Big loss for Linux today

Approximately 2 and half years ago I became a serious proponent, dare I say evangelist, of Linux. As of today that is no longer the case.

Without going into all the boring and filthy details, I had some minor problems running a new 64bit kernel, on somewhat new-ish hardware that almost supports 64bits, with some older software. I tried to downgrade – clean reinstall – to something which I had previously confirmed on another machine works perfectly fine. After the install I had serious problems even connecting to the local network – plain DHCP. This is normally an immediate KO criteria for me, and I don’t even bother trying to figure out anything else. This time I did give it a second chance, only to run into more serious problems. Well, I’ll just reinstall back what I had at the beginning of the day and live with the small issues, right? Last time, the install took me under 60 minutes. After the second install I could not get anything to work again! How is it possible to use the exact same install media, on the exact same machine, and get two completely different results? After a day of pondering this dilemma – downtime for my employer – I am installing that other system first thing tomorrow morning.

Here are some myths, that I personally have proven wrong:

Linux is cheaper. You know what? Nobody in the corporate world cares! I have yet to meet anyone anywhere who actually gives a hoot to save money for their employer in this area. Licensing costs for proprietary software, in the corporate world, are somebody else’s problem somewhere else and the software is effectively free to us here.

Linux is technically superior. That may be, but only if you are a geek that reads source code all day. One of my colleagues, whom I respect very much, runs Windows on his desktop, has a MacBook sitting on the desk next to him, wears OpenBSD T-shirts, and runs several different Linuxes in the back room. He is quite fluent in all these OSes. When someone asks him which OS he prefers, his answer is always: “whichever gets the job done the fastest.” The “job” that he is faced with on a daily basis: some marketing drone hassling him to “just get my laptop to work!” Bottom line: All operating systems will have problems. It just so happens that for Windows the problems are assumed by the (l)users, and there is always somebody around who knows how to “just get it to work.” However, if you run into a problem with your Linux machine, everyone just gives you that you-asked-for-it look and a shrug.

I am not expecting to see Linux on the corporate desktop any time soon.

pwned by Windows

I am starting to put together a new piece of a continuous integration framework (the self-test part, of course). This one has to be done on a Windows platform, specifically it has to run on XP and Vista, a first for me.

I am used to having everything that I could possibly need at my fingertips on a base install of Linux. I can’t remember EVER having to go and hunt for some tool that I would need to get something like this done that was not already installed.

I first decided to see how far I could go with a base Windows install; that is, the minimum amount of tools that are not part of the original install. This means that I tried to resort to pure .bat scripting.

Syncing different Windows machines

As is often the case, this has to run on multiple machines. I am just too lazy (and error prone) to go and make one small change on every single machine every time I update something. I want the framework to be self-updating! In order to achieve that, I had to install SVN on all he machines. My first rule broken, and I did not even get started. I did not even try to work around this one: some sick munched up network test if a drive is mounted properly, copy over network if the machine is not down, verify the copied files, decide which one is considered the master, …

Getting the day of week on Windows

I want different tests to run on different days of the week – this is strictly a management decision, there was no technical reason to do this. No big deal. In pure .bat scripting this is quite difficult to get, but not impossible … or is it?

The only command that I could find that gives you the day of week is date /T. It dumps out something in the format: “day date”, where “day” is a three-letter code for the day of week, like “Mon”, “Tue”, etc; and “date” is the current date. Now how to parse that? After like an hour of Googling and browsing the specs, I ended up with:

for /F "tokens=1" %%d in ("%date%") do set day=%%d

Nice, huh? They even have a different way of naming the variables inside the loop, depending if you are doing it from the command line or from a script! To tell you the honest truth, I am not really certain how this actually works. However, the first time I ran it on one of my test machines, %day% ended up being something like “18/08/09″. I’m thinking WTF? Tried it on another machine and got “Tue”. After some more trial and error, I discovered that the output of the date command varies depending on what locale you have set in your preferences. What sick sadistic MF over at Redmond thought this would be a good idea?

