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Bloomberg ran a piece about the inadequacies of the Internet in the United States, making the oft-mentioned point that we really don’t get much bang for our buck. She wonders why broadband isn’t more of a government venture, citing some municipal initiatives such as the one in Lafayette, Louisiana:

In 2004, the Lafayette utilities system decided to provide a fiber-to-the-home service. The new network, called LUS Fiber, would give everyone in Lafayette a very fast Internet connection, enabling them to lower their electricity costs by monitoring and adjusting their usage.

Push-back from the local telephone company, BellSouth Corp., and the local cable company, Cox Communications Inc., was immediate. They tried to get laws passed to stop the network, sued the city, even forced the town to hold a referendum on the project — in which the people voted 62 percent in favor. Finally, in February 2007, after five civil lawsuits, the Louisiana Supreme Court voted, 7-0, to allow the network.

From 2007 to mid-2011, people living in Lafayette saved $5.7 million on telecommunications services.

Since Lafayette went down this path, other communities have followed. According to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a group that advocates for municipal fiber networks, these community-owned networks are generally faster, more reliable and cheaper than those of the private carriers, and provide better customer service.

I have seen one of these municipal networks in action, and I have to say that they are a pretty great deal. Especially when the local utility companies are charging too much or dragging their feet on upgrading service. More generally, there is a strong argument to be made that utilities that lend themselves towards natural monopolies, like cable internet, cable TV, and phone service, ought to be government rather than private ventures. I mean, if you’re not going to have actual competition between suppliers, why not cut out the middle man?

Sometimes, it’s because the middle man has something to offer. Out here, broadband began as a co-op but eventually was sold on the private model in large part because the cable company had access to more and better resources for expansion and upgrading. The co-op more or less abandoned the city right about the time I was arriving, though they still cover the outlying part of the county. However you look at it, there’s no good reason that a private company shouldn’t have to prove itself to the people.

There were other aspects of the article I was less keen about, however. Where I felt like the article was misleading.

It’s true that in the past private industry had little interest in covering rural America and needed the pitchfork of the government to do so. Rural America and small towns owe a debt of gratitude to the FDR and the federal government in that regard. And, as is the case in Callie, a lot of it they had to do themselves because they were (and in some places still are) below the radar of corporate America. However, it has to be said that (as far as I can tell) this is a lot less true than it used to be. Proclamations that but for the government, national communications and entertainment companies would tell small towns and rural places to go to hell no longer seems to be true except for a relatively small sliver of what we would consider to be rural.

My current town, Callie, population 3,000 with nary another town of remotely comparable size (or larger) for 50 miles in any direction, has 3G from Verizon and (non-LTE) 4G from AT&T. Verizon’s LTE network extends to cover almost 90% of the country, which includes a lot of small towns. Places such as Butte, Montana, and Twin Falls, Idaho, are covered. You see something similar with local channels in satellite. Back when I used to work for a satellite carrier, they had all but said that there were some DMA’s that they would never bother to cover. Now, Dish Network covers everybody and DirecTV covers almost everybody. Twin Falls and Butte both have their local channels broadcast by satellite. And they aren’t actually charged any more than the big cities are for the privilege (a hat tip to arguments about the USPS being a giveaway to rural America because letters to the middle of nowhere cost the same as letters between population centers). There is, in fact, money to be made in rural America and small towns, and the same subsidies that the government has actually apply to private industry as well (ie Dish Network makes more per subscriber in Seattle than Twin Falls because of per-capita usage they get out of resources expended).l

Another issue I had with the article was any comparison whatsoever between the United States and South Korea and the like. You simply cannot compare the two in any meaningful sense. Not with Internet, and not with cell phone coverage. The US faces enormous challenges that smaller and more urban nations do not. The degree to which we are spread out makes coverage more difficult. This applies to rural areas, but also suburbs (and the fact that our urban cores themselves are not remarkably dense, in most places). This is one of the downsides to American settlement patterns, but it’s not going away any time soon. So coverage of such things is going to be weaker, and more expensive.

Which brings us, of course, to questions of how and where the federal government should promote service. I’ve written on this before. Now, as a rural-liver, I wouldn’t mind it one little bit if the federal government decided to lay broadband out here. I’d use it and happily so. The only downsides are the extent to which the same people who would champion a national broadband policy will turn around and complain about “rural subsidies” and, more substantively, I don’t think it’s actually the best allocation of resources.

While we do need to make sure that everybody has access to high speed Internet of one sort of another (I’m a commie that way, I suppose), I believe it only makes sense to approach each areas needs individually. Callie doesn’t need fiber. A lot of places don’t. As satellite internet gets better and more affordable, this may well be a problem that takes care of itself. So long as we keep expectations reasonable.

Which is why, ultimately, I think this should be mostly a local issue. More cities should either do what Lafayette has done or use the threat of doing so to leverage a equipment upgrades by the local suppliers. The primary role I see in the federal government is to use fiber for redevelopment zones. Take cities that have capacity outstripping their population or that are simply struggling to keep their population numbers stable, and start offering it to those areas. Places like Detroit or Redstone. That could be helpful in enticing employers to utilize these services and attract and retain local talent. But beyond that, different places are going to have different needs. The alternative starts to look like this.

We’ve taken to using Google Hangout for our family video conferencing. I was introduced to it at The League and found it was easy enough for all of our family members to use. The downside is that it requires Google+. It says it doesn’t, but it does. The other downside is that nobody uses Google+. I finally got around to getting my profile completely set up (places I’ve lived, jobs I’ve worked, schools I’ve attended, etc.) only to discover that it’s even more a ghosttown now than it was when I first created the account.

