Parks are closed and that's (sort of) OKAY!

All metaphors have their weaknesses, but let me give this a shot.

YOU own a museum. It has lots of interesting things in it, some of them valuable to the point of being irreplaceable. Many, perhaps most, of the things in the museum are fragile.

You hire people to manage the museum because you don't want to sit there 24/7 and watch it (and who would blanme you?).

You tell the people who manage the museum when you want it to be open, when you want it to be closed, and the security provisions you expect them to maintain.

One night a friend of yours - someone who has visited the museum several times and is known to most of the people who manage the museum - comes around after the museum is closed and asks to be admitted. Your friend has brought a group of people, some of them elderly. Your friend has not called you to arrange this visit.

Do you want your managers to let your friend in, just because?

The nonsense resulting from the government shutdown includes video evidence of a Congressman - one who supported the shutdown - berating a uniformed member of the Federal Park Service, berating her with the ugly words, "You should be ashamed."

I don't think so. She should not be ashamed to be following the policies of the National Park Service directing when the staff who maintain the park are not on duty, the parks should be closed.

Americans can own rifles and hunt. Americans own public parks. Yet, Americans are not allowed to hunt in public parks, for many reasons. Policies exist for a reason. Right now, the policy says, "The parks are closed." People moving barriers and walking around in them are engaged in civil disobedience. I do not recommend you doing this, even with a congressional representative in your party.

Leave the discussion of how well we federal employees do our jobs aside for a moment. The issue is, do you want us doing our jobs according the procedures and policies of our employers (you), or do you want us to just do whatever we think is okay under the immediate circumstances?

The parks are closed because the government is closed. This is not usurpation of public lands, this is STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE for the maintenance and protection of public lands entrusted to the government and the National Park Service. "Essential" personnel maintaining barriers are operating according to standard operating procedure.

Personally, I'm glad the parks are closed, because the last time the government was closed, the national parks were the first bellwether that the government being closed is INCONVENIENT FOR CITIZENS. Or, as then-Speaker Gingrich said, in an admirably honest moment, "We throught if we closed the government, no one would notice. We were wrong."

Many of your friends and neighbors - one out of every five people in the country - work for a local, county, state or federal government. However well or poor we work, my experience in both camps tells me that government workers are no less proud, no less professional, no less skilled at the work they do than people in private sector employment. Some of the work being done right now is being done less effectively because we are not at full staff. Many of the people equipped and trained to do work on specific activities are not coming back when the budget issues are resolved, because they will have moved on to other jobs in order to feed their families. And many other people are being harmed by the interruption of government services in the process.

We are not ashamed to be federal employees. We are not ashamed to be doing our jobs. We hope that the amateur theatrics will stop and that agreement can be reached. In the meantime, if you can't get into a federal park, please understand that the uniformed person preventing your entry is doing their job. The parks will be open again; the public land will not disappear in the interim.

So far, how good?

Having started at 6, at 7:40 I was ready to execute the "5-minute install" WordPress so famously claims.

Well, it may be installed but there are still some configuration issues that shall have to wait until tomorrow. MySQL has a database and there's even a user configured. Which I presume means that both PHP and Apache are running fine below MySQL. Tomorrow night, we'll see whether we can get WordPress to notice.

I am starting to realize a) my friend was truly dedicated to WordPress to install a complete server environment onto a laptop just to run a couple of demo sessions and b) he was even more "dedicated" (or perhaps another word is more appropriate) to do it on his wife's laptop.

Happy Easter, 2013, from an old dog not so much learning new things as devotedly following the wonderful instructions of the anonymous, amazing people at WebDevelopersNotes.Com - thanks, folks, for startlingly clear and easy instructions.

Tomorrow never knows, but the future is unwritten. Rest in peace, George and Joe and Phil Ramone.

Fear and Trepidation, 2013

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," as the title slide says in the infamous '60s film, "Lord Love a Duck." "Go to school - get a little knowledge, live dangerously" is the way that advice goes on.

A well-meaning friend gave me an introduction to WebPress last weekend, and so here I am on an Easter evening with a brand new Apache server sitting on my antique-but-beloved Windows 7 beast. Several steps to go in my pursuit of dangerous living (or at least, further knowledge), but this is my progress report for the moment.

Hail, Hail Androidia - Current state of the tablet market

Shortly after I heard someone make the point, I put a poster in my office that said, "A computer will help you do what you want to do. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?"

Without benefit of any special requirements, a very bright friend complimented me by asking for some of my thoughts about "the non-Apple" tablet market. Not wishing to disappoint, I tried to do my homework, and here for the general benefit of anyone else who cares is the result.

“non-Apple” limits things usefully and I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment. To focus further:

• HP bought Palm for $3B solely to get their hands on WebOS, which they proceeded to murder and then mutilate. Recent news that over 200 Palm staff were laid off surprised the media only in that it was hard to believe there were still over 200 Palm staff in HP. There are Palm tablets available but there is no point in buying something already at a dead end. As Gertrude Stein said about her Oakland childhood home, “there’s no there there.” 
• The RIM death watch is continuing, and while the BlackBerry tablet also exists, there seems little point to discussing it. No there much longer.

I'm not saying Android is everything we have ever wanted in computing, but it is the most popular platform, has the most applications and can pretty much do anything any other tablet can do (except load data from iTunes). This is where the action is, even if you don’t want to get into flashing your OS with mods.

7-inch Tablets

There are several good reasons why you might consider spending $249 for a nook tablet rather than $199 for an Amazon Kindle Fire (I will leave for another day the question of whether the $80 Amazon Plus membership is a hidden cost of the Fire).

Any Android product will be communicating through Google servers. The Fire, however, also communicates through Amazon’s servers on a dogmeat browser of their own design that is already notoriously slow and won’t be getting faster – this in the interest of “offloading” processing into “the cloud,” which as Michael Hammer would put it, adds hand-offs and thus delays results. Two clouds for the price of one, with delays for free.

One reporter, at the grand Amazon announcement, asked Jeff Bezos if someone using the Fire to shop for shoes was likely to get an instant message from Zappo’s (which Amazon owns) offering a better deal, Bezos’ reply was a terse, “We won’t do that.” Reassuring? Not so much. I was quite impressed that the reporter had internalized the architecture so quickly; many people weren’t yet even sure whether the Fire would support Google’s Market (now known, sadly, as “Google Play Apps,” but for the record, yes, it CAN).

Yes, the Barnes and Noble product will offer you access to Barnes and Noble products, but remember the concept of tablet-as-reader is 180 degrees from the concept of the ereader. eInk does not have backlighting, and many people prefer it to reading books on a computer screen. Barnes and Noble has music products but they aren’t as adept at marketing them as Amazon; they are much less adept at marketing their “cloud” services, although for the nook it serves quite well – books do not have to be stored on the device and do not disappear from the account. The nook Tablet does not REQUIRE B&N connectivity; the Fire doesn’t communicate with the Web without Amazon connectivity.

