http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/07/sms_bible/
http://www.biblesociety.com.au/smsbible/

Christ. So, the Bible has been converted into text which can easily be sent to a mobile phone and conforms to the limitations (160 chars) of SMS messages.

So, just like at the site itself, you can see verses like

"4 God so luvd da world"

So we can breed a new generation of idiots? What is so difficult about multiple messages with the full, English-conformant text? Ever since I've been invovled in on-line chat (1985, Q-Link, to present) I have had my intelligence bombarded by stupid replacements like "U" instead of "you," "R" instead of "are," and the like. I'll admit that I used shorter phrases of things, like "prolly" instead of "probably," but even that seems to skirt the proficiency barrier.

To me, such short cuts lead to the barbaric assault on our language, such as "your" instead of "you're," the use of "of" instead of "have," and the various misuses of "their," "there," and "they're."

ON THE OTHER HAND

Does the use of such semi-cryptic short cuts help keep our minds fresh? Having to constantly translate text into our native language may work to help lead us into larger, more complex puzzles. 1337-speak is one of those things that I could never get into. I have distanced myself from even close friends who have chosen to partake in such text conventions. What makes me feel even more ashamed is that my love of complex puzzles lead me to develop my own language based on the use of pronounciations of numbers -- that is, I did not use numbers which looked like letters, such as "4" for "A," "1" for "L" or "I," etc. -- I used numbers for their sounds: "4" for "4ever," "3" in certain circumstances (yes, this system has rules) such as "tr3" (tree,) and so on.

Sometimes my dislike of the SMS/IM language perversions, and the whole "1337-5p34" thing clouds my judgement.

So, should the SMS Bible be an insult to our intelligence, or does it work to enhance our intelligence?

Oh, and just for the record, words like "pwned," "teh," "haxor," and the like ARE just plain stupid.

Every so often I come across someone talking about the next big thing in computers. From what I remember, we went from a single personal computer, to multiple personal computers, to desktop convergence (entertainment PC,) to hand-held (ala PDA,) to hand-held convergence, so on and so forth.

From what I understand now, we need:

A single convergence computer which will either
  a) act as an entertainment device playing media from another machine (LAN or WAN server)
  b) act as a server from which other convergence PCs (or simple PCs) may play media

A hand-held multi-purpose convergence machine which acts as a personal organizer, cell phone, digital camera, audio recording device, multimedia playback device, and also be able to interact with desktop convergence PCs/servers via Bluetooth, IrDA, WiFi, or other wire/less networking interface.

Wow. Can I get mine in a watch, with fries, please? (Funny enough, I have a Casio watch which takes color pictures at QVGA... alas the model I have only displays grayscale at the face and has been obsoleted by a model with a color display!)

(Oh, and let's not forget the DRM... that's the large shake.)

ANYWAY... the battle now is who is going to take us there, how, and when.

As a system admin by trade, programmer and hardware hack by hobby, I see a bigger problem. How are we going to achieve the infrastructure?

Turning our PCs into dumb terminals for displaying content seems to be the big thing. But that doesn't remain inexpensive, and it also requires (with the advent of massive networking operating systems like Windows, Linux, MacOS X, et al.) that the user become an administrator. Wow, again. My grandmother just wants a computer to send email, browse QVC, and get pictures of the family. She doesn't need to be concerned about service packs, critical updates, dependencies, and of course malware.

So that leads to the next logical step, making the system administration-less as far as the user is concerned. This happens by moving the OS, at least the bulk of the OS, to the content provider. Ala WebTV or other (TV) set-top boxes.

Discussion of the security implications of the client OS and network transmissions is beyond the scope of this entry, and an exercise for the reader.

To continue... That's nice and all, but the WebTV-alike system is also limited, and inherently untrustworthy.

The biggest concern out there is a person's data, information, and identity. So, here we have moved from the "fat" client (ala AOL on a personal computer,) to a "thin" client (ala WebTV-alike set-top unit.)

Let's press on. In a previous post I made I discussed the potential for a "chunky" client. It's not fat, it's not thin, it's kind-of husky... CHUNKY. What's this all about?

Well, let's take the good parts of everything so far:

The centrally administrated system offered by the thin client. The ability to keep one's information local and private (admittedly, mostly, though this can be changed through implementation, a piece-of-mind thing.) The ability to perform "fun", useful, or productive tasks.

errr Sort of a minimal boot environment with terminal services and a back-mapped drive.

CHUNKY CLIENT.

The idea is the the "server" operating system is maintained by a provider. The user can choose which information is stored on the "server," and which information is maintained locally. This gives piece of mind that sensitive information is not kept in an active location. False sense of security, it might be, dependent upon total system implementation.

The client will have a hard drive, a basic operating system, and some some kind of media drives (remember, we want convergence, too) for multimedia playback and recording. Should the hard drive fail, the system will boot a stripped-down OS from the server. PXE-ish.

