The Newest NetBSD has been released. This is pretty big news, they have been working on it for a long time. Its good to know that the SMP stuff is finished. NetBSD was one of the first OS's to support Multi core support, but I know they have been making it better and better. Says there are 7 million new lines of code. I usually use FreeBSD, that runs my server/firewall/router/gateway, but I have NetBSD on a backup server (a SPARC Ultra AXe).
The Big three BSD's all work great but they are mostly specialized. What are the Big Three?
Hmm. Maybe we should have a quick Tao of the BSD's.
FreeBSD - The Jack-of-all trades BSD Good for beginners, lots of supported hardware and the innovative ports system. Makes installing software as easy as typing "Make install clean" and walking away. I use this for my main server.
NetBSD - The main advantage of NetBSD is there is a release of NetBSD that runs on anything. I mean thin clients, phones, old single board computers, toasters you name it.
OpenBSD - This one is the BSD that is designed with security in mind. They went for years without having a single security hole in the default install. You would think that this would be best for a home server but it really has paranoia-level security.
If you are interested in Unix-like OS's check out the BSD's. Linux is probably more robust on the desktop, but the BSD's make GREAT servers.
Showing posts with label geek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geek. Show all posts
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Ok I joined Facebook
FINE! FINE!
I joined Facebook. I know, I know, I said I'd never be a part of that... But, things change. I've been feeling kinda isolated and lonely lately. Maybe re-connecting with other friends would be good right now.
Anyways... I am gonna try to post something a day at least...
I joined Facebook. I know, I know, I said I'd never be a part of that... But, things change. I've been feeling kinda isolated and lonely lately. Maybe re-connecting with other friends would be good right now.
Anyways... I am gonna try to post something a day at least...
Monday, September 8, 2008
Will they Listen? Probably not.
I was just reading about Spore's recent crisis at Amazon.com. The much anticipated game was released to some fanfare. It seems however, that Spore implements the DRM scheme Securom. And take it from me, Securom causes more problems than it solves. I personally have had issues where Securom games refuse to work because I happened to be running the Daemon Tools virtual drive software.
For a game company to expect me to uninstall perfectly legitimate tools simply because those tools might be used for piracy, well let me just say that this is a slap in my face; an insult to my intelligence and my reputation. When I was first into computing, piracy was just as rampant as it is now, if not more so. First, there were "uncopyable disks" that could still be copied with the proper image software. The next reaction was to include a code wheel or code sheet, usually filled with esoteric symbols that correspond somewhere in the game. Usually red, or somehow otherwise protected from photocopying. This did not really work either, since code wheels could be taken apart, copied and reassembled, and you could get a copier to copy the red code sheets if the setting were just right. But the PC game market had a saving grace that both provided a means for them to produce more technically superior games AND reduce piracy. The CD-ROM. For about 6 years in the 90's, game manufacturers released many games on CD-ROM with absolutely no copy protection whatsoever.
The reason was, was that CD Burners were unheard of, and most hard drives were mostly no larger than 1GB. So copying a 600MB CD made little sense, and that is IF you could fit it on your hard drive. So at that point the only way to get a full game was to buy it. For a long time, copy protection was nowhere to be found. Then of course, came the advent of CD burners and the Internet. These two factors combined gave rise to a new era of piracy. So what did game makers do?
For a while, they did nothing. Burners were not that popular and most people accessed the internet through dial up and most people were unwilling to download entire cd images. But the threat had begun. Game manufacturers, taking a page from recent controversies from the RIAA about MP3 piracy, decided to implement DRM. They were just checks to see if the CD was in the drive, but it had begun. And so, with major piracy fears, game companies are more and more using the utterly draconian Securom protection. Never mind that it doesn't work on a large amount of computers for people who actually bought the title. So, more and more, users are turning to less-than-legitimate channels for these titles.
I had thought that computer software vendors would have learned a lesson long ago, a lesson that the RIAA is now just learning. There will always be pirates. The pirate has been an accepted stereotype in the computer industry since the early eighties. And these guys aren't going anywhere. Arrest them, confuse them, make everybody authenticate with thumbprints, they are going nowhere. This is the digital world now, and pirates are a fact of life. If you provide a digital product for sale, it will be acquired by a percentage of pirates. It is going to happen. Instead of trying to accuse every customer that buys your product of being a pirate, why don't you concentrate on the title. Make no mistake, you are calling every one of your customers a criminal, just like the RIAA. Oh you could be like them, track down a handful of pirates and sue them. Of course, this is futile as well, as there is no way you will catch even a fraction of the actual pirates, and you will just ruin a few dozen lives.
As if being treated like a criminal by default wasn't bad enough, the worst part is that the DRM functionality does not work on a growing number of systems. This is inexcusable, especially when the customer is being called a criminal even though he purchased the product. Now, the advantage of piracy is not only to make the game free, but for some people who bought the title, this is the only way for them to actually play it. And the activation part of securom? Three activations and then you have to call??? What happens if I feel nostalgic and want to load up Spore in 10 years? Are those activation servers still going to be functioning? I highly doubt it. Which means that your game will have a limited shelf life. As far as I'm concerned, the minute those activation servers are offline, every customer who purchased that product should get a refund. Because then it becomes impossible to install this title legitimately.
Software companies, I truly am sorry. Piracy is not going away. In my opinion using lesser draconian DRM measures like Safedisc is OK, but do what you can and then accept what happens afterword. If its a good game, it will sell. Sure some people will pirate it, but again, this has been going on for the last 20 years. One day, when these games requiring activation are forgotten because there are no more authentication servers, software companies will listen. But until then the gaming public seems to be speaking. Treat paying customers like they are criminals and they will, invariably become them. And you have no one to blame but yourselves.
For a game company to expect me to uninstall perfectly legitimate tools simply because those tools might be used for piracy, well let me just say that this is a slap in my face; an insult to my intelligence and my reputation. When I was first into computing, piracy was just as rampant as it is now, if not more so. First, there were "uncopyable disks" that could still be copied with the proper image software. The next reaction was to include a code wheel or code sheet, usually filled with esoteric symbols that correspond somewhere in the game. Usually red, or somehow otherwise protected from photocopying. This did not really work either, since code wheels could be taken apart, copied and reassembled, and you could get a copier to copy the red code sheets if the setting were just right. But the PC game market had a saving grace that both provided a means for them to produce more technically superior games AND reduce piracy. The CD-ROM. For about 6 years in the 90's, game manufacturers released many games on CD-ROM with absolutely no copy protection whatsoever.
The reason was, was that CD Burners were unheard of, and most hard drives were mostly no larger than 1GB. So copying a 600MB CD made little sense, and that is IF you could fit it on your hard drive. So at that point the only way to get a full game was to buy it. For a long time, copy protection was nowhere to be found. Then of course, came the advent of CD burners and the Internet. These two factors combined gave rise to a new era of piracy. So what did game makers do?
For a while, they did nothing. Burners were not that popular and most people accessed the internet through dial up and most people were unwilling to download entire cd images. But the threat had begun. Game manufacturers, taking a page from recent controversies from the RIAA about MP3 piracy, decided to implement DRM. They were just checks to see if the CD was in the drive, but it had begun. And so, with major piracy fears, game companies are more and more using the utterly draconian Securom protection. Never mind that it doesn't work on a large amount of computers for people who actually bought the title. So, more and more, users are turning to less-than-legitimate channels for these titles.
I had thought that computer software vendors would have learned a lesson long ago, a lesson that the RIAA is now just learning. There will always be pirates. The pirate has been an accepted stereotype in the computer industry since the early eighties. And these guys aren't going anywhere. Arrest them, confuse them, make everybody authenticate with thumbprints, they are going nowhere. This is the digital world now, and pirates are a fact of life. If you provide a digital product for sale, it will be acquired by a percentage of pirates. It is going to happen. Instead of trying to accuse every customer that buys your product of being a pirate, why don't you concentrate on the title. Make no mistake, you are calling every one of your customers a criminal, just like the RIAA. Oh you could be like them, track down a handful of pirates and sue them. Of course, this is futile as well, as there is no way you will catch even a fraction of the actual pirates, and you will just ruin a few dozen lives.
As if being treated like a criminal by default wasn't bad enough, the worst part is that the DRM functionality does not work on a growing number of systems. This is inexcusable, especially when the customer is being called a criminal even though he purchased the product. Now, the advantage of piracy is not only to make the game free, but for some people who bought the title, this is the only way for them to actually play it. And the activation part of securom? Three activations and then you have to call??? What happens if I feel nostalgic and want to load up Spore in 10 years? Are those activation servers still going to be functioning? I highly doubt it. Which means that your game will have a limited shelf life. As far as I'm concerned, the minute those activation servers are offline, every customer who purchased that product should get a refund. Because then it becomes impossible to install this title legitimately.
Software companies, I truly am sorry. Piracy is not going away. In my opinion using lesser draconian DRM measures like Safedisc is OK, but do what you can and then accept what happens afterword. If its a good game, it will sell. Sure some people will pirate it, but again, this has been going on for the last 20 years. One day, when these games requiring activation are forgotten because there are no more authentication servers, software companies will listen. But until then the gaming public seems to be speaking. Treat paying customers like they are criminals and they will, invariably become them. And you have no one to blame but yourselves.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Review of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files
One of the things that I still do on a regular basis is read fiction. I love to read. I have loved to read since I could read. So many of my peers and colleagues have admitted to me that while they may code, or play video games, or work on their networks, almost none of them read.
Literacy, or as I like to say, “the art of reading”, is one of the best measures of both a person’s intelligence and wisdom. I know it carries a stigma of being geeky or nerdy or something that shut-ins do to pass time. But some of the best stories are still written in books. Some of the books have been mad into excellent movies, such as The Lord of the Rings. Some of them have been made into very bad films. But the romance of the printed word still retains a large majority of a tale’s impact, and in most cases popular media has ineptly failed to adapt said tale to modern media.
A few months ago, looking for something to read in the darker parts of literature, I stumbled upon a set of books by an author named Jim Butcher. I had never heard of him before, but the blurb on the back of some of his books, as well as the cover art, piqued my interest. So I picked up a copy of Storm Front, the first book in Jim Butcher’s Dresden files. I had some reservations. Modern horror novels all seem to look like they are about tragically-hip wanna-be vampire punks who are hopelessly tormented and crying and blah blah blah. Either they were copies of Anne Rice’s vampires or straight out of the World of Darkness. I was getting very sick of those horror novels.
Jim Butcher has totally breathed new life into the horror/occult literature arena with The Dresden Files. Needless to say, my expectations were totally wrong. While vampires ARE a part of the Dresden Files, Butcher’s take on them is very different. There are elements of the previous vampire ideas there, but Butcher manages to give them a different identity, making them his own unique creations. And they are not the only focus of his novels. Not by a long shot. The magic and wizardry of the novels combined with the brooding “White Council”, the demons, faeries, werewolves AND vampires create absolute page turning details in the whole of The Dresden Files.
There are, so far, 10 different Dresden Files works. I am going to try to write a review of the series and perhaps one or two lines about each book. I am going to try my damnedest not to give away any spoilers. But if I have convinced you already, hit up one of the links below and order yourself some of them. Those of you who need more convincing please, read on.
Harry Dresden is Chicago’s only professional “Wizard for Hire”. I sort of got the impression “what if Harry Potter grew up to become Sam Spade?” Your take may be different, but he is by far one of the most complex literary characters that I have read in the last five years and he is hard to place an exact analogue. He has an office, a dingy apartment and a car that barely runs. He wears a black leather duster, something I myself wear when weather permits (Though I have been wearing mine since the mid 1990’s). His clients are often boring, looking for lost items and the like, but the novels document some of Dresden’s more strange and dangerous clients. The stories are rife with magic, conjurings, thaumaturgy, and the supernatural. My skin crawled more than a few times.
Butcher seems to have either written these books with a male audience in mind, or at least an open-minded female audience. This is fantasy, bear that in mind. Every woman has huge boobs and most of the female characters seem to border on nymphomaniacs. But instead of feeling “cheap” or “sleazy”, the adult themes of these novels end up being very sexual, and very arousing. Sure it’s not reality, but this novel is “fiction”. And I’ll tell you, I loved every last minute of it. I WANT to read books where girls are literally tearing their clothes off all the time. Some scenes are the most erotic things that I have read in quite a few years. Make no mistake – these are not books for the majority of the Harry Potter crowd.
These novels are not just fear and sex either. The magical system that Jim Butcher has created for the Dresden Files is intricate and interesting. It combines many ideas of traditional magic, some fantasy elements and just a subtle hint of Hollywood flair. Harry Dresden has an array of spells and magical artifacts, including several spiritual items. This approach to magic is has the effect of feeling realistic, or at least as realistic as magic can be. There is a bit of religion in the novels as well, and Butcher handles this perfectly. He isn’t preachy, he doesn’t offend, and some of the most thought-provoking aspects of these novels pertains to Dresden’s view of the almighty and how it relates to others around him. The magic is also not overused. Dresden is not just some spell-slinging whitebeard that is powerless without his books. Far from that; Dresden has little hesitation to pull out his revolver when the need arises.
Butcher is also careful to include lots of humor as well. Downright funny events happen and there are small nuances that get the reader smiling every time, such as an army of unseen Faerie cleaning servants called brownies that Dresden cannot talk about or they will stop cleaning his apartment. There are also plenty of pop culture references, especially if you were a child of the 80’s as Dresden, Butcher and myself likely all are. (Though how Dresden was able to watch Star Trek TNG without a television is a mystery to me)
Harry Dresden is a fantastic character. Often broke, cursed by bad luck and bad women, he is easy to empathize with. He is a character that you want to root for. The other characters in the book are quite unique as well. Every person detailed in the books is interesting. Every enemy, every ally, and many of the creatures are all finely detailed. I’ve stated that the setting is Chicago, but that isn’t really true. With the Spirit world of the Nevernever, the jaunts to various night haunts and forgotten places, Butcher’s attention to detail doesn’t just create a story – he created a world. Some characters have hidden and mysterious lineages, others have ongoing personal challenges, yet others are members of secret societies like the Order of the Blackened Denarius. The story is rich indeed.
