Category: Open Source

And the winner is…

OK so the big game is over… the Pro Bowl is done (not that I watched it) and I have finally coughed up a couple of boxes of Nilla Wafers so that some long running jokes can finally be put to bed…. or at the very least be made to suffer with a few other jokes that should have died along time ago… like “YOUR MOM!!”

Exactly…

I do have a couple of ponderous thoughts for you loyal readers this evening so won’t join me for a few moments and ponder these thoughts….

1. Why can I not get 2GB of RAM on a Windows XP based Dell netbook?   Just curious really I can get 2GB if I went with Ubuntu but that defeats the purpose of me getting a USB HD TV adapter and using the thing for tailgating next year.  Since all of the damn adapters only support Windows and not Linux… also note that this will probably be the only time you see me preferring Windows over anything.

2. How come there is no cheap pay as you go wireless data infrastructure?    I’m looking for 3G wireless data speeds and not wanting to pay $60 a month for it… I would like to do something similar to a pay as you go phone and only pay for data on days that I use it and when I pay for data I don’t want it to be a 10MB cap or something small like that I want it to be a 500MB or 1GB cap you know so I could actually get some work done if I had too.  Also I want said data network to cost me in the neighborhood of $5 a for 24 hours of usage and be reasonably reliable.

3.  I hate Phoenix sports writers… I don’t know if it’s just the teams this year but I seriously am starting to dislike all of them.

4.  Also my loathing of the MPAA and all thing that involve me not having control OVER MEDIA I LEGALLY PURCHASED WITH MY OWN MONEY… grew to new levels. So this has generally made me think that this is the only measure I can really take to make sure my stuff is open and compatible.

Its so right on sooo many levels.
It's so right on sooo many levels.

Go Go iShit!

Ok the iPhone has been out for a week now and every technology pundit with a computer and internet connection has given their $.02.

Time for me to give my $1.25 about their $.02.

There is no way to make a technology pundit happy… they always find some flaw with the item in question that will then be repeated by every half twit out there (I would have used more colorful language but this particular half twit has used technology pundititry in more then one or five cases…) So the biggest complaint about the iPhone has been the lack of inclusion of 3g data for it’s data service (HSDPA for the GSM folks or EVDO Rev 0 or Rev A for the CDMA folks). The official line from Apple is something to the effect of…

“Current 3G chips suck power and we have included WiFi to use instead of 3G data” And they are absolutely correct. I will take a shitty WiFi connection over a good EVDO connection any day of the week.

Now for the counter point to the iPhone when Palm released the Treoo 700P it included EVDO data for CDMA (The Treo 750 on GSM has HSDPA) and what did the technology pundits roundly criticize?

“But it doesn’t have WiFi”

Mary MOTHER OF FUCKING…….

And now I remember why I stopped watching TV news… because at least with technology pundits I know they are idiots… With political talking heads they could be feeding me a steaming pile of shit and I wouldn’t know the difference… though that probably has more to do with the fact that I tend to skim over the politics sections of CNN and the BBC.

So where does this leave us? Well the iPhone is a interesting piece of technology that will be unlocked shortly (I give it 3 weeks from this posting and 6 weeks after that before it’s so easy that my brother and mom could both do it) I’m still out in the cold since there will not be a CDMA version of the device unless Apple launches the iPhone in Japan and just happens to leave the door open for the device to work with CDMA carriers in the states.

Me? I’m going to pass on the iPhone in it’s current revision and wait for the iPod with touch screen and upgrade. Of course I need it to be at least 40 Gigs before it’s worth the money to me. I don’t feel this great need to condense my gadetry down to one device between my Treo and iPod I’m good and for those long hauls I always take my laptop with me.

So there you have it kids the iShit from the iTwit’s brain.

Chuck waits… You wait…

A week into the whole Mac transition and it’s been way more painless then I thought. I’ve had more consternation about what to do with my music and photo’s more then anything else. (two copies at the moment). It has not been all smooth sailing I have run into issues getting some web apps work. Don’t worry it’s all related to my work and that is why Steve Jobs gave us BootCamp.

