Geek Muse - Episode 58

This is Geek Mews, episode 58, recorded Monday, October 1st, 2007.

Welcome to Geek Mews, podcasting from geekmews.net.

That's geekmuse.net.

We've gotten a lot of emails from the fans because it's been several months now, and

thanks.

Thanks to everybody who's emailed us.

I believe I've emailed everybody back.

Maybe I missed one or two people in there, but yeah, the big thing is that both Travis

and I are now at different jobs.

We both recently quit one job and started a new job, and in the meantime, as well, kind

of in between jobs, I decided I really needed to kick ass on my thesis, and so I've been

working hard on that, and it's amazing how much effort you put into something like that,

and still yet not done, or not even really close to getting done, but hopefully.

You know, we'll still be sporadic here in the next couple months because I really do

need to work on that shit.

Eventually here, we hope to settle in and settle down and get back to doing the podcast

on a more regular basis, so thanks again to everybody who stuck with us.

We really appreciate it, and well, we're back, so let's go to it.

But at any rate, Travis, you've got a new job now.

What's your new job?

I'll let you kind of go first.

Yeah, I kind of got out of doing software development to sell, and now I'm working for

a really large company.

It's a school district here in San Antonio.

It's actually the fifth largest school district in Texas.

Actually, before I even knew anything about it, I showed up for the interview, found out

how big it is.

Our district employs 10,000 people, which is, I don't know, I was trying to think.

Jesus, yeah.

That's like the population of the town that I lived in during my junior high years in

North Dakota.

So, that's big.

And so, yeah, so I'm doing web development, and it's really nice working for the government,

especially a school district, considering that, like, anytime anybody in history, you

know, had a heartburn, we get the day off.

Like, I get two weeks for Christmas.

Just don't come to work.

Nice.

By the way, Chris Grant is also joining with us.

Chris, how's it going?

I don't want to exclude you yet, the person who's still at his old job.

No, I'm still at the same job, and we can talk about that.

We can talk about that.

If we have some time, too.

But I think it'd be more interesting to talk about your guys' jobs.

Well, you know, it's funny that Travis mentions all this vacation time.

I mean, I got a very nice vacation package at my old job, but they'd never, I mean, and

there were a lot of holidays in there, because, I mean, any, like, official holiday.

But Christmas sucked, because Christmas Day and half of New Year's Eve was all we officially

got off, except for, you know, New Year's Day we got off, too.

But for the most part, you always had to take that week off if you wanted it off and burn

your vacation time with it.

Well, you got a new job working, you went the other way around, that, like, I quit the

private sector and went to the government, and now you quit the government and you went

to a private company.

Yeah, that's right.

I'm no longer at the university where I had my job, my last job for nine years.

I worked on campus in one way or another for, like, what was it, it would be 15 years.

I was at North Dakota State University.

And now I'm at a company called Packet Digital.

They're a small kind of startup company.

I'm an electrical engineering firm, and I'm their IT guy.

So anything IT running from, you know, actually, yes, you know, my document doesn't print.

I kind of have to deal with some of that stuff.

But all the phones, all the networking, all the servers, all the infrastructure, you know,

they haven't had any sort of, you know, employee directory or anything like that.

I'm doing all that kind of stuff right now, as well as, you know, ordering cards for people's

computers and everything.

So, I mean, the full.

I am the IT department.

So it's kind of.

You're Nick Burns.

Okay.

Yeah, pretty much, pretty much, yeah.

It's kind of weird because it's more and less than my old job.

You know, my old job, I didn't have to deal with some of this kind of low-end or hardware-type stuff

where I have to now.

But then again, more, as in I can, you know, I get to do kind of more infrastructure,

more planning stuff than I did at my old job.

So, I don't know, it's exciting.

It's difficult for me, though.

Getting up early.

Getting up early in the morning because I really didn't have to do that for many years.

And so, now I'm like, I might really rely on coffee, which I never did before.

And so, you know, woe to ye if you try to ask me something before I get my morning cup of coffee.

But, no, it's, I think it's good for me.

And it's an exciting company.

It's an exciting opportunity.

And I'm happy I made the move.

See, that's funny because, like, shortly after I started working for the school district,

I actually volunteered to start coming in earlier.

Like, because for some reason.

Like, it's almost like I'm growing up and, you know, putting on my big boy pants and being an adult.

Like, I wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning.

I'm just awake.

And so, I was like, well, screw this.

I might as well be being paid for it.

So, I volunteered.

Like, I leave for work before dawn now.

Voluntarily.

You are insane.

I know.

I don't even feel like me anymore.

Well, I don't know.

For me, you know, it was always this thing where I was held that I was very productive.

You know, I was a night owl, as I'm sure many of our listeners are.

You know, I would.

I would get up in the morning and I would kind of stumble along for a while.

And actually, even before I took this job, I started getting up earlier in the morning

and found that I just wasn't able to function or even do anything, really, until noon always.

And I know this sounds bad, but, you know, really, for nine years, I just, you know,

I got up whenever I wanted to and I went to bed whenever I wanted to and I kept my own hours.

And it's one of these things where the servers are running and projects are getting completed,

so nobody cares, you know.

It's just been odd for me because I think, you know, I was kind of expecting this thing of, like,

I'm going to be getting up in the morning now earlier and I'm going to be productive, you know,

for this, like, nice big eight-hour chunk in the morning, whereas usually that eight-hour chunk

would be, like, four to midnight or not even that, maybe eight to four a.m., you know.

That would be my productive time.

And really now, I don't know, I'm productive.

I'm really productive, I think, in the morning, but I kind of peter out in the afternoon

and then I get productive again in the evening again.

So I don't think I'm any more efficient or anything like that.

I think I produce the same amount.

It's just time shifted.

I read an article about that, how, like, there's two chunks of the day where people are really productive.

And, you know, if you would pay attention, or I should say, if employers would pay attention to the,

I don't know, I guess the curve of productivity, they would definitely give people, like,

three hours off in the middle of the day to, like, you know, take a nap or, you know, run errands

or what have you because people just, you're not really meant to work for that long

and work at peak productivity.

For so, such a large chunk of time.

You know, I'm a big fan of companies exploiting every possible hour of productivity they can get out of them

by breaking up their days so that they can work every possible productive hour they can

and not devote any of that to any family or any outside activities.

I think that's a stellar idea.

Yeah, I was just about to say the same thing.

You know, to have that break in the middle of the day would just be death to families.

You wouldn't be able to do it, you know, to shuffle your kids around and not get home until 10 o'clock at night

or 8 o'clock or whatever.

So, it would be cool if life worked that way.

I mean, if you could work from home, that'd be great.