I am also amazed at Butcher’s talent for writing epic scenes and encounters. The climax of almost every book is a page-turner. Without giving too much away, one ending involves two magic users fighting in a house that becomes a giant, blazing, inferno, while trying to avoid being killed by summoned scorpions. The end of my favorite of the series, Death Masks, leads Dresden and company on a chase after a demon that spans the entire length of a moving train. Adrenaline filled, I read those pages at a blinding pace in an effort to reach the ending. Butcher also is unpredictable. Several times I thought I knew exactly what was going to happen, and of course, I was wrong. The writing is filled with creativity and style. If you have any imagination at all, you will love these books.
Now here is a list of the novels including a small mini review
Storm Front
Literacy, or as I like to say, “the art of reading”, is one of the best measures of both a person’s intelligence and wisdom. I know it carries a stigma of being geeky or nerdy or something that shut-ins do to pass time. But some of the best stories are still written in books. Some of the books have been mad into excellent movies, such as The Lord of the Rings. Some of them have been made into very bad films. But the romance of the printed word still retains a large majority of a tale’s impact, and in most cases popular media has ineptly failed to adapt said tale to modern media.
A few months ago, looking for something to read in the darker parts of literature, I stumbled upon a set of books by an author named Jim Butcher. I had never heard of him before, but the blurb on the back of some of his books, as well as the cover art, piqued my interest. So I picked up a copy of Storm Front, the first book in Jim Butcher’s Dresden files. I had some reservations. Modern horror novels all seem to look like they are about tragically-hip wanna-be vampire punks who are hopelessly tormented and crying and blah blah blah. Either they were copies of Anne Rice’s vampires or straight out of the World of Darkness. I was getting very sick of those horror novels.
Jim Butcher has totally breathed new life into the horror/occult literature arena with The Dresden Files. Needless to say, my expectations were totally wrong. While vampires ARE a part of the Dresden Files, Butcher’s take on them is very different. There are elements of the previous vampire ideas there, but Butcher manages to give them a different identity, making them his own unique creations. And they are not the only focus of his novels. Not by a long shot. The magic and wizardry of the novels combined with the brooding “White Council”, the demons, faeries, werewolves AND vampires create absolute page turning details in the whole of The Dresden Files.
There are, so far, 10 different Dresden Files works. I am going to try to write a review of the series and perhaps one or two lines about each book. I am going to try my damnedest not to give away any spoilers. But if I have convinced you already, hit up one of the links below and order yourself some of them. Those of you who need more convincing please, read on.
Harry Dresden is Chicago’s only professional “Wizard for Hire”. I sort of got the impression “what if Harry Potter grew up to become Sam Spade?” Your take may be different, but he is by far one of the most complex literary characters that I have read in the last five years and he is hard to place an exact analogue. He has an office, a dingy apartment and a car that barely runs. He wears a black leather duster, something I myself wear when weather permits (Though I have been wearing mine since the mid 1990’s). His clients are often boring, looking for lost items and the like, but the novels document some of Dresden’s more strange and dangerous clients. The stories are rife with magic, conjurings, thaumaturgy, and the supernatural. My skin crawled more than a few times.
Butcher seems to have either written these books with a male audience in mind, or at least an open-minded female audience. This is fantasy, bear that in mind. Every woman has huge boobs and most of the female characters seem to border on nymphomaniacs. But instead of feeling “cheap” or “sleazy”, the adult themes of these novels end up being very sexual, and very arousing. Sure it’s not reality, but this novel is “fiction”. And I’ll tell you, I loved every last minute of it. I WANT to read books where girls are literally tearing their clothes off all the time. Some scenes are the most erotic things that I have read in quite a few years. Make no mistake – these are not books for the majority of the Harry Potter crowd.
These novels are not just fear and sex either. The magical system that Jim Butcher has created for the Dresden Files is intricate and interesting. It combines many ideas of traditional magic, some fantasy elements and just a subtle hint of Hollywood flair. Harry Dresden has an array of spells and magical artifacts, including several spiritual items. This approach to magic is has the effect of feeling realistic, or at least as realistic as magic can be. There is a bit of religion in the novels as well, and Butcher handles this perfectly. He isn’t preachy, he doesn’t offend, and some of the most thought-provoking aspects of these novels pertains to Dresden’s view of the almighty and how it relates to others around him. The magic is also not overused. Dresden is not just some spell-slinging whitebeard that is powerless without his books. Far from that; Dresden has little hesitation to pull out his revolver when the need arises.
Butcher is also careful to include lots of humor as well. Downright funny events happen and there are small nuances that get the reader smiling every time, such as an army of unseen Faerie cleaning servants called brownies that Dresden cannot talk about or they will stop cleaning his apartment. There are also plenty of pop culture references, especially if you were a child of the 80’s as Dresden, Butcher and myself likely all are. (Though how Dresden was able to watch Star Trek TNG without a television is a mystery to me)
Harry Dresden is a fantastic character. Often broke, cursed by bad luck and bad women, he is easy to empathize with. He is a character that you want to root for. The other characters in the book are quite unique as well. Every person detailed in the books is interesting. Every enemy, every ally, and many of the creatures are all finely detailed. I’ve stated that the setting is Chicago, but that isn’t really true. With the Spirit world of the Nevernever, the jaunts to various night haunts and forgotten places, Butcher’s attention to detail doesn’t just create a story – he created a world. Some characters have hidden and mysterious lineages, others have ongoing personal challenges, yet others are members of secret societies like the Order of the Blackened Denarius. The story is rich indeed.
I am also amazed at Butcher’s talent for writing epic scenes and encounters. The climax of almost every book is a page-turner. Without giving too much away, one ending involves two magic users fighting in a house that becomes a giant, blazing, inferno, while trying to avoid being killed by summoned scorpions. The end of my favorite of the series, Death Masks, leads Dresden and company on a chase after a demon that spans the entire length of a moving train. Adrenaline filled, I read those pages at a blinding pace in an effort to reach the ending. Butcher also is unpredictable. Several times I thought I knew exactly what was going to happen, and of course, I was wrong. The writing is filled with creativity and style. If you have any imagination at all, you will love these books.
Now here is a list of the novels including a small mini review
Storm Front
This is the book that got me interested in the series. If you aren’t prepared, (I wasn’t) the beginning has lots of information, and the story heavily builds in the beginning of this one. You get introduced to things like the White Council and the Wardens, plus there is a lot of information about officer Murphy,
Fool Moon
Werewolves, werewolves everywhere. Great climax, begins building an interesting relationship with resident mobster Marcone.
Grave Peril
Introduces Michael Carpenter, God’s own Knight of the Cross. Without a doubt my favorite character aside from
Summer Night
My least favorite of the series. That doesn’t mean it isn’t good! Lots and lots of Faerie intrigue, culminating in a battle that shakes the heavens themselves.
Death Masks
Easily my favorite of the series. Michael Carpenter takes more of an active partnership with
Blood Rites
I’m afraid I can’t say anything about this one without spoiling the plot and the Thomas character. I enjoyed it immensely, however.
Dead Beat
A real mystery.
Proven Guilty
Molly Carpenter, daughter of Michel and Charity carpenter, becomes a mail character in this book. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but man, the whole Goth thing that Molly has going on. Dude. Hot. REAL HOT.
White Knight
This one starts with a mystery and ends with a bang. The mystery part was the best aspect of this novel. It really seemed to take
Small Favor
In the first few pages of the book,
Read these books. They are superb. I can’t wait for Turn Coat.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
The Obsession with the "Desktop"
I saw an interesting article over at Linux.com that talks about Linux being ready for the desktop. According to the author, he thinks that the phrase "ready for the desktop" should be retired as it is overused and no longer relevant to modern Linux. While I agree that this phrase is far overused, the author comes to the conclusion that the reason it is no longer relevant is because it is subjective; because different people use computers for different things, there is no "One-size-fits-all" easy OS.
This is where the author and I disagree. The subjectivity of the desktop is a valid point. Of course, that does not excuse Linux from having serious desktop-related problems. First, The availability of any kind of entertainment software including games on the Linux platform quite frankly, blows. In addition, sometimes changes do require use of the command line, and I think it is pretty clear that average users are daunted by these tasks. I mean, that is what the GUI was invented for. For Linux to have problems like these and try to market itself to the average user is inexcusable. Not for Linux itself, mind you, but for the people who are convinced that Linux should be on everyone's desktop by any means necessary. Gee, ravenously wanting to take over the desktop of every user's computer in the world... where have I heard this before... Oh yeah from MICROSOFT. Only they DID have gaming and entertainment as parts of their products for a very long time. Say what you will about Microsoft but they make one HELL of a user interface.
I'm not saying that this is impossible to accomplish with Linux. Far from it. But one thing I often see is people's faces when I show them the video of LinuxMCE in action. Now THAT is a user interface. And it has lots of extras, but lets be honest. The core is not exactly the easiest thing in the world to get going properly, but once you do and put terminals next to every tv in the house, you will wonder how you ever got along without it. But users don't equate the UI for LinuxMCE with a regular desktop computer. After all, its on your TV, there is no keyboard and they navigate with their remote control. But there is the rub. There are PLENTY of other ways for people to use Linux, far more than can be used with Windows.
Windows is, in my opinion, a one trick pony. But give them credit, its a pretty damn good trick. Windows dominates "the desktop." I understand why corperations use Windows servers, but I really think that the stability of *nix on servers, and the multitude of configuration options and support for scripting and its better use of system resources sells Linux for servers every time. But lay people know Microsoft products. They know Windows. And I don't care what any IT staff tells you, the fact that more people ar familliar with the OS is a LARGE consideration for customers to choose Windows servers over Linux servers.
Now far be it from me to suggest closing X.org and shutting down Gnome and KDE. Those projects have been around for decades and they are not going anywhere any time soon. But its time for Linux desktop evangelists to give up. The reality of the matter is most of the users that are going to use the Linux desktop as a desktop already do. Grandmothers who can bearly run windows are not going to want to learn Gnome. PC gamers are not going away either, and like it or not, they drive a LARGE part of the industry. You didn't REALLY think that people actually buy SLI 8800GTX's for spreadsheets do you?
But Linux has MANY strengths, far more than any of Microsoft's products. The failure of the Linux evangelists is that they don't play to the OS's strengths. Forget the desktop. Thats right forget it. There are many more options that are evolving that are going to change people's idea of a "desktop" anyway. There are more devices with their own ui that are going to become more of people's computing devices (iphone). And there will be less of a need for desktop applications when everything is going to be web applications soon. So forget the desktop. It is the greatest server OS there is (with the exception of FreeBSD of course.) It's capabilites as an embeded OS are miles greater than anything Microsoft has. In my opinion, the server market is more lucrative anyway. Lets get Windows off of servers. Let them keep the desktop until it turns into a dumb terminal that runs all of its apps of some Linux server through a browser.
If Linux dominates in the server market (where I know it can), and the embedded market, I will guarentee that those of us who do profit by having Linux widely distributed will be rolling in the hay. There are companies that run evrything on Solaris Servers. But you don't hear Sun complaining that Solaris "isn't ready for the destop" do you? (Granted Sun is not really happy that Linux is getting more shares of the server market, but that isn't really the point is it?) So everyone out there who wants Linux to succeed, look for different places for it to do so. The desktop battle was won long ago. Cry about it, or move on to something else.
This is where the author and I disagree. The subjectivity of the desktop is a valid point. Of course, that does not excuse Linux from having serious desktop-related problems. First, The availability of any kind of entertainment software including games on the Linux platform quite frankly, blows. In addition, sometimes changes do require use of the command line, and I think it is pretty clear that average users are daunted by these tasks. I mean, that is what the GUI was invented for. For Linux to have problems like these and try to market itself to the average user is inexcusable. Not for Linux itself, mind you, but for the people who are convinced that Linux should be on everyone's desktop by any means necessary. Gee, ravenously wanting to take over the desktop of every user's computer in the world... where have I heard this before... Oh yeah from MICROSOFT. Only they DID have gaming and entertainment as parts of their products for a very long time. Say what you will about Microsoft but they make one HELL of a user interface.
I'm not saying that this is impossible to accomplish with Linux. Far from it. But one thing I often see is people's faces when I show them the video of LinuxMCE in action. Now THAT is a user interface. And it has lots of extras, but lets be honest. The core is not exactly the easiest thing in the world to get going properly, but once you do and put terminals next to every tv in the house, you will wonder how you ever got along without it. But users don't equate the UI for LinuxMCE with a regular desktop computer. After all, its on your TV, there is no keyboard and they navigate with their remote control. But there is the rub. There are PLENTY of other ways for people to use Linux, far more than can be used with Windows.
Windows is, in my opinion, a one trick pony. But give them credit, its a pretty damn good trick. Windows dominates "the desktop." I understand why corperations use Windows servers, but I really think that the stability of *nix on servers, and the multitude of configuration options and support for scripting and its better use of system resources sells Linux for servers every time. But lay people know Microsoft products. They know Windows. And I don't care what any IT staff tells you, the fact that more people ar familliar with the OS is a LARGE consideration for customers to choose Windows servers over Linux servers.
Now far be it from me to suggest closing X.org and shutting down Gnome and KDE. Those projects have been around for decades and they are not going anywhere any time soon. But its time for Linux desktop evangelists to give up. The reality of the matter is most of the users that are going to use the Linux desktop as a desktop already do. Grandmothers who can bearly run windows are not going to want to learn Gnome. PC gamers are not going away either, and like it or not, they drive a LARGE part of the industry. You didn't REALLY think that people actually buy SLI 8800GTX's for spreadsheets do you?
But Linux has MANY strengths, far more than any of Microsoft's products. The failure of the Linux evangelists is that they don't play to the OS's strengths. Forget the desktop. Thats right forget it. There are many more options that are evolving that are going to change people's idea of a "desktop" anyway. There are more devices with their own ui that are going to become more of people's computing devices (iphone). And there will be less of a need for desktop applications when everything is going to be web applications soon. So forget the desktop. It is the greatest server OS there is (with the exception of FreeBSD of course.) It's capabilites as an embeded OS are miles greater than anything Microsoft has. In my opinion, the server market is more lucrative anyway. Lets get Windows off of servers. Let them keep the desktop until it turns into a dumb terminal that runs all of its apps of some Linux server through a browser.