Google does a really good job of encouraging people like me, in the Googlesphere, of going ahead and setting up an account. I use Gmail in order to organize my contacts for the phone. Throw in the Google Calendar, and I’m relatively entrenched in a way that Microsoft never did with Windows Mobile. I’ve actually come to like the setup on G+ a little bit better than Facebook. Beyond that, there is some redundancy involved. It somehow annoys me, though, that G+ is useful for chatting but I can’t find much of any other use for it. I thought about making it a repository for cross-posts (things I put on Twitter, or Facebook), but it’s not good for even that (apparently they are stingy with giving developers the tools with which to do it).

One of the frustrating things about Google+, and the fact that nobody uses it, is that few people that have an account even have a profile picture. I’m extremely OCD about these things. I’ve gone in and added some picture or another to every person on my contact list. If I have a picture of them, I add it. If not, I add a picture of some relevance. I have an irrational hatred of default silhouettes. My sisters-in-law went about creating the G+ accounts and I had to implore them to add a picture so that I wouldn’t be setting up chats with a bunch of silhouettes.

Sometimes, I think I’m not normal.

Okay, so apparently almost all homemade porn ends up online:

WASHINGTON (CBS DC) – The vast majority of homemade pornography and private images on personal computers ends up on public websites called “parasites.”

Eighty-eight percent of homemade pornography, including videos and still images, finds its way onto porn sites, often without the owners’ knowledge, a new study from Britain’s Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has found.

The study analyzed more than 12,000 sexually explicit images uploaded by young people and found that the great majority of images had been stolen and published to what the organization calls, “parasite” websites.

I cannot for the life of me understand how they came up with that figure (with, or beyond, the explanation provided).

So, according to a study, 88% of Americans stalk exes on Facebook:

Lukacs tells me that the survey respondents were 18-35 and the interview respondents were 21 to 39. They were all people whose hearts had been torn asunder in the previous 12 months. It is always best to research on those whose feelings are near the surface.

But did this stalking add to their pain or were they in pain and therefore stalked the ones they’d lost?

May I offer you some details of this research that might add to your pain?

Not merely did the vast majority stalk, but 70 percent admitted to using a mutual friend’s profile or even logging in as that mutual friend to do their stalking.

They creep around to see if their ex is having a sleep around.

Is that not painful enough for you? Well, 74 percent crept around the profile of their ex’s new partner or someone they feared might be their ex’s new partner.

Only 88%?

My friend Clint was having a lot of difficulty getting over his ex-girlfriend who he was sure was the love of his life (I don’t mean this as snarky as it sounds, there weren’t many girls he felt this strongly about or who matched his desires so closely). She unceremoniously dumped him and he had a hard time letting go. He was one of those people that did some funny business to get access to her MySpace stuff. I won’t recount how he did it, but it was pretty clever and she had no idea.

The end result was… sublime. He was reminded of the things that he didn’t like about her. Things that he had forgotten about in the intervening weeks. He got over her relatively quickly.

I am really, really glad that by the time that MySpace came around (and later Facebook, of course), I was out of the dating market. It’s the sort of thing that I have a really hard time resisting. I hated being completely cut off, of course, but it was always for the best. It was also easier then than it is now.

A slightly different subject…

A Facebook Friend who put up a picture of my fourth grade class recently put up our 8th grade class. It’s drawing in a lot of comments from people I knew way back in the day. I’d actually be interested in 1-day passes to find out what has happened to them without the mess of actually friending them. (This is a different subject because I never had a single girlfriend from my school system. The lady friends I had as a minor went to other schools.) Anyhow, from the pictures I’ve seen, I would have expected more of them to be fat. I think I’ve been conned by popular entertainment kharma. You know that bitchy hot girl who treated you like trash? Well, she’s 30-something now and is still hot. That’s not how it’s supposed to work.

As I was graduating from college, one thing became apparent: Desktops were going the way of the dinosaur. Laptops were going to replace them. Why shouldn’t they? I mean, you can actually take a laptop places. It can do everything a desktop can do, but in a portable way, right?

Well, laptops have displaced desktops as the most common form of personal computing (at least, I believe so). Yet… desktops are still around. In large numbers. And they aren’t going away. It’s likely that they never will. Why not? Because they serve a valuable purpose as work machines. The work station I have up stairs? Laptops can’t do that. Multi-monitors, large monitors, a more workish environment that requires no set-up. Even if a laptop is more flexible, there are a number of things that are easier to do on a desktop than a laptop. And given how cheap both are, it’s easy to have both. And so while the laptop has thrived, the desktop has remained and appears as though it will remain indefinitely. Why wouldn’t they?

With this in mind, my head boggles any time anyone talks about the post-PC world. A few years ago it was smartphones that were going to replace PCs. Now, tablets. Okay, tablets with keyboards, maybe. So sort of laptops. There’ll be a merger. Something will surely happen to kill off the PC, right?

No. Not at all.

Just as was the case with the smartphone, the notion that we will settle on any single device is very short-sighted. Why should we? Different tasks beg for different tools. Sometimes you need to sit and work. Sometimes you want to sprawl on the sofa and write a blog post. Sometimes you need extra monitors, sometimes you want to be comfortable. Sometimes you want something you can take with you, sometimes you want something that fits in your pocket, and sometimes those things don’t matter and you want performance (and the desktop will always rule over laptops, tablets, and smartphones over performance). This notion that we will end up settling on a single device implies a degree of scarcity that does not actually exist. Now, more than ever, we can afford a desktop and a laptop and a smartphone and a tablet. We can cut out this one or that one, and few will have all four, but there’s not much reason to believe we will all cut out the same ones.

Ironically, the thing that is going to make this easier is actually the thing that leads some to say that the future is going to not be a PC one: cloud computing. I am actually skeptical of the extent to which we will ever move completely to cloud computing, but it does make switching between devices easier. Which not only means that we can do more on our tertiary devices, but also means that we can use these devices in complement with one another.

