itunes again?

wow.. yet another itunes update.. and it breaks sync with the palm pre … a weird pissing contest if you ask me

as an apple fanboy, i hate that apple is doing stuff like this … and anytime they they add something or patch bugs (which they NEVER have) … it means another 90MB file… instead of patches that just fix what is wrong or add the features…

come on apple… ever heard of fusebox type coding?  just update what you need.

ipod touch better quality than iphone..

i saw the new ipod touch and saw the aluminum back and thought…. why didnt they do that with the iphone 3g? it looks so clean.. and is the same size as the iphone basically… just thinnner

one of the issues that has cropped up has been the cracking and hairline fracturing of the plastic case on the new shiny iphone 3g and one of the reasons why i stayed away

heck.. even the nano has always been all aluminum and now has glass display…and the old iphone had an aluminum back as well…

does apple think that the iphone 3g is worth less?  maybe that is where the saving came from on top of the subsidy that ATT is providing… quality seems to have taken a back seat to trying to crank out as many of these puppies as possible

i am waiting for iphone 3g gen2 at least… so they can figure out the 3g network issues they are having, the dropped calls issues, the cracking cases and maybe a better camera and larger hard drive…

windfall profits…

this is for a cousin of mine….

so hillary and barack want to put a windfall profits tax on exxon mobile cause they recorded a record profit… well.. think about it… gas prices are high, exxon is global, and they sell something that everyone is generally using more and more of than they used to even a year ago… so if you do that math … of course they are going to have a huge profit.

the thing that hillary and barack do not tell you is that the profit is what is left over…. they actually made more… but they had to give some of it to the government in taxes already… wanna guess as to how much in taxes they paid? … lets take 2007 …. in 2007, exxon mobile paid almost $68 billion dollars in taxes to the united states… heck with that amount, you would have thought they kept like like $100 billion or something… but actually.. they paid more in taxes than they made in the united states… which amounted to about $48 billion.  hmmm… that does not seem right at all … and just because the number of their first quarter earnings was $11 billion in profits… democrats went ape-crap over it… and wanted to tax the hell out of big mean old oil… cause they made $11 billion in profit. they had a margin of profit about 8% … really.. people are going batty cause the oil companies made 8% profit…

if we take that as a high mark.. then there are a lot of other companies that _should_ be in trouble…

i live next to the manager of the 5 apple stores here in the denver area… so he will not like this post.. but apple made a 31% gain in revenue due to the release of the new iphone.  and their profit margin is close to 15% .. nearly double that of exxon.  and heck… that is more than 4 times exxons growth… why not tax them.  why not make apple give everyone a ipod or an iphone… so… why not hate on apple?

even companies like ge made more in percentage than exxon … at over 10%.  computer industry had over 13%, warren buffett made more than 29% increase in 2007 with bershire hathaway, and koreas own LG made a 500%+ increase between 2006 and 2007… where were the calls to tax them?

how about our own local success story crocs sandels… they are running at about 5000 employees and they made over $64 million in profits last year… on foam sandels…

in the world of tolerance… people are getting ignorant and miopic to their own prejudices and double standards…

all the college students that have macbooks/macbook pros and ipods are not calling for the big apple empire to be taxes and hated .. because they use it and like the product… but their perception is that oil is bad …

i am glad that my daughter got to come to bring your kid to work day when i was at the oil firm… she saw all of the processes .. starting from the geologists that try to figure out where oil is, to the wildcatters and riggers that go out to see if there is anything there worth drilling for, the process from crude to refinement, from the different processes from drilling for oil to drilling for gas… and how they try to go back to ‘empty wells’ and try to get more out of them with new technologies… and then the process of paying royalties to the government for drilling for certain types of minerals and natural resources to paying for tankers to and from well to refinery, to paying to pipelines usage, getting leases for areas to drill in, fight enviromental groups for areas like anwar or the plains of colorado for shale, try to figure out alternatives like shale, oil sands, and on and on…

