BitsOfMyMind

My mind is almost set on getting rid of my Mac, there are just a few bits here and there I need to get over with. I got convinced by the viral Windows 7 campaign and will be swi… No, I will actually start using Linux as my desktop OS. It have been soliciting its services for quite a while on a bunch of servers and only now have I got to fully appreciate its power and architecture. So much that it has lately become overly tempting to make the plunge. In fact, I had been contemplating this as a necessary outcome only a few months after purchasing that 2400 CDN$ Macbook Pro and cementing my switch from Windows XP to *nix only. Yes, Mac OS X is a great OS, but I knew deep down that I would get over all its bells and whistles pretty soon; what really amazed me was its Unix core and that my next machine would not be a Mac but something with Linux on it.

Mac OS X is kind of like a pretty but stupid girlfriend. When the charm dissipates, all that is left is a hollow shell of a human. Linux, on the . . . → Read More: Farewell Mac

I recently did a bit of thinking about the relation between consciousness and evolution and how both of them are certainly the main causes of the human self-importance syndrome, or a necessary bias towards what favors us. I got this idea from this TED talk, which is very well worth taking 15 minutes to listen to for it is a very good lesson in humility.

We all pride ourselves of being conscious creatures. It is what seems to differentiate us the most from other animals and is pretty much the only advantage we have over them; a human without his intelligence is defenseless against nature and certainly near the bottom end of the food chain. Some may think this mental capacity was a gift of some higher being but this is entirely debatable and completely biased since as sole owners of consciousness, we find ourselves incapable of making an objective statement about it. If it wasn’t the case, then anything could claim consciousness but thanks to reason and logic, we know the answer cannot come from us but from observation so we should try adopting an outsider’s perspective if we wish to find a reasonable explanation.

If we look in other living . . . → Read More: Tricked by consciousness

Twitter describes itself as a micro-blogging service, which tends to be a bit misleading in my opinion. To me, a blog is (amongst other things) a personal journal with which you can share anything, from emotions to ideas. I guess I could use Twitter for that purpose, but the shortness of the tweets (140 letters limit) gives me the impression it is better suited for advertisement and petty conversations. 

As I mentionned in a previous post, I really like what I write to remain pertinent troughout time and Twitter just drops the ball on this; I do not care about my opinion of the weather a few months ago (people tweet about this a lot it seems(and it’s the alma matter of office conversations)). There is no blogging whatsoever involved in twittering my state, or else, I should be able to consider all the content that sits in /var/log (on unix machines) to be blogging.

A blog post gives me the opportunity to sit back and think about specific events, thoughts or places that marked an otherwise normal day; its intellectual retrospection and makes me a better individual. On top of . . . → Read More: Twitter is just a cacophony

A few days ago, I got fed up with the firmware of my MP3 player (Sansa e250) acting all quirky and refusing to mount under Linux 90% of the time. I searched the Web for an alternative solution, stumbled on RockBox and promptly installed it. There are plenty of RockBox reviews around the web so it would be pointless to give my own or get into writing a tutorial, but I must say that if you even feel slightly dissatisfied of your MP3 player firmware or just want more, then you ought to give RockBox a try. Its obscenely easy to install and uninstall and using it for the first time felt like a breath of fresh air and even got me that strange empowering feeling I always get whenever I install Linux on a computer that did not know any better. It’s too bad there its not more publicized, people should be aware that alternatives exist even for their MP3 player firmware. RockBox comes with all options you could ever think of and supports a huge amount of formats. As an example, the speaker in my right ear bud is damaged and does not play as strong as the . . . → Read More: RockBox

Positivism is an euphemism for denial. Whenever something sucks and someone advise you to adopt a more positive oultook, they are actually saying that you should find ways to not think too much about the situation you are in. It undoubtebly has its uses because sometimes, shifting your thoughts around to see the big picture or in the long run can truly help one realize that the whole issue is not that bad. However, I believe that it is nowaday overused to hide away problems that we are too lazy to act upon or too scared to tackle. Let’s face it: when something sucks, the course of action should not be positivism but rather to ask ourselves the following question: can it be acted upon? Most of the time yes but when the answer is no, then it becomes advantageous to adopt a positive attitude.

