Monday, June 27, 2005

The Ownership of Sharing

I invoke my right to make fun of Scott McNealy for his latest interview.

We have a strategy that's very different from everybody else's, and it's community development. The way we say that is with the S curve in all our new literature. It's not for Scott, it's not for Sun, it's for "share." We're grabbing that word and saying, of anybody, we own the word "share." We own that space.

Ok somebody please get him a dictionary. They own the word "share". Bill Gates was quoted saying recently that he doesn't send an email without first having a lawyer reviewing it first. Maybe Scott needs to do the same with his interviews.

MS

Friday, June 24, 2005

A very happy surprise from IBM / Lotus

Ok I am so jumping for joy right now. IBM has announced that they are basicly bringing together the Lotus Notes and their new Workplace client in version of Notes that will follow the up and coming Notes 7.0. Workplace being an Eclipse/Java program it is mostly platform agnostic. This will bring about something that has been begged for by Notes Admins for years. A Linux Notes client. For those who are not in the know, I am a Lotus Notes/Domino Admin. This might give me a chance to switch my office over to Linux desktops. That would be cool. Bye bye Windows, spyware, viruses, all of it. Thank you IBM for finally listening to your customers. What took you so long? Check out Ed Brill's Blog for details.

MS

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Nerd Identity and Nerds in Love

Ok I know this is a bit old and has been linked every place in the world but it indirectly caused a bit of an identity crisis. I was concerned if I was a geek or a nerd. I saw an article from the New York Times on how Nerds are better lovers which was noted but I didn't have time to really blog it. In the process of googling the article I came across a couple articles the difference between a geek and a nerd. Once upon a time I had considered them the same but now I know there is a real difference. I guess from the outside it would be difficult distinguish the two but there is a real difference. I don't like the geek tag especially as it refers to a circus performer that does strange things. After some serious introspection and advise from my friends, I consider myself a nerd. The title of the blog stands. After some test I also found that I am "fairly smart" and a "Loser" (see below)


Ok to the second matter, nerd love. Yes folks we have main stream has recgonized what we have been saying quite some time. Nerds are really much better mates than they are given credit for. The scary thing is this might put things out of balance (for example). Society will crumble. Ok I am over exaggerating, but I hate to see my beloved group get infiltrated by the cool kids. It would be kinda sad to see the nerd fakers. Well truthfully this is already happening. It was only the nerds and a few geeks on the internet but now its mainstream. Only nerds carried mp3 players and now its the chic accessory. The same with the pda, cell phone, computers and a boat load of other things. I guess thanks to the highly technology direction of our society we are no longer outcast but really just progressive and forward thinking, or just maybe just ahead of our time. So anyway back to the subject at hand. I just thought it was humorous, we nerd don't get the respect we deserve. I'm sure its not a start of a social movement or anything. At most maybe it makes us a good backup plan. I'm sure it means nothing.

MS


The Stupid Quiz said I am "Fairly Smart!" How stupid are you? Click here to find out!
I am 82% loser. What about you? Click here to find out!

Hair Trouble

I forgot to post about this. Makes you wonder why in the world someone would do something as stupid as stealing hair of someone and sell it on Ebay. Not really a tech article but funny though. Here is the link.

