So last night I got the chance to catch the Trans-Siberian Orchestra live in concert again. And by again, I mean for the 5th year in a row. It's become somewhat of a yearly tradition that I go attend the local TSO show in
Sadly, the video I took has awful sound due to my cell phone's mic distorting at such loud volumes. It's also what ruined the video of the Jane's Addiction concert back in May. Alas, I'll get a new one soon. Galaxy Nexus is coming out December 8th.
So I've been doing a fair bit of rebuilding on my computer infrastructure in the past few months. I built a new desktop system at home (Went with a quadcore beastly Core i7 2600K - 3.40GHz), and promptly spent the better part of the night installing Gentoo. This in and of itself was great - typically, installing a desktop from scratch under Gentoo would take me nearly a week, but on my new behemoth of a system, I got it up and running to satisfaction with Gnome that evening. Fast forward a few weeks, and to be blunt, shit broke, and I mean really broke. Udev, hald, upower, udisk, and then X11, all went up in virtual flames to the point I thought about just re-installing from the latest nightly stage 3. My roommate, snickering the whole time, suggested I try Ubuntu and have a system that "just works". It'd been years since I tried it, and last time was an utter catastrophe, but I figured I'd give it another go. I promised myself I'd install it and try it for 30 days before passing judgement, and now that my 30 days are up, I'm faced with a dilemma: do I keep it, or go back to Gentoo?
Well, I made up my mind, I'm going to stick with Ubuntu. Official Google Chrome builds are nice, Google Plus's hangout voice chat and video plugin is also available out of the box, no more hunting for ebuilds. I hated Ubuntu the first time because I couldn't install Firefox 3.5 with out causing all kinds of dependency hell when it tried to remove Firefox 3.0 (simply named "firefox" in the package manager, so every dep on "firefox" got uninstalled and "firefox-3.5" couldn't satisfy it), among other trivial minutia. Well, it's that trivial minutia I decided to fix, starting with uninstalling the crapware. Yes, Unity, this means you. The stupid scroller widget that funkifies scroll bars? Yep, you're next. Finally, a rewrite of /etc/bash.bashrc, /etc/skel/.bashrc, and redistributing it to every user on the system, so I can have my color prompts, my directory listings in color, and have my Gentoo style terminal back complete with shortcuts. Gone is the annoying "suggest package" upon commands not being found. Gone is the annoying stoic white prompt. And no, for the record, using using the force color setting was not to my preference - the prompt still wasn't very Gentoointive. Configuring Gnome the way I want it has taken a little bit longer, including installing some basics like Compiz Configuration Manager. While I certainly installed 3rd party software such as Gimp and TrueCrypt in my initial 30 days, I felt that if Ubuntu ships with compiz but not the manager, it's for a reason, and I should tolerate that as part of the true "Ubuntu Experience". But after 30 days, all gloves are off. I have my 3D effects back, my wobbly windows, rotating cube, and similar once again. I'm also enjoying media cards and USB hard drives that automount (a feature of Gnome that has frazzled me for months) when inserted.
All in all, I don't regret switching my desktop over to Ubuntu. If anything, I've found it to be a slightly better system than Gentoo, in places where you'd expect a system to be rock stable. Mainly, X11 for a workstation. I still have a lot to learn (manipulation of apt-cache comes to mind) and I have a few books on the subject I'm reading on my Galaxy Tab, but I think for the foreseeable future, I'm sticking with Ubuntu now for a desktop machine. I liked it so much, in fact, that when I got a new work laptop, I dual booted it the day I got it with Ubuntu, and I'm glad I did. As it turns out, it has one of those hybrid nVidia Optimus technology video configurations, and the only way to get that to work with 2D and 3D both is by running ironhide which is actually only a small pain in the ass to install under Ubuntu but a royal one under Gentoo from the looks of it. As a result, I think I'd be stuck on Ubuntu on my work laptop regardless, so I guess it's better that I actually like it I figure. Now, if only I could get the video ports on the damn docking station to work, but that's a battle for another day.