Scheduling things in Windows

Of course not everything everywhere is the same. Some parts of the tests need to change between different machines. From the Linux world, I normally did this through environment variables. Bill’s posse decided to outdo Linux by introducing three types of environment variables, only two of which are properly documented! After some trial and error I found a combination that worked … until I tried to run my tests as a Scheduled task. The facts that the tools for scheduling a task 1) are found in completely different location between XP and Vista, 2) have completely redesigned interface, and not for better, and 3) have their file formats that you export/import totally incompatible between the two, no longer dissuaded me. It makes work that much more interesting. But the fact that different variables are passed to the scheduled tasks in different versions of the OS, is another example of Windows’ big middle finger for the programming world.

There was a time once that I used to run a liberated version of Windows on my machine. Today, they could not pay me enough to install that piece of dung on my machine. I wouldn’t want it even for free!

Next: PowerShell.

Happenings?

Not much actually.

So my Noki is now officially outdated. Man, €500 and 19 months later, and stuff is no good anymore. Am I the only one who thinks that a device I pay that much money for should last me at least a decade? Yea, naïve, I know.

Update 09/08/21: Now I know why. Nokia N900 running full Linux. Yea baby!

I am so over 64bit operating systems, regardless of the vendor. I suspect the biggest problem that is killing the whole thing are peripheral vendors. Apparently 64bit support was available in CPUs from 2003, and OS supported it from 2001 – both on the desktop. However, five years after the fact, support from (closed source) hardware vendors is flaky at best! Here is just one example of a miserable issue I recently ran headlong into.

Here is a good one. The other day, while I am installing something – something that I have been installing the same way at work for the past 6 months – out of nowhere pops up the following:

This is a 10-year old product And I get this popup only when I am installing over the network. Anyone know where the heck this comes from

Biological computer virus

Every once in a while I have a day when lots of unexplainable and unreproducible things just happen to computers all around me. Yesterday was one of those days.

It started out trying to get VMware to acknowledge my wireless network. No good, but this never worked for me, so nothing new so far. Next, when trying to connect to work, I found that VPN networks was gone from the network manager – OpenVPN was still installed, just not showing up in the GUI. Then the kicker: I noticed that OpenOffice.org Quickstarter was gone from the notification area, so I go to launch it from the menu. It just disappeared from my computer; like not just the Quickstarter, but like the whole thing! It was even reported as not installed in Synaptic. After reinstalling it, Quickstarter still would not come up. I have come to expect things like my RSS feeds on the partnerpage.google.com not working, but yesterday they were redirected to a completely different feed. Well I chose this day to install my son’s new computer – how do you think that went? Well, you would be wrong! I burned the .iso onto a CD and had the computer confirm that the burn was successful. When I took the CD over to the new computer it told me that the CD is blank. I got smart – just gave up, turned off everything, and went to bed with a book.

This morning at work I find, of course, that all tests from previous day failed.

e-mail: Bad form of communication

Today we live in a society where people are unreasonably easily offended or they can misinterpret even the best of intentions and freak out. If you don’t believe me ask any guy what started the last fight he had with his girlfriend. I am surprised how often we are ready to shoot the messenger, and nobody stops and considers that perhaps the problem lies on the receiving end. How did we get this way?

The email is the worst medium. It seems to me that people completely loose their brains when given access to email. How many times have you received a joke email, that has been forwarded around the world several times and the mail contains the complete history of all addresses that it has passed through. Sometimes, these jokes can be quite offensive. I personally am hardly ever offended, usually just pissed at the waste of bandwidth. But I know how to set up my mail filters to not even be bothered by these slightly-better-than-spam annoyances. What gets me though, is the history: everyone’s mail address, along with their fancy signature “VP of this large company”, “Senior PR Manager of that prestigious corporation”, and these people never stop and think … maybe this is going to get, with my name and all, somewhere I don’t want it to go. The best IMHO are the legal threats at the bottom of each and every single iteration: “intended only for the recipient only … please delete immediately or we will take action …” These people are obviously not even paying attention to what they are spewing out into the world. Crackberry addicts are the worst; someone may be the most intelligent and most well spoken person you will ever meet, but put a Crackberry into their hands and within a matter of minutes they turn into a drooling mumbling moron. GMail has even created the Oh shit button because of these people! Can you imagine that particular development session: “So majority of our user are idiots, can we do something about that?”

