jr conlin's ink stained banana

Ubuntu is asking what software i'd like to see on Linux. They list things like iTunes, Photoshop, Steam and a few others. They also include "other".

i sat for around fifteen minutes trying to figure out a program that's only on windows/mac program that i can't get on Ubuntu.

Honestly, most of the apps there i can already get "good enough" versions for what i need. i get why they're asking, since they want to have name brands on the platform so that they can get more folks interested in it. Thing is, looking at my windows box, i don't really have a lot of specialized stuff specifically for windows.

i use firefox and thuderbird for browsing and mail; putty for most of my real work; Komodo for editing web pages; gimp and xara (which has an open source version for linux and mac), and rounding out the rest are vlc, vim, openoffice, truecrypt, and a few others. Granted, i'm weird because i spend most of my time programming rather than watching the butt of a digital version of myself, but it's not like i feel less useful on one platform than another. Heck, i could move to a mac tomorrow and be good to go. (Granted, i wouldn't for a whole mess of other reasons, but those are beside the point.)

About the only program i have to use windows for is iTunes, only because that's required by the locked down iPod touch. (Well, mostly locked down. i can use iFuse to mount the iTouch, but i have to goof around with sqlite3 in order to actually get the damn thing to see the music, but otherwise i'm pretty good to go. )

So, what platform only program am i missing?

So, the big news of the day is that Google is reconsidering whether or not to continue to do business in China. It's getting plenty of coverage and lots of folks are rightly praising Google's move to cease censoring results (which will basically get them blocked by the Great Firewall). Still, i've not heard a lot of folks address the elephant dragon in the room. Would China notice?

China, always one to… uhm… innovate, has lots of carbon smudged innovations, and there are plenty of Chinese search engines to choose from, including Baidu, which according to an article published in July of 2009, controls 61% of the Chinese market. Google's share was only 29%. That's a strong second, but hardly the 72% market share that Google holds in the US.

So, basically, Google China is roughly the Sino equivalent of Yahoo. How many folks do you think would be terribly upset if Yahoo Search were to shut down in a month or two? Probably about the same number of folks that were upset when they did and switched to using Bing.

So, while i'm glad that Google is taking a hard stance against a fairly large bully, but of the currently 298 million Chinese internet users, around 182 million of them, more than half the population of the US, more than any population but two other countries, won't even notice.

So, taking a stand against a country that causes you nothing but headaches, and where you're not exactly rocketing up the charts may not be quite as noble as you'd think. Something to think about, huh?

How big is your TV?

More importantly, when viewing it, does it fill at least twenty degrees of your field of vision? Is the image resolution greater than 1080p? If so, Congratulations! You're one of the ten people who might actually be able to discern 3D on such a device. Of course, you're going to have to get rid of it so you can buy a new device actually capable of rendering in 3D. Oh, and you'll have to wear polarized glasses so that you can properly see the image being rendered, and you probably want to sit in a really dark room because by definition, polarized lenses block around half the light available, so things will look a good deal darker.

Stupid thing is that i'm also old enough to remember what it was like when Color TVs made it big. Let me say up front that Color TV was a bigger deal. Color introduced something that wasn't there, that was decidedly lacking, and was overused to the great detriment of fashion and interior design for a decade. (Wonder why avocado, red and gold were big colors for rugs and appliances? Because they showed up great next to green pants suits on color TVs of the time.) With 3D images, you get… well, lied to.

Having tried a 3D monitor recently, i got to see what the hype was about. Items in the foreground were in crisp focus while items in the background were not. Fairly cool, at first, but then, i couldn't shift focus to those items. (i could shift focus slightly to things that were just in front or just behind the main focus, but things that were several feet away were still blurred.) In effect, i got the amazing 3D sense of seeing my hand above a keyboard but still not able to focus on the screen. What's more, moving from side to side didn't "turn" the image. Not horribly surprising since it's not a hologram, but still fairly disappointing.

Basically, in the upcoming years, you're going to have to spend a whole lot of money to get an ultra-sharp, deeply rendered equivalent of an SCTV skit. What's even worse is that with the rush to put "3D" shows out, we're going to have a lot of rocks being thrown at our heads. (Seriously, aren't most 3D extravaganzas basically excuses for trying to virtually poke your eyes out?) Kind of the focal equivalent of earth tone shag carpeting. And who doesn't love that? (Other than anyone who can remember the 70's?)

Yeah, no wonder all the top tech geeks are so excited by this huge boon.

i must be a bad geek again.

