How to Find Me

MY BLOGGER BLOGS:

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http://koolhunter2.blogspot.com/ aka koolhunter2 "A View of the latest KOOL stuff"
http://mediacircus2.blogspot.com/ aka Media Circus 2 "What the Tech Media is Doing?"
http://tvjeebees.blogspot.com/ aka TVjeebees "TV or Not TV, that IS the Question..."
http://theletterselo.blogspot.com/ aka Written by ELO "Bonafide writings by ELO"
http://psphardwired.blogspot.com/ aka PSP On Steroids "Hacking (homebrewing) the PSP"
http://vistavectors.blogspot.com/ aka Vista Vectors "Windows Be Wares"
http://mycordiunnot.blogspot.com/ aka mass media course correction "WWW Course Correction"
http://thursdaysave.blogspot.com/ aka thursday we save the world "The famous Tech Chat"
http://elosblog.blogspot.com/ aka dospossos "About Writers and Books of Note..."

http://paintbucketontario.blogspot.com/ aka paint bucket blog "A PB corporate Blog."
http://elosopensources.blogspot.com/ aka Elo's Open Sources "A Open Sources Credo site/"

The Blogs are out and Running....
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I'm also at Twitter and Jaiku. Two simple "where are you at" Apps.
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I wrote about twitter at my blog on www.koolhunter2.blogspot.com, and mentioned the app called: Twittervision for a look see.


My Pics are at Photobucket (not related to Paint Bucket) and the old Web 2.0 app Flickr.

9 million Wii's is heard around the world

Financial Times reports that 9 million Nintendo Wii's have sold as of July 31, surpassing the Microsoft XBOX 360, which was released over a year earlier than the Wii.

This puts the XBOX 360 in second place and the Sony Playstation 3 a distant third in the game console market.

This First Place, is a position it last held 17 years ago with the Nintendo and Super Nintendo consoles.

* * * *

<--- desklet clock. I've discovered a new scripting tool in Linux (Ubuntu). aDesklets is a simple Desklet creation scripting tool that has minimal overhead. The Web site is Here. I installed it in Ubuntu with Synaptic Package Manager.

What's pictured to the left is gDesklets, which has a more robust toolbox.
<--- desklet cpu monitor. What is a Desklet? adesklets is basically an interactive Imlib2 console, with one or two aditionnal features:

• When an X display is present, automated management of a single window
• Automated support for pseudo-transparency
• Management of long-running applets
• ( Taken from Documentation section of site listed above.)

It can be programmed with Python or Perl.

The NEW iPod Flavors

Among a "ton" of announcements by Apple on Wednesday September 5th was 4 New or Updated iPods.

First is the 1 gig Shuffle at $79 bucks.

Next comes the Nano, or what some reviewers are calling "The FAT Nano". 8 gig at $199.00 with dual screens and the ability to play videos.

Third is the Video iPod, renamed "The Classic iPod" (the one with a hard drive). For $349.00 you can get the 160 gig version. Yes, you can take all your stuff/crap with you.

The three above come in a new assortment of colors too!

And the Expected iPod Touch (or the phoneless iPhone) $400.00 for the 16 gig flash memory version. It has WiFi capabilities and internet browser and the famous iPhone touch flip-screen.

Along witha bevy of announcements was hidden that the iPhone would be availablee for $400.00, and ringtone snippets of songs you already own can be had for .99 cents. Nice.

Linux OS, in your Pocket?

My First Flash Drive was 128 Meg for $35.00.

Today's Fry's AD has a 2 Gig Flash Drive for $22.00 minus a $10.00 mail-in Rebate, making it $12.00.

Since today's modern computers can be told to Boot from a Flash Drive, a pretty sophisticated Linux Distro can be installed on that Flash Drive.

Meaning, Yeah, you CAN take it with you.

Years ago Klaus Knopper invented Knoppix as a rescue disk for problem-booting operating systems, like windows. From that the Live Distro was born. Live Distro CD's could boot a new OS without having to write the data to the hard drive. In the early days of Live Distros on CD, only so much real estate was available and only a limited number of programs could fit on roughly 640 meg of storage.

Then DVD's entered the picture, and even Klaus himself said: "You could put in everything AND the kitchen sink...on a DVD Live Distro."

The main Linux players saw the advantage of putting out a Live Distro DVD of their latest offerings.

You see what worked for AOL Online on CD's worked for Linux Live Distros on DVD.

You could buy a $15.00 magazine fron England called LINUX FORMAT and you get a free DVD.

One such DVD is TRIPLE BOOTING with SimplyMepis 3.4, Gentoo 2006.0 and even OpenSolaris BELENIX, another had FreeBSD 6.0, NETBSD 3.0 and OpenBSD 3.8. (Pictured above)

So what needed a DVD for storage, can now go on a $12.00 Flash Drive.

Yep, you can take your FAV Distro with you, on a Flash Drive.

1839 Patch Drive

There are many ways to install software in Ubuntu. Probably the best known is apt-get which has its roots in Debian (the same as Ubuntu).

Apt-get is console based and fairly easy to use, if the software repositories are set up right.

You use apt-get install Filename, and apt-get searches the repositories for a match and rpm address and it fetches and installs the program.

If you are skiddish about console commands, Ubuntu has a couple of Gui-based front end for apt-get. The first is under Applications/Add/Remove on the toolbar.

My favorite is under System/Administration/Synaptic Package Manager.

Synaptic is what I used to patch/install 1839 programs.

