I want to state clearly that I do not want to stop people from jailbreaking and unlocking their phones.  You bought it, and you’ve got a right to do what you want to it.  However, don’t be pissed if someone at Apple tells you to pound sand because you’re dropping a lot of calls after installing baseband firmware written by a bunch of guys freezing their asses off in Ostrov Rudolfa. Think of it like this: you are a leet iPhone hacker kid, which means you own a Honda Civic (of course) and you put “Nos” in your Honda, not knowing that “Nos” is a brand of nitrous oxide injector systems made by Holley (of carburetor fame), not a genericized trademark for nitrous systems.  You’re driving down the 405 to Irvine (because that’s where all of the kids with modded Civics live) and you crack a piston trying to race a guy from Newport Beach in his Murcielago.  You aren’t going to take it back to the Honda dealer and ask them to fix your engine under warranty, right?

My iPhone works pretty damn well with the factory programs and the few iPhone apps I’ve downloaded from the store.  Unlike most JesusPhone owners, I don’t consider it a way of life nor do I consider it a political battleground.  I consider it a tool, and people will use their tools as they see fit.  I’ve got Chess with Friends, Shazam, TouchCalc, the iTunes Remote, the Weather Channel, WootWatch, and a couple others that I screw around with.  Other than that, my phone serves every purpose I want, and it’s only gotten better with the launch (and later, usability) of MobileMe, the over-the-air information syncing service from Apple.

Last year, I unlocked my phone and played around with the jailbreaking apps, and it was fun for a while, but like my experience with Linux on the desktop, I wanted to actually do something productive rather than just have a novelty toy.  Apple’s development of the iPhone software hasn’t been perfect, but it’s been good and it’s been better than anything I’ve experienced, long term, from a jailbroken device.  Recent jailbreaks require, rather than running a website that exploits security vulnerabilities to crack it (which is sketchy anyways) that you install custom software installation images.  I’m sure that the folks posting those images are not using that medium to spread malware, but what is stopping them?  I’ll trust factory images to run my phone thankyouverymuch.

My iPhone does pretty much everything I want it to do, with the narrow exception of what some of my smaller candybar Sony Ericsson phones do.  But all in all, it’s a nice device that I don’t feel I have to hack and customize to display my uniqueness as a human being.  I have the rest of the internet to do that with.

Problem is, I think her server got nuked from all of the bad publicity.  Way to go, genius.  I bet you are going to be happy with all of the bloggers and tweeters talking about your ugly ass.

Dave Coffin had it done a while ago: DCraw

Now, since I’m about ready to die, I’m going to go back to sleep.

Click to see full image...

I began to channel my inner rant-mongerer instantly:

See, I’m a trendy twentysomething and I hang out with all of the other metrosexuals with nothing better to do at the Gateway Apple Store trolling for whatever it is I troll for, and I was inspired by the artful design of some speaker set designed by a European with a name I cannot pronounce from a country I didn’t know existed.  I want to hook it up to my (shhhh…) Dell laptop, but it is running Windows XP.  I didn’t realize that even though the audio out jack thing that looks like a headphone plug needed Windows Vista to be compatible with these EuroFab ButtPlug Bass Thump Pro speakers, even though it looks like it should just plug in.  Thanks Microsoft for enlightening me!

I realized that I did want to upgrade my computer to run Windows Vista.  See, even though my current computer has an audio-out jack, I want to get the best performance out of its sound capabilities.  I hope Vista’s performance will be OK on it:

Click to see full image...

And yes, children, the Macintosh SE/30 (the best little all-in-one Apple ever made) did have the same audio out jack your MacBook has on the left side.  Amazing, isn’t it!  To think, we had to wait all these years for Vista to unlock its full potential!

So, forward to this week.  I get her new printer set up, life is good, even though I had to install HP’s shitty drivers on her computer.  Hard disk poops.  Well, the drive is still squeezing, but it’s straining hard, and it’s gonna pop a roid if it doesn’t get dealt with soon.  Earlier in the week, I try to set up an RMA on Seagate’s website, but the RMA function is dead.  Whatever, just maintenance.  Just a minute ago, I go to set up an advance replacement, and what do I see?

Seagate, the #1 hard disk manufacturer charges $20 do do the same thing I’m doing now, but in a different order than how I’m doing it now.  See, if I send them my dead piece of shit, they’ll send me a working one for free within 3-7 days.  But if I want to get a piece of shit first, but then send them the dead one afterwards (oh, I don’t know, to save labor and downtime on only having to strip the iBook once) they charge $20.  Given, they do include a return shipping label for that $20 fee, which is worth about $4 or $5 with the USPS.  Regardless of the order that this RMA is processed, they get a dead drive back, they have to send me a replacement and include packing materials.  So, I revise my previous statement.  They charge me $20 for a shipping label that costs them $4 or $5, but probably less because they likely get preferred rates from their shipping company du jour (which probably isn’t DHL since they went out of business despite hiring the bottom-of-the-barrel ex-con delivery people at likely criminal wages.  Another rant for another day, though.)

