Hows it?

Anything interesting happening in the wide world? No? ;-)

Oh… Politics… Nah… Parliament will be nothing but a joke for the first half of this year and I’ve already decided I’m not going to bother with it for now. “Bring back English” indeed. Some of those MPs would do well to learn the language themselves. :-P

So now that everyone has had a day to assimilate it, what does everyone thing of GMail Chat? Essentially Google Talk in a browser. Wanna know what I think? I think the whole thing is pretty sweet. Even if some people are getting annoyed by the new box that shows a persons details when you hover the mouse over their name or an email. As Nick found in his beloved Google Desktop sidebar (heheh) there is a way to turn it off if you have Greasemonkey and Firefox. ;-)

You do have those, right? No? Damn… This blog must be full of ads for you.

Anyway…

So in case you hadn’t guessed, GMail Chat is a product I’m very much liking and very much happy with. While all my own machines do have Google Talk (or some other Jabber client) installed, its nice to know I can be anywhere in the world and easily chat with my friends, simply by opening my email. ;-) Thats not hard though. I live in my browser and GMail is always open for me.

What else is new? Well, not a whole lot. Struggling with code as usual. Dunno why. Well, maybe it has something to do with not sleeping at night, but instead doing so during the daylight hours. Or maybe its just cos I’m easily distracted. I don’t know. Is starting to annoy me though. Need to find some way to get things sorted out for me again.

Hmmm… As I write this there are 7174hrs left to go. Put like that it seems like such a long time.

You remember a while back I said that the Google Pack was a let down to me? I was wrong. Since I rebuilt this machine, it was the fastest and easiest way to get the parts of the pack I use on to this machine. I don’t use Nortons or a few other pieces in the pack, but I do use a significant chunk of the software available.

My opinion? It makes things soooo much easier. I don’t have to do anything and my software is always updated to the latest versions. As long as the pack updater is running in the system tray, all is well. It doesn’t update Ad-Aware’s signature database (and apparently Nortons still updates its own signatures too) but it does update the software itself.

When Google released Desktop 3.0, I didn’t even have to do anything to get it installed. The Pack Updater installed it for me automagically while I was away from the computer. It does the same for all the other Google products as well. Firefox updates itself seperately, so thats not an issue for me there, but I’m sure the Pack would update it for me silently if I didn’t load Firefox often. ;-)

So simple, so useful. Google Talk updates itself too. Nick was the one that told me about that. I thought Google were just updating the XML but it turns out the client will update the whole binary of itself when a new version comes out. You don’t have to do anything, it updates itself while you’re not looking.

Now, this is great from an ease of use perspective. And for lazy guys like me. But it does engender questions about privacy and versioning.

Firstly privacy.

Software that updates itself silently has been traditionally seen as spyware (or malware) in the past. It doesn’t tell you its doing it, it just does it regardless of whether you want it to or not. If its able to update itself without your input, whats to stop someone in the future slipping in something that shouldn’t be included in the update? Accidental viruses can happen to even the most cautious and secure of companies. How many hard drives have been shipped from the manufacturer with a virus on them? Remember when Compaq shipped a whole batch of computers that had a virus on the Restore CDs?

Mistakes happen. Accidents happen. Not accounting for them becomes exceptionally risky. People like to know they can trust something before they go ahead with it.

Having said that, how many people actually read the License Agreements that come with software? Raise your hand now if you’ve just hit the accept button and moved on rapidly without reading what you’re actually accepting. I know I have, and do all the time. I’m not interested in legalese mumbo jumbo. I just want to know what I can and cannot do in plain English. Thats why the Creative Commons licenses are so popular. There is the legal version with all the mumbo jumbo, but for each license there is also a plain English version that just gives it to you straight.

So as much as I like the idea of auto and silent updates, I’m still on the fence over it. However, I’m so lazy anyway that I’m actually enjoying it for a change. A lot easier than software has been in the past. In fact, its at a point where I’d consider it as easy as the updating in Ubuntu Linux 5.10+. But even Ubuntu Linux makes you acknowledge that the updates are being installed. Doesn’t just blindly do it without your permission.

But what about Versioning?

I can’t speak for myself, because I really don’t care much about it at the moment. As long as it works in my browser, I’m content. But a lot of companies have very strick guidelines on the version of software used by their staff. Right down to the build number.

This gets tricky to deal with when the software is updating itself. I’m guessing thats partly why Google Desktop doesn’t update itself when its not in the Pack. I don’t know what the purpose might be, but Nick apparently “needs” version 2 of the Desktop at work and can’t upgrade to v3 there. Don’t quite understand why myself, but that is one example.

Even if you install the software seperately outside of the Google Pack (as I did with much of mine) any software thats also part of the Google Pack will be detected and then kept up to date by the Google Pack Updater. So for Nick’s case, he’s currently using v2 of Desktop, as soon as he installed Google Pack, it’d detect he has an old version of Desktop and install v3. Even though Desktop was not installed as part of the Pack.

Now, I admit thats not so much of an issue in the case of Google Pack. Its license specifically states that it is for personal/private/home use ownly. All the software included is for personal/private/home use ownly. Installing it on a work machine is not only a stupid idea, its in breach of the terms of the license agreement. If something goes wrong, you’d truly be up a creek.

But thats not to say that this may not change in the future. A Google Pack for administrators. ;-) Why not? You can buy your own “Google in a Box” from them already. But the difference would then be that Admins would be able to choose whats available to their end users. I think it’d end up being more like Microsoft SMS than anything else. Just lighter and simpler.

So for businesses it isn’t now an issue, but nothing to stop it being so in the future…. Maybe.

Okay… Enough of the Google stuff.

I’m thinking its time to give up this crap about making my own business happen. I have no money, no sufficient and continuous income and its starting to get a little difficult now.

Time to get a job I think. :-(

If theres something in this world I truly it hate, its working for other people and working the 9-5 bullshit rat race. Thats not life, thats existance.

But if I’m going to make my businesses succeed, I need to start getting some income so I can put spend some money on the business and make it happen properly. This crap about starting it with $0 is just bullshit. Its not possible. You need at least SOMETHING to get started with.

So the new goal is to get myself sorted out health wise. Try to get myself back in to a normal day time routine instead of the way its been for the past few years. Get myself sleeping at night instead of when I get tired. Get myself eating 3 squares a day, with healthy snacks in between. Get myself back to drinking a LOT of water again instead of all this Diet Coke and Coke Zero I’ve been drinking like it were water.

Stop spending what little money I have on bullshit like more websites and more domains and more online useless crap and start using the money to generate useful and valid income. No more “Get Paid To” schemes to be added to my Harem for now. What I have now will hold me over till I can figure a better way or working those that doesn’t require me babysitting the computer.

Time for things to get serious again.

And in two weeks everything will probably be back the way it has been for the past 2 years. But hopefully not.

Oh well, it happens. Time to at least make an effort though.

On that note, I’m outta here. Workshop calls. Time to go earn the roof I sleep under.

Laters.