Nice to see someone familiar is still stopping in. How’s the writing going? You still up in Michigan? I need to hit your site.

I’m debating (again) on what I want to do here. I have a lot of old posts I’d like to take down due to relevancy and broken links I don’t want to fix. The problem is that it’s so…much…work. I’m getting old and cranky.

I thought I wanted to blog about politics again, but…ho hum. I like doing entries on geek stuff, but like political blogs, there’s a million geek/tech blogs out there. Maybe a smart-assed blog with funny stuff. Every now and then, I stumble on a site that cracks me up and I think “that’s what I should be doing.” Like this guy:

http://www.27bslash6.com/index.html

Read the one called “Statements My Offspring Has Made”. Effin’ hilarious.

See you round. Keep stopping by. Things might get interesting here.

Anyway…

Hello, again…

Joe, My solution when it comes to flashing and upgrading stuff exclusive for the “windowsphere” is to use VirtualBox as it does support USB bridging. Perhaps that would work for you?

Lantesh: you’re right. Always follow the money.

Dave: I want them to try to understand why I use Linux, so they can’t come back and play the “well, why don’t you just switch to Windows” card. They need to understand why we Linux users do what we do.

sk43999: explaining why we use Linux and why we don’t like Windows is, unfortunately, not always obvious to these people. Read my response to Dave.

Pedro: Thanks. I will follow up, if/when I hear from them.

Larry: Good idea. But that misses the point. That’s extra steps I have to take. That means I have to find a copy of Windows (I don’t own a copy anywhere) or buy one (which I won’t do). I’m not going to use a pirated copy, on principle. I’m the customer of *their* product. I can’t believe this can’t be done over the air, frankly. I have an Android-based phone and a DirecTV DVR. Both of them have had OTA firmware upgrades. Why not XM?

Tyler: no, this was my first contact with them. I suppose I could have tried what you suggested. But, having been a Linux-only user for a long time, this was just the latest example of a hardware issue that required Windows. Like most Linux users, I tend to be more experienced in figuring things out, and I did a pretty thorough search for a possible solution to this first. I guess I’ve about had it with situations like this and wanted to hear an explanation (other then the “nobody uses Linux” reason, which doesn’t wash anymore). I’m still waiting.

Bob-El: I used to use a Sansa E200 series MP3, and my solution was to load Rockbox. This isn’t a possible solution for everyone, but it worked for me and I got more and better features out of my Sansa. I won’t do what you’re planning, because that would be caving. I’m very happy NOT having Windows in my personal life. I’d like to keep it that way.

Bob Harvey: Good one. Best Buy might be the place to go for this. Many of their Geek Squad guys are pretty clueless.

Michael S: Don’t know. I don’t use Wine (again, that’s kind of caving to useing Windows) and I doubt FreeDOS would work, because the update allegedly requires Media Player.

Baylink and anon: the idea of canceling crossed my mind. But the radio was a gift from my bride of 30+ years and that means something to me. Some of the programming is stuff that is kind of important to me for various reasons, so not getting the enjoyment out of it seems to be shooting myself in the foot a little. I’m still waiting for a reply; for all I know, they could come back and say “hey, you’re right, we’ll get on this right away.” Even offering to do something in the future would satisfy me, because I’ve now made them aware of our growing community.

What Baylink and anon said raises the point of voting with the wallet.

I’m for that, if I don’t get the satisfactory response I hope to from XM. Again, I’m not asking them to come up with a solution overnight, but I would like them to address the issue in some way. Since they’re pretty much the only game in town for this service, closing my account would just leave me without the programming I want, and losing one customer might not matter to their bottom line.

As someone who frequently drives long distances across many states, the service can be pretty comforting to have along, vice AM and FM radio stations that come and go (and don’t offer the variety). The service has *value* to me, so I’m trying to fix an oversight rather than take my ball and go home.

Here’s an analogy: there are a lot of FOSS purists who thing using any version of Linux with ANY non-free code is a crime against humanity (just think Richard Stallman). I’m not that anal about it. I’d like to see FOSS versions of everything, but as a realist, I know that’s not always possible. Richard and people like him are willing to plod along with stripped down Chinese netbooks running stripped-down systems for the sake of freedom. Bully. I want to be able to play my music, watch a video, or do the hundreds of other thing I can on my laptop. Unfortunately, the real world requires me to have some of the nasty old non-free code in there.

Well, someone made the effort to make that non-free code work. If all that’s required is that I agree to a license, fine. I need the thing to work.

Perfect example: I buy and download a lot of mp3 files from Amazon’s site. They built a very neat little download manager that integrates very nicely with their billing system. You can configure it fo where you want the downloaded music saved on your system. They built a version for most of the popular Linux distros, and with a little hacking and patience, you can get it working with most others.

But the code is closed. They don’t offer the source. That, of course, violates the FOSS spirit. But it works on Linux, and that’s all most people care about.

All I’m asking is for XM to meet us half-way. I don’t need some FOSS solution; I don’t want the source; I just want something that works without me having to jump through a bunch of hoops, some of which require me to hand over money to Microsoft.

I sent the email a few days ago and haven’t received a response yet, so perhaps they’re mulling it over…usually these kind of mails elicit a “sorry, we won’t be supporting Linux” response, and that be what I get anyway. We’ll see.

Thanks for all your comments and you support.

That is the only message that “they” understand. And make sure you tell the phone operator exactly why you are canceling.

When the two merged a couple years back, I was an XM subscriber with a 3yr sub plan in place. At the merge point they added talking DJs to what became of the one channel I listened to the most. So, I called up and canceled and got my refund on the remainder of the 3yr plan.

The lady on the phone went all the way up to offering me a free 1 year of service if I would stay. Told her no, cancel the thing. Her response: “not even for free…..”.

You should do the same. If they don’t support you, then you should not support them.

I think my solution will be to buy a netbook with Windoze 7 and I’ll load Ubuntu for dual booting.