Blue Sky On Mars

Do you remember all of the analysts talking about the wide open skies for internet stocks and the “new economy”? The Fool is trashing the folks who claim there’s no housing bubble in the enjoyably titled Behind the Bubble Babble:

The very people most vehement about denying a housing bubble are precisely the people who have the most to gain from seeing one continue: mortgage sellers and realtors.

It always pays to look at where a quote or story is coming from. I liked this part:

Last time I checked, my paycheck was not contingent upon urging all of you to watch out for risky loans.

Actually, in a roundabout way, his paycheck does hinge on that… and providing other sound financial advice.

That’s what’s great about the Fool. Their articles cut through the hype in financial markets to try to give you a clearer picture of how things look.

For anyone who’s never pondered whether something is “important” or just “urgent”, Seth Godin’s Hurry! is a good introduction to the topic.

The Bill of Rights was created to protect people from the corruption that comes from a government with absolute power (absolute power corrupts absolutely, as they say). I don’t think the founding fathers anticipated that the Bill of Rights would be needed to protect against the “entertainment industry”. The story is that in Delhi, India, the international arm of the Motion Picture Association has been granted a general warrants that “[permit] police to search any premises suspected of containing pirated products, and permits officers to open locked premises without delay.” So, if you live in Delhi, Joe Moviemaker can get the police to come storming into your house practically on a whim.

Aren’t you glad we have the 4th Amendment?

For a project I’m working on, I didn’t want to introduce a dependency on py.test. I also didn’t want to manually write test suites myself. So, here’s Testido: a simple unittest extension that easily hooks in to however you’re testing now and eliminates the need to manually write suites.

Through the wonder of setuptools, Testido can be installed trivially with easy_install.

The simplest usage looks like this:

from setuptools import setup
setup(name='foo',
      version='1.0',
      packages=['foo'],
      )

Running “python setup.py testido” with that setup file will run all of the tests it can find in the “foo” package. Doesn’t get much easier than that, does it?

Alternatively, you can create a TestSuite that can be used by other tools like this:

from testido import collector
suite = collector.Collector("foo")

As I point out in the docs, Testido is not a full substitute for py.test or Testoob.

But, if you are using the stdlib’s unittest for whatever reason, it can make your life easier.

Ian Bicking pointed to O’Reilly Connection, which is actually a pretty interesting looking site. It’s a combination of social networking software and a jobs board for software developers and people who want to hire them.

Given how many jobs are found via people you know, this is a logical step, and the implementation looks good. Of course, it looks like it’s just getting started (192 people with the “python” tag, 320 with the “java” tag). Something like this needs to hit critical mass before it becomes viable.

From the BBS opener to the great review of technology-as-it-stood in 1985, Engadget 1985 is the best bit of nostalgia we geeks are likely to get this year.

This is the most egregious example of why manufacturers use rebates that I’ve ever seen. Outpost has a 120GB hard drive for the insanely low price of $20. Even the regular price of $80 is pretty good, but $20 is just nuts. Even if Outpost runs on super skimpy margins, you’ve got to assume that their gross margin on this will be at least $10 of the $80 price. So, counting the rebates, Western Digital would be getting $10 for this hard drive.

But, the rebates are the trick here. There are two of them, each for $30. What’s unique about this deal is that both rebate forms look exactly the same and are mailed to the same place. The only difference between the forms is that one of them specifies that you send the original UPC, the other specifies that you send a copy. Clearly, WD is planning on:

* some portion of customers will not send in either rebate, or will mess up the paperwork in some way
* some will send in only one rebate, or mess up the paperwork on one
* a small percentage will get through unscathed

At $10 a drive, including shipping to Outpost, I’m sure that WD is losing money. At $40 (my assumed Outpost cost of $10 + one $30 rebate), perhaps they’re breaking even or making a little profit. It would be interesting to know what the statistics are here… how many people do get the whole $60 back?

As long as the companies giving out rebates are not being fraudulent and “losing” rebate forms, rebates are a fine, if annoying, way to get really good deals for people who are diligent about sending in their forms. I just have serious concerns about how willing these companies really are to take a loss like this without gaming the system as much as they can.

A few years ago, some insane people gave $100 million to a company called Digital Convergence. The idea? Give away bar code scanners so that people could just scan a code in a magazine ad to jump straight to the advertiser’s website. Oh, and track what all the user scans through a unique ID to build up interesting profiles of people. There were so many things wrong with the idea and implementation it’s a sign of the times that were that they managed to get the thing off the ground and distribute millions of dollars worth of the CutCat cat-shaped bar code readers.

