Paranoia... Will Destroy Ya!

Found this in the review section of a Firefox add-on called "Ghostery". The comment was titled, "You can't get around tracking." It starts off well enough. (All bold-faced emphasis is mine.)

I implement tracking analytics so I can develop more user friendly sites. I have also implemented non-invasive adds in order to keep content free. By blocking my scripts, you are only preventing developers like me from creating a better (and free) experience for users like you. Most tracking data is anonymous anyways. Unless you click a link from an email, no one can tell your personal browsing habits. This plug-in is a security blanket for paranoid "the government is watching" people.

Okay. So far, so good. Logical. Rational. Seems like a person who's concerned that all of this ad-blocking and cookie-blocking, while well intended, may be having bad repercussions. Let's continue.

Just so you know, the government tracks every single page request in the US. There is no browser setting or plug in that can prevent this.

(Sound of a car careening off the cliff...) WTF?!?! Went from "Hey, I just want to make a living" to the fastest Dr Jekyll / Mr Hyde, instant-right-turn-into-the-Twilight-Zone switch I've ever seen. I have Michael Oldfield's seminal work playing in my head right now. Where's my garlic and hot-cross buns? But, hey, he's not satisfied with simply making a right turn off the cliff, he wants to go down in a blazing fireball. Let's read his spectacular finish.

Much the same way to preventing unwanted pregnancy is abstinance... same goes for tracking... you must stop using the internet if you don't want anybody to know what you are doing. Otherwise, watch your back... 'cause we're going to GET YOU!! hahahahahahahah

I didn't realize that the medication could wear off so fast. I'm wondering if there's a straitjacket missing its wearer right now. Regardless, I'm going to be giggling about this one for quite some time, after I install just about every ad-blocking, cookie-cutting add-on I can put in my browser.

It's the Money, Stupid

The BBC reports that the captain of a pirate-hijacked ship has died of wounds suffered when the ship was seized. Near the end of the report, the article adds:

The upsurge in piracy in the region is a consequence of the failure to find a solution to Somalia's political disputes, our correspondent adds.

No, you idiot. It has to do with something your article said earlier. But since you appear to have severe short-term memory failure, let me refresh your memory.

The pirates earlier told reporters they were leaving the ship after being promised a ransom of $3.5m (£2.1m), although there was no government confirmation of this.

Can you say, "Cha-CHING"? The pirates can. That, my friends, is what's driving them.

Any questions?

Need a Calculator for School? Try this!

I was reading through ticalc.org's web site and, especially, the update on the DMCA situation vis a vie TI's threat to sue Brandon Wilson because he dared to crack the encryption key TI uses to lock down the software in its top-o-the-line calculator, the TI-83+. Yup. That's right. It's a whoppin' 100 smackaroos to get you one of those babies. Perfectly understandable that they'd be upset.

Okay. Not really.

I was reading through the comments on their news site concerning this issue when I found this one explanation as to why TI is pissed (er, that means unhappy in this context, in case any one of my UK or Australian / New Zealand colleagues is reading this... doubtful... this web site gets less hits the the Chicago Cubs.) Anyway, here's his explanation:

Their latest reaction is baffling at first, but the reasoning is perfectly obvious if you understand who their customers are. Schools, CollegeBoard, ACT, Kaplan Inc, and other institutes have been hostile toward the whole 3rd-party OS issue for years. Now that calcs are a blank slate for anything we can cook up, TI must show their partners they won't take the situation laying down--even if it's a lost cause. Either way, this will be the stall tactic until new deals are made, or some kind anti-hacking revision rolls out. This line of reasoning may sound alien and incomprehensible from a coder's standpoint, but I witness it on a daily basis in the business world.

So, if this the problem, if schools and colleges are well and truly against 3rd-party operating systems, well, then, I have the cure. The picture says it all.

Any questions?

An Open Letter to Texas Instruments

Dear Dumbshits,

Back in the day, you built a truly wonderful computer. I know because I had one. I also had the expansion box that weighed as much as the USS Missouri. And I still have the 300 baud modem that you built for it. Now, you're left with your IC market and some calculators. Me, I prefer my HP50g, but some of the calculators you make are pretty good. Given that you do not dominate the market in handheld calculators, you'd expect that any news, or "buzz" as the current phrase goes, that generates publicity for your calculator would be a good thing.

