|
title: Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude. |
descrip: One feller's views on the state of everyday computer science & its application (and now, OTHER STUFF) who isn't rich enough to shell out for www.myfreakinfirst-andlast-name.com Using 89% of the same design the blog had in 2001. |
x
 
MarkUpDown is the best Markdown editor for professionals on Windows 10. It includes two-pane live preview, in-app uploads to imgur for image hosting, and MultiMarkdown table support. Features you won't find anywhere else include...
You've wasted more than $15 of your time looking for a great Markdown editor. Stop looking. MarkUpDown is the app you're looking for. Learn more or head over to the 'Store now! |
|
| Tuesday, January 30, 2007 | |
|
I've made a recent habit of calling Google evil. Groups.Google is evil. Books.Google is evil. Google is the next Microsoft, etc etc. Well, I recently dropped my iBook G4 off of a table, and now it too is evil, but only because it won't boot. Due to some short-circuit in my head, I figured I'd wait until Apple's Time Machine comes out in Leopard before I got serious about backups. Now I don't have much of anything I'd created the iBook from before 11/26. Niiice. Let's say I had some really important information compiled into a spreadsheet that, say, I really really need now. Let's say that the uncompiled information can be found in 30 or so emails I can't get to anymore on my iBook. Let's say that luckily Gmail still has copies of those emails. Let's say Gmail may be evil, but today, I'm still buying. I recently upgraded my Google Desktop install on my Windows tower, and they really are doing everything in and around the browser Microsoft made darn sure Sun couldn't do. Where's M$ now? In other news, let me put an end to the belief that integrated video equals "vampire video: The Intel 810i chipset was designed for cheap PCs. Really cheap PCs. Low End PC enthusiasts will encounter these more and more as computers built around the chipset enter the used market. It uses the RAM on the motherboard not only in its usual way, but as video RAM for the built-in video subsystem. Chad coined a great term for it: Vampire Video. Vampire Video not only sucks up RAM you could use elsewhere, but it also yields video performance that, frankly, sucks. Or bites, if that's what you prefer. (emph mine) I've never heard particularly good things about Intel integrated video beyond its being especially cheap, but this 2001 moniker for machines that borrow RAM to do video on the cheap isn't quite fair. My ATI Radeon X200 chipset mobo is doing great with its dual-channel RAM setup. Video cards for gaming are expensive, and the longer you can wait before purchasing, the much mo' better. And if you're not gaming or writing games (maybe doing 3D GIS?), why does the integrated video bother you? In any event, this "vampire video" I've got does a good job with World of Warcraft and even lets me play Doom 3, making my $150, whenever I do plunk down that dough for a "discrete" card, go quite a bit farther. Vampire indeed. I'd consider going much too far with the metaphor and say that my undead box threatens to live forever, but that would, naturally, go much too far. posted by ruffin at 1/30/2007 11:57:00 PM |
|
| 0 comments | |
| Saturday, January 27, 2007 | |
|
Well, it's happened. Google is now Microsoft. I've been wondering if we weren't moving this way for a while, but after being silently forced into the new Google Groups interface, they've undoubtedly moved into an embrace and extend of usenet. Here's a line from my Google Groups summary page:
This is listed alongside of other groups that are Google-only, like those I subscribe to from lowendmac.com. Here's the rub: There are more than 26 "members" of even this extremely low-traffic usenet group of alt.fan.nietzsche. And this is part of the beauty of usenet -- it's distribution paradigm makes it nigh impossible for any centralized source to quickly ascertain the number of members. Of course, this is the number of members who subscribe via Google. Useful and accurate in the context of a Google-hosted group. Not so here. Which brings me to the question, Why doesn't Google use usenet for its groups? Is there even an API for treating Google Groups' servers like usenet servers? (I don't know if there is one, btw, on that last count.) Why not expand on the infrastructure you're exploiting to give yourself an automatic critical mass of groups for folks to search? Why not give back to the community, here usenet via deja-news, that's making your successful [in this specialist arena]? The answer's an easy one. Google is treating usenet the same way Microsoft treated html. They want to slowly augment the service until people have no choice but to access all of usenet plus Google's additions solely through Google. So what happens if Google goes belly-up? What if they decide to dump Groups in 15 years? Should one company even try to have this much power over what amounts to a standard? That's officially evil, and means that Google the behemoth has lost its previous high ground. posted by ruffin at 1/27/2007 03:49:00 PM |
|
| 0 comments | |
| Friday, January 26, 2007 | |
|