I feel obligated to say that while I have a new found respect and appreciation for Ubuntu on the desktop, my server platforms are still Gentoo, as I feel that Gentoo is a more solid base system with explicit feature control over packages and options that Ubuntu simply lacks - the only points Ubuntu has over Gentoo is X11, which shouldn't be installed on a server anyway. As such, I don't see my switching to Ubuntu any time soon on the server side of things. In fact, one of these days, I may re-install BB1 and convert it from Ubuntu Server to Gentoo, just because it's sticking in my craw a little. Watch out, @ChrisSoyars, muahahaha.
I'd like to take this moment to wish all the System Administrators a very happy SysAdmin Appreciation Day. Being a sys admin myself, I know how hard the professional men and women who undertake this position work to keep things up and running. So allow me this brief post to show my appreciation for the sys admins who help me through my day, and route my services at home and the office, upstream ISPs, cloud providers, content delivery networks, all the websites I visit, etc.
I noticed this morning on Engadget (Thanks @PaulOBrien) that Square is coming under fire from Verifone for their mobile payment solution and card reader. For those who don't know about Square, they're a startup that offers mobile payment processing over cell phones using a card reader that plugs into a smart phone's headphone jack and talks to a payment processing application being run. What Verifone appears to be upset about is that the data is not encrypted between the card reader, and, the payment processing application itself, meaning two things:
Lets take a look at the official claim and see what Verifone has to say about it...
In the either case, an application can tap into the credit card data stream between the dongle and Square's application, and a copy of all your card's data can be stored when you swipe your card to make a purchase. That data can be used maliciously and fraudulently after the fact. Your charge goes through for your purchase (or not) at the time, and you are none the wiser. How is this any different from an employee at Target side-loading an application on the register, or your bank ATM being hijacked? Square's lack of encryption does make it possible that a rogue malicious application could be written that emails or SMSes your credit card data to somewhere, whenever a credit card is processed. Imagine if that worm was installed on a popular vendor's smartphone with out the vendor even knowing? The bottom line is this: Is Square doing anything wrong? No. But are they doing anything right? The answer again, at least in my opinion, is also no.
As a child growing up in the '90s, I vaguely remember GeoCities, Angelfire, and of course, Xoom, so when I heard Motorola decided to name their tablet after a failed dot com free webhosting provider from my youth, I was a little reserved. Well in all fairness, I think I fell on the floor laughing so hard. But seriously, what's in a name anyway? Having attended the Google Honeycomb Event in Mountain View not too long ago, I knew exactly what to expect, so naturally when Motorola came forth and gave to the world it's new shiny, I was there early with cash in hand, ready to partake of the honey. Two weeks later, this is what I've learned.
HardwareFrom a hardware point of view, the Xoom is amazing. The dual core technology in it combined with a sensible GPU means the interface is buttery smooth thanks to its copious amount of hardware acceleration. The transitions between home screens, the animations, even the scrolling and rotating effects all go off with out a hitch. The device has the power to perform, and perform it does. While I haven't tried overclocking my Xoom yet, some geeks over at XDA have done so, and managed to squeeze their tablets for even more power. The fact that the hardware shipped unlocked is such a blessing, and I really have to thank Google for their hand in making that happen. It played a serious part in deciding between tablets, and I'd likely have gone with a cheaper model and hacked Honeycomb + Android Market onto it instead, had the hardware not been as open. (Hint hint nudge nudge, Motorola!)
The Xoom features mostly everything you'd need on a tablet: Micro HDMI, MicroSD, MicroUSB, a dock port, and a charging cable port. Not everything is enabled right now, however, especially the MicroSD card, or the host mode on the MicroUSB port, but that is easily addressed with a software update that is scheduled sometime down the road I'm sure. I'd rather have them available "sometime" than never, even if I can't have them right now. An official roadmap and statement would certainly be nice, however.
