than good in my personal opinion. That said, I won't remove comments, even if they're going against what I have said. However, I *will* remove any blog spam I see. Why? because I hate it and they don't deserve to be in business.
Theres posts all over, but I was reading it on Groklaw and they voted NO!! This is awesome... not the end of a three year battle but, definatly a big step in the *right* direction. The vote was 648 to 14 to throw out the proposed law.
PJ noted her favorite quote from none other than Steve Ballmer:
"There is important innovation coming out of the software industry,'' Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, said in Paris today before the parliament vote. "We think that innovation needs to be protected.''
Which PJ finnishes up with:
I will translate for you. I take that to mean: they would like to be protected from innovation by others.
And I must say I agree. Man I really think he's retarded... don't they have enough money? I mean they haven't "innovated" in years... which some of you might disagree with, but really, everything that could be somewhat considered innovation that came out of redmond, didn't actually come from there... they purchased and prossibly stole it from others.
Props to the European Union! Thanks for giving me some hope.
Hell has frozen over. Atleast thats the sentiment of most mac users. It's beent the joke for a while, and also been the rumor since the initial release of OS X. I'd heard a long time ago that Apple had a "just in case" plan with OS X, which had every release running on Intel hardware, which isn't to hard to believe considering its roots(BSD). CEO Steve Jobs confirmed this during his keynote speech yesterday. Now, what I've read alot of people say is "will I be able to load this now on my current system?" The answer is "not if Apple can help it". With the fact that Apple is now going to Intel does not mean that those of us that build our own systems will be able to install OS X ourselves onto those systems. Why? Because they are not changing their buisness model, doing that would put them in direct competion with MS and Linux on their turf. Apples target audience will not know nor care what processor their system is running on. When you buy Apple, you don't care, you buy the whole package. Why the move then? Well as Steve Jobs put it, there wasn't a roadmap with the PowerPC. IBM isn't making it advance as fast as Apple would like, and there were cooling issues with the G5 that prevented them putting it in a laptop. There were also production issues with the PowerPC. With Intel, these are all solved. I'm actually liking this change, its one I wish they would have made along time ago. This may contradict my reactions with Intel, the Pentium D, and DRM I had made a while ago, but as I said there, it heavily depends on how the DRM is implemented. If it can be turned off, and hopefully won't be implemented in the Apple variety. However, I still think Apple could have gone with AMD, but AMD couldn't solve the production problems had with IBM either(Its probably debatable, but that would have changed if AMD had gotten the deal with Apple..). Anyway, This all still keeps me probably going for an Apple next time I'm going to buy a laptop.
Well, they've gone and done it, DRM in hardware. I guess it goes without saying that I'm not a fan of DRM in general. This very much is going to be dependant on how this technology has been implemented of course, but none the less, I was thinking of buying an Pentium 4 for my mythTV box I will be building in the comming months... Now however(yes i know the DRM isn't in the P4), I don't support this course of action, and I'm going to back that up with my wallet. This finallized it, I'm buying an Athlon (might even splurg and get one of the dual core's :)) I've heard that there are glitches with them and their HD video playback, but I'm sure that will be worked out and something fixed in gcc to compensate for it. Or I'm planning on getting a PCI-Express video card, so that might be fixed with that... or an NVidia chipset mobo... we'll see. I still have a lot of research to do about it. With the Wintel aliance in full force it seems. All I know right now is that I'm not buying Intel.
Well, I'm offically *extremly* excited about MythTV... to the point I want to go out and build one this weekend. However, looking over needed hardware which has set somewhat of a damper on things...
Some rough figures I'm seeing are the following:
Power Supply ~ $75 (Good power is one of the most important things)
Case ~ $150 (Need cooling for those components)
Mobo and Proc ~ $150
RAM ~ $85
2 Hard Drives (SATA, 300GB each) ~ $310
Video Card ~ $45
HDTV Tuner ~ $160
Total: ~ $1275
Now these are rough figures, and yes, I could go cheaper on some parts (less disks, cheaper case and power supply). However, if I was to build it, money not being an issue, that is the system I'd build. However, I'm probably not going to be considered a "power" HDTV user... the most I'll ever get is 3 hard drives(but thats unlikly considering how big drives are getting...)... and I doubt I'll ever have more than 2 tuners. (atleast for a couple years, because, I simply don't watch *that* much tv, nor would I still even if I had a HTPC, but I would like to have something setup to automatically record the shows I do watch so I can live my life and fit in some TV when I don't have anything else going on).