Yet another reason to buy Western Digital drives.  They do not charge for advance-replacement; they put a hold on the card, but only charge if you keep the broken turd you supposedly don’t need anymore.  Western Digital has class-leading performance with the Caviar Black, class-creating ingenuity with the Caviar Green, and capacity-leading portable drives with the Scorpio Blue.  There’s nothing not to like about WDC, except that some drives have a 3 year warranty and others have a 5 year warranty.

For the record: Samsung has a 500GB with 3 platters, compared with 2 on WDC’s, which means the Koreans might be good at cramming lots of glass and metal into itty bitty living space, but the Indian guys over at WDC got better areal density, and hence faster drives with fewer moving parts to break.  I’ve never had a Western Digital drive fail on me, personally, but I’ve also never had a Samsung drive fail either.  I’ve got a 3.5″ 120GB 5400RPM Samsung ATA drive that’s over 6 years old and still kicking, and I had a 2.5″ 120GB Samsung 5400 RPM ATA drive for my PowerBook G4 that worked like a charm, too, until I sold it.  Samsung’s RMA policy was unclear for a long time, until recently, which is why I shied away from their drives.  I have nothing against Samsung at the current time.

Back to the point: Seagate (having bought Maxtor, the shittiest drive maker EVER, and Maxtor having inherited the title from Quantum whom they purchased back in the day) is not impressing me with their RMA service at all.  I guess it doesn’t matter anymore about their RMA service since they fixed that nasty problem with all their 1.5TB drives. Now if only I had a computer that worked with their firmware updater…

I’d say the first sign of the shit hitting the fan at Adobe was when Apple owned their ass with Final Cut Pro back in the late 90s.  Kinda amusing, since Apple bought the basis for Final Cut from Macromedia, the creator of the Flash software that Adobe recently absorbed.  The second sign of doom was when Adobe decided it was better to ship crap for $1299 then roll bug fixes into the next release version of their dreck for only $399 to upgrade.

Quark used to be the butt of every customer support joke in the biz, but Adobe is determined to get to #1 in that area, too.  By God, if Adobe can squander their lead with InDesign and give the market back to Quark, while at the same time, crapping on enough loyal supporters to build enough hatred not to upgrade to CS4 from CS3, they might just go under.

I can only hope that Apple has another trick up their sleeve; something in image editing, something that would tie together with Aperture beautifully and make Photoshop look like the bloated 20-year-old crapware it is.  Cross your fingers folks. This could get interesting.

Vista really is DRM masquerading as an operating system.  And a poor OS at that.  At least I can sleep at night knowing that m DVI port is free and open, unlike the poor sods with new MacBooks and MacBook Pros that have the Mini-DisplayPort who must deal with HDCP incompatibilities.  Boo fail.

Now, I’ve met Jim Jannard, and he’s not a flashy guy when working with him in person (aside from his gigantic pair of white F650 pickup trucks [with Red's logo on the back] that he rides between Foothill Ranch and KSNA.)  He’s very intense, but still quite calm and collected.  If Red wasn’t shipping any products, I’d be more likely to say that all of the recent product talk is just more Duke Nukem Forever style vapor posturing.

The Red One is an amazing piece of equipment, and I know several folks who work for the company, and they are investing their way out of a bad economic situation.  I believe the company when they say they are going to have revolutionary products coming down the pipeline.  I cannot wait to see what the 3rd will bring.  This guy could be Steve Jobs’ replacement at Apple like few other people could be.  Go Jim!

To: drunkentech@gmail.com
From: Mail Administrator <Postmaster@rrsecurity-abuse.com>
Reply-To: <Postmaster@rrsecurity-abuse.com>
Subject: Mail System Error - Returned Mail
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:33:28 -0500

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Arrival-Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:33:28 -0500

Received-From-MTA: dns; rrcs-mgw-02b.hrndva.rr.com (172.28.193.155)

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From: Ian <drunkentech@drunkentech.com>
To: abuse-desk@rrsecurity-abuse.com
Subject: Contact Us
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:33:22 -0800

I’ve had an intrusion attempt from a customer on your network.

Nov 21 12:26:15 fatmac com.apple.SecurityServer[26]: getpwnam() failed for user laura, creating invalid credential
Nov 21 12:26:15: — last message repeated 1 time —
Nov 21 12:26:15 fatmac com.apple.SecurityServer[26]: Failed to authorize right system.login.tty by client /usr/sbin/sshd for authorization created by /usr/sbin/sshd.
Nov 21 12:26:15 fatmac sshd[131]: error: PAM: Authentication failure for illegal user laura from rrcs-97-76-164-202.se.biz.rr.com
Nov 21 12:26:15 fatmac sshd[131]: Failed keyboard-interactive/pam for invalid user laura from 97.76.164.202 port 43476 ssh2

Thanks for addressing this problem with your affected customer.
——————————————
Ian, The DrunkenTech
drunkentech@drunkentech.com