I am basically peeved that 1) people do not think before they forward something, and 2) when they get offended by an email, they don’t stop and consider: “hey, maybe it’s me and not them.” Well, at least smileys make everything if not better than acceptable.

PS: I really do like you, and I do want to be your friend, but please remove me from your address book. Thank You.

Recycling is wasteful

Recycling and that whole green movement: I don’t get it!

When I was a teenager, over 20 years ago in the ‘ol country, all backwards and stuff, I used to go around the neighborhood collecting discarded paper, old metal, glass, etc. I took it to the recycling depot where I got money for it … usually to buy ice cream and gum. Today, after two decades of innovation, I have to pay somebody else to take my recycling away?!?! What the hell happened? All the people working on recycling projects are COMPLETELY INCOMPETENT! What have you been doing all this time. Are you even aware that technology is suppose to improve over time and make things easier and cheaper?

No good deed shall go unpunished

Good guys, honest people, always get screwed, and not in a good way. My life is usually SNAFU, so I am pretty used to life’s ups and especially it’s downs. But these past few months have had a rather high density of incidents, even for me.

Back in mid-August things started out pretty good. I got a transfer to California. I was thinking that I would cash in on the housing crash there. Some of the reports are way overrated BTW – it is not possible to buy a home at 10 cents on the dollar, but it is quite possible to buy a home at 40 cents on the dollar. The day after I put an offer on a house I got fired. Don’t want to get into the particulars right now; might air out the dirty laundry later. Basically, I spoke my mind, and my boss and I did not see eye-to-eye. If only I would have kept my mouth shut, and just kept on keeping on like the rest of the sheep, I still would have been gainfully employed.

While all that was going on, being in California, I had to get a car. As with the house market, the car industry was hit just as hard if not harder. So I was shopping round for a bargain. Found a nice 2002 Volvo V70XC, with little over 50k miles, for little over $12k including all taxes and registration. All the fixin’s too, you could still see the imprints of the child-seats in the leather back seats of the car – obviously a pampered mommy mobile. Everyone we spoke to told us that Volvos are very reliable cars, so we went for it. Being a nice guy, I even tried to make it before the end of the month so the dealership makes their quota. Two weeks later, the transmission fell apart! Almost two weeks and $4000 after that, we had a new transmission in it. The mechanic told us, that we had better drive it as much as possible, and bring it back after about 1000 miles for him to give it a quick look over. Only 325 miles later, that transmission started going! At least this time it was under warranty. However, by this time, we decided that the economy is not going to improve any time soon, and so we are going back to Canada. The landlord called from Hawaii to tell me she will not be able to refund me the $1500 deposit because I am breaking the lease, and so we were just holding out until the car got fixed, this time by Volvo personally, or until we get forcefully evicted, whichever comes first. The car won.

When crossing the border with the car, I got another shocker. I had once previously brought a car from the US to Canada. It was a while back, and I remember very little: I showed up, paid the GST, they filled out a bunch of paperwork, and I went along on my way. This time however they wanted me to prove that I am paying the GST for my car. I actually had to prove that I do not have some odd fetish about paying taxes for someone else’s property. The only way to prove that is with an original title. I had paid off the car only like a week earlier, and asked to have the title mailed to my Canadian address (the mailing, normally takes several weeks or months). So now I am screwed! I had to call my dad, luckily only 3 hours away, to come and pick up us and my crummy stuff, drive my car back over to the American side, get ridiculed by more customs guards, and park it in a field behind the nearest bar for $21/week. From the number of cars parked out there, I am not the only unfortunate. If I had instead told the customs officials that I am only visiting my parents for Xmas, everything would have been fine. I still had what definitely appeared to be a valid work permit for the US, along with all the necessary documentation to get it. I could have driven the car on American (cheaper) registration for another 8 months, thereby completely avoiding something like $1300 in import duties because I have owned the car for less than 1 year. A year later I could have saved some more of the $1200 GST (aka: Gouge and Screw Tax) as the car would have been another year older. I could have avoided all the hassle and more than half the costs, if only I had told a little white lie. The best thing is, that if I do honestly get a job down in the States again and take the car back there, I will probably not be able to get any of the taxes back!

