Big Dan’s Site

Toward the middle of February I got my mitts on my very own Mac Mini. I’d been wanting  a Mac for quite a while but couldn’t justify the Apple tax. Long story short, I had been lurking around a few mac forums at one of them I seen a guy had listed a Mac Mini. This guy Jim from Sting Me, Excellent seller by the way  highly recommended. I decided to pull the trigger, buying used saved me some dough, along with the Mini I purchased the Blue tooth keyboard and mighty mouse. I wound up with the Core 2 Duo 1.83 Ghz, 2 GB of RAM, and an 80 GB HD. I didn’t realize until afterward that a DVD burner was not included, which is okay as I don’t burn that many DVDs.

All in all it’s an amazing little machine, not too powerful, but a more than capable Email, IM, web browsing machine. I think the 2 GB of RAM really helps things run smoothly and the processor is a tad bit faster than my laptop’s 1.66 Core 2 Duo processor. The hard drive @ 80 GB is a joke but I knew that going in and I have an external to supplement storage, so no big deal. Aside from that I love the UI, it’s simply the best UI I’ve ever used. If anything having the Mini has made me want an iPod touch more.

The first few weeks I tried using the Mini as my primary computer because most of my work only requires a decent text editor, Internet browser, and maybe the GIMP so I was safe. Although, I was not pleased that I could find a decent free text editor for OS X. Over on the Window’s side I use Notepad +, on Linux I use Gedit which has context highlighting, a god sent for coding. Now OS X does have text editors with context highlighting however they’re commercial projects, ie paid software. Now, I have no problem paying for software if I’m going to use it all the time however for a second computer that I’m just playing with I’m not about to shell out money for apps. If a made the switch to pure mac, I’d gladly buy some software.

That’s the thing with OS X, there are plenty of free programs but it doesn’t seem many are up to standards of free software on the Windows and Linux side. GIMP works horribly on OSX, Filezilla my preferred FTP client crashes after every upgrade, and a few other examples. One might say you cannot judge a computer but it’s free software offerings, I say you should because it adds to the cost of use.

On to the keyboard and mouse:

The keyboard is just way to small, I feel like a midget using it not to mention the lack of end, home, and the no number pad makes it keyboard all but useless to me for coding work. Maybe I’d be happier with the corded keyboard, I don’t know and I’m not paying $50 to find out.

The mouse = just plain stupid. Well then again Apple always screws up mice, remember the iMac puck? From not being ergonomic to not registering right clicks and middle clicks properly I gave up on it and plugged in a Microsoft wireless mouse which works 100%

All in all I really like the OS X’s UI design other than that it’s nothing special, in my humble opinion. I see nothing that justifies the ‘apple tax’ on their hardware. If I had money to throw away maybe I’d buy a pimped out 24″ iMac and get down to business with a faster processor and more RAM but I’d rather buy a system off the shelf and use Ubuntu or Vista.

For now I’m using the Mini as my primary ‘communication’ machine. Adium (IM Client) is the best instant messaging client I’ve ever used. The mini always stays on my desk asleep, I wake it up to check my email and websites in the morning for any coding work I switch over to my HP Desktop running Vista and Ubuntu.

It’s been all over the internet this past week or  that Time Warner Cable is starting expanded testing of metered broadband. It’s hitting close to home for me Rochester, New York just a few hours away from me has been selected for this ‘testing’. Testing in this case actually means how much crap will our customers take before they go elsewhere. It’s now rumored that Frontier, the only competitor in many TWC regions was is considering even stiffer caps.

First of all let’s define bandwidth metering: Metering is simply keeping track of how much bandwidth you use. Bandwidth in this case is the amount of information your downloading and uploading to the internet. Everything you do online uses bandwidth from checking email, to downloading tracks from iTunes, to watching YouTube, to reading this very web page. Bandwidth monitoring is analogous to cell phone companies charging you per minute except it’s a set amount of data normally per GB (Gigabyte).

Now many people will say you use more you pay more it’s quite simple and I would agree with them. However  ever since it’s conception broadband has been unmetered and only lately, as in the last year or so has anyone heard broadband providers complaining about network saturation this is because of the proliferation of sites like YouTube, torrents, and file sharing. My issue with this is for years ISPs have been raking in the fees normally at $50/mo per subscriber for little to no change in service which means a vast majority of subscriber fees generated, in the millions per month was pure profit for them. Now that it comes time to upgrade the network they’re crying foul and want to gouge their loyal customers.

