The D'Arque Cathedral

I suppose I should warn everyone that this post is going to be far geekier than normal.

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The past week or two, I’ve been noticing on Facebook that friends of mine have been joining a group called “I don’t care about your farm, or your fish, or your park, or your mafia”. I don’t generally join such “advocacy” groups, as for the most part the people who the complaints are directed to simply don’t care. In the case of this group, I actually agree with the sentiment of the group, as I for one am tired of seeing all of these posts on my wall from people using apps I will never use. (Really, I’ve seen Facebook games. They’d bore the hell out of me.)

Well, yesterday, a friend of mine posted on her Twitter that she planned on doing double posting of her games to her wall simply to annoy those people who had joined that group. Her point was that instead of complaining, they should just use the built-in functionality in Facebook to hide the apps. Normally I would agree, but there are two problems I have that prevent it from being a long term solution.

The first problem is the sheer number of apps. It seems to me that every time I hit “Hide” on an app, two more pop up in peoples’ wall posts to take their place. It almost seems like every day I’m having to hit “Hide” on one app or another to get rid of these annoying posts. I’d love to be able to just click a box or set a setting to hide them all en masse… and that’s the second problem. To my knowledge (and I’ve asked others to no avail), there is no way to just hide all application wall posts. In short, I’m fighting a losing battle: I can constantly manually hide apps, but new apps keep springing up every day and I have no way to just blanket hide them.

I suppose the easiest thing to do would be to stop using Facebook, but considering how many people I know plan events and get-togethers using it these days, it would make life much more inconvenient in that respect. Unlike before, I actually DO have a social life now. I don’t begrudge people actually using the apps; I (and others) just would like a way to not see them, and Facebook doesn’t offer an easy or convenient option to shut them up. I don’t foresee it changing anytime soon, as I’m willing to bet the money made off the apps overrules any number of complaints. Until/unless something is done, though, those who use the apps should understand that while it might be easier to click “Hide” than complain in the short term, in the long term all we have to look forward is constantly clicking “Hide” or bearing with the annoyance of this filler crap polluting our walls.

I just read this story via Slashdot, and it pisses me off to no end.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/world/europe/12germany.html

BERLIN — It usually takes an author decades to win fawning reviews, march up the best-seller list and become a finalist for a major book prize. Helene Hegemann, just 17, did it with her first book, all in the space of a few weeks, and despite a savaging from critics over plagiarism.

The publication last month of her novel about a 16-year-old exploring Berlin’s drug and club scene after the death of her mother, called “Axolotl Roadkill,” was heralded far and wide in German newspapers and magazines as a tremendous debut, particularly for such a young author. The book shot to No. 5 this week on the magazine Spiegel’s hardcover best-seller list.

For the obviously gifted Ms. Hegemann, who already had a play (written and staged) and a movie (written, directed and released in theaters) to her credit, it was an early ascension to the ranks of artistic stardom. That is, until a blogger last week uncovered material in the novel taken from the less-well-known novel “Strobo,” by an author writing under the nom de plume Airen. In one case, an entire page was lifted with few changes.

As other unattributed sources came to light, outsize praise quickly turned to a torrent of outrage, reminiscent of the uproar in 2006 over a Harvard sophomore, Kaavya Viswanathan, who was caught plagiarizing numerous passages in her much praised debut novel. But Ms. Hegemann’s story took a very different turn.

…

Although Ms. Hegemann has apologized for not being more open about her sources, she has also defended herself as the representative of a different generation, one that freely mixes and matches from the whirring flood of information across new and old media, to create something new. “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,” said Ms. Hegemann in a statement released by her publisher after the scandal broke.

If I can be forgiven the vernacular response, BULLSHIT. The difference between what this girl has done and the “mixers” to which she refers to is the fact that those who produce commercial mixes not only acknowledge who they are sampling from, they get the original copyright holders’ permission first.

The biggest reason for that is the song “Bittersweet Symphony” by the Verve. They sampled a section of the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, and the Stones’ record label (the copyright holder) sued saying that the Verve did not have permission to use that sample. The courts agreed it was an infringement, and now 100% of all proceeds from the song go to the record label instead of the Stones.

If she had admitted to what she had done beforehand, and gave references in her novel, then I could understand what she did. As it stands, right now what she’s doing is making an excuse because she got caught committing the biggest cardinal sin in writing. The story says the book is still a finalist for the Leipzig Book Fair; I (and I would hope others, including author friends of mine) believe she should be instantly disqualified. This should be a black mark on her reputation, and that she’s apparently getting away with it is something I find shameful.

I’m not usually one for making political posts, but this was too good to pass up…

Recently at the “Tea Party’s” national convention, the opening speaker (a former Republican congressman named Tom Tancredo) suggested that Barack Obama was elected because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.”. Such literacy tests were used in the South to prevent blacks from voting, so one could imagine why that would have leave something of a bad taste in several people’s mouths.

