What the E!

Just recently purchased a new Blackberry 8830 from Sprint, it wasn’t a pleasant experience, but I really enjoy the phone. Besides the applications and themes that came with the phone there are a number of nice addons that I have found to be helpful. Links to them are below.

Google Talk for Blackberry
http://www.blackberry.com/GoogleTalk

Google Maps
http://www.google.com/gmm

IPhone Theme
http://www.eveek.com/Themes_88/iPhone-Zen-88-OTA/com_plazmic_theme_iPhone_Zen_88.jad

Black/White Theme
http://www.eveek.com/Themes_88/Bubble-Black-88-Zen-OTA/com_plazmic_theme_Bubble_Black_Zen.jad

The above applications are free, but I also purchased Texas Holdem 2 from Magmic software. It is a great way to relax/pass sometime when you are stuck at the airport or in a taxi cab.

I will add software as a find it, but also feel free to post some links if you find good stuff to share.

I have been using a variety of open source and Linux tools for several years now. Created at least a dozen php/mysql/apache type applications. Currently use IPCop for my firewall, along with the Cop+ and CopFilter addons. Utilize FreeNas as my storage server and Ubuntu with rsnapshot running to backup my personnel information along with that of a couple of small businesses/non profits. I am writing this blog entry with another open source tool. We utilize Audacity to help record the sermons at church and manage the directory/membership with a piece of software called ChurchInfo.

Linux has always been advertised, or maybe more accurately stated “promoted” as the perfect tool for small business and in a number of instances it is. However, there are a few spots where Linux is a little weak. Maybe users can point out the areas where some other options are available or possibly even alternate commercial software can be used. The two areas that are a challenge are Domain Authentication/Profiles/User Management (aka MSFT Small Business Server) and RADIUS/WPA2 support.

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Background/Overview

I have been interested in using rsync and hard links to backup my computer system for a long time. Something very similar to Mike Rubel’s idea. I dabbled here and there for a long time, but never finished putting something together. Well I finally got it done. I used a number of different sites for help and even a couple posts to the Rsnapshot website.

The backup was for both my personal storage sites and for my church. The requirements were such:

1. Ability to backup systems located on a remote network over a non secure network
2. Automatic backup that requires no interaction/reminders from the user accept to leave the computer powered on!
3. Provide the ability to recover files that have changed over a long period of time (upwards of 12 months)
4. Minimize the amount of storage space needed to store files.
5. I would really like to have a push model from the client

A number of open source/very inexpensive software exists, but I ran into a few issues. All of the solutions that I looked at had one major issue, inability to operate over a remote network or they didn’t have a client for windows. If someone has a suggestion of something that might work please let me know.
I broke the solution down into 3 parts.

1. Server
2. Client
3. Connection and Automation

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Like to sue customers that aren’t really your customers? How about suing people for file sharing that don’t even have Internet access? What happens when you sue people based on data from a third part? What if that third party isnt all that interested in getting it right?

If you are having this problem then you are the RIAA. To solve this problem they have sent a letter to a number of ISPs to encourage them to save access/traffic logs so that there customers can settle for less money. Some how this doesnt inspire me to follow up.

If I am an ISP why would I keep logs (at great expense) just to make it easier for a group to sue my customers. As a consumer I would actually much prefer an ISP that doesn’t keep the records just to make the RIAA happy.

Actual Letter 

Recording Industry vs The People

Many of us have waited a long time for the new version of the Windows, Vista or maybe even a few bug fixes that might be found in Office 2007.  We may wonder why the company with one of the largest software development staff in the world cant get anything done.  A former MS employee posts there comment in the link below describing the large, large number of staffers to just to shutdown the machine, http://www.drizzle.com/~lettvin/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html

Then after all the hard work described above, Joel Spolsky, a  software developer who write’s the Joel on Software blog responds with some very forthright criticism of the end result.  http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html

While the former MS employee hopes that his group was an outlier in the MS development process, what are the chances that it was even worse in the more critical areas?  If you have 3, 4, and 5 different groups working on the same feature with no one person in charge who has a keen interest in the overall success of the product, what can you except.