This is to say, I think Barnes and Noble will be much less of an annoyance on their Tablet than Amazon is for Fire users. Any tablet can download music from emusic, Amazon, Google Play Music and a host of others; the only vendor I know that absolutely doesn’t support Android is…yes…Apple iTunes. I am pretty comfortable with the idea that you can even watch Amazon streaming movies on the nook tablet (and Netflix, and Hulu, etc.). I know for a fact that Barnes and Noble has fewer grand schemes for the use of private data than does Amazon; since a very generous friend gifted me with a nook, B&N has had lots of time to do bad things to me and, so far, the worst they've done is sent me emails for business partners (I remember where my delete key is, so it wasn't too difficult to deal with). The Fire, on the other hand, is an identity theft waiting to happen.

More and perhaps better thoughts about the nook tablet are here: http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/barnes-noble-nook-tablet/4505-3126_7-35059751.html

The Large-Form Tablet

“The sky” right now is the asus Transformer Prime (yes, Hasbro is very cranky about that name, which has nothing to do with Optimus Prime or Bumblebee). A to-die-for tablet, thinner than the iPad 2 (the new high-def iPad is thicker than the 2) that attaches to a delightfully-designed keyboard, this was immediately identified by c|net's Molly Wood as more than just the "Gadget of the Week.". Maximum PC says “KickASS.” BlueTooth, WiFi, HDMI video-out port, micro- AND FULL-SIZE SD ports, a USB port and an earphone jack (the single speaker is okay but not boom-box loud). Worst thing anyone has to say about aTP is, “How soon can you deliver it, please?” I think the combination of touch screen with keyboard is near perfection; it is HARD to type on a tablet. If and when I get back to building Frankenstein, I'm going to look HARD at

The other main competitors for the notPad market include the Sony, which is about the same $500 price as the older Samsung Galaxy.

Sony http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/sony-tablet-s-32gb/4505-3126_7-35003724.html and 

Samsung http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/samsung-galaxy-tab-10/4505-3126_7-34505338.html

Everything else is so many shelves below the two tiers identified above that you just DON'T WANT TO LOOK. 

You will discover that you want the MOST on-board memory and storage capacity you can get. If they don’t offer Ice Cream Sandwich, ask why. Firmly.

Android Apps - a few recommendations

You can download a free application daily from the Amazon App Store, even without a Fire [be careful, though - once you have Amazon in your machine, they will try and take ownership of ALL of your apps, and you might not want that]. But absolute minimum requirements include:

• avast or Lookout security
• Cracked Light
• Dictionary.com
• GasBuddy
• Netflix
• Overdrive Media Console (allows you to borrow books from your library)
• SpeedTest and 
• WiFi Analyzer

Don't panic yet - all of the above are well within your price range, and so far we haven't spent a dime.

I like the highly-customizable GO keyboard(s) and, should you be into such nonsense, I find Super Sudoku to be the best presentation of that particular puzzle, just as I find AI Factory’s Checkers and Reversi not only challenging but attractive. These and many, many other pleasant opportunities are free, too.

If you have $10 left after your tablet purchase, that will pay for both PocketCast (which I find the most effective podcast manager) AND MobileKnox, a secure database for user names and passwords that allows you to back up the data to your desktop (all for one low price).Being more than slightly compulsive, Folder Organizer was well worth the price to me. My work desk may be a mess, but my 'droid walls are tidy!  And your correspondent is not being compensated for these recommendations.

Be aware that many games have in-game purchases, preferably BEFORE your kids start playing. Corby is one of the worst offenders, and news that someone's children spent over $100 buying hats and clothing for the charming main character of the game was unsettling but unsurprising. Google is paying attention, though, and later 'droid operating systems have governors for in-game purchasing in the Setup menus.

C'mon Jellybean! Let's keep building Android Planet!

RodM

Happy St. David's Day - Where is YOUR money?

Another screed about Web design and process flow.

http://irs.gov has a relatively clean and bright home page with lots of topics readily apparent to the casual observer. A pleasant-looking man says, "I'm waiting for my refund" as are many of us, so I click there.

A three-step process appears. How nice, straightforward, clear. Except...warning...

"Please DO NOT CALL our toll-free number unless 'Where's My Refund?' specifically indicates that you should." And above that warning, another curious item - "Keep in mind that IRS telephone assistors will not be able to provide additional information." Good thing I found that, given that I have to keep it in mind.

Look around...aha. Step 3 is "Where's My Refund?" Got it.

Below that...hmm..."IRS toll free hours are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time." Awkward phrasing, and worse, there is no number provided. No phone number anywhere on the page. Well, let's try working through the process.

• Check 72 hours after you e-file - no problem. It's been a week and a half.


• You need: SSN, filing status and EXACT refund amount - no problem.


• Get your REFUND STATUS [a link] at "Where's My Refund?" [A graphic link]

Wonderful news. My refund hit the bank two days ago. Except, not so much...the bank knows nothing about it. "Please wait until that date to contact us again because we cannot take any action until then. Thank you for your patience." Someone is thanking ME for patience? That's a nice thought...and again, no phone number nor evidence of a link to same. The "Refund Help" gives me much, much more information than I could imagine needing about how to deal with the form I've already finished. Okay, let's back up.

Back at the home page, there's a menu at the top with "Contact IRS." This sounds promising. One of the options on the resulting page is "Contact Us for Status of Your Refund," which likewise sounds promising. Click...

ARRGH, we're back at the 3-step process page. Back to the home page, and back to "Contact IRS." Oh, there's a note BELOW "Contact Us for Status of Your Refund" stating "Want to check on the status of your refund? You can check online with the Where's My Refund application, or call 1-800-829-4477. (Please wait at least four weeks before calling.)" This is the first time that "Where's My Refund" has not had a question mark.

I somehow don't think waiting for four weeks is going to help with whether or not the bank should have my refund, so I dial the number. I go through one minute of information including the cryptic "We will update our systems with the new information very soon." Then I go through an automated process almost exactly the same as "Where's My Refund?" and learn...yes...that processing of my return is complete, it was delayed (for which they apologize) and the refund should be in the bank...two days ago. I am also advised not to contact them before that date, which doesn't seem like it will be a problem.

I finally, after three calls, locate a mechanism by which I can wait for an operator to assist me. The current hold time is 10 to 15 minutes. Unfortunately, I discovered that while I had not been invited to a meeting, my attendance was required in two minutes, so I had to break out of the queue and attend to business.