I wouldn't want to try that on a Windows machine.

A new Toy (Joy) DVD (Divx) Player

Having been "Under the Weather" (Sick) lately, I just opened my Father's Day Gift, (pictured left), a DVD Philips 5140 Player that plays, well, just about everything..

An online comparison of this Joy-Toy and a previous model by Philips shows the new model shines in almost every feature.

The reviewer seemed to really like it, and in my limited testing, so do I.

Test Lighting Video

Animation Lighting Test:

Silly Photo adder

A Great Weekend for iPhone

Engadget tells us 500,000 iPhone sold in 3 days.

That IS a pretty good start for a new product. Other sites tell us less than 3% had problems with authentication issues.

A good recap of what a handful of knowledgeable New Users thought can be heard on Leo Laporte's TWiT Podcast of July 1, 2007.

My conclusions from various readings tells me the following:

1. Not anything really new is used in the hardware side of this wonder. But the implementation is what makes Apple APPLE.

2. The Cell Phone Bar has been reset by the iPhone, telling us that not very many people have been happy with the same-old same-old.

3. It's not just the technology, but how you FEEL about a product that can change everything.

iPhone: Browsing, An order of a magnitude SLOWER...

What happens when you hitch up the latest Gee-Wizardly Goodies to a horse and "Buggy" carriage?

You get web surfing on the wheels of a turtle-with-bad-knees.

The honest truth is: The IPhone is a bonafide thing of technological beauty.

The At&t network it has to work on for the next-two-years is worst than dial-up.

What was Apple thinking?

Hard to figure.

Harder still, to find a compelling reason to go out and buy this not-quite-finished product from Apple.

Surface ...Surfaces, from Microsoft

Now I know the reason for the TV series "Surface" being cancelled.

It was the name of a new Touchscreen "GIZMO" from Microsoft. Here's a link to Demo on Popular Mechanics Website.

(http://news.filefront.com/microsofts-surface-changes-the-way-we-use-computers/)

Link to Jeff Han of Perceptive Pixel Remapping the Universe Demo



The Surface from Microsoft (codenamed: "milan") was demoed for Popular Mechanics (link above). It's touch screen "surface' can pick up multiple touch points and interact to items placed on the surface. Wireless devices can also 'communicate' with the "Surface" interface.

Kind of nifty, but at $10,000 a "Desktop" pop, rather put that into 5 state-of-the-art Linux boxes (3 Dual-Core, 64 bit Desktops running Fedora, Ubuntu and Open SUSE, and 2 similar spec'd laptops, running Ubuntu and Fedora).

Getting to look more like
Philip K. Dick's Minority Report all the time.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/

memorial day weekend:

In honor of Memorial Day I had planned to read an article in Wired Magazine, the one with Heroes' Masi Oka on the cover. The article: "Escape from Iran: Inside a CIA Covert Op."

But as you know, the Best Laid Plans...

Instead, I read about a Green City/Urban Development project near Shanghai, on the island Dongtan, by ARUP's Chilean architech and Urban Designer Alejandro Gutierrez.

Like a PBS show about a subject you know little about, it open my eyes to the problems of Urban Planning. A good Article, from one of "My Favorites" magazine.

I also did a bit of Online Programming Study on Python's number and list handling ideas.

And speaking about numbers, Jack Sparrow (aka Johnny Depp) took care of business on the holiday weekend with these numbers:

The Top Five

#1 "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" ($142 million)
#2 "Shrek the Third" ($69 million)
#3 "Spider-Man 3" ($18 million)
#4 "Bug" ($4.2 million)
#5 "Waitress" ($4 million)

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A handful of Heroes against Jack Bauer...

2007, the year when comic book heroes was King. The Big Screen is Boasting it's Best Summer EVER with back-to-back boxoffice megahits for Spiderman 3, Shrek, the Third, and the upcoming Johnny Depp and Pirates of the Carribean's THIRD installment.

Well, the Little screen has it's Heroes Too.

Two of which go head-to-head in season finales tonight.

Agent Jack Bauer gets sent off into summer hiatus with a two-hour cliff-hanger to end its award-winning sixth season tonight starting at 8:00 on Fox channel 11.

On NBC, channel 4, Heroes ends part 2 of it's first year with Sylar's explosion destroying half of New York, and band of fledgling heroes trying to stop it.

How to stop and exploding man on IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0988307/

The Hit series on NBC is set to spin-off a sequel about the histories of individual heroes next fall.

Comic books are alive and well on the big screen and the small.


Tune In to the FUN...
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Old FUD's Ugly Head

Microsoft showed it's Ugly FUD Head again this week with an attempt to intimidate Open Source and Linux with allegations of Intelleectual Property Rights violation.

Now remember, I really hate the PC - Apple commercials that the Mac has been rubbing in our windows-faces lately.

Particularly since I remember, not that long ago, Microsoft helped Apple out with some loose change when the Mac seemed on the brink of extinction, again.

That Was nice of Microsoft.

This meaning, that I'm not an Mac or Windows Basher by preference. Only when then continue to "Do Stupid Things". But I guess, old bad habits die Very Hard.

For the uninitiated, the NEW tactics of FUD (Fear,Uncertainty and Doubt) is so interwoven into the fabric of Microsoft that I must refer you the Wikipedia entry on the subject.

This seems to be Microsoft's modus operandi of late, when they feel they're losing mind-share.

These Peckinpah-Matrix slow-motion ambush shots hide the the Facts that if you can't compete technologically (vista), sick the lawyers on them.