Yeah, and then working from home introduces a whole other factor of being productive,

especially if you have a family, too, you know.

The only time I've heard of people being productive at home consistently

is by having their own, basically, dedicated office at home.

And then, really, what's the point at that point?

So, and sorry, Trav, you were razzing me pre-show, so I had to get you back.

Well, I read an article about how to work.

I mean, I work from home productively as well, and that's exactly what the article said,

is that, you know, get up in the morning and get dressed to go to work.

You know, put on your friggin' tie and, you know, just act like you're going to work.

Get your coffee and then go into your office, like, designate an away place

that you go into your office and you're at work now.

And, you know, if you need to get a babysitter for that, then so be it.

And you're right.

At that point, when you're like...

You're getting up and you're getting dressed to go to work

and you're going to, you know, this section of the house that other people can't go to

and you're getting a babysitter for the kids because you're working now,

then what's the point of being at work?

Or I should say being at home, you know?

At that point, you might as well commute.

Well, yeah, that's just to save, I guess, save the commute

and save the time and the money for driving to work.

You know, I guess I'm spoiled.

I live in a, you know...

Well, Chris and I both, you know, we live in a small town, Chris.

I think we can both agree on that.

I don't know how big Fargo is, but, like, 120 miles.

20,000 people or something like that.

Yeah, in the metro area, it's between, it's like 130, something like that.

So as far as towns are concerned, it's bigger than many but smaller than many as well.

Yeah, but so what's your commute time?

I mean, I'm spoiled because my new job is actually way closer to my old job.

So, like, my commute is, like, four minutes, you know?

I don't think we can really even say it's a commute if it's under five minutes

and that's where you and I are both at.

So, I mean, for us, it wouldn't even make sense to even work at home.

But, I mean, you know, Travis...

I don't know what your commute is like now, but I know when you originally moved down to Texas,

you had, like, a 40- or 50-minute commute, didn't you?

When I first moved here, it was a 45-minute commute.

And now, like, if there's no traffic, it's, you know, I can do it in 15 minutes,

but half an hour is a little bit more realistic.

So you're going to work at 6.30 in the morning and there's traffic?

6.30, not too bad, but I leave then at 4.30.

And, you know, then...

Because I live, like, downtown and then I work, like, outside of, like, the main loop that surrounds the city.

So I have, like, a reverse commute, but that reverse commute goes through the airport area.

And so it's still a mess.

Yeah.

Well, one good thing about leaving my...

Well, go ahead, Chris, if you want to say something.

No, actually, I'm okay.

We should get on with the podcast at some point.

Well, no, we are.

This is the rant.

This is topic number one.

Oh, okay.

Sorry.

Yes.

I'm not being patient.

I'm like, where's the geek in this?

I scheduled a rant, asshole.

Well, you know, one good thing about leaving my old job was that I got a nice fat check from all my vacation time that I never took.

So I got a very nice check.

I'll just say that.

I don't want to give out any exact numbers.

But...

And I'm planning on...

I'm planning on replacing my now seven-and-a-half-year-old workstation.

I've got an old Dell Precision 410 sitting here.

I'm running Solaris 10.

And, you know, it's been a tried-and-true nice machine for me, but it's just ridiculously old now.

I can't do much of anything on it anymore, really, because even, like, you know, running the GIMP to do digital photography type stuff, which I do a lot of, I mean, I just can't do it on the machine with new, you know, with my 10-megapixel camera that I'll be soon buying.

So I'm thinking about taking the...

I'm thinking about taking the plunge over to, I don't know, the light side or the dark side, depending on your viewpoint, and buying, like, a dual quad-core Mac Pro.

And I haven't completely made up my mind on that, but I want to solicit your guys' opinions on that.

So, Trav, I'm sure all...

Well, hopefully you have an opinion on this.

What do you think about me buying one of those, man?

Well, I think that you've had your MacBook for long enough that you have an idea of whether or not you can live in an OS X world.

I mean, in the roots of it, it's still...

It's still Unix, and so, you know, I spend enough time under the hood, so to speak, like, you know, compiling new libraries and packages and stuff.

And so you're not going to miss compiling, that's for sure.

Yeah, very true.

Well, you know, I mean, it's basically, it's like a toss-up between a Mac Pro and, you know, a similar Dell system.

I mean, it would be almost the same thing, except, you know, a Dell, I guess.

Well, and obviously, you'll have...

Native support for the OS on the hardware, and, you know, obviously, the coolness factor, it is a Mac, and it is a monster, so you'll be able to do lots of things very easily with it.

And I think you've lived with your old one long enough that you're entitled to a decent machine now, so go for it.

Yeah, I think so, too.

You know, one other thing that's just been kind of striking me about, and this isn't just OS X, I mean, it's OS X or Windows or whatever.

It's just, I don't know, maybe I'm getting old here.

I just don't want to deal with some of this.

I just don't want to give a shit anymore, you know?

It used to be, back in the day, I loved to compile stuff and get some code and port it and yay, and spend, you know, hours getting some wacky module for the GIMP to work or whatnot.

And I just don't give a shit anymore.

I just want the thing to fucking work so I can get some work done and, you know, go home, you know?

Yeah, recently, I wanted to, because, God, what was it, two weeks ago, PHP 5.2.4 came out.

And so I was going to, you know, upgrade that on my web server.

And while I was at it, I wanted to...

I wanted to compile in a lib SSH2 so I could do SCP from within PHP scripts.

But that required OpenSS, like, the new version of OpenSSL, and that required something else, and that required...

And I got a dependency hell to the point where I needed, like, the new glibc, which we needed the new gcc package.

And I'm like, Jesus, you know, now I'm compiling gcc.

And, like, nothing ever works right.

And, like, it got to the point where I'm...

Like, debugging the build process for gettext and, like, manually editing configure scripts so that it'll build properly on my platform.

And I don't know.

I guess I'm still at the stage where you were, where, you know, that sort of thing represents a challenge to me.

And I guess I'm all right with it because, you know, I figure it out and I make a blog post about it.

And, you know, people who have that problem in the future can Google for it.

But I'm just...

I'm kind of in the in-between phase.

I'm kind of getting tired of this shit, too.

Well, and I've ended up, you know, doing the same thing over the years, I think, because I've...

You know, I've messed around with, well, FreeBSD for a long time and adminning Unix boxes.

And now I'm just down to having Ubuntu 7.04 installed on a laptop that just installs and it's painless.

And, you know, you can install it and run the thing off of battery the whole time.

And, you know, it installs that quickly.

And there's just really no issues to deal with.

All the hardware is recognized.

By default, obviously, my Orinoco card was fine, but it recognized my Sprint EVDO wireless card as a USB modem.

