An interesting thing happened on the way to a system build..........
I had some solo time with my boy, so I brought him out for some man stuff. You know, burgers, auto parts stores, peeing standing up, boy stuff. I've decided that I should resurrect my old Windows 2000 box, with Lubuntu, a lightweight Linux distribution. Aside from the install cd, all I should need is a wireless device.
I brought the boy to Staples, to see about getting one for a reasonable price. Stacked within the wireless routers, were a couple of options for over $30. About to pass, I was asked by a sales associate if I needed help.
The young man brought me over to the clearance section, where there was a low profile 802.11n device for $15. I bought it, knowing I could bring it back, no questions asked in a couple of weeks if I found a better price.
In talking to the young man, he informed me that TWC was providing him with a 300Mbps bandwidth pipe. Despite trying to correct him, he assured me that TWC was indeed providing him with 300Mbps, for the low price of $50 a month.
Go ahead and go to speedtest.net, right now and test your connection. Depending on your broadband connection, you should probably see between 3Mbps, and <10Mbps. 3Mbps is enough to stream video, and 10Mbps is considered pretty snappy. My DSL download speed comes in at 7Mbps, and is usually right around there. Even South Korea, which boasts the fastest average internet speed, comes in at 17.5Mbps.
This kid couldn't be more wrong, but I guess that's why he works at Staples, not as a network engineer.
Now, in all fairness, I know I've spoken out of turn, and I could have an improper grasp of concepts, I thought I had mastered. But it's helpful to see the imperfections in yourself when they are reflected from a stranger.
I tried to give this life lesson to the boy, but he was too busy hitting on the cashier.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Friday, July 27, 2012
Open Source For Life!
In my last post, I talked about some alternatives to pirated movies, music and software. One of the most prolific and best alternatives is open source.
Open source software is distributed under the GNU licence. This license entitles you to use the software any way you see fit, deconstruct the software to suit your means, even sell it as your own. The GNU license is most often associated with the Linux operating system, although it is attached to many different types of software.
Ubuntu is one of the most popular and user friendly versions of Linux. There is a massive user following, which means that problems have probably been addressed, if not fixed, and support is abundant. One of the benefits of having a large tech savvy following, is the porting of expensive applications to the Linux platform. Often times these open source alternatives are as good, if not better than the Windows or Mac versions.
Commercially, Linux makes sense. When you have thousands of workstations, and hundreds of servers, the savings could reach millions of dollars. As an added resource saver, most malware only targets Microsoft machines!
If you are stuck on a Windows machine (it is the most widely used operating system in the world) you aren't limited to paying for expensive apps. The most common open source Windows app is Open Office, a Microsoft Office alternative. As a long time user, I can confirm that it handles MSOffice files, quite well, and is fairly easy to use. While the default file formats are superior, it is easy to switch the defaults to MSOffice extensions.
As far as open source music and video go, most of it is protected by copyright. But there are options available!
There are free music services online, like Pandora or Spotify. There are limits to what you can listen to, for example: you can't request a specific song or album, by a specific artist with Pandora, but you can listen to a specific artist and artists like it. Part of the way these services work is by introducing you to artists that you might like that you haven't heard before. I've personally bought many albums, after hearing them through Pandora.
Most people are familiar with Hulu. It's an online television service that allows you to watch current and past shows, and some older movies, for free. There are commercial interruptions, but they are fewer than during the actual broadcasts. Another emerging option is Youtube. While it is sometimes possible to view unauthorized material on Youtube, it is often taken down, and quality is often not good. Youtube is, however starting to produce original content, like the Nerdist channel.
So there, a ton of options that are all perfectly legal. So when you get busted downloading warez, or torrent rips, or hell just get a mean virus that turns your computer into a $800 paperweight, don't say I didn't tell you so.
Open source software is distributed under the GNU licence. This license entitles you to use the software any way you see fit, deconstruct the software to suit your means, even sell it as your own. The GNU license is most often associated with the Linux operating system, although it is attached to many different types of software.
Ubuntu is one of the most popular and user friendly versions of Linux. There is a massive user following, which means that problems have probably been addressed, if not fixed, and support is abundant. One of the benefits of having a large tech savvy following, is the porting of expensive applications to the Linux platform. Often times these open source alternatives are as good, if not better than the Windows or Mac versions.
