A perfect example of the corruption inherent in our election process became apparent today with the endorsement of Rudy Giuliani by Pat Robertson (television evangelist extraordinaire). Essentially, Robertson chose the candidate he believed was most likely to win — disregarding the man’s thoroughly non-christian voting record and personal life.

All people – not just those with religious agendae – should support the candidate they agree with the most. Don’t support Hillary when you agree with Obama because she is “more likely to win”; Support Obama if you agree with him. Likewise, do not support Giuliani when you agree more with Ron Paul — support the person YOU think will make the best candidate, and ignore the media, the statistics and others’ opinions. Look to the facts.

We need to support the right candidate, not the wealthiest, prettiest, youngest, or most popular.

When was the last time we had a president that did not have a priviledged upbringing?

I’m quite fed up with these commercials from cable companies making claims that “cable is way faster than DSL” and “cable bundles cost less than a phone line’s services”

Charter Communication and Comcast have made such claims, and they are bold faced lies.

Where I live, I can pay $50/month for 5-mbit cable internet, or $30/month for 6-mbit DSL. Hmm… which is a better deal? Which is faster??

Here’s another fact cable companies don’t want you to know: your bandwidth is oversold – cable providers sell more service than their infrastructure can support, assuming that most people will use a small fraction of their allowed bandwidth.
Yes, you can burts 10-mbit/sec, but if you sustain 10-mbit/sec for too long, they will probably place a bandwidth cap on your account.

Right along with this, you are sharing your bandwidth with everybody else in the neighborhood – if somebody decides to “abuse” their bandwidth, it will (after a point) reduce yours. The more people who have cable internet, the less you have to use.

DSL is largely immune to such shenanigans. Your connection is yours, and (as long as you live in the US) you can use all of without fear of repercussions. You can usually run servers if you feel like it (usually explicitly forbidden by cable internet providers). And most importantly, your neighbors and you are not sharing anything*.

The catch is that DSL is not as widely available as cable internet, and in some areas, DSL is slower than and more expensive than cable. But not most!

These advertisements are false, and I don’t understand why phone companies aren’t fighting back. Cable is not inherently faster than DSL – it all depends on what service level you purchase.

Earlier this month, a group of folks at the XDA Developers forums figured out how to share the GPRS / evdo internet on Windows Mobile based phones over a Wi-fi connection. This was unfortunately not possible on smartphones, until today!

I was able to get this working on the T-Mobile Dash (and posted by inital findings here. The main hurdle in the smartphones is the lack of a network configuration panel of any kind. Luckily, all these settings are stored in the registry.

I am not sure how many of the changes I made were actually necessary. These are preliminary instructions that will work, but may require you to perform more steps than are really necessary.

NOTE: These changes will probably break your ability to connect to wireless networks with your Smartphone until reverted!!! Proceed with caution!!!!

Perform the following actions in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Comm\TNETWLN1\Parms\TCPIP:
(Note: <blank> means to make the value blank, not the string “<blank>”, or a space. Make the field empty.)

Change these Values to:
AutoCfg = 0 (Default: 1)
AutoInterval = 0 (Default: 300)
AutoIP = 192.168.0.1
AutoMask = 255.255.255.0
AutoSubnet = 192.168.0.0
DhcpDNS = <blank>
DhcpEnableImmediateAuto = 0 (Default 1)
DhcpIPAddress = <blank>
DhcpServer = <blank>
DhcpSubnetMask = <blank>
DhcpWINS = <blank>
Domain = <blank>
EnableDHCP = 0 (Default 1)

Note: The only values you should need to change to undo these modifications are in red. the rest are set automatically.

Add the following Values, and set their value as shown:
dword, DefaultGateway = 0
string, IpAddress = 192.168.0.1
string, SubnetMask = 255.255.255.0

Note: I do not yet know what impact these will have on normal wifi connections. They may need to be deleted to restore normal functionality.

You should probably have the ad-hoc network created before starting Internet Sharing. I set mine up with no security because I’m lazy :D.

You will probably need to make sure that the smartphone does not try to connect to any infrastructure (access point) networks. You can either remove their settings, or in Wi-fi Settings, choose “Only device-to-device” in Networks to access.

Now, startup internet sharing using Bluetooth PAN.
Choose “no” if you get the visibility prompt (although it doesn’t really matter).

