It's A Game of Numbers

The World Series just ended this last weekend. The team with the lowest number of wins in the regular season, Won IT All. Baseball, they say is a game of Numbers. Lately, my digital centric world has been telling me the same thing. So let me throw a few Numbers at you.

Many, many years ago, Bill Gates tried to sell us on an idea that seemed blatantly unrealistic at the time.

A (meaning 1), computer in every home.

He was wrong, and by the way, he's retiring soon.

I won't mention Vista.

But you can't keep missing the ball and keep playing.

Seems, nowadays, most homes have two and more computers. There are a least 10 in my house, 5 being used most of the time. And only 3 with Windows. The rest are Linux boxes, mainly FC (Fedora Core).

I am teasing Bill, after all the Cell-phone pundits made the same mistake in the 1990's. They said it would take 10 years for cell phone to reach x-million units. It happened in 3 years.

However, the restrictive licensing agreements that Bill began ranting about in the early computer clubs, is still in force, should suggest making his headstone read: EULA, Rest In Peace.

Germany and Finland aren't buying it. Britain and the US Should Be Next.

I have an Idea.

Why don't we have the OS (say Knoppix Linux), online. The Network IS the computer, with no licensing restrictions on copies and use.

Think about it.

Google, are you listening?

The Game isn't Over.

Starbuck's, Ipods and Marketing

Do we really need a shopping channel that is really a 24/7 commercial?

Do we really need a coffee that doesn't "taste" like coffee?

Do we really need a portable music player that holds our favorite "15,000" songs?

What has happened to our collective sense of judgment?

The answer is really pretty simple: Marketing.

We've been sold a "bill of goods". And the Marketing Prophets have said:

"Follow Me, and we can go to the Promises Land, sipping a frappachino and singing to Rap/Hip-Hop/Pop Trash."

Welcome to Huckster Nation, the New America. If we stop and think about it, we win.

Don't BUY the Hype. This is a Full-SPIN cycle zone.

Sizzle instead of steak.


Okay, the coffee in the Next Booth DOES smell better. So what?

Is it worth the BIG $5.00 with a dollop of "internet access", with a surcharge, of course.

Home computers sell for under $500 dollars. Do we really need a $500 dollar plus "music player", or a $400 dollar plus, "super-razor thin" Cell phone?

"Well yeah, " the super-kool Apple guy talking to pretty uncool Windows man, "how else would you carry your FAV 5,000 songs (at 99 cents a pop)?"

How else indeed?

Wake up. Smell the coffee.

The Circus Comes To a Town Near YOU

Advance notification of My NEW Web Page:


MEDIACIRCUS2.COM, (hmmm?) I wonder where that came from?

Well it'll be my home for the forseeable future, having outgrown these wonderful Blog Pages.
Too much to Say, too little Time.

Yeah, I picked GoDaddy in respect for My Father.

Still working with the default webpage templates, but even on a Windows Server, my Linux Box FC5 (enterprise), can generate some pretty spiffy content.

Stayed tuned... the glittering elephants are coming into view, and I think I can hear the Band.

A Bad (rajump) Worm in Apple's Video IPODS

Just a matter of percentage points...

Apple revealed Tuesday that a worm that infects Windows users was shipped in a FEW Nano IPODS in September. Not a big deal, because it should only affect about 1% of Windows PC's.(1)

The percentage is interesting because 2% is the number given in June (this year), of Apple's share of the PC Market (down from 2.2%). (2)

Anyone who follows the industry knows that Apple's main Cash COW is the IPODS (I've call them the Tail that WAGS the Dog: Apple, a few times).

A goodly portion of IPODS are bought by WINDOWS PC USERS (gasp). How does Apple respond to this situation?

Exactly the same as the PC-Apple Ads.

Aloof and Too Cool to Care.

This is part of Apple's statement about the incident (quoted from Apple Matter's Blog:)(3)

Apple’s response was terrible. They said:

As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses.....

To Me, that leaves a rotten spot on what was a shiny white Apple.


(1)security focus announcement.
(2)market share.
(3)Apple Matters Blog.

Getting Enlightenment: The Hard Way

Why Yum and Repositories are So Important

One of the main joys of Linux is being able to try out new programs.
Taste, if you will, the latest cutting edge stuff. But the chief bane of this newness is having to walk through the mine-fields known as Dependency Hell.

A recent linux magazine article touted the wonders of Enlightenment 17. Not a Desktop enviromment, but a new breed of file-manager and Desktop Shell.

Sounded good. I decided to try it out. The CVS download was pretty straight forward and downloaded a ton of files in various subdirectories. So far, so good.

Before installing the program, the magazine said, you should compile the Libraries it would need in a particular order. There were 14 plus Libs. Each one in its own directory and each one had an autogen.sh file. Simple enough.

All went well until the 11th library. It was missing something, and would not configure. 3 stinking libraries shy of Enlightenment.

That is why I find YUM and Apt-Get and similar rpm installers so powerful and necessary to the advancement of Linux. It HAS to be that simple.

It was the reason I switched from Open Suse 10.1 to Fedora Core 5, and though still not perfect, I'm staying there until things improve at SUSE.

Wingman out.