In a previous blog, I discussed how the increasing automation of jobs and services will lead to a loss of the desire and design to be productive as humans, created in the image of God. Guardian has an article out that speaks to this, but how it will lead to two ultimate ends: the elusive utopia I spoke of in the previous blog (and showed how it really won’t be that at all), or a new form of serfdom. I would argue that either way there is a loss of humanity in removing the role of working as being a fulfillment of one of our designs as humans. Nevertheless, here’s the article:
Tag: Technology Page 1 of 2
Update 4 (1/16/2011): Actually, they have now shipped the original drive they said they were going to send and it’s in Dallas currently. Not sure what that RMA email was about with the other drive type.
Update 3 (1/15/2011): Apparently the drive type has changed unexpectedly during the RMA process to the WD2002FYPS. I looked up the drive on Tom’s Hardware and came up with an interesting review. At this point in the process, you tell me what you would think after reading this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2tb-hdd-energy,2371-5.html.
“Although a RAID Edition drive like the new RE4 sounds like it should spin at 7,200 RPM and serve up high performance, the new WD2002FYPS is not a new hard drive. Instead, WD modified and re-validated the existing 2 TB Caviar Green WD20EADS to suit the demands of 24/7 applications in business and data center environments.”
Have emailed my contact at WD twice with no response at this point.
Update 2 (1/14/2011): Well … Western Digital called today and I won’t say who I spoke with to keep people anonymous in the process. The sales guy I spoke with was very kind and apologetic. I must say, at this point, they are working to make up for this, as they are sending me this drive: Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s. Okay that’ll do. But we’ll have to wait and see how it performs, short and long-term. I’ll keep you posted. 🙂
Update 1 (1/12/2011): the story only gets worse. I sent the drive back to Western Digital a couple of months ago before the warranty ran out, at my own expense, and was sent back a used, scratched up, junky drive … that ALSO DIDN’T WORK WORTH A … (you know), in either of the computers I tried it in! I had initially asked on the site when requesting the replacement that I be sent a Caviar Black instead of the Caviar Green and that I was willing to pay the extra amount for the drive, and received no response whatsoever, but instead received an absolute piece of junk that didn’t work at all.
This is unbelievable to me, the level of non-support, the lack of quality in the product, the process from top to bottom, from the humans to the machines. I will never, ever buy Western Digital again. I’ve only had trouble. I have no idea in my mind why in the world Western Digital is still in the market at all. MAJOR FAIL on the part of Western Digital on this one!
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So for Christmas, my Dad bought me a Western Digital 1.5 TB (terabyte) hard drive from TigerDirect.com. No issues with TigerDirect to be clear. No issues with what my Dad got me since I told him the hard drive to order. And initially no issues with the hard drive either.
However, the past month or two, the computer would just freeze up with no warning or signs that a problem was imminent. At first I thought no big deal. Then it kept happening, and then the freezes became more frequent. Then they became everyday recently. Finally the other day, I rebooted the machine and it couldn’t even see the drive until I switched SATA (Serial ATA) controllers on the motherboard.
We’ll see how this goes … Just giving it a try. Also, I’ll occasionally be streaming audio, but it’s spotty and sometimes the wireless signal isn’t strong so it drops … but if you want, you can attempt to listen here: http://www.westerfunk.net/radio/player/
A couple of articles from Carl Trueman and one article sent to me by a friend from Justin Taylor’s blog, quoting another article, all do a great job of helping us consider what we’re using social media for. Are we merely making exhibitions of ourselves, using these tools to become our own personal marketers to make us feel like we belong somehow or to draw attention to ourselves because … well, we just think we’re that great? Or in the context of Christianity, are we using it to make God look good or promote and make ourselves look good instead (that whole messy idolatry thing, exchanging the glory of God for anything else)? These articles are seriously making me take a step back and consider what I do with social media, because I surely know I’m not guiltless in how I use these things.