FUD can obscure a multitude of innovation shortcomings.

This is not what someone who wants to be remembered as a humanitarian should be doing.

Stop it Bill.

It's not Open Source or Linux's fault it took five (5) years to push Vista out the door.

Belly Up On Fedora Core 6

Yeah, I know it's my fault for not backing up my data. And No the FC6 OS is Not completely gone. I still have Console access.

But timing couldn't be worse, after a hard week of fighting a MacNasty Cold (pun intended) and the Lakers almost being blown out of the First Round in the Playoffs against the Suns.

Thank goodness for stuff being available ONLINE. (I'll have blog about THAT as soon as I Feel Better)

I found out that a good part of my computing environment is Network centric, and that, I afraid can be done from anywhere...

Even ON my shiny new ACER that may have bad Sony batteries.

Yep, that"s the way the week has been.

(Hey, that might be a good title for Leo Laporte's TWiT's, That Was The Way The Week Was TWTWTWW....I must be really sick...sorry.)

In between coughs and sneezes, I Post.

Done on the new shiny ACER (which is working just fine).

Wingman out.

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PDF Slides for the PSP??

This link (in PDF Format) gives a Slide-Show history of HACKING THE PSP.


Lots of Food for Thought here.

World's smallest fully functioning PC runs VISTA?

Seen on Channel 7's Tech Bytes this morning check out the Website at: www.oqo.com

Tuesday Updates: April 3, 2007

Introducing a new feature on Media Circus 2,

the Tuesday Updates.

----------------------------------------------------
On Podcasts:

Since I've gotten into the habit of listening to Leo Laporte's TWIT podcast on Tuesday Mornings (roughly 4:00 to 5:00 a.m.), I'll present a review of the podcast (with Full-Links) that same day.

The TU's will also cover what I've been gleaning from the Linux Magazines and what I have just installed and what I'm testing on my Linux Box.
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TWit 93: GMT

Hosts: Leo Laporte, David Prager, Robert Heron, Roger Chang, Veronica Belmont, Patrick Norton, and John C. Dvorak

The old gang reunites for a live appearance at the Gear*Media*Tech seminar. Look for video in the next day or so.

----------------------------------------------------
Dvorak pans the Apple iPhone as the wrong business to be in. Too many deep pocket competitors.

Anniversary of first email virus: Melissa (named after a Florida Stripper by the teen that created it.)

This is the heading of the article by CNET on that day in 1999.

=====================================================

Email virus spreading rapidly
W97M_Melissa exploits Microsoft Outlook's address book to send a list of porn sites to people who are likely to be familiar contacts.
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: March 26, 1999, 5:20 PM PST
Tell us what you think about this storyTalkBack E-mail this story to a friendE-mail View this story formatted for printingPrint Add to your del.icio.usdel.icio.us Digg this storyDigg this

A new virus is actively spreading itself across the Internet, taking advantage of users' email address books to replicate "extremely quickly," according to one expert.

The virus, W97M_Melissa, uses a combination of Microsoft Word macros and Microsoft Outlook to send a list of 80 pornographic Web sites. It works with either Word 97 or Word 2000, according to antivirus companies TrendMicro, Symantec, and Network Associates.

Link Location:

http://news.com.com/Email+virus+spreading+rapidly/2100-1023_3-223602.html

=====================================================
On Security (readings)
Port Knocking and Single Packet Authorization.
(Article comng)

On Database Comparisons (readings)
MySQL vs PostgreSQL.

(Article coming)
======================================================
Installing MONO on my Redhat CORE 6.

(Article coming)
===========================================================================
Links:

TWiT Website is here:

http://www.twit.tv/TWiT

Complete MP3 TWiT Podcast is here:

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3?http://twit.cachefly.net/TWiT0093M.mp3

John C. Dvorak's Blog (be warned!)

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/


Want to find out where to put all your iProducts from Apple?

Check out this mock suggestion from MadTV VidCast which I found on Dvorak's blog.

The iRACK from Apple.


===========================================================================

Web Site of The Day (from RefDesk.com)

Today's (3/21/2007) Site Of The Day from RefDesk.com is just So Great I have to Put a Link to it Here:

GovStandard.com
Subtitled: (Your Legal Systems Resource)

Information on the legal system which includes legal history, systems, law practice, jurists, and advocates. Includes discussions of Roman, Greek, and Babylonian law.

Happy reading.

Refdesk.com (my PSP homepage) was one of my Baker's Dozen Picks for Best Of The WEB on my KOOLHUNTER2 blog. Yes, Koolhunter WEBSITE is Still being worked on.

Wingman out.

Dad's Birthday

That's Dad, reading a book from Robert. His birthday is today March 18th.
Glad I got to see and talk with him yesterday. Louie too!

Too much distance for a family that was so much closer before the "rock", Mom passed away.

As the saying goes: It's not the years it's the mileage.

I've been thinking of posting these special images online. Either Flickr or Google Album, two good online Photo Hosting sites.

Digital cameras, even cell-phone cameras (with resolutions constantly getting better) make it easy to catch a special shot like this one.

But still don't compare to having the full size photograph.

We snap more and develop less. Of course, most of my photographs are in a suitcase someplace.

The book (by the way) is about Superstition Mountain and the Lost Dutchman's mine and gold. I'll put a link to the backstory about that below. Everything has a backstory, spoken and unspoken.

Happy Birthday Dad. I love you.


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Apache Junction Public Library webpage.