Update 12-01-09: Got the paperwork for the car last Thursday. It came in an envelope that had a return address to the bank and not the DMV. It has to be faxed to the Americans 72 hours in advance; did that. Went to pick up the car today. No problems on the American side. They made me go get the car first; didn’t even have to dig it out of a snow bank, and it started on the first try!!! The Canadians were A-holes as usual. At the drive-through window they asked me how much the car was. I could not remember, pulled out the bill of sale, and scanned through the half-meter long (I am not exaggerating here) sheet, written in size 9 font. I picked one of the numerous “total price” values and rattled that off to the cute chick. I was then told to come in, to fill out the paperwork and pay the import taxes. Inside it’s all guns, bullet-proof vests and too much testosterone – sheesh. The best thing: the chick running the cash register – no gun, no vest! The guy is scanning through my paperwork, and asks: “How come it says here that the car cost [names some number that is about $400 higher]?” Note that this is a $400 difference on a 12-thousand-dollar car. I told him, that I was not sure. “Well, you need to tell us exactly.” I looked at the paper, and told him that I am sorry and I must have made a mistake, “there are, after all, a lot of numbers on this paper,” I pleaded. The 25-year old kid looks me straight in the eye, and says: “You need to know exactly what the car cost. When you gave us the price the first time, that is the only chance you get. You basically lied to us. I could now reposes the car, you could be fined $10,000, and you could be jailed for 10 years!” I wanted to smack him upside the head for being rude to the elderly, but I realized that that would have been more of an insult to me than to him.

As far as I can tell, the world’s longest undefended border works only for terrorists. Every time I cross it, I feel nervous, and all the people wearing bullet-proof vests and guns at their hip are far from friendly. On our recent “visit”, my daughter noticed a bunch of them standing around a computer laughing. She asked me what they are doing. I told her that they are probably watching some funny movie on the computer. She said that maybe she could do a job like that when she grows up. I did not want to tell her in front of the dozen or so armed officers bored out of their minds, that she can already do a job like that at 9 years old! The North America Free Trade Agreement is some lunatic’s work of fiction, as there is nothing free about it that I can see. The only benefit, is that Canadians are allowed to go work there at a cost of $50/year, as opposed to something like $450/3 years for other nationalities. As for moving goods back and forth for free, or some layman going down there (or coming up here for that matter) to just get any job – forget it!

I often ask myself: Am I actually doing my children any justice by teaching them to be good, law-abiding citizens? Would I not be preparing them better for that cruel world if I were to teach them to lie, cheat, and steal at every opportunity?

Update 16-01-09: I have been corrected. It’s not “lie, cheat, and steal”, it’s apparently called “being diplomatic” and in that case it’s OK.

WP bugs

I have been with WP for four months now; seems like much longer. Right from the start there were a few bugs that have been bothering me, and they still are today. Here they are, starting with the most annoying at the top.