If Linux dominates in the server market (where I know it can), and the embedded market, I will guarentee that those of us who do profit by having Linux widely distributed will be rolling in the hay. There are companies that run evrything on Solaris Servers. But you don't hear Sun complaining that Solaris "isn't ready for the destop" do you? (Granted Sun is not really happy that Linux is getting more shares of the server market, but that isn't really the point is it?) So everyone out there who wants Linux to succeed, look for different places for it to do so. The desktop battle was won long ago. Cry about it, or move on to something else.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Full porn downloads anywhere in the US?
Hey just read this article and I wanted to pop my $0.02 in on it. Its at the NYT and its called Technology Group Plans Wireless Network. Its about the consortum who are getting together to build a wide broadband wireless network. Now I don't know about you, but unless you live under a rock, you hadto be expecting this ( oh I know with my previous article I said that nobody can predict tech trends but this one is a real no-brainer.) With the penetration of wireless devices like cell phones and PDA's this was inevitable. However, it claims that they are trying to match speeds of current broadband providers. Which I suppose is a good thing, and by the time they actually do implement this broadband wirless network, the wired infrastructure in the country will be mostly fiber (hopefully).
However i'm wondering what exactly the effect this will have on the structure of the current internet. I mean, I have a mobile blog . But trust me, posting via mobile is a whole lot different than READING blogs mobile. Sure instead of actually hitting the blogger page, you can hit my feedburner feed, and it looks ok on a mobile, but REALLY, if mobile is going to be king, it needs to have alot of changes. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. From the article though it kind of sounds like they are actually hoping to replace all internet connections with this wide broadband network ( on the consumer level at least ). I'm not sure this is going to work. I mean I have wi-fi on my laptop and I love it, but if there is a wired connection, its much faster and far more stable. I mean there is nothing wrong with my Wi-Fi access point, but wired still delivers data beter than any wireless. I know that the spectrum is different but wireless is wireless. FM radio's are wireless and they still don't get pure connections on the fringe ranges. It will turn into "who is lucky enough to live under a wireless tower?" versus "the only internet I can get is wireless broadband, but out in the styx it maybe works every other day."
I suppose my question is: are people ready for a change like this? Maybe they are maybe they are not. I for one will still be holding on to my wired service provider (hopefully fiber by then). I may consider this as a secondary option for my mobile stuff, but I'm not sure I would be comfortable paying what I pay now for service that gets disrupted during sunspots.
However i'm wondering what exactly the effect this will have on the structure of the current internet. I mean, I have a mobile blog . But trust me, posting via mobile is a whole lot different than READING blogs mobile. Sure instead of actually hitting the blogger page, you can hit my feedburner feed, and it looks ok on a mobile, but REALLY, if mobile is going to be king, it needs to have alot of changes. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. From the article though it kind of sounds like they are actually hoping to replace all internet connections with this wide broadband network ( on the consumer level at least ). I'm not sure this is going to work. I mean I have wi-fi on my laptop and I love it, but if there is a wired connection, its much faster and far more stable. I mean there is nothing wrong with my Wi-Fi access point, but wired still delivers data beter than any wireless. I know that the spectrum is different but wireless is wireless. FM radio's are wireless and they still don't get pure connections on the fringe ranges. It will turn into "who is lucky enough to live under a wireless tower?" versus "the only internet I can get is wireless broadband, but out in the styx it maybe works every other day."
I suppose my question is: are people ready for a change like this? Maybe they are maybe they are not. I for one will still be holding on to my wired service provider (hopefully fiber by then). I may consider this as a secondary option for my mobile stuff, but I'm not sure I would be comfortable paying what I pay now for service that gets disrupted during sunspots.
And here's Carnac the Magnificent !
I was reading Slashdot this morning and saw a link to a Geek.com story entitled The x86 evolution will lead the revolution. Now I'm not exactly sure what "revolution" this is talking about. There are so many these days. But one thing that I have learned in all my time in the industry is that technology ALWAYS changes, and trends can NEVER be predicted with 100% accuracy. How many of you bought a PhysX by ageia? How many of you would have 5 years ago predicted that AMD would get consistently spanked in performance by Intel's LOWER end processors? For many years in this industry people try to make predictions that they are SURE are going to come true. I can't tell you how many predicted that ATI would dominate the graphics card market. But they ended up in trouble and got bought by AMD. Now neither AMD or ATI has a leading product in their market (and it is not for lack of trying).
Or 3dfx? They REALLY dominated the graphics market in the late 90's. EVERYONE said that the 3dfx cards were far better than that Riva or Rage products (by Nvidia and ATI respectively). After the company released its Voodoo 3 card it seemed to disappear into a puff of smoke. Nobody predicted that with 100% accuracy. This industry is one of the most dynamic industries I have ever observed. Even in the retail support market, which I heavily work in, technology turns around at the drop of a hat. First its capacitive touchscreen technology. Then it is resitive. Then, infrared touch rings around the screen. Then back to resistive. And every time the new tech is touted as the answer for all of the design problems in the units. And it will be something else next month. I can't tell you how many times the IT and computer industry has flip/flopped. Its the nature of high tech.
Now don't get me wrong. It is a fantastic feat of the x86 architecture to have survived as an industry standard for so long. Heck, I remember when "x86" architecture was known as "IBM compatible". And even that nomenclature lasted for a long time. So lets give the platform its due. The above article cites the use of increasingly smaller nm production processes, thinner substrates and better power efficiency like in Intel's new mobile chip the Atom. He mentions the 64-bit x86 technology extensions. However, he uses that for evidence of the platform's dominance. Personally, though 64-bit capable chips are well dispersed through the market, MOST of them are not taking advantage of the 64-bit extensions i.e. running a 64-bit OS. I'm sure they will, when they discover that they can't see all 4GB of their system memory in 32-bit mode, but that has yet to happen.
From a distance, one could see how the author made the assumption that x86 will continue to dominate. It has a track record of success, and it was even recently adopted by Apple for its Macs, abandoning the PowerPC market. (Who could have predicted THAT 5 years ago?) But believe me folks, it can all turn around in an instant. Let me lay out this scenario. What if I bring to the market a new, RISC based processor? It doesn't run any native x86 apps. It DOES, however, have a complete Virtual Machine. Virtualization is new and hot, and especially in server environments, it is the answer to alot of issues. Many people are using it. It runs virtual machines far better and more efficient than an x86 based machine. It would be very easy for a product like this to dominate the server market, especially if that customer is using virtual machines as an exclusive infrastructure. They could care less what kind of instruction set the physical cpu has, just so long as their virtual machines are solid. Virtualization may make all hardware platforms as we know them totally interchangeable. You could then run the VM on any hardware you chose. The second you make something faster and cheaper then -- Boom. Server x86 use goes out the window. Now this hasn't happened but it EASILY could.
Also, the author states that x86 will dominate in the mobile and embedded market. Again I have to say this is MASSIVE speculation by the author, almost to the point of being laughable. The future does look bright for embedded x86. But it is difficult at best to hold on to that market. Just ask Motorola. Or Transmeta. Or Palm for God's sake! Or any of the people who were going to change mobile computing for years to come. Perhaps x86 will evolve into a standard instruction set for all VM's in the future, leaving its legacy not in silicon chips, but in an idea, a multi-platform programming standard. That does not invalidate the author's point, but it isn't anywhere near the hardware dominance that he predicts.
The moral of this story is that its ok to speculate, but don't be surprised if those far touted theories crumble. Other than the history lesson, which I might add is very good work by this author, this article is more speculative than the psychic hotline. I encourage people to think about the future, but the main thing about it is that no person on this planet knows for certain what the future holds. Especially in the computer industry.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Who own software? Why does it matter?
I just saw an article over at Slashdot. In the article apparently Blizzard is suing MDY industries over the creation of the World of Warcraft (WOW) glider program. Check it out here.
Now, I understand Blizzard's point of view. I have written several bits of software here and there. Something great, especially something that has had a lot of time and effort put into it, means something special to the creator. Its almost like a child to them. It must be difficult to see people doing things with your creation that you did not intend for them to do. I imagine that Edison and Tesla had similar reactions when the heard of the invention of the electric chair. A rather grim image, but I imagine that these electrical pioneers did not have death by electrocution in mind when they created their inventions. OK, its a more brutal implication than the unauthorized use of software, but I think it drives the point across. Another good analogy is Oppenheimer's reaction to the atom bomb.
I in no way wish to trivialize the emotions felt by Blizzard when they learned the discovery of the Glider program. However, there is one thing that the creators of the above technologies learned, that clearly Blizzard has yet to learn, is that when you give something to the world, it cannot be taken back. People still get the electric chair, and there are MANY nuclear weapons, much to Oppenheimer's chagrin.
Once Pandora's box has been opened it cannot be closed again; Prometheus cannot return the fire he stole. Blizzard, you created a large and prosperous virtual community, you need to know that there will always be people that are successful in subverting the rules in any society. And sometimes there is nothing you can do to stop them. I will say one thing to Blizzard. Don't take a note from the RIAA, keep this out of the courts. Ban the offenders, kill accounts, patch the software, but mark my words, legal action will not stop people from abusing your software.
In my opinion, ownership is not the question. It does not matter to me who owns the software, Blizzard would not like it even if the abusers DID own the software. And it isn't up to the government to enforce rules in YOUR virtual world. That is your job Blizzard, not the United States government's. Not to point fingers, but clearly the folks at Blizzard have the liberal, half-baked idea that the government should be used as the answer to EVERYTHING. Frankly, and I'm sorry if I'm alone on this but Blizzard needs to man up a little. Sometimes its better to beat the crap out of a bully than run and tattle to Uncle Sam. You should have learned that around age ten. This lawsuit is a waste of my tax dollars. Enforce this from the inside Blizzard. Don't make it a legal issue.
Keeping with the child analogy, eventually, you have to come to terms with the fact that the world is a very dangerous place and there is nothing that you can do but eventually let them go. You should have known that this was an acceptable risk the minute you decided to put WOW on the shelves.
Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile
Now, I understand Blizzard's point of view. I have written several bits of software here and there. Something great, especially something that has had a lot of time and effort put into it, means something special to the creator. Its almost like a child to them. It must be difficult to see people doing things with your creation that you did not intend for them to do. I imagine that Edison and Tesla had similar reactions when the heard of the invention of the electric chair. A rather grim image, but I imagine that these electrical pioneers did not have death by electrocution in mind when they created their inventions. OK, its a more brutal implication than the unauthorized use of software, but I think it drives the point across. Another good analogy is Oppenheimer's reaction to the atom bomb.
I in no way wish to trivialize the emotions felt by Blizzard when they learned the discovery of the Glider program. However, there is one thing that the creators of the above technologies learned, that clearly Blizzard has yet to learn, is that when you give something to the world, it cannot be taken back. People still get the electric chair, and there are MANY nuclear weapons, much to Oppenheimer's chagrin.
Once Pandora's box has been opened it cannot be closed again; Prometheus cannot return the fire he stole. Blizzard, you created a large and prosperous virtual community, you need to know that there will always be people that are successful in subverting the rules in any society. And sometimes there is nothing you can do to stop them. I will say one thing to Blizzard. Don't take a note from the RIAA, keep this out of the courts. Ban the offenders, kill accounts, patch the software, but mark my words, legal action will not stop people from abusing your software.
In my opinion, ownership is not the question. It does not matter to me who owns the software, Blizzard would not like it even if the abusers DID own the software. And it isn't up to the government to enforce rules in YOUR virtual world. That is your job Blizzard, not the United States government's. Not to point fingers, but clearly the folks at Blizzard have the liberal, half-baked idea that the government should be used as the answer to EVERYTHING. Frankly, and I'm sorry if I'm alone on this but Blizzard needs to man up a little. Sometimes its better to beat the crap out of a bully than run and tattle to Uncle Sam. You should have learned that around age ten. This lawsuit is a waste of my tax dollars. Enforce this from the inside Blizzard. Don't make it a legal issue.
Keeping with the child analogy, eventually, you have to come to terms with the fact that the world is a very dangerous place and there is nothing that you can do but eventually let them go. You should have known that this was an acceptable risk the minute you decided to put WOW on the shelves.
Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile
Sunday, May 4, 2008
The Geek Budget
I've been having some money problems lately. I'm sure that this is a pretty common problem these days. My wife doesn't work. She is trying to get a job, but I don't need to tell you that the job market is less-than-stellar lately.
Sure, there is the fear of losing our house, our cars breaking down, not having enough money to pay bills. That stuff I try to take in stride. We can handle it. Being a geek however, might have resulted in a unique problem. No friends, I am not worried about the things that I should be worried about.
I have an AMD Athlon 64 Fx 51 as my main machine at the house. It has served me well, but it is getting a little long in the tooth. First, it uses REGISTERED MEMORY. So adding more than the current 1GB of ram is very cost-prohibitive. It has an Nvidia 7600 gs, which is ok, but the motherboard only has an AGP slot. So that's pretty much the end of the line as far as that goes. The socket is 940, so a CPU upgrade is pretty much out of the question.
My home server, which I have bragged about on this very blog, is a 1Ghz celeron with 384M of ram. It has a bunch of smallish IDE drives. It runs ok for a headless box, but it doesn't quite do everything I want.
I don't even have any dedicated *nix boxes anymore. They have either been sold or broken or just plain too old to use.
So what does this have to do with my money situation? Well I have plenty of financial issues hounding me, but I have no money to upgrade equipment. And its killing me. I mean, it really makes me depressed. Its kind of sad and sick in a way, that I am more worried about buying new hardware than losing my house. I wonder if any other geeks have had similar experiences. It is well documented that geeks often develop addictions; just look at the WOW zombies, the porn junkies, the guys that would rather code than have sex with their girlfriends (or FIND girlfriends for that matter).
Is it possible to be addicted to computer hardware? Have any other geeks craved upgrading their old stuff so badly that they cannot get it out of their heads? I constantly think about the cheapest ways to build a new box, but I just can't seem to find the money.
Do non geeks do this too? Do normal people have similar desires? How do they deal with it? I tell myself that I won't be broke forever, but I just keep getting more and more broke. Even my wing phone and my psp were given to me by my parents and my sisters. You know what I gave them? Framed pictures of my little boy. We just couldn't afford anything else.
How does one shake the nagging feeling of failure; of longing every time I stare at my old dusty hardware? How exactly does one be a broke geek? Does anyone have any advice?
