She's a brick... computer

There is nothing better than paying to have your technology get bricked. If you don’t know what “bricking” is it basically means that the tech is so messed up that without some serious intervention on the users part is now a sweet looking paper weight. Apple updates used to brick iPhones, Sony updates have bricked PS3s the list goes on. Now usually the number of bricks is small, obviously if all the devices got bricked it would be a massive massive issue for these companies, companies who you pay to use their services, services that require that you have the most up to date software, or at least pester you till you update. This is even more annoying when the bricking is the result of a Virus scanner.

McAfee released an update this week that targeted and deleted the “svchost.exe” file that, well, basically lets windows XP run. This issue did not affect vista or win7 computers but it did affect windows XP which is he Os with the highest number of users total, but also the OS that is used in most corporations. Mine for instance. Once the svchost is deleted the computer will no longer boot up and requires the user to manually, from the command prompt, copy the file off the recovery cd and back into its home.

Now for a single consumer, especially one that is not super tech savvy, this is a tough thing to do, but its even worse when a whole companies computers are taken out.

There are more than a few things wrong with this situation. For starters who the hell did McAfee not test the update on any XP machine. McAfee provides the anti-virus software for corporation that pay them a lot of money to protect those corporations computers system, most of those corporations are XP shops so how did it not cross at least someone at McAfee’s mind to maybe test the release on XP! If this type of thing happened to say AVG who gives away their software for free to consumers (don’t think they do for businesses) it would still be unacceptable, but at least you did not have to pay for it. I think what irks me the most about this, is that anti-virus is required, at least on a Windows machine (don’t even bother trying to bring up the Mac here, if Apple was the number 1 OS for corporations we would be seeing this problem with them as well) especially if the users of said machines might click on links in emails or any of the other ways to infect your computer these days. Running without anti-virus in a corporation is a great way to make every IT Managers worst nightmare come true.

McAfee says they have fixed this issue and pushed out an updated that does not target the svchost file, but it might be too little too late. We will have to see how this all shakes out but I would bet that some heads will roll over at McAfee, and I would bet a lot of the affected corporations will be switching over to one of McAfee competitors.

The New Who

I’ve finally got a chance to watch the first episode of the new season of Doctor Who. I was sad to see David Tennant go, like everyone, but there was one thing that I was happy to see gone. ALL HIS BAGGAGE. The very mechanism of the doctor rejuvenating into a new being is such a great way to run a show like this. Once things get too dark and heavy from all the epic things that have built up, just hit the refresh button and get a shiny new doctor who only kind of remembers all that. This show is supposed to be upbeat and full of whimsy, and eventually Tennant was getting too depressing. Not the actor of course, just the way they were writing him. How many seasons did he spend bent out of shape over Rose?

Matt Smith himself, is believable as an alien. When he said “I am not people”, you don’t find it that hard to believe him. His eyebrows vaguely remind me of Odo from Deep Space 9, who once joked how hard forming the human nose was. While the Time Lords do appear human, it is never really said if that is only the way they present themselves to humans. It is somewhat charming to think that this young doctor, in making his human form kind of goofed on the eyebrows, and made himself look a little alien. He still manages to be cute though!

Without giving away too much, there was one new element to the show that I found interesting. A moment of filmmaking to show that he had just finally pieced a problem together, it almost reminded me of those moments in House when he looks off in the distance during a conversation having finally figured the whole medical mystery out. The camera snaked around from point to point, and you felt like you were getting a look into the doctor’s manic thought process.

I approve of the new companion too. Generally as long as they aren’t too useless I am happy, since I am not really the sort of Fan Girl who hate the companions because they are not me. My favorite was Donna Noble, so seeing another red head is good. The preview of the season to come clips had me excited for this new season and for this new Doctor.

Hulu to launch premium pay subscription

link

I personally love Hulu, but I can accept that they can't just make their money off kiva ads. (I still don't understand why the website started out with mostly just ads for charities, um aren't charities supposed to be using that money on something other than providing me with the latest ep of modern family?)

