The Home Computer In 2004 (As Imagined In 1954)

Please click on the image to see this in all its glory and to read the caption. Yep, that teletype interface sure makes it easy to use, doesn't it?

Thanks to WinDoze on the Vector Linux forum for digging up this gem.

More Kudos To J&R Music World

In my last post I wrote about the premature failure of my Sylvania g Netbook. I also noted that the dealer, J&R Music World of New York City, offered an immediate exchange. I called to follow up this morning and I should have my replacement on the way very shortly. I also am being reimbursed for the shipping and insurance charges to return the netbook. In addition the price has dropper by $40 since I ordered mine and I am, in fact, receiving a $40 credit as well. When all is said and done I will have paid $239 for the computer, a price that is still available today.

First, kudos to J&R Music World for their outstanding customer service. Second, if the new computer works as expected I will have gotten a very capable little laptop for a truly minuscule price. $239 for a system with a 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 30GB hard drive is impossible to beat. Oh, and yes, it runs Linux.

The Netbook Experience Is A Little Less Shiny Right Now

During the holidays I received some Hanukkah gelt from family specifically earmarked for buying myself a new computer. The Toshiba laptop I'm writing this on is six years old now, it's slow by today's standards and it has developed a highly intermittent harware problem. Sometimes, out of the blue, it will shut itself off for no apparent reason. Since having a reliable and portable computer is vital for me to make a living right now a replacement was the best gift I could possibly get. A netbook seemed like the perfect solution to me and I ordered the one that seemed to give me the most power for the least money in a very small and lightweight case: a Sylvania g Netbook.

For the first couple of weeks I was thrilled with the little laptop. I was less than pleased with the stock gOS Linux implementation but once I replaced it with a Linux distribution that actually had the proper support and drivers for the hardware I was really, really happy. I used the little Sylvania for everything. Then, like the Toshiba, it started having an intermittent problem. It would lock up for no apparent reason. I went back to the stock gOS configuration and it still locked hard at random times.

I bought the netbook from J&R Music World in New York City via Amazon.com. Kudos to J&R for immediately authorizing an exchange and promising that they would ship a replacement within 24-48 hours of receiving my defective unit. J&R is a long established brick and mortar store that I shopped at when I lived in New York. They have an excellent reputation for customer service and it seems to be well earned so far. They also had some of the best prices on netbooks when I shopped for mine. So... the replacement should be here next week some time.

In the meanwhile I'm back on my old computer. Having worked on the Sylvania for two weeks this one really does seem slow now despite only a small difference in the processor (1.2GHz Via C-7M ULV in the netbook vs. 1GHz Intel Celeron in this one). Of course the fact that the netbook had twice the memory (1 GB vs. 512MB RAM) is probably a big part of the performance difference.

Back in the 1980s I did work for a major electronic manufacturer. I learned back then that 90% of electronic failures happen in the first 5% of service life. What happened with my netbook is just plain bad luck. It could have happened with a Dell or an HP or an Asus netbook. In any case it would have been handled promptly under warranty. I certainly don't blame Sylvania at this point. I really have nothing to complain about. OTOH, it's always frustrating to have something new fail like this. For me, temporarily, the shine is off the netbook experience.

I have written a detailed review of the Sylvania g Netbook for O'Reilly Broadcast but for the moment I'm not publishing it. I want to make sure the replacement works as it should before I publish my opinions on a large public tech forum. I expect the review will go out pretty much unchanged but... Yeah, things just aren't shiny right now.

Happy Holidays!

I wanted to take a minute and wish everyone a very happy holiday season. Please pick the greeting that's right for you:

Happy Hanukkah!
Merry Christmas!
Happy Holidays!

First Snow

Anyone who has been reading my blog for a while now knows I live not too far from Raleigh, NC. I've lived here for nine of the past 11 years. In those 11 years we've had a real honest to goodness snow storm here exactly twice. Even the mention of the word snow sends people rushing to the supermarket to buy up all the bread and milk they can find. My housemate claims it's all a trick by the supermarkets to boost sales. Anyway, I digress...

