Are blogs credible?

Dave Farquhar net.culture

OK, so 60%+ of Americans don’t trust blogs. Do I need to do a Gomer Pyle imitation?

Blogs are media. People generally don’t trust the media either.Ten years ago, which was a time when the Web had about 12 pages on it and almost all of them were personal pages, I was in journalism school and if there was one point the introductory and history classes tried to hammer home, it was that freedom of the press is in danger. Today, a majority of students, when presented with the exact wording of the First Amendment, believe it goes too far.

There’s an old saying that freedom of the press is for those who own one. To a degree, that presented a large barrier of entry. One can safely assume that it will cost more than a million dollars to start a magazine, and that’s been true for a very long time. Newspaper startup costs will be much higher.

But somehow that hasn’t stopped quacks from getting into print. Some quacks are very wealthy. They can buy media outright, and less-wealthy quacks can just buy some space in a newspaper and pontificate all they want about whatever bothers them and act like a syndicated columnist–some even include their picture–and the only way you would know is by the word “ADVERTISEMENT” plastered across the top and the bottom of the editorial.

In contrast, some people will give you a blog for free, and that lowers the cost of entry even further. Now all it takes is some rudimentary computer skills and the willingness to sit down and write. And if people agree with you and link to you, you might even gain some prominence.

Does that make them credible? No. But do the words “of the [insert newspaper name here] staff” give you credibility? It shouldn’t. Journalism is not a licensed profession like engineering or law or medicine. If I can convince someone to hire me and pay me to write, I’m a journalist. The same goes for you. There are just two barriers of entry: People who can string words together intelligently are much more rare than they should be, and the pay stinks. If your goal is to keep a dry roof over your head and drive a car that isn’t falling apart, you’re better off persuing a career as a garbage man. But if you’re willing to live with pay that makes schoolteachers look like aristocrats, there isn’t much keeping you from being a journalist.

The low pay is one reason I’m suspicious of a lot of journalists. To put up with that lifestyle, you pretty much have to have a hidden agenda.

So do I trust blogs? Generally, no. But don’t feel bad. Generally speaking I’m suspicious of television news and newspapers and magazines and other online news services too.

Credibility is earned. I know some people trust me. I know some other people think I’m a quack who blogs because no sane person would pay me to write anything. And that’s fine–in some cases the feeling is more than mutual.

So what to do about those big, bad blogs that have no credibility? Censoring speech is always bad. The solution to speech that needs censorship is more speech. So the answer to bad blogs is more blogs. The best of the best will rise to the top, and quacks always find a way to eventually self destruct.

Adobe buys Macromedia!

Dave Farquhar Software

I thought this was a joke at first, but it appears that Adobe really is buying competitor Macromedia.Ironically, the app that really put Macromedia on the map (before Flash) was Freehand, which was an old Aldus product that Adobe sold off when it bought the creator of Pagemaker.

This pretty much eliminates the only viable competition for Illustrator. I don’t know that anyone considered Fireworks a viable competitor to Photoshop or not. But essentially, when it comes to desktop publishing, the only companies left to compete with Adobe are Quark (who only have one viable product) and what’s left of Corel.

If I were the FTC, I would force Adobe to sell off its competing products, although I don’t know if Quark would want them, and Corel already has its line of graphics apps, although Macromedia’s are generally better respected. But since the current administration loves big business, probably what will happen is either the competing products will be discontinued or dummied down into consumer-level products.

I think the software industry is already consolidated more than it needs to be, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen an acquisition actually result in a better product. But we’ll see what happens this time.

Punishing the curious for something that should have never happened

Dave Farquhar net.culture , , ,

I saw a story on the news tonight about more than 100 students who won’t be getting into MBA programs. Why? When they applied to a number of prestigous universities, a posting on a bulletin board claimed to let them view their records and see if they were admitted or not.

It didn’t work for all of them. But those who tried to peek are being punished.My question is why is this information on the public Internet to begin with? This is precisely what intranets are for: You put sensitive information on a web server behind a firewall. Then you define one or more computers who can see it. The rest of the world can’t access it, because the rest of the world doesn’t know it exists. But those who are authorized to see it can see it, through the convenience of a web browser.

Leaving this kind of information on a web server that’s open to the public via the plain old Internet is akin to keeping student records, finals, and other sensitive information at the campus library. If it’s out where someone can see that it’s there–or might suspect it’s there–then someone’s going to look. It shouldn’t be there in the first place. I had professors who never kept tests in their office because some student at some point in time had broken in, hoping to get a preview of the final.

Punishing applicants for typing in a link that they figured wouldn’t work anyway accomplishes little or nothing, except to say that some of the nation’s finest universities have given no thought whatsoever to their computer security and network design.

I hope their graduates are smarter than the people who run the place. But that’s probably a given.