MS

City WiFi

News.com has an article about the fight between Verizon and the city of Philadelphia. Like most cities anymore they want to build a city wide wireless network so that they can take advantage of technologies like VOIP and have internet access to all their city vehicles and workers. The thing is since they have the network why not let their citizens take advantage of it too. Especially the poorer ones that the cost of high speed internet is way out of their price range. This is where Verizon has issue with this. They have a new wireless network technology that they really want to sell themselves. So here is the dilemma who is in the right? Sure Philadelphia has full right to provide city employees (maintains crews, police, fire) with wireless access but should they go beyond that? If you look at the situation the city would like to provide its poorer citizen with high speed internet access. Can they do that and stick to only low income households or do they have to include their richer citizens. So where does this leave companies like Verizon. Some could make a case that it gives the city an unfair monolopy on the internet access in a city. A compromise could be made to only allow access to the poor (you must be this poor to get cheap internet), but that leaves the question what do you consider poor. There are families who by most would be considered middle class who can't afford high speed internet. If I could get high speed wireless that would free up a fair amount of cash I could save some money for other important things. What about the businesses in the city? Shouldn't they should be allowed to take advantage. If I owned a restaurant in that area I would advocate it. I'm sure there will be those who take advantage of it. Seriously I'm sure there are going to be a few companies sticking out WiFi antennas out to get free internet access. Several cities including the one I live in are considering going this route. Down deep I have to say that I am all for it. Could this hurt innovation among the wireless providers? Probably not, they will have their pity parties then try to innovate. Looking at what available for like wireless access from Verizon ($75) it would be hard to compare against something say for $10 or $15 a month. To a lot of families that would be a strain. Maybe this could create a market for something like that new Nokia device. Oh well time will tell. If Verizon and the like were offering a reasonably priced service then I probably would be in their camp but I until they do I'm on municipality side of this issue. Maybe this will spur them into doing this. That would be nice but not likely.

MS

Friday, June 17, 2005

OpenSolaris

Well Sun has thrown Solaris in the free operating system mix. For this I am willing to forgive almost all the stupid things Scott McNealy has said in the past. Although I reserve the right to make fun of him for a select few utterances in the past and all stupid quotes in the future. My congratulation to his handlers he has managed to stay out of the news recently. I hope it didn't have to involve duct tape. Anyway I have to admit Sun is slowly starting to redeem itself from its old ways. There was a time I could say that I had no interest in messing with Solaris. It only ran on one absurdly expensive platform. As much I admired their commitment to Unix, their way and no other philosophy has really rubbed me the wrong way in the past. They were trying to be IBM with a different color scheme. As big and bad as they are, they are still not IBM probably won't ever be. Regardless Sun in the last couple years has slowing seen the light that IBM saw a couple years before. It of course dabbled in open source some time before (OpenOffice) that but that was to combat MS Office the only way you could, open and free. That was an end to a means. With the job market being as it is . I'll probably eventually play with OpenSolaris, need as many OS under my belt to be competitive. If your interested then check them out here.

MS

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Mac Os X86

Apple has finally took the plunge from PPC to Intel chips. I can't say I'm surprised that they did it. It was inevitable, if they want to grow their market share they would have to use more widely available and cheaper x86 chips. I could imagine that they will use x86-64 though. I figure they will manage to make super proprietary though, so Mac fans don't worry. They will find a way to give you, your elitism fix. The down side though, I will have to buy an actual IBM E-series to get a PPC workstation and you thought Macs were expensive.

MS

Debian Sarge (3.1r0)

I saw this posted over at OSnews.com it kinda speaks for itself:

Debian GNU/Linux 3.1r0 (Sarge) has been released to the ftp mirrors. The full download is available on 14 CDs or 2 DVDs.

Its about time. I love how they refer to their "up to date" packages. I love them as a server but suck as a desktop. They need to separate their server and desktop packages. With direction the desktop market is going and speed at which it is going, they need to be more limber. I know Server Administrators (I am one myself) like a steady code base but seriously folks both KDE 3.3 and Gnome 2.8 is at least a year old. In the open source world that is an eternity.