Now, what about the fun, useful, and productive aspect? Well, we all like software. We all like games. And hell, we all LOVE to work. At the server applications are available for people to use... word processors, graphics editors, web browsers, games, etc. A virtual catalog should be available which allows users to select software to "install" to their profile. Such apps may already be installed by the "server" admins, but not available to a user profile until purchasing, licensing, whatever.

I like the idea of distributed computing. Something like this system could be run on my Amiga 1200 50MHz 68060... but where are we going to find such, uh, robust hardware these days? The average client hardware will more than likely be pretty beefy in the CPU arena, and probably have a GPU as well. Some applications may need to have parts run at the local client level (consider games with heavy CPU and graphics requirements.) Parts which would not only tax resources at the far end, but also the bandwidth in-between.

And so on.

Hey, this is only a journal, not a thesis, so I'm dodging some bullets here.

So, in the end we have the Chunky Client System:

Centrally operated and maintained
Local storage capabilities
Local peripherals (printers, storage devices, etc.)
Far-end application execution
Distributed processing, including local execution
Virtual catalog of applications available to user

I don't know of any kind of system like this which exists. I'd like to think that I'm one of the first to articulate it. I'd like to think that one day this kind of thing will come about.

Hey, can we program on a system like that? Give us BASIC, dammit :) Oh, distributed LOGO. Okay, that's enough now. eerrrr one last hit... Visual RPG-II.

Okay, I'm done.

To reach this kind of communistic technology nirvana our current thinking of technology needs a rethinking. We cannot stick to our current pragma of operating systems, mice, and men.

Oh, and marketing for this system. I think that such a system could run hand-in-hand with the traditional PC for many years. Many of us still want the freedom of modifying, tinkering, and doing whatever the hell we want with our hardware. Such freedom simply cannot be afforded with the Chunky System, at least not easily and without risk. But there is a large part of the populace which doesn't care, doesn't know, doesn't care to know, doesn't have the time to know, or some combination thereof.

I'm really done now.

Dell Financial Services (DFS) SUCKS for several reasons. First, my personal experience with them.

Last year when I first openned my office, I ordered some equipment on a 60-days same-as-cash deal. I gave them my business information, my business address and contact information. It took a couple of months to get all of my equipment, but I eventually got it. Mind you, the keyboard and mouse I ordered DIED within a couple of months. I digress. I did not hear from them until December when they contacted me about the billing. But they had the wrong address!

What? Yes, somehow they linked my business account to a personal purchase from almost five years ago. I corrected their error, and got off the phone thinking everything was fine.

Except that I had to do this again in January.

Then in March, I start getting calls from Tritium Card Services about my several months of past due invoices. What? I haven't received any invoices! Well, we've been mailing them, and you must have gotten them. Blah blah blah, and suddenly it hits... they have not only my home address, but a home address from which I moved a few years back. Dammit!

I tell them that this was THEIR screw-up, I never received any invoices because they have been sending them to the wrong address, AFTER I corrected them TWICE. As far as I am concerned, I made the effort to fix this mess.

NO, no no. See, you have a responsibility to pay. You knew you were in a credit arrangement, blah blah blah. That's all well and good, but I pay my bills when I get an invoice. Staples invoices me, Cingular invoices me, etc. As a one-man operation I don't have time to chase down all of my bills, and I certainly don't bring in enough money to suddenly pay four months of past-due bills! Not good enough. This can ruin your credit, and so forth.

Fine. I'll take my case to the FTC, Texas Dept of Business Regulation, Florida Attorney General's office, and the BBB. I won't be extorted because of DFS/TCS's screw-up, and I won't have my credit held hostage for the same. We'll compromise. Adjust my billing to start on the date that you first sent me an invoice, and I'll continue to make the regular $92.43 payments per month.

Nope, not good enough. Pay it up, including the late fees. Well, I'll do my best to make the payments, but I'm NOT paying late fees.

This goes on for months, until finally in July we make an agreement for me to make the few months back payments in exchange for dismissal of all late fees. And then the fuckers charged me a late fee for the automatic draft which covered all of the past payments and current! But, as a one-time customer courtesy, they waived that fee and discussed the due-date with me again.

So, now on to my girlfriend. She bought a laptop from them about a year ago after hers got stolen on a business trip. I won't make excuses for her, she sometimes pays bills late. Fine. But these assholes call SEVERAL times a day, starting on the day AFTER it's due. Seriously! In one day I counted 12 calls! And they LIE about who they are. "This is Josh, I need to speak to xxxx." "What's this about?" "Oh, she knows me." "We don't know any 'Josh'." "Well, she knows me, and it's personal." "Well, this is my phone line that I pay for, and she doesn't get calls unless the caller properly identifies himself." "Well, I'm afraid it's business, and I cannot discuss it with you." "I thought you said this was a personal call? Is she screwing around on me?" "Uh, this is personal business." "Those are mutually exclusive. Look, unless you identify yourself, you won't get past me." "Well, I'll just call be in two or three hours." "Fine."

