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And my favorite just because it’s so balantant advertising:

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There’s links galore in all these messages, but I stripped them out for all of our saftey. So, this is it. I’m done. I’m tired of coming back to my computer and having a dozen random messages and just as many requests to allow people to add me as their buddy. As a note to all the people that I regularly chat with on ICQ (Mike: you’re the only one, actually) catch me from now on on AIM or Yahoo! or MSN, and I might even start signing in to Google Talk also.

But not until today was I unable to do maintenance on some of our internet equipment because of a nippy horse. Until today. Click on the photo for a larger version.

sips --setProperty format jpeg --setProperty formatOptions normal bluetooth_broke.tiff --out bluetooth_broke.jpg

There’s a line break in there just so that it displays correctly here… You can convert a dozen different filetypes, play with it for a while to figure it all out.

At one point will people stop calling them MP3 players and start calling them “Music Players” or “Digital Music Players” or something else? Anything at all? Most players manufacturers don’t even want you to use MP3s, they want to be used with AAC or WMA. Of course I realize that MP3 is the catchy term (for some reason) that the public is familiar with, but really when will it stop? The tech community really needs to thing of a new catchy term that can be used for all of them that isn’t tied to a file type that everyone still supports but no one wants you to use.

Steve Jobs is doing and suing everyone and everything he can to protect the term “iPod” from this fate, so thats out. Lets call them…ok, I don’t know what to call them. But some marketing firm needs to get on this; maybe that same team that made up “WiFi”. That term means exactly dick and the public eats it up. We need something like that for MP3 Players.

Of course, none of this will help with the annoyance for this holiday season, but next year it might.

Suggestions? Anyone?

To make a long story short (and less boring) I finally ran accross something that sovled my problem. Actually there were two problems. In Fedora 4 there is an issue with Samba where the permissions on the /etc/samba/smbpasswd file can not be read. It looksl like the permissions are fine, but the server can’t read that file, and thus can’t find the user information. Problem one solved by touching a file in the root directory (Sorry, I’ll find the exact file when I get back home.) Problem 2 is that, unbeknownst to me, in Fedora 4 directs samba traffic by default through the security module SELinux. So I either had to mark everyfile I wished to share via samba or I could just turn the selinux intergration with Samba off with a command (That I will share when I get home.)

Finally it works…and I only wasted 2 – 3 hours total.

The company’s exploration of ad-supported software extends even to Windows, its most important product. An ad-supported version of the operating system could make some sense, the Microsoft researchers argue in their Thinkweek piece, noting that the product reportedly earns $9 per year per user.

“It seems possible that we could match that revenue via ads, but there are difficult UI (user interface) issues to solve, since the OS does not have a natural way to display ads that does not annoy users,” the Microsoft workers said in the paper. One suggestion is a low-end version of the operating system that comes bundled with other ad-supported programs, such as Works, Outlook Express and Windows Media Player. However, the writers point out that “it’s not clear how to prevent these elements from being replaced.”

Good point. How long would it take for the “abOS” (short for Ad Based Operating System, its my term remember it if this comes to fruition.) to be hacked allowing people to use it for free? Of course Microsoft already has to deal with this problem today with their regular versions of Windows. Most likely the users that have the means to hack it would not be the same users the abOS would be targeted at, but still other issues remain. Would any one really want it if you can run to Linux, which is ad and cost free to begin with? Would the cost of a regular retail install of Windows go up to cover the gamble of the ad version? Or could this be a genius stroke and everyone would have this on their computers (why not have a copy of Windows, just in case, if its free?) allowing Microsoft to just rake in advertising cash. And lastly…what if Microsoft Windows won’t be the first product to create/enter this market? Maybe the infamous GoogleOS?

Whether they would be first to market or not, the only OS that matters in the possible future Ad-Based OS market would be Windows. Sure Google could throw something out there and stick a “Beta” tag to it and be first, but most likely it would be some variant of *nix, and thats not exactly special. Those that cared about a GoogleOS most likely already have an *nix machine somewhere and after the initial “Holy crap Google did something new!” wave, people would see nothing is new and it would die. Of course Google could do something new a cool with an Ad Based OS, but when does Google ever do anything truly original? Microsoft would be the one and only player that could have a chance to pull this off because they are the OS that 90% of the world runs, and people that live in a Window-less home would probably take a free copy to have around or dual-boot on a machine so that in the one instance they needed it, it would be there, ads or not. Usually these people pirate Windows, but if they are given a free and legal option, I’m sure most would take it. Also, don’t forget about the business market, you may be using an Ad-based Windows no matter what if your cheap employer decides to save a few bucks.