I guess you didn't get that memo.

Seems a hacker has managed to crack the encryption key for one of your calculators. And you're pissed about it. Sent him a high-falutin' memo stating, "Stop that!" Threw in some big words and acronyms, including DMCA.

I guess you just. Don't. Get. It.

You have a group of people who are dedicated to tinkering with your calculator. Are they trying to reverse engineer your hardware so that they can make their own? No. Are they selling the software that they have managed to reverse engineer? No. But because you are currently suffering from some cranial-rectal inversion, you're going to be the guy with the truly smelly flatulence who just arrived at the tea party. And instead of saying, "Hey, we've got a lot of people who are looking at our calculators as cool! Let's build up some buzz! Have a conference! Start a contest for looking at some other part of the calculator!", you decide to kill the party just as soon as it starts.

Are you REALLY this stupid?!?! Can't you SEE the possibilities here!?!? So they cracked the encryption key of your vaunted $100 calculator. And somehow you think this is going to impede on your corporate profits. Ya know, it might. But something tells me that, if you saw this as a potential to improve the market share, to increase awareness (People thinking, "TI still makes calculators? Hey, I thought they quit after that TI 2500 Datamath thingee."), to really and truly hype your calculators, you'd be on the right track. Are you following me here? Can you see where I'm going with this?

That's right. Park your lawyers in the closet for a few minutes and figure the possibilities. Lots of buzz, lots of hype, lots of publicity, lots of free advertising. For YOUR calculator. You know, the one you want to sell more of? Hellooooooo?!?! And all you have to do is to say, "Ya know, perhaps we should concentrate on the hardware and not so much on the software. Perhaps we can even make it open source. If we do that, there's this whole community of open source people out there. Perhaps they'll want to buy our hardware. And by default we can control that." (knock-knock. Anyone home?)

Please. Consider what I'm saying. You can either stay on this same road. Or you can really and truly make a comeback in the calculator department by embracing a different mindset. The choice is yours.

Back in Business

After reformatting the Linux partition and starting from scratch, my system is now up to Ubuntu version 9.10. Yes, it's pretty nice. The interface is different, but I'm not certain that alone made it worth it. I do know that the Ubuntu team has stated that there were many changes that made the upgrade worthwhile. I'll take them at their word. I've discovered that some things that didn't work before do now. For example, I have an old webcam. It didn't work at all before, but does now. Kind of. Another thing is that this new version is recognizing my other partitions without me prompting them. I'm now in the process of reloading my data and putting back the various programs that I need. Skype is back (which was one thing I really needed) and so is Octave. I'm hoping to get the latest version of Freemat (version 4.0) installed as well. I've got Thunderbird back, and all of my e-mail is back in its proper place. All in all, the upgrade was disastrous, but the OS, once installed properly, is working fine.

The one thing I'm doing better this time than with the original install is keeping careful notes of what is getting installed and how I installed it. Some of those notes will be written up in upcoming articles.

A Big Setback

Today, I received a notice from Ubuntu that a major upgrade was ready. Specifically, the system was ready to upgrade from version 9.04 (called "Jaunty Jackalope") to version 9.10 (called "Karmic Koala"). Being the trusting type, I hit the "Upgrade" button. As the upgrade progressed, I received a few errors, namely that "OpenOffice" was running. I managed to kill the processes, though for some reason it kept coming back. Anyway, there wasn't anything that said, "This is a MAJOR error! ABORT! ABORT! ABORT!" Two hours later, it finished. I restarted the computer and thought, "Hey! Looks great!" Wanted to go on about my business. Just before the upgrade finished, I was listening to some music. So I wanted to continue listening.

Only problem is my sound wasn't working. And still isn't working. Also, every time I reboot my computer, the icons on my desktop all shift back to the left side of the screen. (I have certain ones that I explicitly put on the right side of the screen.) And sometimes Skype doesn't start up. And also when I reboot or shutdown, I get a pop-up window that says an "unknown" process is still running.

Suffice to say, I'm far less than thrilled. I went to the Ubuntu forums and found someone else with a similar problem on the sound. He managed to get his problem resolved. I didn't. That was topped by someone called "lovinglinux" who came on and told me tersely that I was on the wrong thread. It was a kubuntu thread, and I was ubuntu. Despite the fact that the original creator of the thread was actually helping me. At the time, I was thinking, "Well, bite me, "lovinglinux", you arrogant, kubuntu prick!" I've calmed down since then and realized he was trying to save me from possibly getting bad information. But as mad as I was at the time, he was "wrong thing to say at the wrong time".