Anyway, I'll probably start with the minimums which can probably be had for about $500 (with one 300GB disk). I can't wait... Just need to finish up the living room first. Who knows... probably by the time I get around to building it... Hardware will be out that I could do this cheaper and better. I would like to be able to get some parts that are low power, so I don't run up the power bill.
Mac Laptop != PC Laptop. After reading this article I would also like to say that any comparisons that are made Mhz for Mhz, and feature for feature is not a correct way to compare these two types of laptops. They are completely different architectually. Since the release of OS X, and Jobs' return to Apple, I've loved alot of their hardware designs, I just haven't had the money to buy one of the systems... With the introduction of the Mac Mini, and Fedora now being compiled for PPC, I do believe my next box will be an Apple. I would love to get my hands on an iBook or if possible a PowerBook. If I get a raise here at work, and we get other things paid off... *sigh* someday anyway :)
Was browsing GrokLaw today, and came across and article of a college student getting sue'd by Microsoft. Because their return policies are rediculous, he ended up selling some unopened software he bought at his universities book store on eBay.
One part that really got me going was this:
It wasn't until the day after Christmas that Zamos realized he'd actually been sued.
He found his case on LexisNexis. "They were so shady about the whole thing," he says.
So they run around sue'ing people and not telling them? Or making the wording so convoluted that the average person that doesn't speak legalize doesn't understand that thats what they are reading... *that* my friends is *MESSED UP*. Who is this company that is now acting so threatened by anything that moves, they need to sue anyone that even mentions their name?
Its honestly getting to the point where its all rediculous. I mean really... Guess when you have it all, the only way you can go is down? :)
How did it turn out you might ask? Well, its all under an NDA of coarse, but here is what he said he wanted out of the whole thing:
Finally, Zamos gave Microsoft the migraine it hadn't expected. He requested a trial by jury, knowing that the company wouldn't want to spend tens of thousands of dollars in legal bills just to snuff one kid in Ohio. He was right. The lawyers said they'd drop their suit -- if Zamos dropped his countersuit.
But that wasn't good enough for Zamos, who'd wasted hours of his time and $40 in Kinko's copies. He didn't want billions of dollars or a new Ford Mustang. He wanted an apology and reimbursement for his copies.
I love it, I want $40 for my copies and an apology.
Think they'll think twice before they sue again? I wouldn't hold your breath...
I was made aware of a site called Hack A Day which has one for "Speeding up Firefox"
Seems to work pretty well, assuming the webserver is fast (mine regretably isn't...). Anyway heres the how-to:
1.Type “about:config†into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining†to “trueâ€
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining†to “trueâ€
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests†to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.
3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay†and set its value to “0â€. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
Give it a try! I love firefox!
I've been hearing alot of things lately about Apple's Mac Mini. With people putting them in cars, and with Fedora creating a PPC port. I'm thinking instead of trying to build a small VIA box for use in home automation/media storage, I think I'll buy one of these neat little boxes. I can't believe how small they are...
*sigh* I'm hoping I'll have the time for this soon.
Finally! I got a new cell phone! Its been forever and a day but my work cell phone crapped out the other weekend, so I got a loaner for the last week (which was the same model). The worst part of it, was I also lost all of the phone numbers I had saved on it. So I have to put those back in... :( Anway, I got the LG PM-325. So far so good, but I'll post a review after I've used it for a couple days :) So far I'm loving the fact that I can create groups, and assign rings to groups and pictures, AND I can do the same to each individual in my address book. *sigh* I really hated my old phone.
George Ou VoIP and open source, the next great frontier - ZDNet.com
What do you think? Are the Bells in for the same type of competition as what Microsoft has been dealing with for the last couple years? I believe they are. Since the begining of the internet, the Open Source Community has been the (subtle?) driving force behind the major advances of the internet. Up untill recently no company has really cared what the community was doing because they weren't affecting their bottom line. However, the community is moving up the chain. Linux is making *huge* in-roads in the datacenter, and threatening the Desktop. Something that Linus himself said would be really neat(he *never* said he wanted to over thow MS from their throne, that will probably just be a bi-product). The community has always been about the core infastructure of the internet. Because thats the only way to keep it free. As it becomes more and more involved in our lives having a *free* option availible becomes more and more important. I really believe that Open Source is the best thing for everyone. The community as a whole has whats really important to each and every one of us in mind. Most just buy into the marketing machines FUD. Its only a matter of time before software for the most part is a commodity.