I was first told about “cloud computing” when I was in college. It wasn’t called that yet, but went by the less marketable name of “Dumb Terminal.” Which was the belief that in the future, computers wouldn’t actually be anything but terminals into larger and more powerful machines. It took fifteen years, and it’s still not happening quite like it was supposed. Why should it happen? Our individual computers now are just as powerful as the mainframe they would have been connected to 15 years ago. Given the constant state of advancement, there’s no reason to outsource what our computer does. At least, not completely. Enough, though, to make owning lots of devices easier. As Americans, we like to own stuff.

I was reading an article about Hewlitt-Packard and a sentence jumped out at me. The wording made me think that Lenovo had purchased Dell. My eyes shot wide open and I went googling and discovered that no, this bizarre thing had not happened. What happened was not that Lenovo had taken over Dell, but rather that they overtook Dell as the #2 computer seller in the world. I actually have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I’m all about the Thinkpad. On the other hand, Dell is an American company and I tend to root for American companies in the international marketplace (even if I don’t purchase their products).

In any event, it listed the top five makers in order: HP 17.7%, Lenovo 13.5%, Dell 11.6%, Acer 10.6%, ASUS 6.2%.

It seemed to me that Apple was missing from this. And bizarre that Lenovo was actually #2. And shouldn’t Toshiba be on there? Then I realized that this was the world market, so I looked at the US market: HP 28.9%, Dell 21.9%, Apple 12.9%, Toshiba 8.4%, Acer 7.4%.

That struck me as reasonable but for one thing: I never see HP’s anywhere!. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but I see far more Thinkpads than HP’s out there. The workplace? Everywhere I’ve worked, just about, has gone with Dell. Maybe the home desktop market is where HP does well. But it’s just weird that they are so significantly on top and they’re maybe the fifth or sixth name that comes to mind when I think of computer brands.

{Source}

The dude to the right is a character from the TV show Fringe named Lincoln Lee. That thing you see in his right ear is not an ear-ring. Rather, it’s a bluetooth-like device worn by characters in the “alternate universe.”

I long for that day in this one. Not for the day that bluetooth earpieces look like jewelry, but for the day when it is socially acceptable to wear these things at all times.

I ran across a neighbor at Safeway. He commented, “You really do always have that thing in your ear, don’t you? Do you sleep in it?”

Not generally, no.

It really has been an ongoing thing for me. Ever since I started listening to stuff at work a few jobs back, I decided that I wanted the ability to listen to things whenever I want. Therefore, the bluetooth is in my ear as often as not during my waking hours. This elicits a various responses. Some people joke about it (leave it in there long enough, your skin is going to grow over it!). I had a former boss who was frustrated by it. I always took it out whenever someone started talking to me, even though I could hear them just fine with it in. After that, I started keeping it out unless I was actively listening to something.

I keep about five of them around, so that I always have multiple ones charged. I suppose it looks goofy. Some might say that it’s rule because it gives the appearance that you’re not listening. I consider that to be a faulty norm. With the exception of discomfort (and I rarely feel that, thanks Plantronics!) there isn’t much reason to ever take it out. Even for someone that is moderately hard-of-hearing as I am.

I hope that this is one of those norms that does change. Maybe they need to do a better job of signalling whether someone is actually on a call or listening to something. However, the perception of it being douchey needs to be retired. We should accept the practicality of it. I don’t know if that day will ever come to pass. I still cling to my belt-holster for my cell phone as it becomes increasingly unacceptable (as phones increasingly fit into pockets). Sometimes, society moves the wrong direction.

I got what was the most baffling friending on Facebook to date: Jennifer “Porky” Gadsden (Greeley). The names are a story unto themselves. I’ve mentioned, but not named Porky before. She was the very conventionally beautiful (the nickname is not a reference to her weight) woman I was briefly with that warned me off conventionally beautiful women forever. Without going into too much detail (maybe I’ll make a Ghostland post out of it), in the words of Death Cab for Cutie, it was vile and it was cheap.

I’d say that things ended poorly, but save for a brief window at the start they went poorly throughout with each of us asking what the hell is wrong with the other person as time progressed. After the split (if we had anything to split from), the only contact we had was a “hello” at the university’s convenience store and once when she texted me to ask if I could help move her furniture. That was fine with me (not moving the furniture - I was helpfully out of town - but the no-contact thing).

So what the hell was she making a friend request on Facebook for? My first thought was maybe she sent out a lot of such requests - though that wouldn’t be like her - but after I accepted (I’ve never denied a request from anyone that I know to be a legitimate person) I saw that she had only a few more Friends than I do. I did see that she was still single, though with a cute little kid. She’s still thin, which I was sure she wouldn’t be.

Anyhow, those of you who read me know that I have a tendency to get hung up on the past. Yet, despite this, if there was one book I don’t mind being shut (even to the point of being so indifferent as to not care to know if things are turning out miserably) it’s her. And she was always far more indifferent to me than I was to her. I know what I got out of what we had, but hell if I can figure out why she would even remember my name.

Maybe she didn’t, or confused me with someone else. All I know is that when I woke up the next morning, I had been unfriended.

While I was ordering a couple of replacement hard drives, I went ahead and ordered a new keyboard. The existing keyboard, purchased in 2003 or so, was still doing its job. But it had, at some point, picked up an odor that even I could smell. Plus, and I will grant that this reason is more frivolous, it was beige and all of my computers have since switched to black.

You never realize how much you’ve gotten used to a keyboard until it’s gone. All of the little things you never noticed. Oddly, this is true even when you regularly switch between keyboards. I have no problem going from laptop to desktop, despite the very different computer configurations. But I guess when I am sitting at the desk, my mind has incorporated one keyboard over another.

So what are the differences? This keyboard has shorter keys. This is a shame. It’s one of the things I prefer about desktops over laptops. The tall keys. I was about to say that it makes typing easier - and it does - though I have gotten so used to the laptop I think I can switch back and forth between modes. But when I in desktop mode, I am expecting taller keys. This has resulted in an unusual number of typos. The biggest ongoing issue is for some reason my failing to correctly tap the letter “L.” The L key works fine, but for some reason I seem to suddenly be missing.

