steven n fettig's Jitterin' Thoughts

vs.
It's funny how easily I can change my mind on a given tech related topic or device. Two things happened in the past three days that made me fall for the Treo 650 all over again (I still really don't like the lack of WiFi and EVDO, but I have other ways around that...): 1) I dropped my PPC-6700 out of my shirt pocket by not paying attention while I was bending over and a fall of about 1 1/2 feet broke the joy-stick/navigation-stick. I didn't realize it until hours later, but found that without that part of the device working, using the PPC-6700 one handed is a joke. So, in preparation for using the Treo 650 again, I pulled out the OQO and went through the pains of setting up Outlook, ActiveSync and Palm Sync so that I could get all data that was on the PPC onto the Treo. Lo and behold, ActiveSync duplicated, tripled, and in some instances, quadrupled my contact list. There is absolutely no reason for this and to be honest it made me so mad I almost simply threw the PPC-6700 in the trash. How in the world can I use all Microsoft-made products (Outlook, ActiveSync and Windows Mobile 5) and get something as simple as my contacts completely mangled? (If there were some way of emphasizing my irritation, I would, but I'm trying to steer clear of expletives on this one.) I understand (don't accept, but I understand) when it happens trying to sync my Treo w/ my Mac using Missing Sync from Mark/Space - but because I am using a product developed by three different vendors. Microsoft had its hands on every aspect of the sync project I was undertaking and it still got mangled. Hence, we end up with 2) my turnaround when it comes to the Treo. It really is simplicity at its finest when melding a phone with an organizer. It is more ergonomic than the PPC-6700, it is easier to navigate than the PPC-6700 and it runs more programs that I find important. Plus, even with its drawbacks, it does a better job for a power user like myself - even with the lack of my hailed EVDO and WiFi. We'll see whether I change my mind again. At this point I'm not promising anything, but I've dropped my Treo countless times from greater heights than 1 1/2 feet and have never had this type of problem.

If I were to talk about purchasing DVD's and ripping the collection so I could watch it on remote TV's in my own home, would I be breaking the law? If I were to go beyond talking about it and do it (i.e. set up a storage system whereby individual computers or custom made devices could access the VIDEO_TS folders), would I be breaking the law? The fact that I can't figure out what I can or can't do with my own DVD collection is more than irritating. I've been reading here and there about other's disdain for DRM - some of whom feel they are forced to violate the law - and sat back in my comfy chair righteously thinking how much of a good boy I'm being by purchasing all my music and video content from legitimate sources, only to realize while trying to make access to my video collection I was running into an issue where I had no idea whether or not what I wanted to do was legal. I relish in my rights to private property and the last thing I think anyone has the right to do is to come on my property or in my house to inspect what I am doing - physically or digitally. Yet, the latest snafus over Sony's Rootkit and ColdPlay's CD insert have made me think twice about these issues. One of the most irritating issues is why I can't share video at home like I do my CD's - i.e. use devices like Sonos or iTunes music sharing. What about video - specifically DVD's - makes it so special. I had originally looked for a commercial device to rip all my DVD's and consoles to play them over the network on a given TV. After much searching, there is no straight-forward way to do this. You always have to (illegally, I think) modify the content of the DVD - i.e. rip it into a single mpeg4 file, etc. - in order to play it on the remote device (say a elgato EyeHome, for example) - at which point the value of the DVD is lost because you no longer have access to chapters or extra features without going through great pains to make them work again.
This is sad. It almost makes me want to go out and simply download the content from P2P networks... If I can't do sensible and legal things with content I spend good money on, then why try doing it legally at all? Worse yet (for the industry), quit using it in the first place.

A guy from IBM stopped by my office yesterday to fix a ridiculous problem with a DS300 (SCSI storage array we got for disk-to-disk backups) - someone set the controller to an IP that we couldn't find and I wasn't allowed to purchase the cable that would have enabled me to save IBM around $300 in warranty support costs. At the time (and as usual), I had everything from my PowerMac G5, PowerBook to a few IBM ThinkPads (and numerous other brands). The biggest difference was not so much the types of systems, but the fact that one group ran OS X and the others Windows. The tech. asked me what I thought of Apple's switch to Intel. Without blinking, I said I loved it. He had a puzzled look on his face and asked, "why?"
I figured at some point in time, I would get the question why I would think moving to Intel would be a good idea. To be honest, at first I was annoyed when the switch to Intel was confirmed. Not because of chip-religion or anything of the sort; I was irritated because I knew the transition would mean that software packages I now relied would have to be recompiled or completely reprogrammed to work on whatever new system I bought. Plus, there was the automatic obsolescence my G5's would end up going through (the most expensive systems in my collection). After the G5's weren't worth the effort of keeping up with OS and software changes, what the hell was I going to do with them? With Intel or AMD based machines, I could easily convert them to OpenBSD for use as a server or Linux (Fedora Core) for use as a MythTV box. My biggest issue was that OpenBSD doesn't have complete support for the G5. This may be for a host of understandable reasons, but it is an irritant if I look at the path I expect my high-end machines to take as I upgrade to something newer. This is exactly why I like the switch. Besides the fact that the question of performance on Intel has yet to be answered (which I think will be as good as the G5 over time - how can it not be?), I no longer have to wonder whether my machine can be put to good use after I retire it from use as my machine at the office or at home. On top of this, I expect to finally see improvements in the PowerBook, er MacBook, line. (Yes, I dislike the name, too, but as long as it remains as sexy as the old line and/or gets better, I could care less what they want to call it.) This was the biggest question in my mind: it was obvious that the G5 wasn't going to be crammed in a PowerBook (various reasons come to mind), so what were they going to do to finally come up with the next line of the PowerBook. I'm not referring to minor improvements. I'm talking of actual improvements in performance and functionality. When I compare the speed of my 1.67Ghz PowerBook to my G5, I laugh. I am sick of laughing at my PowerBook.
So, is the MacBook going to be faster than the current PowerBooks? I have my doubts, performance tests notwithstanding. The problem, my dear Watson, is software. I expect the performance of the MacBook to improve over time and not get worse. Improvements should come only because software will be made to work natively with the x86 architecture and not jump through Rosetta hoops. When I do finally decide to retire my first MacBook, lo and behold, I can actually convert it to something else and give it life as a workhorse instead of a plaything collecting dust. My pleasure of the switch comes from the new longevity my machines will see and nothing else. Otherwise, I was completely happy with the progress and performance improvements of their desktop line. You see, I'm not a programmer, so I wouldn't know where to begin when discussing the good or bad of the PowerPC chip architecture. I'm a user. And this user sees more use out of my machines as they get old and not less. That's worth something to me and hence, I like the switch.

