Last weekend I received an invite for Google Music Beta. This is Google's cloud music service, which allows you to stream your music to any PC or Android device.

It is Google's spin on the same thing Amazon, Apple and (believe it or not) Best Buy is doing. Oh, and credit where credit is due. MP3Tunes has been doing this for OVER 5 YEARS ALREADY! Welcome to the party, boys.

I do use the Amazon cloud locker, and bought the $0.99 Lady Gaga album just to get the "free" 20 Gb of storage space. It seamlessly integrates with Amazon's MP3 sales bits, so I can just purchase a song and in it goes. Very simple.

I'd like to try Google's version, but I can't. You see, in order to load music into it you have to use their music loader program. That program is only available for Windows or Mac, not Linux. No, for some bizarre there is no web form option like on Amazon to upload music.

No, it doesn't work on ChromeOS, either. Oh, I can play some of their free music that they loaded in, but can't upload any of my music using my CR-48. WTF?

Left hand, meet right hand. Both of you team up and yank the idiot who decided on not supporting your own OS' head out of his arse.

Online Education

I'm not all that impressed with online BS grads knowledge, but unfortunately that could be because most of them don't offer real degrees ala my last entry.

Most of the CS-style degrees seem to be more along the lines of certificate-mill collections where people memorize, regurgitate and advance.

What I really question, though, is the online MS degrees.

A Masters? Really? Only one year (9 months, really) after receiving your Bachelors? And while working full-time? That could explain why your thesis reads more like a freshman term paper.

I've met a couple people who I could believe it, but they had 10+ years experience in the field and were already published before getting their online MS.

A Master's should *MEAN* something, damn it!

Higher Education is an interesting one lately on the job applications.

After going thru everything, and interviewing people, I have come to the conclusion that most Bachelor Degrees are totally fucking useless. They have become the high-school degree for the 21st Century. General basic education in the field, but probably can't think for oneself.

There are degrees that matter. An actual ENGINEERING degree, or one in Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology or the like. Something that makes you THINK, and you can't pass by just memorizing and regurgitating.

Computer Science means something. Computer Information Systems, Information Technology, Management of Information Systems, Information Systems, and all the like DON'T MEAN SHIT.

I take it back. It means you couldn't handle a CompSci degree.

If you have one of the above, great. It gets you by HR and looked at, but other than an entry-level position, they don't add anything to your cachet. They rank right up there with the 20-year old BS in History for me.

That being said, the older the degree in the Computer field, the less it means. Things change so fast, make sure you keep up on your continuing education.

That also means that EXPERIENCE TRUMPS EDUCATION for me. I'll hire the person with 10-years hands-on experience and no degree long before the person with the Masters and no practical experience.

No, I'm not looking for a job. I'm going thru resumes and job applications for a position that I'm responsible for screening.

1 opening for a Computer Security Specialist with Digital Forensics experience, 96 applications.

In reviewing all of these I've learned a great deal and see a bunch of stuff people do wrong. There are plenty of "how to write a resume/apply for a job" sites out there, so I might as well add my $0.02.

This all represents MY PERSONAL OPINION after reviewing almost 100 applications, resumes and supporting documentation.

This is the first in a series, in no particular order. If I wrote it as one journal entry, it would be many pages long.

Here goes...

In a job that is mid- to senior-level professional, please, PLEASE don't bother to apply if you aren't qualified.

Mid- to senior-level professional doesn't just apply to you as a PERSON, but to you as a person IN THE PARTICULAR PROFESSION.

In looking for the position above, I have applications who have 20 years experience as Electrical Engineers, Project Managers and DBAs. No actual experience in Computer Security or Forensics, mind you. A few classes on MS Office or Web Design, maybe.

You. Are. Not. Qualified. Not even close. YOU may be mid- to senior- level professional, but you're an entry-level amateur in the field.

I can forgive the Network Administrators who think setting ACLs in a Cisco router or once setting up a PIX/ASA qualifies, but "securing web pages by proper HTML/CSS design" DOES NOT CUT IT!

Even if you've been unemployed and are getting desperate (and none of my above examples are), don't do it. Your name will stick in the reviewer's head, but NOT in a good way.

A brief update on my experience with Google's CR-48 ChromeBook.

No, no Citrix or offline Docs/GMail yet.

The wake/sleep speed is fantastic. Open the lid and work. Close the lid and go. Very nice. Too bad I have to wait for the WiFi to re-associate to actually start doing anything. :-)

USB flash drives are supported, but USB CD/DVD drives are NOT!