On the other hand, it seems to me that in a way this is kind of hypocritical, as it has seemed to me that many of those who support the Tea Party are themselves ignorant of current civics. For example, the Tea Party seems to be a home for the Birther movement (those who believe Obama isn’t a natural born US citizen despite the overwhelming evidence he is). In response, movie critic Roger Ebert recently posted his proposed civics/history test for potential voters, saying that to vote you should pass this test. I’m going to go ahead and repost his quiz here.

How well will you do?

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I’d had a few comments and observations I’d been meaning to post for a few days; normally I would put these in my Twitter, but they’re a bit more than 140 characters. So, for your entertainment, a few thoughts…

Does a bum WHAT in the park?

The following is excerpted from a conversation between myself and Jennifer on the way home from work yesterday:

Jennifer: “That’s the park where I see the guy poop. Of course, he hasn’t done it as much the past few months because the leaves are off the bush…”
Me: “Okay, I have to ask… is he REALLY pooping, or is he just squatting?”
Jennifer: “Well, let me put it this way: he’s got his pants around his ankles while he squats.”
Me: “Yeah, he’s pooping.”

Parenthood should be easier than this.

A friend of mine and his wife have been documenting their journey towards adopting a child from the Ukraine. They’ve done numerous applications. They’ve had to get CPR certified. They’ve had to get the fire marshall to do an inspection. They’re going to be undergoing a home study this week. It’s exhausting what they put potential adoptive parents through.

… on the other hand, it strikes me as kind of sad that adoptive parents have to go through all this preparation to take in a child, when Joe and Jane Idiot can just pop one out without so much preparation or a blink from the state. Don’t get me wrong; as much as I feel Scott and Lindsey will be great parents, it’s great to see that the agencies are making sure they’ll be ready for him/her. I just wish the parents of natural-born children got held to such a high standard sometimes.

(Then again, not that I consider any of my friends or anyone I know bad parents; indeed, they’ve been proving themselves to be exceptional parents or parents-to-be…)

Internet Explorer 6 is no longer welcome here.

Internet Explorer 6 is approximately eight years old. There are much better alternatives out there, including IE 7/8, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome. At this time there’s a serious IE6 vulnerability (which also exists in 7 and 8, but is apparently much harder to exploit), which was behind the Google China compromise. As a result, I’ve decided to load the IE6 No More code (via a plugin) that places a banner at the top of the page if someone enters the site using IE6, telling them to upgrade their browser. Educating the user is always a good thing, especially when it comes to an outdated web browser.

Those who have known me for a while know that I tend to favor Apple products. My primary laptop for the longest time was a PowerBook G4. I’ve used iPods since 2003 or thereabouts. My current cell phone is an iPhone 3G; I’ve actually had it probably longer than any other cell phone. The thing I like about Apple stuff is that it generally Just Works. If I have a problem with something, the Apple knowledge base articles are pretty concise and helpful. I’ve not had a real problem with figuring something out until today, and man, it was a doozy.

When I got into work this morning, the boss asked me as a favor if I could take his wife’s old first generation iPhone and turn it into an iPod Touch. In other words, he simply wanted to use the iPhone without the cellular capability. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue, but he had wiped the iPhone and now it needed to be activated through iTunes. What worried us was whether activating through iTunes would disable his wife’s new iPhone. So, I did some research, and came across this Apple knowledge base article that said what we wanted to do is easily done, and that iTunes would happily activate the phone with the invalid SIM for use as an iPhone without cell service.

Sounds simple, right? It wasn’t.

Once I plugged the iPhone into my laptop and iTunes came up, it asked to activate through AT&T. Confused and unwilling to continue lest I mess up Kendra’s phone, I called AT&T for assistance. After explaining the situation to the tech support specialist, I got the tech support equivalent of a blank stare. She ended up transferring me to Apple, where the support tech there knew what I was asking for but didn’t have the right information for me. After talking to a supervisor, he told me I needed to talk to AT&T regarding the SIM card still in the phone (as the phone will not activate without a SIM card). After getting off the phone with him, I called AT&T back and got another tech on the phone. I explained the situation to her, but she told me that what the Apple tech said wouldn’t work. We tried going through the different options on the iTunes activation, but every route we took led to the same result: we would be deactivating the cellular service on Kendra’s phone and activating it on this one.

The AT&T tech eventually got another Apple tech on the line, and we tried different options, including even trying to activate it with MY iPhone’s SIM card in it. The iTunes activation wouldn’t even allow it to proceed on mine. Finally, the Apple tech suggested asking an AT&T store person, and the AT&T tech called the nearest store to me and found a employee who could do what I asked. I thanked them for their help, got off the phone with them, and headed over to the AT&T store. The problem would soon be dealt with.

… or so I thought. As soon as I walked in the door and handed the guy the phone, he looked at it and said, “The tech told me it was an iPhone 3G.” I said no, that I had quite clearly told her it was a firstgen one. As the tech explained, for some reason it was not possible to activate the original iPhone for non-cellular use. Only the 3G and the 3GS could be activated that way.

