Just a Test

sga4u

Also, see:

Darrell Messer for President

Samir Vermani for President?

Gone

This blog is officially dead. I'll leave it up for a time, but you can visit my new (and still being built) site at http://www.pentrant.com.

Thanks for reading.

One Toolset to Rull Them All

All I want is a bit of standardization!

Let me elaborate. I'm a Windows "power user," both at home and at work. I dabble in Linux, and may even switch to it in due time. Hell, I'll probably buy a Mac one of these days.

My problem comes from the dispartity in these systems: when I'm at work and I want to write a document, I use MS Word XP. Here at home, I've taken to using MS Word 2003, and on Linux, I use OpenOffice 1.3. If I had a Mac, I'd probably use NeoOffice/J. Standardization? Sort of... I could pull the Windows machines onto OpenOffice, and leave the Mac alone (since NeoOffice is a sister to OpenOffice anyway). Of course, that wouldn't go over so well at work... and so, in one swoop, my dream is defunct.

So let's concentrate on the home, shall we? I'm feeling the need to get some good, cross platform software. Here are the things I use the most often:

-office platform
-software development tools
-web browser
-e-mail client
-calendar program
-Palm syncing software
-MP3 player
-AIM client
-CD/DVD burning software

A few of these are simple: OpenOffice for the office platform, Firefox for the web browser, Thunderbird for my email client. What of the others?

For software development, I've begun using Eclipse (over MS Visual Studio). As much as I actually do like Visual Studio (with the exception that it sometimes allows non-ANSI compliant behavior to pass through... making porting my stuff to Linux difficult), Eclipse seems to be the real, cross-platform solution I'm looking for. It's got a learning curve, to be sure, but I'm very near getting it to work right on Windows (Java works great, but getting C++ stuff to compile is a bit more difficult).

Calendaring is a bit of a stumbling block; I've been using Sunbird, which works well when it does work. Unfortunately, it's still very much an Alpha, with a version number of 0.2. It will suffice for now, but I'd like to see something that has better server support and less bugs all around.

Palm syncing is definitely difficult. The default Palm software isn't all that awesome, and kpilot for KDE is Linux-only. No good solutions there, yet.

Looking for the perfect MP3 player is also something of a problem. I'm currently using Windows Media Player 10 on Windows, and have bounced between several options on Linux (Amarok being the strongest option). No good cross-platform software seems to exist.

On the other had, good AIM clients abount. I choose GAIM for this purpose.

Lastly, media burning software. NeroExpress is wonderful for the PC, and I've yet to play with a Linux variant that's quite as good. No cross-platforming for me here, either.

So there you have it... only moderate portability for my apps. My goal is to one day have a nearly transparant computing experience, being able to use the apps of my choice wherever I want. That day has yet to come, and when it does, a huge victory for Linux will have been scored.

New Adventures in Hi-Fi

I've decided on a project to keep me busy this summer.

Not that I need one, but this just sounds neat, fun, cool, and whatnot.

Darrell and I are going to take the old PC in the Student Council office and turn it into an IVR/PBX phone system for the office using Asterisk. Asterisk is an Open Source PBX piece of software that runs on Linux and is both free as in speech and free as in beer.

I actually have no idea what kind of hardware I'm going to end up needing for this, but I'm hoping to not have to pay for it myself (since Darrell is the Student Council President, I'm hoping he can swing some funding our way). I'm hoping to be able to get away with using standard PC software and a modem or two, as we're not really planning to implement voice switching (i.e. redirecting to different phones), but instead want to implement voice mail boxes for each director (or something like that). Maybe we can even have the option to have the system call the director's cell phone if they're not in the office. The possibilities are limitless, and I think we can not only pull this off, but learn a lot and have some good old techie fun in the process.

I'll keep a log of what happens with this project in this space.

Ethically Challenged?

One of the classes I'm saddled with this semester is titled "Ethics and Law," intended to make us familiar with the particulars of the subject that Computer Engineers/IT Professionals may have to deal with at one point or another. The class alternates between very intersting and very boring, depending on which of the professors is giving the lecture (the class is taught by two lawyers; one is an engineer, the other isn't; an you guess which one is more boring?).

Tonight we had a guest speaker, a man from the tech industry who spoke about ethics. He said two things that stuck with me, the first of which being that in the Better Business Bureau's ratings of all 700 or so recognized industries, the IT industry was #20 when ranked by complaints issued. That's 20 out of 700, or in other words, we're in the top 3% when it comes to most complaints.

Does anyone else see a problem with this?!? I certainly do... this means that people in my field are ranked right up there with used car salesmen! My memories of when I first started at HMHS back this up, as many people were disillusioned by years of bad in-company tech support. Though I've done my best to turn this around, I'm not so sure that all my coleagues feel the same way.

So where does the problem lie? Our speaker tonight discussed a few possibilities, one of which fits into the car salesman model: ethically challenged individuals cutting corners, doing whatever they can get away with to make a quick buck. How much these people contribute to the overall problem is difficult to calculate, but I do know that according to a friend of mine (who works at a major company and shall remain anonymous for fear of recrimations... not that his boss reads this blog anyway, but you never know), probably 30% of his department (which includes tech support , web development, and application development) can be said to be making ethically poor decisions that have cost others in the company both time and money. I'm sure that this is the case elsewhere, as well... how accurate that percentage is surely varies from company to company.