That all just works well.

You know, and it's just great.

I can get stuff done.

I can use it as a workstation and there's no issues with it.

And I've done the same thing with my firewall.

Instead of, you know, using a FreeBSD machine with, you know, IP filter or IP tables or, you know, whatever version they're even using now.

I don't even know.

That's how out of the loop I am in there.

But I'm running SmoothWall, which is just, you know, a pre-built Linux box, which has a nice web interface to everything.

And you can, there's all kinds of other people who like building add-ons for it because I just want it to freaking work and have the capabilities.

So I'm doing the same thing.

Well, in all cases, I think it's, you know, it's a good skill set to have.

And I'm happy that I spent, you know, the years and the time, you know, figuring out how to get Automate to work and, you know, figuring out IP tables.

And let's just, which I believe is now IP filters, but I'm not positive either.

But like you said, I know how to do it.

I can do it if I have to, but I just don't want to bother with it anymore.

Well, and that's exactly, exactly it.

You know, I have those skills because I did that in the past, but it's, it's just not as interesting to me as it was.

And maybe that's really it.

It's not new.

So I'd rather go find something new that extends what I know, where it takes advantage of what I know.

So I understand the internals, but I want, I want it to be easier to, to deal with.

The other.

Yeah.

Thing that spawned this whole move to Ubuntu on the workstation is that I did manage to get gen two up and running and it reminded me a lot of, uh, of, uh, you know, make world under free BSD through the, what you had to do to compile everything to make it work.

And I went, okay, well now I understand that exists.

Now let's go play around with something else that just sort of works out of the box.

Now, what are you guys' suggestions for, you know, like a listeners out there who are just getting into some of this stuff, like, especially let's talk about like firewalls real quick.

You know, smooth wall is a, is a great little utility.

You go, you know, slap it in and I think it could even run off a CD, even you just, you know, throw it in and bam, you're done or, you know, off a USB drive or something along those lines.

I mean, I, for years I was always kind of the sort, I always kind of was along the lines of, well, you really should do it the hard way and, you know, and take the huge chunk of time to figure everything out so that you, you know, you know, what's going on.

Cause we all know that, you know, a good, a good tech person, you know, it's not really a measure of, you know, installing things.

It's a measure of, you know.

Uh.

A good tech person is somebody who handles the wacky problem that hasn't ever come up before and is able to solve that quickly.

You know, that's somebody who really knows a system.

And if you're a new person out there and you just install smooth wall, you're not going to, you know, dive into this kind of stuff.

But I still, I, I still kind of think you should, you know, you know, if, if you're new to this kind of thing, you know, grab the easy Linux distro, distro, you know, grab a smooth wall, install that, get your, get your firewall up and running.

And at that point though, you, you do kind of have to force yourself to, to, you know, get into the industry.

Internals and get into the guts and the bits and pieces of things.

And then if you can, at some point, you know, move over to, to, you know, setting up your own IP tables manually, just, just so you know how to do it.

But what do you guys think?

I don't mind, um, you know, the idea.

The problem I think is that you get stuck in one particular vendor's implementation of, of like firewalling, for instance, because you end up with, uh, you know, the concepts are all the same.

So whether you choose Linksys, D-Link, uh, or smooth wall, you know, you're going to have to understand network.

Working and ports and how they get passed.

And after that is, you know, which vendor do you want to understand how to make that work?

Um, and in Linux or in, and on a smooth wall, you know, all it is, is a front end to those, to that, you know, standard Linux, um, based IP tables.

So you can actually go in and look at it if you want to, um, you know, you, you get SSH access to it because it is a Linux box.

And so it's nice from that perspective, because you know, that you've got the ability to pull back.

The covers and see what's really going on, but you're not forced to, by default, um, it won't run off a USB drive natively.

Um, I don't believe 3.0 just came out, but I don't think that's part of the deal yet, but there are a lot of people that just run it off of, uh, you know, ID flash drives.

So that's, it, it's not quite that lean, but it, uh, it'll run on very low end hardware.

It's pretty slick.

Well, I think in the, in the same way that when you teach high schoolers math, okay.

You always teach them the long way to do something.

Then they, they go.

Home and their, their older brothers and sisters teach them that, you know, there, there's a, a shortcut to do that, or a, a, a quick rule to do that.

And you get kind of pissed off that your teachers is teaching you like the long way to, to graph a parabola, you know?

And the, the reason they do that is because you don't really appreciate why you do things if you're taught, um, the easy way to do it first, which is why, oh God, I'm going to get hell for this.

But I think that like windows sysadmins are just taught windows to begin with.

You don't get an appreciation for why you do things when, when all you ever, all you've ever known is wizards, you know what I mean?

And so, you know, if you bust your chops, like trying to get, um, you know, certain packages to install on your specific platform, you get a better idea of why you want to, you know, build things.

So they're, you know, easily maintainable and that sort of thing.

And, you know, when, when, when you waste that much time, well, not waste, but when you, when you spend so much time.

Like trying to get little things to work, you have a better appreciation of when things just do work out and how to get them to work out that, you know, work out properly like that.

Well, and, you know, being the, uh, the closest to a windows admin, um, in this group, I, uh, I have to agree with you, you know, the best, uh, the best sysadmins I run into have an appreciation for all platforms and what it takes to make, uh, you know, everything play together nicely and, and understand really what goes into a box.

Not.

Because they can click next eight times and have something installed, you know, that's where, uh, a lot of people that claim to be windows admins get into trouble is because they don't have an appreciation for anything outside of, uh, outside of the point and click next, next, next, next finish.

And by the same token, you know, I know, uh, a couple of windows sysadmins that are really, really good at it.

And, you know, if you were to, to, to take me and just drop me in, you know, windows enterprise with an exchange server and that sort of stuff, I'd be completely clueless.

And so, you know, I am going to point out that it, it's not that breed, it's just, you know, when, when you don't know anything other than any one thing, you kind of get jailed into that one frame of thinking.

And, uh, I think that's really dangerous.

Well, and you have to realize that, you know, it's, it's not just, uh, it's not the environment you're in.

It's where your curiosity is and your attitude toward it all.

Because if you got thrown into a windows world tribe, even though you have, you know, no experience.

Um, other than, uh, you know, on the client side, if, if you had to manage an exchange server, you would know everything there was to know about an exchange server because you're interested in the guts of it.

And that's, that's why you're a decent sysadmin.

Exactly.

And all you'd have to do is just translate, you know, from what you know, from, you know, Qmail or send milk and fake files into, you know, whatever the, uh, the preference GUI is, you know, but once you figure out where it's in the GUI, then, you know, you know, it's like a translation.

Once you know where it's at, you're done.