No Text Please, I’m British! (Archive) – Carl Trueman, Reformation21.org
Making Exhibitions of Ourselves (Archive)- Carl Trueman, Reformation21.org
Twitter: The Telegraph of Narcissus (Archive) – Justin Taylor, theologica.blogspot.com
Everything may shift around us at extremely fast rates … and yet God and His Gospel remain constant. Plant yourself in Him and His grace to us in Christ, for, “the times, they are a-changin’,” really really quickly.
I’m a nerd. I’m not afraid to hide it, clearly. As a nerd, I love technology. I have a webcam setup at home for security reasons, pointed across my front yard to catch possible intruders that wish to invade my property or cause other harm. I have a threshold setup on the software I run along with my webcam that, when hit, sends an email attached with a picture (or series of pictures) to an offsite email account.
Most of the time, I just get cars passing by, lightning during a storm, really any kind of movement or light change that causes enough of a fluctuation to trigger a webcam picture alert. Sorting through the emails on partly cloudy days is not always fun and many times, I just delete them all because it is too many to sort through. However, there are some rare occasions that I actually get something good, funny, or odd. Here is a sample of some of the best shots from the past two years that I have kept:
This guy thought he might try and get into my garage and steal some junk in the middle of the night last year in June.
Apparently, it proved to be too much of a risk for him with the flood lights along with neighbors who are not afraid to use a gun. Good, please leave. Whew.
I’m pretty sure this jumping spider knew he would send off an email alert and intentionally walked across the viewing range of the webcam.
It really isn’t that uncommon to see people walking across the yard. You would be quite surprised to know how many neighbors do this during the middle of the day 🙂 Anyway, this guy caught my attention only because he looks exactly like my wife’s brother. It was just the electric meter guy though.
I thought this was a fascinating photo study in the custodial/lawn service arts.
Finally, these are two shots from last nights’ thunderstorm that I thought were pretty awesome.
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Updated at 2:00pm on 08/02/2008:
I almost forgot … though we live in the city, we apparently are still on a rural mail route (can’t figure that one out). As such, we receive our mail (I would guess) about every other day on average, from a guy in a jerry-rigged minivan. He drives the thing from the passenger seat. Yet the wheel still resides on the drivers side … and I assume he has pedals on the passenger side as well. I’m still trying to figure out how he drives the thing without easily running into stuff. Very interesting to say the least.
A while back I wrote this post pertaining to what appeared to be spammers utilizing Gmail servers to send spam to my account. I didn’t know if it was just me or if others were experiencing it as well. It’s not just me apparently. This article on The Register in the UK shows that this is quite a growing problem for all mailing systems, that is now causing many mail services to start throttling Gmail (as well as Yahoo) emails that come in. This is bad news because Gmail was supposed to be one of the more secure mailing systems. In addition, it presents a big problem for services like Spamhaus because spam emails being sent through Gmail SMTP servers are not blacklisted. Therefore a spammer can send email from foreign IP address blocks that may be banned in the Spamhaus database, but because the email is actually being sent via Gmail servers, it is not blacklisted. So mail services have started enforcing throttling to limit the number of email that are sent from Gmail. This just shows that no matter how much security you put in place (even complex CAPTCHA techniques), there is always a way around systems, always. And at some point, someone will find the holes. It’s just a matter of time. The trick is staying ahead and always keeping people guessing.
Update: 1/12/2009
A much better firmware now exists for this router called Tomato. Check it: http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato
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A friend of mine has a Linksys WRT54G v4, and there is some new hacked firmware out for it (hacked in a benevolent, legal way :). So we decided to upload this hacked firmware and give it a whirl. It worked with no problems and you can now boost the transmit power up to 251 mw (my WAP54G with hacked firmware goes up to 84 mw and I still get a connection from 6 houses down if that tells you anything). Theoretically, without any electronic interference between the router and your wireless card, you should be able to connect from quite a far distance (not sure exactly how far though as I have not tested it). This firmware will work for v1-v4 and seems to be really stable from what I can tell. So check it out and download it from here …