It looks like some of the remaining supply of CueCats has ended up at Surplus Computers. For just $7, you can get your very own bar code reader that was formerly free (Surplus Computers is certainly not going to just give them away!). I actually have one of the original free ones sitting on my desk, with a pleasant red glow coming out of the cat’s mouth.

I’ve been following the sales of music online for years now. I’ve been fairly okay with iTunes Music Service, because the restrictions on the files have not yet caused me grief and I’m certain they are breakable, should I ever find that the restrictions are causing me grief. I have also used AllOfMP3.com from time to time.

Here’s an exciting scoop from Boing Boing: Customers of new UK ISP get to share all Sony music on P2P

Here’s the deal. PlayLouder MSP DSL costs about the same as comparable DSL offerings in the UK (though right now, PlayLouder MSP’s one-meg speeds don’t compare to the high-end offerings from ISPs like Bulldog, who are offering 8-meg DSL). For their money, PlayLouder MSP customers get their regualr DSL lines, as well as:

• The right to share any song in the Sony-BMG catalog
• Even if it’s out of print
• In any file-format
• Using any file-sharing software
• At any bitrate

This is some truly amazing news. While I understand the arguments against a scheme like this (everyone is paying, even those who don’t use the service is the primary complaint), the freedom you get with this is fantastic.

Personally, though, I don’t think going this far is absolutely necessary. If Sony is willing to sign a deal like this, they should really just revise their deal with Apple so that Apple can sell unencumbered MP3s or at least unencumbered AAC files. The sad thing is that even if Sony were willing to sign a deal like that right now, Apple might not want to do it because the FairPlay protected AAC files only play back on iPods… and we all know that’s where the money is.

One ironic thing about this deal with PlayLouder is that it was Sony Music that was crippling Sony’s MP3 players, which didn’t even play MP3 files because of piracy fears.

Boing Boing’s article sounds more positive than the Guardian article they’re linking to. I do hope that the Boing Boing version of the story comes to pass and we start to get over the copy protection nonsense that Hollywood has been foisting on us.

A friend of mine had a hard drive failure yesterday. This, and Ian’s hard drive failure last month have jostled me into changing my backup strategy.

For years, I’ve been using a central Linux server and rsync to back up. I wrote a small script with all of the rsync options, and I’d run that script to get data files and documents up-to-date on the server.

This is generally fine, and I’m not likely to lose important data with a hard drive failure. I even burn some data to DVDs for offsite backups. What I will lose with this setup is time. Sure, I’ve got my data files, but how long will it take to reinstall the apps that I use regularly: TextMate, Python with various libraries, Firefox (with extensions), Omni Outliner, Photoshop, Skype, etc. How many preferences for these apps will be lost?

I’m lucky to have not had a hard drive failure on my primary machine for a few years. But just thinking about the lost time is frightening. So, my new backup strategy is to buy external hard drives for our machines.

Back in “the old days”, buying extra hard drives was extravagant, and so people would run backup utilities and backup to floppies (and then CDs). Hard drives are dirt cheap. Here’s a 60GB 7200 RPM drive for $40. Add $22 and you get it in a USB 2.0 case. Who cares if it’s not a name brand, this is just a backup drive. If it fails, you just get a new one.

On the Mac, the free Carbon Copy Cloner will make a complete duplicate of your hard drive. I used this to save my Panther install so that I could make Panther Zesty News builds. It works great. Ian recommended Super Duper!, which is only $20 and sounds fairly similar to CCC. They also have a free version that does cloning only. The full version of Super Duper will let you checkpoint your files so that you can go back in time if something gets really hosed (and is even hosed in your backup).

If you’ve got a desktop machine, you can just go mirrored RAID (which is what Ian chose to do after his failure), and you’re always in sync.

The hard drive is the both the most important thing in your computer (because of your data), and the most likely to fail. Secondary hard drives are way cheaper than the time required to deal with the data, application and configuration loss. I have no idea why I didn’t get this setup going sooner.

Special bonus link: Here is a Firewire/USB 2.0 combo external chassis that even has fancy lights in the included cables, all for $30.

Update: By the way, before I get a bunch of comments saying “everybody knows that!”, I know enough people with *no* backup strategy, so I’m sure that not quite everyone knows this. I’d imagine I’m also not the last person stuck in the old fashioned “backup your data files” mindset.

Update 2: Apparently, Macs don’t boot from USB drives at this point. Good to know…