Well, in an exchange 2007, everything is available.

So you would even have a command line for everything that was available in the GUI.

So you wouldn't have a config file necessarily, but it would be, uh, it would be command line based if you wanted it to be.

I love the black box.

I do.

Well, in Travis's explanation of the math problem, uh, I mean, that really hits home for me actually.

Cause, and actually for me, it was, it wasn't a frustration thing.

It was an excitement thing.

I still remember learning how to do long division and going home and my dad showing me a trick on how to do it like 10 times easier.

And it just like, I don't know, for me, it just really made me excited about math.

But, uh, but I was just going to say, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll amend my suggestion here.

If you're at a job and your boss says we need a firewall now, go get smooth wall and throw it into place, but then go home and set up IP tables on your home machine so that, uh, in three years, you will still have your job by knowing the internals of how smooth wall works.

And when it doesn't do something correct, or when your boss wants something crazy, you'll know how to properly configure it.

And so I have something else here I want to rant about, uh, and, uh, that is, uh, for a long while now I've been, uh, I don't know, I'm a pretty hardcore Gmail user and I don't know if you guys are, but I do, you know, I still have, you know, I have various email accounts for the university and work and personal and, and I actually have multiple personal accounts and whatnot.

And, uh, so I have Gmail handle all that.

And for a long while now, I've just been using, uh, pop to access them.

But of course the shitty thing about pop and that's all Gmail really offers is, is pop access.

Is, you know, you set it up on one machine and when that machine fetches the mail, then, you know, no other machine can, can get that mail, you know, cause that's the way fucking pop works.

And, uh, you know, Gmail doesn't have any IMAP interface.

And, uh, so I don't know, I mean, I saw a couple of blog postings on this and I just, I, I kind of, I basically figured it out on my own.

It was just like, well, Hey, does this work?

But so I, I know I've set up IMAP accounts and, uh, you know, we have, uh, we use dream host for our, for, you know, to distribute the podcast.

And I don't know, I don't know what it is.

It's like seven.

75 or 750 email accounts we can create or something like that.

And there's a ridiculous amount of space and bandwidth there.

So there isn't any problem.

But, uh, so I set up a bunch of IMAP accounts for the various email accounts that I use.

And now I have Gmail just automatically forwarding to those IMAP accounts.

But then I have my client set up to when I send out a mail, it still sends it out using, using Gmail.

So basically all my incoming and outgoing mail still gets nicely archived and is nicely searched and all that kind of shit.

But, uh, I don't.

Do you guys use Gmail all that much?

I use it quite a bit.

Um, I, but I don't typically use it on, uh, on anything other than through the web or my BlackBerry just because it's got a nice client for the BlackBerry.

But, uh, you know, for pop purposes, I actually have, um, outlook set up to leave the messages on the server.

And that way both my outlook can pick up the messages and my, my, uh, Motorola queue with its own Verizon crappy.

And so I can actually, uh, you know, the, the sync software can actually pick up the pot mail separately.

And so it goes to both places.

I don't look how it works, but technically, um, you can leave the messages on the server and still do it that way.

It's just not really clean or, or, uh, elegant.

Yeah, I suppose, um, you know, that would work.

And I'm, I'm just thinking here, well, yeah, no, that wouldn't be too bad actually.

I don't know.

But IMAP just seems cleaner and nicer to me though.

Now can you do, um, can you encrypt, um, IMAP or does Google allow that?

Or does it just run on Google?

Or does it just run straight pop, do you know?

The pop connection itself through Google is all, is all SSL'd, um, if that's what you're asking, right?

Oh, sorry.

Yeah, I may not have made sense there, but that's what I was asking.

Yeah, I was saying, well, yeah, if I want to encrypt my messages PGP, I got no fucking problem doing that.

Gmail doesn't give a shit.

But yeah, um, yeah, both incoming and outgoing mail through Gmail is encrypted.

And that's actually one kind of semi-bad thing, uh, moving over to, uh, uh, DreamHost with IMAP is, is, uh,

they don't have secure email.

Well, they might, I don't know, I just didn't see it.

But, I mean, eventually I'm gonna set up IMAP on my home machine and have it all run through there.

Cause that, that's just, seems nicer to me, but, uh, than using some wacky third party.

But, um, although they'll probably have a much better internet connection than I have at home.

Yeah, I, I don't know, I've, I use my Gmail mostly just because it, it, it's, uh, it's handy for my website.

Because the spam filtering is really good, but I don't, um, I don't really trust it with anything, like, I don't,

I don't use it for any real email, you know what I mean?

Just cause I, I, over time I really started to, to kind of doubt, um, Google's, you know, don't be evil bit.

I, I don't, I don't really have this opinion entirely flushed out yet, but I don't entirely trust Google to the point where I'm gonna start routing all of my mail through there.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, absolutely.

I was thinking about that the other day cause, uh, shortly after I had kind of moved over to Gmail multiple years ago and, you know, got an account set up and whatnot.

Yeah. I was thinking about that the other day cause, uh, shortly after I had kind of moved over to Gmail multiple years ago and, you know, got an account set up and whatnot.

And at the time it was 2 gigs of storage, holy shit, and that's, I think it's almost 3 now, but, uh, you know, I, I, there were special programs out there where you could take your mail, your inbox or your mail folders or whatnot and run the script against them and it would shoot all of your email up to Google, so, you know, you could be able to search it and everything.

And I think, I still think that's all nice and cool and whatnot, um, but I really would like some sort of, like, and I suppose I could do it via POP actually, is just, you know, go in and say, hey, POP, and there's an option that says, you know, let me download everything.

You just, you know, go into, go into there and just, you know, I want to back my shit up, you know, I want to back it up from Google just in case, you know, they die, which is nearly impossible, but you never know.

You just can't trust that when you delete something that it really goes away, um, you know, not that, you know, I'm, I'm not smuggling guns or anything, but, I don't know, I guess it's a philosophical bit that, you know, they, what, they say that things happen on the back end, but you don't know for sure.

And Google.

Google really doesn't, like, I'll have to find this article that I read about, Google was independently, I don't know, what's, raided, I guess would be a good way, um, like, they investigated, like, uh, to what degree does Google protect your privacy and, and that sort of thing with, with their services, and it didn't come out very well at all, like, not even a little, and, you know, those sorts of things just really bother me, particularly because Google has such a good reputation with, you know, their, their don't be evil and, you know,

giving lots of stuff away for free and, and that sort of thing.

That separation between the, you know, perceived image of Google and, you know, the actual practical application of what Google is doing, that just, there's just something about that that, that, um, gives me pause, and I just, I don't, I don't really feel like I can throw my weight against it yet.