The phone tree one must traverse to actually speak to a human being is quite challenging, and to avoid any further annoyance to the IRS than this faithful report already provides, I will not go through the procedure. Suffice it to say that one must score correctly on five different levels of automated responses, enter nothing for the sixth and then resist the temptation to press 1 to indicate that you owe the IRS money. This is when you are told how long the current hold time is; my time to this point was 4 minutes and 37 seconds. Once on hold, you are provided with suggestions that you take your question to the IRS Web site, and of course that their representatives are helping other customers.

Please believe me when I say that the attendant who answered my phone call (at 33 minutes, 12 seconds after the connection began) was extremely pleasant, gracious to a fault and very patient with me having violated several procedural steps to make my inquiry.

The problem - this year's program is malfunctioning. The automated systems are giving out incorrect information and the IRS is experiencing processing delays with bank deposits. She suggested that I wait until the week of March 12th to call back and see whether or not further information was available about when the deposit would be made; she also complimented me on submitting a tax return with no errors.

Remembering - in case you "missed all that"

Let's start with a simple association. The 1960 musical, "Bye Bye Birdie," was a comedy about a rock and roll star being drafted, as well as a shout-out to one of the best friends Broadway ever had, newspaper columnist and TV host Ed Sullivan. The film included a break-out performance for Ann-Marget, co-starred Bobby Rydell who himself already had four Top 10 hits, provided Dick Van Dyke his film debut, and continued the fascination Hollywood had with parent/teenager relationships, albeit in a much funnier vein than, for example, "Rebel Without a Cause."

It also - however inadvertently - taught American kids what they were supposed to do when the Beatles arrived. The song chanted by fans of Conrad Birdie, "We Love You Conrad," both formally and informally was transformed into "We Love You Beatles" in January 0f 1964 when Sullivan provided the Beatles for three weeks in a row on his Sunday night variety show.

Elvis was the real rock and roller who had gotten drafted, and in his absence a number of pop stars became part of the popular consciousness. Bobby Rydell, just as dozens like him, sang songs written by other people while musicians behind him played arrangements written by different people. The teen-idol phase of his career was intended to be the star of a longer career, perhaps in Vegas, and that's what happened. Philadelphia gave the world Bobby, Frankie Avalon and Fabian. Detroit gave us Mary Wells and Martha Reeves.

But also in Detroit, Smokey Robinson was writing songs for himself and others. Chicago had the haunting falsetto and socially-conscious voice of Curtis Mayfield. Texas gave us Buddy Holly for four short, prolific years. Dozens of blues musicians recorded whatever they got paid for. At Sun studios after Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash were recording country songs for pop audiences. And with "Maybelline," Chuck Berry appeared to have married country and blues and created rock and roll.

A bunch of lower-middle-class kids in England were eating it all up and spitting it back out with a verve, an intensity and a life all its own. Even now, "Please Please Me" (the Beatles' second single) and "She Loves You" (their fourth) leap out of a set of speakers with startling vitality. In the months to come, a dozen other British music groups arrived to grab whatever scraps were falling off the tables. Some of them had been listening to American blues for years. Some were art school drop outs. A few were kids who'd been stuck taking piano lessons for classical music recitals.

In Greenwich Village, a Columbia Records producer introduced Woody Guthrie acolyte Bob Dylan to the music of Robert Johnson. Not much later, a couple of L.A. kids came out of the theater having seen "A Hard Day's Night" and, deciding they wanted to be rock and roll stars, set Bob Dylan lyrics to electric guitar music and called themselves "The Byrds."

The legendary advice about Hollywood from screenwriter William Goldman applies double to the record industry, "Nobody knows anything." A group of blues players went into a London studio at the direction of their record company to record "a rock New World Symphony." The album they recorded with symphonic instruments and electronic keyboards, songs chronicling a single day, "Days of Future Passed," was not that but, having paid for an album, the company released it anyway and "art rock" began. Even funnier - one band took a section of New World Symphony and grafted it onto Bernstein's Broadway show-stopper, "America" - and almost no one noticed (as I write this, the song is still widely available on collections of the The Nice and still incorrectly credited only to Bernstein; the keyboardist involved soon became friends with Aaron Copland but never quite paid back Dvorak).

This is not an absolute principle but it's close - take any music group working in 1966 and look at the album(s) they released that year in comparison to what they recorded in the five following years and you will notice they have one thing in common - extraordinary growth.

• For the Rolling Stones, the curve starts with "Under My Thumb," goes past "Sympathy for the Devil" and lands at "Gimme Shelter."



• For the Kinks, a British-patter "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" led to the shimmering "Waterloo Sunset" and to "Arthur," a song cycle about the end of the British Empire.



• The Impressions went from "You've Been Cheatin'" to the civil rights anthems "We're a Winner" and "Choice of Colors" to arrive at "Check Out Your Mind."



• Even Elvis had to get on board. His own arc started with yet another movie song, "Frankie and Johnnie," then "U. S. Male," then "In the Ghetto." Along the way his first black-leather suit and his first solo TV special reintroduced him as an idol and gave him his gold ticket to Vegas.



• In 1966, the Who created a generation gap anthem, "My Generation" with a hopped-up singer stuttering "Why can't they all f-f-f-f-fade away?" By 1970, they'd already served as the world's smallest touring opera company with "Tommy" and were looking back to American rockabilly with their loud remake of "Summertime Blues."

In 1970, the film "Woodstock" fed the festival to millions who hadn't been there while allowing thousands who had their first chance to actually hear the music. Rock was firmly established as a canvas on which anything was possible on any instrument one could grab. Flute with a blues band? French horn with shatteringly loud drums? Screaming guitars playing Latin salsa? Tape loops and multiple rhythms and theremin against vocal choir and clarinet? Ho hum; it's been done. What else ya got?

Because the performers were creating their own music, because the industry never understood the music well enough to participate (Motown and Columbia came closest, and both made crucial mistakes, and even Fillmore producer Bill Graham couldn't handle a record company) and because the whole world was engaged in struggles for equality and against the Vietnam war, the music managed to go in all directions at once.

A return to "three-chord" rock by Southern groups only added additional texture, it did not stop the 20-minute science-fictional jams. Disco did not kill rock, but gave some of the older and straighter musicians new jobs while setting the stage for the rebirth of Michael Jackson and rap. Katy Perry may call herself the new millennial Bettie Boop, but the Beatles were cartoons twice, once on TV and then in the visually-anarchic "Yellow Submarine."

We have all been here before, and some of us feel like we owe it to someone to sleep with both eyes open, lest we miss something.