Why do these people make these sort of decisions? Perhaps they really are corrupt or incompetent individuals, but it seems to me that there is a better answer. This brings me to the second item I took away from the lecture: our speaker told us that in his 23 years of experience in the field, he had found that IT professionals were nearly always bad at three things. First, they were bad at communicating; second, they were terrible at planning; third, they just didn't have a knack for solid business practices.

What does this mean in terms of ethics? It means that good people are making bad decisions, decisions that may or may not be violating ethical policies and procedures. The engineer who stops answering phone calls after his project goes awry is certainly making a mistake, but he is also making a poor ethical decision that will end up harming his customer. Likewise, it can be unethical to go into a project without the proper planning or a nicely hammered out contract. Communication and planning failures can occur on many levels, especially when discussing the goals and objectives of a project. In many cases, incompetence and a failure in these three areas can cost a company and their consumers big money; failing to train employees in how to act with regard to these areas constitutes a breach of ethics for the employer, just as the employee is responsible for the ethics of his own actions.

This is why this industry has such a complaint rate; members of the field are simply not responding to these and other failings in a way that satisfies not only the customer, but also in a way that is ethically enriched. Being honest with people and giving one's best effort goes a long way towards this, and failing in these areas is most certaily a breach of ethics.

There is a ray of hope through these gloomy figures: as pointed out by our speaker, amid such problems, it is not very difficult to be *different*. To stand out among competitors requires standing above them, and if they all tend to be corrupt and dishonest, the honest business can easily rise above.

Keep this in mind in your dealings with your customers, and you will find that they will not only be pleased, but that they will keep coming back.

A Chink in their Armor

This past Tuesday (3/29/05), MGM v. Grokster went before the Supreme Court. Of all technology cases in the last twenty years, this looks to be the most important, having wide-ranging effects ranging from partial Hollywood control of all new technology inventions to increased corporate liability for illegal use of the products by consumers.

Interestingly enough, in MGM's argument to the Justices, they admitted that ripping media to one's hard drive for storage was legal. While this may seem common sense to some, it runs counter to the logic of some recording companies who put copy protection on their music discs. It seems that the industry is willing to give a bit in order to win their battle, but should Grokster win, this could turn out to be a freebie.

Other news from the courtroom, posted by the EFF:

"Over and over, the justices hammered the lawyer for the RIAA and MPAA with questions about the potential impact of a ruling in their favor against small inventors -- the "guy in the garage" as Justice David Souter put it. Justice Stephen Breyer also grilled MGM's attorney about whether lawyers who advise technologists -- for example, the inventor of the next iPod -- could give any assurance at all to their clients under MGM's rule that he would not be sued at some point down the road for copyright infringement.

Justice Scalia was also skeptical of the plaintiffs' arguments, questioning whether their proposed "primary use" test made any sense, given that the balance of lawful versus unlawful uses of technology are constantly changing."

Here's hoping that the justices will decide in the favor of the tech industry, rather than bowing to corporate pressure. More on this story as it presents itself.

Surrounded by Technology

First Post!

Or as Fark.com would put it, First Boobies! ;-)

This is an experiment, a way to separate the professional/hobbyist side of myself from whatever it is that is represented over there at my original blog.

A little introduction for those who may not know me. My name is Tony Harper, and I am a Junior Computer Engineering/Computer Science major and the University of Louisville's Speed School of Engineering. I work in the Technical Support group at Humana Military Healthcare Services, doing mostly desktop break/fix work. At home, I am obsessed with technology, specializing in older x86 hardware, alternative operating systems, and custom PC setup. I also do a bit of programming, mostly for class, but sometimes I'll do some for myself when I need to. I hold the posisition of Director of Administration in the Speed School Student Council, and as such have been made to do a bit of web design; you can check out the site I'm maintaining at speedcouncil.org.

And yes, I am indeed surrounded by technology. I'm typing this on my desktop PC, a gaming machine in a giant Antec server case. It has dual monitors (they come in handy more than you'd expect!) and 5.1 surround sound attached. Underneath the desk are twin HP Vectra VEi7 PCs (Early Celerons, around 500 Mhz), one running Suse Linux 8.2 and acting as a software development machine, the other running MS-DOS 7.1 and serving as a nostalgic gaming machine. To my left is a HP Laserjet 4 printer, which serves myself and one of my roommates.

The technology does not stop there -- I have a cell phone in my pocket, and my Creative Nomad Zen MP3 player rarely leaves my sight. In my basement is a server that I've never turned on (I'm getting to it!), and I also built a failed Home Theater PC that will soon become my primary desktop system. Shipping to me are a Palm Tungsten C PDA and a TrendNet Wireless Ethernet bridge.

There's the proof that I'm truly an addict. I get paid to work with technology, but that's not really all that fun; my true fun comes from tweaking and twiddling hardware and software to produce the results I really want. But beyond that, I tend to be an active scholar and speculator on the tech industry, so come along as I make my predictions and criticisms on the things that are shaping our lives (and will be for years to come).