If you think your programming job is hard, try this guy’s hacking job.
Jul
26
I came across another great article about the INDUCE Act that the Senate is trying to push through. The article is on Salon.com and you will have to watch a paid ad to read it for free. The article is worth putting up with the ad. This piece of legislation will be one of the single most damaging pieces to the digital age if it is passed.
Jul
9
My computer experience started with a Commodore Vic20, and later a Commodore 64. I got to play with some Apple IIe computers in programming class in high school, but back then BASIC programming was pretty much the same on both. My next computer wasn’t until some time later, well after I graduated from high school, and it was a Pentium 75 by Digital Equipment Corporation. It came with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. And ever since then I’ve had some sort of PC, some with windows, and now more recently with Linux; Suse Linux 9.0-9.1 to be specific.
I’ve never really gotten into Macs, and the biggest reason why is price. With today’s PC prices I can put together a Linux box that is just as powerful as its Mac counterpart for a third of the price. I’ve never been able to justify the cost for a Mac. Now someone has stepped forward to tell Steve Jobs exactly why his Macs don’t sell well. Read Alex Salkever’s Open Letter to Steve Jobs. He has hit it right on the mark.
The only thing I can add to this is to keep yourself involved in the Open Source community as well. The smartest move Apple ever made was switching to a Unix type kernel. Lower the price and work with the Open Source community to get their apps working on Macs and you’ll have people switching in droves. You might even get me to buy one.
Jul
8
Peer to Peer networks have been pointed at as the cause of the Music industries woes for some time now. Now the Software industry is complaining about the same thing. The apparently took a $29 billion hit in 2003. While I would not be surprised to find this accurate, maybe the software industry should stop by Eric Raymond’s site and have him show them the way to enlightenment, the reason why their business model for closed software fails to meet real market needs.
And the issue with peer to peer networks does not stop there. Now Congress is looking to pass a bill called the Induce Act. This bill would make it illegal for anyone to produce a peer to peer network client that *might* be used to download copyrighted material. This means the people who write software like Kazaa can be held liable if you use their software to do the illegal downloading. Think this sounds like a solution to the problem? Think again!
The bill is written in such broad terms that it says that anyone who produces anything that induces someone else to break copyright law is liable. Hmmm, I see many VCR manufacturers going to court, probably a few makers of CD writers too; and hey, what about TiVo? I bet Apple could get sued for illegal MP3’s on people’s iPods as well. There are so many things we use in our daily lives that could fall under this category it’s not funny. This is the stupidity of senators like Orrin Hatch, R-Utah (between this guy and Bush I’m gonna start voting Democrat by default, at least until the Libertarians have viable candidates), who introduced the bill. Just how dumb do you have to be to get a seat in Congress. Remember, this is the Senator who got busted with illegal software on his web server after he first started saying he wanted to give the RIAA the ability to fry the computer of anyone who was sharing files.
So now everyone is responsible for everyone elses actions? Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
When this mess is finally over it will be the real innovators, those who figure out how to use the digital medium without taking away all of the consumers rights that win. Apple and Magnatune seem to be leading the way into the new digital business model.
This whole business about trying to strip away all of the customers rights is going to end up backfiring someday.
For a good dose of reasoned thought on this subject read Lawrence Lessig’s blog.
Additional Reading:
Apr
8
I’m a big fan of the Linux operating system and I know you can install Linux on a lot of different things, including XboX and some cash registers, but these have to be the funniest installs I’ve seen yet:
Mar
20
It has been some time since I posted to this blog. My original intention was to post as often as possible, at least every other day. But alas, I have been overly busy and I have also been having problems with my Adelphia broadband service.
About 3 weeks ago I began having trouble reaching some of the web sites I maintain, including this one (all of the sites are hosted on one machine by Buzzsawhosting). Initially I thought it was my hosting provider having an excessive amount of downtime. Fortunately, this was not the case, and the problem resided only on my internet connection. No one else had problems reaching the sites.
So I started diagnosing the problem. I cycled the power on both the Linksys router and the cable modem. That didn’t seem to work. So I hooked up my laptop directly to the cable modem and cycled the power on the cable modem once more. Surprise! I was now able to access my web sites. Hmmm, problem with my router?
After unhooking my laptop from the modem I hooked the modem back up to my router and cycled the modem’s power once more. Once this was done I was now able to access my sites again through the router. This lasted maybe two hours, then the problem returned.
Another unusual thing I discover while diagnosing the problem: Even while I was having trouble connecting to my sites through the router, I had no problem getting to them through AOL(we have one machine in the house with AOL on it,using the Adelphia connection). This may be because all requests done through AOL go through their proxy server.
At this point I called Adelphia’s tech support. They were of little help, doing the same things I had already done. When we finished they proclaimed that the problem wasn’t theirs and that the problem was probably my router.
So, going on the possibility that the problem existed with the router, I purchased a new router - A brand new Linksys 8-port DSL-Cable router/switch.
After getting everything hooked back up and cycling the power on the modem everything worked as it should. I had no problem accessing my web sites. This lasted until the next morning, when the problem returned.
At this point the problem clearly wasn’t the router, and since the problem occurred on every machine in the house and on every web browser (I tested Netscape 7.1, IE 6.0, Opera 7.11, Konquerer, and Mozilla 1.4)
The only conclusion I can come to now is that the problem is with the cable modem. It must be some very intermittent problem that causes the modem to be unable to request my sites. I know that sounds silly, but I have nothing else to go on. I even did an nslookup (it used Adelphia’s name servers) from the DOS prompt while the problem persisted and it had no problem resolving the web sites’ IP addresses. So clearly the modem should have been able to supply the router with the web page I requested.
This problem has been quit an annoyance for the past 3 weeks. My only recourse to correct the problem has been to cycle the power on the modem. Then I am able to access my sites for 2 hours, or sometimes 2 days. I will probably be calling Adelphia tech support back and demanding that they replace the modem so I can at least eliminate it from the list of potential causes.
Feb
9
I came across the interview below while surfing on http://slashdot.org. It’s a very interesting view of computers, operating systems and their use in Iraqi society. Well worth reading as I’m pretty sure most of us here in the states do not truely understand the current state of daily life in Iraq.