1. DEAL KILLER: wifi radio is implemented very, very badly. If you are going to ship Ubuntu Linux on a consumer netbook you would think you would go the extra mile to insure that the WIFI chipset you were using was well supported. But not at Sylvania, it appears. The driver for the radio is extremely flawed. It cannot connect to a network featuring modern (i.e. this century) encryption. Plus, for some reason, the driver causes the range of the radio is diminished to 10 feet or so. I hear that the Windows XP driver works just fine. But that is a dead-end OS and we don’t know how Windows 7 will run on this sort of computer. Deal killer, fer sure. With a lot of hyper-technical huffing and puffing I managed to get the netbook connecting about 50% of the time. But I wouldn’t expect Joe consumer to be able to get that done — even with step by step instructions.

2. The keyboard is too small. I guess I should have paid more attention to the comments before I bought this. My expectation was that it would have a keyboard on a par with the Acer Aspire One netbook (on which I can type with my usual 6 fingered style). Not so, the G-Meso. This keyboard is truly tiny. I find myself using my cell phone technique for it.

So I’m removing the G-Meso from the list of Bazaar products. Lesson learned… I’ll make sure that I check these things out more thoroughly.

I’m currently in negotiations with my daughter Olivia to trade her my G Meso for her Aspire One. The negotiations are not going well….

Wicked Cool PHP

Books on programming are not typically the most enjoyable things to read. However, I can’t help but be very entertained by . I bought this book in combination with one of those giant programming reference books for PHP. But I started reading this one first because I was intrigued by the title.  Now at the end of this book I find that I am getting quite proficient with the PHP language and have not felt the need to even crack open the giant reference. I think I will just put it up on the shelf for future reference. Meanwhile I can see the my copy of Wicked Cool is already dog-eared and showing some wear.

Now for the disclaimer – I am a seasoned programmer and master of many programming languages old and new. So what suffices for me may be different than what might suffice for, as an example, a script kiddie trying to patch a php-based web site.

But even in that scenario, I think the kid could glean some worthwhile insight into the language, its syntax, and how to use it all in the real world. So I think I will add this to BitLizard’s bizarre Bazaar for the consideration of any programmers who find their way here.

Ah, but the Zune car kit has made a believer out of me. Upon first connection it downloaded some software to my Zune and then started up. I pressed the seek button and it found a radio station. I tuned my car stereo to the station displayed on the LCD and found my music. The fidelity was as good as any FM station I get from my car stereo. Plus the music titles and the group name scroll across my radio’s display, which was something I didn’t know about or anticipate happening. All in all, a simple device that does the job just about perfectly.

So I’ve added it and the Zune to the Bazaar as something I can recommend. The Bazaar is a showcase on Amazon for some of the products I have become very fond of recently. Some of the items listed there I don’t actually own yet but certainly wish I did. If you’re in the mood to add a little stimulus to the economy, give it a browse.

Do you like classic science fiction? And no, I’m not talking about 50’s sci-fi B-movies. But stuff like Asimov, Pohl and Heinlein? Well then you will be very well served by John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War novels. These books are set in a not-so-far future with faster-than-light travel, transhuman augmentation, and many different, intelligent (and competitive) alien species. Yet this is a future where you will find a society that is recognizably human, with all that entails.

John Perry, the main character, is a decidedly old guy who is plucked from the Earth, augmented extensively, and made into a soldier for the Colonial Defense Forces. The CDF is in the business of protecting the human’s colonized worlds while also depriving other alien species of their own colonies. What could be more entertaining than that, I ask you?

Scalzi explores some interesting themes in these books – the meaning of war, xenophobia, what super-longevity could bring, etc. However, these topics do not weigh the books down. These are definitely action/adventure stories and great entertainment.

I completed the third book in this series during the visit to see my parents in Kansas City early this week. In The Last Colony John Perry is no longer a soldier but now a colonist and family man. His augmentations have been stripped away and he is now back to being human; but still an old man in a young body. This doesn’t stop him from becoming embroiled in war and political intrigue.

