Ok, so the title is pretty offensive. I get that. As much as I go back and forth on the whole Apple love/hate thing I have to say that overall I think Jobs dying is a bad thing. Yep, you heard me say that. I know that many of you are shocked, but as I highlighted when he resigned I didn’t think that he did a whole lot at Apple, other than be a figure head anyway. Still, we can’t deny that he did make some very smart decisions that definitely helped change the world for the better. One thing I’ve always been annoyed about is the fact that he got a liver transplant. Not that I think people that are sick shouldn’t get them, but having cancer usually puts a person very low on the list of people that can get livers and other organs. I think it’s outright disgusting that he somehow got one anyway. Of course none of us can be 100% sure how that happened, conspiracy theories lead us to believe that some poor person in a 3rd world country may be an entire liver short. It probably was just part of someone else’s liver…. Then again perhaps they just took it from one of the many people that jump off of the Foxconn building every year, oh yeah, they put up nets now so you don’t have to feel as bad that manufacturing iPhones, etc. in China leads to this… Anyway, as influential as he was let us not forget that if someone down the ladder, that arguably actually made the products that saved the company, got as sick, thanks to our health care system, they probably would not have the same priority for getting a transplant as Jobs did, which obviously was a bad move because he didn’t make it that long anyway. I know it’s sad, he was influential, but those are the facts. 56 is not an old age in modern society. I personally put a lot more value on the many brilliant people that decide to get paid, in comparison to Jobs, like crap to work in the health care and educational fields and would hope that they could all get the same considerations to receive an organ transplant if they were ill that Jobs did, but know that they would not. Oh well, anyway, I know this was cynical, but what the hell? Are we going to cry when Donald Trump dies too? Sob, he made too much money, and now he can’t anymore, and we’ll only have to deal with the generations of asshole millionaires that he left behind that get to live off of his legacy. Oh my God, what will we do if their wealth gets distributed more equally?! I don’t even want to live in a world that’s that fair 
. By the way, I’m being sarcastic, for the Apple zealots that are oiling up their iLasers as they’re finishing this post. Still, in the end I won’t rejoice that someone has passed, I’ll just say that I wish things were more equal in general and his passing reminds me that they’re not, among other things, like reminding me that OSX is a better OS than Windows, and that my iPod ended up being way more reliable than my Sony Walkman.
I don’t usually like to comment on rumors, but considering the bs and trouble that Apple gave people that were buying legit copies of OSX and trying to run them on non-Apple computers, at first anyway, I don’t think it’s too crazy to think that Microsoft may do something just as stupid. ZDnet ran an article about a rumor that Windows 8 new secure boot functionality may block Linux dual booting. link to the article I’m talking about
I have to say that after performing a few Windows 7 workstation upgrades and a Server 2008 R2 migration I am more pleased with Windows products than in the past, but still appalled at how crappy their migration tools are. In some cases they don’t even really exist. In general, they are a long way away from the ease of upgrade that a UNIX or OSX server provides and are of course the Windows products are very expensive, and of course there are 96 versions of the Windows server OS to choose from to make your life even more confusing. By the way, I know Apple and servers is a sore subject now, you can get the software, but machines… Anyway, of course the largest software company in the world is releasing this kind of garbage, but hey AD is pretty good right? Oh and like GM has shown us they’re too big to fail. Anyway, perhaps they’re just waiting for responses to the rumors to decide what to do for sure.
Money aside I have found GNU/Linux to be not only free, but free and awesome. It is my main platform even for supporting other platforms, and allows me to keep my machines around for a long time. In fact, thanks to Linux, I often don’t even have to buy new machines. People give me old Windows machines, that are jacked up with spyware, and I erase them, put Linux on them and run them for an average of at least 3 more years giving the machines a total of a 6 or 7 year lifespan. This is something our environment could certainly benefit from and a model that the most of the proprietary wold is not very interested in, cause they’re assholes. Although I have old machines around to run the WinDoze on, if Microsoft goes this route I won’t be inclined to buy a copy of Windows. Still I wonder if my reaction is the one that most users are going to have. Something tells me not. I just don’t like to feel like I’m being punished for not being totally loyal to Microsoft. I’m sure someone will argue that this is just part of the new boot system, but I’m sure that they can not be dicks about it and figure out a way to not screw us on dual booting too. In general, I’d like to feel like the machine I paid for is actually mine and not just really on loan because of licensing BS, although in many ways it’s been that way for years for those that use proprietary software. Anyway, I’d love to get some feedback on this one.