Kool Hunting

One man's Kool is another man's Booor-ring!

Kinda Kool is Wesley Crusher's (Wil Wheaton, the Geek), reviews of STTNG which is funny and found Here.

These sites are also KOOL:

Leo Laporte of TechTV days, is Now Podcasting like cRaZy.

Check Out the TWITs (which is a weekly TECH podcast), where he's joined by John C. Dvorak, Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose (Mr. DIGG, to you), and even Spin-Rite's Steve Gibson.

Korean Zombies with German Accents!!!

Last Tuesday, 3 of the Top 13 DNS (Domain Name Servers) were attacked by Korean Zombies (DoS) Denial of Service robots (unmanned--code devices, also known as: Zombies). The Zombies were traced back to Germany (but they probably came from somewhere else--maybe China. Who Knows?). One of the three DNS sites attacked was almost completely shut down, but as far as the WEB was concerned, nobody noticed.

That was the scary part.

No payoff. No notoriety. So what was the point?

My thinking is: Proof of Concept. Testing the delivery system.

The Real Site will be Elsewhere.

Call me paranoid, but when some experts tell us that 1/3 of the web is infested with robots/spiders or zombies following orders, it's time to worry...

Particularly when Other Experts tell us, That 1/3 number IS TOO LOW.

Pipes, ANS Network and Bernice

Yahoo Pipes:
Yahoo came out swinging a big "pipe" last week to snag back some respectability from Search Leader Rival: Google.

Yahoo Pipes is a Web-based RSS "mash-up" tool that lets you graphically connect Source Information (from one or many rss-feed places), and add a bit of logic or filters and create a "New View" of the RSS data.

They say it's a tip-of-the-hat to Unix Pipes Tools, which for anyone running any recent distro of Linux knows, is alive and well in the Linux OS.

Scripting languages can do pretty much what Yahoo Pipes does, but the Web based GUI is a pretty big deal. It was supposedly developed by Yahoo In-House, and beats Google to a pretty nice New Tool.

REAL Competition IS Good.

==========================================================================
The BOOBs at Network News:

When oh when did they become PEOPLE Magazine?

CNN is now the ANS Channel.

You know what the letters stand for.

One of the cool and needed things you can do with Yahoo Pipes is grab the News RSS feeds and Filter-Out any mention of ANS.

Hopefully the "NETWORKS GONE WILD!" mentality will be over real-soon-now, before any more attention-starved nymphets shave their heads in protest.
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Bernice and Hair Bobbing:

"Huh! she giggled wildly. "Scalp the selfish thing!"

Quoted from Bernice Bobs Her Hair from the book Flappers and Philosophers.
New York:Scribners.1922.

A title of a short story from high school was "Bernice Bobs Her Hair", and it was mentioned at work recently. And Not having heard that title before I decided to "Look it up".

Wikipedia has become a very good place to start, and was so in this case too. I was surprised to find that it was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the same writer that gave us the "The Great Gatsby".

Sidenote: (also found on Wikipedia).

Louise Brooks of the film silent era became synoymous with the bobbed or flapper look of the twenties.

New MC2 BLOG: "Thursdays, we saved the World." Check it out.

Superbowl Sunday: On The SMALL Screen

Move over plasmas and LCD Big Screens, here comes PSP LIVE broadcast TV.

With the ubiquity of DSL cable and Wifi connectivity, higher bitrates can be streamed over the Internet with picture quality really close to HD. And what home appliance is capable of handling this Super Stream? Why Sony's PSP, of course...

The little screen Does Digital "live-casts" great. Even your PC, running VLC outperforms Most TV-tuner cards.

Go long....This Is A Touch Down!

Internet TV: This Changes Everything!

On Tuesday, January 23, The Revolution Began.

I got home a little after 6:30 in the evening, and my son was watching the President's "State of the Union" speech on his lap top. He was using Internet TV, over a wireless DSL connection.

This was what the futurists and pundits had been predicting would happen.

The final piece of the puzzle was collaboration of major TV network providers to join forces and make live internet TV available.

What you need to make it work, is a broadband internet connection and Windows Media Player 9. That's it.

Goodbye cable. Goodbye regular tv.

If you don't know what this means, let me tell you:

This IS a Very Big Deal.

This Changes EVERYTHING!

Sunday Politics and Defining Terms

As I began my morning breakfast, I pondered on the following:

Maybe it's time I gave a definition of terms, specifically: Media Circus.

Circus is pretty easy. At a circus, a lot of things are happening at the same time. Five rings, and a lot of clowns all over the place. You may not know it but there is nothing worse than a media clown.

It's a circus.

Thus, it's sometimes hard to take it all in. And even harder to focus on the total meaning. It becomes a form of gestalt, where the whole means a lot more than the sum of its parts.

MEDIA is very inclusive in my definition. To me it began with the mass media analyses by Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), and his book: The Medium is the Massage. [message fits too!].

That's a good start, but it also has to do with Media Transmission of the message which is becoming a Circus of it's own.

To paraphrase a popular AD, "More Taste, Less filling...". Less Text, more Tidbits.

We digest less information as we take in more sound-bites.

The Media IS (more important than) THE MESSAGE, not the substance.

***************************************************************************
OBAMA announces his running for President on the WEB, not a press conference.

FACE THE NATION had 3 of the reporters that quit their respective newspapers to form a New Political WEB SITE called POLITICO.COM which begins this tuesday.

Hilary announces she too is running for the Presidency, by Press Conference.