And they do. Each time with a different name in that same annoying accent. Let's see, they give you fake American-sounding names, lie about who they are, call numerous times in a day, refuse to identify their purpose... sounds a lot like harassment to me. I know the economy is down, but hell... if Dell needs to money that bad, I wouldnt' mind letting them hold a couple of bucks here or there if it meant that they wouldn't harrass their customers the day after a payment is due. It's like having a crack addict as a land-lord... "You got the rent??! I NEEEEEEEEED IT!"

Then they give us this bullshit about "Once we speak to the person, we stop calling." BULLSHIT BULLSHIT! She talks to them this month about her payment. It was an automatic draft (which they almost insist on) but it hit before her paycheck. Whoops. So she talks to them. They want $10 to process a payment over the phone, which they say they will credit back on the next bill. Oh, and this is after they ALREADY charged a late fee. She said NO. I've already been penalized, so I'll send in two month's payment next month, plus the late fee. And the calls haven't stopped.

Oh yeah, don't ask for a supervisor, because they're always in meetings or otherwise not available.

So, that's why DFS sucks. And that's why I don't recommend Dell to my clients anymore. Used to be I wouldn't even try to compete on system builds. Now, I don't care. Sure, my builds cost twice as much, but I give much better customer service.

Well, that's the end of that. Pizza's here and I'm damn hungry. Until next time.

END OF LINE

I found this guy's page in a search for "Amiga HDBackup". I started scrolling through his random thoughts and found that he and I think alike on a number of things.

Interesting, isn't it? I mean, could it be that a lot of sane Amiga users think alike? Could it be that if Amiga users were great in number that maybe the world would be a saner place?

http://www.seebs.net/log/archives/2004_01.html

I get really tired of the bullshit moderating that happens around here. I also get tired of the poor grammer, dupes, and various other happenings that lower my estimate of the intelligence of /. as a whole. I'll mention that I get irritated by the fact that most of the articles are news items I've read from other POPULAR sites as much as three days before, though sometimes within hours. The only redeeming factors are the discussions which follow, which you don't get from the popular sites. For that, I overlook that /. has become more of a news aggregator.

I just find that a lot of moderators abuse their powers to smite those who have opinions opposite of their own. I have modded up plenty of posts with which I do not agree, but the content is such that it makes for a valid argument or differing perspective.

We'll see how things play out with time. Maybe I'll start moderating again, if /. doesn't get tired of me letting my mod points expire.

CNN.com has some fantastic footage available for free viewing of the unbelievable devastation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

I can't help but to notice that with Katrina, as with Ivan's destruction of I-10 in Pensacola, the parts of bridges which were destroyed were closest to the water. High spans were unaffected. My thoughts are on what this means (wind at low levels, high water surges, etc.) and if engineering can learn anything from this.

This is my first modern blog, and it's going to be a bitch session, I guess. This article,

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/21/0138216&tid=126&tid=14

It kills me. Why? In 1994-ish I was working at Taco Bell, going to school in the evenings at Troy State, and dating a girl that worked at the local car parts store. During this time I bought Peltier devices ripped from coolers (I guess) from MECI and started toying with the idea of a car air conditioner based on the devices. I even tried building a prototype, but I got bored with the project after a while.

I want to be curious about this. I want to see how these kids solved the issue of heat dissipation on the opposite of the cool-side. I want to see if they used the same circuit I designed to maintain temperature. But at the same time I am flogging myself for letting this slip out of my hands.

And it's not the first thing to happen like this, either. When I was a kid I used LEDs in my Lego towns for lighting and traffic signals. I used the money from my allowance or from mowing yards to purchase the 10- and 20-pack grab-bags of LEDs from Radio Shack. I wrote a program on my C64 and built a connector to run the traffic signals. I figured then that LEDs would be the future of lighting.

And other projects which I won't mention here since I'm now trying to wrangle a patent attorney.

I am currently reminded of a project I was working on when I started dating the girlfriend I have now, almost four years ago. It's sitting on a shelf, and next week when we move I'll be dusting it off and getting it ready for patent.

It's not that I want money or fortune, but it really kills me that I have all these great ideas and never do anything with them. I think about GREAT inventors and how they just churned out patent after patent based on their ideas, and I wonder how the $^&! do they get the money for the applications, and why can't I follow a process to get my ideas patented? Really, all I want is recognition. If I make money, great, my kids won't have such a rough life that way.

I'll be over this some time. In the mean time, I'll find a good patent lawyer and start shovelling every idea I have, no matter how seemingly stupid it is, to the USPTO.

At the behest of some friend,

http://alan2.rateliff.us/a4000flash/

I replaced the hard drive in my Amiga 1200 with a 512MB Compact Flash card.

http://alan2.rateliff.us/a1200flash/

http://dh0.info/
http://df0.info/

They're just to start. I have a little more planned for later... but I'm really damn tired right now.