Thoughts

So, over the past couple weeks I’ve gotten into the whole Wikipedia editing experience.  It’s… interesting, I’ll give it that much.  It’s a pretty slick system, although a bit too complex for the average user.  It has taken me this long just to learn the very basics.  Regardless, I’ve pretty much exclusively (it has gone from 6k in size to 30k in size since I started editing) developed the Southbury article.  No one has really interfered with me, or edited it since I started.

Until today.  I go in today, and people have added things, made statements, changed things around - all without any discussion and often without any source.  While I’m not saying any of it is wrong, I’m saying it’s annoying.  I feel like I’ve done all this work, for free and really even without an acknowledgment - my name isn’t even on the page - and now people can just screw around with it.  That annoys me.  It makes me not really want to continue.  I’d rather write the history & status of Southbury on this blog.

Wikipedia has discussion pages for a reason - people should use them, if they’re going to make edits.  Even when I alone was working on it, I put a significant amount of stuff onto the discussion page, which not one other person has bothered to respond to.   Annoying.

Even worse, one of the users claims in his user page to be primarily responsible for the contributions to the article.  This pisses me off to no end.  But what can I do about it?  Nothing, really.  Sure I could delete it from his user page, but he could just re-add it.  It needs to stop.  Wikipedia is TOO open.  There should be one person or group actually responsible for approving edits to each article, rather than everything being completely open.

But hey, what do I know, I’m only someone adding information to it.

No, I haven’t decided to sue the gaming industry for making me kill people, or something of that nature. But every time I sit down to play a game for a few minutes, I look at the clock a bit later and I’ve been playing for 2 hours. Hmm, maybe I can sue the gaming industry for lack of sleep. Or forcing me to neglect my responsibilities.

My latest is Battlefield 2. I decided this past weekend to resurrect my old P4 2.4 system, which is the only system I had that had a graphics card of any note in it (Radeon 9500 Pro 128). Unfortunately, that graphics card was busted. So I stupidly bought a new one (Radeon X1650 512). Bad idea… I then thought since I had a new graphics card, I needed some new games. So now I have Galactic Civilizations II (Decent, but it has a ways to g0. For instance, why is there no battle strategy) and Battlefield 2 (plus 2 expansions for it). It has reminded me how long it has been since I’ve played a game - I suck at BF2.

The Simpsons Tonight!

The Simpsons Movie came out last night (this morning?) at midnight… sadly, I did not see it then. 8 hours until I do!

Writing Code

I hate writing code.  I don’t write code.  Except that I do, sometimes (PHP), for my websites.  And there’s nothing I hate more than code.  Except for code that doesn’t work, for no apparent reason.  Damn it.

Income Tax

To people that don’t like the income tax: Deal with it.  I don’t care how many court challenges you fight it with, it’s here to stay.   And more than that, it SHOULD be here to stay.  You use all the services it pays for, just  like the rest of it.  So quick your whining.

Mail is the lifeblood of communication today. Whether it’s personal, business, or somewhere in between, losing your stored mail is a big deal. Not receiving your e-mail in the first place - an even bigger deal. I was reminded of this last night in quite a rude fashion: Google locked me out of my Gmail account because of “unusual account activity.” Now, unless checking my e-mail, and replying to e-mails, is unusual (that’d be an interesting definition of unusual, for an e-mail account!), I don’t know what possibly could have caused them to lock the account. To make matters worse, I was in the middle of negotiating a business deal when it happened. My Gmail remained locked all night, but was finally available again this morning.

Now, when they lock your account, this is what they tell you:

For your security, we may temporarily disable access to your account if
our system detects abnormal usage. It will take between one minute and 24
hours for you to regain access, depending on the behavior our system
detected.

Abnormal usage includes, but is not limited to:

- Receiving, deleting, or popping out large amounts of mail (via POP) in a
short period of time
- Sending a large number of undeliverable messages (messages that bounce
back)
- Using third party file-sharing or storing software, or software that
automatically logs in to your account and that is not supported by Gmail
- Multiple instances of your Gmail account opened
- Browser-related issues. Please note that if you find your browser
continually reloading while attempting to access your inbox, it is likely
a browser issue, and it may be necessary to clear your browser’s cache and
cookies.

If you feel that access should not have been disabled, please visit
https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=53897 for
troubleshooting tips.

Now, go to that link there, and tell me if that’s any more useful than the message left (as above). It isn’t. So I contact Gmail support. And what do they send me? Well, here’s the “surprise”: What I copied above wasn’t the message left to me when I tried to go to Gmail, it was the SUPPORT E-MAIL BACK TO ME. Freakin useless.

Well, I’m lucky enough that I’m involved in web companies to the extent where I don’t actually use Gmail as my provider - I simply use it as a webmail platform. I changed some redirects on my servers, and created a new webmail account directly on my servers, so I missed no urgent messages. Everybody is not so lucky. So here’s my advice: never trust a 3rd party with your important information, especially one that you have no business relationship with (you’re not paying). I *do* have a business relationship with Google - they even send me Christmas presents every year (aww, how nice), but when it comes to Gmail, they still couldn’t care less about me, you, or anyone else.

Unfortunately, if you do use Gmail (or anything short of your own domain & hosting) as your primary e-mail inbox, you don’t have much choice as to relying on them. But at the very least… BACK UP YOUR DATA. There’s several ways to do this:

1. The nerd method, using a UNIX/Linux box and Getmail + a cronjob: Click here
2. The mostly nerd method, using Cygwin (UNIX emulator) and fetchmail: Click here
3. The non-nerd method, just using a simple POP3 client (Outlook, in this example) : Click here

The list goes on. You’re capable of doing a Google search, I assume.

So, as of July 25/26, 2007, Nintendo is now worth more than Sony, and Apple Computer is now worth more than Hewlett-Packard (and already passed Dell, a while ago).

Nintendo

Nintendo passed Sony in market valuation yesterday (approx?). I don’t know how the hell this happened? Nintendo’s Wii and DS systems have been doing great - better than great - but it’s still just a couple products, compared to Sony’s massive presence in many markets. Nintendo is now one of the top 10 Japanese companies, and Sony’s not. Nintendo, in market cap, is bigger than Honda or NTT!

Apple Computer, Inc.

The company formerly known as Apple Computer announced revenues for their June quarter yesterday, July 26 at 5 PM. Net rose 73% to $818M from a year earlier, on the strength of, of all things, Macintosh sales. But the stock price primarily reflected sales of 270,000 iPhones in the first 30 hours of availability, methinks. iPod sales were fairly flat at +2% to 9.82M. Mac sales were +33% year over year to 1.76M. Apple now has $13.8 BILLION dollars in cash on hand. I could use a handout… how bout you?

On the strength of these figures, Apple stock skyrocketed to a new all time high, passing HP in market capitalization during after hours trading on July 25. Apple retained that lead with stock +$10 to ~$146 on July 26, leaving it with a market capitalization of approx. $127B.

As of this writing, market cap:

IBM: $174B
Intel: $139B
Apple: $127B
HP: $123B
Dell: $64B (Oh, Dell, where have you gone? Do you still think Jobs should shut down Apple and hand the money back to the shareholders? The king of all stupid comments?)