Commercially, Linux makes sense. When you have thousands of workstations, and hundreds of servers, the savings could reach millions of dollars. As an added resource saver, most malware only targets Microsoft machines!
If you are stuck on a Windows machine (it is the most widely used operating system in the world) you aren't limited to paying for expensive apps. The most common open source Windows app is Open Office, a Microsoft Office alternative. As a long time user, I can confirm that it handles MSOffice files, quite well, and is fairly easy to use. While the default file formats are superior, it is easy to switch the defaults to MSOffice extensions.
As far as open source music and video go, most of it is protected by copyright. But there are options available!
There are free music services online, like Pandora or Spotify. There are limits to what you can listen to, for example: you can't request a specific song or album, by a specific artist with Pandora, but you can listen to a specific artist and artists like it. Part of the way these services work is by introducing you to artists that you might like that you haven't heard before. I've personally bought many albums, after hearing them through Pandora.
Most people are familiar with Hulu. It's an online television service that allows you to watch current and past shows, and some older movies, for free. There are commercial interruptions, but they are fewer than during the actual broadcasts. Another emerging option is Youtube. While it is sometimes possible to view unauthorized material on Youtube, it is often taken down, and quality is often not good. Youtube is, however starting to produce original content, like the Nerdist channel.
So there, a ton of options that are all perfectly legal. So when you get busted downloading warez, or torrent rips, or hell just get a mean virus that turns your computer into a $800 paperweight, don't say I didn't tell you so.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Pirate? Or Opportunist?
In my first post, I admitted using P2P networks to get illegally licensed files. Basically, when you purchase music, movies, or software, you are buying the physical media (or right to download), but the majority of the money you spend goes toward the license.
What is that license, and what rights does it extend? For music, it means you can enjoy it yourself, or in the context of a party, but if you are making any money while listening to it, you owe a cut to the record companies. For example, the bar I work at pays a license to ASCAP to enable the bartenders to play cd's of licensed material. (The practice in and of itself is a bit of a shellgame scam, but I'll get into that in a future post.)
You are all probably familiar with the FBI warning displayed before video's.
The license associated with movies, basically prevents you from charging people to view the video.
Interestingly enough, most software licenses allow for the user to make one backup copy of the software media. The End User License Agreement (EULA) is the list of legalese, that most people don't bother reading, but must be agreed to before you can install software.
The gist of most EULA's is that you won't sell or give copies of the software away, you won't reverse engineer the program, and you'll only install the program on one computer. In fact, if you sell your computer, most EULA's require that you uninstall the program beforehand.
So using limewire, napster, or any other P2P filesharing network to obtain files that you haven't legally obtained a license for is, in essence, stealing. I stole music, and software. I was a child, to be sure, but that would not have prevented my prosecution.
Why did I do it? I wasn't a big fan of flaunting the law, and I didn't shoplift. I was aware that obtaining these files without a license was illegal. Was it wrong, though?
I did it, because I was a broke ass kid. I couldn't afford to follow the paths that new music brought me too. How would I ever have known about the magic of Fugazi's entire catalog? How would I ever be able to figure out the superiority of NTFS over FAT 32? My justification, was I made no money from these pursuits. I still bought the same amount of music and software as I would have if I hadn't procured any from P2P networks. I will posit further, that I bought more, because of my introduction from pirated materials.
In my next post, I will talk about some alternatives to pirated materials.
What is that license, and what rights does it extend? For music, it means you can enjoy it yourself, or in the context of a party, but if you are making any money while listening to it, you owe a cut to the record companies. For example, the bar I work at pays a license to ASCAP to enable the bartenders to play cd's of licensed material. (The practice in and of itself is a bit of a shellgame scam, but I'll get into that in a future post.)
You are all probably familiar with the FBI warning displayed before video's.
The license associated with movies, basically prevents you from charging people to view the video.
Interestingly enough, most software licenses allow for the user to make one backup copy of the software media. The End User License Agreement (EULA) is the list of legalese, that most people don't bother reading, but must be agreed to before you can install software.
The gist of most EULA's is that you won't sell or give copies of the software away, you won't reverse engineer the program, and you'll only install the program on one computer. In fact, if you sell your computer, most EULA's require that you uninstall the program beforehand.
So using limewire, napster, or any other P2P filesharing network to obtain files that you haven't legally obtained a license for is, in essence, stealing. I stole music, and software. I was a child, to be sure, but that would not have prevented my prosecution.