We finally bought a digital camera! We've been thinking about it for atleast a year now, just haven't gotten around to getting one untill last friday. However, I believe it was worth the wait, the prices have come down some from last year, as before we were only looking at a 3.2 - 4 MegaPixel camera because they were in the $300 dollar range. However, I've read a bunch of reviews and seen nothing but positives for the Cannon PowerShot A95 5 MegaPixel camera. I love how the LCD flips out and rotates, and that was worth the extra $75 or so for the 5MP over the 4MP! I haven't taken many pictures with it, however, the ones I have taken have turned out really well. However they've been shrunk for web viewing :) Anyway, I hope to post more pictures soon. They should always be viewable from the link above. And I probably will make a section just for pics as soon as I get around to writing some kind of smarty template driven photo album.
Linux.com has their weekly editorial of SysAdmin to SysAdmin. Today they published one titled "So you wanna be a SysAdmin". I liked the article so I thought I'd share it. Couple things I liked the mose are quoted below:
You can't get a certificate in administration, get a job, and stay put until retirement. You won't last three years. The job demands that you stay on top of new technologies.
The goal of the administrator is to automate oneself out of a job. This involves not only knowing tools, networking, systems, and services, but the scripting languages to make the tools, networking, systems and services take care of themselves.
However, the important thing to remember is that system administration is more than just a job. It's a lifelong craft. Technology is such that no one person ever knows everything about it. It forces you to keep learning and evolving along with it or be left behind.
Well, I've been having a hard time finding anything decent from Dells Linux forums... currently all they have is this biosdisk which is somewhat cryptic unless you want to look through the source code, it doesn't tell you what its doing behind the scenes. However, last time I was looking it up. I found this information which referred to an older version of the biosdisk. However using the latest 0.50 as of this writing.
Download this RPM http://linux.dell.com/biosdisk/biosdisk-0.50-1.noarch.rpm
Run: biosdisk mkpkg /home/mitch/GX270A04.EXE (as root [su -]) *note: path and file name may be different, this is the version I was using however.
This gave me this error: "Error! There was a problem creating your rpm."
However... it still worked. (it droped an image file in /boot called dosdisk.img, if this didn't happen for you... don't know what to tell you...)
Then, you need to copy the memdisk file from /usr/lib/syslinux (this is redhat specific your milage may vary)
"cp /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk /boot"
Then edit /boot/grub/grub.conf like so, adding the fallowing lines:
title Dell BIOS flash
root (hd0,0)
kernel /memdisk
initrd /dosdisk.img
Once again, change as needed for your system.
Save grub.conf and exit.
Reboot, and fallow Dells normal instructions for flashing the bios (you will have to select the correct boot option from grub on boot to flash the bios... and hopefully you didn't put it as the default)
Update: I suspect it is failing for me because of missing dependancies... I will find them and update this when I do.
It has just come to my attention that my website here doesn't render correctly in the latest version of IE... (on XP atleast). And, all I can say is... get a decent browser. I mean, with all the security problems with the browser AND its lack of support for even the basic standards (full CSS1 comes to mind), and on top of it, Microsoft thought it would throw in a couple of non standard stuff that it can use as well. Its horrible. Sure, i know, windows users don't care because "everything just works for me". But the web is suppose to be a medium where it doesn't matter what OS, or browser, or anything else your using. The experience is supposed to be the same for everyone. Hence why standards are important. Last I checked, this site renders fully compliant with standards, except for my news feeds.... which I will be fixing as soon as I get around to it...
Well... I've been trying to get a movie for my wife put together and burned to CD in SVCD or even VCD formats... and neither seem like they're working for me... I've tried a bunch of different ways of doing it, and none of them seem to work... I don't really understand why its so difficult really... I thought it was a standardized format... which is why most if not all DVD players were able to play them....
Guess I was wrong.
What we learn with pleasure we never forget.
- Alfred Mercier
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