***************************************************************************

Announcing KoolHunter.com:

A New Lean and Clean HUNTER is coming to the WEB!

KOOLHUNTER.COM will be up shortly. An RSS and ATOM online aggregator that finds the IMPORTANT Sites.

Not the 60 billion that DON'T really Matter.

Wingman.

A Blog prototype is at: koolhunter2.blogspot.com.

Light Reading and CES Musings:

A common complaint about CES and MacWorld Shows is that they have a lot of stuff that is Not-Quite-Ready YET, or will never see the LIGHT-Of-Day. But that goes with MOST Shows anyway...It's a given.

The Sharp 108-inch LCD HDTV is real by the way. An unnamed basketball player has put in an order for one and the mechanical device to LOWER it from the ceiling..

This year, the Buzz from the keynotes came from Steve Jobs at MacWorld and the gaga over "iphone" (maybe I can't use that name?) IPHONE. I just listen to count how many times Steve uses the hackneed phrase: "Order of a magnatude..." to describe new stuff.

On the other, side of the coin...The Fatter part, CES, where Bill Gates gave his keynote address that most pundits tune-off. Bill still hasn't learn how to SELL hackneed phrases.

The big question was: "Will this be Bill's LAST-KEYNOTE before retiring?"

For those with a historical bent, most videos of the keynotes are available online. Even the classic Apple commercial called "1984" which introduced the First MAC is online.

Tuesday Morning TWITs

Tuesday, in the a.m., listening to my PSP RSS feed of Leo Laporte's TWIT (This Week In Tech) podcast review of CES 2007. The TWIT Website describes the proceedings thus:
======================================================================
January 15th, 2007 TWiT 84: Hahn, I'm Home! Hosts: Leo Laporte, John C. Dvorak, Robert Heron, Hahn Choi, and Cory Doctorow Our CES post-mortem
======================================================================
HD TV's was the main focus of the CES recap and that included the Sharp 108-inch LCD HDTV.

Holy Hannah!!!

Picture from ENGADGET website on top.

The Code Searchers:

According to LJ (Linux Journal): "In Journalism, three examples create a TREND and in Business Schools, professors teach that three competitors create a market category. These two tropes now apply to CODE SEARCH..."

Google, the number 1 search engine has spun off a searcher just for Coders (Hackers), called Code Search.

But Google isn't the first search to Kater to Koders (yeah, I'm going to replace a lot of C's for K's here...:).

THIS market category was started three years ago by Koders.com .

Sometime later, Krugle joined in with their Code Searcher, called Krugle.com (don't ask me why).

The big deal about Google jumping on the bandwagon is that it draws attention to a category of search that we might not know about.

These wonderful programs we run by clicking a button or icon, don't come out of thin air.
Real hackers, sometimes working on their own in the wee hours, create this magic.

And I for one think, that helping them with these Code Search Engines, is a REAL GOOD IDEA.

wingman out.

2006 Christmas Photos (Part 1)

Jacob Pensive
Judy Cheers
Heffner Girls
Hacking The PSP
Jon The PSP Wizard

Melissa
Breaks

Lydia's Christmas Table

A Blogging We Have Gone (in 2006)

This YEAR'S (2006) POSTINGS:
MY BLOGS:(54 Postings, 1 short story fragment)
Media Circus 2 (http://mediacircus2.blogspot.com/)

Posted Blogs: I AM "the Person of The Year..."
The GIG is UP (Again)
Brain Stretchers
WEBSITE Evolution and CMS Software
A Great Couple of Weeks For OPEN SOURCE!
It's A Game of Numbers
Starbuck's, Ipods and Marketing
The Circus Comes To a Town Near YOU
A Bad (rajump) Worm in Apple's Video IPODS
Getting Enlightenment: The Hard Way

===============================================================
Mass Media Course Correction (http://mycordiunnot.blogspot.com/)

Posted Blogs: Counter-Culture And YouTube
The Replacement Killers
YUM, Yum, Yum!
PSP 2.6 and waiting for an Exploit...
UCLA: March Madness
Guilty by Association
What's It All About? Alfie
The Wonders of Wiki--A Work in Progress
The Rant That Rages
From Oxnard to Shangrila

===================================================================
Written by ELO (http://theletterselo.blogspot.com/)

Posted Blogs: Wednesday, December 13, 2006
The Post Keep Coming. Ideas in the Works:
Tidbits and News Bits (November 17, 2006)
A Writers Blog not BLOCK!
Going Up the Country, Got to Get Away
Tools in the Toolbox
Going UP the Gibson
A Picture, Still Worth A Thousand Words?
Gibson, French Maids and IPOD wagging Apple
It's Only Words...
Blogging the Writer

====================================================================
Dos Possos (http://elosblog.blogspot.com/)

Posted Blogs: Hitting The Gibson Brakes
Online Books
Feeling Disconnected: No Wires attached
One Step Forward, TWO Steps Back
Digital Memories are made of This...
The Light at the End of The Virtual Tunnel
I Hate the Word PROJ
First On the Block Syndrome
Two Steps

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PSP On Steroids (http://psphardwired.blogspot.com/)

Posted Blogs: The Homebrew Game
PSP Podcasts and Other Links
Waiting for Exploit 2.6

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THE PAINT BUCKET (Ontario) BLOG
=======================================================================
The Painting on The Wall (http://paintbucketontario.blogspot.com/)

Posted Blogs: The PC's are up and Running in Ontario
Paint Buckets and CAT 5

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MY Media Circus 2 WEBPAGE (Drupal Driven)
(http://mediacircus2.com)

Posted Pages(blog-like) It IS a BLOG Life!
Test For Google Maps API
Topics And Details (T.A.D.)
Old is NEW Again
IDORU Done
Tapping "Drift" Technology
Adding URL/Filter Modules
Adding Content BLOCKS for New Modules
Drupal's Modules
November 9, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------
Posted Short Stories: Pocket Change
(Part of a Short Story Collection called: Subject To Change)
========================================================================

I AM "the Person of The Year..."