There is only one thing I disdain more than any other programming snafu: kill not being able to kill a rogue process. Friday, in a hurry to get out of the office, I was messing with a USB-to-EIDE converter from Wiebetech, trying to get data from what appears to be a long-gone hard drive back from the dead. I just installed a Fujitsu ScanSnap on my G5 at work and somehow mangled the USB hub so that all of the attached devices went dead. One of them was the ScanSnap. No worries, right? USB is hot-swap and the devices should come back alive when I unplug the hub and re-plug everything. Wrong. For some reason, the resident driver for the ScanSnap hung and I could do nothing to kill the application. I tried forcing quit through the normal routines via the gui (in OS X Tiger). After waiting and clicking and waiting, I finally opened up the terminal, found the process number (ps aux | grep Snap) and ran 'sudo kill pid' again and again and again. It never worked. The process kept hanging. Besides wanting to kick my machine or hit it with a hammer, I was at a loss. How the heck can a process get so stuck that kill won't even kill it? (My guess has to do with shoddy programming.) If I actually had the time, I would have tried to trace the problem, but I didn't and ended up hitting the power switch. The beauty of unix is that you are supposed to be able to cleanly kill processes that won't shut down or are becoming problematic, without affecting the overall system. (The reason I dislike using Windows so much is it is prone to crashing due to a program malfunction than due to something deeper in the system.) My second and last question is how in the world the software engineers came up with the brainstorm that dmesg would only keep track of the last 100 or so system events and no more? What the hell is that? dmesg is one of the most useful utilities that I use to figure out where I went wrong with something - e.g. why the USB-to-EIDE converter wasn't working. If it shows me only the last 100 events and stuff is happening so quickly to the system, what good does it do for troubleshooting.
I guess there are two things I find overly irritating: programs not kill'ing and dmesg being worthless because an engineer decided its output was too long. Too bad a hammer won't solve either problem and too bad OS X sometimes shows its bastardized state of unix-ness.

There has been much ado about Apple's new packaging of products like iLife and when I just received my copy, I had to comment. What the heck took so long? I've never understood the ridiculous wastefulness of the way software has been packaged over the years. We rarely receive any documentation with software anymore, so what use is it packaging it in a textbook sized box? The sad part, however, was the box it came in. It was still your standard 8"x11"x5" box. I guess it is a start, though.
I've tried to complain to companies like CDW (one of my biggest suppliers of tech equipment) about the huge packages that I get for parts like RAM (why is RAM shipped in a shoe-box?), but have had no luck. They state it is because of inventory control. Okay - I understand, but with all of the technology we have these days, aren't there easier ways of controlling whether or not something walks out of your warehouse without being paid for? Or if it is a problem with the shipping companies, isn't there a way to simply say no and tell them that they have to learn to deal with shipping smaller packages without them also walking away?
For all the defending I do of our country and culture, this is one area where we are extremely guilty of unnecessary excess that can easily be changed without changing our habits. Hopefully this will start a small revolution.

I love trackbacks. I hate spam trackbacks. I just deleted every trackback on this site. I'm sorry if yours was one of them, but I didn't have the patience to sift through 2000+ spam trackbacks and find the good ones. Dammit.

After Doc's post of the lame carrier head examination, I felt it finally necessary to lay down a quick quip on my thoughts of a tiered internet. I hope to holy hell that everyone and their mother fights this horseshit of an idea. Yes, I am so pissed at the idea, I'd like to drop a few more expletives off this keyboard, but I won't (click on the above link to get an idea of what I'm referring to). I've been mulling writing about my short experience of owning an ISP (which I've decided I will over at Cogito Ergo Sum) and one of the essays I wish to write is how ridiculous concepts sometimes come out of providers like AT&T (former SBC) or Verizon's mouth. The concept that we will be charged extra to access content on a public network depending on where it is coming from is sheer lunacy. My customers and in turn, I, paid a very precious penny for the bandwidth we were using. It was up to my main upstream provider, Global Crossing, to make sure they had adequate peering and bandwidth, not to mention, that I was paying fair market costs for my connection. As you move up the levels of the internet (customer -> provider -> provider's provider -> backbone), each person has paid for that capacity along the way. There are no free rides. If Verizon is concerned about the fact that they are losing their asses on $15/mo connections, maybe they had better reevaluate the way in which they price out their services. It is not my job as a website owner (or a webhosting company, for that matter) to figure out what you need to charge your customers to give them adequate bandwidth to my site - it is your job.
I really hope this idea dies a short, yet very painful death. If it doesn't, I simply don't see how the average person is going to understand, let alone use, the internet. It makes me want to get back into the business if only to show the idiots who think this is a good idea that money can be made without such nonsense.