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.

Two Magazines Are Better Than One

I've been updating my Linux OS for the past couple of years from Distros that come with monthly Linux Magazines. Linux Format, mainly. This past month TWO Linux magazines had the same Distro on their Cover DVD: SUSE 10.0. On the surface, it appreared they were both the same, but wait, One had OSS on the distribution.

The OSS version from Linux Format was not as Full as the Real SUSE 10.0 not OSS from Linux Magazine. This Not OSS version had more cutting edge programs from Novell than the OSS version. A half-hour upgrade installation time later, I was back in business running the latest from my favorite Linux OS.

The Gig is Up....Really UP!

I remember, in the distant past, buying a 5 gig hard drive and paying $210.00 for it. And I thought I was in storage-hog heaven.

Today, my Son uses a 2 gig memory stick for his PSP and is longing for the recently announced 8 gig stick by Sony.

Looking at the current ad in the Fry's electronics, my jaw dropped. On sale was a 500 gigabite Seagate drive for $259.99. That means that for less than $600.00, a HOME computer can have a TERABYTE of drive space.

Yes, the gig is UP!

Even my three year old digital camera, which currently has a 128 meg SD chip (on board memory is 8 meg), can get into the gig leagues for $49.99 (twice the price of my 128 meg).

This kind of thing is always happenning in computers, but it still is pretty amazing.

Wait until Next Week, after the CES Show in Vegas....

The Blog Times

(These are a few of my Favorite Things)

Google Search Yahoo Search Msn.com


Court Side with a Hot-Peppered FLEA.

A blatant Laker Fan writing a Blog for NBA.com. Good court-side perspective with a jazzy edge.
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Wil Wheaton, a.k.a. as Ensign Crusher, is STILL Treking New Worlds and Civilizations.

Trek Fans pushed "the KID" off Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The Kid grew up, (He discovered he was no longer the center of the universe, a tough job for a celebrity and most of US). He's also a BIG LA Dodger Fan (like Freddie).

Yet he managed to landed firmly on his feet with a Blog that struck a strong enough cord to land him a Nice Book Deal.

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The DOOMed Man From ID: John Carramack.


I began reading the programming WHIZ when he was writing a Pre-Blog TO-DO journal about programming and DEBUGGING Doom, and Quake. What he has to say about programming Games is still Must-Read.

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The MS Show Of Shows: Channel 9, on a Video Podcast near you.

Very Candid Camera at Microsoft.

The MSDN-Slanted Tech Topics in WMV format Video (Called Video PodCasts). Still very interesting.

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Surfing fo Answers?

There are Lots of New WAYS of Presenting INFORMATION on the WEB.

10X10 100 pictures arranged in Order of occurance in daily newsfeeds.

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Daily Rotation. 300+ Tech News Headlines arranged in order of YOUR SETUP on
One Web Page.

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RSSOWL My favorite RSS (Real Simple Syndication) Reader.

It works in Windows and Apple and Linux.

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Wikipedia. The Web Encyclopedia that is teaching Britannica a Thing Or Two about
community Authorship.

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REFDESK. A Family-Friendly Reference Desk that the tames spinning windmills of our Times
for the Don Quixote in all of us.

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A New Band of Brothers (Luaplayer programmers) .

These guys working hard on Homebrewing the Playstation Portable (PSP), and just won Best

Developer's Award from IGN.COM for 2005 for their Efforts.

Yashimaru, my son's Avatar, is One of these clever programmers.

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And a quick jump to MY Other BLOGs and Natterings:

ELO's Mass Media Course Correction About Linux, Mass Media and the WEB

Written by ELO About My Writing IDEAS

Media Citcus 2 Revival of Media Circus Webpage

One of the many New BLOG Search engines is Technorati.

Want your OWN Blog? Visit BLOGGER.COM (It's how I did it!).

The FAB 60's

This is Not about the Beatles Invasion, but rather about the Bargains that are available in computer parts these glorious days.

Technology for home use that would have seemed ridiculus a few years ago. As Dylan told us, in the Sixties, and is STILL telling us today (thanks to the PBS Special by Martin Scorsese) the Times, they are a-changing.

I began my computer life with a Cassette Recorder as a storage device. I even subscribed to a monthly cassette magazine called Chromasette for the TRS Coco (Color Computer). The cassette recorder came with the Color Computer, but you could buy one from your local Radio Shack store for about $60 bucks. Incidently, it was the recorder of choice for UFO hunters. You could buy one at your local Radio Shack store of which there were about 9,000 at that time. Because you could run it on batteries it was considered "portable" and could be taken out into the field where the invaders roamed. It appeared in a few X-Files too, because they paid attention to trivial details like that.

I just recently updated my storage device to a DVD -R dual-layer Burner. It cost me about $60 bucks from my local Best Buy store. The DVD burner replaced my TDK burn-proof 121032 CD burner which I've had for about 4 1/2 years now and cost me around $250.00 at the time, because it was state-of-the-art.

This kind of stuff is normal for computer parts. Get use to it.

My first 5 gig Hard Drive cost $205.00 from the Pomona Computer Swap. The only place to go in those days to get a bargain on computer parts. Now you can get a 250 gigabite Hard Drive for about, yup, $60 bucks, from Fry's E;lectronics a computer superstore (think: like Home Depot for Electronics).

If fact, my last four OS's (Operating Systems) cost about $60.00 each. I've bought one of those just about every other year to stay on the EDGE of the Linux revolution. The last one I bought about 3 years ago came on 5 CD's. It was for SuSE 9.1 Pro and came with the 32 and 64 bit version. Talk about cutting edge, MS Windows won't be releasing a 64 bit version of Windows until some time in 2006, maybe.

The newest versions (I'm using SUSE 9.3 now) can be had for the price of a British magazine called Linux Format (about $15.00 stateside). Each monthly issue comes with a 4 Gigabyte DVD, containing the latest in Open Source software.

Because of the work of Klaus Knopper (of Knoppix fame), a rescue disk project has become the backbone of "LIVE" CD's and recently, LIVE DVD's. This allows you to Test-Drive a Linux Distribution without installing it to the Hard Drive. These can be as bare-bones as fitting on a BC (business card) CD or as maxed-out as the NEW DVD versions which come with thousands of Open-Source programs (some of which I'll talk about here)

By the way, the reason I went to a Dual-Layered DVD burner is because I heard the New Open-Suse Linux Distro (Distribution), was coming on Dual-Layer DVD Media. Yeah, it holds twice as much as a regular DVD (about 9 Gigabites).

Computer technology, I think this is all just Too Fabulous.

Old Becomes New Again

The Old Blogs I had were just too Hard to Find, so I decided to resurrect my Old Webpage from my Earthlink, AOL and before days, and bring back: Media Circus.

This Blog revolves around my view on what MASS (and now Minor), Media is doing FOR us and TO us. And to search for some answers regarding its impact, good and bad, on society and technology.

The fun part is that the playing field is getting bigger and bigger.

The dangerous part is that the playing field is getting bigger and bigger, and as the saying goes, we sometimes can't see the forest for the trees.

So jump aboard this reconstructed view, and join the awareness brigade. Our future depends on recognizing the signs and sign-POSTS that litter our consciousness terrain.

Big words for big Ideas.