The music of the period endures, despite the expectations of many who, like the unhappy Time magazine reporter renamed "Mr. Jones," simply didn't know what it was that was happening. Solid performers, many who were not born before the day the music died, are available on a new tribute album, singing Buddy Holly songs. All you need, according to the savant who produced the Beatles, is ears. Love helps, of course; it always does.

Starting with 7 Starter - painless tricks for survival

So, you just got a great deal on a NetBook, a reconditioned machine or some other too-good-to-be-true deal? And it comes with a little label that says "Windows 7 Starter"?

The good news is that you have several options. And not all of them cost money.

You could get a copy of Home Professional, or go in with a couple of friends and get a 3-pack (and it's funny, but as I write this, one vendor is selling each of these products for the same price).

But it is likely that there are two key things that are making you ache from the limitations of Windows 7 Starter

• you can't get rid of the Windows logo on the desktop, and
• you really, really want a screen saver, if not more than one.

Would you believe...both problems are easily solvable?

Solution number one involves a freeware called Oceanis Change Background W7. It allows you to pick a background, two backgrounds or more and then either leave one in place or cycle through them all. There's even an option to avoid cycling while you're on your battery.

Solution two...and you're going to hate this one...is even easier.

Hit your Windows button and look in the bottom left hand corner for a small text entry block to appear (the screenshot seems to have disappeared from Blogger). Now for the really painful part - start typing the words "screen saver"...

...and now look at the top of the window.

That's right - they left the function in, they just removed the Control Panel hooks to it.

And you just saved yourself an upgrade.

Best from

RodM

Saturday farewell (except, well, not so much)

This time-sensitive material is no longer relevant and has been removed.

Should you have questions, please contact Unclejack Solutions at unclejackdc@yahoo.com.

Thank you.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Zuckerberg

This isn't a story about me but my context to it seems amusing. Your mileage may vary.

I attended a class on Tuesday and Wednesday of this past week. The PRE-class homework assignment was to create an account on both Facebook and Twitter so that we class members would know what the heck the instructor was talking about.

I remembered this assignment late Monday evening. Certain that I couldn't claim that the cats had eaten my NetBook, I had at it for about an hour. I found several folks I knew already on Facebook and willing to "friend" me. I spent four minutes trying to discover HOW to turn off the "year of birth" field from my birthdate (I'll get to how I knew I should do this in a moment). I didn't get angry, but, well, four minutes seemed like a LOT. I knew this thing was bigger than I understood, complex in ways I hadn't yet guessed, and clunky to use.

I got to class on Tuesday, and I was the only one who had done the homework. So, we didn't look at the class members' Facebook pages.

But what a week to be introduced to Facebook. In the previous weekend, one of their executives had spoken with the New York Times about the "charges" that Facebook handled user data in an indelicate fashion. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/facebook-executive-answers-reader-questions/ They also had launched a new partnership through which your Facebook friends' experience on several other sites would be visible to you.

[Here is new how features are generally introduced in the business world. THEY TELL YOU about the feature. THEY DO NOT TURN ON the feature. THEY TELL YOU HOW to turn on the feature. If possible, they charge you for the new feature first.]

By mid-week, there was chaos about how to turn the new links off. And the "where am I" moment was when the most straightforward, simple and fundamentally easy-to-follow set of instructions was HERE - http://franken.senate.gov/press/?page=news_single&news_item=Facebook_Privacy_Instructions

Yahoo Finance borrowed a small sidebar from the amazing and useful four-page feature Consumer Reports has in their June issue about social media tools and their privacy/security issues. Consumer Union should give an award to whatever editor came up with the title, "9 Things To STOP DOING NOW on Facebook!" (Number two - "Leaving Your Full Birth Date")
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/109538/7-things-to-stop-doing-now-on-facebook

The New York Times created a truly fabulous graph of exactly HOW MANY PLACES in Facebook there are where you NEED to set security settings. ("Joe, I've been looking at this design document you just sent me, and, well, YOU'RE FIRED.")
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/facebook-privacy.html

Thursday night, an all-hands meeting at Facebook Central was held to address the current "bad press."

Friday, a story surfaced with an email in which Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said unpleasant things about his college colleagues who had entrusted their private data to him and his electronic student directory. Very unplesant things. The implication being that he has not matured and gotten more sensitive in the past six years.

THIS IS UNFAIR.

But, you DO realize that Facebook started as an elaborate prank Mark concocted by which to humiliate a girlfriend who had dumped him? Do you want this man controlling access to pictures of YOUR grandchildren?

Today is Mark's birthday. In case you want to go into Facebook http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001100291957&ref=profile#!/markzuckerberg?ref=ts and send him a greeting.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to earn more blood in Vampire Wars and am suddenly immune to religious icons. So, as Carl said in "Caddyshack," "I've got that going for me."

THE COMMERCIAL IS BETTER THAN THE MOVIE - Today's edition

Google Chrome, in my rarely-humble opinion, is a dog so far. I tried seven or eight versions before I even could get it to install. It still is very difficult to configure to do things that other, more mature products (Firefox comes to mind) can do immediately. Although it does fewer things while occupying fewer hardware resources.

BUT - the Googles have done a dramatically wonderful commercial for Chrome that you will not want to miss. The commercial is available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCgQDjiotG0&feature=channel

The too-short, not-really-satisfying look behind the scenes for the commercial is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oarMXGq3gI

An older, charming Google commercial is also available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrDHrwLUtvk&feature=channel

AND ONE MORE THING

What do YOU have scheduled for 10/10/10? The reason I ask is in my next post.

Join up so you don't miss it.

No Tech Today - Object Lessons and Ambiguity

iPads are sold out. We might have to think about something other than new toys.

Early in his book, “Orthodoxy,” G. K. Chesterton makes the case that zealots generally reduce their world to the size of their particular issue of passion, making themselves a sort of king of the reduced kingdom in which they live. Someone who believes the government is eavesdropping on their phone and monitoring their comings and goings, by example, becomes the sole center of their world because suddenly everyone is an enemy and a co-conspirator. This resembles nothing so much as the old TV show, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” which depicted a city in which every shoe-shine provider and newsstand attendant was either an agent or a retiree-on-pension, providing service and regular reports.

There are church bodies whose entire approach to ecumenical activity revolves around whether the other denomination absolutely and completely has the same position about abortion; only with that agreement in place can they work together to provide food and water to non-aborted children in Haiti and Chile.

But in a Northern Virginia conference room on a recent Wednesday night, I got another example of how this “small world” works. The event was a non-partisan presentation on the terrific book, “The Checklist Manifesto,” which tells of a surgeon working with the World Health Organization to create a checklist for operating rooms (if this sounds like a 2009 episode of “E.R.,” you may be watching the same too-much-TV as your correspondent).