Well, I, I gotta be careful what I say here, too, because, uh, about a month and a half ago, it was, go so here.

In fact, it was very shortly after I told Mike.

One of my current employers, yes, I'll come work for you, uh, Google headhunter called me again and wanted to interview me again, so, uh, so who knows, maybe in a short, I don't know, maybe, you know, I'll entertain, I'll entertain the idea, maybe I'll be working for Google soon, and then I can tell you, but, um, I, I have, I don't, that's highly unlikely, but, um, maybe we have, I don't know, you know, we have a lot of listeners in California, if any, if any of our listeners, uh, work for Google, obviously we don't, you know, we don't, we're not gonna ask you to share any corporate secrets or anything like that, but, uh,

just if you can shoot us a note on, on, you know, what your own personal trust factor is in the company, we'll, we'll keep it anonymous, and, uh, it'd be interesting to know, I, I, I get exactly what you're saying, Trav, you know, it's, it's one of those things where, you know, power, uh, absolute power crops absolutely, and Google's a pretty fucking powerful company, you know, they're, they're pretty big, and they have, uh, a lot of sway in their fingers into a lot of markets, and really, if they wanted to store all this shit, uh, they could, and they could just say that they're not, and I suppose, I don't know, that's, that's, you know,

kind of lying to their customers, but who's gonna find out and sue them? I don't know if that's, I'm going off on an odd tangent here.

Well, and now they're negotiating to buy DoubleClick, which is, you know, one of the most evil online advertisers to survive the dot-com bust, and, you know, when you put the kind of data that, that Google just kind of has, just because people trust them with it, with the kind of data that DoubleClick has been collecting in not-so-savory ways, I mean, there's just, there's too much there.

There's too much there to believe that it's all gonna be used ethically. It's just, I, I just don't, I don't, I don't believe that, that it's all gonna work out fine in the end, you know?

You know, is there some sort of anti-DoubleClick Firefox extension? I, I mean, I know I modify my Etsy host file on all my Unix boxes, and my, and my Mac hosts, actually, as well, to just say, you know, I got a big long list of DNS, uh, names, and I'm just like, yeah, these are all local hosts.

So, anytime, any, you know, anytime I'm browsing the net,

and tries to go off to, uh, to DoubleClick or whatnot, I just, I get a little error in there.

And it actually really speeds up my browsing, because I'm not downloading all these frickin' ads all the time.

And, uh, you know, this was a couple months ago, but there was, there was some guy who said he was gonna start blocking Firefox because of the, the ad block extension, which I don't use.

I use a different one called, uh, Remove It Permanently, which I, I was a little bit more control over, so I like it a little bit better.

But, uh, that's the other thing in all this is, is that, you know, the, there are ways.

There are ways of defeating these companies, and, uh, some, quite effectively, you know.

Um, did you guys hear about this, about the Firefox, uh, the, the guy who's, you know, um, in the past I've seen these things where it said, you know, you know, all these websites come up and say, you know, this is IE only.

And, um, so then some Firefox people said, all right, well, this page, you know, doesn't work with IE.

And a guy did that similarly with Firefox and said, all right, you know, if you're using Firefox, I'm not gonna show you my page.

I mean, I'm gonna give you nothing because...

Because I have advertising on this, on the site, and that's how I make my money.

And you may have this extension installed that blocks my ads, and if you do that, I don't get money, yet you're getting, you know, my website.

Basically claiming that Firefox users were, were breaking the law and were thieves, which I think is a little bit extreme.

But, uh, did you guys catch that at all?

Yeah, I saw the article, and, uh, I don't know, good riddance.

If, if, if you want to rule out, you know, uh, what are they up to, 17% or so of the surfing?

Population, and just not show them your ads and not show them the content either?

Okay.

There's lots of internet out there.

I'll, I'll catch you later.

Lots of tubes out there to follow, exactly.

One thing I do is, uh, this is turning into a big plug for Smoothwall this episode, but anyway, I use, uh, I use, uh, Squid on the box to actually do all my ad zapping.

So, all my machines in my house run through not only a, a caching proxy, but it also strips all the ads out of it that way, too.

Just so I don't have to worry about...

All I need to do is configure a proxy off each machine, then.

And I also get handy, you know, web logging and reporting, too.

Oh, you're spying on your kids, aren't you?

Well, as a matter of fact, instant message logging is also built into Smoothwall these days, which is really damn cool.

Ooh, that is nasty.

I am logging.

As, as long as, well, uh, well, eventually your kids are gonna learn about encryption, though, you know.

Well, that would be cool.

That would be fine.

But they, uh, until that point, they need to know that they can be seen everywhere.

And what they say is not...

It's not private, and that's okay.

This is my network.

This is the way the world works.

It's just like corporations, you know.

Daddy's dictatorship.

Yeah, that's right.

You're on your corporations network.

You do not expect privacy.

So, you do not get privacy in my house, either.

It's my house.

You know, it was just hilarious.

I've heard stories over the years about, you know, we all have about people going online and impersonating and saying,

Hey, I'm a young girl, or I'm an old man, or whatever.

But what was funny is there, there was this couple, and it was in some Eastern European country.

They were both...

They were both having an online affair.

Each of them, you know, finally decided to meet the person that they were having an affair with.

And, of course, they were keeping a secret from each other.

And they...

And, uh, so they had this, you know...

Well, it turns out that they're fucking cheating on each other, and they didn't even realize it.

So, the whole time, they thought, Oh, I found my soulmate and somebody that I can talk to.

And it turns out to be their spouse.

And, uh, they got divorced still, but, uh, it was pretty crazy.

I think that's an old wives' tale.

It's just too easy.

It's just too simple of a story to be true.

It can't really happen that way.

All right, well, I'll go research.

I believed it when I read it.

There's crazy shit on the Internet, man.

Come on.

Well, speaking a little bit about Google and, uh, it's, you know, the monopol-Google, I guess.

Going way back to episode 57, our last episode, where we talked a lot about cell phone apps.

One thing that I don't...

I don't think we did even mention it in our list of applications.

Um, but there's a...

There's an application called Grand Central, which was recently bought by Google.

And, uh, the, uh, the concept with Grand Central is it's basically a VoIP, but it's a VoIP interface to other phones.

And so, uh, you, uh, you need an invite.

And if you...

And we have some.

So if you're interested, shoot, uh, shoot us an email at geekmuse at gmail.com.

What it is is you, you get a phone number.

And, uh, of course, this is, well, unfortunately, this is U.S. only.

But, uh, um, but you get a phone number, and you can give that phone number out to people.

When somebody calls you, you can record the conversation.

