Patrick’s Rants

A coworker pointed out a surplus type sale that the city was conducting yesterday. The sale (I just noticed) took place just two streets from the bus barn. The listed items were Panasonic Toughbooks, PCs, computer monitors, etc. Interestingly, the sale is on a draw system where you get a ticket and get to buy something if your ticket gets drawn. The most interesting part is the description of the “used computer sets”

(30) used computer sets (monitor/keyboard/mouse) with MS Windows 2000 Professional & Open Office Suite…

With Open Office… wonder if they mean Open Office.org Now that would be cool if the city were using free alternatives to MS Office. Unfortunately, anyone who bought any of these machines would be required to remove the Operating System due to MS’ obnoxious “licensing”.

Open-source software rated: Ten alternatives you need

The Associated Press has a story on the Bull Shit - er Business Software - Alliance and its bullying tactics titled, Software Group Targets Small Business. This again points out that the rules are terribly broken in favor of software companies. If you buy a music CD (another topic) then you own that music CD. You can sell it, give it away or burn it in protest when Garth Brooks decides to stop making CDs because they can be *gasp* sold to someone else in a second hand store - and poor Garth’s kids will have to go without dinner.

Here’s where it gets interesting. If you buy a box set of Microsoft’s latest operating system, XP (because who would want to buy that abomination Vista?) and install it on a computer that you have sitting around (another reason to not buy Vista - that thing’s a hog on computers older than three months) and then you forget about it. If that computer happens to be in a business setting you are at risk of being “audited” by the BS squad. They come in, look at your Certificate of Authenticity labels that you dutifully put on the outside of the computer case. They look at your hologram protected Microsoft CD and your faded Best Buy receipt and decide that you “stole” the software from Microsoft and now you have to pay up big. You were legal but your receipt faded so you couldn’t prove that you didn’t heist a case of CDs or that you didn’t buy the CD from someone else who stole it. So you must have broken the law, or someone else did in the process. There’s a name for people like you Captain Sparrow and that’s pirate. Don’t bother with innocent until proven guilty, this is the BS squad you’re dealing with. I did find it interesting that the money extorted by the BSA does not go to the companies that are allegedly wronged by your criminal activities, such as Microsoft in this case, it goes back into the BS squad’s budget. Like a rouge regime, the money is used to pay for more goons to extort more money.

I have a thought about keeping track of what you legally installed (and just who those disks belong to once you buy them in the store). How about use the unique serial number on the CD to track ownership? I mean, if you can only install software on one machine then the serial number issued by the company that produces the software should suffice right? How about the Certificate of Authenticity? That tells you that the software you are buying is genuine. It doesn’t tell the goon squad, but maybe it should. The other option is to never use software that comes from BS members. It’s a little tough in some cases, but it can be done. If you haven’t read them here are some stories of people who have jettisoned Microsoft from the pirate ship:
City of Largo Linux success
and a follow-up
Ernie Ball 2002 story
Ernie Ball, 2003 story
And there are plenty more… so back off goon squad. Treat your customers with respect instead of a small country that you can invade and pillage. Oh wait, you don’t know how to do that.

In an interesting, albeit extreme, view of copyright law, John Tehranian writes INFRINGEMENT NATION: COPYRIGHT REFORM AND THE LAW/NORM GAP. In the article he describes the typical day of mythical “John” who manages to rack up millions of dollars in potential penalties on a daily basis just by doing the little things that many of us do. While I don’t have a problem with anything that I write be copyrighted as soon as it’s in a “tangible form” (such as this blog) I do have a problem with copyright lasting for well over a hundred years. Does anyone really care enough about my opinions that they should be protected until I have great great grandchildren? And at that point, shouldn’t someone have just removed this blather from the web?

In one of those moments when you just want to stick the Q-Tip all the way in the canal and jab repeatedly I overhead some of Rush Limbaugh today. Apparently there is a poll out today that has Rudy ahead of Hilary. Whether that is true or not, it’s the lard ass’s response to the poll - squealing in delight like one of his buddies on his “boy’s Viagra weekend” shoved a fudge sicle up his pasty collagen filled ass - that makes me want to puke. I can’t listen to that big fat idiot for more than 5 minutes…

Despite all of Microsoft’s ‘hard work’ to bring Vista to the masses, it is an utter failure. If they didn’t have that (illegally maintained) monopoly, they probably wouldn’t have sold a single copy of this dog of an operating system. Apple has several great commercials poking fun at the woolly mammoth of operating systems. The first, released around the time Vista first came out, talked about the new ’security’ dialog boxes. Windows pops up numerous dialog boxes asking the user to “Allow or Deny” many different activities. Following that was the upgrade commercial with the PC getting ready for major surgery to be usable for Vista.

Now there are the spokesperson commercials.

PC: People have been choosing to downgrade to XP.
Spokesperson: By “downgrade”, we mean that users are choosing to “upgrade” to an older more familiar experience.

In another one, the PC is giving a speech

PC: My fellow Americans, if Vista doesn’t support your printer, I say buy a new printer!

and then as an aside he tells the ‘Mac’ that he downgraded to XP three weeks earlier.

At first, Microsoft attempted to force their users to upgrade to Vista but terminating sales and support of XP, but by June a glimmer of hope began to shine, as XP (slightly)easier to get. That doesn’t mean they weren’t still pushing Vista as hard as possible, they just quietly continued to offer XP. It has even been suggested that Microsoft should abandon Vista, if only to save itself.

Finally, due to heavy demand Microsoft is forced to keep offering XP.

Of course they were still fighting against offering a “better” alternative going head to head with a Dutch consumer group in that asked for free XP CDs. An interesting twist to Vista’s security - if it can be called interesting - is that new hardware deactivates Vista. Actually, it’s not just new hardware, but driver upgrades as well - keep the same hardware and it can still deactivate on you.

So Vista Sales are still lackluster, so much so that companies may just skip Vista.

And finally, another survey highlights business concern about migration

What can we draw from all of this? Microsoft needs to stop treating its customers like thieves, disabling the operating system because someone adds a printer.

I just got an email regarding my Capital One money market account. Four people have signed up and gotten their $25 deposits. I get $15 for each of you . Now, there is still time to get just one more. The referral codes are posted here.
November 30, is the deadline. That’s some of the easiest money I’ve made

If you are in the market for a new job, the Sedona Public Library is looking for a replacement for their Information Technology Manager. What I know of the setup is that it’s a very interesting layout as far as technology goes with an emphasis on what I can only call ‘extreme redundancy’

ITM Job description(pdf)

Anyone interested should contact the Library Director:

David Keeber, MLS
Library Director
Sedona Public Library
3250 White Bear Road
Sedona, AZ 86336
928.282.7714
928.282.5789 FAX
add the @ below:
director sedonalibrary.org

I’m still fighting with that Access database at work. I recently made a copy of our live database to a new database (for next year, kind of like a rollover) I wanted to delete records in a table and start over at ‘1′. The autoincrement field keeps going from where I left off, somewhere around 3800. Using Microsoft’s built in help had me chasing my tail, telling me to create a new table, run a query, delete the table. In short a mess. I did find, however that all one has to do is compact the database after removing the records and autoincrement is reset to ‘1′. Why the hell does MS describe the most convoluted way to do everything?

Is there anyone out there who is an Assurer for the CACert Web of Trust? I’d really like to get some assurance points so I can load certificates on this machine, and chatting about geek stuff over coffee or a beer isn’t out of the question either