If you are feeling generous, you can hit the donate button on this page. It doesn't have to be a lot, a buck will help and clicking some of the sponsors would be appreciated as well. Thanks for listening to this rant.
PV
Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile
Sure, there is the fear of losing our house, our cars breaking down, not having enough money to pay bills. That stuff I try to take in stride. We can handle it. Being a geek however, might have resulted in a unique problem. No friends, I am not worried about the things that I should be worried about.
I have an AMD Athlon 64 Fx 51 as my main machine at the house. It has served me well, but it is getting a little long in the tooth. First, it uses REGISTERED MEMORY. So adding more than the current 1GB of ram is very cost-prohibitive. It has an Nvidia 7600 gs, which is ok, but the motherboard only has an AGP slot. So that's pretty much the end of the line as far as that goes. The socket is 940, so a CPU upgrade is pretty much out of the question.
My home server, which I have bragged about on this very blog, is a 1Ghz celeron with 384M of ram. It has a bunch of smallish IDE drives. It runs ok for a headless box, but it doesn't quite do everything I want.
I don't even have any dedicated *nix boxes anymore. They have either been sold or broken or just plain too old to use.
So what does this have to do with my money situation? Well I have plenty of financial issues hounding me, but I have no money to upgrade equipment. And its killing me. I mean, it really makes me depressed. Its kind of sad and sick in a way, that I am more worried about buying new hardware than losing my house. I wonder if any other geeks have had similar experiences. It is well documented that geeks often develop addictions; just look at the WOW zombies, the porn junkies, the guys that would rather code than have sex with their girlfriends (or FIND girlfriends for that matter).
Is it possible to be addicted to computer hardware? Have any other geeks craved upgrading their old stuff so badly that they cannot get it out of their heads? I constantly think about the cheapest ways to build a new box, but I just can't seem to find the money.
Do non geeks do this too? Do normal people have similar desires? How do they deal with it? I tell myself that I won't be broke forever, but I just keep getting more and more broke. Even my wing phone and my psp were given to me by my parents and my sisters. You know what I gave them? Framed pictures of my little boy. We just couldn't afford anything else.
How does one shake the nagging feeling of failure; of longing every time I stare at my old dusty hardware? How exactly does one be a broke geek? Does anyone have any advice?
If you are feeling generous, you can hit the donate button on this page. It doesn't have to be a lot, a buck will help and clicking some of the sponsors would be appreciated as well. Thanks for listening to this rant.
PV
Posted from moBlog – mobile blogging tool for Windows Mobile
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Bioshock or Some Geeks are NEVER Satisfied
Slashdot had a post linking to Eurogamer documenting Problems with Bioshock. Bioshock is a game published by 2k Games. In my not so humble opinion, this is probably the best game I have played all year. Released on the XBOX360 and the PC, Bioshock is a first person shooter with some RPG elements. It is visually stunning, with immersive environments, realistic enemy AI and pretty much does a very good job of immersing the player in the game world. Now I know that this is said of many games but really, Bioshock makes you feel like you are really there. But the above things arn't even the best part of the game.
The best part is the story. I found the story very engaging, and I wanted to know what was going to happen next. Another big part about the story I like was the working of the game's nonphysical weapons, magical/psychic weapons called plasmids into the story. They aren't just weapons that you find on the ground, they are intrinsic to the genetic manipulation/addiction part of the plot. Add to that, the fact that the whole game takes place in a network of underwater buildings. And the story of the game is a look about what can happen in a truly free society, sort of the libertarian worst-case scenario. It is a society that develops a class division based on looks and good genetics, and money, of course. Plus, there are no drug laws in this society, so the lower echelon is made up of crazy drug addicts. And since there is no gun control, they are crazy drug addicts with guns. I know I always wanted to live in a society like that but this is sort of a what-not-to-do for any good libertarian. Add to that, the society's culture is based in a 1940's-ish atmosphere, complete with old music and tommy guns.
There are a few problems with the game, but they are relatively minor in my view. One, the game has no "lives". Every time you are killed, you respawn at a "vita-chamber" sort of a rolling save point. I can see that many people do not like the idea of infinite respawning. People can feel that this does not provide enough challenge or incentive to stay alive. That would be the cas if not for the other minor flaw in the game: its REALLY, REALLY hard. Oh sure lots of you are going to say "What a wuss, it isn't that bad," you guys are on crack. The story about finishing the game using just the pistol? Chambers make the game too easy? Trust me, if there were no chambers, nobody would have finished this game. Taking down enemies like "Big-Daddy" takes a LOT of work. I've also noticed that they seem to be a little stingy on ammo and health. So really, very minor issues. I personally like the hacking mini games and the vending machines. It's a nice break from just running and shooting.
The article defends critical points that geek gamers have had with the game. I still stand by, regardless of those issues, my statement to make this "game-of-the-year". But I guess there are some geeks who had "problems" with the game. If you look through the article, some of those points are just ludicrous. It seems that the article's author and I pretty much agree about the game. My point is, however, that he shouldn't even have to answer those points. Why? Because the only reason that anyone would have any problem with this game at all is because geeks are NEVER satisfied. Never. The sarcasm about the constant critic in my article How to be a geek in 10 easy steps is true. Bioshock is a great game, and it most likely WILL be game of the year on many places where it counts. Yet there are geeks that will rip it to shreds. I'm totally perplexed why geeks do this. It seems the gaming industry is one of the only industries where game of the year has people that cry "the ending sucks" or "the respawn system is horrible". I mean when is the last time a movie won best picture even though most viewers say "the ending sucks!" The last time a musician won a Grammy even though the track arrangement was horrible? It generally does not happen. That is because of the simple fact that geeks are not happy unless they are criticizing someone, somewhere.
I really don't know why geeks do this. Maybe its that over-inflated sense of self worth. Perhaps they are pretty much perfectionists. But you would think that if geeks never liked anything, then nothing in the geek world would ever be popular. But things are popular. This game will be high on any games-of-the-year lists regardless of the fact that it seems many geeks don't like it. It leads me to the conclusion that geeks like anything, but they like complaining even more. I think the Comic Book Guy in the Simpsons summed it up with one statement. Coming out of a film that is supposed to represent Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, he says "Worst film ever. I will only be seeing it five more times. Today." As parodic as that is, I have YET to come up with a line that has more insight on geeks and criticism.
I am an anomaly when it comes to criticism. I really don't like criticizing anything. I guess that makes me a strange geek, but I just don't see the point. You like something great. You don't? Don't play it, don't watch it, don't listen to it. But for the love of god, man up and stop complaining.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Installing a home server -- Networking Considerations
Hopefully, if you have read by article on building a home server, you have a good idea what you want to do with your box that you will be building. My detailed tutorials are going to be from the perspective of setting up an all-in-one router/firewall/gateway/webserver/media server. You can most likely omit any of the sections and ignore what you will not be needing. If you have a hardware firewall/router, for example, you can ignore the steps about sharing the network connections and setting up the firewall. Some of the steps depend on the others, like the need to install an sql database if you wish to properly use php. But If you don't need to have a shared drive, you can skip the file sharing part.
But the one aspect of this server that pretty much cannot be ignored is that it is going to be on a network. I thought that I would lay out some of the networking concepts that I will be using in building our home servers. This is by NO means a course on networking. If that's what you are looking for, hit a search engine and see what you can find. There are literally countless pages that have as much networking info as you need.
First and foremost, lets discuss IP addressing. An IP address is like a phone number that tells others on the network where the computer is located. If you are using the machine as a router/gateway, you will probably have 2 network connections on the machine. One probably goes to your cable modem or DSL modem. The other will go into a switch or hub in your house that your other computers are going to connect to. Let's call your internet connected network "external" or the "outside" connection, and the other will be called the "internal" or "inside" connection. If you are already network savvy, the outside connection is the WAN connection, and the inside interface is the LAN. Each of these connections will have a different IP address. You probably will not have many options for your external IP. Either that interface gets its IP from your Internet service provider (ISP) automatically using the DHCP protocol, or you will have been assigned a static IP address and subnet mask. This is vital information and you will not be able to complete this setup without it.
The internal address is something I want to touch on a little bit. Your internal interface is pretty much going to HAVE to be set to a non-changing, static address. The reason for this is that you do not want it to change because then the internal computers will not know where your server is exactly, and using DHCP to configure this interface will not always guarantee this. (There are some ways to make it happen, but those are beyond the scope of this article). When it comes to IP addressing and networks, certain rules have to be followed. Your internal network most likely is a private network, so you will have to use ip address ranges in the "Class C" range. This is a special range of IP addresses that can be used for internal private networks like yours. Valid ranges are : 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 and 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255. Any addresses in those range are valid and legal. For example you can give your internal interface of 10.0.0.5 or 192.168.1.1. For various reasons that will be illustrated during the XP routing section in the next article, I recommend that you assign your internal interface to the address of 192.168.0.1 with the default subnet mask. In addition to XP's special requirements, I recommend using this as your internal IP even if you are going the *nix route. It will simplify many of the subsequent steps. You do not HAVE to do this, but I really see no reason why you wouldn't use 192.168.0.1.
Next you will want to decide the way your clients will be connecting to your server. You may either run a DCHP server on your home server and assign your clients addresses automatically, or you may manually assign static IP addresses to your client PC's (or you can have a mix of the two if you follow some guidelines). To be honest, DHCP can sometimes have problems if your outside interface also uses DHCP, but I will show you how to use either way, and really this is a case of personal preference. Decide on this before you start, however.
Also, you need to think about how this machine will be administered. If you are going to want to administer your server over the internet and you have a static IP address, then don't worry, you should be able to access your static IP from any internet connected computer. If you have an ISP that gives you a DHCP address, you can never know when your assigned IP is going to change. If this is the case, hope is not lost. you can use something called a Dynamic DNS. I use No-ip, and if you are willing to use their domains, you can get an actual internet address like mysrvr.noip.com. There is a little program that we can install on the server that will let your dynamic DNS always know the location of your machine no matter how many times it may change. There are other dynamic DNS services, and you should pick one out. For a fee, you can usually get an actual domain and register it with these services like www.mysrvr.com. If you have a static IP you can just register a domain name and have it point to your static address.
Finally, you will need to know about NAT and port forwarding. NAT or Network Address Translation, in layman's terms is essentially this: As far as the outside network or internet is concerned, a request to the internet from any of the clients in your private network looks like it is coming from your outside interface ip address. If you Google NAT you will find extensive information about its nuances, but it's just a principle that says that the ONLY IP address that the rest of the world can see is your outside interface. Here's a dirty little diagram
remote computer--> Outside interface( 9.6.74.15)<-NAT Router-> insideinterface(192.168.0.1) --- client 1(192.168.0.7)
Say remote computer one is an internet web server. Client 1 types this web server address into his browser. The remote computer's web site appears. But as far as the remote computer can see, the request to display his site came from 9.6.74.15. In fact, it isn't even aware that 192.168.0.7 even exists. But how does the outside interface know to send the web site information back to client 1? It uses NAT routing. This is exactly what NAT is designed to do. Most home servers and hardware firewalls/routers use this exact mechanism. This is NAT in a nutshell.
One of the problems with NAT is that if the request for information is NOT initiated by one of the client computers, there is not a way to send any information to client 1. Say remote computer is your work PC at your office, away from your private network. Also, lets say you are not running a web server on your NAT router, but you are running it on client 1. If you type in 192.168.0.7, chance are you will get a page not found message. Thats because your office PC doesn't even see 192.168.0.7. It has no direct route to get there. So how can you access that machine's web server from your office?
This is where port forwarding comes in. You can set the NAT router to route all traffic from remote computers to port 80 (the default web server port) directly to 192.168.0.7. So any request that is made to 9.6.74.15 on port 80, will get sent directly to client 1. So after you set up port forwarding, at your office computer type 9.6.74.15 and poof, you will be shown the web page being served on 192.168.0.7. Any other port will still get processed by the NAT router, but all port 80 requests will go to client 1. You can even run web servers on BOTH machines if they use different ports. I'll touch on that during the installation of the server software.
The great part about this comes with respect to hackers and intruders. Because of NAT, the only machine that malicious intruders will ever be able to hit without being invited or knowing about your port forwarding scheme is your home server. That means that if you run a firewall on the server, you can block any malicious traffic to any of your clients. This eliminates the need to install software firewalls on any of your clients, because the NAT router blocks all of those attacks before they ever hit any clients. Cool, huh?
So do some research, get familiar with the above concepts, and in our next installment we'll begin building a windows XP based home server. I'm really looking forward to it.
But the one aspect of this server that pretty much cannot be ignored is that it is going to be on a network. I thought that I would lay out some of the networking concepts that I will be using in building our home servers. This is by NO means a course on networking. If that's what you are looking for, hit a search engine and see what you can find. There are literally countless pages that have as much networking info as you need.
First and foremost, lets discuss IP addressing. An IP address is like a phone number that tells others on the network where the computer is located. If you are using the machine as a router/gateway, you will probably have 2 network connections on the machine. One probably goes to your cable modem or DSL modem. The other will go into a switch or hub in your house that your other computers are going to connect to. Let's call your internet connected network "external" or the "outside" connection, and the other will be called the "internal" or "inside" connection. If you are already network savvy, the outside connection is the WAN connection, and the inside interface is the LAN. Each of these connections will have a different IP address. You probably will not have many options for your external IP. Either that interface gets its IP from your Internet service provider (ISP) automatically using the DHCP protocol, or you will have been assigned a static IP address and subnet mask. This is vital information and you will not be able to complete this setup without it.
The internal address is something I want to touch on a little bit. Your internal interface is pretty much going to HAVE to be set to a non-changing, static address. The reason for this is that you do not want it to change because then the internal computers will not know where your server is exactly, and using DHCP to configure this interface will not always guarantee this. (There are some ways to make it happen, but those are beyond the scope of this article). When it comes to IP addressing and networks, certain rules have to be followed. Your internal network most likely is a private network, so you will have to use ip address ranges in the "Class C" range. This is a special range of IP addresses that can be used for internal private networks like yours. Valid ranges are : 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 and 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255. Any addresses in those range are valid and legal. For example you can give your internal interface of 10.0.0.5 or 192.168.1.1. For various reasons that will be illustrated during the XP routing section in the next article, I recommend that you assign your internal interface to the address of 192.168.0.1 with the default subnet mask. In addition to XP's special requirements, I recommend using this as your internal IP even if you are going the *nix route. It will simplify many of the subsequent steps. You do not HAVE to do this, but I really see no reason why you wouldn't use 192.168.0.1.