If you pick up a call on your cell phone, and then you, like, while you're driving your car, and then you get home,

you just walk in the house, you hit star on your cell phone, and your home phone starts ringing, and you can pick up your home phone.

And, uh, I don't know, it's, uh, I've been using it a bit here now.

So I, I got a much more formed opinion on it.

Sometimes the delay is rather bad.

Because, again, it is actually, you know, it's converting from regular phone to VoIP and then back again.

You know, sometimes I'll be talking to somebody, and there is a noticeable up to a quarter to half a second delay.

Uh-huh.

Between, you know, when I say something, and then they hear me, and then get back.

And that's been a little bit annoying.

And I did have, uh, a call just right in the middle just died, just dropped.

And, uh, it wasn't my cell phone because I was on a landline.

So, uh, so I'm still a little iffy.

I'm hoping that the service, you know, will improve.

I'm, I'm guessing the lag is a bandwidth thing.

And, um, and same thing with the dropped call.

So maybe they're, they're suffering a little bit here.

But, uh, um, but it's a very, very cool service.

You can do all sorts of things.

You can do all sorts of cool, neat things with it, including, like, dialing.

You know, you can basically, like, set up a thing that people can call you from a website,

and they have no idea even what your number is.

And, uh, the other thing is, you know, you have this universal number that you can assign any phones you want to it.

And when somebody calls it, all your phones ring.

So, you know, if you were to call my Grand Central number, my cell phone, my home phone, and my work phone would all ring all at the same time.

And I can pick up whichever one is closest to me.

So, um, and it has all sorts of spam and telemarketer blocking built into it.

So.

And have you guys played around with your, uh, with your Grand Central accounts at all?

Not much.

Honestly, the, the last time, uh, we had a podcast was probably the last time I used it with any, uh, regularity.

Yeah.

Yeah, I, I kind of played with mine, but that, that's as far as it went, really.

Well, I don't know.

I tried, I tried delving into it a bit and, uh, and playing around with it a, a lot.

And I, and I've been giving it out now as, as kind of my number.

And I've, uh, you know, I, I've printed up new business cards and put, put that number.

On my business card.

So, um, I'm kind of throwing it in.

Well, I don't, I don't, not that many people know my fucking number or call me.

So most people just email me.

So it's not that big of a deal.

Um, but I, I do, I do really like the idea of being able to go to a web form and entering that number in.

And if that company calls me, I can just really, I think even from the phone, it's like three or five or say, I don't know what the hell it is.

But there's a way, if not from the phone, from the website of just saying, hey, that number was bothering me.

But I don't know what the hell it is.

And actually if, if like, I don't know, you know, whatever their metric is, but if like, you know, 50 people block that number, then it's like permanently blocked from, uh, from, uh, from grand central.

So that, uh, so it's almost like, you know, it's kind of like Google.

I'm assuming Google has a thing set up where, you know, they can identify the heuristics and other things.

Oh, you know what, you know, what, what emails are spam, but they also use, you know, how many people go to Gmail and mark an email as spam that was sent to somebody similarly.

And if enough people mark it off as spam, then automatically any new incoming email that looks like that is automatically marked as spam.

So, um, kind of same concept.

I want to point out that like my not or lack of use of it, I guess, isn't necessarily due to its merit in that or dismerit in that I think that the, the, the service is really cool.

And you know what I did play with that I thought was really neat.

It's just that I don't really do a whole lot of voice communication.

Like everything that, that, you know, when I talk.

To people, it's usually a grand total of about 10 seconds to be like, oh yeah, I'm just down the block.

I'll be there in a minute or text messages.

And that's about it.

And so I really don't use, um, my phone number a lot for people to call me.

And so it's not that useful to me.

And that's, I think really what, you know, it comes down with me also is that I've, you know, I've been thinking about transitioning off of, you know, the local telco DSL and going to, uh, going to vibe VoIP.

With other systems and, you know, how you consolidate, um, or you keep your number and, you know, doing all these different things with, with all of the different phone numbers we have, but I really haven't decided to change much at this point.

So it's not that the service is bad or that I, um, have anything against that.

I just haven't found a really telephone piece in my own life to figure out what the heck I'm going to do.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, I didn't give my, uh, my grand central number to my parents, you know, um, I've given it to several friends.

But most of those, you know, I want to let them be able to text me and I don't think that they can text my, uh, I haven't tried that yet.

I should try.

I'll have to send a text to my, uh, to my grand central number and see if it actually forwards it on to my, to my phone.

I don't know if that'll work or not.

And if that doesn't work, then that's kind of crappy.

Well, you know, the other thing is to, you know, uh, if you're, uh, if you're a swinging young guy like myself and you go out to bars and you meet young ladies, the, the kind of the social way of, of exchanging phone numbers nowadays.

Is.

Is for, you know, one of you to give your number to the other person while they're dialing it and then, you know, they call you or you call them or whatnot, you know, and then you both have, you know, each other's numbers, you know, automatically that way.

And if you do that with, with, if you go out to the bars, you do that, well, they're not getting your grand central number.

They're getting your, your usual cell phone number.

So I mean, outgoing calls are still obviously from your outgoing phone.

Well, actually to wrap up with the, uh, cell phone stuff, uh, the video for this socks, but basically, you know,

I don't know how many, how many episodes was this?

This is probably like two years ago when we first started out the podcast.

I don't think it was, it was very far into the podcast.

We were starting to talk about this, but these micro projectors were supposed to have these cool, like laser based, laser based, um, you know, micro projectors for cell phones and laptops and everything.

And it's been a long time and we still haven't seen shit.

I mean, even if it was black and white and a grant, you know, most people think, well, black and white kind of sucks, but I would still be kind of cool with black and white.

I mean, give me something that I can project out of my laptop and I'm going to be fucking happy because it means that I don't have to lug around a thousand dollar projector with a fragile bulb and that weighs 10 pounds.

You know, um, I can make, I can make black and white work.

Trust me, you know, and maybe, you know, two color or whatever.

I don't give a shit, but at any rate, there was a Texas instruments finally does have a cell phone that has a projector built into it.

And I don't know if you look at this video, it just looks like they have like a fucking regular bulb projector in, in this thing.

I can't imagine.

I can't imagine the battery lasts more than 10 minutes with this thing.

And I don't know, did you guys watch this video at all?

I didn't watch the video, but I saw the, uh, the still pictures and, eh, it's a cell phone that's got a, a Fisher price projector in it.

Exactly.

This isn't the coolness that I was hoping for.

Well, and if you look at it, the thing is huge.

So, um, you know, battery life has got to be all of about eight minutes.

Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, and they're projecting it like three feet away and producing an image that's like a foot in diameter.

