It seems to be a close race in the United States between the music industry (via RIAA), the movie industry and the phone companies for the title of “What Company Despises Their Users The Most.” The movie industry has done everything it can to prevent new technologies from being used/developed/marketed at all. The most famous of these was the fight against VHS, which they lost. Just a few years later, the movie rental business started bringing in boatloads of cash for them. Now, they are suing people who download their movies before they can buy them – taking them to court, and making sure the people will never have the free cash again to see a movie in the theater.

The music industry has been very public with their distrust and disregard for their customers – they started suing individuals a long time before anyone else got into that game. They have also fought almost all new media formats that have eventually helped their sales and profit numbers, and insist on draconian DRM whenever they can. They have recently been mulling over trying to get Congress to force portable media devices to include FM radios, and they have managed to make Federal Education funding contingent on university staff acting as copyright police. As if the higher education system needs even less funding and more work to do these days.

However, the worst segment belongs to the phone companies. Not only do they do anything possible to lock you into two-year agreements with them, they find any way they can to bill you exorbitant rates. It costs four times more to send data from your phone than it does to send data from Hubble Space Telescope. If you use your charged-per-kilobit internet service on your laptop as well as your phone, be prepared to pay extra, as “you’re going to use more data so the price is based on the value that will be delivered.”

At least the phone companies pretend not to hate their customers. Verizon is returning $90 million dollars to customers for “inadvertent” data charges – the charges that are racked up every time a non-smart phone without a data plan tries to use the data networks. Usually by users hitting the web-browser button by mistake – the button you can’t disable or reprogram. I’m surprised that Verizon is doing this – this is the company that locks down their phones so you can’t use Bluetooth to sync your AddressBook, all to prevent you from downloading ringtones from your computer, and not their paid service. They are handing over $90 million dollars… oh, wait… because the FCC is pressuring them to do it.

Nevermind. They hate us, and everything about us, especially the fact that we don’t just sign our entire paychecks over at the start of every month.

It looks like Shufflegazine is dead:

`It looks like Shufflegazine is dead:

`

It’s now a photoblog. I guess I won’t have a chance to archive some of the content I wrote (and foolishly didn’t backup), nor will I be able to point people to the blog when I reference it on LinkedIn or on my résumé. I wish all the former staff – especially the former editor – good luck and godspeed.

I really, really need to get off of 1and1 Web Hosting. These guys are either playing amateur hour something fierce, or they think their customers are really stupid. To make a long story short, I’ve been looking for a hosting provider that will promise that I can run SVN without having to give out SSH logins to the box. You know, SVN over HTTPS, the it was intended to run. They are either so expensive I would rather just get a VM, or they won’t commit, which means they don’t offer what I want. Fine.

Today I noticed that 1and1 was advertising Git support. (Look under the “core features” section). Much like SVN, Git is a version control system, but it’s designed from the ground up to be distributed and decentralized, so unlike SVN, it doesn’t have a need for a central server.

So, I log into my 1and1 package, setup a test repository, and quickly discover that you have to use SSH to use git in any form or fashion. And 1and1 only provides a single SSH account for your system. Which means to use a distributed – that is shared version control system, you have to use the single SSH account…

Stupid is as stupid does. What I’m wondering is why I’m still using them.

The one thing I had removed from the original author’s implementation of the foursquare perl script was the idea of a random delay before posting. On further reflection, this sounded like a good idea, so I’ve added it to the code. New version: <4sq.b2.txt>.

Yes, I need to get this into version control. I know.

It looks like my replaced video card wasn’t a fluke – Apple is now voluntarily replacing the cards if they match a specific serial number range. The real question comes in two parts – a number of people who had their cards replaced when I was reading about this issue over a year ago got cards of the same vintage back. So, part 1) Did I get a new, unaffected card? 2) If I got a second defective card, can I get a third?

It’s probably also time to pull the system apart and blow it out for dust and the like. I do wish Apple would include vent/fan/airflow filters as part of the professional lineup. Would be a nice gesture to people who spend the big bucks and buy the high end.

I’ve enabled OpenID logins on this blog – which means you can use any account that provides an OpenID to make comments, etc. I’ve also linked my primary OpenID account to my admin login – so I can do SSO most of the time, but still have a strong local password in case I need it. It’s incredibly easy, and it’s one less password for me (and anyone else here) to remember.

The problem with toddlers is they learn how to push buttons. Like the power button on your fileserver. How do you know it’s them? They push it five times in a row, in as many seconds.

`The problem with toddlers is they learn how to push buttons. Like the power button on your fileserver. How do you know it’s them? They push it five times in a row, in as many seconds.

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