Next you will want to decide the way your clients will be connecting to your server. You may either run a DCHP server on your home server and assign your clients addresses automatically, or you may manually assign static IP addresses to your client PC's (or you can have a mix of the two if you follow some guidelines). To be honest, DHCP can sometimes have problems if your outside interface also uses DHCP, but I will show you how to use either way, and really this is a case of personal preference. Decide on this before you start, however.
Also, you need to think about how this machine will be administered. If you are going to want to administer your server over the internet and you have a static IP address, then don't worry, you should be able to access your static IP from any internet connected computer. If you have an ISP that gives you a DHCP address, you can never know when your assigned IP is going to change. If this is the case, hope is not lost. you can use something called a Dynamic DNS. I use No-ip, and if you are willing to use their domains, you can get an actual internet address like mysrvr.noip.com. There is a little program that we can install on the server that will let your dynamic DNS always know the location of your machine no matter how many times it may change. There are other dynamic DNS services, and you should pick one out. For a fee, you can usually get an actual domain and register it with these services like www.mysrvr.com. If you have a static IP you can just register a domain name and have it point to your static address.
Finally, you will need to know about NAT and port forwarding. NAT or Network Address Translation, in layman's terms is essentially this: As far as the outside network or internet is concerned, a request to the internet from any of the clients in your private network looks like it is coming from your outside interface ip address. If you Google NAT you will find extensive information about its nuances, but it's just a principle that says that the ONLY IP address that the rest of the world can see is your outside interface. Here's a dirty little diagram
remote computer--> Outside interface( 9.6.74.15)<-NAT Router-> insideinterface(192.168.0.1) --- client 1(192.168.0.7)
Say remote computer one is an internet web server. Client 1 types this web server address into his browser. The remote computer's web site appears. But as far as the remote computer can see, the request to display his site came from 9.6.74.15. In fact, it isn't even aware that 192.168.0.7 even exists. But how does the outside interface know to send the web site information back to client 1? It uses NAT routing. This is exactly what NAT is designed to do. Most home servers and hardware firewalls/routers use this exact mechanism. This is NAT in a nutshell.
One of the problems with NAT is that if the request for information is NOT initiated by one of the client computers, there is not a way to send any information to client 1. Say remote computer is your work PC at your office, away from your private network. Also, lets say you are not running a web server on your NAT router, but you are running it on client 1. If you type in 192.168.0.7, chance are you will get a page not found message. Thats because your office PC doesn't even see 192.168.0.7. It has no direct route to get there. So how can you access that machine's web server from your office?
This is where port forwarding comes in. You can set the NAT router to route all traffic from remote computers to port 80 (the default web server port) directly to 192.168.0.7. So any request that is made to 9.6.74.15 on port 80, will get sent directly to client 1. So after you set up port forwarding, at your office computer type 9.6.74.15 and poof, you will be shown the web page being served on 192.168.0.7. Any other port will still get processed by the NAT router, but all port 80 requests will go to client 1. You can even run web servers on BOTH machines if they use different ports. I'll touch on that during the installation of the server software.
The great part about this comes with respect to hackers and intruders. Because of NAT, the only machine that malicious intruders will ever be able to hit without being invited or knowing about your port forwarding scheme is your home server. That means that if you run a firewall on the server, you can block any malicious traffic to any of your clients. This eliminates the need to install software firewalls on any of your clients, because the NAT router blocks all of those attacks before they ever hit any clients. Cool, huh?
So do some research, get familiar with the above concepts, and in our next installment we'll begin building a windows XP based home server. I'm really looking forward to it.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Installing a home server
One of the things that I am the most proud of in my technical life has not been anything I have done at work (though there is quite alot of stuff I have done at work that I am proud of). Nope, one of the most things that I am proud of is my home server. There is alot of talk about Windows Home Server , but in my opinion, this kind of implementation is just the tip of the iceberg. It's a file server, a glorified NAS box. My home server fulfills many roles like:
My server fulfills all of the roles above, and can be remotely administered through ssh. The entire thing runs on commodity hardware. In fact it runs on a nearly seven year old Celeron 1GHZ with 384Megs of ram and a 17GB and 120GB hdd. That, combined with an Ethernet switch, is one powerful little network. Regardless of being a "home" server, learning how to build and use one can teach principles of large servers and corporate networks. You can even expand to include other servers and have your own little cluster.
When building a server like this, first, ask yourself WHY you want to build it. What do you need it for, what do you want it to do, are there better alternatives? Before you ask, "because it would be cool and I can learn all sorts of things" IS a perfectly viable answer as to why you want to build your own server. What you want it to do however, is something you want to spend more time on. You should try to plan a little bit for this. What role is this machine going to fulfill? Is it going to just be a firewall/router? Then perhaps m0n0wall is for you. Just an NAS device? Try Freenas . For versatility and growth however, you may want to stick with a full OS like Linux or FreeBSD . It's even possible to use some versions of Windows.
In fact, my server started as a windows 2000 server and it ran great for a few years. I'd recommend using one of the *nixes, because I find them more robust for a server, and keep in mind, even if your desktop clients are all Windows, you can still use Linux or BSD for your server. They do play nice together with a little work.
In subsequent weeks, I will take a look a closer look and give more of a how-to for setting up some of the particulars of home servers, but I'd like to make some reccomendations here on what to decide in the planning stage.
One, decide how you are going to interact with your server on a regular basis. You will most likely need a mouse, keyboard, and monitor when you set up your server, but one of my goals was to have a box that was a mere appliance, and that meant headless. All administration on my box is done remotely through SSH. I can do this from work or from my home desktop. The caveat about this is that you really need to learn how to use the command line and command line tools. But you CAN load the Xorg gui or using windows remote desktop. You are going to want to keep your box running efficiently though, and you will find that graphical interfaces take up more overhead than most of you are going to want.
Two, decide what sort of hardware you are going to run on. Even Windows 2000 can run on some pretty thin hardware. FreeBSD and Linux headless machines can run on almost a pocket calculator (ok well not THAT thin, but you will be surprised). The processing power and memory are not the only considerations. Do you want to run RAID to handle your files? How much storage are you looking at? Will you have a separate drive for the operating system than you do for storage? If you are running as a router, you will need at least two network cards. If it's also going to be an access point, you will need a compatible WiFi card. Is it going to be in a little box in the closet, or will it be on your desk? How far away are you going to be running? Do you need to run Ethernet cables? Do you want to upgrade your network hardware to gigabit speed? I personally find that 100Mbps is fine for serving video and audio, but you may want to run multiple clients and feeds. Do you have plans to backup your data on an external drive?
Three, try and figure out some of the roles that your machine will be performing? Do you already have a hardware firewall/router? Do you need a DNS? Do you want to keep everything static, or use DHCP? Do you understand the basic theory behind IP addressing, subnets and NAT? Are you going to need a database for anything (if you plan on running php web pages, the answer to that is yes)? Is it going to be on all of the time? How are you going to secure the system or your shares?
Fourth, there are some miscellaneous considerations to think about. What kind of internet connection are you going to use? How is your internet connectivity? When I first set up my servers, my ISP had blocked incoming ports 80 and 25, which are the standard web server and mail server ports. I had to run both of those services on non-standard ports. See I learned something almost right off the bat. Then there is a time factor to be considered. My server grew and evolved over time to the machine that it is now. Don't try to do everything at once. It can take quite a while to install the various things on the machine. Give yourself time. Remember, this is a project. If you need this to be a mission critical machine, you may want to familiarize yourself with commercial server technologies. This is also beyond the scope of this article.
So get prepared, think about what you want, and next week, I will give a step-by-step guide to setting up a Windows based server, and for the two weeks after that, we'll look at using Fedora and FreeBSD for a similar purpose. I'm splitting the open source version into two weeks worth, and since many of the princples are the same for FreeBSD and Linux.
- webserver
- ftp server
- shared media drive
- NAT router (yes router)
- firewall
- video encoder (from command line no less)
- WiFi AP
- streaming music server
- remote bittorrent downloader
- mail server
- group ware server
- database server
- DNS Server
- DHCP Server
My server fulfills all of the roles above, and can be remotely administered through ssh. The entire thing runs on commodity hardware. In fact it runs on a nearly seven year old Celeron 1GHZ with 384Megs of ram and a 17GB and 120GB hdd. That, combined with an Ethernet switch, is one powerful little network. Regardless of being a "home" server, learning how to build and use one can teach principles of large servers and corporate networks. You can even expand to include other servers and have your own little cluster.
When building a server like this, first, ask yourself WHY you want to build it. What do you need it for, what do you want it to do, are there better alternatives? Before you ask, "because it would be cool and I can learn all sorts of things" IS a perfectly viable answer as to why you want to build your own server. What you want it to do however, is something you want to spend more time on. You should try to plan a little bit for this. What role is this machine going to fulfill? Is it going to just be a firewall/router? Then perhaps m0n0wall is for you. Just an NAS device? Try Freenas . For versatility and growth however, you may want to stick with a full OS like Linux or FreeBSD . It's even possible to use some versions of Windows.
In fact, my server started as a windows 2000 server and it ran great for a few years. I'd recommend using one of the *nixes, because I find them more robust for a server, and keep in mind, even if your desktop clients are all Windows, you can still use Linux or BSD for your server. They do play nice together with a little work.
In subsequent weeks, I will take a look a closer look and give more of a how-to for setting up some of the particulars of home servers, but I'd like to make some reccomendations here on what to decide in the planning stage.
One, decide how you are going to interact with your server on a regular basis. You will most likely need a mouse, keyboard, and monitor when you set up your server, but one of my goals was to have a box that was a mere appliance, and that meant headless. All administration on my box is done remotely through SSH. I can do this from work or from my home desktop. The caveat about this is that you really need to learn how to use the command line and command line tools. But you CAN load the Xorg gui or using windows remote desktop. You are going to want to keep your box running efficiently though, and you will find that graphical interfaces take up more overhead than most of you are going to want.
Two, decide what sort of hardware you are going to run on. Even Windows 2000 can run on some pretty thin hardware. FreeBSD and Linux headless machines can run on almost a pocket calculator (ok well not THAT thin, but you will be surprised). The processing power and memory are not the only considerations. Do you want to run RAID to handle your files? How much storage are you looking at? Will you have a separate drive for the operating system than you do for storage? If you are running as a router, you will need at least two network cards. If it's also going to be an access point, you will need a compatible WiFi card. Is it going to be in a little box in the closet, or will it be on your desk? How far away are you going to be running? Do you need to run Ethernet cables? Do you want to upgrade your network hardware to gigabit speed? I personally find that 100Mbps is fine for serving video and audio, but you may want to run multiple clients and feeds. Do you have plans to backup your data on an external drive?
Three, try and figure out some of the roles that your machine will be performing? Do you already have a hardware firewall/router? Do you need a DNS? Do you want to keep everything static, or use DHCP? Do you understand the basic theory behind IP addressing, subnets and NAT? Are you going to need a database for anything (if you plan on running php web pages, the answer to that is yes)? Is it going to be on all of the time? How are you going to secure the system or your shares?
Fourth, there are some miscellaneous considerations to think about. What kind of internet connection are you going to use? How is your internet connectivity? When I first set up my servers, my ISP had blocked incoming ports 80 and 25, which are the standard web server and mail server ports. I had to run both of those services on non-standard ports. See I learned something almost right off the bat. Then there is a time factor to be considered. My server grew and evolved over time to the machine that it is now. Don't try to do everything at once. It can take quite a while to install the various things on the machine. Give yourself time. Remember, this is a project. If you need this to be a mission critical machine, you may want to familiarize yourself with commercial server technologies. This is also beyond the scope of this article.
So get prepared, think about what you want, and next week, I will give a step-by-step guide to setting up a Windows based server, and for the two weeks after that, we'll look at using Fedora and FreeBSD for a similar purpose. I'm splitting the open source version into two weeks worth, and since many of the princples are the same for FreeBSD and Linux.
Danger of violent video games?
Hello there folks. I just saw a post on Slashdot entitled Violent Games 'Almost' As Dangerous as Smoking. And as a good violent-video-game-playing geek, I though perhaps I would weigh in my personal opinion.
First, just looking at the title, the article implies one of two things. Either a) violent media is the cause of almost as many deaths as smoking, or b) smoking is not as dangerous as originally thought. I'll tell you right now that it is not the latter, and as a smoker I was very disappointed to find that out. now if you haven't read the article please do so now. Click here TV, film and game violence seen as a threat . If you don't know, I have a little son, Logan. As a father, I am constantly considering what the effects of the media on my child will be, regardless of the fact that he is really too young to see any violent TV or play any violent games. And let me tell you, where the media is concerned, the level of violence in the media is the LEAST of my worries.
Now I realize that at this point most of you will be saying OMG, what a horrible father Panvamp is letting his young child watch violent media! This is not true. I will not let my kid watch anything that I feel is too over-the-top. No Kill Bill for my little guy, until I feel he is mature enough to handle it. I'm not going to be against him watching Spongebob Squarepants because there is a part where Spongebob gets hit with a rock. Or any of the Looney Tunes that are deemed "violent" nowadays that were once considered "slapstick". I have little problem with him seeing it, because if he decides to take a note from Spongebob and smack a playmate or say, his mother, with a rock, then he will be disciplined and punished and I guarantee he will not do it again, regardless of seeing it on TV again. This is part of an ancient skill called "parenting".
Notice that NONE of that has anything to do with the violence being a threat to his health or even "public health". How this relates to smoking deaths is beyond me. And when he is fifteen or sixteen and I do sit down and watch Kill Bill, I trust that my years of parenting will have convinced him that eviscerating someone with a razor sharp katana is just not something that should be done. If I felt that he would do that, not only have I failed as a parent, but there is no way he would be watching violent movies. But believe me, I will not let my kid grow up to be someone that is particularly violent. Will he get into fight or two? Sure. That is part of life. The aforementioned article seems to imply that exposure to violent media will make him more of a danger to health. Of course it fails to mention just WHO'S health. His health? "Public health"? I'm not sure.