from Mac Rumors: Not necessarily. Apple thinks that it has found a much better place to put the Optical Disc Drive: at the bottom of the MacBook In the patent description, Apple addresses the challenges of making laptops even smaller... At what point does this become ludicrous? Apple's looking at putting optical drives on the bottom of a computer with a flap-style opening (see link for pic), and they're supposed to be able to somehow corner that market until Willie is free? Perhaps someone should quickly patent drives on the top, keyboards on the screen, and screens where the keyboard should be and see if they get sued. Not to mention, it'd seem if it were so difficult to make a small laptop with an optical drive, Apple would simply get more intelligent about taking it out. Why not use stand-alone drives or other machines' fixed drives via some supra-fast Bluetooth? Standardize around PSP discs? (he said only half sarcastically) Anyhow, next they'll patent crustless bread. Thanks, US, for the beautiful legal system. posted by ruffin at 1/26/2007 03:48:00 PM |
|
| 0 comments | |
| Thursday, January 18, 2007 | |
|
The record industry lets the counterculture have the prophetic lyrics and collects the profits and the real cultural power. Carey and Quick in Communication and Culture, 1989 (pg 189) What else is new, eh? Of course this is how Apple makes its dough, $6 drop in stock price today or no. posted by ruffin at 1/18/2007 11:00:00 PM |
|
| 0 comments | |
| Wednesday, January 17, 2007 | |
|
Playlistmag.com has this to say about downloading music and CD sales: Digital music sales doubled in 2006 thanks to better distribution, but the rise hasn't made up for the decline in CD sales, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said on Wednesday. Revenue is expected to come in at US$2 billion for the year, accounting for about 10 percent of the total music market, the IFPI said in its Digital Music Report 2007. So we've got a few things to wonder about. My first reaction was that the ability to select individual songs is in large part responsible for the dive, and that albums had a bit too much crap on 'em, which would also suggest the price for newly released money tracks is probably a bit too low on iTunes. This, of course, is overly simplistic and hardly explains what's going on. Later in the article, they say, "Overall, however, [International Federation of the Phonographic Industry] said a relatively low level of music stored on [mp3/etc players] devices had been purchased." The basic issue seems to be this -- record companies' choice to move from cassette to the CD made for easily digitized, and therefore now very easily tradeable music. The cat is out of the bag. Now does something like the iTunes Music Store, for whatever reason -- for the availability of music, for the appearance of legality/legitimacy it provides for the players and iTunes, probably the most common way of ripping those files, whatever -- sell so many more players that the online distribution is [via its introduction/sale of more nodes to hold these ostensibly largely pirated goods] contributing to piracy more quickly than the income it makes back up? If so, perhaps it's time to try to close digital distribution systems down [from the point of view of record labels]. You know, if it weren't for car players, perhaps record co's would have a better time of it chunking the CD and going back to vinyl.[1] And don't give me the "Microsoft's renting system is better." After it was cracked, users could grab and keep as many songs as they liked. With iTunes, it's one 99 cent song at a time, in a sense. I believe we've covered that before. If revenue is 10% of the total, I'm guessing that digital online music distribution, still in its relative infancy, is likely putting more money in their pockets. Squeaky wheel still gets the grease, however, so I wouldn't expect the whining to stop. What might be the most interesting experiment suggested by this jive would be to get on Limewire, etc, and start reading ID3 tags. If my guess that iTunes is the preferred ripper for pirates is on the money, well, Apple might have a harder time keeping the easy road from CD to iPod open, and may very well see themselves paying a tax per unit similar to what's paid for blank cassettes. By the way, isn't it about time that tax went away? Seriously, who is using cassettes to pirate music anymore? Really? [1] This is, you may have guessed, something of a modest proposal. posted by ruffin at 1/17/2007 11:37:00 AM |
|
| 0 comments | |
| Monday, January 15, 2007 | |
|
From Lost Garden: Convergence: A great word to hate: By this argument, if the technologists had managed to figure out how to pack a camera into a standard keychain (and people were constantly encouraged to upgrade their keychains), the "camera keychain" would have been nearly as successful. The customer value is what matters. The fact that the value takes place in a convergence device is mostly random happenstance. I'll take exception with that. The cameraphone is an issue of convergence insofar as the phone uses a small, high-resolution (relatively speaking), color display and the camera benefits from the same. There is also some overlap with taking pictures and sharing them, from the screen, of course, but also via email or uploading to the web. So networking on phones is somewhat important as well, at least for those whose plans already have digital services (or those for whom the camera puts that purchase over the top). There is no networking, no screen on a keychain or wallet or other pocket device. Adding the camera would mean one has to add the entire camera. In some respects, the cameraphone works because over half the camera is already in the pocket. Now I usually go into some sorry talk about how it's the shared binary medium and generalized computer processing platforms that allows this overlap to happen (see the camera-radios of the early twentieth century. A bit more fadish), but I'll spare you that today. posted by ruffin at 1/15/2007 10:38:00 AM |