Those of you who know me are probably surprised that it took me so long to write about this. You know that I have a love/hate, mostly hate, relationship with Apple. I think OSX (well up to 10.6 anyway) is still better than Windows, although I am impressed with Windows 7 but am still most impressed with Ubuntu Linux. 10.7 looks ok, but I’m not nuts about it yet and need more time to evaluate it. Overall, it seems like it wants to make my computer an iPad and I like having a computer so that’s lame. I still think that OSX was best around the 10.3 age when Apple seemed to get, or pretended to get, that a company can produce proprietary software, and embrace open source, while still making buckets of money. They then started to lock the OS down shortly after. Those of us who remember the pre-OSX days, when they were very proprietary, remember that they almost went out of business. I think that this had to do a lot with their inflexibility. Anyway, back to the main point. One of the stories I watched on Steve Jobs resigning was from ABC News, basically claiming that Jobs was responsible (the tone seemed to hint at directly responsible) for the creation and success of the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and basically walked on water. Maybe the story was just trying to be kind to a man that has helped influence technology and is on his way out. The overall picture is much worse, of course. As depicted in “Pirates of Silicon Valley” Jobs is not a man to be personally respected as far as being a human being goes and as far as technological innovation goes, give me a break, it’s not like he personally developed all of the innovations that have made Apple successful. People that think that any one individual can make great change, be it a CEO or president, are living in the past. It takes teams of strong, intelligent individuals to do that. Jobs may have put some money into technologies that other teams had been working on before he even came back to Apple, like the iPod, but just because he had enough sense to put some more resources into those technologies doesn’t mean that he deserves the credit for their success. The teams working on those products do. It’s time that we give credit where credit is due to the underpaid, hard working people in the background that actually make innovations happen, that work like dogs for companies like Apple, under the direction of overpaid jerks like Jobs. It’s time that we stop putting so much stock in any one individual, and realize that Apple, as a company, always diverts back to some creepy, ultra-proprietary model. No matter how cool their stuff is, they will always be trying to lock you into some creepy model where they get you to buy everything from them (which is expected) and lock you out of working on your hardware, which is awful for the environment (from not being able to replace your own battery easily in an iPod or iPhone, which shows the hipocracy in their “Greener Apple” document to the inservicable iPad that people can’t buy enough of.) I’ve commented in the past on their DRM policies and the pinnacle of creepiness surrounding the iTunes store, media-control and their click-through agreements. They’re a creepy, irresponsible large corporation, and although they may not be worse than the next corporation, in many respects, the award of total irresponsibility belongs to the company as a whole, not just to Steve Jobs. As I’ve said before and I’ll say again, these companies often take from open source, then try to lock it down, then over charge us for it. Why don’t we just use open source instead? Applications have and will come to GNU/Linux if we support it like we support Apple for screwing us. Just watch the stupid battle over the Galaxy tablet in Europe that’s going on right now. Even though the Galaxy tablet runs on a totally different OS, and multi-touch was originally developed by a University, not by Apple, they can’t help but pretend that Samsung is stealing from them because of the size of the tablet. That’s like saying that because a Toyota Corolla and a Honda Civic are about the same size that they’re the same, and that Honda is stealing from Toyota, but we all know that isn’t true. We know that cars in general have similar characteristics, just like tablets will too. It’s just another way for Apple to withhold technology from the consumer. Anyway, overall Jobs wasn’t that important, and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we can move towards more fair, just forms of capitalism, like employee-owned companies where some narcissistic, dead-beat dad (well only up to a certain point I guess), d-bag like like Steve Jobs, can’t be king of his domain and fire an employee that isn’t “Apple enough” just because he’s having a bad day, etc. You know, where the employees that actually make companies work have representation without having to form a corrupt union, which will just lead to a monarchy or mafia style hierarchy, or fight though an intentionally inefficient legal system that favors large companies. I would say good riddance, but again I never thought that he was that important, except to idiots that think that he was directly making the products that we see today. I really think that some old people, and a few young people, really think that he was directly coding iOS, for example. In closing I think it’s tough to say for sure, but the company probably would have been successful with or without Jobs stepping back into the picture. Let’s not forget about all of the money that Microsoft gave Apple while they were undergoing anti-trust lawsuits, and all of the awesome free code that they got to use in OSX thanks to NetBSD, etc. Perhaps it was just the right time, and not the right CEO, that made Apple successful again.