And I'm like, well, fuck, just bring a laptop with you and let that, you know, set the laptop on the table.

Let them look at that.

I mean, it's the same fucking effect here.

So I don't know, maybe, you know, I guess when I saw this, I thought finally, cause I know I've been looking for many months now waiting, hoping for, even if it's like one of these, you know, expensive $5,000 prototypes, I just want to see the technology there and know that I'm going to be able to buy it in like three years.

Yeah.

Anybody can cram like a low resolution LCD with a lens, you know?

Into a handheld thing.

But I think that the, the real innovation will be, you know, cramming what we're used to in a normal size projector down into that size and maintaining the quality.

And, um, I don't know, I think the DLP would probably be, you know, kind of useful for that, you know, cause they're, they're doing some, uh, really neat stuff with, they don't have the spinning color wheel.

They have some other way to do the colors, but you either DLP or, you know, what the, the kind of vaporware that we're talking about.

Both.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, we talked about this before with the wacky lasers they were talking about, you know, if, if you can use high quality and then, and pull it down to, you know, a cell phone size, that's the real innovation.

That's the real trick.

Cause if you've got something that's the size of a piece of paper, yeah, at that point, you know, just whip out your laptop.

Well, the great thing about the laser is, is there's very little optics in there.

I mean, really you need, you need, uh, you need, you need a lens to do some focus, but after that, you don't, you don't need a lens to do any magnification or anything like that.

So we're talking about, you know, magnification.

We're talking about, you know, infinite focus and, you know, being able to project clearly either a, uh, an image that is a two feet in diameter or 20 feet in diameter or 200 feet in diameter in theory.

Um, so that's why I was all jazzed about the laser thing.

So I don't want to, I don't want any sort of big bright bulb or anything that generates a lot of heat, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, cause that heat equals no battery life, you know?

That would be a great t-shirt.

Heat equals no battery life.

You know?

All right.

So let's, uh, let's talk about Vista for a little while here.

I mean, I've seen tons of things on the net now about how, you know, nobody's been adopting Vista and that's because, you know, or, or the, the numbers are low for Vista because everybody in China is stealing it.

And, uh, and Dell now is, is offering people to downgrade from Vista back to XP if they want to.

There's another rumor I heard.

I don't know.

I, I, I mean.

To some extent, there's nothing really in Vista that's like, yay, gotta have it.

But I felt that way about XP.

I mean, I, it took me forever to upgrade to XP.

And for a lot of businesses, they're not going to jump on this shit.

I mean, they're, they're waiting for stability here before they're going to be, you know, jumping on something that could potentially, you know, stop production in their, in their, in their corporation.

So I don't, I don't really get the whole big Vista hasn't taken off thing.

It's going to take a little while to settle in.

Now, granted, how long has Vista been out now?

It's.

Uh, it came out in what, like March, right, Chris?

Uh, yes, that seems right.

You know, I honestly don't remember, but yeah, I mean, it's been out long enough that, uh, that they can start taking metrics of, you know, what has it done in the first six months.

All right.

Well, yeah.

And, and, and that's exactly right.

You know, it's not selling as well as they, as they figured it would because, um, because it's a complicated picture, you know, it's not as simple as.

It's not, I don't think it's nearly as simple as previous upgrades, you know, not, not from an OS level perspective, but, you know, I think companies are getting good at, at it and understanding how to manage it and understanding what an upgrade means.

Uh, it used to be in the past, you just bought whatever was newest, you dealt with the issues, but now there's so many people that are relying on machines that, you know, you have to go into this with both eyes open and realize what you're getting into and have a freaking plan before you do it.

You can't just go in and buy stuff and.

Install it and expect everything to be hunky-dory because these are, these are things underlying underpinnings of the OS and how applications interact with the OS that change.

And so you need to understand application compatibility and you need to get your vendors to get off their asses and support Vista and all these things take time.

Um, it's no surprise to me, but it's something that the press likes to grab onto because it's just makes for good news.

Oh, look, it's slow.

I don't think this is an issue.

Um, downgrading.

XP is just another factor of that.

It's well, you know, applications aren't compatible with it.

You gotta have an option.

You know, there's gotta be some way to keep Dell selling machines to corporations that, uh, that need them on XP instead of Vista at this point.

Yeah, I'm gonna go down a limb here.

And, uh, I think that the, the primary difference between like the XP to Vista, uh, leap, as opposed to there's been a new release of OS 10.

Jesus, what every 18 months or so, and, you know, uh, a new version of Linux comes out every 20 minutes.

And I think the big thing is that Windows has is chained to its legacy stuff so much, and it's such a large company and such a large product that they can't turn out the updates as, as quickly as I think that they might want to, or as quickly as the competition.

And so I think that with the Vista, they actually made a pretty good decision by.

Kind of shooting a little bit in the future, you know, Vista really, you know, is, is kind of at home on a bleeding edge machine.

They've, they've kind of overshot a little bit, and that's not that bad of a decision because it, it extends the life of the product some, um, the downside of that being that, you know, it, it might take a little bit longer for it to come into its own.

And I think that that's kind of what's happening now.

And so, Chris, I think you're right that it's not entirely unexpected.

Um, nor is it.

Overly negative, it's just, it makes for a good story, so that's what's being reported.

I haven't used Vista for longer than 90 seconds at a stretch, and maybe half a dozen times at that, and so my grand total of about four minutes worth of usage, eh, it's fine, I guess, you know, I mean, XP was okay, you know, and, uh, I think that, that eventually Vista will kind of find its home in the same way that people will be like, yeah, it's okay, I can use it.

Yeah, it's okay, I can use it.

I can use this, you know, I like it.

It's just, it, it might take a little bit longer to get there, just because, you know, they're planning further ahead.

There's something about DirectX 11 and it only works with Vista.

I mean, a few years ago, I would have said that that's probably, yeah, I would have said that that's, you know, a killer thing, because, you know, it's, it's still true to this day, to some extent.

I mean, I don't know, people, people go out and they have, you know, they have a PlayStation 3 or an Xbox or something like that to, to play a lot of games on, but don't a lot of people still play games on their PCs, and isn't that, like, a big deal?

If, if DirectX 11 is only going to be on Vista, you know, is there, like, backwards compatibility of some sort back to 10?

How does that all work?

DirectX equals gamers, and gamers equals whatever's coming out three months from now.

So, you know, that, I don't think that's a big of a deal, because all the gamers are going to be, you know, if they haven't pirated it already before it comes out, then they're going to get it, you know, they're going to be standing out blind, out in front of CompUSA.

Well, and, and you have to know that, you know, gamers are buying high-end machines.

Anyway, so they're always going to have the newest stuff, because that's what all of the software development companies are developing on.