The article seems to make a leap of logic as well. Even a smoker can tell you that smoking is not good for you and if you smoke enough, it likely will kill you. The article cites a study where people exposed to violent media are found to be more aggressive than normal. But aggression does not equal death. Not by a long shot. As anyone in the sales and business world will tell you, the aggressive marketers generally win over the more passive marketers. Aggression is good in the sports world as well (but I don't see any articles claiming football or boxing is as dangerous as smoking). Aggression is part of life, and in life, the more aggressive generally do better than the passive. Sure, there are limits on aggression. As in sports, life has rules. There are acceptable uses of aggression that can be used as long as these rules are followed. Hopefully, that is where that whole parenting thing comes in. believe me, I don't want my son being too passive either. If he lets people walk all over him, his enjoyment out of life will be far less. Some of the above statements will not be seen as politically correct, but it does not make them any less true.
Many of you will state that there seems to be a definite rise of violence in the modern world. While this is subjective, I can concur that there do seem to be more shootings and violence attributed to younger people these days. I can imagine that the average person will make the logical leap that these people were raised with violence and therefore violent media causes these incidents. I will go out on a limb here and say that it is not the violent media that causes these things, but a distinct lack of proper parenting. With the rising divorce rates and single parent families, I feel that I have more than a leg to stand on in regards to that statement. I'm not saying that divorced families or single parents cannot make good parents. To me, I feel that a single parent must work twice as hard to parent a child. I realize that it is hard work, but this is the price of having children. When parenting is not done, the child will fall through the cracks. They will become adults that were not told that violence in media should not be emulated and they did not learn that there is a punishment for being violent outside the rules of society.
There is one place where violent media and smoking are related. I realize that as my son gets older, despite my amount of parenting, he will be getting into things and doing things that I don't want him to do. Despite all of their hard efforts my parents ended up with me being a smoker. They were good parents, they told me smoking was bad. I made the choice at 15 to start smoking and the truth is, there really was nothing they could do to stop me. Violence is the same. If I was going to watch something at 15 that they didn't want me to watch, chances are I was going to do it anyway. I am not a violent killer now however, because my parents instilled in me values. They taught me the right thing to do. It didn't matter that I played games where I "fragged the weak, hurdled the dead", I knew that in real life, killing is wrong. I could go on and on stating that gun violence is on the rise because people do not train their kids how to use and respect a firearm, but that is really beyond the scope of this argument. The point here is that proper parenting is supposed to prepare a person for just these type of situations.
I think that if we want to avoid violence in the future society, we need to spend time with your kids. If you cannot handle this, please do not have children. Lord knows I don't want to get a bullet in the back because you didn't tell your kid that shooting someone like in Grand Theft Auto is not appropriate.
First, just looking at the title, the article implies one of two things. Either a) violent media is the cause of almost as many deaths as smoking, or b) smoking is not as dangerous as originally thought. I'll tell you right now that it is not the latter, and as a smoker I was very disappointed to find that out. now if you haven't read the article please do so now. Click here TV, film and game violence seen as a threat . If you don't know, I have a little son, Logan. As a father, I am constantly considering what the effects of the media on my child will be, regardless of the fact that he is really too young to see any violent TV or play any violent games. And let me tell you, where the media is concerned, the level of violence in the media is the LEAST of my worries.
Now I realize that at this point most of you will be saying OMG, what a horrible father Panvamp is letting his young child watch violent media! This is not true. I will not let my kid watch anything that I feel is too over-the-top. No Kill Bill for my little guy, until I feel he is mature enough to handle it. I'm not going to be against him watching Spongebob Squarepants because there is a part where Spongebob gets hit with a rock. Or any of the Looney Tunes that are deemed "violent" nowadays that were once considered "slapstick". I have little problem with him seeing it, because if he decides to take a note from Spongebob and smack a playmate or say, his mother, with a rock, then he will be disciplined and punished and I guarantee he will not do it again, regardless of seeing it on TV again. This is part of an ancient skill called "parenting".
Notice that NONE of that has anything to do with the violence being a threat to his health or even "public health". How this relates to smoking deaths is beyond me. And when he is fifteen or sixteen and I do sit down and watch Kill Bill, I trust that my years of parenting will have convinced him that eviscerating someone with a razor sharp katana is just not something that should be done. If I felt that he would do that, not only have I failed as a parent, but there is no way he would be watching violent movies. But believe me, I will not let my kid grow up to be someone that is particularly violent. Will he get into fight or two? Sure. That is part of life. The aforementioned article seems to imply that exposure to violent media will make him more of a danger to health. Of course it fails to mention just WHO'S health. His health? "Public health"? I'm not sure.
The article seems to make a leap of logic as well. Even a smoker can tell you that smoking is not good for you and if you smoke enough, it likely will kill you. The article cites a study where people exposed to violent media are found to be more aggressive than normal. But aggression does not equal death. Not by a long shot. As anyone in the sales and business world will tell you, the aggressive marketers generally win over the more passive marketers. Aggression is good in the sports world as well (but I don't see any articles claiming football or boxing is as dangerous as smoking). Aggression is part of life, and in life, the more aggressive generally do better than the passive. Sure, there are limits on aggression. As in sports, life has rules. There are acceptable uses of aggression that can be used as long as these rules are followed. Hopefully, that is where that whole parenting thing comes in. believe me, I don't want my son being too passive either. If he lets people walk all over him, his enjoyment out of life will be far less. Some of the above statements will not be seen as politically correct, but it does not make them any less true.
Many of you will state that there seems to be a definite rise of violence in the modern world. While this is subjective, I can concur that there do seem to be more shootings and violence attributed to younger people these days. I can imagine that the average person will make the logical leap that these people were raised with violence and therefore violent media causes these incidents. I will go out on a limb here and say that it is not the violent media that causes these things, but a distinct lack of proper parenting. With the rising divorce rates and single parent families, I feel that I have more than a leg to stand on in regards to that statement. I'm not saying that divorced families or single parents cannot make good parents. To me, I feel that a single parent must work twice as hard to parent a child. I realize that it is hard work, but this is the price of having children. When parenting is not done, the child will fall through the cracks. They will become adults that were not told that violence in media should not be emulated and they did not learn that there is a punishment for being violent outside the rules of society.
There is one place where violent media and smoking are related. I realize that as my son gets older, despite my amount of parenting, he will be getting into things and doing things that I don't want him to do. Despite all of their hard efforts my parents ended up with me being a smoker. They were good parents, they told me smoking was bad. I made the choice at 15 to start smoking and the truth is, there really was nothing they could do to stop me. Violence is the same. If I was going to watch something at 15 that they didn't want me to watch, chances are I was going to do it anyway. I am not a violent killer now however, because my parents instilled in me values. They taught me the right thing to do. It didn't matter that I played games where I "fragged the weak, hurdled the dead", I knew that in real life, killing is wrong. I could go on and on stating that gun violence is on the rise because people do not train their kids how to use and respect a firearm, but that is really beyond the scope of this argument. The point here is that proper parenting is supposed to prepare a person for just these type of situations.
I think that if we want to avoid violence in the future society, we need to spend time with your kids. If you cannot handle this, please do not have children. Lord knows I don't want to get a bullet in the back because you didn't tell your kid that shooting someone like in Grand Theft Auto is not appropriate.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
On Mailboxes and White Houses
Recently, I finished reading Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction
by Nick Montfort. If you are into Interactive Fiction (IF) or have been in the past, this book is an excellent title on the subject. It's not that long of a read, but it provides a wonderful insight into the evolution and history of IF, especially Infocom products (arguably the best commercial IF). There are a few issues that I had while reading, but overall an outstanding work.
I want to break this review down by saying a little something about each chapter of the book. To me, the books preliminary chapters were sort of a slow read. The first chapter defined the "text adventure" and IF as to what it is, and what it is not. Likened to more of an electronic novel experience, the author makes a clear distinction as to what he will be discussing, as well as some of the history of interactive text and hypertext or electronic text. I found this chapter interesting, but I would imagine readers that were not familiar with IF will probably want to spend a little more time understanding the subject matter. Those who are quite familiar with the form may want to peruse this chapter quickly.
The second chapter discusses the riddle throughout history, literature and games. While riddles tend to fascinate me, this chapter had more of a "college research paper" feel to it. In fact, the first two chapters seemed to drag a little, and there were more than a few spots where the author's prose becomes a little "wordy", even catching a run-on sentence here and there . I can see, however, that these chapters are necessary, especially for readers less familiar with the form and computer gaming in general. There are a few choice riddles that I was not familiar with, but for the most part I had been exposed to many of the riddles and the history of them already.
The third chapter, in my opinion, is where the author truly begins to shine. I found myself fascinated by the evolution of Adventure, arguably the first well-known computer IF. He examines some of the university and research works in computer language interpretation, and the rise of some rather intelligent interpreters that came before Adventure, in addition to a detailed look at the first programming and limited academic distribution of
the work on some of the very first electronic networks. Perhaps even more fascinating, the author notes the various versions that were produced. One of the more interesting facets here is a look at how the source code was passed to subsequent authors, and how the versions of Adventure that people are familiar with today are the result of several authors, making it one of the first electronically collaborated work of its kind.
The fourth chapter pertains largely to Zork and works that were developed using large mainframes. For those who don't know IF at all (and its pretty hard for any geeks never to have heard of Zork), Zork is a fantasy IF work that became the public face of IF and Infocom. It is by far my favorite of the Infocom published titles. The version that is discussed in this chapter, though, is not the commercial version, but the sprawling, cavernous version developed at MIT by the original implementors (authors). It looks at some other works that were developed and distributed using the mainframe method as well. In addition to looking at the works, a view of the environment is discussed at length, looking at the PDP mainframe usage and MIT's influence of IF as well.
Chapter five was the best chapter in the book, Taking a look at commercial Zork, as well as some of the other works published by the great Infocom corporation. Montfort takes an extensive look at Deadline and A Mind Forever Voyaging, and documents many of Infocom's successes throughout the 1980's. If reading this chapter does not compel the reader to try and play some of these digital classics, nothing will. The last few parts of this chapter examine the decline and eventual fall of Infocom and IF's mass popularity with the rise of graphical works.
Chapter six was filled with much information that I was not aware of. Montfort looks at some of the more notable international IF works, like English titles in the UK and non-English titles in Europe and around the world. This chapter was a great read. I read the entire chapter in a few hours in fact, while sitting in the White Plains airport. A great and interesting read, the pages fly by and many less notable works are examined. The thing that struck me is the amount of nuance in the descriptions of some of the foreign works. This chapter makes clear that Montfort has done his research, and his clear documentations can be found through the entire book.
The final two chapters examine the rise of the phenomenon of independent IF, and the many works that came from Independent authors like Graham Nelson and Adam Cadre. There is information about the IF competition which exists even to this day, and a look on how IF affected culture and created its own culture. Some discussion is also contained about the earlier newsgroups like rec.arts.interactive-fiction and rec.games.interactive-fiction. These chapters clearly mark IF as a very important part of computer history and culture and lends further credence to the statement that IF works are serious works of computing and art.
I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in PC gaming and IF. It is a great book and deserves a place on any geek shelf. I don't know much about Nick Montfort, but I would like to think he is a kindred geek. I hope to read more works by this author, especially if he is as passionate about other subjects as he was about IF. So hit the link to the right or up top and go to Amazon.com and buy it. It is well worth the money.
by Nick Montfort. If you are into Interactive Fiction (IF) or have been in the past, this book is an excellent title on the subject. It's not that long of a read, but it provides a wonderful insight into the evolution and history of IF, especially Infocom products (arguably the best commercial IF). There are a few issues that I had while reading, but overall an outstanding work.I want to break this review down by saying a little something about each chapter of the book. To me, the books preliminary chapters were sort of a slow read. The first chapter defined the "text adventure" and IF as to what it is, and what it is not. Likened to more of an electronic novel experience, the author makes a clear distinction as to what he will be discussing, as well as some of the history of interactive text and hypertext or electronic text. I found this chapter interesting, but I would imagine readers that were not familiar with IF will probably want to spend a little more time understanding the subject matter. Those who are quite familiar with the form may want to peruse this chapter quickly.
The second chapter discusses the riddle throughout history, literature and games. While riddles tend to fascinate me, this chapter had more of a "college research paper" feel to it. In fact, the first two chapters seemed to drag a little, and there were more than a few spots where the author's prose becomes a little "wordy", even catching a run-on sentence here and there . I can see, however, that these chapters are necessary, especially for readers less familiar with the form and computer gaming in general. There are a few choice riddles that I was not familiar with, but for the most part I had been exposed to many of the riddles and the history of them already.
The third chapter, in my opinion, is where the author truly begins to shine. I found myself fascinated by the evolution of Adventure, arguably the first well-known computer IF. He examines some of the university and research works in computer language interpretation, and the rise of some rather intelligent interpreters that came before Adventure, in addition to a detailed look at the first programming and limited academic distribution of
the work on some of the very first electronic networks. Perhaps even more fascinating, the author notes the various versions that were produced. One of the more interesting facets here is a look at how the source code was passed to subsequent authors, and how the versions of Adventure that people are familiar with today are the result of several authors, making it one of the first electronically collaborated work of its kind.
The fourth chapter pertains largely to Zork and works that were developed using large mainframes. For those who don't know IF at all (and its pretty hard for any geeks never to have heard of Zork), Zork is a fantasy IF work that became the public face of IF and Infocom. It is by far my favorite of the Infocom published titles. The version that is discussed in this chapter, though, is not the commercial version, but the sprawling, cavernous version developed at MIT by the original implementors (authors). It looks at some other works that were developed and distributed using the mainframe method as well. In addition to looking at the works, a view of the environment is discussed at length, looking at the PDP mainframe usage and MIT's influence of IF as well.
Chapter five was the best chapter in the book, Taking a look at commercial Zork, as well as some of the other works published by the great Infocom corporation. Montfort takes an extensive look at Deadline and A Mind Forever Voyaging, and documents many of Infocom's successes throughout the 1980's. If reading this chapter does not compel the reader to try and play some of these digital classics, nothing will. The last few parts of this chapter examine the decline and eventual fall of Infocom and IF's mass popularity with the rise of graphical works.