|
| 0 comments | |
| Sunday, January 14, 2007 | |
|
Two encouraging Mac-related sites fell into my browsing this morning. The first is how to turn el-cheapo wireless cards into Airport cards for early iBooks and, I assume, iMacs. A pretty hefty savings over a true Airport card, certainly. The trick seems to be taking the case off of the old school wireless card and replacing it with electrical tape so that it fits. tanais: How to save 100 [British Pounds Sterling] (and try not to break something in the process...): Knowing the original Airport 802.11b card was an antenna-less Orinoco Silver and Gold Card sold as an OEM lucent jobbie (also used in Sony VAIOs...), ... and actually having an Orinoco/Lucent Silver to hand I first of all I had a quick test to see if the card actually worked. (These are about $16-$20 on eBay if you look hard enough). [he was successful] The other positive I saw was the slashdot response to today's post regarding DRM in Apple's iPhone. The posts getting modded up actually seem to have a pretty practical approach to Apple and DRM. This post seems to sum it up fairly well. Apple had to produce a DRM that was acceptable to the music industry, or else iTunes would never exist. MP3 players would still be gimmicks, much like minidisk players, and the advances we have seen across all brands of MP3 players never would have happened. Now admittedly, I've got small bones to pick with the above. It's as if it took Apple for the music industry to go digital. I'm not sure that's the case. I do wonder if the digital music biz would be as successful now, but you'd expect eventually somebody would soak out much of the iPod dough from the market. This is, of course, part of the music industry's beef; if it weren't for Apple, the money-soaking would look different, quite likely wouldn't involve so much cash heading through, if not always to, Apple, and would potentially be much more favorable for their bottom lines. I've got to say, of all the digital ecosystem tooth & claw battles, music is the most interesting. Sony's rootkit escapade has been incredibly interesting, not just for the perceived screw-up, but for exhibiting just how far a company will go to make its legacy distribution system a combatant for the battleground of PCs. A more insightful /. iPhone post might be this one... How is this fresh? That is... we knew it was an iPod, right? Did people think it would not have DRM just because it was a phone this time? posted by ruffin at 1/14/2007 12:30:00 PM |
|
| 0 comments | |
| Tuesday, January 09, 2007 | |
|
Ooooh, very well said, your honor. 'I'm reminded of a sentence I took out of my opinion,' [US Judge Frederick] Motz said. 'When Microsoft has the will to achieve, the achievement is great, and when it has the will to obstruct, the obstruction is complete.' posted by ruffin at 1/09/2007 04:57:00 PM |
|
| 0 comments | |
|
DaringFireball is making some interesting predictions about what'll happen at MacWorld in about 30 minutes, and this one caught my eye. Good-bye, anodized Aluminum, hello something new that plays off the design cues of the new Mac OS X user interface mentioned above. The red/yellow/green/blue candy-colored transparent elements of Aqua resemble the hardware from the old G3 iMacs and Power Macs. Recently I took my blue clamshell iBook to lunch to show someone a few interesting usenet posts in context. While we were using it in what was a slightly hoity toity place, a well-dressed, mid-to-high aged fellow walked over, assumed the "looking at a new car" pose, and said, "Is that the new Apple iBook?" I said, "No, it's from 1999 or so." With that, he turned and left, a little sheepishly, and without another word. The point being is that the colorful design still works, still projects a positive image of Apple. After making the consumer part of the laptop line the blandest possible, like Jobs' shirts, now perhaps they will move back. Personally, I think an updated clamshell would be a good idea. The retro-styling trend in automobiles is awfully popular, with Ford's Thunderbird and Mustang leading the charge, followed by Chevy's just announced Camero. Why not throw Intel innards and a nice screen into a clam, and send out a new retro book? Imagine trying to find a worthy Gateway design for such a move. PS -- I'm starting to wonder if Google is routinely called "such a great place to work" because it's ultimately a little lax. Ever since Google took over Blogger, and even moreso now that it's out of beta, I've been running into little dealbreaking issues, and have saved more than a handful of posts as text to post later, once the system is happy again. I'm also not impressed with their willingness to discard the legacy Blogger interface. There's really no reason