I think it's about time I created a corporation. It would be easier for tax reasons, for credit reasons, and to allow me some room to actually purchase the right equipment for the projects at hand.
Now that I know I need to move forward, the next question is 'How?'.
It seems most of my entries in this blog are something along the lines of, "Hey, sorry for the long time without posting, maybe I'll post something interesting soon!"
Yet, I never do.
I've been on LiveJournal for seven years, and I bet I have at least four of those a year on there, too.
Sorry about that.
Anyone who has been involved with the "forbidden" osx86 scene, or the ability to run Mac OS X on generic PC hardware, likely knows the name netkas. Netkas created the EFI firmware emulator that brings the osx86 distribution of OS X closer to the real thing by emulating the EFI Apple uses in their modern hardware. EFI is Intel's replacement for BIOS, closely resembling OpenFirmware, that allows both the interface to hardware from the software layer as well as providing direction and configuration for said hardware. The EFI emulation layer has opened the doors for more graphics hardware support, booting from GUID Partition Table hard disks, and more. It also allows osx86 users with compatible hardware (Intel chipsets and Core Solos or higher) to use Apple's OS X kernel, rather than waiting for a hacked and patched version from the community.
A company called Psystar recently exploded into the news by openly announcing a commercially sold "hackintosh". They're offering what is essentially a white box PC, with off the shelf parts that match or closely match what Apple is offering in their hardware, pre-installed with Mac OS X 10.5. Their sales pitch is that they're effectively selling an expandable Mac, with more power than an iMac, for less than half the cost. They're bundling a legal copy of Leopard, the Netkas EFI v8 emulator, and Apple's bundled software, as a complete package. It's a license violation to do this, as Apple's EULA specifically forbids using Leopard on hardware that is not Apple-branded.
The funny part to this story is that Netkas is all pissed off that Psystar is using his EFI emulator in a commercial product. He has since re-released EFI v8 with a new license forbidding the use of the software for commercial purposes. Now, if anyone just noticed that, Netkas is pissed off that Psystar is violating his license agreement by bundling software that allows people to violate Apple's license agreement.
Right, then.
Jim Butterfield died last night at 1:30 in the morning, from complications from cancer. He inspired many a geek who hacked their way through Commodore 64's in the old days. He certainly helped me explore the inner workings of computers, and he will be missed.
The sad thing is that he leaves with a whimper, when he was such an influential person in the 80's, in that scene. Anyone who opened a copy of COMPUTE, COMPUTE's Gazette, or RUN knows who he is, and how brilliant he was.
My best wishes to his family. Know that he left his mark on so many people, and he will be remembered.
My apologies for not writing too much. I had doubled to tripled my time at the office and had very little time for sleep and home, much less writing in my blog.
Time passes.
I have moved to another position with another company. With any luck, I will be here quite a bit more.
In other news, my MacBook is being replaced again.
I noticed this morning that Monster.com had a JASPER test available on the home page, the Job Asset and Strengths Profiler. I decided to kill a couple of minutes and take it, just to see what I got.
(I know this sounds like a meme, but I thought it was really interesting.)
Somehow, it thinks I am a Visionary, Innovative, Rousing, Multi-Tasking, and Questioning. It sounds accurate. Probably a little too accurate given my current position. I evidently don't accept anything at face value and challenge the status-quo. I guess that makes me a terrible employee, but a great idea generator and force to move a company forward.
My most important value is Personal Growth over Security, Balance, Achievement, Helping Others, and Financial Success. I found it odd that financial success was the bottom of my list, but I suppose in the end, happiness and confidence in myself far outweighs the money I make. Oddly accurate.
Carry on.
Living and working in Redmond, Washington, I realize the dominance Microsoft has on this town, and this region in general. My ride to work takes me past blocks upon blocks of entrances to Microsoft buildings all the way down 148th Avenue. They are an economic powerhouse, creating thousands of jobs, and generating a Metric Load of cash for Redmond, King County, and the State of Washington.
That aside, I'm getting kind of tired at the dominance of Microsoft technologies being foisted on Washington because of their location. Everywhere you look around here, you see someone expounding on the Latest Microsoft Innovation, something the rest of the technology community likely saw from a different manufacturer five years early, and it's coming out as the greatest thing since sliced bread. The latest one that irritated me was Origami, the modern day Newton, with a fat processor and a big operating system, effectively defeating the purpose of the device. Luckily, they don't seem to be selling well. They made the same mistake as Apple: the base system is nearly $1000, and it only goes up from there.
I could go on and on about individual pieces of technology, but the main reason I went off on this rant is a huge banner ad on the Seattle Times' web site. This guy, Brier Dudley, is the official Seattle Times Blogger on "technology and business affecting the Northwest". That's a pretty broad category. I mean, we have Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, and thousands of dot coms, startups, and a few really large companies with a big base of operations here. Sure, there's Microsoft, but there's also Amazon, T-Mobile, Cingular Wireless, a large chunk of Google, and a ton more. More than that, the tagline is "affecting the northwest", which means that all of the competitors of these companies, as well as designers of systems that support the Northwest would be included as well. You could include companies which rely on major pieces of technology to operate, like Boeing. Their headquarters may be in Chicago now, but their manufacturing, and their very spirit is right here in Washington.
Yet, go look at his blog. It consists of entry after entry about Microsoft and what they put out. A lot of it is positive, some of it asks some questions or pokes some fun, but there's very little 'blog opinion', and it reeks of regurgitation of other news sources a few days late. It's only been around for two months, so it's easy to see the direction this person has taken -- in fact, he wrote about Microsoft for five years before starting this blog for the Seattle Times. As of this post, there are 14 entriers on the front page, 10 of them have to do with Microsoft, or an executive at Microsoft. Rounding out the other four is a small commentary on Enron, a shot at Blu Ray based on commentary from a dev with the Xbox group (I didn't count this as a Microsoft entry), words about Google's growth, and some words about Google and Dell, and why Dell didn't go with Microsoft.
If you click to the other technology blogs from the other bloggers at the Seattle Times, you see a lot of the same theme. Even the articles that aren't about Microsoft seem to reference them somehow, or are remarkably light on details, fact checking, or why the entry is relevant.
So, in fact, a typical blog posting.
And now I'm self conscious.
[10:28am] <oZ> osiris, excuse for perl?
[10:28am] <Osiris> oZ: working as designed