The presenter went off-slide for a moment to say that he had learned a lot about medical procedures in the book (which also covers gourmet dining, high-rise construction and rock and roll along the way). He asked the group, “For example – do you know why they put a sterile gown over the patient instead of just putting a dressing on the area in which they're working?”

A quick, haughty response replied loudly, “Because Medicare pays more for a whole gown.”

All the air left the room.

The speaker, significantly startled, tried to bypass the outburst.

“It's because the wires and tubes can catch on the patient's skin, they can touch non-sterile surfaces and then contaminate the patient, and they can get stuck. With a full gown, there's a smooth surface without drag and less chance of contamination.”

Nothing anywhere approaching insurance fraud. How dull.

The person answering the question didn't comment further, but he had made his philosophy clear:

• All health care is crooked.

• Hospitals conduct health care.

• Hospitals are crooked.

• The recently-passed health care bill is as crooked as Medicare.

A strangely simple world, that. Believe one premise and the rest falls into place.

I was startled when a friend began arguing, with remarkable precision and an evident mastery of facts, why the health care bill is insanely bad for the country. I learned later that she has made her living as a writer and research for a conservative lobbying organization, deeply entrenched in fighting the health care bill. Sad to think that for some parties, perhaps including her, the passage of the health care bill could severely reduce income.

She brought up the amount of money the government would spend on health care. I mentioned some of the pallets of cash that had “gone missing” in Iraq and Louisiana. She snapped that she rejects my comparison because there has always been government graft but there has never been so severe an entrenchment of government control over extraordinary debt levels. A nice try, and I allowed her to take the point for the moment as I saw no chance she would understand why I thought there was - is - a difference.

Even Michelle Bachman on the Fox Sunday talking heads admitted that (“unfortunately,” she whispered) the deficit preceded Obama. In fact, Michelle was so far out there that the soulless Chris Wallace had to express some concern about her casual attitude about facts.

This cultural chasm is the reason I'm becoming more and more engaged with ambiguity. P. J. O'Roarke told NPR that the British are better at cognitive dissonance than Americans, and I think we will need to get much better at it if we're going to go through mid-term elections and what is already being identified by most as “an enormous fight” over a Supreme Court justice.

Why not simply nominate Hillary Clinton, get it over with and double all the deals made for health care?

You'd have to be a master satirist to devise the Tax Day scenario where Tea Party attendees were complaining about paying the lowest taxes in 50 years, or a few days later when folks who want to carry guns around (all the better to shoot themselves in the calf, as one athlete recently discovered) said that the state laws are too variable, and demanded a nationwide law from the government they despise. But irony died quite a while back, and the hatred that dare not speak its name is ranting in all directions at once, as usual. Jon Stewart thinks they're mad because they lost an election. Bill Maher is much closer.

But back to ambiguity. In a world that is round and thus has no sides, ambiguity is the large majority point between the rather thin “black” and the equally-thin “white,” the lovely gray middle-ground. Where there is no “either”and no “or,” just a lot of really interesting “possibles.”

There is a risk, of course, that within the wide, uncrowded space of ambiguity, we might actually be discussing with reason instead of emotion. We might become so preoccupied with facts that we are again startled when a public official says two different things on two different days while being filmed with two different cameras, all the better to see through them with. Perhaps we can even help some of those officials retire, and have more time to learn about the 24-hour news cycle and how easy it is to re-run footage over and over and over.

There is the risk that we might not be able to snap our fingers and have emotional mobs attend to our hyperbole.

There is the risk that our stakeholders will expect us to deliver on the promises we make.

But, to borrow a phrase from Orwell, standing in the narrow confines of “black” or “white” seems too much like allowing others to think our thoughts for us.

And for some of us, predictability is overrated.

PS - Happy 87th birthday to rock's longest-working drummer, Spirit's Ed Cassidy on May 4th.

Happy New Year - Your 2010 Resolutions

Sigh...some romances are too good to last, and lo and behold, both my ancient eMachine and my acer laptops died on me during the holidays, both apparently with power issues. So...there I was in the lovely Shenandoah mountains enjoying what I expected to be a week of catching up with certain computer-based activities, and...no computer. Suddenly, my complaints about the slow "free wifi" offered by my host disappeared.

The first machine I found with a built-in WiFi modem was a Dell Inspiron 15-inch, perhaps soon to inherit the nickname of "the AntiWebBook." But dual Intel Pentium processors and Windows 7 built in are not to be sneered at (not to mention at least a dozen applications showing up in the Belarc Advisor scan that I can't yet identify). And that cool processor/memory gadget in Windows 7 is running below 50% a lot more often.

What did this new year disaster teach me?

My gradually-increasing anal-retentive tendencies were rewarded generously. What I had saved, whether on thumb or external pocket drives, was extremely useful in building up the new machine to "my standards," including Firefox, MediaMonkey and a host of other necessities. What I didn't have, I managed to download. Slowly. So - new year's resolution #1? Save everything INTO the Documents folder ("Downloads," "My Music," "My Pictures," ad infinitum), then copy THAT folder off to SOMETHING before bedtime.

On arriving home, restarting the household network and getting a week of clothing into the washer, some vague nagging voice said, "You haven't run the anti-virus program thoroughly on the new machine - and hey, when was the last time you did a full scan on the old workhorse desktop?"

Guess what I found? Half a dozen trojan horse files in the BROWSER TEMP FILES! Hmm...and these didn't trigger an alert when they arrived because...why? Because. Deal with it.

So, resolution #2 - even with all those snappy commercials with the PC customer who wants faster start-ups in Windows 7 - we're going to begin EVERY log-in with a quick scan, and run a full scan every week, preferably during early a.m. snore-time.

Boring resolutions? You betcha. But now is not a moment too soon for you to actually DO what you know you should do.

So (I hope) - the NEXT time I need to rebuild a machine, having a "Downloads" file FULL of up-to-date necessities will save time. AND keeping the machine clean will be worth the daily exercise in patience.

The cynic in me is wondering what will break next. The pragmatist in me is interested in fixing my desktop sound card and figuring out how to deal with a thumb drive (with no switches) that magically seems to have decided it is now read-only. Wish me luck.

Your ever-lovin' Unclejack
UnclejackDC@Yahoo.Com

Quick Notes - eBooks as movies / eBooks as CDs

Our "Catch 'Em..." story about technologies designed to lock you into a single Web site rather than allow you Web browsing (http://olddognewtricksreport.blogspot.com/2009/12/2009-in-review-catch-em-and-keep-em-net.html) addressed eBook readers as one example of the phenomenon.

Now we have a new paradigm for eBooks - "they're like the movies."