I've scoured the internet (both Ubuntu forums and non-Ubuntu ones) hoping, praying to find a fix. Somewhere. Somehow. And I've come up empty. Seems that a LOT of people are having similar issues. I'm now backing up all of my data on Ubuntu because. I. Am. Going. To. Have. To. Start. Over.

No, waiting is not an option. I need sound NOW. I need Skype to work reliably NOW. I need the sound because I use it with Skype. And I need both of them NOW. So, as I'm typing this, I have data backup in progress. Once it's finished, I'm going to start over with a fresh install, which seems to work better for most people. Still, this will be 6+ hours out of my life, not to mention the future time to re-install much of the software I've come to rely on. Freemat & Octave. Google Earth. Wireshark. Wine. Crossloop on Wine. Paint Shop Pro on Wine. And the list goes on. And this is time that I could have been spending doing real work.

Does this mean I'm dissuaded from Linux? Hardly. But if you're considering making the switch, wait a few more weeks.

Loading Digital Images under Ubuntu Linux

After loading Ubuntu Linux (ver 9.04, aka Jaunty Jackalope), one of the things on my list that I needed was the ability to download images from my two digital cameras. One was an older Sony Mavica CD-R camera. The other was a newer Canon Powershot SD870. Under WinXP, it was pretty much plug-n-play.

The good news was that it was just that easy with Ubuntu. I literally plugged them into the USB cord I keep on the desktop for just such a purpose, turned on the camera, and voila! I'm downloading pictures. After plugging in the camera and turning it on, a new folder popped up on the desktop. It was as if I'd plugged the digital storage card (for the Canon) or CD (for the Sony) into the computer. All I had to do was to select the pictures I wanted to copy then paste them into the folder on the computer where I wanted them to go. Now, it didn't pop up a "wizard" of any kind. So you have to know how to do basic copy-&-paste operations.

The even better part was that downloading them from either device seems to be as fast, and probably faster, than under Windows.

I consider this one less thing off of the list before Windows can go "bye-bye" for good.

So It Begins

These just arrived from Amazon. I have a bit of reading to do. Time to get started.

The Realization

Many have said it, but it's rare when I agree. I'm an idiot. In one of my previous posts ranting about Linux, I was comparing it to Windows. I knew (and still know) Windows fairly well. The problem was that I was upset with Linux, of which I knew (and know) little, against something I knew well. Not a fair comparison.
Now that I have Linux to play (and learn) from, I've found that Linux has much more to offer than Windows. One of the best things is transparency. Linux does not try to hide anything. On the contrary, it gives you the opportunity to see everything. By way of analogy, imagine buying a car and having the hood welded shut. That's Windows. Linux is just the opposite. It not only has a transparent hood, the hood can be opened and the different parts examined to whatever degree you like. A further analogy is what is provided on the dashboard. A Windows dashboard would have the basics (speedometer, perhaps a fuel gauge) whereas a Linux dashboard would look like that of a 747. Gauges, dials, switches and levers everywhere.
So, those are my realizations. Now that I have my head out of my... motherboard, I can see that Linux will allow me far greater opportunities than Windows ever will.

The Beginning of the End

I realized that, in a previous post, I'd ranted about I'd ranted about problems I was having with Linux. Specifically, I was using a version of Linux called Ubuntu. I'd tried Ubuntu and found it wanting.
Not too long ago, I started a new job that required me to having a much deeper understanding of programming. Frankly, that was one thing I remembered that Linux did real well. Perl, C, C++, you name it. Long story short, I wound up loading Linux onto a hand-me-down computer. After playing with the latest version of Ubuntu (9.04, the Jaunty Jackalope), I was pleasantly surprised. It did much of what I needed it to do right out of the box. Therefore, I've decided to make this permanent. I'm not going to make the leap completely. I've found that I still need Windows because there are still some things only it can do. But the transition has begun.
I plan on keeping a running log of my transition to Linux (and away from Windows) on this blog. Future posts will go through the various steps (loading Linux and adding functionality).