d00dism

It is my firm belief that our society’s high quality of life level has resulted in two things: an entitlement complex and a lack of responsibility complex. This is particularly easy to observe in teenage kids. You don’t even have to leave your home. Log onto the net and see their poorly spelled, grammatically incorrect, incoherent ramblings about everything!

This is evident in every aspect of life. “I bought a harmburger, so I’m entitled to fries. It’s my right.” It’s spread to software as well. Users are content to commit software piracy, downloading and using software with a clear conscience. To them, Microsoft Office and its thousands of features is a right. They need that software and as a human being, they deserve it. Some outright steal it, while others simply buy the academic version of Office (when neither a student or a teacher) and attempt to justify it with the fact that Microsoft Office is expensive. That is not justification, only a rationalization. Further, they have the audacity to claim that Microsoft actually wants users to abuse the fact retailers do not verify academic status when selling this software. Office is a product, a ubiquitous product yes, but a product nonetheless. Its common usage does not make it a right.

Many teens make this mistake with cars. It’s become incredibly common for parents to buy their children automobiles. So common that children that are not give one yell and scream at their parents for trying to destroy their life. While that is more true in higher income areas, the same is true when kids are denied the car on the weekend to go out. “Why are you trying to control me?” “You can’t take the car away from me.” etc.

Further, if in an act of desperation to get something one really wants, one breaks the law, the blame is no longer squarely upon the shoulders of the perpetrator. For example, in the above case of Microsoft Office, if a person were to be prosecuted for pirating that software, I guarantee the first words from that person’s mouth would be “Microsoft made it too expensive.” There would be a ready admission of guilt with some kind of explanation that supposedly should exempt them from punishment. A rationalization or explanation for the action is not a defense. It’s just a different way to confess.

I see it every day in every situation and I’m sick of it. There are a few very basic rights. Everything else is a privelege. Leading a priveleged life doesn’t entitle anyone to those priveleges.

I can’t say too much about the two following links as they are fairly self-explanatory.

I will say that they are worth the extremely long read.

By reading these stories you can also figure out common scammer tactics on eBay. Any experienced eBayer will already know all the do’s and don’ts, but it’s still worth the read.

Without further ado, they are:
The Sal Wise Fraud
P-P-P-Powerbook

Once upon a time, someone thought to serve email through a web-based interface for easy access anywhere (that saved users the process of setting up an email client). HoTMaiL was one of the first of course, but is now owned by Microsoft. The number of services like these exploded and just as quickly collapsed (or got bought up like Rocketmail).

When web search giant Google announced GMail, its 1 GB email service, the major (and minor) webmail provider’s realized that in order to retain any of its members, they would have to amp it up.

The first to respond was Spymac, formerly an Apple rumors site, it now aims to provide web services. They responded with 1 GB free web email that also could be accessed via POP (which the free versions of other services don’t offer). They now also offer a paid version of their email service, called MailPro. Not only is your service boosted to 3 GB, but it also sports IMAP access, which is essential for keeping all your mail on their servers. [1 GB web/POP service: free] [3 GB web/POP/IMAP service: $18.99/year]

The most notable big name in free email to respond was Yahoo!. They boosted the formerly 4 MB (or 6 MB if you had been with them long enough) to 100 MB for free members. They also now offer 2 GB paid service that also brings POP access. [100 MB web service: free] [2 GB web/POP service: $19.99/year]

Microsoft is taking a long time to prepare its new service, promising its availability “in fall”. Current service is a diminutive 2 MB, web access only. To add insult to injury, mail marked as spam still counts toward your quota.

GMail brings 1 GB free web mail service to its users. Not only is it offering large storage for free, but a new way to think about email. Instead of filing mail into folders, you can label mail in various ways. This allows for flexible searching without stringent filing. You search your mail with Google’s search technology, making for fast, accurate searches. No paid plans are offered as yet.

With all these options, no one has an excuse to not have an email address anymore. The main problem is now, which one to use?

Verizon Wireless is now selling the Motorola V710 cell phone, for August availability, featuring Bluetooth and a megapixel camera. [MacInTouch]

That’s right boys and girls! Verizon is finally going to offer a Bluetooth phone. It looks like it will cost $250 (subtract $70 with a two year agreement).

I can’t wait until it’s released so that I can pump all that money into a new phone. My only problem is that due to its picture phone capability, I may not be able to bring it into work when I make the move to Woburn.

At any rate, this is good news for Verizon customers and hopefully will start the ball rolling with other manufacturers that make phones with CDMA compatibility.

It’s hard to believe that in this day and age that any email client doesn’t support IMAP. For those of you who already know what IMAP is, you can skip down to the next paragraph. IMAP is a mail protocol, like POP, only more powerful. The POP protocol, while ubiquitous. is very simple. It stores messages on the server in a simple queue that one downloads and deletes from the server one at a time. That mail is then stored locally on your computer, accessible no where but that server. While this may work fine for many people, it’s limitations are impossible to ignore for power users. With IMAP, the messages are stored permanently on the server, including a complete directory structure to file messages. This allows one to access their mail at any time, load only messages you want to see instead of having to download them all, and allows mail providers to place a web interface on your mail.

With all the features of IMAP and its growing popularity, one would think that any modern email clients would support it. This isn’t so. Mailsmith, made by Bare Bones software, completely lacks IMAP support (as well as HTML formatted mail, but honestly, I find formatted mail repugnant anyway). Sure, it sports all kind of neat features like full AppleScriptability, BBEdit-like editing, lots of filtering, etc. but this is a core feature that makes their email client 100% useless to me. Revision after revision is released with full fanfare and the first response by half the tech community is “Where’s the beef (IMAP)?”

To make things worse, this email client costs money. It costs $99. Who in their right mind is going to pay $99 when perhaps the most developed email client, Entourage, is just about the same price (and has IMAP support). In fact, there are many free alternatives such as Apple’s Mail.app and Mozilla’s Thunderbird. Thunderbird should not be overlooked because it’s beginning to rival (and beat as far as Spam filtering goes) Entourage. Being open source means that it’s developing at an accelerated pace as well.

I love Bare Bones and their text editor, BBEdit, in particular, but Mailsmith is a boneheaded blunder. I have no doubt they’ll rope in a few people, but ultimate success will elude them until they get with the program.