What’s new and exciting?

I’m really big on reading. Lets just say when I was a kid I didn’t go anywhere without something to read. Usually even just a magazine. I guess my whole goal in life was to be that wise older guy with salt and pepper hair. Picture Morgan Freeman sitting with a newspaper in hand telling stories the enlighten you while also letting you know he wasn’t the most perfect child. That’s me. That’s the story of my life. I look at my bookshelf at home now and when people ask me have I read those books I scratch my head and say, “Oh crap I guess I have read most of them.” I have no idea why this still surprises me but it does every single time.

About 5 or 6 years ago I read an article where a guy said that if you read 50 books a year then imagine how much information you will have gained in 20 years. I said, “You know what you’re right!” So, starting from then I’ve set out on this mission. The first year was easier because I broke my leg pretty bad so I was on the couch for a month so I did nothing but read. One problem though. I didn’t receive my quickening. Where’s my quickening?

An old movie series that started in the 80′s and also had a TV series based on it was called “Highlander.” Now the thing about Highlander was that there were these random people that for some reason or another became immortal. The one caveat to this is that they could sense each other and knew they’d have to search the earth to kill all the others because as the tagline says, “There can be only one.” Whenever any immortal cut off the head of another immortal the sky would become turbulent, clouds would circle and they’d go into convulsions as lightning would come from the sky into them giving them all the knowledge gained by the other immortal over his/her lifetime. This is the quickening. That’s what I expect from reading.

Last year I took a course in speed reading. I felt that I could consume even more content if I read faster since I have a really short attention span and I keep stopping for crazy things. Did it. Got good but still no in the middle of the night quickening.

I now see life as a slow quickening. The new info is in there. Churning itself together with the old stuff. I will it so I will one day be that Morgan Freeman guy but just like with everything in life, you don’t just wake up one day and you’re someone or something else. Patience is for the virtuous who want to change.

Recently I got into a debate about interfaces. I know this isn’t the most common conversation. Actually, it was spawned by a conversation about my last blog post on Windows 7. Critiques (even if they are not heavy handed) will usually cause someone from a group that loves the item to lash out at you without fully thinking about the review. Zealotry of anything will cause you to be blind to some extent. The zealotry that is the core of most computer fights isn’t what most people think it is. Most people find themselves in three basic camps: Mac, Windows, or Linux/Unix.

Analyzing the problem further you will find that the real difference between all of these is the interface. The interface is how you interact with the computer. Mac people learned when their computers turned from Motorola processors to Intel that the guts became the same as everybody elses. They learned even earlier when Mac went to OSX that the core became Unix. Briefly returning to the aforementioned debate, the other person disagreed with my assessment of Windows 7 because the interface was easier to use for him. Joe Average User will never flip his lid over the look of Windows 7. Linux users have learned this the hard way. The major Linux interfaces are Gnome and KDE. Both of these have added all kinds of crazy effects, transitions, shading, etc. to better the eye candy in Mac and Windows. In actuality it can look much better than what either of the others can do. At that point they realized, “It’s not how pretty it looks. It’s usability. How easy it is to use.”

Usability is an area that Mac excels at. A Mac is a pretty easy piece of equipment to learn to use for the most part. With that said, it does however have the reputation of not being useful for higher level work or tweakers. Just creative types and people just typing papers and getting on the Internet. These areas seem to be some of the commonly said weaknesses of Linux. My friend’s believe in Windows 7 being easier to use goes even deeper than usability though. It strikes at the heart of my own zealotry. Input devices.

The monitor, mouse and keyboard have changed very little for the last 30+ years. We love these devices. They are near and dear to us. Have we reached the end of the interface road though? If you ever saw the move “Minority Report” you will be aware of Tom Cruise moving items in the air on a two dimensional projection in the sky. Many companies have come out with prototypes of this technology after Microsoft released video of it’s “Microsoft Surface” technology to come out to the public soon. Is this the next step? Even though keyboard changes like the Dvorak (no connection to publication famous John C. Dvorak) style keyboard were introduced in 1936, before the computer even came out, it has not been adopted because we don’t like massive changes in our inputs and interfaces.

So, all that to say the big question: “Have we reached the end of what we can get out of what we are using?” I really can’t picture how much more can be done that will totally blow the mind until virtual reality and 3D projection come but the future always holds some new surprises.

I a thought just brought itself together to me yesterday that I had to throw out there. During the Olympics I was talking to my kids about China and how we find that they attack American servers so much. I personally have tried to track down IP addresses on servers I’ve run and even at my home in the past and traced them down to a Chinese IPs before I even knew about all the attacks.

Fast forward to the night before last. I was watching a James Bond movie called “Tomorrow Never Dies.” The movie’s plot in short was a plot by a media magnet billionaire (obviously Ted Turner) making the news so his magazines, TV, and newspapers could report it first. So, he used a stealth ship and park it near the Chinese ships and attack the British and vice versa.

So, in my preparation to write this post I was listening to a podcast called Linux Outlaws and found out that John C. Dvorak or the Twit network also came up with this conclusion. What if it’s someone else attacking us by attacking Chinese servers and routing through them? In my own history I have found that a server that I had control of but wasn’t supposed to really touch was compromised many years ago. The thing is, during the forensics process of this I found out that the attackers were from Germany and using my server to attack the company 3COM (who also notified me of the attack). Dvorak seems to think it is the Russians attacking US computers but I haven’t thought too much about the “who” just the “not who.”

Just a side thought. Tomorrow Never Dies was made in 1997. Somebody else was watching and coming up with this idea. Plus, we know that the Chinese servers aren’t totally without holes. The whole drama about the Chinese gymnists being too young really broke after an american IT security guy hacked (well not really hacked but run with me) into Chinese search engine servers cache files, got data, and used Google to translate the pages. From that he found that all the references to a gymnast meet just last year where the girls were 13 and now they’re 16 by the time of the Olympics. Right…