Chapter six was filled with much information that I was not aware of. Montfort looks at some of the more notable international IF works, like English titles in the UK and non-English titles in Europe and around the world. This chapter was a great read. I read the entire chapter in a few hours in fact, while sitting in the White Plains airport. A great and interesting read, the pages fly by and many less notable works are examined. The thing that struck me is the amount of nuance in the descriptions of some of the foreign works. This chapter makes clear that Montfort has done his research, and his clear documentations can be found through the entire book.
The final two chapters examine the rise of the phenomenon of independent IF, and the many works that came from Independent authors like Graham Nelson and Adam Cadre. There is information about the IF competition which exists even to this day, and a look on how IF affected culture and created its own culture. Some discussion is also contained about the earlier newsgroups like rec.arts.interactive-fiction and rec.games.interactive-fiction. These chapters clearly mark IF as a very important part of computer history and culture and lends further credence to the statement that IF works are serious works of computing and art.
I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in PC gaming and IF. It is a great book and deserves a place on any geek shelf. I don't know much about Nick Montfort, but I would like to think he is a kindred geek. I hope to read more works by this author, especially if he is as passionate about other subjects as he was about IF. So hit the link to the right or up top and go to Amazon.com and buy it. It is well worth the money.
Monday, November 26, 2007
One more old post
Okay, one more classic post before I got to bed. In this post, true to geek style, I am complaining about the state of affairs that I am in and lamenting the past. I was a little whinier in the past I guess.
Posted 2005-11-13
About a year ago, Some friends and I started playing a Forgotten Realms 3.5 D&D Campaign. On the first couple of days that we played, I found something. I didn't even know I'd lost it.
It started simply enough. I played with the group and after I while I was my character. That hasn't happened to me for a LONG time. To actually be in another place at another time. It made me feel like I did when I played D&D 15 years ago.
So I re-went through D&D frenzy. This is characterized by an uncontrollable urge to buy every dungeons and dragons product that has come out all at the same time.
But about halfway through a bunch of Ebay purchases for books that I just might need for some campaign or other, it hit me. Or rather my wife demanded more time. So I started canceling some games to be with her. I understand that the requirements of a husband must take precedence over everything. I don't apologize for this, nor do I regret it. But as schedules of the players changed, and the wife needing me at home more, that feeling inevitably changed. I all but stopped going to my once beloved campaign.
It's strange. We do grow up only to pine for lost feelings and things. I REALLY wanted this feeling back. Very badly. Oh, I occasionally get glimpses of it, flashes of it when I play a great Xbox game that really draws me into the story (KOTOR), or while reading a really good Star Wars book, (Dark Rendezvous) or see a great move.
When I saw LOTR, I instantly felt saturated by that feeling. And I still kind-of get it when I watch them. Its weak, but it is definitely there. And the worst part -- I don't think anyone knows exactly what I am talking about. This is no mere nostalgia. It is an indescribable feeling. It makes one feel powerful, large, important, like existence is MORE than just the normal world. This feeling often gave me hope, self confidence, and it made me happy. I hadn't had the feeling even when I played other RPGS on computer or pen an paper. It was just something about this group, this game, that brought it back.
There is one other time when I get a similar feeling. It isn't quite that same swashbuckling adventure, king-of-the-world feeling that I used to get from D&D. Whenever I play any of the Zork games, or Lucasarts or Sierra adventures, I got a different feeling. And over the past year or so most of the Zork sites, most of the "abandonware" sites have been falling slowly into decay, like the Great underground Empire itself. There have been copyright issues, publishing problems, and I'm sure most of those netizens who took it upon themselves to preserve those games and those feelings do actually have better things do do than run a Zork site. Believe me, I know.
I picked up and read through the Domains of Dread D&D Ravenloft accessory last night. Just to read through a little of it. I can tell you this, I felt as if I had put my hands into the soil and sniffed my hands and felt the faintest smell of that feeling. Like it was long gone.
I suppose this could just be youth itself that I am missing. I don't want to admit it, but at 28 years old, I am no longer able to be a child in any way, shape or form. I cannot afford it. It is very possible that this is what a mid life crisis is. If this is what getting old is going to be like, I really don't think I am going to like it that much.
So I am going to make an early new year's resolution. This next year, hell or high water, I want to try and show others that feeling. I know if I do nothing that soon, Zork will disappear. Worlds like Krynn and Ravenloft will be unheard of in the RPG community.
What will this do? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything. But I will not just let these loves from my youth roll over and die. I remember my first dragon con. I must have been 13 or 14. I remember setting foot in the Atlanta Hyatt. I saw faeries and knights and samurai and basically a bunch of weird people. Standing there among the masses, I realized something. I am not alone. Other people do these things too. And it is great that someone organized an event to bring them all together to celebrate the things that I love. I want to do that. I want to bring these things that have been lost back to those people. I'm certain there are others who feel the same as me.
below is a token of beginning. There are some great netbooks here: Go get them. Read through them. And see if you can feel that feeling.
The Grave of the kargatane
And if you are curious about Zork, normally you get conflicting viewpoints of where to start.
Start here
And for the hands down most informative zork site on the web,
The chronology of quendor
Thanks,
panvamp
Posted 2005-11-13
About a year ago, Some friends and I started playing a Forgotten Realms 3.5 D&D Campaign. On the first couple of days that we played, I found something. I didn't even know I'd lost it.
It started simply enough. I played with the group and after I while I was my character. That hasn't happened to me for a LONG time. To actually be in another place at another time. It made me feel like I did when I played D&D 15 years ago.
So I re-went through D&D frenzy. This is characterized by an uncontrollable urge to buy every dungeons and dragons product that has come out all at the same time.
But about halfway through a bunch of Ebay purchases for books that I just might need for some campaign or other, it hit me. Or rather my wife demanded more time. So I started canceling some games to be with her. I understand that the requirements of a husband must take precedence over everything. I don't apologize for this, nor do I regret it. But as schedules of the players changed, and the wife needing me at home more, that feeling inevitably changed. I all but stopped going to my once beloved campaign.
It's strange. We do grow up only to pine for lost feelings and things. I REALLY wanted this feeling back. Very badly. Oh, I occasionally get glimpses of it, flashes of it when I play a great Xbox game that really draws me into the story (KOTOR), or while reading a really good Star Wars book, (Dark Rendezvous) or see a great move.
When I saw LOTR, I instantly felt saturated by that feeling. And I still kind-of get it when I watch them. Its weak, but it is definitely there. And the worst part -- I don't think anyone knows exactly what I am talking about. This is no mere nostalgia. It is an indescribable feeling. It makes one feel powerful, large, important, like existence is MORE than just the normal world. This feeling often gave me hope, self confidence, and it made me happy. I hadn't had the feeling even when I played other RPGS on computer or pen an paper. It was just something about this group, this game, that brought it back.
There is one other time when I get a similar feeling. It isn't quite that same swashbuckling adventure, king-of-the-world feeling that I used to get from D&D. Whenever I play any of the Zork games, or Lucasarts or Sierra adventures, I got a different feeling. And over the past year or so most of the Zork sites, most of the "abandonware" sites have been falling slowly into decay, like the Great underground Empire itself. There have been copyright issues, publishing problems, and I'm sure most of those netizens who took it upon themselves to preserve those games and those feelings do actually have better things do do than run a Zork site. Believe me, I know.
I picked up and read through the Domains of Dread D&D Ravenloft accessory last night. Just to read through a little of it. I can tell you this, I felt as if I had put my hands into the soil and sniffed my hands and felt the faintest smell of that feeling. Like it was long gone.
I suppose this could just be youth itself that I am missing. I don't want to admit it, but at 28 years old, I am no longer able to be a child in any way, shape or form. I cannot afford it. It is very possible that this is what a mid life crisis is. If this is what getting old is going to be like, I really don't think I am going to like it that much.
So I am going to make an early new year's resolution. This next year, hell or high water, I want to try and show others that feeling. I know if I do nothing that soon, Zork will disappear. Worlds like Krynn and Ravenloft will be unheard of in the RPG community.
What will this do? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything. But I will not just let these loves from my youth roll over and die. I remember my first dragon con. I must have been 13 or 14. I remember setting foot in the Atlanta Hyatt. I saw faeries and knights and samurai and basically a bunch of weird people. Standing there among the masses, I realized something. I am not alone. Other people do these things too. And it is great that someone organized an event to bring them all together to celebrate the things that I love. I want to do that. I want to bring these things that have been lost back to those people. I'm certain there are others who feel the same as me.
below is a token of beginning. There are some great netbooks here: Go get them. Read through them. And see if you can feel that feeling.
The Grave of the kargatane
And if you are curious about Zork, normally you get conflicting viewpoints of where to start.
Start here
And for the hands down most informative zork site on the web,
The chronology of quendor
Thanks,
panvamp
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Classic Posts
For about 3 years I blogged on my own server. Of course, nobody at all read any of my posts. But since I started this new one I figure I'll try to post some of my better posts. I call these classic posts.
Posted 2005-12-21
Geez. I have just been working and surfing, and I have a new gripe to talk about.
I have always gotten along with people, and I like to think that I am well liked. I can have a decent conversation with pretty much everybody I meet; black, brown, women, men doesn't matter. But, since High school, I have never really "fit in". It bothers me in a way, I mean I like lots of people and lots of people like me, but I am not like anyone else. I have some kinships, friendships, but about the only person that even comes close is my wife. However, even she has some major differences from me.
When the internet first started I started feeling kinships with other gamers and geeks, A like minded people that just fit together. But even that, now that everyone and their mother is on the "interweb", is starting to fail me. The blatant rampant liberalism, Marxism, communism of all the people on the web is appalling. The fact that most people speak about blogging, email and p2p like they actually have some idea of how it works (they don't) sickens me. Now grandma to little johnny is out there all over the internet, and alot of people are just begging the FCC or the UN to come in and take over, so that they can feel safe "on-line". This is not me.
I respect works like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. Even now, after their large popularity and so-called "geek chic" B.S, these things are still used as a punchline. AD&D, which I am CONVINCED that the large majority of people just do not understand, is another good example. Before saying that you played RPG's was almost expected. But now, you post anything about it and OOOPS, you're just a geek again.
Sometimes I just feel lost. I am seen by most people as an impossible dichotomy of contradictions. I'm Libertarian. That means that every single liberal I talk to thinks I'm a right-wing wacko, and every conservative I talk to thinks I'm a pinko. I'm against organized religion, but I actively encourage personal religious experiences. That means that I am lost among atheists, but I am also lost among religious zealots. I am a gun owner who does not support the NRA's policies of protecting hunters tooth and nail but being "not-so-vocal" when the stupid assault weapons ban came around.
I just don't know what to do. I feel alone sometimes. I'm a happy person and I like who I am. It's just sometimes I feel like a misift. I guess that happens to everyone... And I know that everyone thinks that they are the worst misfit of them all.
I REALLY want to move somewhere where I can be myself. And with other people that are like me. If only I could live on Summerisle, like in The Wicker Man (sans the Christian burning thing).
It makes me wonder If I am actually capable of building such a place somewhere where we would not be bothered with any laws but our own... and then I wonder if I could actually fill an island with people like me...
Well, If I don't post before then, Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and the like.
panvamp
Posted 2005-12-21
Geez. I have just been working and surfing, and I have a new gripe to talk about.
I have always gotten along with people, and I like to think that I am well liked. I can have a decent conversation with pretty much everybody I meet; black, brown, women, men doesn't matter. But, since High school, I have never really "fit in". It bothers me in a way, I mean I like lots of people and lots of people like me, but I am not like anyone else. I have some kinships, friendships, but about the only person that even comes close is my wife. However, even she has some major differences from me.
When the internet first started I started feeling kinships with other gamers and geeks, A like minded people that just fit together. But even that, now that everyone and their mother is on the "interweb", is starting to fail me. The blatant rampant liberalism, Marxism, communism of all the people on the web is appalling. The fact that most people speak about blogging, email and p2p like they actually have some idea of how it works (they don't) sickens me. Now grandma to little johnny is out there all over the internet, and alot of people are just begging the FCC or the UN to come in and take over, so that they can feel safe "on-line". This is not me.
I respect works like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. Even now, after their large popularity and so-called "geek chic" B.S, these things are still used as a punchline. AD&D, which I am CONVINCED that the large majority of people just do not understand, is another good example. Before saying that you played RPG's was almost expected. But now, you post anything about it and OOOPS, you're just a geek again.
Sometimes I just feel lost. I am seen by most people as an impossible dichotomy of contradictions. I'm Libertarian. That means that every single liberal I talk to thinks I'm a right-wing wacko, and every conservative I talk to thinks I'm a pinko. I'm against organized religion, but I actively encourage personal religious experiences. That means that I am lost among atheists, but I am also lost among religious zealots. I am a gun owner who does not support the NRA's policies of protecting hunters tooth and nail but being "not-so-vocal" when the stupid assault weapons ban came around.
I just don't know what to do. I feel alone sometimes. I'm a happy person and I like who I am. It's just sometimes I feel like a misift. I guess that happens to everyone... And I know that everyone thinks that they are the worst misfit of them all.
I REALLY want to move somewhere where I can be myself. And with other people that are like me. If only I could live on Summerisle, like in The Wicker Man (sans the Christian burning thing).
It makes me wonder If I am actually capable of building such a place somewhere where we would not be bothered with any laws but our own... and then I wonder if I could actually fill an island with people like me...
Well, If I don't post before then, Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and the like.
panvamp
How to become a geek in 10 easy steps.
One of the things that I wanted to do with this site was to educate people into what I think makes a "geek." "Geek" used to be a dirty word. It was a title that I did not want to have in high school. (Yet I got that title nonetheless) I suppose that it still is to some extent, but far less people are ashamed of using it to describe themselves, myself included. I wish to welcome geeks and non-geeks to this site.
I realize that there are alot of people who think that they are geeks because they use myspace and facebook all day. Sure your email box might be filled to the brim, and you may spend more time online than you do sleeping. You might have the fastest, fanciest computer on the market. You get so many IM's you need a second monitor. You might be sitting there with this smug grin on your face saying to yourself, "Oh yeah, he's talking about me." You might even have a nice, cushy job in the IT industry. However, that does not necessarily make you a "geek".