The IronKey is a hardware-encrypted USB flash drive. The first partition on it shows up as a CD drive, which contains the interfaces for entering the password. Well, with no CD/DVD support on the CR-48 the IronKey just doesn't work. This sucks.

No TrueCrypt support, either. I'd want that for the SD-Card slot.

I want my encrypted drives, damn it!

My youngest son, at age 2 years and 10 months, has just discovered the game of Brockian Ultra Cricket. That is, he'll grab a plastic or foam baseball bat, whack one of the other family members, then run away saying "sorry sorry sorry sorry" and laughing.

The older I get, the more I appreciate that Douglas Adams was a genius and the humor in his novels was incidental.

This is funny:

Have you heard the one about a homeowner foreclosing on a bank?

Well, it has happened in Florida and involves a North Carolina based bank.

Instead of Bank of America foreclosing on some Florida homeowner, the homeowners had sheriff's deputies foreclose on the bank.

http://www.digtriad.com/news/watercooler/article/178031/176/Florida-Homeowner-Forecloses-On-Bank-Of-America

As one of their "early adopters" I received an offer today for an early purchase of the Samsung Chromebook. Buy today, delivery around Wednesday the 8th -- a full week before public availability.

I'm sticking with my free Google version right now, but am hopeful that I'll see an update that makes the offline version of Google Apps and the Citrix connector available soon.

I am holding off in writing a full review of the Chromebook until after mid-June.

Google just disabled offline mode for GMail under Chrome. It should come back, along with an offline mode for Docs around June 15th.

Also, the Citrix receiver isn't yet publicly available, and that is a big deal for businesses. That should also be out around June 15th.

So, right now, without an Internet connection, the CR-48 does a good job in holding papers down, but not much more.

HOWEVER, there is a potential show-stopper. I mean 1-2-3 strikes you're out, shower and leave the ballpark -- you aren't even playing the same game as the rest of us.

I'm talking about printing. It seems ChromeOS prints only thru Google Cloud Print. You're options are connect a PC or Mac to the printer and run Chrome-the-browser on it, or by a "cloud aware" printer.

Our office has a couple HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS in high speed, high volume printers. In an office full of economists and lawyers who seem to measure their self-worth in dead-tree weight, that ain't gonna fly.

A single-proxy in the office that acts as the print server would be acceptable. Hooking a PC to each Richo/Savin/Xerox machine and printing thru "teh clouds" will not work. This is a major, major issue for business.

I need to see what Google's answer for this is. Next week I'll call my rep over there and ask.

Sigh... The dishonesty in this debate is sickening. A friend of mine sent me a link to someone named Steven Crowder who posted a video he did asking people at SxSW about Net Neutrality. He spins it like the big, bad government is stepping all over private property ownership. Link here: http://hotair.com/archives/2011/05/24/video-crowder-on-net-neutrality/

He couldn't be more wrong -- or more dishonest.

I will explain...

Crowder, and most others, frame this as a contest between two players: the corporations who built and own the networks and the government. The truth is, there is a third player that he is ignoring and it is the most important. The consumer. Me and you.

Here is how it works.

The consumer -- you and me -- pay an ISP for a connection and bandwidth. They sell that to me as basically a road with a speed limit. I get 10 Mb of traffic down to me and 2 Mb of traffic from me to the world.

Now, the ISPs are not interested in just being common carriers. They don't want to just provide the roads, for which they charge a toll and get paid. They really want you to take those roads to THEIR STORES, so they get a cut from what those stores then sell. They want a slice of every pie.

What they're seeing, though, is people aren't coming to their stores. They're going to Netflix, Hulu and YouTube for streaming video -- not Comcast. They're going to Amazon, Overstock.com and Ebay for buying things -- not Cox. They're going going to Vonage for phone service -- not AT&T.

It helps if you think of the corporations not as hardworking property owners being screwed by the big, bad government, but as the Mob. The Mob, who has thru bribes, political shenanigans and general unsavory tactics has massively tilted the field in their favor. They've bought politicians and favors. They are not the good guys.

So, they do what the mob normally does -- they head on over to the competition and basically say "Gee, it'd be a shame if anything happened to all that business you have. For a fee, we can make sure traffic keeps flowing smoothly across the road."

What they tell you and me is they need to be able to manage traffic on the road so it flows smoothly for everyone. Who is against that? They just want to keep the data flowing, right?