This new keyboard is also much, much quieter. I am not sure if the old keyboard simply got louder over time or if it was just a louder keyboard (this may be related to the whole height thing). I have been told, by a large number of people, that I am the loudest typist that they have ever met. My musician friend Clint actually says I am also the most rhythmic typist he has ever met. I think that’s a good thing. I seem to have gotten used to it. The only key that makes any notable noise is the spacebar, which means that the noise comes in a non-rhythmic fashion.

The biggest issue, however, is the fact that the new keyboard has a sightly different layout. They almost always do, and I consider it frustrating. This has a problem that is more severe, however. Where I am used to the Scroll Lock key being, now resides a “sleep” key. I don’t like sleep keys to begin with, but definitely not where the Scroll Lock is supposed to be. Now, some of you may not even know what the Scroll Lock is. It’s one of the least-used keys on the keyboard. Which is why KVM switches (which allow you to use a single keyboard/monitor/mouse for multiple computers) use it to switch machines. So, without thinking, I tap what I think is the Scroll Lock key in order to switch machines, and the next thing I know the computer I am on is going to sleep.

This will pass with time, no doubt. Maybe I’ll even be able to remap the key. But even if not, I’ll get used to it soon enough. I remember back in the old days how much I absolutely hated, hated, hated the double-decker Enter key. I still don’t prefer them, but it didn’t even occur to me to look for a keyboard without it.

The last thing is that my wrist hurts typing this. I am really hoping that’s temporary.

Alexis Madrigal argues that frictionless sharing could undermine our legal right to privacy:

You are no doubt familiar, now, with Facebook’s concept of “frictionless sharing.” You enable a social reader like the one from the Washington Post and the next time you read an article on the site, news of that textual encounter is broadcast to your Facebook friends. {…}

In Fourth Amendment cases, the Supreme Court has to determine what “a reasonable expectation of privacy” actually is. If you do have that expectation of privacy, then the government needs a warrant to look into your communications. So, if you go out in the public street and shout to the world that you committed a crime, the government does not need a warrant to use that communication. However, if you were to send a sealed letter to a friend containing the same information, you would have a reasonable expectation that the government would not be reading that note.

Because we’re talking about expectations, we have to think about what cultural norms are and the actions that signal what norms are in play. For example, Kaminski notes, “In the 1967 seminal Supreme Court case on wiretapping, Katz v. United States, Katz placed a phone call in a public phone booth with the door closed, and was found to have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the phone call, so a warrant was required for wiretapping the phone.” Closing the door meant he expected the call to be private.

And the problem with frictionless sharing is that it may leave the door open for the government to collect and use information without a warrant.

“Justice Alito recently contemplated that we may be moving toward a world in which so many people share information with so many friends that social norms no longer indicate a reasonable expectation of privacy in that information,” Kaminski writes. “Without a reasonable expectation of privacy, there will be no warrant requirement for law enforcement to obtain that information. This analysis is troubling; sharing information with your friends should not mean that you expect it to be shared with law enforcement.”

I was skeptical of the headline, but reading the article it actually made sense. It actually makes me wonder, more broadly, if the perception of young people wanting to share everything won’t change privacy expectations with or without frictionless sharing.

I consider frictionless sharing to be, on the whole, a negative thing regardless of its fourth amendment implications. I mean, I keep (albeit with poor maintenance) a list of what I am reading, watching, and listening to on this site. But I choose what to put up there. I put up a thing for Fringe, or maybe a season of Fringe. Frictionless sharing can mean, basically, that every time I watch an episode of Fringe it gets posted. Or every time I listen to something on Spotify, you get to find out what it is. I don’t care if you know, but I don’t have any reason to believe you would want to know. And if I think you might, I’ll write a post on it.

The same goes for articles that I read. If I find something interesting, I’ll pass it along. But just because I am reading something doesn’t mean that I think you will be interested in reading it as well. The same applies to Facebook friends and such. The internet as a whole has a signal-to-noise problem, and this creates a whole lot more signal.

According to Thomas Freedman, we shouldn’t be worried about broadband capabilities in rural America:

Right now, though, notes Levin, America is focused too much on getting �average� bandwidth to the last 5 percent of the country in rural areas, rather than getting �ultra-high-speed� bandwidth to the top 5 percent, in university towns, who will invent the future. By the end of 2012, he adds, South Korea intends to connect every home in the country to the Internet at one gigabit per second. �That would be a tenfold increase from the already blazing national standard, and more than 200 times as fast as the average household setup in the United States,� The Times reported last February.

Therefore, the critical questions for America today have to be how we deploy more ultra-high-speed networks and applications in university towns to invent more high-value-added services and manufactured goods and how we educate more workers to do these jobs � the only way we can maintain a middle class.

Erik Loomis disagrees, arguing:

I know the fact that people live in rural areas and small towns is inconvenient for people obsessed with national planning and technological fetishism, but that�s the reality of the United States. You can�t just marginalize these people and their futures by dooming them to second-rate access to resources. I mean, you can, but then you have to deal with endemic poverty, high rates of drug use, domestic violence, and any number of other social problems.

He is particularly concerned about rural Hispanics.

I am, of course, in the middle of this. I am a broadband using geek living in rural America. So naturally, I am sympathetic to the idea that the “last 5%” should get broadband. I am not presently in the last 5%, but I’m close enough to it that we would have to be careful about where we buy a home. I’ve already let it be known that broadband is not optional. But I am a computer geek. A lot of people out here can live with cut-rate connectivity. There’s nowhere in the country (or the lower 48, anyway) that you can’t get something, even if it’s satellite. Satellite might not be good enough for me, but I am not a typical case. The degree to which the rest of the country should bend over backwards for its most rural brethren is limited.