These books are easy to read and their stories are compelling. Also, John Scalzi’s blog is quite fun. Be sure and check it out.

So it was that I was shopping for a semi-pro SLR camera for my wife and found a GREAT price at a little online shop named ShopDigitalDirect.com. I doubt that there is a legitimate part of this business. The evil part is that they advertise an almost- too-good-to-be-true price for the camera body and then call you to <ahem> confirm the order. During this confirmation call, they try to upsell you on various add-ons. For example, the price on the camera body was about $285. But during the confirmation call I added a battery and a charger. Total price – nearly $600. Well this was where I put on the brakes. First, the guy told me that the package did not include a charger or battery (which I later found out is a bald faced lie). Looking around their web site I noticed that the price on a 4gb SD card was $135. Sheesh, I can get that for less than $20 just about everywhere else. So I told this guy to forget about the charger and battery. I would stick with my original order.

As my anger and suspicion grew over the next several days, I decided to call them up and get the status of my order. Imagine my surprise when I heard that my camera was backordered and would not be shipped for 8 to 15 weeks. I wasn’t going to hold my breath on that one. So I cancelled my order and filed a compaint with the FTC. A lot of good that’s going to do… but it lowered my blood pressure a bit all the same.

Since then I have discovered that this shop is well known to the consumer protection web sites. I should have checked with these sites before I placed my order. Also, once I knew these people were thieves I started to worry about my credit card. I should have used the one-time use card numbers that my bank offers as a free service. So there are many lessons here:

1. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. We all know this one already, but it bears repeating.

2. For an unfamiliar merchant, always use a one-time-use credit card number offered by your bank.

3. Check the consumer fraud web sites for compliants about the business before you order.

4. Do not order from a web site if you cannot find their mailing address.

5. Specifically, do not order any camera equipment from an online shop when their address is in Brooklyn, NY (found this tip on a consumer protection site).

After all of that, this story has a happy ending. Amazon.com happened to have the best real price on the camera. I ordered it and it arrived promptly and in good condition. And it was all worth it to see the suprise on my wife’s face when she opened her gift on Christmas morning. I’m such a good husband!

The Singularity refers to a flash-over point, a basic state change, where the rate of change has accelerated to the point where human beings cannot possibly keep up — unless they are wielding some phenomenally capable computing technologies. The Singularity is brought about by advances in software technologies such that we succeed in making software capable of improving itself. This kicks technological progress into high gear giving birth to artificial intelligence (AI). Ultimately this hyperbolic rate of change will result in a hyper-technonological world where unaugmented human beings will have a very hard time keeping up. Enter transhumanism – the augmentation of the human being into a entity who can remain relevant in the wake of the Singularity.

So, winding this back onto the idea of a simulation, you can readily see the motivation for building one. In light of a scenario like the Singularity, a motivation for building a simulation might be an attempt to create a refuge in a universe that’s suddenly become incomprehensible. Another motivation might be a grasp at immortality – a new, non-biological platform on which to run your consciousness. Of course, if we were living in a simulator and then we created a simulation into which we downloaded ourselves, one might begin to wonder how many levels of simulation we are separated from the ultimate reality.

One of my favorite science fiction novels that dances around this theme is Accelerando by Charles Stross. Stross is always an engrossing read but Accelerando seems an especially well expressed story. I can’t imagine the difficulty of trying to create a plausible story around something that is, by definition, so unimaginable. Charles Stross must be augmented somehow. Yeah, that’s it! Hey, where is MY augmentation??? I could especially use a memory enhancement just about now.

So one other idea that I keep thinking about is that if we are living in a simulation, isn’t it nice how just about everything in religious theology kind of finds its place and has a straight forward explanation in this version of “reality”. Hmmmm….. Or, coming at it from the inside-out perspective, could it be that the whole purpose of our simulation is to birth an AI?

Do you want the red pill or the blue pill?