d3ft.com

Or, How to Use a Salacious Title to Explain Sane Purchasing Decisions for Computer Users

Years ago, as I was helping a fellow of mine get over his painful divorce, I suggested we use this newfound search engine, ”The Google”, to search for something of an urban legend. To get over his previous nuptial failure, we would find him a Russian mail–order bride. Needless to say, after looking through the first 20 sites that offered women, we decided that even the idea was too creepy for our limited experience.

It turns out that mail–order brides are less smarmy than I remembered (from the cheesy, 90s sites), and far more plenteous than I knew (if Wikipedia is to be believed). Remembering the faces of those women, the circumstances that led them to offer themselves, and just how one–sided the whole thing was upset me back then. However, it helps me understand the relationship people need to have with the hardware they are spending money on, and how the whole thing is getting ridiculous.

In 1996, I got my first Macintosh. Since then, I’ve only bought computers from Apple. My latest electronic device was an iPhone. I have made that company a bit of money. Not a lot, but every bit helps, right?

As I started working with other people, looking at their needs, I kept coming back to something that bothered me; Apple makes their electronics and their computers too well. While typing this on a now–completely–by–their–standards obsolete computer (Power Mac G5), I couldn’t rationally suggest to anyone that they buy something that will be completely obsolete in five years, yet completely functional. My computer works just fine, it’s just that Apple doesn’t support it anymore.¹

That was a strange feeling, that day. The day I realized that there was no way I would ever wear a new computer out again. By the time it becomes obsolete, it still does everything I could hope to do with it. Yet, with the constant advance of technology, to run any of the ‘latest and greatest,’ I need some new processor, or some animal–themed operating system.²

This trope—the Russian mail–order bride—is how I now explain to people how they should treat that wonder, awesome, incredible new gadget they hold in their hands. It is something that will be forgotten in two years, something that will be sold or trashed long before its usefulness is at end. While you may think you will love it forever, it is best to understand that you will pay money to have somebody get rid of it in a few years’ time.

If you think I’m being harsh, why would companies advertise that they will recycle your old hardware—for free? Because you are willing to pay somebody else to get rid of your trash, that’s why. That is the harsh, speedy advance of technology. Keep up, or be drowned.

We should realize that whatever you hold in your hands is going to be worthless in 24 months, so be careful. There will be a separation, and it will cost you money. The good time you’re paying for today will seem like a complete waste of money when you can see what you can get, now.

But now is when you care. You have to have the delicious arm candy that only a smartphone provides. You have to be able to show off countless frames per second. You have to win at processor speed.

So don’t get caught up on sentimentality. Don’t burn the sails. Plan now how to get rid of the eventual junk heap you now call your precious. If you don’t, you’ll be the one paying.³

A note on reality

That people should treat their hardware with a bit of harshness, of course, is my technological allusion. The urban legend says that either they are cunning women, only wanting some rich man to wed for citizenship, money, divorce, and settlement (in that order), or underage girls sold into a world of slavery and murder. I would never suggest the way we treat humans be the way we treat machines.

The sad realities of how one becomes a slave, however you want to sugar–coat the title, is heart–breaking. The level of destitution in some people’s lives amazes me. Yet, I sit in utter amazement as people fawn over some new gadget, while people on the other side of the planet—or even the other side of the tracks—starve.

It was the realization—that people are worth more than machines—that led me to this way of thinking. It also led me to put my money towards things that really matter for other people. That is now what I encourage other people to do, as well.

1. Officially, anyways. Or cheaply. ↩
2. Or Linux. But that’s a completely different argument. ↩
3. Of course I realize you’ll be paying either ways. Stop being so literal. ↩

As part of the constant evolution of d3ft.com, I’ve added a new section dedicated to the links I was adding to the site. As a fastidious linker, I always feel the need to link to things. The problem with linking to other places from this place is that relatively few people get to see those links. The vast majority of people who visit this site are coming for some of the anchor posts I’ve written, and not people I’m sending them elsewhere.

What I decided to do was to spend more time linking to items where people are already looking; in Google Reader. The combination of sharing links with other people, and the ability to repurpose those links elsewhere reminds me of what was (and is) possible with del.icio.us (oops, I meant, Delicious). That lead me to put together a page that uses my links, but isn’t the goal page.

The d3ft links uses the shared items part of Google Reader, put on my site through a WordPress plugin. Yay for site integration (and all those swell page–views), but that isn’t the point. RSS is the goal, and those RSS subscriptions are very important to me. To be clear, I am not begging for subscriptions—they are simply another indicator of success.