You may now turn bluetooth off.

Change PrivateInterface (in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Comm\ConnectionSharing) to TNETWLN1 (for the Dash anyway).

If you haven’t turned Wi-fi on yet, you should do so now. (i am not sure what the ideal time to turn it on is…)

And now, go ahead and connect.

Troubleshooting:

Check the IP address that is assigned to your “client” computer. If it is 192.168.0.xxx, it probably worked. If not, check your registry settings.

Switch to the Internet sharing app, and make sure it still says connected. If it does not, you will have to start it, and edit the PrivateInterface again.

You may need to set up a proxy if you are using T-Mobile. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you probably shouldn’t be trying these modifications at this point.

Hope this helps somebody else. I will be using it to get internet on my Ipod Touch when I don’t have wifi.

Looking to run Linux within Windows?

Think vmware and clunky linux ports (bochs, qemu, etc) are your only free options?

Think again. Maybe I have been living under a rock, but until recently I was unaware of innotek’s vrtualization offering called VirtualBox.

VirtualBox is not quite as stable a vmware, but more than makes up for it with the light refreshing aftertaste. You do not need IIS installed. It has a small footprint, and is feature-packed (it has excellent USB support).

The main version of virtualbox is free (as in beer) for non-commercial use, but there is a free (as in speech) version available as well (albeit with fewer features).

I have run windows vista, centos 4 and fedora 7 on it.

I highly recommend this software, but don’t take my word for it. It is a quick download, and a painless install. Give it a try!

I really wish the ipod touch supported flash, because I would use it to watch strongbad emails.
I also wish Apple would have made it easy to copy videos onto the thing.
I also wish third party apps worked.

I haven’t had to print anything at home in quite some time (read: over a year). In fact, today marks the first time I have really needed some things printed.

So I busted out my Epson Stylus Photo R220, that has been sitting on my desk upstairs unused for over a year with the original ink tanks still installed. I wasn’t real optimistic about the outcome…

Surprisingly, the thing worked fine. After dusting it out and printing a few pages, it seems to be working good as new.

While I cannot recommend Epson for their anti-consumer, anti-refill technology, this printer didn’t dry up.

Night!

I bought an Ipod touch on Saturday at Best Buy. I could not resist – it is just too awesome. That and I misheard the price.

When used in an environment with Wifi, this thing is about as cool as it gets. Youtube, safari and itunes all work smooth as butter.

Take it to work, and things change…

I have no wifi at work, and there is an atmosphere of fear regarding internet use. My phone (T-mobile Dash) has GPRS internet that I can use on the phone, or share with my laptop, but I wanted to show off the Ipod.

Here was the plan: I share the phone internet with the laptop via bluetooth, then share that internet over ad-hoc wifi on the laptop.

Brilliant!

So after quite a bit of fumbling, I got the bluetooth PAN working, then I tried to share the internets.

No Dice.

Windows complains that the IP needed for ICS is in use.
ICS uses 192.168.0.1 as the gateway IP and DHCP server, and no other computer may use this IP.

To cut a long story short, the Internet sharing features in Windows Mobile are more flexible than Windows XP – you just have to fudge with the registry.

I changed the IP for the bluetooth PAN to be 10.0.0.1, and cleared out the last used DHCP address. After doing this, the bluetooth PAN worked, and ICS worked, allowing me to share the internets with my ipod touch.

I may update later with more details. I have to reinstall windows now.

For the majority of my formative years, I have been obsessed with automation. Seeing a robot perform a human (or superhuman for that matter) motion gives me goose-bumps. I’ve been known to laugh and clap my hands like a little boy while watching “How its Made” on the Discovery channel…

I love technology, and the freedom it has granted mankind from the mundane. File cabinets? Card catalogs? Long Division? Replaced with databases, kiosks and calculators. For the most part, the changes have been liberating.

No longer are we forced to categorize information by a single trait — databases allow us to organize our files however we choose, and form elaborate relationships among the various sources of information. That is, customers need not be sorted from A to Z only; now we can sort them by location, age, occupation, or shoe size (if we have such information…). The data itself has been set free.
Libraries – the great repositories of information – were once bound by the same. Books can only be sorted in one fashion, and finding a book based on subject matter or publication date was tedious at best. Maintaining this alternate index required constant maintenance, and hundreds of tiny drawers.