It leads to projects like this, where millions was spent on areas with 35k homes, of which 30k already had fixed broadband service. Over 90% of the remaining 5k had 3G availability, which isn’t ideal but is still something. I would be surprised if satellite were not an option for the remaining 500 houses. At some point, I think you have to say “good enough” and move on.

On the other hand, Friedman’s suggestion about the top 5% leaves me cold. Namely because we want a degree of universality to our service. Even if some get left behind, web site developers and content deliverers (like Netflix, Hulu, etc.) need to have some idea of the sorts of speeds that people are going to get. If you plug in Silicon Valley, and their speeds are significantly faster than everyone else (who isn’t in the top 5%, that is), they will be developing things for those speeds. This is already a problem, with inadequate buffering on the unjustified beliefs that everyman’s delivery speeds are faster than they are.

In terms of Internet, what I would very much prefer over raising speed caps is raising speed reliability. The other day I was at a coffee shop wherein all of the comments I wanted to leave at blogs had to be emailed to my cell phone, where I could then post it using my phone. The main reason is that they (I believe) have to dedicate so much of their bandwidth to downloading and so little to uploading, that the latter just became impossible. This is at a hot spot. This is where we really need improvement before we’re worried about the top 5% (or, for that matter, the left behind 5%).

Doc Searles writes:

There are dozens of wi-fi hot spots showing up on our lists, but all of them are closed. If this were eight years ago, at least half of them would be open, but the popular default in the world is now for closed hot spots, so those are also not options.

I�m sure in the long run The Market will fix this, but meanwhile �The Cloud�s� promise and reality are way out of sync. Since most of The Market outside our homes is comprised of pay services over wi-fi and cellular data systems are sure to suffer traffic jams as more of our lives require tethering to data banks and services in clouds, I�m not holding my breath for ease in the short run.

Remember �the information superhighway�? Would be nice to have that now.

I’ve written here and there about why I am skeptical of cloud computing. Namely, for cloud computing to really work, we have to be able to reliably access the Internet, and have a solid connection, wherever we go. And it needs to be free or a part of a ubiquitous subscription service. As long as we have to ask ourselves whether it’s worth it to get a solid and stable Internet connection in some place or another, cloud computing won’t work. Because the alternative is installed software. And you know what? That’s on my computer wherever I go. A file locker that can be accessed anywhere would be helpful, but even then it’s going to have to be a synchonization thing rather than a working on it from wherever thing. I open it and download it to the laptop, and as soon as I’m done with it, or the first time I am connected to the Internet again after it’s done, it uploads to the central server in North Carolina or wherever.

I am the first person that should be using cloud computing. I have an obscene number of computers and laptops. It’s a real pain to know that a file exists somewhere and then have to figure out which of the four likely places it is. But I will take that, every time, over being able to work on something only until the Internet connection slows to a crawl or stops.

This isn’t an appeal for some large government program that will assure Internet access anywhere and everywhere. Rather, it’s saying that unless we have such a program (whether supplied by the market or the government), it’s going to make more sense to work on files locally rather than remotely.

-{via Dustbury}-

I haven’t made the complete transition to Windows 7 yet. All of my secondary computers are still on XP (or, in two cases, Vista). When you do a search on XP, there’s a little dog that appears in the lower left-hand corner. You can make it to tricks. The problem with this digital dog is that it makes noise (some scratching sound). I don’t mind the dog, but the noise is irritating. But to get rid of the noise, you have to get rid of the dog. Right-click and tell it to take a hike and it trots away.

I feel the slightest bit bad about telling a digital dog to take a hike.

I feel ridiculously dumb for that sentiment.

—

Many years ago - maybe it’s till around - there was an application you could buy to raise a digital dog on your computer. My then-girlfriend Julianne had some. If you didn’t play with it often enough, it’d get droopy and sad. Sometimes it’d leave a dump on your screen. Julie bought me the program. I played with it a little bit, but it got old and only served to remind me that I didn’t have a real dog (mine had died not too long before). And I hated the notion that a digital dog required my attention or it would get pouty.

This is, of course, Zynga’s business model. Making you feel bad for letting pointless digital things languish. I guess, despite the stupid little feel-bad for telling the searchdog to leave, I am relatively immune.

My real dog would say that I am too immune to letting her languish.

—

Once upon a time, it was part of my job description to keep the office’s network up and running. It was an irritating part of my job. Not the least of which because I was having to look after the computing habits of a bunch of post-middle aged women who didn’t know the first thing about computers. One of them would say “Hey, Will. You need to see this!” so that she could show me something cute that the Office Help paperclip did. That was the second most annoying of all.

(The most annoying was conflating “I can’t find the database” (which I accidentally deleted the shortcut to) to “The database has been deleted.”)

According to the EFF, CNET has not been living up to its standards with regard to bundled ware:

The blogosphere has been buzzing about revelations that CNET�s Download.com site has been embedding adware into the install process for all kinds of software, including open source software like NMAP. For the unwary, some of the ads could have been read to suggest accepting the advertised service (e.g., the Babylon translation tool bar) was part of the installation process. Users who weren�t paying attention may also have clicked �accept� simply by accident. In either event, after their next restart, they would have been surprised to find their settings had been changed, new tool bars installed, etc. Gordon Lyon, the developer who first called public attention to Download.com’s practices, found a particularly egregious example last night: a bundled ad for �Drop Down Deals,� an app that, once installed, spies on your web traffic and pops up ads when you visit some sites. It�s hard to imagine that many users would choose that app on purpose.

This practice is not only deceptive, it directly contradicts Download.com�s stated policy, which promises users that it has �zero tolerance� for bundled adware and that �when it comes to fighting unwanted adware . . . Download.com has always been in your corner.� Indeed, that promise was one reason users and developers had come to trust Download.com as a reliable source.

CNet was really a pioneer in anti-bundling efforts. I remember when they first announced that they were no longer going to be accepting anything that relied on adware being bundled in. It was a questionable decision because some people (like me) wondered how these freeware providers were going to be able to make money. But it worked out splendidly because the freeware kept on coming and they either made money by having a beefier version that you had to pay for or they didn’t care that they weren’t making money.

