So there I was walking into the local Best Buy to buy a case fan and lo and behold I see two people that I used to work with. They just recently quit to start up their own business and were looking for a computer, however, they didn’t know what they wanted. They were thinking about either one laptop or two desktops, but they were having a hard time making up their mind. Being the friendly computer geek I am, I give them some general advice such as:

Don't buy a Celeron or Duron (or whatever the hell they call them this week).
Don't buy too much software because there are several free alternatives (and most are equal or better than their proprietary, costly counterparts).
Two desktops cost just slightly more than a decent laptop.
Laptops typically have more problems and cost more to fix.
Laptops generally aren't easily upgradable and the upgradable parts cost more than desktop parts do.
Desktops can be easily upgraded fairly cheaply.


So after casually talking with them for about 15 minutes or so, up walks the Best Buy sales scumbag putting on the typical sales routine of “getting to know you so they can socially engineer you into buying something”. Grr.

The first thing he tries to pitch them on is how much a laptop will save them and how it’s portable. So he compares their cheapest laptop to two of the most expensive desktops and shows them they’re “going to save so much money by just getting a laptop”. Right. So I pointed out that if you compare the most expensive laptop with two middle-priced desktops, they’re about the same price.

Anyway, after his creative number-crunching, his next step was to talk them into Norton Anti-Virus and Microsoft Office Professional (because they had mentioned Access). To give an idea of where their business is, it’s “up north”, which means there’s a 99% chance they’ll be on dialup. However, they have cable at their home in Midland. What this meant was that they will be less of a target of viruses and the like, so why spend around $50.00 on Norton, when they can get AVG for free? AVG is well maintained, free, and works wonderfully. According to one of my networking instructors, who is also a network administrator in a local school system, they made a full switch to AVG a few years ago after using Norton for several years. During the transition, he tested it pretty heavily and found that AVG did a better job detecting nasties than Norton. Don’t get me wrong, not much better because it only detected a couple of things that Norton didn’t, but for a free product that’s pretty good! Besides, antivirus software doesn’t detect any brand new viruses right away until they create a definition for it. Don’t get me started on the whole anti-virus rant…been there, done that. Anyway, the functionality and reliability is the same so it comes down to free vs ~$50.00. You decide.

The next debate was Microsoft Office. They needed a spreadsheet, word processor, and database application. I, of course, suggested OpenOffice because it has functions that Microsoft Office has and then some…and it’s free.

His next step was to try and get on my good side by talking with me for a little while. Sorry, I don’t fall for that crap…move on. During our conversation, he tried to talk Techie with me. In doing so we started talking about shool. He enjoyed bragging about how good he is at math and how he scored so high on his COMPASS tests. I asked him what he is going to school for and apparently he is going into Chemical Engineering. He asked what I was going to school for and I told him Computer Science and Information Technology – specifically Network and Information Security. He continued to try and talk Techie with me and ended up impressing me even less as his true salesman colors came through. Seriously – I work with salesmen all day long…I know how they work, ok?

Anyway, to sum up my Best Buy employee experience – if you don’t work off of commission like you say, then don’t strongarm and bullshit people into buying stuff they don’t need.

Article here.

Here are some thoughts on DRM and piracy in general in society today. It looks like nowadays you cannot know anything unless you pay for it first and without a money back guarantee. You cannot listen to music, see theater, or learn unless you pay – all without a money back guarantee. If I buy a lemon, and it’s core is rotten and infested, I can return it. If I buy a music CD and the music is complete crap complete with DRM so that I can’t actually play it, not only do I not get my money back but I don’t even own the said piece of crap. It’s a rental.

Is this how humanity evolved? Is this how we will be able to retain knowledge in the future? What the fuck are libraries but mass piracy collectives?

Here is the truth of it, and it will piss off pretty much everyone in this non-manufacturing based economy: You either know something or you do not. It is either secret or it is not. And in the end, all things are known.

You cannot own knowledge. It was never yours to begin with. The language I am speaking now was giving to me by thousands of years of other English speakers. It is not mine to own. The word “assnuggety” that I just made up does not belong to me. It is a contruct of what I’ve learned from others. It is knowledge.

When this understanding is realized, say after a catastrophic event, then Linux will no longer need the GPL along with all other proprietary software/entertainment data. And the data that will be able to survive at that point will be open data, as Linux is today. It will save our asses – mark my words. Windows and all those shit programs that those people copied won’t be worth a drop of piss. Nobody will be able to modify it. It will be useless.

And so here is what I think of arresting very smart people in high end technical positions. Maybe they know something that you don’t? Maybe they aren’t paid by people that get their money from PAC funded politicians. Maybe they are archiving data educating more people than your broken government ever could. Maybe we should all think about what this means.

I have to tell you that the moment Intellect and Knowledge became legal property is the moment that you have no “lawful” rights to your own thoughts. That does not serve anyone and never has.