Will Internet Radio, as we know it, die on the vine?

At least in America that may be the case. A recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board may mean the end of listener supported radio stations like SOMA, Chronix, and Radio Paradise.

Internet based radio stations will now have to pay an additional fee, per listener, on top of the fees they already must pay to royalties performing rights organizations like BMI, ASCAP and SESAC.

Having been in the radio business myself I know that even with advertisers and commercials, most radio stations run on a razor thing budget. A large cut of their revenue goes to pay the royalties. For listener supported radio, that margin is even thinner, with no commercial sponsors to help pay the royalty fees.

The music industry keeps trying to force the old model into the new technology and it's a square peg in a round hole. Certainly there needs to be protection for the artists who's work we enjoy, so that they are properly compensated, but it needs to be balanced in a way that we can actually hear this good music. If it's left up to the current delivery machine of FM radio stations, I fear we will be resigned to listening to the same tired music over and over and over.

If you want your voice to be heard, you can sign the on-line petition, or use THIS LINK to call, write or e-mail (Calling is best) your representative in the US.

You can also read a bit more about the subject in this Wired Article

Do your part to save Internet Radio.

Napster Bad... Beer Goood!!

This one has been around for awhile, but I thought I'd post it here. Remember the old Napster, before they got bought out?

This is a little piece on the RIAA's effort to shut them down.

Champ Chaos Video from Yesteryear

Rex is Da Man - Nice 3d Animation

I had seen this one awhile back, and was watching videos with my daughter, on the net, last night, and it reminded me of this video.

Nice work guys.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/33563/rex/?filters=5

Star Trek vs. Star Wars

I was making the previous post and looking at the picture in the About me section and thought I should make clear my stand on the Star Trek vs. Star Wars.

First I love the Star Wars franchise, great effects, one of the best space movies ever IMO, good on ya, George Lucas. But to be honest, Star Wars is mere eye candy compared to Star Trek. I'm not talking about the new Star Trek, with prissy, Jean Luc, or the manly Captain Janeway, I'm talking about the F* the prime directive, give me some Romulan Ale, and bring on the green girls Captain Kirk.

The special effects are cheesy by todays standards, the costumes are a laugh, but the main point was the story. It was about the interaction of the characters and the choices they made. It was about alot of things, but it was a story of what happens to a group of people who got on a big ship to go out into the universe to "check it out".

I think the newer Star Treks are somewhat formula-ized versions of other television dramas, but the original, that was breaking new television ground, it was innovative and fresh.

So just to be clear, my vote, Star Trek, Original FTW.

You know what to do dog!

-GT

Buying a new computer? Buy Local, F* The Internet

When buying a personal computer the advice I always give people is as follows: "Call around to local computer stores, when you find one that treats you like a customer, buy it there"

I say this for two reasons:

1. They treat you like a customer, meaning they answer your questions and don't make you feel stupid, and if there's a problem, they'll make it right.

2. They are local, so if there's a problem you can put your computer in your car and drive it over to the place you bought it, and ask them to fix it, or for your money back.

I'll also from now on, add this bit of advice; Do a "Sucks Search". Go to Google and type in for example "ibuypower sucks". If there are alot of hits to your search of people that took the time to write about their poor experience, then you probably shouldn't do business with that company.

A case in point. I bought 2 computers for my childen (1 each) for Christmas. The machine I bought for my son worked fine. The machine for my daughter however has not worked since we purchased it for more than a couple of days.

When we got it and plugged in, it ran fine for a couple of days, then the hard drive started to fail. They sent me a new hard drive, I installed it, and it ran fine for another couple of days, then the machine stopped booting. It would start to turn on and the fans would start up, but then the machine would just turn itself off. The company sent me a new power supply, and I installed that, but it did not fix the problem.

I then sent the whole machine back to them for repair. They replaced the motherboard (or so they said) and sent it back to me. It ran fine for two days then started doing the won't boot thing. They received the computer back over 2 weeks ago, and I talked to them yesterday and I was told by someone that they hadn't started work on the machine yet, but they were waiting on a part to come in and should have it in the next couple of days.