I am increasingly loathed to pay for software. It’s not that I can’t afford it. It’s not just that there are free alternatives most of the time (this is necessary, but not sufficient - sometimes the paid stuff is really better). Rather, it’s because I don’t want to have to buy the product several times over. I keep a fleet of four operational desktops and regularly use about four laptops. I seek for a degree of consistency for what’s installed on them. I never really know, when I purchase software, whether I can install it on all my computers or only a limited number. Even when it starts off the first way, sometimes it converts to the latter. Then, further, I don’t know if when I upgrade to Windows Vista or Windows 7 whether it will continue to work or if I will have to buy it all over again.

With free software, I don’t have to worry about it. I can install my free version of TeraCopy anywhere I choose. Or OpenOffice/LibreOffice.

The major exception to all of this is Windows itself. If I ever make the transition to Linux, it’s not because I can’t stand spending $150 on an operating system. Rather, it’s because I can’t stand it when I want to do an F&R, can’t, and have to go to the illegitimate well I should be able to avoid buy paying for the license in the first place.

To bring this back to the subject at hand, what CNet’s policy normalized was making free software less hassletastic than the paid alternative. Even though they seem to be ignoring their policy, they normalized it so that I don’t have to just assume that any free software I get has something bad bundled in with it.

Apparently, someone reached my original Trumanverse map by googling images for “map of the usa with state names”.

Relatedly, I wrote this on LoOG yesterday:

With Wikipedia down, Timothy Lee points out that this could be Wikipedia-alternative Citizendium’s chance to shine. I tried to use it, but it’s pretty… thin. Personally, I thought that this was Uncyclopedia’s turn at the wheel. They joined the blackout, though. Shame. That would have made for some awesome term papers.

Much of last week was spent on computer stuff. It was a bad week, some of it my own fault and some of it not. The main goals were to (1) assemble and get a new PC up and running and (2) install a new SSD hard drive on one of the laptops. Though assembling a PC can be fraught with hazard and it’s a pain to go through and reinstall everything, it all should have been pretty straightforward. But nothing that was supposed to go right went right.

I expected that I might order a wrong part due to carelessness, or that I might forget to plug something in and freak out when the computer doesn’t boot like it should, but neither of these things happened.

Instead, things started happening everywhere else in the constellation. The laptop that was plugged in to the TV downstairs stopped working. The laptop I assigned to replace it wouldn’t do the one and only thing I really needed it to do: play video. So the laptop I had to use was the one I wanted to put the new hard drive in. So before I could get to that, I had to format and restore the one that wouldn’t play video (the typical things, such as installing new codecs and drivers, didn’t work). Then, after having taken the PC I am replacing apart, one of my other PCs started acting funky and was no longer reliable. That meant placing a last minute order for a new power supply as I had isolated that to be the problem.

Everything with the new PC worked except for the high-falutin’ video card. Except, it being a new PC, I didn’t know the video card was the problem. So I had to run all sorts of tests to isolate that as the problem. In my investigations, I discovered that the video card wouldn’t work through a DVI-VGA adapter, which meant that even if it did work, it wouldn’t do what I needed it to do without a new monitor and KVM switch. But even accounting for that, the card still didn’t work. I called tech support and was on hold for four hours before giving up, leading me to question their “24/7 commitment to customer support.”

Then, the power supply I ordered didn’t fit into the machine I ordered it for. It was the right size, so it wasn’t an obvious mistake on my part. However, to get to the place where there was room for it, I had to go through a place where there wasn’t enough room to get it through. There may be a way to remove one of the offending bars, but it’s going to be a pain.

Note, while video cards and power supplies can be cheap, these weren’t. They cost $110 and $150 respectively. Oh, and I discovered that because of the pure awesomeness of the motherboard I got, having a 4-slot video card wasn’t even necessary because the mobo would let me use the PCIE card in conjunction with the mobo card.

So then on to the laptops. The F&R on the video-problemed laptop went smoothly until I installed a piece of “updater software” that updated everything from “working” to “not working”, forcing me to start again from stratch.

And the new SSD HD didn’t work. It took me several hours to figure that out (to rule out the possibility that the problem could be anything else).

Then, out of nowhere, the initial laptop that failed causing me to play the 3-card monty with my laptops suddenly started working perfectly again. I mean, a working laptop is better than a non-working laptop, but it rendered a lot of what I had been working on unnecessarily.

With the exception of a desktop sitting on the sidelines for lack of a power supply, and the inability to see video on one of my other desktops (I can still access it through Remote Desktop), things are working okay.

It does make me wonder a little - only a little - if there isn’t something to the whole notion of having “a computer” instead of “thirteen computers.”

On the other hand, throughout all of this I never lacked for a computer no matter what I did. Even on the PC downstairs, if I had really been adamant I could have hooked the Pentium Vista computer up and still been able to watch something. So it was and does remain nice that short of a nuclear bomb, I always have something.

Courtesy of my red-headed step-computer:

Issue

NTLDR is Missing.
Related errors

Below are the full error messages that may be seen when the computer is booting.

NTLDR is Missing
Press any key to restart

Boot: Couldn’t find NTLDR
Please insert another disk

NTLDR is missing
Press Ctrl Alt Del to Restart
Causes

Computer is booting from a non-bootable source.
Computer hard disk drive is not properly setup in BIOS.
Corrupt NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM file.
Misconfiguration with the boot.ini file.
Attempting to upgrade from a Windows 95, 98, or ME computer that is using FAT32.
New hard disk drive being added.
Corrupt boot sector / master boot record.
Seriously corrupted version of Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
Loose or Faulty IDE/EIDE hard disk drive cable.
Failing to enable USB keyboard support in the BIOS.