Automation comes at a cost, unfortunately. One auto assembly line robot can perform the work of several humans with super-human speed and accuracy; and they don’t go on strike.

Technology should be helping mankind. It should allow us to use our resources more effectively, and focus our energies on making the world a better place. When a dangerous job is performed by a robot instead of a man, that man does not get to move on to better jobs – he is unemployed.

There can be no doubt that technology has improved life for all people to some extent, but not nearly as much as it could.

In church last week, I heard about a nursing home in the Eau Claire area that is run down to the point of being dangerous. During the pastor’s visit, there was a single attendant for all the residents. The floors were dirty, with trash all over the place. People were standing in the hallway with every manner of assistive medical device precariously hanging off them. The woman the pastor was visiting was on a ventilator that became plugged while he was there.

What is the problem? Why is there only one attendant? Why can’t they keep the place clean?

Money. They cannot afford to hire enough people, and they cannot afford to pay the people what they deserve.

This is where automation technologies are needed; not in a toll-booth plaza.

There is, of course, a catch-22.

Say we develop a computerized system that makes it possible for a single person to manage a nursing home. Who will benefit from this system? If we can make it affordable, the run-down nursing home might become livable again. But, the swanky corporation-owned “assisted living” facility will also benefit — and lay of the majority of their staff. The reality is that these technologies are never affordable – only those that do not need them can afford them.

If we find a way to fill in the gap where another person genuinely cannot be afforded, companies that CAN afford it will seek to increase profits and fire everybody.

How then do we do it? How do we replace people without displacing them?

I am currently a Napster-to-go subscriber. This service allows me to pay $15/month and download / transfer as much music as I want to a compatible player.

Yes, it is a rip off if I don’t continually expand my collection, because if I cancel my account, all the money I have given them becomes several hundred megabytes of useless DRM-locked bits.

That stinks, but the service is convenient, and I really had no complaints… until today.

I had a very nice collection on my old computer that I recently decided to use again – which required updating the licenses. What do you know, song after song were unplayable. The artist, or record company had decided to no longer allow the songs to be heard in their entirety without purchase. I’m only allowed to listen to the first 30-seconds of the songs.

In other words, my music collection is only safe as long as the artist and record company says so? This is ridiculuous.

What the industry doesn’t seem to understand is that the harder yoou make it to legally obtain music, and the more restrictions you place on it, the more people will seek out illegal means.

The album Once, by Nightwish is a good example. I have no desire to buy the album – most of the songs are no good. Neither am I going to pay $1.00 for a song I have essentially already paid for (and them some…). It is completely unreasonable to expect me to pay twice for something. So I wil find another way to get my songs back.

Most of my library was either from CDs or Napster. Unfortunately, more and more songs are getting the green 30-second circle, and I have to seek alternative means. I wish I didn’t have to, but I will probably cancel my membership – it has become a waste of money. Hopefully the industry will eventually get the hint – make music cheaper and easier to get, and people will be happy to pay for it.

I thought it was an annoying nucleus feature, but I guess I was wrong. Apparently, most blog software packages think the authors should have to hunt down the admin link, then hunt down the new-post link in order to make a new post.

Is this really what people want? WHY!!

I do not understand why they would not put a new post link in an easy to find location when you are logged in, and I do not understand why I should have to customize the code just to get such a link.

Blarg.

I have moved to a new host.

Total Choice Hosting has been my host since 2002 I think – it’s been a long time. But alas, I was won over by the wares of another — dreamhost.

I pay a little bit more, but I get tons more – and without the unpleasant aftertaste. Most importantly, I get shell access to my account, and I can host multiple domains.

I have three of them right now, I have to decide what to do with them. I was considering moving the blog type posting craziness to another domain, as shulerent was supposed to be a semi-serious starting point for my devious plans of world domination. It turned into a blog, and I don’t like blogs – I once despised the term ‘blog’.

But the world turns, seasons change, the inevitable inevitably occurs and… I have to accept the the phrase.

While having a discussion with my Mother, I learned that she was unaware of the vast history this blog contains – going all the way back to the beginning. Nucleus’ historical posts can only be viewed by month – so looking to the past can be a real pain.

I am in the process of converting to WordPress. It’s much nicer, and MUCH better supported. You can sample the system at http://www.deviatone.com.

Now I must watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and cry like a sissy girl.