i dont think anyone would want to be taxed more than 60% of what they earn, and then be villified for the percentage they got to keep and have people like barack say he wants to take it away and give $1000 to every family in america…

there are commercials by t boone pickens talking about transfer of wealth … but what barack is promoting is redistribution of wealth in the classic communist model… he is not robin hood…

think about if exxon just said screw it.. we dont want to deal with the bad press and crap about windfall taxes and stopped work tomorrow…. think about the havoc.  think about actual lives that would be affected.  you could not drive to work or school.  ambulances would not be able to take patients to get saved.  not heating and air conditioning… no pizza deliveries…

and think about if a company like apple stopped producing… would anybody die? i am as big an apple fan as any… but i would be able to live without a new mac if my old one kept going… and my ipods and nanos were not dropped and destroyed.

without oil/gas.. we all die. really.  we talk about giving teachers raises because they are important… well.. why begrudge oil companies for making some money for something that we all use…

it is all a shell game (sorry not trying to bring another oil company pun) … it used to be big bad tobacco.. and we all saw how wisely the states used the funds from the settlements because people chose to light up and smoke even after everyone told them it was bad for them… and then big bad pharmaceuticals until they started making boner pills and then all the old democrats laid off them … uh.. again, not trying to use a pun.  and now the stalwort big bad oil … until they all need lube for their car or expedition into africa or private plane flight to give a speech … wait.. they have those needs now.. why do they still hate you big oil?

pick whomever you want to hate and they get the windfall profits tax…

so back to exxon mobil … they have close to 110,000 employees world wide.  that means that their $11 billion profit is like $100.00 profit per employee.

arrggggg!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my mac is dead.

after all the hassle of replacing the hard drive and getting everything reloaded… i plugged in a usb cooling pad and it shorted out the usb port so it will not boot up any more…

(tears…)

my mac is back

so… any of you that have a mac ibook g4 … have you ever had to replace the hard drive?

well… hope that you do not have a disk failure or even want to upgrade your disk to something larger..

the process is the most convoluted and weird processes ever.

with any other laptop, you have ready access either with a few screws and from the side or bottom of your laptop.. you may even have to go under the keyboard… but that is not so bad

with the ibook, not only do you not have access to it from the outside… or even below your keyboard … it is wedged under a part of the metal frame … leaving you to dismantle the whole thing to get to it..

now that would not be so bad either… but they use several different screw sizes including torx and phillips 0 size heads, but you also need a spudger or something to crack the shell open with…

total form versus function.

it looks nice not to have screws exposed on the outside of the laptop, but spending hours trying to crack the case open, making sure not to lose any of the 30 screws and figuring out where there are hidden hinges you have to spudge and cables and wires that need to be unplugged before you pull the parts apart… and not to mention the potential of cracking the plastic or breaking something…

sound like fun? check out a sample here

i  work with computer hardware allbut this is once where it was worth the $100 to have some other guy that has too much time and much more practice on this than me do it…

leopard sp1 ???

so today.. there is a update to leopard (apple mac osx 10.5) which came out less than 1 month ago… i call it sp1 cause it is over 100MB … that plus the 50MB iTunes 7.5 update… i am just glad i am not on dialup

geez… at least microsoft waits a while to release a service pack

hope they fixed the losing data when you move a file.. and the firewall issue that lets traffic thru when you start a process manually.. even if you have a policy for it

the great xp rollback…

it is like the new mac vs apple commercial where they talk about vista users reverting back to xp for features on older technology…

i rolled back from vista to xp cause vista was KILLING me… it was so slow… even with a dual core proc and 2GB of ram… things would just run so dog slow…

i am finalizing my conversion back to xp and SOOOOO happy

the thing is… leopard (os x 10.5) is not looking too good right now either…. there is a bug that causes actual data loss… move a file the ‘wrong’ way and poof! no more data

i just think as more and more people jump on the apple wagon.. the more people are going to complain about things that the macaphiles (like me) have let slide… like all of the iphone issues… the recent release of yet another iTunes version… issues with hardware.. more bugs.. and more hackers/crackers are going to target mac more… exposing more vulnerabilities and security holes…

enjoy the ’switch’ if you are going through the same thing…

mmmm … mail in rebates

so.. got a mac mini today .. but it ends up coming with tiger instead of leopard....   