MS

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

A Sad Goodbye

I can go on record and say I hate Sony. It seems they can make the coolest product and yet screw it up so badly. Example the Minidisc. I guess in their effort to support mp3 on their new Hi-Md players they have degraded the quality so they can showcase their own format. I am now washing my hands of the Minidisc. It breaks my heart but once I can afford it I am getting a Ipod. Heck I might get a Ipod Mini. I know its not that much more to get a 20 GB instead of a 6 GB one, but I have to admit I like the mini size. If I need more than 6 GB of mp3s then I need to get a life. Also there are some Linux music programs that support The way flash memory is going in capacity and price I won't be surprised if they take back the market from the harddrive players. I figure get a Ipod once it dies they should be selling 1 or 2 GB SD cards for fairly reasonable. Especially with the Consoles supporting them in the next generation thats not an extreme stretch of the imagination. As long as I get a player that can support the higher capacity cards I'm ok. I am still kinda bummed that such a cool concept of the Minidisc got so mishandled. Unless Sony seriously gets its act together I doubt I will ever own a MD player. I will always feel sadness everytime I will see blank Minidisc at Best Buy. Thanks to Sony stop selling the one computing product that seem to done almost everything right their Palm based handheld I don't have too much reason to buy anything else from Sony (maybe except a PS3). Its just overpriced but good quality stuff. I am officially bummed.

MS

Update: Just saw some speculation about 2 or 4 GB Ipod Shuffles. If they can sport a small screen I am all over it. Considering I can't afford a Mini anytime soon then that might be the ticket especially if its cheaper than the Mini.

Gaming Consoles

Ok I hate apologize every other post for not posting but I am sorry.... Now that you have forgiven and we are all happy and such. Lets talk gaming console systems, not just the current ones but the Next Gen ones. Last week we got a preview of the systems in question. Some more detailed than others but a preview. From the specs it is looking like the PS3 seems to be the leader as far as power but only by a hair. All of them are going to have wireless controllers, be powerpc based (yes hell froze over), be online, will have some kind of standard memory card slot and will feature wireless is some form. So beyond that its pretty much more of the same from both the ps3 and xbox 360. Oh they are pretty too (looks wise and Graphics wise) Big bad boxes I have to wait a couple years to be able to afford. The running rumor has the price somewhere between $350 and $500 for either system. So what about the big N? Well there console is called the Revolution. It small its black and has a glowing blue cd slot. Oh it can act as a wireless hub, will be online with a Live like service (via Gamespy technology), supports SD cards, will have a hard drive (a small one), be powerpc based (starting to get redundant huh?) and graphic chip from ATI. Pretty much that same feature set as the other two. Beyond that they are pretty tight lipped. In that lippedness they win the Least Amount of Hype Award. I have to admit the other 2 have impressive specs but do we really need it. In the current generation we have gotten fairly close to photo realistic. Come on folks how shiny does it have to be to keep it fun. I personally rather have a game that looks mediocre and be fun than a game that looks impressive that isn't all that fun. Oh I forgot to mention the big N is going to offer a service for a fee to download and play 20 years of past Nintendo games. Not too sure if that means only Nintendo titles or if there are going to be 3rd party titles. Either way I'm excited in that regard alone. Oh well I guess we will see how this all plays out in the next year or two.

MS

Friday, April 08, 2005

Well apparently not

Ok so I am ranting to no one oh well. I have for the last several years had a infatuation with the minidisc. I can't tell you why but I have. Maybe its it size or the fact that it was basically a mini-cd with higher capacity and a hard plastic case. I guess it just always appealed to me. I never broke down and got one (thankfully) because of one issue. DRM, Sony insistence on having stupid restrictions on the music you put or take off. Who are they to judge how I got my music. If I want to trade music with someone I'll use another technology if not yours. Your not inconvencing me just screwing yourself over. Well the news came as of late that they have embraced mp3 and saw the error of their ways. They even allowed native playback on the new HI-MD minidiscs players. They officially haven't released the players but from what I am understanding you still have to use their SoundStage software (windows only) to put them on the minidisc. You can use the minidisc a usb mass storage device but for some reason can't just play mp3 on the disc with some kind of DRM wrapper. I can only hope this is not true. If they don't have this issue and I can use my Linux system to transfer music to it I am so getting one. Sure I could get 5gb hard drive player for around the same price. Something I might do if Sony disappoints me again. I so want to have small minidisc. Sure I can get a CD based mp3 player for a quarter or even a fifth of the cost of the HI-MD player but it wouldn't be in the nice sleek package that it is in. On a side note I am also considering a Rio Carbon. So tell me what you think. Am I crazy for wanting one?