1. When you are entering text in the WP HTML editor, for every Enter that you press (or in my case, copy-paste from OOo) you get a silent <br /> – you do not get to see them as you are entering the text, you only get to see them after you Save (possibly View your post, go WTF?) and go back to Edit your entry. How is that HTML or even XML? According to the standard, white space characters, including newlines, should be collapsed to a single space. Transforming them into a <br /> is definitely a very creative interpretation. I work around this in vi with %j (join all lines), but what a pain: an entirely separate tool to work around one bug!
2. The text box widget (mine is labeled “Flare” on the right) has an upwards compatibility bug with the img tag (note that mine has only images). Image is normally entered as <img src="...">. Since it is an empty element (meaning there is no </img>) it can be entered as <img src="..." />, which is correct XML. However, if you enter it as <img src="..."/> (note the missing space before the closing slash), which is still valid XML, the WP parser does not get it and looses the entire src attribute.
3. This one is not really a WP bug, at least not solely. Last.fm is a place where I often listen to music, as it runs on all OSes that I use. They also generate a widget for your WP blog. Go ahead, and try it … I dare ya. Just go right ahead and paste that mess into either a post or a text widget.

My Last Days of the Celtic Tiger

Apologies if you’re expecting some summary of the play, but I thought the title fitting for my situation.

I have only a few days left in Dublin and last night I took one last stroll on the Boardwalk along the Liffey. I thought about past two years of my life. On the personal side of things, completely unrelated to Ireland, things did not work out as I had hoped or even anticipated; but life is like that sometime – that’s what keeps it interesting. Overall I am very glad of my time in Ireland, but after two years it is time for me to move on. Ireland is beautiful, but it’s a country that “only a mother could love.”

One thing that I must clear up. Lots of people have mentioned that the weather, specifically the rain, is what forced me out. That is not true. I must be probably the only person on this island that did not mind the weather. I actually like a cooler climate. I like that once in a while it rains, it gives you constant green grass and (afterwards) clear blue skies. Joking aside: my top three are at the bottom of the following list.

Things I will miss

• Guinness! Unfortunately, the black stuff does not travel. Just as I no longer drink Sam Adams outside of Boston, or Staropramen outside of Prague, I don’t think I will enjoy a Guinness outside of Dublin. It’s not just the local atmosphere, it actually tastes different.
• Irish people. I am normally no good with people, but Ireland was the easiest place for me to make new friends – I don’t know what that says about the Irish. They are some of the most tolerant and friendly people that I have met anywhere.
• Lots of very kool things to see. I thought it was great, that most (not all!) of the historic sites have free admission and you can actually climb all over them. The kids especially loved this.
• The country. Dingle peninsula, Wexford, Giant’s Causeway, and others. Apparently I have seen more of Ireland than most Irish. Sorry I did not make it out to Achill Island, but I guess I gotta save something for next time?
• For their size (of the country, not talkin’ ’bout obesity here) the Irish will not be just swept under a carpet. The recent Lisbon Treaty vote in Ireland proved that they are a serious contributor to the EU, and they will voice their opinion.