so.. i have to send in $10 to apple for them to send me a copy of leopard to upgrade my machine

second.. i also got mac office 2004 (i already have the student/teacher edition)... but cause.. microsoft is going out of their way to be nice.. similar to the $59 office 2007 ultimate for students... as they too are having a mail in rebate for anyone buying mac office 2004 product.. getting mac office 2008 media edition (the beta looks nice already)... for.. you guessed it $10

i love sending money to companies that should have been providing the software preloaded anyway... at least for the mac mini

no more itunes updates please

i love my mac… i have used mac since the beginning… i know that they are fixing issues and adding features like ringtones and video downloads for itunes and the iphone… but really… please… this is when i would wish apple would be more like microsoft with their patch tuesday…

in the past month… my autoupdate for itunes has kicked off at least 3 times… at ~45MB per download…

all i want is to sync my 3rd gen 20GB ipod that is more than enough for me… i don’t use video, don’t download many podcasts, don’t sync ringtones to my blackberry … why do i need all of the added ‘features’ that stream down

if not for my 7Mbps DSL line.. i would be more pissed… it is just that i have to update 4 machines … again.. to download and listen to my itunes…

ugg… i wonder when the next ‘issue’ or feature is added.

don’t update to 10.4.10

generally… i am the first to say to install any patches and updates released for your os.  i love being bleeding edge… for personal stuff (i generally wait a few cycles for work things.. cause there are ALWAYS little gliches).  but in this case… i would recommend the oppositethose of you that run macs… hold off on installing update 10.4.10.  it sucks.  it will make your machine blow up.. i think 10.4.3 did something similar with compatibility with iScroll.. but at least you could booti had installed it on my ibook about a week back… and it would not startup after that… it was in some weird kernel panic loop… and safe boot did not work eitheri left it attempting to boot for over 24 hrs.. with the apple screen and the spinning gear  stagei did not have time last week to do anything with it so i just ended up using my other machines for everything…i eventually broke down and did a re-install of tiger… and then re-ran most of the updatesi am hearing and reading there are goofy wifi issues as well.. with the new 10.4.10 update… so…. if you have not upgraded yet… DONT.. wait for the next release if you can..i guess they spent too many cycles trying to get support for the iphone added and safari for windows and not enough on actually releasing an update that required a reinstall…   at least the apps and settings generally were preserved. *** after doing a re-install down to 10.4 from the install dvd … the upgrade to 10.4.10 went fine 

iphone == ipwn3d

for those not in the know.. the term pwn3d gamer/hacker speak for totally embarrassing or dominating somebody… usually in the game world of warcraft or something… derived from ‘owning’ someone and the typo pwning .. more on pwn later

well…you know that commercial with the pc and the mac guys talking and generally pwn’ing the pc with all of the features of the mac… all of the iphone commercials needs to be updated to say… don’t use safari on windows cause you will get hacked. and the iphone gets hacked too….

i love mac.. i was a mac only user until about 1999… when i got my first windows machine… i would also get n iphone if it was maybe a tad cheaper… and if the email functionality was better (i am spoiled by having been on a blackberry for like 6 years.. and having awful experiences with treo and hp mobile pc devices)

after all of the hype.. there are just gonna be loads of people that are going to try and bring apple down to size and expose them for weak security and faulty products…

even with all of the rave reviews… there continues to be a stream of bad news for the iphone…

first the activation issues, phone issues, third party application support issues, arp floods on wifi networks, slow speeds on edge network and not using 3G, the hack…

i will also wait until at least generation 2 or 3 of ANY apple product…

note the macbook products… second gens sports things like led screens, longer battery life..no issues with overheating or plastic covering the fan vents

again… i love mac and would take one if given one.. but i am not ready to give up my blackberry curve for an iphone just yet…

over da vista….