Wrong. They can do that *NOW* without anyone complaining. They can take traffic like VoIP, which is time sensitive, and give it priority. This is shaping by traffic TYPE. Perfectly legitimate, and done by every competent admin. Sort of like giving an ambulance all green lights and making everyone else move out of the way. BUT, what they're REALLY wanting to do is give only THEIR ambulances the green lights. The ambulances heading to Hospital Google have to pay an extra toll or travel with the normal traffic. And if a few packets die along the way? Well, maybe you better reconsider our offer.

So, VoIP traffic that is heading to Vonage is slightly degraded. Vonage calls suffer more call drops, break-ups, echo and delays. Calls to Comcast Voice, however, are pristine. Vonage can either pay the protection money, or slowly get squeezed out of business. Ditto Netflix and all the others. And he is wrong when he says it hasn't already happened. Comcast did it to Vonage. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ip-telephony/some-vonage-users-are-frustrated-about-comcast-connection-quality/938

His barbell vs letter example is equally dishonest. Shipping is charged by weight. In the Internet world, the barbell is broken into packets of one envelope each in size. They're charged for each envelope. So a 5 lb barbell is charged the same as 80 1 oz letters. Actually, it gets a discount, since each ounce after the first is discounted. YES, they get to their destination at the same time. BECAUSE I PAY FOR THE SAME CLASS OF SERVICE -- FIRST CLASS! If I want to pay for parcel post, it goes slower and I PAY LESS. No one is saying they should cost the same.

What is wrong with them charging extra for everyone else's cars on their roads? BECAUSE THEY SOLD ME ACCESS TO THE ROAD AS A FLAT SERVICE! THEY DIDN'T SAY 20 Mb/s to COMCAST, 5 Mb/s TO EVERYONE ELSE! THEY SOLD ME 20 Mb/s! AOL tried that shit way back when, and look what happened to them. Do we really want to go back to the days of the walled gardens of AOL, CompuServe and GEnie?

Bits are bits. The roads are separate from the destination. Transport is separate from content providers. Net Neutrality is trying to keep it that way. If they want to moderate traffic by type to make the time sensitive stuff faster, like trucks carrying perishable goods or emergency vehicles, fine. But they have to apply that policy NEUTRALLY, and not on destination. That is, all VoIP and streaming video packets are prioritized because delay degrades their service. NOT just the VoIP and streaming video packets of the companies who paid the protection money.

Crowder is wrong.

Back in early December last year Google announced a beta/developer program for their ChromeOS program. They were offering free notebook computers running ChromeOS to a limited number of people to test. Never to be one to pass up an opportunity for free toys, I signed up.

While I wasn't chosen in the original batch, it seems I wasn't totally forgotten about. Waiting for me on my desk when I came into work on Monday was a mysterious package without a return address label. Opening it up revealed it was from Google, and it contained a CR-48, a to test the Chrome OS operating system.

About 60,000 Cr-48s were manufactured to be distributed to testers and reviewers in early December 2010. On March 8, 2011, Google Product Management vice president Sundar Pichai stated that the last of the 60,000 Cr-48s had been shipped.

Acer and Samsung are both preparing to ship what are now referred to as "Chromebooks" on June 15th. The hardware specs are basically the same from the CR-48 prototype and the final development units, with a few tweaks. The CR-48 has a single-core Intel Atom, 1 USB and a VGA port, while the retail units have dual-core processors, multiple USB and mini-HDMI ports.

Since what I have is a reference hardware design, I'm not going to focus too specifically on that other than saying that I do like it. It has a very good feel to it, and using it as a reference I can guess that I'd like either the Samsung or Acer even better, with them being slightly thinner and lighter. But, I'm talking mostly about aesthetics, which is a matter of personal taste.

The real question is, is the hardware up the the job? The short answer for the CR-48 is "almost". I suspect the change to a dual-core processor on the retail units will change that to a "yes". The long answer is much more interesting, because it is challenges fundamental definitions of the current computing model. More on that in Part 2.

My tests consisted of doing what I normally do on the web. Web browsing, including some Javascript-heavy sites; watching video on YouTube, Hulu and Amazon; using interactive Flash-based interfaces such as Tenable's Security Center -- the Enterprise control center for Nessus; document editing and HTML/CSS/JS development.

My criteria were simple. Remember, I'm talking about hardware only here. Did the CR-48 have the tools needed for me to do my job? Did it perform without noticably straining, lag or delay? This is where we get the "almost" from.

