People who know me and talk with me, know I’ve been making this claim for years. That means that this post has been years in the making. That is true both in terms of the argument I’m about to make and in the actions Microsoft has taken to create the situation. The reality is that if I had made this argument ten years ago, most people would’ve laughed and stopped reading by the end of the first paragraph. ...
This post is really going to be just a random collection of random updates and thoughts. If you are looking for an overarching theme, I’m sorry to disappoint but there isn’t one. Nevertheless, this might be worth reading anyway. Your call. So yesterday was a painful and stressful but ultimately fruitful day for me in terms of tech. You see I received the parts required to complete my small server project. By some miracle Fedex delivered the parts early in the morning rather than later, so I ended up spending a huge portion of my day on this. However since this final server was meant to act as my file/print server, I decided to deviate a bit and buy a CloudShell2 NAS case for the ODroid XU4Q SBC (Single Board Computer). What a mistake that turned out to be. As it’s first order of business the embedded RAID Controller decided to mirror my backup drive onto my live drive despite the fact I had configured the jumpers to turn off RAID in favor of presenting the two six terabyte drives as separate volumes. ...
So as I’m sure my readers have noticed, the rate at which I’ve been producing content here has slowed. The reason for that is simple: I don’t have as much to say as of late. However I have been saving up yet another classic rant and today I’m ready to unleash it upon you all. Proprietary Software is a plague and today I’m going to explain why. Before I get going I want to address the elephant in the room. I’ve spent my entire career writing proprietary software, haven’t I? Yes I have. I am part of the problem. However because I’ve spent the vast majority of my career writing custom software for clients which is used internally, I am able to absolve myself of most of this. The reality is that when I write custom software for a client the ultimate choice of whether or not that software is distributed and under what license it’s distributed is up to them. For the most part these are internal tools, and distribution isn’t even a factor. In addition my clients retain full rights to the source code I produce. It belongs to them, not me. In that situation the client ultimately maintains the control and power that will benefit their business in the long run. ...
So I’ve taken a bit of a break from writing over the last few weeks. Honestly while I kind of needed one, the reality is that I also didn’t really have anything interesting to say. Nevertheless, I’m back and I’ve decided that I’d like to spend a few minutes convincing you that the world’s most popular operating system, Android, is a steaming pile of dung. I can already hear you saying, “Oh no here comes another pro Apple diatribe.” But let me put your fears to rest and tell you up front that I’m not planning on pushing iOS as an alternative as I believe that it is also a steaming pile of dung. ...
Late last year I reiterated some principles which I intended to keep in mind for the year of 2018. More than six months into the year, I thought it would be good to publicly reflect on how all of that has been going. If you’ll recall, there were three principles. I’m going to go through each of them one by one and enumerate my progress and setbacks. If you haven’t read it yet, you might want to take the time to read my original post “Notable Principles for 2018” before continuing. ...
Way back when in 2012, I did what is commonly referred to now as “cutting the cord”. It was a bold move as all I had was a Roku device, a Tivo DVR and an HD antenna. If it had been solely up to me I probably wouldn’t have bothered with the Tivo and the antenna but Annette really wanted some form of live TV, so that was that. Six years down the road, I’ve finally decided to begin moving away from the Tivo/Antenna combo. ...
This week I’m going to delve into a question which occasionally rears its ugly head even for me: Why doesn’t bad tech ever seem to go away? It is worth noting up front that while this includes computer based tech, it covers all kinds of tech. For example, we still have people who insist on photocopying and faxing things. Why do people still photocopy things? I really don’t understand it myself. But then again, printing things is already incredibly offensive and wasteful from my point of view so I’m willing to assume that the opportunity to photocopy things is less common for me largely as a consequence of that. A similar reasoning could be applied to faxing things, but in all honesty one can fax documents without relying upon actual paper. There are a variety of ways to fax things electronically nowadays. ...
Chances are that if you’ve worked in tech long enough, you can probably rattle off a list of tech fads you were forced to suffer through. But you know what my secret is? I have yet to fall for the siren song of any tech fad. But rather than just laughing at a few older fads, I’d like to try and provide some instruction on how one can tell the difference between tech fads and legitimate tech trends. ...
This week I’ve decided to tackle a topic which has been in the back burner of my mind for awhile: Whether or not development teams are a help or a hindrance. Why now? I was asked some questions which revolved around this as part of a job interview I had this week and wanted to provide a more fleshed out answer here than I was able to there. The reality is that when it comes to developers/engineers there are really only three kinds that matter in the context of this discussion: ...
So over the last year, something on the Internet has been really pissing me off. That thing is Google reCAPTCHA. This thing has been driving me bonkers for over a year and I’m pretty much at the end of my rope. So let’s start with a bit of background. Over a year ago I began to fundamentally change the way that I accessed the Internet on a daily basis. Prior to this change, reCAPTCHA was just a minor annoyance. So what did I change? I started to browse the Internet through an always on VPN connection that I setup using some extra hardware, pfSense and PIA. This box is setup with an always on connection to PIA and acts a dedicated optional gateway on my network that I can point any of my devices at to enable them to access the Internet exclusively via a VPN connection. ...