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Does anyone actually read this thing?

I'm starting to wonder if anyone actually does read this. Feedback would be nice.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Really Folks

This stuff is getting childish Microsoft. Everything you fund a study it tells us how expensive and unsecured Linux is. Everything anyone else funds (including independent studies) a study it tells that Linux is a real, viable and time than not better option to any windows server. Do you think you scare any intelligent IT manager anymore. You have been caught crying wolf too many times for us to believe you anymore, regardless who you get to do it.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Mice

Its amazing that Apple feels it needs to engineer things to their "standard". I'll give them that the ipod was pretty awesome but people have done it as well since then. I'm sure they are going to spend a foturne when all they need to do is the same thing that Microsoft did when they did their first mouse. Call up Logitech and ask them to design something for them. I'm sure they will make it pretty and clear(or white or blueberry or whatever the heck the color of the month is) . I'm sure you want it way too small, if I ever got a Mac (something I'm not doing) I would get a replacement mouse / keyboard to able to use it. (big hands) Either way time to catch up Apple. You can read about it here.

Speak of pointing devices (nice transitoin there). My first trackball ( or was it my second) was an earlier model of this product from Kensington. I ended up giving up on trackballs because of how inacruate they were and how dirty than get hence causing it act unpredictably. This is espiecally annoying when doing CAD. I think it was the late 90s when I gave them up and haven't used one at least in 6 or 7 years. That said when I first saw the opitcal trackballs I laughed, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. That would remove all the problems I had in years past. That said at the time I was still doing CAD work and I was addicted to mouse wheel by then. Wasn't really an option then. Now today check this out from Microsoft. The question should I spring for it

IE 7

I saw a link to an article that had some leaked specs for the next version of Internet Explorer. Not that I'll be ever using it on any PC if I can help it. I requires XP. Amazing how Microsoft can sing how innovative they are when they are just implementing features that I have been using for over 3 years in alternative browsers. Maybe we should be grateful that they are getting around to actually supporting an actual web standard. That reminds me I need to install Debian on my PC at home. Got to get away from those idiots.

Friday, January 21, 2005

Wired Vaporware Awards 2004

This is at least an interesting article.

My favorite quote about Duke Nukem Forever is:

"NASA has planned, designed, developed and successfully landed a rover on Mars in the time this game has been in development," wrote reader Ray O'Neill. "So much for deadlines."

To give some perspective. They were talking about this being a Quake 2 killer back in 98. Yes 1998.

Late Christmas Redux

I know I promised to post more often, and I am. Within a month is an improvement. I hope to do better about that. Anyway on to the reason of the post.

Thanks to my brother and disordered I am now a proud owner of 128mb Geforce FX 5200. Yes I know its not the latest out there but hey its pretty powerful for a 3 year old 1.2 GHz Athlon computer. Who am I kidding I would pair it off with a brand new computer especially considering the price and the fact its not that far off curve. You ask how I know the price, well I kinda sent him the email ad for it. He is the only family member I can ask for stuff like that for Christmas / Birthday. (they are only 3 days apart) Anyway it seems to be doing pretty well on everything I have thrown at it, well except the Doom 3 demo. I suspect that has more to do with processor than anything. Most of what I got is at least a year old so I can't guess how well it will stack up against more recent games like Unreal Tournament 2004. (Which I do plan on buying soon) I am again in need to redo my system config. I hope to get this thing settled eventually. At this point I think I'm going to hold off till next year to build a new system. I think it wise to hold off until a couple things(x64, SATA, PCI Express, etc) I want use become a hair bit cheaper. It will also give more time for the x64 flavors of Linux distros to mature. I figure on retiring the old box to act as a server for various tasks. Not that I'm not looking foward to it.

Happy computing every one

Thursday, January 06, 2005

A New Year

Ok, my New Years resolution (well one of them) is to update my blog more often. So look foward to seeing more post after this one. I promise.


Really I mean it.