If there is anything I love more than linking to things, it is statistics. Google Reader gives me that. It also allows me to share the stuff I share more easily. Then, after all that, I get the fun and excitement of charts and other analytical datum. That is why I moved there, to do this.

This is a screen capture from earlier today. Reader gives me that lovely meta knowledge of what I am doing. And with Helvetireader, I don’t drown in the interface, and it looks so good that I stopped using Fever for most things. I still use it as a meme–tracker, but not as the place for my main consumption of RSS.

I have the feeling that image will appear dated after a while. Not that the volume of reading will go up (it most certainly will), but that the number of subscriptions is so low. In the past, I maintained over 300 subscriptions with NetNewsWire. That level of information overload is just unnecessary with all the trend–trackers and all the other people tracking the trend–trackers. The time to become a leader in linking was 2003—there are enough linkers out there now.

Blog, that is. I don’t have to blog. There is no requirement to fulfill.

Nowhere in my contract does it say that I have to write anything. Weeks or months or years can pass between words. That’s just how I am. That’s just what I do.

I’m currently looking at just how much time I need—or want—to spend on this computer, creating my internet wuffies. This is something I’ve looked at time and time again, in some varying degree, every six months since I started posting thing on the Internet in 1995. Each time in the past 15 or so years, I’ve come back with some varying degree of need for continuing an online existence.

This month was my lowest posting output since 2003, when I was deployed. It wasn’t that I stopped writing, you just couldn’t see it. I have a daily journal filled with so much wit and marvel that your human brains just couldn’t take it all in. It stays there, in my MacJournal file, waiting for somebody to read off my cold, dead hard drive. Oddly enough, even though I was writing back then, in a war zone, I wasn’t writing here.

That’s okay. I don’t have to.

I find that there are certain parts of the web that I am drawn toward less and less. This could be maturity, a lack of time, or just that they are no longer interesting. Mostly, it is because I just can’t find a connection with the writer.

One of those places on the web I no longer frequent is sites of web developers. Another such place is application developers. It seems my desire to learn about the creation of content about content creation has come to an end. No real reason for this, just an observation of how I spend my time.

This could be because the creation of applications and web sites are now so commonplace, and the tools so simple to use, that there just isn’t the greatness associated with “getting a website!” It doesn’t take a genius to code up an iPhone app, or to make yet–another text–based to–do application. It just takes time and the ability to market well.

One of the recent trends in marketing was blogs. Sadly, it appears that real–time web is going to make even blogs seem slow. Google will get you to the data (and the answers) as fast as it used to take think up the question. This makes it seem like even blogs are becoming inessential. Especially blogs about coding for blogs that market to people who want to know how to code for blogs.

I’m not sure it’s the lack of time that keeps me away, now. With constant iPhone-y internet, I’m a couple of clicks from anything. It isn’t the lack of enthusiasm and topics from the writers, either. I think it’s because I just don’t need them anymore. Content about the construction of tools to create content has become inessential.

A while ago I whined about the inability to block certain iPhone apps. Luckily for me, Apple saw fit to just remove the questionable apps themselves. So it’s “good for them, good for me,” right? Or is it?

It comes down to this: Apple can do whatever they want to with their store. It’s their store. Nobody can tell them what to do with their store. Other than just not purchasing Apple products, consumers have no say in what Apple does with their services.

So, there.

None, at all. Could hardly care less.

It had to be said.

I care nothing for implications for Apple in the laptop–replacement milieu, nor their impending fight with Amazon’s Kindle. Nor, do I care anything about Apple’s continued use of touch technologies.

If one were to ask me if Apple is creating another G4 Cube, I would have to ponder how little I care about the situation, in total. This is a product that does not concern me. The state of the company does not rest with either my love for or hatred of this new piece of hardware.

It is made by Apple, big deal. They also make mini DVI to VGA adaptors, should I pontificate on that? No. No, I should not, because I care nothing about the laptop–to–display adapter segment of Apple. Nor, do I care about the iPad sector of Apple.

If you are going to put up a blog with the expressed purpose of creating nothing but great content, then gain notoriety, then cash in on that notoriety by putting advertising on your site, can you do one thing for me? Please?

Keep producing great content or stop putting up ads.

I was going to link to many, many examples of this, but I figure it wouldn’t be acted upon. Seriously, if I am out–blogging you, then you need to stop with the ads.

Until a couple of minutes ago, I had this in my Colophon:

If you’re looking at this on a Windows–based system, it may be hard to see. That’s because Mac OS X displays tend to have a much brighter gamma than Windows. If you can’t see it, then, blame Windows.

Pim from the Time Capsule Memorial Register kindly pointed out that, as of Mac OS X 10.6, this is no longer the case. Now Apple shoots for the minimum and makes your screen darker than necessary. Just brilliant (pun intended).