So, you know, I don't think that's going to be an issue.

So, good question, Dem.

Well, but, well, I do, I do have a counter case to that, and that is, how many kids are out there?

I have a very good friend of mine, he has a girlfriend with a, with a child who's, I believe, 10, or maybe 9, I don't remember.

But, at any rate, this child loves to play video games.

And half the shit he can't play, because he doesn't have enough, you know, a high-end enough machine, and his parents aren't going to buy him a computer just for games, you know.

They're like, well, you know, you get the leftover crud that we used to have, and you have to make that, make that go.

I just think there's a potential market there, if you're restricting games to just the high-end gamers.

I think the high-end gamers are going to go and buy the Xbox, and not buy, you know, the souped-up PC, you know.

Maybe I'm wrong.

And in, I think...

I think most cases, the gaming experience is going to be better on a dedicated console than it is going to be on a general-purpose machine.

But you don't get the game selection either, because you're not going to be able to play things like World of Warcraft, or any of the other massive multiplayer online gaming.

It just doesn't function as well on a 360 or a PlayStation 3 as it would on a PC.

Because you don't have the mouse, you don't have the keyboard, you don't have those kind of controls over it.

Yeah, and that 10-year-old kid...

It can cry me a fucking river, because when I was a kid, I got an Atari that my parents bought at a garage sale, okay?

And I never even got a Nintendo.

I never got that far.

I still have my fucking Atari 2600.

You know, one of the computer naming schemes at my new job is old Nintendo games.

And I don't remember, it was like Zelda and Mega Man and whatnot.

And so I named my workstation Sonic, because I was a Sega guy, because I never had, I never got a Nintendo.

I never got a Nintendo either.

By the way, here's another plug for you.

Halo 3 just came out, and it kicks ass, so...

Woohoo!

Yeah, I saw, like, I was watching Spike TV, and they had, like, they're interviewing people and whatnot.

Now, how much does a copy of Halo 3 cost?

Just the game?

Uh, 60 bucks, or 70 if you want the super special version, which I don't know what the difference is,

but there's, like, a limited edition, whatever.

Of course there's going to be 8 different flavors of it.

It's a Microsoft product.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

There's just two. There's just two.

There's the home and the ultimate, yeah.

Ha ha ha ha.

Yeah, right.

Home Halo 3 and Ultimate Halo 3.

You want different colored players, you have to get the multicolored version.

Well, the home Halo 3 is you just running around your house shooting at the cat.

You know, that's the home version, but the ultimate, you can actually get to the aliens.

Ha ha ha ha.

I thought I'd heard it was, like, $140 or something like that.

Maybe on eBay the first day or something like that, who knows, but...

Oh, yeah, that could be, but...

No, it's a lot of fun.

It's more of the same, but a whole lot better, because now it's, you know, 1080p and not interpreted Halo 2 on a 360.

It's Halo 3 designed for the 360, so guns, guns, guns.

It's the same game, but it's got a lot more pixels this time.

Well, I'm now very much looking forward to the ultra-high-def version of Red vs. Blue.

Well, and I guess in the making of this, they actually used a couple of the characters from Red vs. Blue in the actual game.

Very nice.

They're the voices, at least.

And they used, actually, the Firefly cast, too, which was, I thought, pretty cool.

Cool.

And I also saw that there was, like, a screenshot of, in one of the buildings when you're running around,

there's a couple of computers, and they both have the Windows blue screen of death on them, so...

At least they have a sense of humor.

Yeah, this is true.

Well, I mean, how much does Microsoft have in the development of Halo 3?

I mean, isn't it all some other subcompany?

I mean, maybe Microsoft owns that subcompany, but...

Is Bungie still, like, separate-ish?

I mean, I know Microsoft owns Bungie, but are they still, like, their own...

They're a wholly-owned subsidiary, you know, just comes down to that.

Gotcha.

All right, well, in other Microsoft news here, I've been pushing this on my other...

Well, because I'm still a student here, I'm still a grad student, so...

If you are a student of some sort, and I believe their only restriction is, I mean, you have to be currently enrolled and, like, taking an actual class.

You can't be auditing or just, like, enrolled and somehow not taking classes.

I don't know what they would call that, because then you're not a student.

But, at any rate, if you go to TheUltimateSteel.com, you can pick up a full copy of Office 2007 Ultimate.

Again, you have to prove that you're a student, and you have to use your studentemail.edu address.

But you can pick that up for 60 bucks, so it's $640 off, so...

Pretty nice.

And that is a great deal, by the way, because...

Even for employees, the Ultimate version is 65 bucks.

So, I mean, you're getting it below even what Microsoft employees can buy it at for 60 bucks.

So, if you have the opportunity, it's well worth it.

Yeah, and I'm not even a huge Office user, but I bought it for the heck of it, because eventually I'm, you know...

It's always nice to have a copy of Access or Excel around, you know, for when you need it.

And for 60 bucks, it's really stinking cheap for, you know, a legal copy.

And 07 is pretty nice in a couple of key ways, because...

You can actually print things as PDF right out of Word with a little add-on for it, so that's kind of handy.

No more third-party software, open-source, you know, print drivers to get it into a PDF.

So, one minor thing that's probably not worth 60 bucks, but I use that.

It's one of the nicest things I've found that I use regularly.

I am a big Office user.

I really do like, you know, because I've used OpenOffice and, you know, some of the other, like, you know...

Google's different productivity apps and whatnot.

And, you know, any way you slice it, I think that Office really still takes the cake with respect to productivity apps.

If nothing else, because Excel and Word will accept anything.

If you, you know, copy something and then paste it into it, somehow it'll make sense of just about anything.

I just... I don't understand how it... all the work that must have gone into that, but it's the Swiss Army knife of, you know, Office work.

Yeah, and actually, what's kind of crazy, I was thinking about this because I was...

As I was paying my tuition not too long ago here, I'm just taking one credit as a graduate student.

As a graduate student, you have to maintain continuous enrollment, so you sign up for just this one-credit class always.

And then when you get your thesis finally done, you... basically, you pay for the credits that you have left that you haven't taken.

But anyway, you know, I'm going to... at a state university in North Dakota, so maybe this is a rather specific thing to me.

But I believe my credit... my one credit for this semester cost me a little bit over $200.

With fees and everything, it might have been closer to $250.

But still, that's a shitload cheaper than paying $700 for a full copy of Office.

So, if you have a local community college near you, sign up for one credit over there, pay the minimum amount you can to them,

and, you know, get a copy of Office for cheap, if you want to go the whole legal route, I guess.

Well, that should do it for this episode.

On behalf of Chris Grant and Travis Crowe, I'm Nemesh Lecht.

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