Sure many geeks do that kind of stuff. But there is a certain patina to a real geek. Geeks have a specific feeling, a sort of flair to them. It's not even tangible. But when you are a geek, you know it - through and through. And perhaps the most telling part? Other geeks know it. They can smell it all over they instantly know when they are talking to a geek. The worst pitfall though? They can instantly weed out "wannabe geeks". For some strange reason, some normal people try to pass themselves off as a geek. Perhaps they think it will help them in the IT industry (it won't), or perhaps they think that they can gain some respect among non-geeks. This method will backfire on you if you try it around a real geek. Not only will it backfire, but the geek that sniffs you out will surely tear your ego to ribbons. Trust me, geeks are good at belittling non-geeks.
Well, for those of you who are wannabes, there are ways to become a geek, but understand this: most geeks do/did not try to be geeks. They were born that way. So don't blame me if you do all these things and you still aren't considered a "geek". It's likely that if you don't get it, most likely you never will.
1. Unix/Linux COMMAND LINE USE
This one is probably one that will get you the most cred. If you can use the *nix command line, you are well on your way to becoming a geek. Heck, there are probably geeks out there that have only this requirement. Learn Bash. Learn other shells. You want to be able to administer an entire *nix box from SSH command line ONLY. I also think it is fair to say that if you can master VI then you pretty much instantly become a geek.
NOTE: Though necessary in the modern world, Gnome and KDE are not a show that you are a geek. In fact, if you can muddle through a Linux install and just get to an X gui and never learn the command line at all, then you are pretty much the textbook definition of POSER.
2. Fanboy-ism
This one is also pretty much a requirement. To be considered a REAL geek, you have to be completely obsessed with some form of entertainment. And I mean obsessed. You are the source of all information on the subject. In fact, you know more about this than the creators of the work. There is a little latitude with this, but some good examples are Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Dr. Who. You could also be a fanboy of forms of entertainment like Anime or Horror movies.
NOTE: Being a sports geek does not count. I don't care who you are or how much you know, but knowing obscure details about the 4th game of the 1974 world series isn't going to impress any geek. Knowing what the "T" in James T. Kirk on the other hand might get you somewhere. (It's Tyberius)
3. The art of the Flamewar
If you are unable to start an internet flamewar, then you need to learn. It's actually pretty simple. You just find a nice, unsuspecting messageboard where people are having a civil conversation, and you pretty much make a post telling everyone how wrong they are. The art of it, and this is something that only geeks seem to have mastered, is keeping a flamewar going for a long, long time. Bonus points if you know that you are totally wrong, but you start a flamewar anyway. Remember, politics and religion are the best ammo for this.
4. RPG's
Since Dungeons and Dragons came out, it has been a refuge for the geek imagination. Other RPG's are good too, but I am specifically talking about pen and paper RPG's. Computer and console RPG's count to some degree, but there is nothing geekier than dice and books. ALL NIGHT LONG. Yes, participate in an all night RPG session, and chances are you will climb that geek ladder that much faster.
Live action RPG's or Larps, are another insta-geek thing. If you LARP, you probably are a geek.
5. Old school
Geeks are all about "old school". The concept is kind of hazy and ambiguous but trust me, if you want to be a geek, you have to be "old school". This is another one where you have a little latitude. you can be an old school gamer/programmer/hacker, and this includes things like Interactive Fiction, Sierra or Lucasarts adventure games, old Unix distros, programming in FORTRAN, using BBS's playing a MUD, using gopher, the list goes on and on. It doesn't really matter if most of these things happened before you were born, you just need to learn how to be old school. And you have to constantly complain that things aren't like they used to be. For example, "DSL? Pfft. I used to log on to bulletin boards all the time and get stuff on a 9600bps modem. " Now that's old school.
6. Pr0n
Not a single geek is EVER going to admit it but geeks are experts at finding porn. And they all have tons of it. Like I said every one of them will argue to the last breath, but just because it's well hidden, doesn't mean it isn't there.
7. Freedom
Geeks love their freedom. Okay, maybe not politically, but geeks love to have freedom in the digital world. Being involved in an open source project is like getting a geek tattoo. Many geeks will not use anything but free software. Whereas some of the above geek attributes are parodies, I actually agree with free software. But for this to be geek necessity, you must understand, you have to be a Nazi about it. Here is a little example of this attribute at work:
User: Hi, I was having a problem with IE. It seems to crash on a specific page and it takes down my whole computer. can you tell me how to fix it?
Geek1: Switch to Linux.
Geek2: Get rid of Windows.
User: Right but I have to use IE for this.
Geek1: If you don't use Linux you are stupid.
Geek2: Linux is superior in so many ways.
User:But that doesn't solve my current problem...
Geek1: Hey man if you wanna be part of the Borg, this is the kinda stuff M$ is gonna pull. Switch to Linux and help us fight the MAN!
See, the geeks didn't even try to help this user. They didn't even let him speak. Now THAT is freedom at work ladies and gentlemen. Everyone is free to make their own decision about their operating system. As long as it's Linux. Notice that they didn't try to fix the problem that the user was having. You can usually see this in action by a geek's constant use of cute little symbols and sayings: M$, Microshaft,Winblows, etc. Strangely, BSD users don't seem to suffer this kind of affliction, they just seem to be happy using what they like.
NOTE: There are also multiple kinds of free. Free as in beer, free as in speech, free as in not wearing any underwear... you name it.
8. Slashdot
If you really want to get good at the above skills, hang out on Slashdot. On it's own, its actually a really good news site. The comments section however? Oh yeah. That's were you separate the men from the geeks. It's the veritable Mecca for geeks. And every geek on that site knows everything about everything. Really, just ask them.
9. The constant critics
Ever see a movie that sucked? Sure, everyone has. But to a geek, EVERY movie sucks. Geeks are never satisfied with anything. EVER. Oh sure you get some geeks that actually like George Lucas now and again, but most geeks will say that everything sucks. Modern video games: they suck. Modern music: it sucks. Movies: they suck. The current Internet: it sucks. You don't even really have to hate these things, but never admit to liking anything that is popular. EVER.
And finally:
10. Vastly inflated self worth
As a geek, the most important and smartest genius in the universe is you. You can't be a geek without that I'm-so-much-better-than-you mentality. Oh sure lots of people on the planet are like this, but with geeks, almost every one, without fail will have this quality. They can solve all of the world's problems, they know what is good and not good and they all are capable of doing anything, they just don't feel like it.
Like nuclear war, geeks could stop it, but the world doesn't deserve to benefit from said geek intelligence. But it's not only intelligence. If you ask them, every geek on the planet could kick your ass, if it wasn't for their asthma or shin splints or glasses or whatnot.
And it doesn't stop there. Geeks have a long history of taking credit for things that they couldn't possibly have done. Oh you know that stock market crash in 2000? Oh yeah, that was them. hacking the CIA? Yeah they all did that too. The Chicago fire? Yup you guessed it. Geeks.
So there you go, follow these steps and you too will be a hardcore geek. But don't forget I will always be more hardcore than you. ALWAYS.
I realize that there are alot of people who think that they are geeks because they use myspace and facebook all day. Sure your email box might be filled to the brim, and you may spend more time online than you do sleeping. You might have the fastest, fanciest computer on the market. You get so many IM's you need a second monitor. You might be sitting there with this smug grin on your face saying to yourself, "Oh yeah, he's talking about me." You might even have a nice, cushy job in the IT industry. However, that does not necessarily make you a "geek".
Sure many geeks do that kind of stuff. But there is a certain patina to a real geek. Geeks have a specific feeling, a sort of flair to them. It's not even tangible. But when you are a geek, you know it - through and through. And perhaps the most telling part? Other geeks know it. They can smell it all over they instantly know when they are talking to a geek. The worst pitfall though? They can instantly weed out "wannabe geeks". For some strange reason, some normal people try to pass themselves off as a geek. Perhaps they think it will help them in the IT industry (it won't), or perhaps they think that they can gain some respect among non-geeks. This method will backfire on you if you try it around a real geek. Not only will it backfire, but the geek that sniffs you out will surely tear your ego to ribbons. Trust me, geeks are good at belittling non-geeks.
Well, for those of you who are wannabes, there are ways to become a geek, but understand this: most geeks do/did not try to be geeks. They were born that way. So don't blame me if you do all these things and you still aren't considered a "geek". It's likely that if you don't get it, most likely you never will.
1. Unix/Linux COMMAND LINE USE
This one is probably one that will get you the most cred. If you can use the *nix command line, you are well on your way to becoming a geek. Heck, there are probably geeks out there that have only this requirement. Learn Bash. Learn other shells. You want to be able to administer an entire *nix box from SSH command line ONLY. I also think it is fair to say that if you can master VI then you pretty much instantly become a geek.
NOTE: Though necessary in the modern world, Gnome and KDE are not a show that you are a geek. In fact, if you can muddle through a Linux install and just get to an X gui and never learn the command line at all, then you are pretty much the textbook definition of POSER.
2. Fanboy-ism
This one is also pretty much a requirement. To be considered a REAL geek, you have to be completely obsessed with some form of entertainment. And I mean obsessed. You are the source of all information on the subject. In fact, you know more about this than the creators of the work. There is a little latitude with this, but some good examples are Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Dr. Who. You could also be a fanboy of forms of entertainment like Anime or Horror movies.
NOTE: Being a sports geek does not count. I don't care who you are or how much you know, but knowing obscure details about the 4th game of the 1974 world series isn't going to impress any geek. Knowing what the "T" in James T. Kirk on the other hand might get you somewhere. (It's Tyberius)
3. The art of the Flamewar
If you are unable to start an internet flamewar, then you need to learn. It's actually pretty simple. You just find a nice, unsuspecting messageboard where people are having a civil conversation, and you pretty much make a post telling everyone how wrong they are. The art of it, and this is something that only geeks seem to have mastered, is keeping a flamewar going for a long, long time. Bonus points if you know that you are totally wrong, but you start a flamewar anyway. Remember, politics and religion are the best ammo for this.
4. RPG's
Since Dungeons and Dragons came out, it has been a refuge for the geek imagination. Other RPG's are good too, but I am specifically talking about pen and paper RPG's. Computer and console RPG's count to some degree, but there is nothing geekier than dice and books. ALL NIGHT LONG. Yes, participate in an all night RPG session, and chances are you will climb that geek ladder that much faster.
Live action RPG's or Larps, are another insta-geek thing. If you LARP, you probably are a geek.
5. Old school
Geeks are all about "old school". The concept is kind of hazy and ambiguous but trust me, if you want to be a geek, you have to be "old school". This is another one where you have a little latitude. you can be an old school gamer/programmer/hacker, and this includes things like Interactive Fiction, Sierra or Lucasarts adventure games, old Unix distros, programming in FORTRAN, using BBS's playing a MUD, using gopher, the list goes on and on. It doesn't really matter if most of these things happened before you were born, you just need to learn how to be old school. And you have to constantly complain that things aren't like they used to be. For example, "DSL? Pfft. I used to log on to bulletin boards all the time and get stuff on a 9600bps modem. " Now that's old school.
6. Pr0n
Not a single geek is EVER going to admit it but geeks are experts at finding porn. And they all have tons of it. Like I said every one of them will argue to the last breath, but just because it's well hidden, doesn't mean it isn't there.
7. Freedom
Geeks love their freedom. Okay, maybe not politically, but geeks love to have freedom in the digital world. Being involved in an open source project is like getting a geek tattoo. Many geeks will not use anything but free software. Whereas some of the above geek attributes are parodies, I actually agree with free software. But for this to be geek necessity, you must understand, you have to be a Nazi about it. Here is a little example of this attribute at work:
User: Hi, I was having a problem with IE. It seems to crash on a specific page and it takes down my whole computer. can you tell me how to fix it?
Geek1: Switch to Linux.
Geek2: Get rid of Windows.
User: Right but I have to use IE for this.
Geek1: If you don't use Linux you are stupid.
Geek2: Linux is superior in so many ways.
User:But that doesn't solve my current problem...
Geek1: Hey man if you wanna be part of the Borg, this is the kinda stuff M$ is gonna pull. Switch to Linux and help us fight the MAN!
See, the geeks didn't even try to help this user. They didn't even let him speak. Now THAT is freedom at work ladies and gentlemen. Everyone is free to make their own decision about their operating system. As long as it's Linux. Notice that they didn't try to fix the problem that the user was having. You can usually see this in action by a geek's constant use of cute little symbols and sayings: M$, Microshaft,Winblows, etc. Strangely, BSD users don't seem to suffer this kind of affliction, they just seem to be happy using what they like.
NOTE: There are also multiple kinds of free. Free as in beer, free as in speech, free as in not wearing any underwear... you name it.
8. Slashdot
If you really want to get good at the above skills, hang out on Slashdot. On it's own, its actually a really good news site. The comments section however? Oh yeah. That's were you separate the men from the geeks. It's the veritable Mecca for geeks. And every geek on that site knows everything about everything. Really, just ask them.
9. The constant critics
Ever see a movie that sucked? Sure, everyone has. But to a geek, EVERY movie sucks. Geeks are never satisfied with anything. EVER. Oh sure you get some geeks that actually like George Lucas now and again, but most geeks will say that everything sucks. Modern video games: they suck. Modern music: it sucks. Movies: they suck. The current Internet: it sucks. You don't even really have to hate these things, but never admit to liking anything that is popular. EVER.
And finally:
10. Vastly inflated self worth
As a geek, the most important and smartest genius in the universe is you. You can't be a geek without that I'm-so-much-better-than-you mentality. Oh sure lots of people on the planet are like this, but with geeks, almost every one, without fail will have this quality. They can solve all of the world's problems, they know what is good and not good and they all are capable of doing anything, they just don't feel like it.
Like nuclear war, geeks could stop it, but the world doesn't deserve to benefit from said geek intelligence. But it's not only intelligence. If you ask them, every geek on the planet could kick your ass, if it wasn't for their asthma or shin splints or glasses or whatnot.
And it doesn't stop there. Geeks have a long history of taking credit for things that they couldn't possibly have done. Oh you know that stock market crash in 2000? Oh yeah, that was them. hacking the CIA? Yeah they all did that too. The Chicago fire? Yup you guessed it. Geeks.
So there you go, follow these steps and you too will be a hardcore geek. But don't forget I will always be more hardcore than you. ALWAYS.
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