I knew All-my-blogging would lead to something, I (okay, WE) made it to the cover of Time magazine as the "Person Of The Year".

Yeah, right. According to John C. Dvorak (on Leo Laporte's TWIT Podcast), it WAS a cop-out.

I agree. YouTube would have been a better choice.

I beat Time-Mag to the punch with my Post on Media Circus2 webpage: I Blog, therefore I AM. (the real importance of having an online identity.

I also came up with music videos back in the sixties, but that is another story.

More will be coming on the significance of the TIME piece.

The TWIT's also related the release of IPHONE.

Picture at right.

It's been released, BUT Not by Apple. It from Linksys. Legal battle, anyone???

The Gig is UP (Again!)

Let's UP the Ante..
New Sony/SanDisk DUO leapfrogs to 64 gig.
Yes, I know, everyone was waiting for the 8 gig chip and wondering why it was taking soooo long to come out. Well, folks, It Was Sure Worth The Wait.
Bang!
Move over 8 gig, Here Comes the 64 gig chip.

Sweet!

Brain Stretchers

NEWS Notes:
DAS-3 Project (Netherlands):
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A recent article on a project called DAS3 in a Dutch Graduate School that may be on the verge of creating a Super-GRID. Capable of turning the Web into a Linux Cluster. The Article called: "The Wide Area Cluster" appeared in the November issue of Linux Magazine.
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Real Dangers in Virtualization:
Steve Gibson (Spinrite) recently warned on Leo Laporte's podcast, that hackers have introduced a virus into the code of the new Intel Processor that was created with built-in virtualization hooks. The virus stays dormant until an OS is installed on it and then it becomes a pre-installed Root-kit that can take over the system.
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WEBSITE Evolution and CMS Software

Webpages are evolving into modifiable BLOGS, and with the Trend, the Content Management Software (CMS) is poised to deliver us from the evil of HTML coding. Sure, you can hack away with HypeText Markup Language, but why bother? The Content is the important part. The means of getting it on the page is: Whatever works Best For You.

I usually juust use a simple Linux Text Editor (qedit) and just paste it into my Blogger page. Like THIS:

Blogs are short, clean, and work well with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which give websites a very professional look.

The next step is, of course, audio and video streaming content.

Remember the hoopla about cable being the great democratization of MEDIA, it appears that the WEB is the form that will deliver on the Promise.

You ain't seen nothing yet...

Stay tuned.

A Great Couple of Weeks For OPEN SOURCE!

Last week Microsoft entered into a unique agreement with Novell. It paid Novell XXX Million dollars for the Windows to work (communicate), with SUSE Linux.

This Week Sun Microsystems let their JAVA out of the proprietary bag and released it under GPL licensing.

The General Press was busy paying attention to the Release of Game Consoles from Sony and Nintendo, but the real long-term impact event was these two giant steps toward Open Source.

This is HUGE!

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.

Player Pianos, Podcasts and Internet Radio

I remember listening to Chick Hearn broadcast the play-by-play Laker games on the radio. The high mountains around the city where I moved to, prevented getting a good TV signal. But radio, and Chick, did just fine.

Earlier, I would listen to KPFK radio on friday nights and listen to "Hour 25 with Mike Hodel--The Hour That Stretches", a very good radio talk show that covered All-Things-Science-Fiction. When Michael passed away, the show lost its focus. And it too had a tough time going over the mountain ranges that blocked radio content from the Big Cities and stations with the limited power of public radio.

If anyone has talked to me about computers recently, they would quickly see that I am not a big fan of Apple or the IPOD. I can't honestly believe anyone needs to carry around 15,000 of their favorite songs. Now, really!

I'm not anti-music.. I Like music! Heck, I even like radio, when they're not trying to sell me something. I even like Podcasts. You don't need an IPOD to listen to them. They are mostly just MP3 files.

Well my latest toy, the PSP (Sony Playstation Portable), with firmware 2.6, has podcast reception over WiFi. My PSP has recently been HACKED to HomeBrew statu.

Letting it run all kinds of Homebrew Apps, including Internet Radio (also Wifi). For times when I'm not within range of a WiFi signal, I have on the memory stick a few prerecorded mp3 songs and LQRadio Podcasts. One of the songs was the Maplestreet Rag by Scott Joplin. My PSP had become a New Incantation of a Player Piano. The Tech Podcasts are a new version Hour25, a place between There and Here and going someplace Else.
A book title by Hemingway springs to mind: "A Moveable Feast".

Yep, that is pretty much what it is, and Radio will never be quite the same.

The Tube Choosers

TV just took a hard left and ran into the WEB.

The Network Suits are frantic to Webify their CONTENT. Old USA network showed them how harness the audience of web-surfers that want to vent about their favs. Even the likes of movie drivel like "Snakes on Planes", showed how Web Buzz can make something out of nothing.

Give Apple a nod here. They showed that a market exists for the 99 cent Store.