I recently came about hearing in a radio program of a couple whose last child was mentally deficient and I was amazed by the mechanisms they had devised to not think too much about it. They lived on planet “Kelly”, which is a planet full of adventures and where every day was different. To make a long . . . → Read More: Positivism

However, I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Microsoft achieved dominance in the American market during the same period that bottled water became omnipresent. In both instances, clever marketing convinced the general public that something that was clean, safe and free was inferior to a product encased in plastic.

Source: A comment on a linuxtoday . . . → Read More: So true…

Finally, I can have ssh access from pretty much any computer on the planet! With *nix workstations, this usually was not a problem, but given the fact that the vast majority of personnal computers are running Windows and that their owners do not like you installing strange tools on them (putty), I was in need of finding a simple way to remotely log in to my server (without using telnet). After some searching, I found Ajaxterm, a simple python deamon that enables you to remotely login from a web browser using ajax. Its not ssh, but once I am in, I have the convenience of a fully working console from which I can use ssh.

Installation was easy as it was part of the Ubuntu package repository, but getting it to work securely over the Web was a bit more tricky as I had to cook up my own security certificates for an SSL access through apache.

As for the actual comfort of use, its limited in screen size and nowhere as fast as an actual ssh session but its convenience more than makes up for . . . → Read More: Ajaxterm

Yes, big time. I even suspect that within our lifetime, TV, radio, newspaper and magazine as we conceive them will be superceded by a web equivalent. But why do people keep mourning over this logical change? My theory is that they have mistakenly associated the service with its media. From a different perspective, if you come to think of it, what’s coming is just a change in the mean of delivery, not service. Paper, TV, radio are only physical mediums over which a service can be provided, and as a matter of fact, they are all interchangeable, albeit with many practical limitations: TV could be broadcasted on paper, where every page is a frame, newspapers could be carved on rock and so on. Thankfully, these services have all found a media that best represent the experience they want to convey, but to me TV on paper would still be TV ( in which case the word my need to be changed); simply because TV is script, strory, and images, newspaper is litterature and journalism and radio is music and discussion. In the future, the web might very well replace all those medias, but script, images, literature, journalism and discussions will . . . → Read More: Is the web threatening other forms of media?

On very rare cases one can safely predict the outcome of an open discussion, but sometimes, it is just too obvious. While there are many examples of this around the Interweb, two situations come to my mind. First, the fallacious debates that arise from any music video on YouTube, that always end up in insults, and second, the age old Mac vs. PC debate, on which this post will develop a bit.

Apple computers are overpriced products, there is no doubt about it, but I would go and affirm they are not grossly overpriced as many people like to suggest. Back when Macs were functioning on the PowerPC platform the story was a bit different but with Apple’s recent switch to x86, the fact that you can now build your own hackintosh for a fraction of the price (this is not legal however) and that the hardware contained in PCs and Macs is now identical from a compatibility point of view has given the PC proponents a lot more ammunition to throw at the Mac fans. I completely concede that if you look at a computer from a purely hardware aspect, you are much better off buying a bare bone deal of . . . → Read More: Apples and PCs

Whenever, I get in a new affectation, there is always a bunch of waivers and agreements to sign. They usually concern information systems or building security procedures, and exist just for the sake of putting the burden of responsibility on me in case I screw up or commit an infraction. I do not know about other administrative entities, but they are omnipresent where I work, and everybody that is about to spend his Monday to Friday here has to sign a few; its just part of the process. Now, these papers always end up with a statement in the form of ” I certify that I understand…” or “I am in full agreement with the policy…” after which there is a signature block that, when filled, turns the text into some sort of contract. For software, an End User License Agreement (EULA) is pretty much the same thing. Now, what if I tell the person handing me the next waiver that I do not agree and will not sign… With a software’s EULA, it just stops the installer but with an organisation, I wonder what will happen.

I guess its just like replying that your life sucks when someone asks you howdy, . . . → Read More: I do not agree