The other day we had what the local news called a "10 minute blizzard", as in near white out conditions. Of course, nothing stuck to the ground and it was over. The fact that 10 minutes of non-stock snow even makes the news tells you just how little snow we get around here. Still, that was our first snow of the season.

When will the second snowfall come? The forecast calls for snow showers tomorrow. I guess I'd better run out and get some bread and milk :) Oh yeah, that's right, I don't drink milk. Make that soy milk.

The Panic of 2008: History Repeats

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-George Santayana, 1924
This famous quote was also paraphrased by Winston Churchill:

"Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it"
With stocks continuing downward precipitously today, the following cartoon and commentary which appeared today on Planète Béranger is particularly apropos:

From the Library of Congress description: «This poster for the stage production of The War of Wealth depicts what might have been any number of nineteenth century-financial crises. During that time, the U.S. experienced panics in the years 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, and 1893. The major financial catalyst for the panic of 1857 was the August 24, 1857, failure of the New York branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company. It was soon reported that the entire capital of the Trust's home office had been embezzled. What followed was one of the most severe economic crises in U.S. history. Almost immediately, New York bankers put severe restrictions on even the most routine transactions. In turn, many people interpreted these restrictions as a sign of impending financial collapse and panicked. Individual holders of stock and of commercial paper rushed to their brokers and eagerly made deals that "a week before they would have shunned as a ruinous sacrifice." As the September 12, 1857, Harper's Weekly described the scene on the New York Stock Exchange, "…prominent stocks fell eight or ten per cent in a day, and fortunes were made and lost between ten o'clock in the morning and four of the afternoon."»

Sound familiar?

The Second Great Depression

With Yom Kippur over I turned on the news this evening. It was consumed with two things. The American Presidential election was down to number two after the now global economic crisis.

Stock markets the world over continue to crash down. The Bush administration, once the voice of laissez-faire capitalism, is considering following the British example and taking the decidedly socialist step of purchasing parts of private banks, in effect partially nationalizing them, albeit "voluntarily". How voluntary is it if the choice is semi-nationalization or outright failure? We also have the spectacle of a possible national bankruptcy in Iceland. Has a nation ever gone bankrupt before?

All these events are, I think quite accurately, being described as "the worst financial crisis since the great depression" by various talking heads on all the major and not-so-major news media. Normally optimistic economic voices are now saying we're going into a deep recession. Hello? We're already there and I honestly believe this is the start of a second great depression. 2008 and 1929 will often be linked from this point forward.

I think a lot of us are going to have to rethink our lifestyles, our finances, and how to plan for our future. Too many Americans, encouraged by our consumer culture, have lived way beyond their means. A little economic panic may actually have a healthy result if people pay down debts and start saving for a rainy day. It may also make some rethink their political ideology and make a more sane choice in the November election. Those would certainly be silver linings to the proverbial dark clouds.

What about me? What will I do? Believe it our not this may actually be beneficial to my business if I do some clever marketing. OK, I hate marketing. Only chasing people down for monies owed is worse. I truly loathe collections. Yet I honestly believe suddenly being very good at marketing is vital to me.

Let's face it: Linux can save companies money. It can do lots of really serious work well on machines that can't even minimally run a current version of Windows. That's true both for servers and desktops. Linux can allow companies to leverage the existing, aging systems and extend the productive life of hardware they already own. There are no licensing costs either, and for small and medium sized businesses the savings involved can make a huge difference in difficult times. My expertise is Linux. I'm very good at making it turnkey, easy to use, and optimizing for performance. Now I need to be especially good at showing people how using my expertise will save them money, as in many times what they pay me for my services.

It's not just Linux, of course. It's also using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to replace proprietary and often costly software. If I can offer alternatives that save licensing costs for multiple products a business needs the savings can add up, perhaps more than enough to make learning a new product and transferring or converting data worthwhile.

Can I do it? I honestly think so. No, it won't be easy. Selling change never is. Asking people to step outside of their comfort zone and dive into new software is difficult at best. Now, though, people may make some tough choices they wouldn't have made in better times when they weren't counting their pennies so closely.

A new website, perhaps a little print advertising, and a few successful engagements to create word of mouth advertising is what I need. It's a challenge but then again, riding out tough times and keeping heads above water is a challenge lots of us will be facing now.