Of course what Steve giveth Bill really fouls up….

I of course loaded boot camp and windows on to the Mac. And Windows runs great, I just have to boot into the Windows side to use it. I’m going to be honest I’ve never been big on booting between operating systems. So I’ve been checking out virtualization for OS X. The good news is there are some really excellent options out there. The bad news is that Microsoft has some really fucked up licensing.

This one has me a little ticked off so if you don’t want to read about Microsoft and Apple for the rest of this post I would just go some place else if I were you.

I decided to load XP, you know since it’s stable been out for forever and a day, and way cheaper then Vista. See now you can get two versions of XP full… OEM and Retail. The difference is OEM instantly gets tied to your hardware set. Meanwhile retail has some flexibility built in to help with those pesky hardware upgrades. Turns out that you can virtualize a retail version of XP but not a OEM copy unless you install the OEM copy directly into the VM. (This is really good info for anyone thinking about doing this).

So where does this leave me? Well for the time being I don’t know I haven’t landed on a virtualization setup that I really like. I would like to just do it and move on. At the same time though I still have my work laptop that I bring home and my desktop that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Honestly for me the best solution would be a VM type appliance that contained I.E. and access to Java in the VM. After that I could really care less about Windows.

So other then the whole I need I.E. to do some legacy web stuff for work that I can do on another computer just as easily I think I could recommend a Mac as your next computer.

Unless you Curtis or Clint… there is just no talking any sense into those two.

Reflections in F.U.D. and you

Being a I.T. guy from time to time I get asked by certain indviduals for help for things that fall outside of my normal day to day duties.

I like to call these individuals Doctors.

So I get a call today from a doctor who wants to use his shiny new MAC to work from home with… I feel his pain. I agree to help him.

So as I’m talking to him I ask if he has made a boot camp partion for his MAC. You know since running windows in a virtulized environment is the least painful way to get 99.9% of windows only apps (read as active X or require IE) to work in MAC.

“I don’t want to load windows on to the MAC and have to deal with anti-virus”

Wait, you don’t want to deal with Anti virus in Windows on your MAC?

Ok on one side I can see the point… I mean that is why you bought a MAC isn’t it? So you didn’t have to deal with all of those stupid Windows viruses… On the other hand…

What on earth are you bitching about? Antivirus programs are so dirt simple that they should be the first or second thing you load up on your computer! And you don’t want to deal with them?

My god man…

For the record I do have Anti virus on all of my boxes (Norton and AVG mainly) Windows/Linux/Mac

Just because Lord Steve says it’s secure doesn’t mean it’s true kids…

The shape of things to come…

Driving home from work I saw a interesting sight. It was a repo truck for other cars and the license plate was “UBWALKN”. Great just what the world needs repo guys with a sense of humor. Next thing you know there will be bloggers out there talking about things like the license plate they saw on the drive home from work… oh wait….

So yeah…. about that those bloggers great people eh?

Ok time to move on. So with my moving from a Dell PDA back to Palm I’m once again free from the tryanny of Outlook (at home). I also have a PDA for sell if anyone is interested. Actually for the record just about everything I have is for sale. That is just the kind of guy that I am.

Anyway I’m free from Outlook since I’m only syncing my calendar with the Treo and can do that with Palm Desktop. Sweet I finally have a thrown free all of my bonds from the Windows Platform!

OH look a shackle with a large lock that’s got alot of gum in the key hole… oh yes gaming my Achilles heal.

/sigh

I have considered going back to Thunderbird but honestly I just don’t like it’s interface very much and I find it’s database system to be more susceptible to corruption then Outlook. I know Mr. Open Source likes a Microsoft product. Yeah I know let me turn in my geek cred badge at the door.

Then again when your into Linux you run into these type of things all of the time. You know the idealouges who want to a “perfect open source system” and the cold harsh reality of “the business world“

Hmmm maybe I need to find a woman who apperciates the term “free as in beer or free as in speech“