I also went ahead and removed some WebKit–specific hacks to make the letters on the screen theoretically more legible. The hacks were reportedly not successful. A few color changes, and the site should read more effectively, regardless of the operating system or monitor you are using.

Plus, I’m stuck on white backgrounds.

Perusing the iPhone apps in the iTunes store, it reminded me how much absolute garbage gets in there. It’s as smarmy as Facebook. I have an idea to make it better.

Looking at the list of the top 100 free apps, you’ll find free versions of apps. Nice idea, but most of them are free versions of apps that you wouldn’t pay for. Others are limited versions of apps that you wish you didn’t have to scroll past. How’s about we introduce something else they have in Facebook?

Block App

Tired of seeing that stupid Sex Quiz thing again? Just click the ‘Block App’ button. One quick confirmation message later, and never see it again (unless, of course, you want to go into the preferences and unblock it).

I’m not sure if this has been proposed before, but it seems rather obvious to me.

No computer that is incapable of running Mac OS X 10.6 is capable of running an app that can only run on Mac OS X 10.6. Therefore, to use the logo for ‘Universal’ apps on your software is illogical. Please stop doing it immediately.

I’m trying to be succinct. It bugs me when software developers don’t pay attention to detail. It goes beyond irritation and into mild rage when I see something like that used in marketing materials and blog flair.

For review: 10.6 only runs on Intel processors. If your app requires 10.6, do not use the ‘Universal’ badge.

Some brilliant writer person once suggested that people write the first paragraph of a blog entry last. That way, you’d have a good idea what you were writing about, so you could introduce the idea more clearly. I love the idea, and I did it with this entry. It amazes me, in how I’ve been writing somewhere on the internet for something like 20 years, that I never have stuck to one thing long enough to really see how good of a site I could make.

In September, I decided to put together a minimalist website that had the primary function of sifting through the ever–growing number of interesting things on the internet. A rather fortuitous domain name search and registration later, I created this site. The original intention was to put it here then leave it be, but that changed.

That concept, of creating something and never evolving it, was something I looked forward to. It was a challenge for me to keep something in its originally–concieved state, then grow the site through external and internal ideas, rather than functions. The idea is akin to what Twitter has done — build on their core functionality without diverging from the original intention.

Most of the innovations Twitter the company has made in the past couple of years are from ways to work around limitations on the system from Twitter users. Search, lists, hashtags, and ‘re–tweeting’ are all ideas from the users that the company has wisely added to its core functionality. That way — organically — is the way I think you grow a product most successfully.

Its that way that I chose to grow this site. Organically. Built on a WordPress core, I’ve added a few touches here and there, but there’s nothing here that anybody can’t do. Just some plugins, a minimalist template, and my own ramblings, written in micro– to short–outbursts of sagacity.

A couple of months have shown me that writing alone doesn’t work any more. The internet is full of terrible writers, linkers, lurkers, and trolls. Nobody gets enough traffic that deserve it, and nobody that gets traffic deserves it. This is less of a personal quibble and more of an acknowledgment that people tend to be attracted to the grotesque rather than the tranquil.

There are no drastic changes planned for the future of this site. Just a few additions, here and there. Just a continuation of growing this thing — whatever a d3ft.com is. As I get more settled writing this thing — gain my sea legs, if you will — then I’ll keep on trying to make this the best d3ft.com it can be.

I wrote this piece in February of 2008, and thought I would resurrect it in light of the recent controversy concerning its life expectancy.

A few months ago, I had a real scare with my hard drive. One of the bullet point selling points of Mac OS X 10.5 is Time Machine, the automatic backup software. As I thought about Time Capsule, my hard drive, and backups, I came to an awesome, terrible realization: all hard drives fail.

Looking over the specs, I can’t really find any way to replace the hard drive in this thing. This is critical, because it’s your last line of defense. If this thing goes down, you’re sunk.

Pondering the possibility of losing years of data on my disk, I realized how Apple could be setting itself up for failure. No, not because the device won’t sell — it will. And not because it isn’t marketed as another boutique product. It’s because the very device they’re selling can easily go against the convention they’re trying to enforce.

Years ago, Apple introduced this application called ‘Backup.’ It was part of the .Mac service, and it let you back things up in a simple, convenient way. That was the intention, anyways, as I’m not sure anybody really knows how to get the thing to work. And I’m pretty sure nobody’s dumb enough to trust it to back up anything more important than their Safari bookmarks.

That’s the problem with the backup solutions that are supposed to be what you would expect from Apple; not as feature–rich as you would hope, but comprehensive and very easy to use. They succeeded this time with Time Machine. And somehow, Backup yet lives — there must be a reason.