When the computer started malfunctioning, I feared it would be something easy to fix. Which is an odd thing to think, when I have spent twenty hours or so over the last week or two trying to get the computer back up and running. I had to do a complete Format & Restore because under the previous installation, tasks that should take seconds were taking minutes. I had hoped, upon reinstallation of Windows, that the problem would come right back.

Because then I would be done. Done, done, done.

This computer has been a pain since I very first got it. It’s required more attention than all my other computers combined. It had shifted from my second machine to my fourth by the end of its fourth year, passed up by computers five years older than it that had the virtue of actually doing what it was supposed to do (albeit at a considerably slower pace). But it never gave me an excuse to just junk it. Like the slowest kid in the classroom, I simply gave it the most rudimentary assignments with high malfunction thresholds (so if it locked up or something, it wouldn’t be a big deal).

But now it’s dead. Dead, dead, dead.

I mean, I could go through all of the various things, test this and that, and isolate the precise problem. And I confess a little piece of me is tempted. Just to get it back up and running. But perhaps the greatest irony in all of this is that I was going to need to permanently sideline it anyway. I’m building a new computer. The computer to end all computers (until it’s obsolete, of course). And that made for five computers in a KVM switch with only four slots. Once I got Windows reinstalled, the plan was to just stick it in a closet, not touch it again, and hope that it gets demolished in the next move.

In retrospect, I realize that this is kind of irrational. Not the least of which because, by salvaging the parts that excludes the motherboard, I will be saving about $300 on the new computer. And taking the slightest step back, I realize that the motherboard-processor aren’t worth a fifth of that, which is what I would effectively be paying to keep this computer operational, unplugged, sitting in a closet and waiting to die.

Of course, the thought occurs to me that I am 95% sure that the problem is the motherboard. I think the processor is fine. If I were to just replace the motherboard, it would probably be as good as…

Therein my madness lies. Not this time, though.

If I were really sincere, I would be looking at the computers I got in 2001 and junking those rather than going to the trouble of replacing the fan on the one that needs that and the case on the one that needs that.

I’m not quite that sincere at this juncture.

My sister-in-law recently asked me for some advice on a new laptop that she wants to get. I’ve decided to generalize it here for any of you all that are seeking to get a laptop.

As people who know me know, I am a Thinkpad guy. And so, if you’re looking for a cheap PC, I am not your guy. My advice would actually be to buy a used PC of a good make and model (maybe I will do a separate post on that). Most of the advice I give here is not limited to Thinkpads, though. The options on Dell Latitudes E’s are very similar. Notably, LatE’s are a part of Dell’s business line. That is perhaps my first piece of advice: Go with a business-grade laptop, unless you are on a serious budget or want a gaming machine. The main reason being that more care is put into quality of business laptops. Why? Because when they sell to a business, there is a strong likelihood that the customer will be buying another laptop. Customer satisfaction matters more. When selling discount laptops, they know that either (a) the person won’t be in the market for a few years if their laptop lasts, and (b) they’re looking at price-points and are less likely to be loyal customers the way businesses are (or are at least more likely to be.

Outside of Lenovo, I have generally heard good things about Asus, though I have never owned one. Dell’s business lineup is probably okay, as well. I’ve heard good things about Toshiba and Sony, though my experiences with both have been abysmal (quite possibly because I went with the consumer line). I’d be wary about Gateway, too. Truth be told, though, a lot of the laptops are built in the same place with similar or the same parts. The difference is often going to be how much care they put into parts. That’s why I recommend business line machines, where they are likely to put more care. Though I wouldn’t bet my purchase on it, what is true of Dell (which at least used to be notorious for cutting corners) is probably true of HP, Gateway, and the others. Increasingly, Lenovo is releasing cheaper models. Though they may be quite good, I am going to steer you away from that, as well.

Model:

For Thinkpads, I most strongly endorse the T-Series. I’ve never had a bad one, and I’ve owned more than half a dozen. Since they canceled the R-Series, I’ve more or less committed to T’s. The only one I ever had that wasn’t an T or an R was an X60, which quite frankly was a disappointment. The current model for Thinkpad T’s are the T420, T420S, and T520. The T420S are stock machines, meaning that there won’t be much customizing involved. The T420 has a 14″ screen and T520 has a 15″ screen. So the first decision is what size monitor you want. This is, of course, a personal decision. Get what you want.

Processor:

The processor is the main driver of everything. That makes it sound important, and it’s not *unimportant*, but processors have become so good over the years that it’s hard to go wrong. Since the conversion from Windows XP to Windows 7, though, this is less the case than it used to be. Windows 7 requires more in the way of resources and so you might struggle more than with a Windows XP machine with what used to be lower-end processors (excepting netbook processors, which can struggle with anything). This is the only reason I would steer anyone away from an Intel Core i3 processor. As more and more gets installed, it’s likely to struggle more and more.

When it comes to processors, the main thing you want to ask yourself is what you plan to be doing with it. If you’re only going to be using office software, email, and a browser, you don’t need much. The only exception is if you, like me, tend to keep a bazillion browser tabs open at once. Even then, I might suggest focusing more on RAM than on processor power. An i7 processor is still pricey at this point, so I wouldn’t get it unless you’re looking at a really good deal or plan on doing intense tasks. The other reason to consider it is if you want a quad-core processor. Quad-core processors can be useful to prevent overloading the CPU. With more flexibility, they generally keep responding even when your computer is hard at work. With single-core or dual-core processors, I occasionally have to killtask an overloaded Firefox. I’ve never had to do that on my quad-core processor. It’s also generally the case that newer processors will remain useful longer.

But the sweet spot right now is the Core i5, and for most people I think you would be okay going with a lower-end i5. In my experience, it tends to be processor model rather than hard speed that dates a processor. For instance, my lower-end Pentium and upper-end Pentium both became useless at about the same time. Ditto for the Pentium II. Speed is speed, and it’s nice. Pay for it if you want it. But this is a corner you can more easily cut.