So, I took the phone back to the office and told the boss the sad truth: the only way we were going to be able to unlock the phone for his daughter’s use was to jailbreak it. We had wanted to do it via an “authorized” method, but that had been closed off to us. Fortunately, a quick word with a friend of mine who had more iPhone knowledge than me pointed me in the direction of blackra1n, a quick and easy jailbreak tool for the iPhone. Once the phone was successfully jailbroken, it was available for use. The boss checked it over, made sure everything was available that his daughter would need, and thanked me profusely for getting it running.

If you were to ask me where the failure here was… while I’d lay it at both Apple’s and AT&T’s feet, I’d probably lay it more at AT&T than at Apple. I don’t know how Apple looks up SIM numbers for activation, but I’m willing to bet that whenever an AT&T SIM card is entered in, it automatically tries to sell cellular service as opposed to giving the option of activating without cellular service. Apple’s blame comes from the fact that their knowledge base article didn’t make ANY mention of problems with activating without cellular service if it was formerly used on AT&T and had an AT&T SIM.

In any event, the iPhone is now operational without cellular service. Jailbreaking was a last resort as the boss and I are both people who like to stay as official with software as possible (even though I have no problems with others jailbreaking), but in the end it was the route we needed to take to get the phone up and running where the boss’s daughter could use it. Now, if only Apple and AT&T hadn’t made the process so painful in the first place…

One of the tech websites I visit on a regular basis is the Daily WTF. It’s a collection of stories regarding ineptitude, cluelessness, failures, and even sometimes malevolence in the IT world, especially when it comes to development. Two days ago they posted a story that I figured I should share…

One thing that people generally ask me is whether I’m afraid that my job would be outsourced to somewhere like India. The answer I give is most often “no”; over the years, it’s become plainly obvious that while it’s cheaper to send tech support and development to such countries, the cost savings are undone by the language barriers, quality of work, time zone differences, and even possible corruption. Plus, with them being overseas, there’s little chance of them being called on whatever they do.

Anyway, this story, called “Maybe I Needing Later”, should serve as a very precautionary tale about hiring a developer in this manner. While this is one of the worst examples I’ve ever seen, it also doesn’t surprise me one iota. I figure this guy is not the first to be burned in this way.

How bad is it? Well, I’ll just quote one line that says it all…

“If you don’t paying, then I delete files that I send you,” he responded, “I don’t want deleting your web, but it is not fair for me. I know you changing my password and I can’t logging on, but I don’t needing SQL or server password to delete.”

You can read the rest of the story here.

Well, this should hopefully be good.

Nearly two years ago, I started a new exercise regiment in order to get healthier and lose weight. What I started doing was exercise with small hand weights for five minutes when I get up every weekday morning, and doing 25 minutes of Dance Dance Revolution three times a week. While I enjoyed doing it, it got to the point where I wondered whether it was doing any more good for me or not. It didn’t help that I always felt it really wasn’t as much of a workout as I should be getting. So, with Jennifer’s support, I took the plunge this past Sunday.

I’ve officially joined a gym.

Jennifer’s been a member of 24 Hour Fitness for quite some time, and had been encouraging me to join. She and I went on Sunday (with me using a free week pass), and I was impressed enough to join as soon as we were done. My big hangup with gyms previously was that even with personal training, I’d never be able to keep up with how to do most of the exercises. (I speak from experience.) However, most of the machines have directions on them, which put me at ease right away. The staff was also very courteous and helpful.

So, now I’m going to the gym four times a week. I’ve settled into a good exercise routine that should do me pretty well, once my body adjusts to the extra level of exertion. Keeping to the routine shouldn’t be hard, either, as there are locations right outside my neighborhood, right by Jennifer’s neighborhood, and one or two by our offices. Here’s hoping it works out pretty well for me… no pun intended.

A couple of weeks ago, I went on another road trip with Jennifer. She and her parents have a Thanksgiving tradition: instead of having a big turkey dinner, they go out of town for the weekend. This year, they decided to go to New Orleans and Lafayette, and asked if I wanted to tag along. I was up for it, so I went with them and had a great time. I’d been putting off posting about the actual trip, so I figured I’d spend some time doing a recap…

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I seem to have a habit of posting tales of bad customer service here.

I’m not really “up” on the whole con thing, really. I’ve been to one or two, but my experience has been mostly with trade shows like E3 and OTC. However, the one con I’ve known about for years due to friends attending and talking about it was Dragon*Con. I’d considered going for years, even when slightly annoyed when undergoing overload of D*C. However, there had always been a reason for me not to go, from not wanting to fight with hotel rooms, to not having a friend to go with me, and so on and so forth…

Well, yesterday, I found a VERY good reason not to go. Yesterday, Ryan Sohmer of Blind Ferret Entertainment (responsible for the popular webcomics Least I Could Do and Looking For Group) made a post on the LICD forums talking about their experience with Dragon*Con staff this year as a paying vendor, and why they will not be back next year. Lar deSouza (Ryan’s collaborator on LICD and LFG) asked that people retweet Ryan’s post and get the word out; while I’ve already tweeted about it, I figured I would go ahead and repost the story on here.

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