At this point I've had enough, 3 months and I haven't had a machine that I paid for work for more than a week straight. So I ask for my money back. First I am told that I am past the 30 day Warranty period and they won't give me my money back. Then after arguing on the phone with a "Manager" for half an hour, he finally agreed to give me my money back, but less a 20% re-stocking fee.

Even thought the machine has not been working for any given 30 day period, and even though they have had the machine for more time in the last 3 months than I have, they refuse to honor their warranty stating that's it's been longer than 30 days since they shipped it.

Now had I done a sucks search on ibuypower before I started this whole nightmare, my daughter would probably have a working computer and I wouldn't be out several hundred dollars or hard earned money, because of a 20% re-stocking fee on something the company never actually delivered.

To make a long story short, when buying a new computer, heed the following advice:

1. Don't under any circumstances buy from ibuypower.com :p
2. Don't buy it on the Internet and have it shipped, if there's a problem, you'll have to ship it back, you could buy on-site repair service, but if they can't fix the problem, you can't take it back to where you bought it and talk to the person you bought it from face to face.
3. Use a local computer dealer for the same reason above. Talk to the person who will put together your machine and if he/she treats you like a customer and answers your questions, even if it costs more up front, you will save money in the long run in time and sanity.
4. When you buy a computer from a local store, make sure they service it on-site, and don't have to ship it back to the manufacturer for repair. This is basically the same as buying it from the Internet with a middle man involved. It gives the seller an excuse to say, "We're not responsible, you'll have to take it up with the manufacturer".
5. Look at the Warranty that comes with the machine. Does the warranty start on date of delivery or date of purchase? If something goes wrong will they use new or "refurbished" parts to fix your machine? Will they give you your money back if you are not satisfied, if so, for how long?
6.Do a "sucks search" on google before you buy. That one would have saved me alot of money and hassle.

I'm sure there is more to add, but that's the basics. Follow this advice, as I should have, and you'll be a happy computer owner.

-GT

Microsoft, Deceptive? Say it aint so! *smirk*

I just read this article titled:

Microsoft Sued Over Deceptive 'Vista-Capable' Sticker

Microsoft, Deceptive? Go figure. When are you people going to wake up.

So here is this company. They screw you around for years, forcing you to spend lot's of time and money to upgrade, patch for virus', recover from system crashes, the list goes on, but instead of looking at an alternative, like a Mac, or Linux, you still give the company your money, you still use their product because you are too F*ing lazy to seek an alternative, then you sue them for doing what they have a long history of doing. Not to mention the fact that they have some of the deepest corporate pockets in the world and an army of lawyers that take on countries on a regular basis.

I just installed a new Server. It does e-mail via the postfix server and courier IMAP, it serves up the family website, and the website for my consulting engagements. It also server as the print and file server for the other computers in the house. It does all of this with a decrepit 350mhz, pentium 2, 256mb of RAM and a 4gb hard disk. If you want the new Vista in the recommended configuration, you'll need 100 times the processing power, 8 times the RAM and twice the hard drive space. This, my friends, is the beauty of Linux. All the taste of Windows, but half the bloat.

Micro$oft vs. Anything Else

You know, I have nothing personal against Bill. As a matter of fact I kind of admire his geek made good story. The software made by his company however is another story.

As a consultant I guess I should like Micro$oft, because any given IT task I have to do, usually takes twice as long (and usually the purchase of additional expensive software) to accomplish as it does under any other operating system. Pick one, Solaris, Mac OS, Any Linux Flavor, HP-UX, AIX, Dec-Ultrix, QNX, to name a few.

What the advent of Windows in the Server world has done is to breed a generation of MCSE's that can regurgitate the requisite points and clicks need to configure a Windows operating system, but they do not understand the underlying concepts of what their network and hardware is trying to do so they build bloated applications and flooded networks. To be fair there are MCSE's out there that know their stuff, but the majority I've run into know about Windows, but ask them an architecture question and they'll start pulling answers out of their arse.

