Tim Armstrong – AOL’s mega rich corporate greedmeister.

AOL decided to stop matching 401K contributions.

Why?  Tim claimed 2 women had babies that cost $1million each.  He said the cost of Obama care is $7.1 million and he needs to pass the pain onto the company.

It needs to be noted that Tim's 'compensation' went from $3.2M in 2011 to $12.07M in 2012.

That’s right.  His raise $9million dollar raise exceed the so called Obamacare increase by $2million dollars.  Anybody wanna try and blame the babies now?  Or should I ask, who's the baby?

This douche bag is just another example of corporate greed run amok. The rich 1% continue to pull right from the mouths of workers.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Keep your minds open and your wallets closed

Linux failed the desktop

The looming end of life for Windows XP on April 8^th has me re-evaluating my computing OS situation.  I have an HP tc440 note book – it has the flipping / rotating screen with a full keyboard and touchscreen.  I find it the perfect footprint.  It does unfortunately run Xp. 

I am a techie by trade. I’ve run/installed/supported a Linux farm at the office for almost a decade (debian).  At home I ran Ubuntu desktop on ‘the kids’ computer because I got tired of the monthly format and reload required to clear non-stop virus infestations on Windows machines. End point security didn’t really seem to matter.  Several pre-teen’s / teens using a computer ensured regular infections. Using Linux stopped infections.

I’ve run Unity for several years – on the kids pc – and I have to say, I hate it.  I refuse to use it for my personal PC.  In my desire to continue using my beloved HP, I tried Linux Mint. Since my HP doesn’t have a built in CD / DVD drive, I created a bootable flash drive with Mint and installed.  Pretty much everything worked, wireless, touchscreen… everything! I chose Mint because according to my research, Mint has the largest user community after Ubuntu…. And I won’t support the Unity abomination.

 However – there’s 3 annoying issues

1 – There’s a message on the screen before the GUI starts about invalid user.  From the research, this is a debian bug.  As far as I can tell, it doesn’t affect anything.  I’ll ignore it.

2 – There’s no support for Netflix?!?  This surprised me, as it would be similar problem with any version of Linux.   According to posts on the internet, this is because Netflix requires Microsoft Silverlight, which is not available on Linux.  I really, really have to say I don’t believe this at all.  I have Netflix on both my android phone and my iPad.  Both have a Linux connection.  There’s no excuse not to run Netflix. 

3- This is the killer -.  After the initial install of Linux Mint, I performed an update…. The update killed the OS.  No boot, just a brick.  I re-installed Mint and it worked, however I didn’t perform the update.

Issue number 2 makes the device unusable for the majority of my entertainment.  Issue number 3 makes the device just plain untrustworthy. 

Now I’m 50 years old.  As I said I’m a techie.  I’ve been a programmer by trade - longer than I want to think about.  I do network support, server support and mange a team.  I have kids, a wife, home interests.. I don’t have the time or patience to futz with computer problems.  When I was younger, I enjoyed the hack to make it work.  That was 20years ago.   Now it annoys me.  I just want it to work.

After 20 years of Linux development there needs to be some level of maturity.  It needs to just work without having to hack it for the casual user to accept it.   unfortunately, Linux doesn't pass that bar.
I’m done with Linux at home.  It’s nothing more than a toy for hackers who want to tweak.  For people who just want their stuff to work, stick with Microsoft of Apple.  Sorry.