What happens when you overclock

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

I’ve never been a big fan of overclocking. I overclocked for a couple of weeks back in my Pentium-75 days but quit when my system started acting goofy. I did it again five years ago when I was writing my book, because, well, everyone expected me to talk about overclocking in it. So I overclocked again, and tried to use that overclocked machine in the process of writing a book. This foray only lasted a little while longer.

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Survey sites, revisited

Dave Farquhar Saving money

Back in December, I warned against paying anyone $35 for lists of survey sites.

If I was convinced then it was a bad idea, I’m even more convinced now.The hucksters promise you can make a hundred dollars an hour or more. If you do the math, that can be true–I suppose if someone offers you $35 to take a survey and you finish it in 15 minutes, you’ve essentially been paid $140 an hour–but that’s numbers trickery. You’re not going to get enough surveys to do a 40-hour week at that rate, unless you’re a whole lot luckier than I am.

I signed up at several paid survey sites, starting in late November. Within a week, I got a couple of $10 surveys. After a month or so, a couple of $25, $35 surveys came in. It was nice. Some of the surveys took longer than others, but I don’t think any of them took me much more than 30 minutes.

I think I may have made $100 in my best month.

But here’s the rub. The marketing research people who do these sites don’t want career survey takers. If you take a survey about, say, potato chips, they don’t want to hear from you again for another six months.

My best month, I made about $100. These days, I’m making more like $5 a week. I’m not complaining, because it’s usually a fairly easy five bucks, and while that’s a small amount of money, it’s about the smallest amount of money that you can actually do something with. But is it worth paying $35 to get at a list of people who are willing to shoot five bucks your way every once in a while? No.

The other thing that works against paid surveys being the secret of the universe that leads to financial independence is the speed. Some of them pay you within a couple of weeks. Some of them take months. If your rent is due next week and you’re a few bucks short, don’t count on filling out a bunch of surveys to make up the difference–you’ll be lucky if the money gets to you in time to help you with next month’s rent.

So don’t pay that survey site. If you’re curious, click that link above to the entry I wrote back in December. In the comments, there’s a link to a good site with links to literally hundreds of survey sites, both paid and unpaid. Sign up for a Yahoo mail account and use it to register for a few sites and see what happens. Maybe you’ll do better than me and make a couple hundred bucks one month. Maybe you’ll just make $15. But at least you didn’t pay $35 to find out.

Fixing Backup Exec with Hisecweb installed

Dave Farquhar Windows , , ,

If you run your web servers on Windows under IIS, you’d better install the Hisecweb security template unless you want to find yourself hosting a warez site.

But Hisecweb breaks Backup Exec. So what do you do when upgrading to Apache and Linux isn’t a solution?The problem is that Hisecweb makes the system state (shadow copy components in Windows 2003) and SQL server not show up in the selection list. Not only does it not show up in the selection list, Backup Exec cannot find the resources. So backups fail, and if you have to restore from them, you won’t have the registry or a number of system files, which vastly reduces the value of your backup.

The solution is to tell Backup Exec not to use null sessions on those components, which seem to be one of the many things disabled by Hisecweb. On the server being backed up, go into Services and disable your Backup Exec Remote Agent. Now, fire up Regedit. Navigate to HKLM\Software\Veritas\Backup Exec\Engine\NTFS and locate the key called Restrict Anonymous Support. Set this value to 1. Close the registry editor and restart the Backup Exec Remote Agent service.

SQL Server and the system state or shadow copy components should now show up in the selection list for the server you just changed.

This registry hack can also fix visibility problems when the two machines are on different sides of a firewall.

Who’s in hell?

Dave Farquhar Christianity

One of my coworkers told me today that on his way back from lunch, he heard a preacher say on the radio that Pope John Paul II was in hell right then.

I know for a fact that Pope John Paul II wasn’t in hell right then. He was in a bed in the Vatican, still alive. Some faux pas, huh?

Even still, no Christian has any business saying something like that. Never. Even after the person’s death actually is confirmed.Saying someone’s in hell when he or she has been confirmed to still be alive just makes you look like an idiot. No great harm done, I guess. But who’s in hell and who isn’t actually isn’t my decision, nor is it yours, nor is that radio preacher’s.

I grew up hearing poorly educated church workers tell my Dad that he was going to hell. They told others the same thing too, I’m sure. Dad wasn’t going to hell for the normal reasons people tell others that they’re going to hell–he wasn’t sleeping around, or cheating on his taxes, or stealing, or voting for the wrong political candidate. No, Dad was going to hell because he believed the wrong thing.

I’ll be the first to admit that Dad had an unusual combination of beliefs. But Dad had an unusual combination of degrees and life experiences too. But among those beliefs was the single sentence that will keep you out of hell: Jesus died to pay the price of my sins.

Believe that, and God doesn’t care if you believe the sky is orange and dogs say moo.

Don’t get me wrong. The Pope’s beliefs and mine differ in some very important ways. The Pope was wrong about a lot of things. That radio preacher’s beliefs and mine differ in some very important ways. He’s wrong about a lot of things too.