Why did I do it? I wasn't a big fan of flaunting the law, and I didn't shoplift. I was aware that obtaining these files without a license was illegal. Was it wrong, though?
I did it, because I was a broke ass kid. I couldn't afford to follow the paths that new music brought me too. How would I ever have known about the magic of Fugazi's entire catalog? How would I ever be able to figure out the superiority of NTFS over FAT 32? My justification, was I made no money from these pursuits. I still bought the same amount of music and software as I would have if I hadn't procured any from P2P networks. I will posit further, that I bought more, because of my introduction from pirated materials.
In my next post, I will talk about some alternatives to pirated materials.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Hardware, hardware, everywhere, but not a driver to link
I've been a computer hobbyist for close to 15 years. It started with finding a TigerDirect catalog at work, and piecing together how the components of a pc100 system worked by looking at the pictures. I had friends in the industry, or that were hobbyists, and they filled in the blanks for me.
I became roommates with one of those hobbyist friends, and we were commited to living a nerd lifestyle. We eschewed cable television, but joined the beta program to test one of the first broadband cable internet services in the country. Combined with the fledgling P2P file sharing industry, any piece of software we wanted was at our fingertips.
We setup a peer to peer network in our home, with a file server holding all of these illicit files. I even setup an FTP server, to exchange those files with friends accross town.
Those friends connected us to network admins who were upgrading machines in some local school district. Instead of scrapping thoses machines, we picked them up and turned 20 broken Windows boxes into a five machine Apache Linux server farm. (In all fairness, my roommate configured most of the Linux machines, I just reassembled them into working boxes.)
I stopped paying attention to computers when DDR became the standard. My mind was occupied with other things, but the knowledge I had never left me. I was able to keep up with about 80 % of any tech conversation.
Flash forward about 10 years and I'm here, installing a network card into a machine that's about as old as the kids around me. Thats the test. Install a network card. They even have every driver, for every piece of hardware in the Computer Tech department on the Novell file server.
But I can't access the network.
Here is a task I've performed hundreds of times, but I've always had a working machine to find drivers with. I'm not going to get into the technical details here, but the short story is, I'm still not sure what I did wrong. I got a 70 because the network card was physically installed in the machine, but I'm still trying to figure out the issue with my network access. I could ask the professor, but if I don't figure this one out, the lesson won't stick.
Here's where education comes in. Sure, I've literally done this exact task 100's of times, but I've always done it for my own ends. I need to do this for my professor, so that I can prove that I can do it for an employer. And setting up those networks and servers? Completely for myself. I need to know this stuff inside and out, so that I can do the same for anyone.
I suppose that is the advantage of being a 35 year old freshman.
I became roommates with one of those hobbyist friends, and we were commited to living a nerd lifestyle. We eschewed cable television, but joined the beta program to test one of the first broadband cable internet services in the country. Combined with the fledgling P2P file sharing industry, any piece of software we wanted was at our fingertips.
We setup a peer to peer network in our home, with a file server holding all of these illicit files. I even setup an FTP server, to exchange those files with friends accross town.
Those friends connected us to network admins who were upgrading machines in some local school district. Instead of scrapping thoses machines, we picked them up and turned 20 broken Windows boxes into a five machine Apache Linux server farm. (In all fairness, my roommate configured most of the Linux machines, I just reassembled them into working boxes.)
I stopped paying attention to computers when DDR became the standard. My mind was occupied with other things, but the knowledge I had never left me. I was able to keep up with about 80 % of any tech conversation.
Flash forward about 10 years and I'm here, installing a network card into a machine that's about as old as the kids around me. Thats the test. Install a network card. They even have every driver, for every piece of hardware in the Computer Tech department on the Novell file server.
But I can't access the network.
Here is a task I've performed hundreds of times, but I've always had a working machine to find drivers with. I'm not going to get into the technical details here, but the short story is, I'm still not sure what I did wrong. I got a 70 because the network card was physically installed in the machine, but I'm still trying to figure out the issue with my network access. I could ask the professor, but if I don't figure this one out, the lesson won't stick.
Here's where education comes in. Sure, I've literally done this exact task 100's of times, but I've always done it for my own ends. I need to do this for my professor, so that I can prove that I can do it for an employer. And setting up those networks and servers? Completely for myself. I need to know this stuff inside and out, so that I can do the same for anyone.
I suppose that is the advantage of being a 35 year old freshman.
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