Getting to the reason for the continued existence of Backup led me to think about the rationale to make Time Capsule, the wire–less, hard–drive–based backup device. As Backup is to .Mac, Time Capsule is to local storage. They both follow the same mantra, but with vastly differing success.

Backup was always hampered by its connection to .Mac. There just wasn’t enough room to backup the files on your computer. You could, at most, back up a subset of the types of files like Word documents or all the files in your Documents folder. It surely wasn’t what you’d need for the ‘prosumer’ experience, and definitely wasn’t a professional–level solution.

Mac OS X 10.5 brought Time Machine, and the promise of backing up your entire file system, down to the minutia of your fonts and preference files. Sure, you needed a pretty big hard drive, but that sort of space is cheap right now, still more so that online. With a daily backup of everything — that comprehensive approach — you could get back what was lost, and that’s what we all want.

Selling hardware to meet that demand was the next logical step. Apple did this moving from iTunes to the iPod, and they’re doing the same thing from Time Machine to Time Capsule. The wireless capability is just a bullet point — what they’re really doing is selling convenience.

With that convenience, Apple is getting you to do something you should be doing: backing your data up. It makes everybody feel good, you see. Promote that healthy behavior. But it would make sense to use a piece of hardware you can fix, right?

As far as I can tell (since I haven’t been able to get my grimy paws on one, yet), there’s no way to change the hard drive in the Time Capsule. There’s a lot of precedent for this, from the iPod to the new MacBook Air. But that’s a bad idea when you’re using this as your solitary backup.

It’s the same problem you’d have if your primary disk went bad. One well–timed lightning bolt and every source of hope you’ve got is turned into stylish, over–priced paperweights. The message I’m trying to convey is this: instead of having one last chance (your hard drive) you’ve now got two (with Time Capsule). And until somebody does something about it, that’s all you’ve got.

I love fear–mongering. Even more so when it’s right in line with the idea Apple’s trying to get across to consumers. With Time Machine, they’re trying to say that cheap storage — online or local — is within the reach of pretty much everybody. If you can afford a computer with Leopard, you can afford to get a Time Capsule for your house.

Honestly, I agree. The thing that I’m wary of is that you’re purchasing a silver bullet — and that will lead people to the inevitable complacency. That lax attitude will lead to reliance on this system, and someday we’ll be watching videos about “Time Capsule’s Dirty Secret.” Nobody wants that to happen. Nobody.

So, solutions? I’m not sure. I’d really hate to think that this piece of hardware is going the same route as the iPods and Mac minis and Apple TVs and MacBook Airs before it. I’d hope that there was some way to replace the disk, or at least to get it recovered quickly. I would hate to think that people are trading a bag of magic beans for two bags of magic beans.

Just in case you ever wondered who you should block off and keep almost 100% of your site free from spammers and scrapers, I’ve found it’s always a good idea to block off the RIPE network. Not that it’s all a bad thing, or that you don’t get legitimate traffic from there, it’s just that a full 100% of the traffic I got from there was spammish.

Before we get started, some things to remember. Like last time, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, let the person who you bug about all things electronic do it for you. Also, this tutorial needs a modern Apache webserver. Most importantly, if you expect legitimate readers from the Asia Pacific region of the world, you could block your readers. Remember these things.

Copy and paste this into your .htaccess file:

#Amsterdam
deny from 62.
deny from 80.
deny from 81.
deny from 82.
deny from 83.
deny from 84.
deny from 85.
deny from 86.
deny from 87.
deny from 88.
deny from 89.
deny from 90.
deny from 91.
deny from 139.10.
deny from 139.12.
deny from 139.16.
deny from 139.18.
deny from 139.24.
deny from 139.28.
deny from 139.30.
deny from 147.83.
deny from 147.84.
deny from 147.91.
deny from 193.
deny from 194.
deny from 195.
deny from 212.
deny from 213.
deny from 217.
#Australia
deny from 58.
deny from 59.
deny from 60.
deny from 61.
deny from 165.228.
deny from 165.229.
deny from 168.140.
deny from 202.
deny from 203.
deny from 210.
deny from 211.
deny from 218.
deny from 219.
deny from 220.
deny from 221.
deny from 222.

That would be it.

The Amsterdam and Australia mean really nothing. They are just there to keep things organized. Doing a whois on the IP ranges shows to which branch of RIPE they belong. You can shuffle them all together into one neat list, if you like.

Like I wrote before, this is a throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bath-water approach to banning. The way I have it set up, you block everything in the IP range rather mercilessly. The only reasonable purpose for doing this would be if you are losing a lot of bandwidth to non–human traffic.