Disillusioned with the iPhone

I have to admit that I've been an iPhone user for almost two years.

I love the interface, as it mostly works and in my opinion is much better than just about anything else currently available; including BlackBerry and Android phones.

The reason it's better has to do with the design of the user interface and the way it's controlled (android does pretty well, but is stuck a bit too much in older design concepts).

However I'm becoming more and more disgusted with Apple's goal of completely controlling the phone and all the content it gets. The recent move to kill iPhone apps that are competitive or are some how morally objectionable to someone at Apple (such as the recent decision to remove wifi finders from the app store), along with Apple's tendency to lock down anything they do in recent years is concerning me on a usability and moral level.

It only a matter of time before my disgust with Apple outweighs my desire to use the best device and I choose something else.

The question becomes what else there is. Android comes closest at the moment, but I'm not complete satisfied with that one ether.

Note: This image is not mine, and I don't know where it came from. If you know, let me know and I'll attribute it properly.

They are fighting for Your Future!

I found a good article, Tinkerer’s Sunset written by Mark Pilgrim.

Once upon a time, Apple made the machines that made me who I am. I became who I am by tinkering. Now it seems they’re doing everything in their power to stop my kids from finding that sense of wonder. Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world. With every software update, the previous generation of “jailbreaks” stop working, and people have to find new ways to break into their own computers

What struck me is that what he's saying is so obvious that I have trouble understanding why most people don't know what all the fuss is about. He says it well however, so I encourage you to read his article and actually think about the consequences.

Wake up people! There is a war going on that will significantly impact your future and the future of your children.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix: Getting the Wifi and Mic working on an HP mini 110-1118 (CA)

Ubuntu Netbook Remix works fine for this machine, except the sound drivers and wifi, but fixing them is easy:

To get the wifi working:

Update the OS, then use the Drivers control panel in the system settings panel.

There is a bug in 9.10 that prevents this from working out of the box, so you need to update the OS first.

To get the internal Mic working:

Sound works, all except for the internal Mic. A peer passed me a note he found in some forum that worked (sorry, I don't have the original attribution):

(You can install the backport module using the Synaptic package manager).

Here is the word-for-word original note I used:

Yes, that worked for me too, using the Mini 100c!
But you don't have to install the alsa sound package.
Just
- install linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmic-generic
- reboot
- open a terminal, enter "alsamixer", press "tab", and set both internal and front mic sliders to 100%
- press "esc"??

You can now use the internal mic using whatever tool you like.

US doesn't like Canadian copyright laws.

In the Canadian Press article Canada deserves spot on U.S. naughty list due to lax copyright laws, the author suggests that the US ambassador to Canada doesn't like Canadian copyright laws, and is not shy about saying so.

It's not really a secret however. The US, driven by entertainment industry lobbyists, has been at us for years to make our system like theirs.

What they are missing however is that in Canada, there is less power in the Lobbyist camp and more power in the people. The People don't want US style copyright laws or at least don't want to be dictated to by a foreign country.

Make no mistake, our copyright laws need revision (in progress) but they need to reflect the needs and wants of the People in this country, not the US.

So, to the US ambassador, By all means tell us about your system, we'd be happy to take the ideas from it that are useful, but we'll discard the points that we, the People, don't like about it.

If you don't like it, well, we all have to suck eggs now and then.

Apple OSX Security FAIL

More than once now, I've managed to get OSX to require me to log in, but allow me to access the machine behind the login prompt.

I have been unable to explicitly reproduce it at will however, and so I would like help from the people out there to determine what exactly is going on, so we can get Apple to fix the problem.

Here is what I know of the problem:

• Happens on Leopard and Snow Leopard (I'm currently running Snow Leopard 10.6.1).
• enable: Require password "immediately" after sleep or screen saver begins.
• enable: Use screen saver "Word of the Day" (mine is set for 5 minutes).
• Allow screen saver to activate and move the mouse before the the Word of the Day screen saver is fully active.

What you should get if you are able to reproduce this is that the computer pops up a dialog asking you to log in to unlock the machine, however you have mouse access to your desktop, and if you check, you will be able to change security settings as long as they don't require keyboard input. The keyboard will be captured by the login dialog.

I managed to take snapshots of the last two times this has happened on my machine, showing that i was able to access the preferences dialog (I have smuged out personal info in the images):

If you are able to reproduce this, please let me know and what you did to reproduce it, particularly is you are able to do it at will.

By all means call apple about the problem if you can reproduce it. The case number I put in is: Apple Expert Case 139146232

Update: This has been submitted to bugreport.apple.com as issue # 7318689

Update: This appears to be fixed in OSX 10.6.2 as I have not seen any further occurrence.

Google Street view in Toronto

Google street view is now live in Toronto.

Street view was delayed in Canada because our privacy laws have more depth than in the US.

Google place names in their own language

I just noticed a very cool feature Google Maps has added to their map views.

It seems the place names are now in english as well as the native language of the place.

This seems like a small thing, but gathering all that data and then rendering it for display on the map has a very cool aspect and it lets the rest of the world know that Google cares about the place you come from, even if you don't speak english there.