NOW PLAYING

Many of us are used to seeing the tiered approach by which films are marketed:

1. in theatres,
2. pay-per-view-and-airline,
3. home video,
4. cable TV and
5. network TV

Well, apparently eBook marketing is going to follow a similar path.

"The right place for the e-book is after the hardcover but before the paperback," according to the chief economic officer of Simon and Schuster publishing, quoted in today's Wall Street Journal article, which also states the current publisher of the former Time-Warner Press will be scheduling similarly.

This news comes in time for some people to cancel their orders for the Kindle/ nook/ Papyrus/ Cool-er/ Reader/ Readius/ Bookeen/ Astak/ iRex/ eSlick/ WISE that won't arrive by December 25th. [Gee - is this vertical market getting crowded?]

Audio book customers know that audio books - with no standard digital rights management imposed - typically arrive in stores (or on Amazon's Audible subsidiary site) concurrent with the release of the title, be its first release hardback or paperback. Whether this continues or the digital delays begin impacting audio equivalents will be an interesting issue to watch in the New Year.

PIRATES!!!

The Quill & Quire blog quotes several sources in an interesting story (http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/index.php/2009/11/30/as-e-book-sales-soar-so-does-piracy/) suggesting that book publishers are going to start playing the prediction game that is doing SO WELL for the recording industry.

• Dan Brown's latest thriller, "The Lost Symbol" has "been illegally downloaded more than 100,000 times"!!!
• Publishers lost SIX HUNDRED MILLION in 2008 to piracy!!!
• Top pirated books - sex, do-it-yourself and Twilight (more or less in that order)!!!

In the record industry (one more time, the book is "Appetite for Self-Destruction"), the game is played like this:

• Performer X sold 250,000 copies of their first CD
• Performer Y is "just like Performer X"
• Performer Y only sold 112,000 copies of THEIR first CD
• PIRACY IS RESPONSIBLE FOR 138,000 SALES LOST

We await more scintillating logic, embarrassing exaggerations and the occasional just-plain LIE, while noting, sadly, that magazines are publishing more and more of their content on line RATHER than in the pages, and subscriptions are getting cheaper and cheaper as they grow more and more desperate for subscription sales to add to their newsstand sale totals.

Giving books for Christmas, I remain your mostly-trustworthy and ever-lovin' Unclejack

2009 in Review - Buy your favorite music (AGAIN)

Where were you on 9-9-'09?

A friend of mine was standing at BestBuy's doors at 9:59 a.m., wearing a Beatle cap and a Beatle T-shirt, having decided that "Number nine, number nine, number nine" was a holiday. He also reports that he got through the entire "The Beatles: Rock Band" story mode before dinner.

But if 2009 did not quite generate the banner sales that the debut of CDs provided (again, the book is called "Appetite for Self-Destruction," and almost anyone with more than a dozen CDs should laugh wildly while reading it), there were a whole lot of reasons why you probably found yourself re-purchasing music you already owned.

Beatle re-releases

Your correspondent has the memory of dozens of articles about the effort by EMI (aided and abetted by Beatle producer George Martin's son Giles, who was the primary force behind the wonderful "Love" CD packages last year) to re-engineer the catalog to 2009 standards. I still haven't seen anyone do a review of how it turned out.

My own rock-and-roll-damaged-ears find little difference. Here and there, there is the sense that someone has applied a Chorus pedal to a guitar, or added echo. And oh yes, "Help" is now in stereo. No, wait...the booklet says George Martin re-engineered the mono recording to stereo BACK IN 1988, and THAT is the release included. Huh?

Meanwhile...the MONO versions of the Beatle catalog are also back. How does this make sense? Well, Beatle fans who have yet to read Geoff Emerick's memoir, "Here, There and Everywhere" are advised in this as-yet-unpaid-unpolitical-announcement to get 'hold of a copy; in that valuable volume, the talented and innovative engineer unashamedly admits that no one at EMI anticipated that Stereo would make Mono recordings obsolete, and that the main effort ALWAYS was on the Mono version, with Stereo an afterthought.

But the most interesting bit of reengineering I've found so far is the Rock Band remix of "Dear Prudence," where a George Harrison crescendo near the end of the song is turned up to assist the guitar player in following the melody. Louder than on the 1988 OR 2009 CDs, it sounds better in the game than anywhere else; why they buried it in the mix is a mystery. But this leads us to...

On-line downloadable content

"Guitar Hero," "Rock Band," "Band Hero," "DJ Hero," and even the PSP-only "Rock Band Unplugged" continued to thrive this year (despite at least one first-person-shooter that used the tag line, "Because YOU'RE TIRED of music games"). Not only were there new song packs adding Metallica, the Beatles and (by year's end) Van Halen to Aerosmith and AC/DC's band-specific titles, there were several multiple-artist titles as well.

But the real action was on-line. Too much classic rock? Download songs by the Dixie Chicks. Too much testosterone? Rediscover the Breeders. Two Beatle album downloads were finally added to the successful game's original lineup, and lots of "mini-album" packages were available for about $2 per song or $6 in combination. Even the Faux Four, Spinal Tap got into the game with a few titles from the reunion album that preceded their not-in-costume tour.

You've heard Steven Tyler's proud claim that the Guitar Hero game made Aerosmith more money than they've made from any album release? No reason to doubt it, which means this is going to keep going for a while longer.

Extras

This didn't begin in 2009 (the Black Eyed Peas' 2006 release was a remix of their 2005 release, after all) but it reached new proportions this year. With DVD-added versions, extra-track versions, remixes and the rest, it was tough to buy only one copy of a new release this year. Self-proclaimed supergroup Chickenfoot put out a decent CD, then attached one additional song to their "album only" iTunes release, then for good measure, they released the album on vinyl.

21 seven-inch vinyl "singles" from Green Day? Hey, they sound better than bobble-head dolls, whatever the eBay resale value.

As I write, the #1 album in the country is...Lady Gaga's reboot of "The Game," with 8 or 9 new tracks (reports differ) and for all I know, a do-it-yourself mask-making kit. And the beat, like the marketing, goes on. [FYI - the "Nano Video" commercial is not Gaga but a Swedish artist named Miss Li. And if you think the song sounds like "Count Me In" by Gary Lewis and the Playboys - gee, you're older than you look!]

SNL

This didn't require an outlay of funds once or more than once, but a very positive trend was the good use of musical performers for the 2010 edition of the soon-to-be-Verizon-Night-Live franchise. Taylor Swift showed charm and a startlingly broad sense of humor, probably finishing ahead of all competition, but anyone who can get Madonna to show up and wrestle has my attention - well done, Gaga and well done, Lorne Michaels.

Kudos, before I end, to Green Day for not only following up "American Idiot" with a solid "21st Century Breakdown," but perhaps even topping themselves. Sneers, though, for giving iTunes the note-for-note remake of the Who's "A Quick One While He's Away."