Things I will do without

• Bulmers – sorry Paul, but this stuff is mangy.
• Irish drivers. One thing that the Irish are very bad at, and they will be the first to admit it, is driving. Horse and cart, not a problem. Once you remove the reins, and replace them with a wheel and pedals, that becomes a huge conundrum. The department of transportation tries to help them out a bit, with things like putting traffic lights at roundabouts, which only confuses the heck out of foreigners. Even parking is a mystery to the Irish. As far as I can tell, the rules are as follows. No lines on the road: it’s a free for all. White lines along the side, usually painted in the shape of a box: paid parking. Once you pay, do not let yourself be restricted by the white lines, be creative, see if you can cover as many lines as possible with the car, after all you paid for it! Single-yellow line along the side of the road: no parking. Double-yellow: seriously, no parking! OK, you can park here, but only if all the available space designated by the single-yellow line is already taken up by parked cars. Zig-zag yellow: this time we really, really, really mean it, please don’t park here … for too long. Exemptions are: mamys wielding an SUV who really have talk to their girl friend about the fabulous new sweater they just saw in the store for sale yesterday when coming home from a Mary’s house oh and did you see how much weight she gained….. Rich snooty people driving expensive Mercedes. Anyone who would be inconvenienced by walking the extra distance. And lastly, anyone who is just plain lazy.
• Constant wailing of alarms in the background. Several people tried to convince me, that house and car alarms are a theft deterrent, while standing in front of a bank, alarms blaring, police cars idly driving by as if nothing is happening. They were unsuccessful at convincing me. Alarms in Ireland, or at least in Dublin, serve only one purpose that I can see: very effective noise pollution.
• Dublin sidewalks. They actually created concrete tiles, that are slippery when wet (did I mention it rains here often?), and they build the entire sidewalks in Dublin centre out of this stuff!?!? Not sure what is wrong with pouring concrete on the spot and then ruffing up the surface before it sets, but someone in Dublin apparently thought they could invent a rounder wheel.
• Irish cost of living. It’s an island, it’s out of the way, it is expensive. Buying a new house here today, is simply out of the question.
• Irish medical system. Don’t get sick here! You will be worse off coming out of a hospital, then going in. Visit to a GP: €50 on the spot. Visit to a specialist: €150 just to see you; don’t forget that a GP had to refer you … for a €50 of course. The Irish think it’s a good deal, when the insurance kicks in €30 for that visit! I actually got given out to about bringing healthy children to doctor for an annual checkup! “We don’t see healthy children here, we don’t have time to see all the sick children!”
• Irish school system. It’s the 21^st century people, there is no place for the church in a public school system! Schools are overcrowded and underfunded, staff is young and inexperienced.

Slan agus beannacht

Bus Átha Cliath – bring a crash helmet and swim trunks

So I recently moved a little further away from the DART (and a little further away from the coast). The choice was financially necessitated, not a voluntary one. By coincidence, although anticipated, my work office moved as well, also further away from the DART. The total physical distance between me and work now is approximately the same as it was before, however I am forced into a new form of transport: the Dublin Bus. I won’t even get into the three months I have left on my DART annual pass. The DART is like VIP Royal treatment compared to the Dublin Bus. My commute to work used to take approximately 1 hour 30 minutes door-to-door, out of which 1 hour was spent walking (by choice, ’cause I do need the exercise). Now my commute takes approximately the same 1 hour and 30 minutes, however my Slí na Sláinte is now less than 10 minutes!

The first thing that you will notice when getting on the bus, is the attitude of the driver. As I have stated many times before, the Irish IMHO are a wonderful people, extremely friendly, helpful, and generally very polite. The Dublin drivers (I don’t have experience with any other Irish city) are a major exception to this rule. These are some of the most bitter people you will ever meet. I am not sure if new employees have to go to special training to become assholes, or if during the hiring process they hand pick the most caustic people they can find, and then brainwash them to absolutely hate all of humanity. These fiends are then given a massive double-decker, and ordered to drive it as fast as possible skimming along the sidewalks crowded with pedestrians that have no sense of self-preservation!

As an added union benefit they have no timetable and no strict route to follow. Yes, they do have something published on their site. But in the morning on my way to work, like most other tax contributors, I’m not checking the Internet. Majority of the bus stops around Dublin are only marked with a yellow pole with the company emblem at the top – no indication of what bus actually stops there, where it goes, or what time it may get there. That’s because they get to make it up as they go along! If you want to see Dublin, screw the local travel agencies. Just take a bus someplace and (try to) take the same one back. In both directions you will get to see completely different sites. After doing a little research to find which buses go to where I now live, I discovered that “heck, the 41 goes up there.” There are, all together, six 41’s. However, besides the number they do not have much else in common. The plain 41 takes the longest route, and because it goes through the airport where there is a good possibility of meeting first time visitors to Dublin, this route has the most vile of the drivers. Then there are the 41a and 41b; after a month I still have not discovered where they go or where they stop. But I have seen both of them drive by, and with people on board, so I can only assume they stop at some point somewhere. Then there is the 41c, which actually ends up being the most convenient one for me as it often stops closest to my house. It also has the distinguishing feature that most of the passengers do not speak English. In Dublin this means it is frequented by cute Polish chicks, and nackers who may be Irish but certainly do not speak either of the official languages. At least to make things fair, the drivers on this route do not speak English either. Then there is the 41x, the XpressO. This is suppose to be the fastest way to get to Dublin centre; an assumption based on the restriction that this route must go through the Dublin tunnel, other than that the driver is actually actively encouraged to “make it up” as he goes. Unfortunately, the tunnel dumps the bus out on completely opposite side of the city centre then where the bus must go. The morning commute traffic ensures, that although the buses depart 10 minutes apart, they all get to the destination at exactly the same time! On the way back this bus does not take the tunnel, so it is actually faster getting home. To offset this, there are fewer 41x’s in the evening than in the morning. Lastly there is the 41n, the Nitelink. This bus takes all the drunks home after they get ejected from the pubs. It is the average of all the other 41’s in terms of its route, but the sum in terms of its cost to board. Also, volume discount tickets cannot be used on the Nitelink routes.