Though I doubt this will happen anytime soon, or at all, this potential market truly is Microsoft’s to take a chance on or let it die on the vine. Now the Ad-Based (and possibly web-based) office software, thats another story entirely.

“When I first heard about it, it seemed pretty outrageous,” said Joe Posewick, president of EN Engineering, an engineering firm that helps natural gas companies build distribution facilities. “But the more we talked to Nethercomm and other experts in the industry, the more we realized that it could be a viable technology that could revolutionize the natural-gas industry.

“Of course, we have to see if it really works,” Posewick added. “There’s been no proof of concept yet.”

They say that pumping the wireless signal through the lines in the ground will keep it from being interfered with by other, more powerful, signals that are all around, a major issue with high-speed wireless. Here are some more made up numbers:

Delivering broadband through gas pipes could be much cheaper than technology available today, according to a recent study by West Technology Research Solutions. The analyst firm estimates it would cost a phone company about $500 per customer to deploy broadband in gas pipes. Deploying DSL over its existing copper infrastructure costs about $1,000 per customer. Fiber to the home is even more expensive, costing about $2,000 per customer.
…3.9 million households will subscribe to broadband services delivered through gas pipes by 2008. And by 2010, he predicts that number will grow to 18.6 million subscribers.

Are these guys high?! These numbers are complete shit because they don’t even know if it will work. They don’t even have a freaking prototype yet! Show me something first, show me wireless internet traveling through a straight 12 ft piece of pipe. Show me something before you tell me how cheap it will be and that I’ll have in my house in 2 years. If Cheech and Chong were into computers, these are the types of conversations they would have. I’m not saying it won’t ever happen…but there sure is a lot of talk about some technology that hasn’t gotten past the “Dude, you know what would be sweet?” stage.

Link: CNet | Gas pipe broadband?

So how do we get that to happen? That I don’t know. Apple does this when you first install Tiger or get a new Mac, they play that little “welcome” video. So I did a little digging. I found where the movie is stored that plays on initial setup, and I found out that deleting a certain XML file will cause the system to go through the setup again…but thats as far as I’ve gotten.

Does anyone have more suggestions on how to get this hack done? Does anyone really even care if this hack gets done?

The point of this ramble-in-progress is that with the 33 different podcasts that I subscribe to, iTunes starts to break down a bit. iTunes will pull the newest RSS feed from all the podcasts all at once. This is not too bad since it’s just text that is being transfered. But then it tries to download every single new episode also all at once – 10 or 15 or more large mp3′s all fighting for bandwidth.

I’ve found that because of this a good number of episodes just die in downloading and you end up with 5 minutes of a 30 minute show. One of my CNET BuzzCasts was 9 seconds long.

There is no ‘reload podcast’ button.

If iTunes choked your internet connection and botched a download your S.O.L. You can’t reset the feed to redownload an episode. You may be able to unsubscribe and then resubscribe and get a new feed but that is a pain in the ass and I’ve not tried it (and won’t).

Please iTunes, do two things for me in your next version:
1) Download just one mp3 at a time.
2) Give me the option to redownload a podcast that got botched in transfer.

Love & Thanks, Dan.

In my current home networking setup, I have: 1 iBook, 1 Windows XP machine, 1 Linux server. When I get my shiny new iMac, my plan was to bump the XP machine to another (faster) Linux server, and move my media files off the older computer to the faster Linux server and then use the older Linux server as a web / asterisk / whatever server. After the initial euphoria of the thought of living in a Windows free house, I got a little worried that I might, at some point need a Windows server. What if I can’t open some a file or a friend’s hard drive? What if I need to run a program that is only on Windows? …etc. Do I really need at least one Windows box or am I just nervous about that annoying yet comfortably easy to use Windows box not being around for the first time in 10 years?

What do you think? If I got with a *nix (fedora and OS X) based world at home (I still have to use Windows at the office), will I be a fool or finally liberating myself? Please, do try to keep the” Windows sux” comments to a minimum, I know it sucks, but the majority of the computing world runs on it, so will I be screwing myself by taking it away?