Most Thinkpads come with Intel processors, though some will offer AMD. There is nothing wrong with AMD processors. For desktops, I almost always go with AMD. For laptops, however, since IBM and Lenovo have so long relied on Intel, I don’t have much in the way of good advice as to individual processor models. Phenom generally beats Athlon (and is more likely to come with more processors), and, be wary of anything that has a number with an “e” at the end of it (ie Athlon II 245e). AMD used to be a cost-cutting alternative to Intel without sacrificing performance, though more recently Intel has gotten their act together and done a better job of justifying the price premium.

Operating System:

I always go with Windows 7 Professional (and Windows XP Professional before that). However, Windows 7 Home Premium is going to be fine for most people who don’t tinker like I do. The main reason to consider going with Professional is if you want to be able to run programs in XP mode or the Backup and Restore. I’ve personally never used either; I just like to know that they are there.

I would go with Home Premium as a good way to save money by sacrificing features you probably won’t need if you’re not a geek. The Thinkpad T-Series doesn’t offer anything less, but if you do run across something that offers less, don’t do it. Just trust me on that. You never know what these lesser versions can’t do until you need to do it.

If for some bizarre reason you are buying a laptop with Vista on it (first, I would question why I am buying this particular laptop…), go with the 32-bit version. My experiences with the 64-bit version cost me a lot of headaches. With Windows 7, go with the 64-bit version. The transition is going in that general direction and I fear that 32-bit will rot faster. I’ve noticed no difference in terms of reliability. Also, 64-bit allows for more RAM. I rarely see the 32-bit version advertised anymore.

Display Type:

My philosophy is “the higher the resolution the better.” The resolution is the pixel-width by the pixel-height. So 1366x768 means that you have 1366 pixels wide and 768 pixels of height. The main reason that I prefer higher resolutions is for things like spreadsheets and databases. It also allows for you to use splitscreen and more easily look at more windows at once. For instance, right now, on the left side of my monitor is the Lenovo customization page in the browser and I am typing this on the right. You can do this with less resolution, but it’s more cluttered. (Also, if you care, 1600x900 looks nice and in my opinion 1366x768 does not.)

However, this is something that a lot of people don’t care about. Plus, lower-resolution notebook monitors tend to be more reliable. So if you don’t really multitask and want to save a bit of money, here is a place you can do that. Also, while higher resolution looks nicer, it can also be a little harder on the eyes because the text is smaller (albeit much more clear).

I recommend 1600x900 if you have a 14″ monitor. Either 1600x900 or 1920x1080 should be fine for 15″. But if the price differential ($50 between 1366x768 to 1600x900) puts you in a pinch, it’s not hugely important and here is a corner you can feel perfectly okay cutting.

System Graphics:

Unless you intend on doing graphic-intensive stuff, the standard (usually something like “Intel HD Graphics 3000″ or will contain the word “Integrated” and NOT the word Discrete) should be fine provided that you get enough RAM (see below). Some models (Thinkpad or not) will only list one or the other.

Total Memory (RAM):

Do not, under any circumstances, go with less than 4GB. Do not. Under any circumstances. I would recommend 6 or 8. My laptop has 6. I intended to upgrade to 8, but got an especially good deal on 6. It’s been acceptable, though I may still upgrade to 8. I think you would be fine with 6.

Memory remains one of the most important and often overlooked aspects of a computer. With too little RAM, it doesn’t matter how fast your processor is because the bottleneck will be swapping information back and forth from the hard drive. Cut corners on the processor (within reason). Cut corners on video, or audio. Do not cut corners on RAM.

The most miserable time using a computer (except when it’s broken) is when it is having to swap data from the memory to the hard drive and when the CPU is overloaded. If you’re buying a new computer, you don’t have to worry about the second part. The more RAM you buy, the less you have to worry about the former.

Pointing device:

A touchpad is a little pad below the keyboard that you drag your finger across or gesture to move the pointer. A trackpoint (also known as an eraserhead or a combo word referencing a part of the female anatomy) is a little stick that points out of the keyboard with a hat that looks like a pencil eraser. Almost all Thinkpads will come with both. Almost all non-Thinkpads will only come with a touchpad.

Hard drive:

Thinkpads generally come with 500GB and that is more than sufficient space. There is also something called a Solid State Drive. These are smaller and more expensive, so why get it? Because it’s faster. When a computer has to move data from the hard drive to the RAM, that immediately becomes the system’s bottleneck. With SSD, the bottleneck just became a lot larger. I won’t say that it makes RAM a non-issue, but it greatly mitigates the effects of RAM overload when it does occur.

Also, having an SSD means that boot-up will be much faster. I upgraded an old, struggling machine with an SSD drive and boot-up went from taking six minutes to taking under sixty seconds.

I love SSDs, but if you have a tight budget, I would go with the standard hard drive for now and just stock up on RAM.

Expansion slots (of the Cardreader variety):

They’re nice to have, but far from a necessity. Thinkpads often come with them standard. Sometimes there is a “smart card reader” option. Ignore it.

Battery:

Whether to upgrade to a 9-cell depends on how often you want to use it without it being plugged in. If you want to be as wireless as possible, get it (I always do). But it’s not a necessity. You can always get a separate 9-cell later when you have more money. It can be helpful to have more than one battery.

One thing to keep in mind: On Thinkpads, at least, 9-cell batteries protrude from the laptop. So it makes it less likely to fit in a tighter carrying case and can be awkward-looking. This never bothered me, but I could see it bothering some people aesthetically.

Bluetooth:

Sometimes they come with it, sometimes they don’t. Honestly, I wouldn’t worry about getting it. If you need bluetooth, you can always buy a dongle later.

Wireless (WiFi) adapter and Mobile Broadband:

Here you can get the standard, as long as it is G-band and N-band. All of the Thinkpad options are (I would suspect the same is true for non-Thinkpads, too). Do not worry about “3G capable” unless you plan on paying a monthly fee for 3G access.