First things first. I signed in and checked for updates. The version of ChromeOS on the unit was from December, and there have been several updates since then. The system took care of itself, updating in two steps quietly in the background to the latest release. On to the tests.

I had no problem smoothly streaming video from Hulu or YouTube at resolutions up to 720p. Watching both animation, such as an episode of the Simpsons or the trailer for Kung Fu Panda 2, and non-animated video like an episode of Seinfeld, both displayed fine.

BUT, going to the Kung Fu Panda 2 website, which is nothing but Flash and had the HD trailer embedded in the middle of the screen, cause the video to be choppy and sluggish. This is where I think the dual-core on the retail units will help. That being said, the Tenable Security Center interface is Flash-based and it responded without issue. Of course, it doesn't have everything moving and a video in the middle of it at the same time.

Google Mail, Maps, Calendar, Docs, Yahoo Mail, Zimbra and Turbo Tax Online are all javascript-heavy sites. I had no issues with any of them either rendering correctly or noticable delays in operation. Everything was snappy and crisp.

None of my other tasks did anything to stress the hardware. This machine isn't going to be playing the latest Call of Duty, but then again it isn't designed for it.

The bit I'm really interested in, from a work perspective, is the Citrix Connector which isn't available to the public, yet. This was highlighted at the recent Google I/O conference and is disabled in the current version of ChromeOS. I expect to see it made available on or before the date the official retail units ship.

In Part 2 I'll delve into the entire Cloud paradigm as Google is presenting it, and my experiences with it.

I started going thru all my old e-mail in my Gmail account. There are over 7,000 messages in the "All Mail" section.

When reading thru it, I was looking at it with an eye towards what someone could learn about me from my e-mail. 10 minutes later, I was deleting old stuff en masse. Google knows more about me that *I* know about me. The stuff I had in my e-mail, taken as a whole, is scary in its depth.

Funny thing is, after the first few hundred deletes the little message on top of Google changed to "You can make a lovely hat out of previously-used aluminum foil."

It hasn't changed back, yet. For the last hour, no matter what screen I go to in G-mail, reading, filing or deleting, that is on top.

If it ever changes to "I'm sorry, I can't do that Charles", I'll probably lose it. :-)

I just got a password reset request from Slashdot. It said the request came from IP 122.249.234.193. That maps to a mobile provider in Tokyo, Japan.

The phone seems to be an Android phone. Its user agent was
"Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.3; en-jp; 001HT Build/GRI".

Why would someone on a cellphone in Japan be trying to get my Slashdot password? I mean, there is "I'm bored" and then there is this.

People need to understand how this works.

CONGRESS passes a budget saying "buy this stuff -- it costs X". Once passed by both the House and Senate, and then signed by the President, it becomes law. It is then the responsibility of the Executive Branch, thru the Treasury, to go out and buy the stuff.

Once they run out of ready cash -- and remember, Congress knew exactly what it would cost and how much cash they had on hand BEFORE they passed it -- they go back to Congress and ask to borrow some more money.

That is like me telling my wife, "here's the grocery list for $300 of food". She tells me "We have $200." I then say "fine, fine, go buy the $300 in food and let me know when you need to use the credit card". She agrees and goes to the store. Lo and behold, after spending the $200 she comes back and says "I need to use the credit card to get the rest of the stuff on the list". Hell, it is WORSE than that. It is her coming back and saying "the credit cards are maxed out, I need to get another one"! I, being an asshole, start to blame her for the problem and complain about her profligate spending. She points out the I gave her the list and decided on 90% of the stuff on the list in advance, knowing full well it was 50% more than we had in cash. Still, I go on to tell the kids how it is HER fault we can't pay their allowance, or buy the new clothes they need.

This is NOT the fault of "the Administration". It isn't the exclusive domain of Democrats. The fault lies full well with CONGRESS -- mostly with the House -- who drew up the budget and allocated 50% more funds than they had on hand. Anyone in CONGRESS who voted "yes" on the budget needs to shut their damn mouth about the debt ceiling and start looking in a mirror.

RAISE the debt ceiling. We already MADE those commitments to buy, spend or pay. People loaned us money on this and we OWE them. Pay them back.

AND NEVER DO IT AGAIN, STARTING WITH THE 2012 BUDGET THAT WILL BE VOTED ON STARTING IN SEPTEMBER! We have a credit limit, stick to it.

This puts it succinctly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOKRR9sYlzc&feature=player_embedded