Happy listening from your ever-lovin' Unclejack

2009 in Review - Catch-'em-and-Keep-'em Net

{FD for "full disclosure" - This is version 1.1. Yesterday's report was updated following information from a gracious correspondent and the coincidental terrific article on eReaders in the 12/3 Wall Street Journal. Visit http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704328104574519851557848662.html quickly, as WSJ is securing their articles for pay-per-view quickly these days.}

I have talked to people in computer networking who do not sneer at former Alaskan senator Ted Stevens' analogy that the Internet is "not a big truck" but "a series of tubes." Many other computer professionals think that Stevens is an idiot, with that figure of speech being near the top of their list of reasons why.

But this year has seen a strange proliferation of oddly-shaped tubes designed to hold onto the user and keep them inside as long as possible. AOL was never like this.

Even iTunes is gradually bowing to the will of its users and is becoming a less-authoritarian environment [a WONDERFUL history of iTunes can be found in Steve Knopper's amazing book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction," which chronicles the almost complete absence of thought in the record industry, circa 1970-2008]. Admittedly, you have to pay MORE for digital-rights-management-free tunes, and they still have that weird MP4 suffix making them difficult to use in some MP3-friendly hardware, but it's a step forward.

But the "not-quite-Internet of the year" is probably Amazon. The outrageously-successful Kindle includes "free" connectivity to the on-line Kindle store, where you can buy newspapers, magazines and books for your Kindle.

But let's back up a minute. Do you realize that {FD - in addition to buying and killing CDNow and Egghead, WITHOUT learning anything from their better elements} Amazon already owns:

• AbeBooks, the Canadian used/rare bookseller AND its major competitor, LibraryThing,
• Audible, the near-perfect audiobook sales Web site,
• Box Office Mojo, the near-perfect guide to movie success tracking,
• Brilliance Audio, the US' largest independent audiobook publisher,
• the Internet Movie Database,
• Mobipocket, the ebook software company known especially to Palm users,
• PlanetAll and Junglee, a Web-based reminder service and data mining company,
• Reflexive Entertainment videogame developer and on-line gaming portal (Maximum PC magazine shills their games regularly as "free trials" on the DVDs),
• Shelfari, the "social network for people who love books," and
• Zappos, the online shoe and apparel store.

{B}ook-related acquisitions, audiobook companies, movie-related acquisitions, an epublisher, a gaming site and a shoe store. Exactly what sort of syncronicity that provides is not totally clear, but there could be a master plan.

Now Amazon has a device that provides an on-line bookstore, access to non-password-protected PDF files, MP3-playing capability (only "in order that the files were entered into the Kindle") and a rudimentary Internet access to "text-based" sites and WikiPedia.

If it seems strangely stupid to you that the Kindle network does not link to Audible directly, you are not alone. And, of course, searching the FULL Internet provides lots of commentary about Kindle digital rights management. {FD - Sony's DRM appears to be dissolving in favor of EPUB files in what appears to be a fluid situation.}

And, of course, Barnes and Noble has their own product and THEIR own direct-download network. {And DRM strategy.}

Sony, of course, was the first offering in this vertical market. It handles PDFs, EPUBs, Adobe's Digital Editions software, RSS feeds and has its own Web store, but so far, no special network.

{FD - Oops -

1. As late as 4 p.m. yesterday, Sony's site did not contain details about it, but the WSJournal report mentioned above states that a wireless version is available, but with delivery backlogged to mid-January.
2. Wiser sages than the WSJ reporter who wrote the article mentioned above, or myself, are going to have to untangle the relationships between Mobipocket and EPUB. I didn't mention it, my sources tell me the WSJ got it wrong.
3. If I understand my new source, you can now move a Sony file to a Kindle but not vice versa. Maybe? What's the phrase - "your mileage may vary"???}

Then there is the strange issue of the Microsoft Zune, an obvious iPod clone with a remarkably terrible on-line store in which you can buy, or borrow, music and audiobooks. You may think it would be hard for anything to get you to appreciate iTunes, but ZuneNET will do it. (This month's Esquire, featuring weird webcam games and Robert Downey Jr. on the cover, includes a review by over-eager film director and gadget columnist Barry Sonnenfeld, who likes the new high-definition Zunes but hates the online store.)

Considering that the first generation Zune has the most sophisticated support for Audible audiobooks I've yet encountered, the question again comes - WHY doesn't ZuneNET include a link directly to Audible? How would that interfere with an MP3-playing book reader that can't go back and forth on a song list, much less handle albums?

Gamers know Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony maintain their own networks for on-line game play. More and more, these portals support on-line game purchase. Sony's new shrunk-down handheld gaming platform, the Go, doesn't even have the disk drive of its big brother, the PSP, and downloads new games directly from the Internet. Fans of the various music games, the dance and guitar and turntable "Band" and "Hero" titles, realize that new tunes are available on-line. One minor embarrassment of the Beatles Rock Band launch was that none of the expected album packages were available for the game on the 9-9-09 release date (at least two have hit Sony's on-line store as I write this). And while all three Sony game consoles promise Web access, lack of hardware support for add-ons like Flash limits the experience significantly - making it all the more tempting for the user to spend more time at the Sony store.

[Note to game store owners - keep an eye on the Blockbuster stores in your neighborhood, and notice how the number keeps dropping. The hardware vendors are working to eat your lunch. Booksellers can smile tolerantly, for the moment.]

Where, in any of this, is transparency, or portability? To say nothing of user interest?

Then again, why would you pay $300 for a device that allows you to hang out in one little corner of the Internet rather than picking up a WebBook that enables your voyage to the whole Web, where you can read almost anything (except proprietary book formats for the proprietary book readers)?

Still, I suspect we will see much more of this in the next few years, as the urge to attract eyeballs increasingly becomes the urge to hold people hostage in our store, so they never go to anyone else's store. {With that nasty browser trick of making the BACK button non-responsive as well, I presume.}

Catch 'em and keep 'em. At least until the {non-replaceable, rechargable} batteries {die for good}.

All the best from your ever-lovin' Unclejack {still in release 1.0, sadly}

2009 in Review - Windows 7

Okay, while the bandages and salve are healing my bruised knuckles, I am pleased to offer a few ideas about how best to make your own, less-painful, journey from Windows XP (perhaps the best Windows to date) into the brave new world of Windows 7.

#1 - Don't just do something, sit there!

Sit there and open Control Panel, do the required wiggling and get to your hardware settings. VERY carefully, make note of every single thing Windows XP is telling you about your hardware. WHO MADE your hardware? Are they still in business? Do they still have a Web presence? Are DRIVERS for your hardware still available from that source? WRITE THIS DOWN because I promise you it will be helpful later.