SoftwareWhat I've been the most disappointed about with my Xoom is the software. How much of that is Google's fault, how much of that is Motorola's, how much of that is HTC's, though? HTC, wait, what? Yes, HTC. My problems don't come from the core Android OS itself entirely, but from applications that aren't entirely compatible from the marketplace. Some applications look funny, and that's to be expected, but others refuse to run, draw themselves half way in the corner and half way full screen for a very funky experience, or just are *missing* entirely from the market. What if HTC had released different resolution displays sooner for use with Android? What if people had to worry about MDPI, HDPI, etc, sooner. Would they have? Motorola is partly to blame for rushing the Xoom out the door - it really does feel rushed in many ways, and Google themselves as the proprietor of the operating system of course have to have their hand in the guilty cookie jar too. From lack of folder support in the home screen to lack of Flash available at release, the whole Android 3.0 has left me a little underwhelmed overall. The things it does, it does amazingly well, but the plethora of polish it's lacking leaves a slightly sour taste in my mouth, especially when it has hardware that is disabled at a software level giving it a very unfinished appearance.
My biggest disappointment in the software actually stems from one of Android's core strengths - it's market openness. The Android market is full of some really amazing applications, written by some very talented developers. The creativity and function of some of them blow my mind, even, but then there's others that were obviously written by lazy coders whose applications don't work at all on the tablet, or people out to make a quick buck and in some cases are pulling some Shady Shit™. I only noticed this for the first time after purchasing my Xoom because I don't generally install the same application on different devices all the time. So I was very surprised when I go to install Worms on my Xoom, and it's asking me to pay for it. But, I paid for it on my Nexus S, and play it on my EVO. So, why is EA wanting me to buy it again? As it turns out, EA has separate copies of their games for Verizon as they do for the rest of North America, and cross-installing them isn't possible through normal channels. Doesn't this go against the spirit of the Android Marketplace's openness and concept of buying a game on your account, and being able to use it anywhere? It's great to know that if I ever switch to Verizon from T-Mobile, I'll be forced to re-buy at least 2 apps now, and quite possibly others. How many other developers are doing this for fun and profit? What is Google's stance on this?
ExperienceOverall, the experience I've had with my Xoom has been great. While I get a few force closes once in a while, even of the launcher process itself, over all I've been very satisfied with most of the experience. I will state, however, that the experience has not been flawless. The location of the power button takes a high amount of getting used to, and I still think it's a stupid place for it. When I'm using my tablet, one hand is always near it, that's a plus. However sometimes I put up a video or a document I'm reading, and lay the tablet down or lean it against something and use it "hands free" for a bit, and then when the screen turns off I have to pick it up to turn it back on rather than hitting a button on the side or front. This is a minus. The volume up and down buttons are a little stiff, making them hard to press one handed if the tablet is laying down in front of me and I'm watching content on it. I also dislike the lack of USB charging, but I understand that the device needs more power than the USB spec allots for and thus I'm not holding this specific one against it.
The feature I miss the most on the Xoom is Flash support. Something I wish it had that none of my devices have right now is NetFlix streaming support, but I don't know if/when it'll get that. Google Music is another thing missing entirely, but that should be coming soon enough, likely at IO. Flash support is supposedly coming in Spring but given Adobe's track record, I'm not going to hold my breath. All the same, once the Xoom delivers on the features we're promised, and NetFlix shows up some love, I'd easily rate it at nearly a perfect score. Not to compare Android to Windows, but Honeycomb seems to just need a service pack or two to be decent.
ConclusionOver all, I am glad I got my Xoom. Do I wish I would have waited for the missing features to appear? I can't say so - I just don't see anything better coming down the pipe any time soon. This is the Nexus of tablets, with it's OEM UNLOCK functionality, and I'm willing to bet that Google will be giving away a few of these devices at it's IO 2011 convention too. Sure Samsung or HTC or even Acer may put out better hardware soon, but by then, the Xoom will have all its features in tact, and I'd likely make the same decision I already did make - to Xoom or not to Xoom - and I'd Xoom all over again.