So today, like many Netflix users, I received an e-mail telling me that my plan price is going up yet again. This is disguised publicly as Netflix’s “lowest price ever” since they are splitting up their streaming and DVD services, but for me at least it’s a raise of about one third in their overall price to keep my current plan. What it really is is an unregulated company with a Monopoly on their mailing service, at least, abusing their loyal customers even though they were making an obscene amount of money at their old rates. Just like when oil companies raise the price of gas, “on a prediction”, and then we find out that they were just price gouging. Sure they’re not the only streaming service, and I can already hear the BS arguments about how people have other choices. Anyway, I will be getting rid of my Netflix account come September if something doesn’t change and I encourage you all to do so as well. I’ve been a member for years, but I hate it when companies get this greedy. Also, more often then not they don’t have things that I am looking for lately, or pretend they do and then stick them on my “saved” list. Some titles have been there for 2 years. Sure I don’t expect them to have everything, but it’s not like it’s a free service either. Tons of their content isn’t available for streaming because of greedy motion picture industry BS, and they shit all over the open-source community with their Microsoft Silverlight DRM. Anyway, just remember that there are plenty of legal options available to you that don’t cost anything, which will allow you to watch lots of media.
Here are a few:
1. Your library.
2. You can swap stuff with your friends.
3. You might as well wear out those old VHS tapes (meaning why not rewatch some of the stuff in your own library it doesn’t have to be VHS or Laser Disc, I’m mostly kidding about that).
4. Your local video store or equivalent. If you’re as lucky as I am you still have an old school rental store in your town. Sure this may be more expensive if you rent movies a lot, but if you don’t then you can actually reduce your overall expense over a monthly membership and not reward a company that took a shit on its loyal members yet again.
5. Hulu and Crunchyroll. Sure the commercials suck, but at least their free. Crunchyroll removes the commercials if you get a membership with them (like Hulu should). Hulu does not remove commericals with your Hulu Plus membership, which is lame, and has some web only content (like how Futurama is web only so you can’t watch it on your PS3 through Hulu even though you’re a plus member). Still they do add some movies and other content for plus members. Anyway, Hulu Plus is pretty lame but Hulu is still free. Crunchyroll is awesome, and a model of how streaming services should be, but it’s only good if you like Anime and Asian drama, I stick to the Americanized Anime side like the Gundam stuff personally.
6. I’m not totally impressed with Amazon’s streaming service, but it looks like it works with Linux, and if you’re a student, and/or signed up to be a member of Amazon Prime, then you get access to a ton of content for free or “free” (meaning as part of your Prime membership).
– Anyway, I should also note that Netflix has made it very hard to contact them about this, or any other problem. Years ago, their contact us page allowed Netflix users to contact them about anything using a free form field. That option has been circumvented by a system that tries to force you into choosing from a list of very stringent problems that you’re having. I know it’s more efficient, but sometimes you don’t just have a canned problem that needs a canned answer. Sure you can call them, but I’m sure their call volume is way up after this (a move they knew would be very unpopular) and I’m sure either way you’ll just get a canned answer.
– Yes I know how capitalism works, they’re in business to make as much money as possible at any cost (meaning they’ll do anything that they think they can get away with). The greedy sons of bitches that buy into the system hook, line, and sinker can’t understand what someone like me would be upset about. After all screwing everyone to make as much money as possible is the point of our current society right? I mean WalMart does it, cell phone companies do it, health care companies do it, why not Netflix? They would really just be insane not to. Well I like to think that we’re a bit more complex than that as a people. Also, I hope we’re not all actually a bunch of Ronald Reagan clones, or a bunch of bitch slapping pimps at heart. The logical reaction is to not support them when they act like children. I am also not encouraging you to buy tons of stuff from companies like Sony or Apple. The latter of which actually charges you more to give you stuff without DRM. With the BS Hollywood backs I’m surprised people even go to regular movies anymore. The independent stuff is way more interesting, well sometimes it’s just weird, but that’s a topic for another post.
