Fake’s Tank

The more I use it the more I’m impressed by Ubuntu and Linux distributions in general. In addition of giving a second life to my old PC hardware due to it’s low system requirements, the software is actually more useful.

My friend has a iPod that stopped playing the mp3s it holds. The proprietary Mac and Microsoft software he normally uses, like the obvious iTunes or other iPod rippers of sorts, did not recognize his iPod either.

I had a huntch Ubuntu would have something to offer to save his music collection. While I was expecting to have to do a few console tricks, turns out the included media software read and fetched the mp3s off his iPod without any problems.

The only thing we haven’t tried yet was to actually try and ‘reset’ the iPod using the open source platform. My guess is that while I could get his mp3s back, we were going to have to return the songs to the iPod using iTunes in the end.

Because the process of saving the files on my Ubuntu box, sending them over to my Mac and re-include them to the freshly wipe iPod through iTunes would have been too lenghty, my friend wanted to try a few other things first. At least now we have a back up solution, though.

Feels good to be a nerd with social skills.

It’s really important to know which websites to trust when you make transactions online. It’s even more critical to know you can’t trust anybody fully.

You do have to let it go at some point though: just like one chooses to trust a local merchant won’t duplicate your credit card while scanning it, you have to expect websites to treat your private information respectfully.

Amazon just sent me an alert saying another user tried to make purchases with my credit card, which they had previously linked with my account over there. I didn’t expect them to actually make proactive checks like these and was pleasantly surprised.

I have yet to understand when my card information was harvested and if transactions were made on other websites, but at least Amazon’s suspition will be noticed by my credit card provider.