The fact that they will still provide the latest 5 episodes for free is great. This service will provide whole seasons, for an extra fee ($9.95 a month). Currently I mostly rely on Netflix Instant Watch for watching old episodes of TV shows, for a similar price. So I probably wouldn't opt in for Hulu Plus unless it ended up having a lot more shows than Netflix Instant Watch. As someone who loves watching TV shows in multi-episode sessions in order, this definitely could open up another option.

This would catch a lot of people as customers who are probably pirating TV shows too. As the success of Itunes has shown, if people can download something conveniently, without having to deal with torrents and all that, they will pay for it.*


*This blog does in no way condone pirating, but accepts that it is a thing that occurs in the real world.

Ticket Tunes

I love to hate on Apple. They just make it so easy, especially now a days. They seem to be eating up a lot of the good will they accumulated during the 90s from being the !(Microsoft) (not Microsoft, sorry to geek out there for a second), I am sure I will be posting some hate for them soon, but in this post I would like to rally my support of the rumor that Apple is going to incorporate ticket sales into iTunes.
I love this idea, mainly because I think that Ticketbastard needs all the competition it can get, the merger with Live Nation had stipulation for creating competition, but come on, there is really only 1 place to buy tickets and that place is Ticketmaster.
I hate TM and here are a 2 reasons why, not in any real order:
They cant handle the demand – they may have made some improvements to this recently, but on several occasions they were not able to keep up with the demand on the consumers and their web page kept crashing. I know some people that got all the way to the end of the ticket purchasing process only to have the page crash and the tickets be released because TM can’t deal with the demand. I find this to be unacceptable, either they needed to stagger the ticket releases so that the demand was spread out over a couple day or they need to make sure their damn infrastructure can handle all the people trying to give them money
The fees! – this might be my biggest problem. TM charges a ticket fee that in most cases is like 20% of the ticket price. You know I understand originally it was a convenience to be able to buy something on the internet, it was fast, and you didn’t have to get off your ass and go anywhere, but we live in a world now where buying things on the internet is not a convenience it’s the way it’s done. Now, I am not saying that TM can’t charge a fee, I mean they need to make money somehow (though I would bet if they really cared they could figure out a way to make money without the fees, but that is not the point). What I take issue with is the fact that it’s a per ticket fee! So if you buy several tickets they whack you for each one. Personally I think a better method would be to charge a fee for the whole transaction or use a micropayment scheme. I am not opposed to paying the fees, but I can’t stomach the idea that TM, which really doesn’t do anything but be a middle man, can charge so much when the service they are providing is well pretty limited. The real issue here is the price point of the fees, of course TM is going to charge as much as possible because well, what are you going to do, and there really isn’t any other competitor, especially not one that is branded so well. If you want tickets you are going to first check TM. The solution to this issue is a major competitor with branding and the infrastructure to take TM on, and I think Apple fits that bill perfectly.