For $1.99 you can download an episode of "Lost". And even PBS's Charlie Rose has Program Videocasts that are downloadable. Free, of course. It is PBS.

The Big Frog in this Dippy pond is YouTUBE, which was nothing until Bill the star-maker, mentioned them in that fateful article in the WSJ. That unsolicited annointment brought channel surfing to the mass audience of Looky-Lous.

And coming to a cell-phone real soon.

Waiting for Geedot?

The more things change, , the more they stay the same.
I remember, back in the dark ages, when I ONLY had dial-up to the Web, that I saw DSL access as nirvana.
Gosh, when I get to that level of SPEED, watch out!
Well, I've had IT (dsl) for sometime now and guess what? I'm still waiting on downloads, just like in the Old Days. The connection IS faster, it's just that the downloads are humongous. Some of the files I'm getting now are so big (how big are they?), that they have to be broken up into smaller pieces.

Okay, a lot ARE iso images, for Linux Distros of course, but everything is bursting at the seams. And a goodly portion of these goodies are going to go into our ever-growing hand-held devices. That's a lot of crap for a small bag, if you'll pardon my french.

I have a better IDEA.

If All of this software is pretty-much standardized, or better yet, open-sourced, why don't we just download the stuff that changes. I would guess that 70% of web traffic is repeated data. Why?

I'll give you an example: TEXT. How many times do you think the word "the" gets transmitted? A number should replace "the". Maybe, 1. That's 1/3 smaller. We saved 66%

Example 2 GRAPHICS: Remember Christensen's animations in the early days of computing. He suggested the same thing for animated drawings (I'm not talking 3D movies here). In a screen with X by Y dimensions only a small portion of that screen changes. Don't redraw the whole screen, only redraw the pixels that change. Good idea. Made for really snappy animations.

This is not rocket science. 1 is better than 3. A portion is better than the whole. Traffic savings is huge. And a better way to included the hand helds that are begging for lush media. Because of propriety restraints, I suggest that open-sourcing these ideas and tools is a better way to solve the problem.

Wingman.

The PSP Era

Joined the ranks of the handhelds with the purchase of a Playstation Portable. Picture at right >--->

Heck of a lot of TECH in this baby:
Wireless Internet Access
RSS Feeds
UMD movies and Games
Photo Browser
Bluetooth Connectivity
MP3 and WMA playback
USB connection to the PC. Windows or LINUX.
And being hacked by a group of underground HOMBREWERS to expand its capabities, including programming it with LUA language and LUA PLAYER (game developer or IDE).

Call it an IPOD on Steroids.

A Magazine Partially Loaded

The English Publication "Linux Format" has been my favorite magazine since I discovered it 5, maybe 6 years ago. On top of the excellent articles on "Things Linux" it came with a CD or DVD of Linux Software.
I've always been a fan of this method of "playing with the system software". I began using monthly magazine software since the days of Tandy's (Radio Shack) Color Computer, when I was receiving a monthly CASSETTE called "Chromasette". Linux Format has dutifully produced a CD version and a DVD version for the last few years, and always wanting more for my money, I usually grabbed the DVD-version at my local B&N bookstore. Sometimes, being in too much a hurry, or for smaller Boot Distros, I'd get the CD-version. I did this this month and grabbed the CD-version by mistake.

The CD does hold a lot, compared to the 60-minute cassette that came for the COCO, but a DVD holds tons more.

Well, it turns out that the June Issue of LFX will be the Last One to come with a CD-version. The End of an Era.

I've been forced to migrate, because of technology, from cassette to CD to DVD.

I also upgraded my storage from 80 gig to 160 gig, trying to stay ahead of the curve.

One Shiny Moment, quickly Dashed

A couple of weeks agao I read a newsfeed that I felt was going to send shockwaves throughout the Server Sector. Sunmicrosystems had a NEW Processor that was multi-core and multi-threaded. It promised to stem the trend of Server Bloat that necessitated the ever increasing size and space for Servers. The New Core would knock down size of the Server by 60% and increase performance by 80%. And an additional benefit was less power and heat.

All this sounded too good to be true.

I wondered what kind of a "hit" linux servers would take.

That was a couple of weeks ago.

Today, on the morning business update, a report came out that Sun Microsystems was cutting 5,000 jobs.

What is the back story?

Stay tuned.

Apple Dumplings

The iPod Tail that wags the Apple dog chronicles:

Taking another step into boutiquedom, Apple has open a store in NY that operates 24/7. So, if you have the Urge (please resist...) to buy an IPOD in the A.M., the store will be waiting.

I believe I've mentioned in previous posts the trouble in finding a eBook battery in these places of dubious value, the IPOD Boutique (use to be known as the Apple Store).

No one needs a device that stores 15,000 of your favorite songs to carry along with you. Especially at .99 cents a pop. That's 15,000 dollars of music in a $400 plus device. Do The Math.

Okay, I must admit that most of the owners of the 50 million such devices apple has sold in 4 1/2 years has 15,000 songs in them. Some may be pirated.... Yeah, even on the Apple of your Ear.

The Nike tie-in with IPOD Nano, technolgically speaking, seems more practical.

Would I take an IPOD as a Gift?

Sure, I just read how you can install Yellow Dog Linux on it... Link is HERE !


But hey, now you can also Watch "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" on your IPOD.

Talk about being lost and desperate.

Daggon Queen

Looks like ol' blogger is running mighty slow...Maybe it's because Googel has finally gotten China Online......Just kidding.