And I know God and I will someday have a very long conversation about where what I believed was wrong. I hope that conversation will be shorter than God’s conversation than that radio preacher, and His conversation with the Pope. But I’m not willing to bet the change in my pocket that it will be. Am I both smarter and less stubborn than either of them? Only God truly knows the answer to that question.

Is Pope John Paul II in hell? I can only answer that with another question. Did Pope John Paul II know why it was necessary for Jesus to come to earth and die? If he did, then he’s in heaven. End of argument. And only God truly knows the answer to that question.

So who’s in hell? To answer that question is to pass judgment. Is Adolf Hitler in hell? I can’t answer that. I wasn’t there during his final moments. Did he repent and accept Jesus before he pulled that trigger? Highly unlikely, yes. Impossible? No.

Is Judas Iscariot in hell? I think most people probably believe he is. But they probably believe it for the wrong reason. Judas’ mortal sin was not his direct role in Jesus’ death. Judas’ mortal sin wasn’t suicide, either. Nor was it his love of money. No, Judas is a good candidate for hell because he believed the wrong thing about Jesus. Judas seemed to expect a political savior, not a spiritual one. And Judas died before Jesus was fully revealed as that spiritual savior.

Of course, it was Jesus’ death and resurrection that changed the rules. Judas didn’t live under the same set of rules that you and I now do. Did Judas know that he was a sinner, and was Judas trusting that God would one day provide atonement for those sins?

It’s obvious from Judas’ actions that he realized he was a sinner, and even that he was penitent. And it appears that he knew about God–Judas cast out demons just like the rest of the disciples did. This tree had fruit. So the question becomes, did Judas die believing the right thing?

Were you there? I wasn’t. Only God was. And only God knows. Once again, I can say the likelihood that Judas made it to heaven is very low. But only God can say for certain, because only God knew Judas’ heart.

If I can’t say for certain that the greatest betrayer in human history and the man who Jesus Himself called "a devil" is in hell, then how can I say where anyone else is or isn’t?

The Bible is perfectly clear about where I’m going and why. And that’s a much more productive thing to talk about.

In case you’re still having a case of the Mondays

Dave Farquhar Humor/Satire

If your five bosses are bothering you about putting the wrong cover sheet on your TPS reports again and you got the memo but you can’t find the sheets, you can download one.

And if you haven’t seen Mike Judge’s modern classic Office Space, you really need to.If you don’t yet own a copy, that’s curable. And I would be remiss if I didn’t post a link to the red Swingline stapler.

Informercial, out. Now go print out a copy of that TPS report cover sheet to hang on your cell, er, cubicle wall. Or leave it laying on the desk of a fellow inmate who needs a laugh.

Are computer repair people all amateurs like this BBC reporter says?

Dave Farquhar General

I saw this link on Slashdot to a BBC story that calls all computer technician types “unqualified amateurs.”

I think I resent that.I think I happen to be pretty good. Understand, I got that way by being very bad for a very long time. But I will admit I’ve met a lot of IT people, and very few have impressed me. Most are better at sounding like they know what they’re talking about than they are at actually accomplishing anything. I once worked with someone who had the longest resume I’ve ever seen. He claimed to be a budding Windows NT Server administrator with experience in every application you can think of. I got suspicious when he didn’t know how to use a mouse properly. I got severely torqued off when I wrote a whiteboard full of detailed instructions on how to Ghost a PC, left for an hour, and came back to find he had completed three of them, and two of those incorrectly.

But that’s not everyone.

I’m seldom impressed with in-store technicians too. But I can tell you why. The big-box stores have difficulty keeping their good technicians. Headhunters are constantly scouring those stores in search of talent, and it’s only a matter of time before anyone who’s good leaves for greener pastures–namely, a job with fixed or semi-fixed hours and benefits.

So, no, I don’t let my friends take their computers to those places.

I’ve thought about doing what the BBC author did: Posting a notice somewhere offering computer help to home users. I’ve done a bit of it on the side in years past. But there’s a problem. Generally, too many people call, and too often.

Sometimes people seem to think they’re entitled to free computer help for life because they paid you $40 once. Other times they just keep calling you. My biggest problem with it as a part-time gig is that it’s too easy to get buried in it. I work too many hours as it is to come home to three more hours of part-time work every night.

As a full-time gig it would be more tempting, but the problem there is self employment. Thanks to self employment, the government is likely to take half of your earnings, so in order to make what you make in someone else’s employ, you really need to double the number.

That’s my deterrent. There are too many broken computers out there to do this part time, but are there enough broken computers nearby that I could fix 8 of them in a day, and do that about 260 times a year, so that I could make enough money to make it worth my while?

So that’s why I don’t operate a computer repair business out of my home. If someone bribes me enough, I’ll fix theirs, but I can think of better outlets for my entrepreneurial ability.

Just don’t call me an unqualified amateur.

If you’re concerned you might be talking to a hack in a store, here are some questions you can ask to gauge knowledge.