Everyone know who Apple is, I would hazard to guess that most people between the ages of 15 and 30 have iTunes on their computer right now. Apple as least for me single handedly stopped me from really using pirating web pages like ISO Hunt and Pirate Bay because iTunes makes the music buying experience easy and painless. Apple already has a relationship with the music industry, and while its not perfect it’s a start. If Apple started to sell concert or sports tickets via iTunes they would instantly become a major competitors to TM and they could change the price point of the fees on tickets. This would hopefully exert pressure on TM to change their fee structure as well. If so everyone wins!
Now I don’t know if Apple would actually change the way fees work, they might just end up charging the same as TM but if they want to take business away from TM and to make themselves a player in the ticketing market they will have to do something to differentiate themselves and I think the fees are the place to do it. As I understand it TM get to sell 80% of the tickets at a particular venue, leaving 20% for the Artist or Record Label to sell. Based on that it should not really matter to the Artist or the Record Label who is selling the tickets as the seller is making their money on the fees per transactions. This means that unlike the sale of the actual music where the Artist and Label (more the Label) are affected by the price point in ticket sales it should not matter, and therefore Apple could really set whatever price point they want. Additionally just about every person that has iTunes already has a credit card stored with Apple, Apple has your address, and all the other information needed to transaction with you, granted TM has most of this info too, if you have bought tickets from them, but I find the ease of use of iTunes to trump the ease of use of TM.
I believe that part of the rumor is that Apple would then have the Ticket sent to your phone and you would show the phone at the turn stile to get into the show. This would cut down on the overhead of having to mail out the tickets, and it would make the tickets cheaper for the consumer who will no longer has to pay for the shipping of a piece of paper. I am sure if this is true then you would also be able to print the ticket in the event your phone can’t handle the transmission method.
I personally think that this is a great idea; however there are a couple draw backs. One is that it would bloat iTunes even further, currently according to my Add or Remove Programs iTunes is 160mb, which is pretty big . It would also give Apple more power than the currently do, and they have a tendency to do some “interesting” things within their eco-system. Just look at the changes to the developer agreement of App developers.
Over all I am in favor of this rumor becoming the truth, if only to create an actual competitor to TM, one with the capability and the branding to give them a run for their money, or in this case fees.

Couple of things:

1) I think the relaunch is going to happen. I have been able to get a couple more people to agree to contribute to the Blog. If you think you would like to write something (not sure who I am talking to here since no one reads this) feel free to send me along something and it will get posted.
2) I think I am going to aim to start having as frequent as possible contribution starting next week, so next week will be the relaunch. I may still post a few things in the mean time, in the hopes that I can get some momentum up again and get back to trying to post on a daily basis.
3) I have a pipe dream. I really want to create a podcast, and I would love it the podcast was associated with the blog. Ryan and I tried for a while, but usually it was an epic fail in some way or another. I am hoping that if the blog gets a bunch of frequent contributors that a podcast for the blog would become more of a reality. Hell if the hippies from This Week on Lot can do it why cant I?!
4) If we ever got to a point where readership was an actual thing, I would consider buying casualgeekery.com, but for now I am going to stick with the blogger url cause, well, it’s free. I like free, and I am a Google fan boy so might as well stick with Google for a bit

Thinking about a Relaunch (now with paragraph breaks)

I have been thinking about Casual Geekery for a while now. I miss it. I know that it had basically no readers, and I am sure that no one will read this post, but I enjoyed writing and ranting about techie stuff. Recently one of my favorite pod-casters Scott Johnson launched Frog Pants Studios. He has created new and adopted several existing podcasts to the Frog Pants family, and while he is the main host there are several others, and some podcasts he is not even part on. While thinking about Frog Pants and Casual Geekery I realized that the main problem that Casual Geekery faced was that Ryan and I were the only people writing anything. I know for myself that I really only wanted to write posts about things that I was either excited about or pissed about, and frankly it’s hard to get that riled up every day. We both also have jobs that pay us and therefore those take priority over a blog that is read but no one. The conclusion that I came up with is that Casual Geekery needs more contributors.

I think a total of around 5 people would be pretty ideal. This way when some of the contributors are busy with real life the blog will not be stagnant for a day or several days. I also like this idea because, well, having a variety of tones and subject matter is important to make the blog interesting to the 0 people that read it, but if content is king and the blog was to ever take off or gather readership I think it would be important to have different voices rather than just 1 or 2. To this point I think that having a couple girls as contributors would be great. Geekdom is a pretty much dominated by neck beards (who are male) and since the blog is mostly based on opinion having some female opinions to provide counterpoint to mine and Ryan’s as well as other male nerds out there would be excellent.

I am putting out feelers to see if I can rope some people in who want to write, and maybe if all goes well the blog will be relaunched. Also, to the 0 people that will read this, if you happen to know someone that would be willing to design us a logo that would be sweet.

And lastly for good measure let me just say “Fuck Facebook”