Every year, i look forward to the electronic Christmas pageant that is the Consumer Electronics Show. Not actually attending mind you (i had to do that a few years ago when i was asked to pimp Yahoo! Mobile 3.0 which was thankfully dragged behind the barn and beaten with a shovel), but reading about all the nifty toys that are going to be coming out Real Soon Now.

Most of them are crap, of course, but there are usually a few gems in the mix, with one overriding theme as companies desperate for a big hit latch onto anything that seems remotely marketable. This time: The iTablet. Apple's long rumored slab based device that will bring peace to the Middle East and rainbow sprinkled unicorns to children of the world. It has yet to exist, mind you, but that didn't stop folks from releasing dozens of iTablet killers in shiny glory.

And i bet they still won't sell.

Tablets aren't new. They've been around in various incarnations for coming up on a decade. They're expensive, tend to not really work terribly well, and are great for a tiny fraction of folks that want to live the dream of being a character in Star Trek: The Next Generation. If you wanted one, you could drop $500 and pick one up on amazon today. Heck, you could even scrape out the installed OS and load up osx86 on it and wait for the unicorns to show up. Granted, even if you don't, what you've got is still going to be better than a pure tablet.

The problem with all of these is that you're basically walking around with half a laptop, and unless you're highly proficient with a mouse, you're going to discover in pretty short order how much text entry you really do in a given day. You're also going to discover that walking around with half a laptop isn't really as much fun as you'd think it'd be, unless you happen to have a good sized purse or rather large pockets. Even then, you're probably going to realize that a laptop is just a bit thicker than what you're currently wandering around with, and has a keyboard, which not only allows you to type at a slightly faster rate, but does things like protect that big-ass scratch magnet from your car keys and loose change.

The biggest problem with tablets is that they seem like a good idea, kind of like how people think flying cars and mechanized walking battle armor are good ideas. They're not. In fact, they're down right horrible ideas if you actually try to use them. (Thus the amazing lack of ambulatory champions on BattleBots.)

It just doesn't feel like this year's show had anything all that exciting. Just the same stuff as before only now with 3D capacities taped on like some bad 1950's World of Tomorrow short. (i wear my sunglasses at night, so i can see two people talking to each other for ten minutes IN 3D! It's like being at a play! Except the focal distance is still fixed and it's not like i can actually shift my focus to SEE something in the background! OOooooh.)

Sigh.

Guess this Christmas was mostly socks and underwear.

Whilst dropping of a couple of dozen home baked cookies to a co-worker (hey, i asked. She was the only one that said "yes"), i was probably a horrible influence on her family. In particular, her daughter. i kept encouraging her to cheat.

It wasn't for school, it was for her Underwater ROV group, which gave out projects she and her team had to compete on. Things like "Build a bot that can maneuver in any direction using this pile of parts." My suggestion was merely to add a few extra bits. Things like adding a ballast tank system so that she could free up two motors and add direction, or using a denser foam (like Great Stuff) instead of polystyrene so that she'd have better control over buoyancy.

Basically, the rules said that she had to use the parts she was provided, but didn't say anything about adding things. i was encouraging her to think outside of the limits. Basically, i was urging her toward hacking.

For me, hacking is cheating. It's using things in unexpected or possibly inappropriate ways to do something interesting. It's going outside of the rules while staying in the spirit. For me, that's the beauty of Hack events. It's why i encourage folks to work on projects outside of the n hour period of something like Hack Day, and one of the reasons i like to give out objectives rather than rules. i'd much rather see what sort of designs someone comes up with from "Make the fastest gravity powered racer" than "Here's a block of wood, make a car" or "Give folks a way to browse movies without a computer" rather than "Using the Netflix API and Java, create an iPhone application". Someone might create what you'd expect if you gave them a rule, or they may surprise the hell out of you. (i prefer the latter.)

Heck, if i'm in a contest with someone and another person bests my efforts in a creative way, i'll never whine and call that person a cheater for being more creative. i'll kick myself a bit for not having thought of it as well, but otherwise i'll respect that person a lot more. (Ok, granted, if i'm running a marathon and someone hails a cab, there's a bit of a difference because the ultimate goal 'Can you run this distance in the shortest period' wasn't achieved by that person. Then again, it depends on whether or not that goal was clearly specified.)

So, yes. i'm a cheater. And kinda proud of it from time to time. Likewise, i'm happy to help others cheat too, even if it means i may "lose" whatever contest. For me, the fun is the creativity, and the more folks that get that, the better.