the BlogThis! feature needs me to know whether I'm on the new or old blogger, but here's the excuse I got when I tried to use it today. The old version of Blogger is currently down for maintenance. We are also unable to create new accounts or blogs on Blogger at this time. Please try again later. Nice. If the old version is down, at least route users using BlogThis! to the new version, if they've switched over, which I have. I'm also surprised, honestly, that a Google system ever has downtime. Similar to my complaints about World of Warcraft going down every Tuesday, why can't these incredibly liquid companies have full, server-for-server replacement systems running while they run maintenance on the front line? Neither Google-Blogger nor Blizzard are hitting anywhere close to nine nines, even if we pretend the times I've seen them down are the only times without service. Imagine if their search engine did this (which seems to counteract my initial statement in this section, but I'm not so worried about Google continuing to do what it did well in the past, but the method by which it adds new features. How long before it's the equivalent of "Microsoft in a browser" in more than just market dominance? posted by ruffin at 1/09/2007 11:24:00 AM |
|
| 0 comments | |
| Monday, January 08, 2007 | |
|
Oh, I told myself I'd set up an account and sink a few more buckos into Apple while it was down at $83-$87, before the iPhone's release, then cash in on the predictable euphoria that always sends Apple's stock price skyward on a new product announcement. Always. I haven't done that yet. I'm too late. Mac Rumors: Wall Street Journal: Apple Phone Days Away: the Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required) is chiming in that Apple will be announcing their cellphone 'as early as Tuesday.' ARGH. I just lost myself 12% more dough for every dollar sitting in savings, easily. Then I could've started up a school in Africa too, also through an investment in what we all know is a decidedly unGreen company. posted by ruffin at 1/08/2007 10:36:00 PM |
|
| 0 comments | |
|
The L.A. Times is running a piece titled Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation - Los Angeles Times which is getting some play on the blogs. Look, this has nothing to do with the digital world as I've narrowly defined it here, but please, give the foundation a break. Here's a choice quote... Like most philanthropies, the Gates Foundation gives away at least 5% of its worth every year, to avoid paying most taxes. In 2005, it granted nearly $1.4 billion. It awards grants mainly in support of global health initiatives, for efforts to improve public education in the United States, and for social welfare programs in the Pacific Northwest. It invests the other 95% of its worth. THE HORROR!!! This section of the story is titled "Investing for profit", as if that was some headline in itself. Incredible, surely. Just caught during dinner a bit on CNN where people apparently are questioning Oprah Winfrey's $40 million school built in Africa too. Think that the money could have done more good work used differently (probably right) and should have been spent in the US, not Africa (which boils my blood a little). People, how many of you are even making 5% on your savings? Even then, that would imply the Foundation is breaking even, and we know money makes money. You can get a pretty good return on a $35 billion 12-month CD. Even more importantly, how many people are giving away 5% of what they make each year? I'll try not to get too Baptist on anyone here, but any entity, fictitious or no, that gets even half-way to what one should be parceling out gets a kind nod from me. (For now, I'm blogging off of the first page, and assuming that the Foundation doesn't get to get liquidated in 90 years and given to little Gateses. I'm pretty confident doing so would cause the non-profit to owe just a tad in back-taxes. I'll read the rest if the L.A. Times ever sends my mailinator account the registration instructions.) Down off the soapbox now. You may now charge me with any seditious speech starting with what I say... now. How bout them Mets, eh? Hope Pedro makes it back. posted by ruffin at 1/08/2007 10:02:00 PM |
|
| 0 comments | |
|
Okay, this is more not being able to sleep than anything to do with programming, but I'm surprised both by Chevy's new electric don't-call-it-a-hybrid vehicle and the lack of anyone explaining why the following setup is a very good idea for carmakers: The second group [of which the Chevy Volt is one] comprises vehicles that have no ICE [internal combustion engine] mechanically connected to the wheels. E-Flex falls into the latter category. Quite simply, all that you need between the engine and the rest of the car in this set-up is a wire from your oversized alternator. No transmission, no separate driveshaft, nothing. Getting rid of the ICE to driveshaft connection has to save car makers tons of dough when it comes to creating new vehicles. This really is a pretty neat car, were it affordable. You even plug directly into your wall. No fancy charging station. My biggest fear is pretty irrational, but I still wonder how difficult it'll be to be a shade tree mechanic on these EVs. Rebuilding a carb is one thing; cracking open fancy smancy battery cases is quite another. Still, I've