TECHNOLOGY: The cloud isn’t as good as a newspaper

Thursday, December 9, 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/08/editorial-wikileaks-julian-assange

WikiLeaks: The man who kicked the hornet’s nest

As the disclosures continue, a number of questions about the way the world has changed are becoming more clearly framed

* Editorial
* The Guardian, Wednesday 8 December 2010

*** begin quote ***

The academic Clay Shirky has blogged persuasively this week that the US government should openly use the law against WikiLeaks and others rather than muscle. “Whatever restrictions we eventually end up enacting, we need to keep Wikileaks alive today, while we work through the process democracies always go through to react to change. If it’s OK for a democracy to just decide to run someone off the internet for doing something they wouldn’t prosecute a newspaper for doing, the idea of an internet that further democratizes the public sphere will have taken a mortal blow.” We agree.

*** end quote ***

Several interesting points:

* The inet is not as resilient as expected. It’s supposed to route arond failures, but it’s politcially “controlled”.

* The DNS infrastructure is a single point of failure with respect to that political control.

* With this spur the creation and deployment of a peer to peer bittorrent style dns? Will everyone discard DNS in favor of “phone numbers” like 1.2.3.4? People remember 10 digit phone numbers when they need to.

* Will WIKILEAKS create a new genre of “tabloid journalism”?

* “We, The Sheeple” have gotten a real wake up call into their Gooferment and their politicians. Will it change anything?

 

 

######

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

HARDWARE: Added a POGOPLUG to my garage “datacenter”

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

http://download.pogoplug.com/meet/

*** begin quote ***

The Pogoplug is the perfect accessory to your connected life. Imagine accessing all your files and media at home from any laptop or desktop computer, anywhere in the world, or sharing this content with friends and family without having to upload. There’s even an iPhone application so you can always “phone home” to get your files!

*** end quote ***

It installed quickly and easily.

It works as advertised.

(Doesn’t seem to like when the platform hibernates?)

Have to figure out how to sync various machines on the home network. No immediately apparent.

RECOMMENDED!

######

Leave a Comment » | HARDWARE | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

OPERATINGSYSTEM: Cloud-centric OS? The ultimate Thin Client?

Monday, December 6, 2010

http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/11/chrome-os-poll.php

Poll: Do You Want to Use Chrome OS?

By Klint Finley / November 30, 2010 11:00 AM

*** begin quote ***

We recently covered five cloud-centric OSes available today. Some of them have been around for years, and can run on old desktop computers. None of them has yet to catch fire in the enterprise or anywhere else – not even Meego, which is sponsored by Intel and Nokia. It seems that people are more excited about Android than Chrome OS.

Is Chrome OS, or one of the alternatives, something YOU would want to use?

*** end quote ***

The question, with “cloud computing”, with “cloud operating systems”, or even with Windoze with it’s Update “Service” that can change the underlying OS without User or Administrator permission, is “change control”.

How do I know that it works and works in a functionally identical manner when I can’t have “change control”?

# # # # #

Leave a Comment » | OPERATING SYSTEM | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

SOFTWARE: ECTO, the blog posting software, developed a bug

Saturday, December 4, 2010

ECTO, the blog posting software, developed a bug … …

… … it lost the left column of the main screen that allows you to select the blog you want to post to. Nothing on the support site and I know they take days to reply. So, I tool a change and reinstalled.

Problem solved.

The MACBOOKAIR has to go in again. (Monday?)

# # # # # posted 2010-12-04 19:37

Leave a Comment » | SOFTWARE | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

MACBOOKAIR: So much for Apple’s vaunted service

Saturday, November 27, 2010

201011271138.jpg

Case close. Broken hardware (maybe? probably?) But “closed” from their POV. Not mine.

Now you see why it’s “NOTRECOMMENDED”?

Like DELL, I think they are living of reputation.

# # # # # posted 2010-11-27 11:38

Leave a Comment » | MACBOOKAIR | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

MACBOOKAIR: Hardware problem. (Remember Apple Computers are on my “Not Recommended” list)

Friday, November 26, 2010

“No output sound devices defined” (No input either.)

Conclusion after ½ on the phone is it’s a hardware problem.

NOO, really!

Argh!

They want me to leave the machine for three days for them to diag, order parts, and repair.

You gotta be kidding me.

Or, I can send it in and this is with the extended warranty.

Argh!

This is for a machine that won’t sync. (They never figured that one out either.)

Hence my time machine is a giant router in disguise. That’s all it is good for.

Argh!

BAck when I first got the machine and wasn’t totally “on” it, the screen took a week to replace.

Cloud computing, with all it’s version control issues, is looking better and better.

Argh!

# # # # # posted 2010-11-26 15:34

2 Comments | MACBOOKAIR | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

IPAD: Some irritations with the IPAD

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Major irritations with the way applications are handled on the IPAD. Can’t nuke stuff without going to iTunes. Some applications show up in the “settings”, but most do not. (Why is that?) After upgrading the os, I find I have a new piece of “crapware” added in. Said piece of software has a dumb “sequential” password validation against rules that are not known in advance.

# # # # #

Leave a Comment » | IPAD | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

UBUNTU: Playing with U 10.10 on Luggable

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Running it from the “try it option” off a CD I just burned.

(Old hardware is fun! Didn’t remember how loud or how heavy this “notebook” was. There’s a reason I called it “luggable”. Reminds me of the old Kaypro suitcase.)

First try it just hung. Second reboot it just worked.

Had to configure the wifi but it appears to work nicely. (No, refusal to connect as under U8.

Just starting to play.

# # # # # posted 2010-11-24 06:51

Leave a Comment » | UBUNTU | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

IPAD: the US-focused Daily

Monday, November 22, 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/nov/21/ipad-newspaper-steve-jobs-rupert-murdoch

iPad ‘newspaper’ created by Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch
Apple and News Corp reportedly set to launch joint iPad news publication exclusively via download

*** begin quote ***

Rupert Murdoch, head of the media giant News Corp, and Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, are preparing to unveil a new digital “newspaper” called the Daily at the end of this month, according to reports in the US media.

*** and ***

With no printing or distribution costs, the US-focused Daily will cost 99 cents (62p) a week.

*** end quote ***

Unless it has the UK Sun’s Page 3 ladies, I don’t see the 50$/year working.

The FLIP application already on the IPAD for free has a better shot.

All these “media moguls” have done is to get “We, The Sheeple” to buy the reader and transfer all the costs to us from them.

The IPAD is a “game changer” but it’s not a “credit card machine” like a toll booth collector. When I first saw it, I thought it was nothing more than a heavy device to sell me stuff. That’s the way these guys are thinking of it. It’s really a tool that puts the cloud at your finger tips.

Just rearranging those proverbial deck chairs isn’t going to do it.

Micro-payments will.

If each issue cost a tenth of a penny, then maybe you have a chance. And, charge me when I buy it. Subscriptions, “applications” that have to be downloaded to do nothing more than cost your wealth, and “copy protection” (i.e., Digital RIghts Management) in general is not how dikw (i.e., data, information, knowledge, wisdom) is consumed on the inet.

(Consumed is a bad word. It’s not “eaten”. It is digested, shared, and amplified. Absorbed might be better.)

This idea is a dud! The continued death throws of the old print media.

# # # # #

Leave a Comment » | IPAD | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

IPAD: Upgrade to new OS

Monday, November 22, 2010

Not immediately apparent how to do it.

Takes a while. Half hour? And, a few syncs.

Not apparent at all how to print from ipad.

Not sure if the upgrade does anything at all for anything.

# # # # #

Leave a Comment » | IPAD | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »