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Jason Haslup
jason at haslup dot com
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Tue, 31 May 2005
Joe Jobbed
blog
A couple weeks ago I started getting a flood of bounced emails, out-of-office replies, system messages, etc... just about any sort of message an email system can send, I was getting.
It turns out that my email address had been picked by a spammer and was being used as the 'From:' header for a butt-load of unwanted email messages. Nice. I'm not quite sure how I was lucky enough to be selected, but there really wasn't anything I could do other than redirect the messages to /dev/null and hope that it didn't happen again.
Today I read a quick story on Tech Dirt about the same thing happening to someone who is now suing the spammer. Awesome... I hadn't actually thought of that when it happened to me. I think they're actually suing a few "John Doe" folks, so we'll see if anything comes of it.
More interesting, though, is that there's a name for this phenomena... I was "Joe Jobbed". I have no idea what that means (other than this meaning), but I like it.
I'm hoping I won't be Joe Jobbed again anytime soon, but if I am at least I know what to call it.
Thu, 26 May 2005
What I Do
blog
Some random stuff I like to do now and want to do in the future. This is by no means complete -- it's just all the tech-related stuff I can think of right now:
- Help out in getting a great release of OpenZaurus/Opie/GPE for the Zaurus C1000.
- Finish up my db-tree emacs package and put it out on gnu.emacs.sources
- Finish my mp3 player/podcast retriever for the zaurus/desktop
- Write some secret web apps
- Get my World of Warcraft character to the same level as my brother
- Write some magazine articles about linux, emacs, the zaurus, etc...
- Write a dashboard widget that displays the latest picture of my daughters from flickr
So far the Yahoo Music Engine (YME) has been pretty good... the interface is definitely slower and a little more annoying than Rhapsody's, but I'm getting by. Not sure of the exact numbers, but it seems like their "radio station" selection is a little better, as well. I'm actually listening to the "80's Alternative" station right now... currently playing: The Psychedelic Furs. Previous to that was Depeche Mode. Ahh... back to the high school days!
I haven't had a chance to write a full review of my new Zaurus C1000 but in a nutshell: it's freakin' awesome. Really like it even though the OpenZaurus image I'm using doesn't take full advantage of the hardware. I'm hoping to work on that soon, though. I use it a lot just about every day, though, which is nice.
Still up and running on Gentoo... gonna get another box up and running soon, too. My parents are bringing up my mom's old PC so I can use it as a replacement for buster (my server that died a couple months ago). It should be a pretty easy gentoo install to get that up and running... no X, nothing fancy, just the server apps.
So I've been hooked into the podcast craze recently... I didn't think I'd like it, but as long as you pick the right podcasts it's pretty cool. Currently I'm listening to Adam Curry's "Daily Source Code", The DVD Weekly Podcast and This Week in Tech which is the old Screensavers crew from TechTV (which I never actually watched). If you know of any other good ones (non-Mac, JJ!) please let me know.
I'm done. See you later!
Fri, 13 May 2005
NFL Sunday Ticket
blog :: hdtv
Last year Mystique and I started up "Football Sunday" -- a great day of hanging around the house, getting some things done, but always having a football game on. Sure, we'd still go get our burgers at The Garage each Sunday, but they usually had football on, too.
With DirecTV + our local CBS station, we'd usually have the added bonus of watching the games in high definition. That's when the real beauty of HD comes out. It really does enhance the experience.
I enjoyed football sunday so much that this year I was actually thinking about buying DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket. This would allow me to watch just about any game on Sunday with a good chance of getting that game in high definition, as well. It was $199 for the entire season which is a lot, but tempting.
But not anymore... it was just
announced that a new pricing plan was put in place for NFL Sunday
Ticket where it's now $219. Now that in itself isn't too bad, but
here's the kicker: another $100 for the high definition
games.
Are you kidding me? Another $100 on top of the extra $10/month I'm
paying for ~10 channels of HD? Talk about screwing your advanced
technology viewers... we're the folks that put up with paying
$10/month for four channels of HD two years ago. We're the folks who
tolerate your mini-HDTV service because you don't have enough
bandwidth for full HDTV, especially during the NFL season. And now
you're trying to get another $100 from us? Forget it. Crazy... I'm a little disappointed, but also relieved. DirecTV just
made that decision incredibly easy.
Music Services
A few weeks ago I decided to try and write an essay about iTunes and Rhapsody. I'll include
it below, but since I started writing it so much has changed! Rhapsody announced their
support for downloading to mobile devices and Yahoo just today announced a new
service which has a price that's almost unbeatable. I'll include my original writing today and follow up with my impressions on Yahoo's offering
in the next day or so (I've signed up for a free 7-day trial). If you're a dedicated haslup.com reader you'll remember that I signed
up for Real's listen.com/Rhapsody music service about a year ago.
Since then I've been a happy customer... I use the service at least
six hours a day while at work and really enjoy it.
Some people, though, aren't quite convinced that the subscription
model is the way to go for online access to music. Those folks are in
the iTunes camp -- basically extend the model of a brick and mortar
music store by "allowing" the customer to physically create a CD of
music that has been purchased. Wow. Pardon me while I admire the
innovation. Oh wait, there is none.
The argument I keep hearing regarding iTunes vs. something like
Rhapsody is that I'm "renting" my music. Instead of paying $0.99 for
the latest U2 song and downloading it to my machine, I pay $8/month
for the right to play that song anytime I want. While that's true, that's like staring at the one dead tree in a
forest saying "wow, this forest sucks." Expand your mind and think
about what's really going on: instant access to just about any song
and the ability to listen to the entire song. At any time from any
machine that you have access to. Let's look at how I use Rhapsody on
a daily basis.
Part of Rhapsody's service is a number of "radio stations" that
basically play random selections from different genre's. I believe
there are around 40 or so of these stations, plus you can create your
own intelligent station by telling Rhapsody some of the artists you
like. It will create a playlist based on that information and what
other folks listen to who listed artists that you did.
I usually listen to "Alternative Hits". On this station I get a great
selection of music and rarely, if ever, choose to skip a song that
comes on. It's nice to know I can if I want, though... at anytime
during a song's playback I can skip to the next at a push of a
button. Handy. While typing this I just listened to Oasis, P.O.D., Starsailor, U2,
Coldplay, and Smashing Pumpkins. Who the hell is Starsailor? I have
no idea, but the tune was good so I pulled up Rhapsody and instantly
added that group to my favorites. Now, whenever I want, I can listen
to their albums and decide if their any good. Each entire song of
each of their albums. And you know what? I'll probably enjoy listening to Starsailor for a
couple weeks, then drop them from my playlist. That's how I listen to
music, I usually tire of albums after a few weeks. Knowing this,
Rhapsody is the perfect service. I'm introduced to new songs that I
would have never have had the chance to hear and I have a huge variety
available to me right now. Let's do some math real quick. I said before that I listen to
Rhapsody around six hours a day. During that six hours I don't get a
repeat song at all. If each song is four minutes long, that means I
listen to 90 songs each day. To get that in iTunes I'd have to spend $81. Eighty-one
dollars for some variety. And that's just one day! Yes, I don't own any of these songs, but seriously, how much
of an iTunes song do you really own? It's managed by DRM
which locks your iTunes song down just as much as a song bought from
Rhapsody, with the one exception of copying to a portable device.
That's something that Rhapsody does not do. Until now! To be continued...
Wed, 11 May 2005
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