Time Warner’s reasoning is just plain flawed. There is a new standard for cable broadband called DOCSIS 3. DOCSIS which in short is the technology which enables you and I able to get high speed internet over the cable system. Current systems are DOCSIS 2 which are “limited” in speed. DOCSIS 3 is supposed to be roughly 6-12 times faster than the old standard. As I understand it our current modems will still be compatible with the new standard so that TWC does not have to give all of it’s to subscribers new modems. TWC can give new customers the new DOCSIS 3 modems and give the customers who request (or more likely upgrade) to the super fast internet capabilities new modems. New York Time’s says it will not cost more than $100 per subscriber for the upgrade to DOCSIS 3 and that’s with a brand spanking new modem.

Now let’s step back and take a look at broadband offerings in the US. Typically it’s offered in tiers most companies have 3 tiers which basically means the more you pay the faster you can download stuff. You have slow (~$20/mo), average (~$50/mo), and fast (~$80/mo +) These tiers have nothing to do with how much you can download just how fast you can download it. Basically with all tiers you can drive as far as you want on a highway just the higher the tier the faster you can drive.

Metered broadband seeks to change all that in the name of charging you more (allegedly for upgrades) so you can drive faster but with the meters you cannot drive as far.Does it make any sense to institute caps to pay for upgrades so that your subscribers can GO faster but cannot drive as far without excessive overage charges?

I thought maybe there was something wrong with me but no it doesn’t makes sense. Not to mention the fact that perhaps the company should eat these upgrade costs as they’ve been raking in millions per month with broadband as a cash cow and now that a slight upgrade is needed for cable to stay competitive with fiber to the home options they want to pass the cost along to us and rake in even more profits on top of it. It just doesn’t hold water and wreaks of GREED

Let’s look at something over the past year or so lots and lots of people have been legally watching TV shows and movies online, thus not watching much TV. To be fair video does take up the most bandwidth of all forms of data. Does anyone think once bandwidth caps are instuted people might go back to watching TV so they don’t waste thier data on video feeds? Bingo the cable cos want to force people into watching TV again — TV as a medium sucks with all the commericals being shoved down your throat not to mention the crap fest that is TV these days content wise but more eyeballs equals more ad revenue plain and simple. With the internet and services like Netflix on demand and Hulu people now have a choice and TWC does not like that; These bandwidth caps are one way to get more people to turn on the idiot box again.

Now as to why DSL companies are jumping onboard — I don’t know why DSL is a limited technology there are no new standards that need upgrading to me thinks they just want more money for the same old crappy service.

Roboform Logo

KeePass Logo

I’ve been a long time fan of Roboform in fact I often recommended it to just about anyone I could tell about it. For those of you who don’t know both Roboform and Keepass are form fillers and password savers; they both save your user name and passwords in addition to your name, address, etc. Just one click with Roboform and it fills in your user name and password to log on to sites and another click fills in your name and address information when placing orders. For anyone who spends any amount of time online a form filler is a major time saver not to mention great for security as you can set random passwords and have the program remember them for you.

Now a little back story, I’d been becoming more and more frustrated with Roboform as I’ve bought more than a few licenses over the years but just last year when I bought a new laptop and desktop within a month of each other I bought two more licenses and started using them. Which is all fine and dandy until you reinstall Windows a few times and Roboform won’t activate which means with over 200 passcards stored I couldn’t use any of them. I’d have to email support and beg them for more activations, which they always obliged but it was still an unnecessary headache in my opinion.

For this reason when Foxmarks (now xMarks) started offering secure password sync along with it’s awesome bookmark sync’ing capabilities I started letting Firefox save all my IDs and passwords little by little.

Fast forward a little bit and I’m reading on Lifehacker about using Keepass and Dropbox as the ultimate password sync tool. As some of you know I use several computers and with those computers I often dual boot, so keeping all my passwords in sync is a great idea not to mention Roboform ONLY works on Windows and with my new Mac plus me dual booting Linux on my other machines Roboform isn’t much help in that arena.

Long story short, I decided to dive in the only problem is that there isn’t a direct Roboform to Keepass conversion path. I found one how to on lifehacker but it didn’t convert half my user IDs which was troubling a little Googling found this more involved python script that went off with out a hitch: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7023471 .

Now that I’ve been using Keepass for a month or so now I really don’t miss anything about Roboform. Probably my biggest ‘loss’ in switching is that there’s no toolbar in Firefox or IE to fill and submit as there is with Roboform. However the gains are much more, I now have my passwords stored safely but available from any operating system and in conjunction with Dropbox my passwords are constantly synced and updated whenever I turn on my computer. You just cannot beat that.

The only thing I noticed that wasn’t immediately apparent is when you’re using Keepass on Linux and Mac in addition to Windows you’re going to want to download the ‘classic’ (1.x branch) of Keepass for Windows so the database is saved in the same format across machines.