The other day, though, I had the best experience. My day started off with me sleeping right through my morning alarm … and continuing right through lunch. But I also slept through the heavy morning rainstorm. When I got on the bus I immediately noticed that the floors are particularly wet, significantly more so than the sidewalk outside. OK, so maybe the sun outside is drying the sidewalks faster than inside the bus? As I made it onto the upper deck, there was actually water running, not dripping, down the stairs – fuck, some idiot must have left the windows open overnight. By this time the bus was already moving along the road at a pretty good pace, so I did not spend too much time pondering the situation and made for a seat, unless I find myself on the floor as the driver dodges another cyclist. Sat down, the bus was almost empty, so I got a nice window seat. However, as the bus came to a stop at the next red light, a torrent of water washed over my feet from behind. I swear, there was double-digit inches of water on the upper deck! “Well you need to take one of them new buses, they don’t leak as much!”, a colleague told me afterwards. Now first off, I did not even realize that one has a choice of what model bus will come, and second this was a new bus. The floor of the upper deck is nicely convex shaped so that all water will stay upstairs and pool along the walls, and not go down the stairs except in the case of really creative manoeuvring on the driver’s part. To prove I’m not pulling your leg, I am including a short video I shot.

Warning: we apologize to our viewers for the poor quality of the upcoming video. It was shot by an incompetent amateur using his camera phone for the first time.

Sharing is Stealing

As children we are often taught to share with others. From before we can talk or walk we are encouraged that sharing is a good thing. So I wonder: what kind of parents did Jack Valenti or Dan Glickman have? And what will their children be like?

The *AA are raising a generation of people that will fear and hate them as well as anyone that they represent. I am willing to pay for pair of shoes or a meal, but a movie or a song? No way! Now don’t get me wrong, I am totally OK with going to the movie theatre and for around $30 I get the popcorn and a movie. But if I am going to spend that kind of money for a few hours of entertainment, I want to know up front that I will get my money’s worth. Just like if I go to a concert: I have no problem in supporting the record company, the stadium, the security at the concert, the sound crew, the guy selling overpriced watered down Coke, the janitor, oh ya and the artist, but I need to know that I will be entertained.

Here are a couple of examples, of why I am a pirate!

1. The other day my girlfriend and I wanted to watch a movie at home. From the kind of stuff that she likes, and I was in the mood, I decided on an older movie (Awakenings, but the title is not important). So during the day I dropped down to the local video store. Not available for rent. Or, so “can I buy it?” “We could order it for you, it’s available as part of a box set for €75.” “No thank you!” “How about any of the other stores in town?” “Well, we can only search through the latest titles.” I tried several used stores, none of which had it either. Screw this! 2 hour download, bottle of wine, and we’re enjoying the movie.
2. Bought the kids a children’s movie on DVD – can’t remember the title. The kids all excited pop it in and start it up. First thing that comes on, a scary commercial against piracy. Fine, whatever. Followed by more commercials, for Disneyland, other movies, etc., etc. I tried to skip over that, but during the commercials, skipping over was disabled. I told the kids they will just have to sit through the commercials before their movie comes on. 20 minutes later one of them comes to me with: “Daddy could you please rip the movie for us, so that we can watch the movie instead of all those commercials?” What am I suppose to say?
3. And my favourite: region codes. I got / purchased several movies in Europe. I will soon be moving to the US … making all my DVDs useless! Either I need to bring a region 2 DVD player (plus power converter), or trash my movies and buy them all again, or the third option: rip them!