Collect, as best you are able, drivers and installation packs for your current hardware. Microsoft has not empowered Windows 7 to find them for you. Yet.

My acer WebBook camera has been out of service for about a month now because I don't have drivers and software for it any more. One is hoping that acer will address this SOON.

#2 - Copy your install disks

Especially if you are working with a WebBook without a CD/DVD drive, this step is useful. Even if you have an external drive available, this step is STILL recommended, as a single read error can cripple your install process. The 64-bit version of Windows 7 is 3.9 GB, the 32-bit is 2.3 GB. They will fit comfortably on any thumb drive 4 GB or larger.

This is also recommended for "essential" other software installs like OpenOffice (or its Microsoft superset), antivirus protection, etc. etc. etc. Anything you believe is a "must-have-immediately" item should go on the thumb drive. It'll work, I promise.

#3 - Plan "busy work"

There is an almost-invaluable ~5 MB file waiting for you at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/windows-easy-transfer And when WAS the last time Microsoft gave you something useful for free?

Easy Transfer will allow you to back up your Windows and "Documents and Settings" folders to an external drive, along with anything else you tell it to archive (Windows 7 will put those two folders into a Windows.old area of your install, but you may be well-advised to think of that as a last resort). Obviously, this goes on that thumb drive you're working with. Make sure you get the right version, as Easy Transfer (like Windows 7 itself) comes in 32- and 64-bit versions.

The problem with Easy Transfer is that it is PAINFULLY SLOW on both the backup AND restore end. My mileage was ten minutes per GB, so that backing up the 37 GB of data on my acer 100 GB drive took, yes, more than six hours. This is easy if you remember to do it before leaving the house for work...not so much if you start at 9 p.m. and expect to finish before dawn. Happily, external drives are remarkably cheap these days and there have been enough news reports (even the Wall Street Journal got into the story!) warning you that you should already be prepared.

#4 - How much memory DO you have?

I have a delightfully large, heavy, cumbersome eMachines laptop with a wide monitor. It's great to watch movies with while traveling. However, I learned two interesting things about it during this process - 1) the memory chip it contains cannot exceed 2 GB and 2) the machine can't address more than 750 MB, so even the 1 GB chip in it now is careless overkill.

Yes, I tried to install Windows 7 into this sweet monster, which I love for every one of the 49 minutes its battery can provide without the AC cord. The "are you ready for Windows 7" application cautioned me that it MAY NOT function optimally without more memory, but didn't say "Don't even try."

After install was completed, I clicked the new and much-better respected version of Windows Explorer to open a window. It took TWENTY MINUTES. Happily, I still had the eMachine repair kit, and Windows XP continues to work fine on this aging beast. I believe Linux looms large on its horizon.

#5 - Final check

Okay:

• Hardware data, drivers and useful information links?
• Install disks tucked onto a speedy USB drive?
• All your good data stored externally?
• Several good movies from Netflix waiting to help you while away the hours?
• ABSOLUTELY sure you have at least 1 GB of memory (the acer hums nicely with what appears to be this minimum requirement)?

Oh, yes - is your Internet service provider account in good standing? It may be possible to install without the Web waiting and ready, but it is not recommended. Many ISPs accept on-line payment and/or offer 24-hour telephone support; certainly all of them accept credit cards.

So now, go for it. There will be a few interactions with the install along the way, as 7 is a bit more user-intensive than XP, but not tediously so.

Best of luck - and here's hoping SP1 arrives soon.

Happy holidays from your ever-lovin' Unclejack - UnclejackDC@Yahoo.Com

Sugar - The Story so Far

On February 5th, a co-worker found his car impounded from the streets of D.C. due to the expiration of his parking meter. With a TomTom GPS and my hybrid, I leapt into super-hero mode and put myself at his disposal for the next several hours. I drove him to the office where he had to bail out his car, then stayed in the car (and in the street until a parking meter opened up) on a cold but quite sunny day. I turned the car stereo to some jazz while pulling up news on my BlackBerry.

I went to Slashdot and got immersed in an article about Sugar Labs [http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/05/1813246]. I loved Nicholas Negroponte's editorials in Wired magazine, and was intrigued to learn that he had helped fund the magazine's start. When "Being Digital" was released, I was an enthusiastic fan and especially loved the audiobook, read by Penn Jillette. However, I was not especially surprised to learn that Negroponte had disagreements with the two members of Sugar Labs working on the $100 Laptop Project [http://laptop.org/en/].

The idea of "Sugar on a Stick" [http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick] appealed to me. This may seem surprising in that I have always been wary of partioning my hard drives into multiple operating systems, and have never successfully installed a Linux environment (partition or otherwise) on a machine. But, booting a flash drive? Very cool. I did study education in college and have several friends attempting to support the education needs of kids from pre-school to middle school; I also do some volunteer work for an educational charity. I decided I would see to what extent Sugar's education tools might have some value for one or more of my teacher friends.

It took a couple of days for me to find time to create a "Sugar on a Stick." Then came another small delay - my eMachine laptop is not USB-stick-literate. I spent a bit of time playing around and looking for guidance on how to remediate this issue; none of the solutions looked especially robust.

A week later, wandering around Target, I caught site of the eee notepad computer - just $300. Obviously, THIS would be new enough to support the requirement, and it would also serve me by providing a light resource for writing without jabbing a pointer at an on-screen keyboard (as my Palm requires). I had tried writing with the keyboard that pulls out of my cell phone but - surprise - the files created this way don't seem to be transferable, in much the same way as the thing won't allow me to convert a sequence from an MP3 file into a ring tone (although I can buy one, and then pay for both the music file and the download).

So - ready to invest in the eee, I open up the day's mailed Micro Center ad and discover that for the same $299.99 I am ready to invest in the eee, I can get 120GB of hard drive rather than 8GB of flash memory to write on, a less plastic-toy-like case and so forth. I send an email to a friend, inviting him to comment whether there is some disadvantage in having the larger set of features with the same weight for the same price. He, logically, ignores the question.

So, this blog is served by a brand-spanking new acer Aspire One and some flash drives. One of them was created according to the instructions at Sugar Labs, except having forgotten to instruct the loader to pick up the Sugar tools, it came out as a bootable Fedora Linux environment. I may blog about my stumbling around with that, but the primary goal of this chronicle is to report on my stumbling around to learn enough about Sugar to share with friends.

Welcome. To you and to your comments. I hope some of these true-life adventures prove entertaining, and perhaps useful to Sugar users and perhaps even Sugar Labs.

Best from your optimistic Unclejack - UnclejackDC@Yahoo.Com