Let's talk about Vista for a moment. They did this to us with Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP and up the line. Each successive operating system has been more bloated than the next. Each upgrade causing the customer to have to buy bigger faster hardware just to equal the performance of their old operating system/hardware combination. In addition to that, the new operating system is 64 bit, but most of the applications and drivers are still 32 bit. Which means you'll have to run those suckers under a 32 bit emulator which will give you yet another performance hit. I just don't get it. Let's see, I'm going to cause myself days of un-told pain and suffering so I can upgrade to something that runs slower and is less stable than what I currently have? Ya right..

The architecture, hmmm... Well I can sum that up with two words, "Protected Memory". All of the other operating systems I mentioned above, Unix and Unix work alikes have something called protected memory. The operating system itself, i.e. the video drivers, disk drivers, passwords, logins, etc are all stored in what's called protected memory. Your applications, like your spreadsheets, web browsers and e-mail programs all run in what's called "User Memory". This is also sometimes referred to as kernel space and user space. The concept here is that while your applications run merrily away, they can only access the core of your system or "Protected Memory" through very well defined API's (Application Programming Interfaces).

In the Windows world everything runs in the same space. In other words, once you're in you're in. This is what makes Windows more prone to virus' than other operating systems that utilize the concept of "Protected Memory". On Windows, Any program you install can access parts of the operating system that it's usually not a good idea for programs to access. Things you run on your user desktop can re-install drivers, write directly to the hard disk and update your system registry where all your important system configuration information is stored. Once you're in to a Windows system it's a fairly simple matter to infect it with something nasty.

In the "Protected Memory" world, once someone gets in, they are in to that application, i.e. a mail server or a web server. The difference here is that just because they have broken in to one application still doesn't mean they can get at your system. Once someone is in to your system they then have to try to break in to protected memory which in a lot of cases just can't be done. "Protected Memory" not only helps protect machines from getting completely compromised by hackers, it also keeps poorly written applications from crashing or locking up your machine.

Let's talk about that time thing. I said up above that it takes twice as long to get things done, and here's why. First, point and click, point and click. A half hour later you've navigated to the places you needed to go to updated your configurations the way you wanted them. In a *nix system there are certainly graphical config programs if pointing and clicking is your thing, but on the back end instead of a cryptic "Registry" where everything is stored in multiple levels in text and hex, there's a directory, with text files (usually /etc) where all your application configuratino is stored. There's usually only one or two files per application and everything is in there, usually with comments telling you what each configuration parameter is for. It makes configuration of systems and applications, nice, simple and less prone to failure.

I've always found, in the IT business, that it is always best to have options. If you have a hammer in your tool box, you can only drive nails. If you have a hammer and a screwdriver in your tool box you can drive screws and nails. The point being is the more tools you have the more problems you can solve. Next time you are out looking for a new server or a new set of desktops think about a Unix or Linux solution. If you have the basic needs of most business', i.e. E-mail, Web, Database, Word Processing, Graphics, then a good Unix or Linux distro may be the ticket. It will cost you less up front, has commercially available support, won't get virus' and will keep people from installing alot of extra chat programs and the like on your nice new desktops or servers.

My current favorites are Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server, although I've only had the server running about a week, setup was text based, which is OK, but it took a bit, being new to the system, to get it how I wanted it configured. It was, however, very easy to get a postfix mail server with spam assassin and a Courier IMAP with SSL running. I've still got to get my Apache and mySQL set up the way I want them. I'll let you know more about how I like it after I've had it running for a bit.

For Video games, well it's just Windows. The same thing that makes Windows suck at being a desktop, is what makes it great for playing a video game. In an operating system there is something called a scheduler that divides up the single or multiple CPU's to work on any given process at any given time. In Windows the scheduler tends to like to dedicate all of your CPU power to just one process at a time for long periods of time. This is why sometimes when you run Windows and start a big print job, all the other applications either lock up or run very slowly. In *nix, the schedulers tend to divide the CPU time up a bit more evenly (although you can adjust certain process to hog all the CPU if you like, it's generally called a "nice" value). In Windows, if you start a heavy duty game, it will dedicate all of your CPU power to a single game process (although multiple CPU's and multiple core CPU's tend to be a bit under-utilized in Windows as compared to most *nix systems).

I could go on about this for days, and I think I will, but for now, I've got to get back to the consulting biz..

Safe Travels,
GT