Just recently got through Steal This Film, both of them. There were a couple of quotes that I really liked when they were talking about today’s culture. “A culture where things are produced because people care about it, and not necessarily because they hope other people will buy it.” – Felix Stalder. “Making money is not the point of media, making something is the point of media.” – Peter Sunde. Give the films a look.

If you want, here is something from a little more “respectable” source, if that turns your crank. But there are plenty of things on this Internet, have a search.

Češi tady a Češi tam – kulturní šok

Už jsem z Česka přes tisíc kilometrů a přes dva roky pryč, a stále mi tam hejbaj žlučí!

Jak už jsem jednou psal, já v Čechách nesmím vlastnit auto (nebo cokoliv jiného). Prostě a stručně: jsem sice rozený Čech, mám pas a občanství (i s kulatým razítkem!), ale nemám Český nejdebilnější vejmysl: trvalý pobyt! Nemám trvalý pobyt, protože legálně jsem ho jednou ztratil a dnes odmítám podplatit nějakého Čecháčka abych se u něho mohl napsat. Existuje možnost, že se přihlásím někde na radnici, ale tam mají kecy, že napřed potřebuji nějaký jiný kus hadru (s kulatým razítkem samozřejmě) z místa kde jsem byl naposledy vedený. Já se jim na to vysral. Takže nesmím nic vlastnit, jako třeba auto. Čechy jsou jediný národ na světě, o kterém vím, který si vymyslel takovouhle píčovinu! Všude jinde na světě smíte přijet, koupit si auto, přihlásit si ho, pojistit si ho, a jezdit. Potom ho prodat a pokračovat dál v cestách.

Takže já mám teď auto, registrované v Čechách na “kámoše”, a jezdím s nim v Irsku. Teď už je to vrak, kterého se jenom chci zbavit, protože je dražší to dovést zpátky do Čech na likvidaci než kolik to má hodnotu. Tady v Irsku to nikomu nedokážu prodat, ale klidně to můžu tady odvést na vrakoviště kde si to rádi vezmou. V pár případech mi za to možná daj i stovku. Problém je, že Čecháčci potřebují doklad o ekologické likvidaci vozidla, nebo to prostě neodhlásí a bude se nadále muset platit povinné ručení na auto které neexistuje, ale bohužel jenom prakticky a Češi hrají jedině na teorii. Takovejhle protokol, s razítkama, překladama, a já nevím co ještě, se jen tak v zahraničí nesežene. V zahraničí je většina lidí slušných, a dá se jim věřit. Hlavně když se jedná o něco jako zlikvidovat vrak auta. Možná mi napíšou ručně něco jako dopis, kde bude ruční podpis, a v lepším případě i nějaké razítko které si možná zakoupili někde přes Internet aby jako vypadali důležitě. Ale s Českým “protokolem” se to nedá srovnávat. Samozřejmě to můžu někde svalit ze skály a nahlásit to na policii jako ukradené, ale proč musím podvádět? Prostě i slušnej občan, musí mít správné známé a musí různě obcházet systém aby dokázal vyřídit něco co potřebuje. V Čechách nic normální legální cestou nejde!!!

Tohle si myslím, že je jádro nedorozumění, mezi Čechy kteří utekli a už delší dobu bydlí na západě a Čechy kteří přežili komunismus a nadále žijí v Čechách. Jedna skupina nerozumí proč druhá nechce zpátky do toho blaha, a druhá skupina nerozumí proč ta první chce dobrovolně žít v takovém neuvěřitelném bordelu.