In the last year these little computers have become a big hit.  The past couple of weeks I have had three friends get a new Netbooks.  Personally I carry my laptop around with me, so having a netbook just doesn’t suit me.  For them however it was a perfect solution.  Portable, cheap, and they run Linux.  What more could you want.

How about not to be screwed over by cell companies selling Netbooks at a “subsidized” price with a two year contract.  The computer industry moves too fast for this to be a sensible option for the customer.  Yet AT&T, Verizon and others are doing this.  These computers are Netbooks, which means they are cheap, and underpowered.  How does anyone expect these computers to be usable in two years?

I would personally not even think about getting a subsidized Netbook from a cell company.  They are going to lock you into a two year contract, paying $60/month, and in a year you’ll have a messed up slow computer.

Thanks Jerks!

Let me just explain my hatred for Norton Anti Virus. See because my work computer is on a government network, I have to follow their rules, and one of these rules is letting the government install whatever they want and configure it however they want. Well in this case it happens to be Norton Anti Virus Corporate Edition. Friday when I left I went to restart my computer but being Windows meant of course there were updates that needed to be installed. So I said sure install and shut down. When today rolled around I came in and started up my computer, logged in. Noticing there was a lot of activity going on with the hard drive I began searching and found Norton scanning my drive. Well its been about 45min and its still scanning. What nice about the way Norton scans is that if you want to do anything you are SOL because Norton is using all the systems resources.
Why can’t we (meaning every Windows user) have an Anti Virus that respects our usage and I don’t know….only scan when I’m not doing anything. Like maybe wait till the screen saver comes on or something. Jesus Christ this isn’t a big deal, stop using my computer when I’m trying to use it. Stupid machines never respect my authority.

Here is a little script a friend help me put together. It it basically a caching RSS reader for GeekTool. I use it to display my Netflix query on my desktop, as well as My MeeVee listing. Just change the LOG, RSS lines and it will pull the title lines out of RSS feeds. If you want more you can change the curl lines. Have fun.

#!/bin/sh
LOG=/Users/Nathan/scripts/netflix_queue.txt
RSS=”http://rss.netflix.com/QueueRSS?id=P1414648916102002442351662043565655″
size=$(ls -all $LOG | awk ‘{print $5}’)

if [ ! -f $LOG ]; then
curl -s $RSS | grep title | sed -E ‘s/<\/?title>//g’ > $LOG
else
age=$(echo $(date “+%s”) – $(stat -t “%s” $LOG 2>/dev/null | awk -F\” ‘{print $4}’) | bc -l)
if [ "$age" -gt 3600 -o $size = 0 ]; then
curl -s $RSS | grep title | sed -E ‘s/<\/?title>//g’ > $LOG
fi
fi
cat $LOG

I stole this list from this blog.

% cat “food in cans”
cat: can’t open food in cans

% nice man woman
No manual entry for woman.

% “How would you rate Quayle’s incompetence?
Unmatched “.

% Unmatched “.
Unmatched “.

% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].

% ^How did the sex change operation go?^
Modifier failed.

% If I had a ( for every $ the Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many (‘s.

% make love
Make: Don’t know how to make love. Stop.

% sleep with me
bad character

% got a light?
No match.

% man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.

% !:say, what is saccharine?
Bad substitute.

% %blow
%blow: No such job.

% \(-
(-: Command not found.

$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!

$ drink matter
matter: cannot create

I teacher could be sentenced to 40 years in prison because her computer had porn pop ups. If anyone should be send to jail it should be Microsoft. This is just plain bull shit. If you can show me one 7th grader that has yet to see boobs, I will show you a lier. Every 7th grader has seen a playboy or has watched lite night HBO. A pop up on a computer screen is nothing new for these kids. If anything I might give them something new to try.

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