Thumbs UP! to Samsung...

Samsung Electronics announced that it is making the driver source code for its OneNAND open to Linux/Open Source community designers.

“Open source code has become one of the main forces driving the accelerated pace at which consumers are embracing mobility, so our decision to make OneNAND available for open designs should be very well-received,” said Jon Kang, senior vice president of technical marketing at Samsung Semiconductor.

Samsung claims its move should allow designers of consumer electronics goods to quickly incorporate OneNAND's operational instructions into products.

OneNAND's fusion architecture features a single-level-cell (SLC) NAND core with SRAM and logic elements to emulate a NOR Flash interface. OneNAND provides a sustained data “read” speed of 108 MB/s, which is four times faster than conventional NAND Flash memory, and a “write” speed of 10 MB/s, which is more than 60 times faster than multi-level-cell (MLC) NOR Flash memory, according to Samsung.

Open Source is Changing the Way Corporate Thinking relates to Code
as a Share-able commodity.

Beyond The Blue Horizon: Windows VISTA

What's New Dept:

What's that old football cheer? "Push 'Em back, Push 'Em back, Way Back..."

Microsoft's Next Windows Vista, is not around the corner, again. Citing reliability concerns (sounds vaguely familiar), they've decided to wait and Get-It-Right (about time). So figure about the first part of 2007 for the release of the much overdue Next Generation of Windows called VISTA (already two-years Late).

They couldn't be waiting for us to get out of Iraq could they?

Naw!

The TeraBytes are Coming

Friday's Fry's Electronics AD had a quartet of Uber-Huge Network Drives. The TB's have landed...

Back in the days when I started computing, hard drive storage was measured in MEGA-Bytes. Then the GigaByte became the standard of storage. (see my posts On the Fab 60's-- and The Gig is UP!, a few months back).

Well, another techno corner has been reached and the New Drives are now boasting TERA-Bytes of storage, that's 1,000 gigabytes. Selling for $649.00.

Whoa!

Ain't Tech Grand!

Yes, it is.

Beyond the "French Connection"

Picture Popeye Doyle racing down the streets of San Francsico, chasing the "killer" suspect. I recently went from my Old Standby SUSE Linux to test Mandriva, the merging of ol' Mandrake (French) and Connectiva (Brazillian) Linux.

Unlike Doyle, I ran into too many barriers. Today I re-INSTALLED SUSE Linux 10.0. After 5 hours of updating the DVD files with the latest online hack-proofed versions (yes, it can take that long with a clean install), Suse was back!

The next few days will be spent tweaking the settings to my preferences. After all, that's the beauty of Linux, you can tweak everything.

Ah, Home again.

One Long WEEK

Since last saturday i"ve been really out of sorts. Aches and pains at night, trouble sleeping and unable to sit or lie down comfortablly. I couldn't think, pay attention, concentrate. I felt I was going to crack-up. I've never felt so alone on an island of discomfort.
You take health (whatever level) for granted. You assume things are going to stay the way they are and then something knocks you on your can and you start to see the BIG picture. You're only a human machine and sometimes that machine breasks down.
Easy to talk about in hindsight, but inside that little corner of pain all you see is obstacles. You should have paid more atttention on how that wonderful machine called the human body was functioning. You should have done a lot of things to keep fit. But it's easy to be complacent when good times are here.
I had a whole week and I didn't FEEL like reading or writing or working on the computer (My whole intellectual world gone, bam).
Some lessons are learned the hard way.

The March of the WORMS (and Viruses)

I've been testing the KlamAV virus protection program for my Linux Box. Nice application, has lots of good bells and whistles. A couple of 3 things tweaked my interest.

One was the downloading of the names of the infectious buggers out there. Pretty adolescent names for the most part, which I guess pretty much goes with the territory.

Two, it also gave a bar graph of the effectiveness of 8 different anti-viral software programs for the current breed of baddies.

And Three, a bar graph of something that BLEW ME AWAY. A month by month rating of the incident of attacks. It seems the most dangerous month for attack is MARCH!

I don't know why, but I'm not taking any chances. Time to beef up the protection...and Word to the Wise...

A New Enterprise, a New Medium

How long is a 5 year mission anyway? Your guess is as good as mine. Trek fans have resuscitated the Star Trek Enterprise again, this time on the WEB. The demise of Enterprise last season seemed like the end of a very popular series.

But wait, there are still legions of fans out THERE in Cyberspace that just won't let a good thing go away.

Welcome to the New Adventures of Star Trek. A brand new younger crew of Bones, Spock and Kirk and others fly the Enterprise on the WEB. A couple of episodes are posted Free-to-Download and view in WMV (Windows Media Video Format). A simple conversion to mpeg (most burn software, like Nero can do it) will let you burn the conversion to DVD to view on TV just like the OLD days.

Hats off to a very clever use of Webcasting.

(Subnote News for Trekkies: Patrick Stewart (Picard) has said "yes" to Star Trek 10)

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My Other Blogs on Other Interests:

DOS POSSOS (2 Steps)

WRITTEN by ELO

MASS Media Course Correction

My First Blog.....
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A Son's Gift To The World...

My son, Yashamaru, had a birthday the beginning of this month. On that day he was up most of the night finishing up the code of a program he wrote for the PSP. That was not unusual, he does that a lot. What I found interesting was that he wanted to get it out to give to the world, as a birthday gift from him to all of US.

There are a lot of important things that come about because of Open Source. But I feel the "mind-set" of sharing is very close to the top of the list.