been wondering what I'll be looking back on with wonder when I'm 80, like The Greatest Generation (no bias there) and radio/TV/Internet. I'm beginning to think it's going to be the end of filling stations. In 30 years, we'll be putting weapons-grade plutonium into our tanks from our garages, figuratively speaking, cars won't be louder than large fans, we'll no longer be shifting gears, and we'll be driving from place to place without stopping. Heck, we'll probably perfect wireless recharging by 2037, won't plug a thing to our cars, and will cross-country it without so much as a hint of a pause or CO. The only stops will be for the humans to reload, and when they get tired, well, they'll sleep because they aren't the ones driving. Face it, *that's* a big change, and a bit more likely than us all living in cyberspace. Okay okay -- I wonder how many processors this thing requires, and what they're keeping track of. There're your 0s and 1s for the morning. posted by ruffin at 1/08/2007 02:42:00 AM |
|
| 0 comments | |
| Sunday, January 07, 2007 | |
|
If you have reached this blog due to the spam email I (he said with pain evident in his face) just sent to everyone affiliated in any way with the academic journal, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, my sincere apologies. I'm afraid there's not much academic on this blog, however. It is mostly a collection of random editorials and selfish trivia about Java, Apple, GIS, SQL, Visual Basic, and other exciting programming-related activities, and is something of an appendix/fossil from my past life as a database administrator and customizations programmer. Lesson learned. The amount of RSQ spam coming your way should drop considerably, and should in no way reflect on the new editor (though I do have a few bones to pick with the Manuscript Central interface designers). posted by ruffin at 1/07/2007 10:33:00 PM |
|
| 0 comments | |
| Friday, January 05, 2007 | |
|
Not but a short hour after posting that I don't need to fire up my StarMax short of the ImageWriter, Max reasserts his claim to dominance by holding an Applescript that I couldn't figure out how to rewrite in twenty minutes or less. So out comes Max, and a power cable later the onboard 1 meg o' VRAM is putting out to a spare monitor cable from the KVM switch and I've got my Microsoft Natural keyboard plugged in via Max' PS/2 port (show-off). In an attempt not to lose this again, here is the magic Applescript that I figured out how to write one day, which takes resource forkless files, say Java files, from, say, my Windows 2k box, and turns them into file type TEXT with creator CWIE, aka CodeWarrior. on open dropped_files tell application "Finder" repeat with a_file in dropped_files set file type of a_file to "TEXT" set creator type of a_file to "CWIE" end repeat end tell display dialog "Done" end open posted by ruffin at 1/05/2007 11:09:00 PM |
|
| 0 comments | |
|
I recently eBayed a 300 MHz iBook G3 for a bit under $100 shipped as a "Classic replacement," and the experiment has, so far, gone proverbially swimmingly. The iBook was very clean, has 96 megs of RAM, and somehow I lucked out and seem to have gotten one with a relatively new battery, as it still keeps a six hour charge. Usually my eBayed laptops come with D-E-D dead batteries, and stay that way until I figure they're worth keeping. Battery prices mean that I haven't decided any of my laptops are worth keeping to date. Overall, this is a neat machine. I now understand the allure of a handle and why people would spend insane amounts ($50) to add them to iceBooks. It's a hefty laptop, but feels solid enough, and is easier to carry sans case than any other loose laptop thanks to the handle. Add to that that I had an old Airport card sitting idle, and I've got a neat portable. I might add that I'm purposefully not getting RAM and trying OS X. I used to run X on an iceBook 500 and that was pretty danged slow. Still, a coworker has another iBook 300, and we put 10.2 on it. If you can keep yourself to running Safari and Mail.app, you're in business. Unfortunately I can't resist going whole hog. Most importantly for me, it keeps me (ignoring that I'm posting this with The Clam now) generally on task when I'm writing. There really isn't much you can do with OS 9 compared to the constant distractions of OS X. With the limited memory, clunky memory management, and lack of solid applications for many current day Internet tasks, I tend to do what I mean to in Word 98 productively. Also important for me is that my old Quicktime Pro registration works here, eliminating my need for my StarMax almost completely. My only real complaint is that there's no way to print to my ImageWriter with The Clam. In any event, it's a nice machine for writing, where the 800x600 resolution doesn't bother me. I can even install my Classic games, which is awfully nice now that my OS X machines no longer have Classic installed. Much better than an emulator, The Clam has a pretty good foothold in my weekly computer usage. (But I do wish I'd shell out for more RAM just to do more more quickly in OS 9. There's always something.) posted by ruffin at 1/05/2007 09:47:00 PM |
|
| 0 comments | |
|
All posts can be accessed here: Just the last year o' posts: |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
About Our Author