microsoft launched their long awaited … 5 years in the making… operating system to surplant windows xp… windows vista

i have had the beta running for about a month and was fairly pleased wth the updates and features … and somewhat apprehensive.. because i don’t know what to get…. just another hp/dell/whatever to run windows and linux on… and now .. vista will be preinstalled on machines… or an macbook pro to run leopard (once it is out)/vista/linux … either way.. i will be scraping the default install anyway.. so i guess it does not matter unless i want my mac apps with me too .. hmm

i think i may have to stay on the windows platform for my primary system because of business applications that are not on either linux or max osx.

i am going to wait until at least service pack 1 to install on my current machine… as that will be about the time i get my copy in the mail… (wahoo for beta programs and vendor sppnsored freebies)

i saw bill gates on the daily show with jon stewart and was kind of sad that bill was flustered and they did not show some of the features on the huge screens they have for backdrops… ther ehave been those infamous demos by bill gates when the machines lock up.. so i think he reserves the demos to controlled environments.

are you ready for vista?

which os will i end up using

i tested a combo of windows vista, visual studio 2007 and office 2007 … i have to say that i am impressed with what i saw. is that enough to make me switch and stay for good?

i use pretty much allof the operating systems out there…. windows xp/2003, apple mac osx, linux (centos, fedora, kubuntu), solaris ..  even cygwin forgnu type commands on windows… and i have to say i am really conflicted at this point.. i am not an os zealot by any means.. i have uses and each does certain things better.. and certain apps are only on one or the other..

there is a lot of eye candy in the mix.. aero makes it easier to apply aqua style themes and so glassy…

i currently use virtuawin for desktop management on my windows boxes.. but flip 3d will be a neat change. i use desktop manager and virtue on mac and it resembles virue the best.. having virtual desktops built in will be nice.

i use seamonkey for a browser and their new version 1.1 allows for a thumbnail of the tab if you rest your mouse over it.. like the popups on netflix if you want more details on a movie… but vista has that on their taskbar so you can have multiple windows and instances of apps open and go to the one that has the data that you are wanting to work with

i am waiting for my copies of vista and office 2007 from microsoft as i participate in betas and learning and feedback channels. i just want to see how all my old apps that i have grown to rely on work on vista… it is another few days of vista before i move on to fedora core 6 … i have it installed at work.. but i never play on the desktop environment… or maybe ubuntu or gentoo … arrgg .. so many choices

playing with betas are fun.. but time consuming… installing apps on multiple machines and then trying to break them.

it just seems like all the vendors are copying the look and feel from each other… apple lead the way.. windows lagged behind so guys started tweaking with window blinds or other shell tweaks like aston shell . which i used a lot in win2k…

i have half a dozen machines now running all flavors or whatever.. and i need to consolidate… or just pick one and be done with it

i may want to get a macbook pro at some point.. and try a triple boot machine… i have been running a dual boot using centos for a long time.. but with all of the livecd os versions now.. i have been downloading and burning like crazy too…

vista will prob be my primary.. because of the environment that i am in.. and needing access to a lot of the windows ad tools.. and not having to remote desktop into another machine to work on visio or something… omnigraffle is great on mac but porting the files over is not seamless … having to use the xml export versus vsd format… or even omnioutliner.. which i would like to port and merge with myinfo…

i guess the tools that is across all of the platforms that i use all the time are seamonkey/firefox for browser, freemind for data/outlining, gaim/adium for chat, openoffice for doc/spreadsheets…. maybe it is worth using online doc/spreadsheets on google or 37signals

or just email and text files.. yeah. i like that.. a bunch of ascii art for diagrams and plain text emails… no more stupid pictures or templates in emails.