– There are non-legal alternatives too, but I’m not into that stuff when it’s so easy to legally watch stuff for free.
So I put a few “historical facts” together, with the help of a few friends, and I think I’m about to prove that my age old theory of David Hasselhoff causing the apocalypse is true. You see in 1980 the Battlestar Galactica sent a survey mission to Earth to scout out our primitive culture. Because of their circumstances they left technology behind which would eventually lead to the building of the first Earth made Cylon prototype in 1982 known as KITT the car in Knight Rider. Thus causing the 13th tribe cycle to start all over again. Furthermore, David would take this car into impossible situations and teach it the art of slick 80′s combat, eventually leading to a race of unstoppable Cylons that destroy humanity…. The similarities are evident in KITT’s Cylon like eye and sex appeal. Ok fine, it’s far fetched but since they canceled Caprica I can only guess at to what really leads to the Cylons going totally ballistic. Plus that spin off movie “The Plan” only shed very faint light on the subject.
Here is the link to another blog that is about a really cool event that benefits the JDRF. See I’m not all piss and vinegar after all 
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Bicycle Ride In Memory of Sean MacDonald
IT and why you Need to Care — Chapter 3 – Why you shouldn’t be an Administrator (admin) on your work Computer
So I know I said chapter 3 would be about Linux converts, but that is going to be chapter 4 now. Chapter 3 is a re-write of an article that I posted separately on the old BHM page. I hope this new version is better than the old one, it’s certainly more concise, but I felt that it belonged as part of the book more than on its own.
Some of the biggest problems that occur with computers, especially in an enterprise situation, come from a lack of simple security related more to the politics of giving users elevated privileges that they don’t need than anything else. Chapter 2 highlighted how politics, especially on college campuses, can lead to a skewed sense of ownership, but the age old lesson of giving users only the user level they need to perform daily tasks is not restrictive and plays a huge role in keeping the computers safe. Plus you don’t own the fucking computer, the place you work for does, so let’s not pretend that it’s a violation of your rights to have you run as a standard user and not waste their money fixing problems that are occurring because you’re jacking up the system with shitty virus and spyware ridden games and other programs. Sure a virus scanner and some other software programs can help protect you, and your company, from your own disregard for an others property, but those solutions are a poor substitution for not being an ignorant douche bag in the first place and running as a standard user. If you want to fuck up someone’s computer because you simply don’t care, make it your own. Not allowing a user to install whatever they want on their own computer, since installation may lead to an infection, is a common sense rule that is ignored by users partially because of ineffective IT departments as well as for the aforementioned reasons. Continue reading »
So after struggling with the issues for why my computer would disconnect while viewing videos on You Tube and flash videoes in general I finally found out that my issue related to multicasting on my router. I of course read all of the documents I could find, tried WiCD instead of Network Manager, tried several flash players, and a few other software related things like the Chromium 10 and Firefox 3.6 web-browsers.
In the end what fixed my problem was to go to Security>Firewall>Filter Multicast and check it to enable it on my router. The router is a Linksys E3000, but most Linksys routers have this feature in the same location. After I did that my problems disappeared. I am using 32-Bit 10.04 LTS on a Toshiba A-100 series laptop. I guess what I’m saying is that you might want to look at your router’s settings over too. Oh yeah, and why does it make sense that this worked? Well start with the wiki article on multicasting and take it from there.
click here
Chapter 2 – A Classic Example of University “IT”
So before I write this obscene account of mafia-like management systems and government waste, I should say that in-spite of all of this, about half of the people I and the characters in my story worked with here were really good, hard working people. The problem is with the other half. No organization can simply piss away 50% (or more!) of their money and expect not to have to make any changes, but that is what the State of Connecticut does. Sure, this example comes from a small University, but you will see how more than likely this is going on to some extent with many collegiate organizations nationwide, perhaps not to the same disgusting level, but certainly in a way that is helping to make college unaffordable to most. I highlight IT because when tuition goes up for no good reason, technology is almost always on the list of things that are blamed as a rising cost. On to the story which takes place at Central Connecticut State University in its User Support department. This incident took place a little over a year ago. (Again this is a repost so we’ve looking at more than two years ago now.)
Continue reading »