The Philosophy of Nate

Lovin' those Facebook Likes

When it comes to the Internet, it's always interesting to see how things evolve once they come about and sometimes, how they get contorted into very different things. Nearly everyone knows about or at the very least, has heard of the idea of 'liking' things on Facebook. 'Likes' started off as Facebook Fan Pages just a few years ago where brands, or anyone for that matter, could start a public Facebook page to promote themselves and form an interactive community. In keeping with Facebook's (at the time) new 'like' button, the idea of becoming a fan of something was turned into "Liking" the page, in order to make interaction with Facebook more consistant and in their words "more lightweight." 'Liking' brands, celebrities, and causes is now the new thing to do, and people click the like button as though their lives depend on it. It does raise some awareness of certain causes, although given how many causes some people have listed in their likes, it seems like some people might a...

We're Moving!

There's been some big changes in the works for The Philosophy of Nate for a few months now, and it's finally time to show them off. I've been working on developing my own platform to host The Philosophy of Nate in hopes of migrating the blog from Blogger to a new platform that's faster, cleaner, and especially, focuses on improving how readers such as yourselves interact with my blog. The new platform has substantially better integration with the rest of my website which allows me to make browsing more uniform and to expand options such as my website's "do not track" feature.

I expect to make the switch sometime midweek. Everything is set up for the migration to be clean and simple so on your end, the blog gets a new look and some new options but otherwise should continue to work as it always has since all the web addresses will redirect. However, those who subscribe by any means may run into a few bumps with the feed switching over depending how FeedBurner handles the ch...

Facebook Graph Search

Facebook has released a new feature - and with it, a new layout - called Facebook Graph Search to people who signed up for the beta. I'll admit that I haven't gotten access yet, but I have had time to check it out via friends and the Internet. From what I've seen, it is the coolest, creepiest feature Facebook could have added. On one hand, it is a pretty cool search tool that lets you search for friends based on interests, associations, or whatever using a more or less natural language search. On the other, it gives Facebook a whole new status as a powerful stalking tool if you want to get to know people. One of the more amusing searches that I found online was "Married friends who like prostitutes" which would, as expected, return a list of friends who are married and who also "like" prostitutes. The search also allows you to branch out to non-friends by searching criteria for "friends of friends." It seems that in general, searching for "Pictures of friends of my friends...

Windows 8, Two Months Later

About two months has passed since I upgraded my laptop to Windows 8 back in October, slightly before the public release. Despite my general preference for Linux, my initial impressions of 8 were really good and for the most part, that still stands after using the OS after the initial shininess has worn off and I've broken it in a little more. With that said, Windows 8 is still very definitely a Windows operating system with the same quirks here and there as before, although I still maintain that it is an improvement over 7.

As has been typical with Windows since as long as I can remember (I go back to Windows 95 myself), 8 takes a while to get to a point where it's usable after logging in. I don't have a ton of programs start at login and I've disabled most of the ones that have a higher impact (according to Task Manager), and I still have plenty of time to get up and get a snack between logging in and having a usable desktop. Once the system is up, it's still snappy ev...

The Upgrade to Windows 8

The official release of Windows 8 is later this week on the 26th, so the wait for the final reaction to the new version of Windows is finally less than a week away. As far as the Internet has been concerned since screenshots of 8 first came out, the new Metro interface is everything from amazing to unusable, although the unusable claims seem to be the most widespread, if not just the most vocal. For those like myself who are at a school that has access to MSDNAA, we've had access to the Windows 8 release since the beginning of the month for those who are curious enough to try it or in some cases, courageous enough to ditch Windows 7 in favour of Windows 8.

I upgraded my laptop to 8 a few weeks ago after some consideration about compatibility and the effect that upgrading would have on my Linux install on the other half of my drive. As far as the release goes, not a lot has changed visibly since the consumer preview that I tried previously in a virtual machine. The same...

Learning from Apple Maps

Apple has been in the news a lot over the past several weeks with their patent suit against Samsung and the release of iOS 6, and is now in the middle of cleaning up their own mistakes with the new iOS. It has been rumored for a while that Apple would replace Google Maps and YouTube with their own equivalents since Apple and Google are competitors in the smartphone market, so the fact that iOS 6 has Apple Maps as the default maps app and is missing the YouTube app doesn't come as a surprise. What is surprising, however, is how bad Apple Maps actually is. I'm not a fan of Apple by any means, but I have always been able to give them credit for making sure all of their product releases are up to their usual standards. With Apple Maps, that just hasn't been the case. Apple has been met with round after round of complaints over wrongly named countries, weird 3D imagery of melting cars, and outdated maps.

While Apple can't be blamed for wanting to ditch apps from Google, an...

Losing Your Digital Life to Hacking

Hacking pops in the news occasionally, but mainly when it happens on a huge scale. Hotmail's big breach a few years back, Dropbox's "password optional" bug last year, and Yahoo Voices' stolen credentials are some of the bigger ones that have made it into the news and they all have one thing in common; they were on a large scale and fairly isolated in that millions of people did not lose their entire lives to them. Basically: they were news, but they weren't extremely scary to most people. Even I can admit that large-scale attacks don't scare me and I am conscious of how destructive an attack can be.

The fact that those huge breaches are so often brushed off and users change their passwords or drop the service and consider themselves completely secure again downplays how epic an attack on an individual can be. In all likelihood if hacking was seen as a much scarier thing to individuals there would be far more outcry for improved security of breached sites, less need to ...

Platform vs. Platform

One of the most interesting things about the digital world is the availability of the cloud.  Pretty much everything is capable of going online in some way or another and accessing cloud services as either a mobile or "desktop" device.  The coolest part of it is it no longer really matters what platform is being used behind the scenes on the client device.  So much effort and money goes into advertising why one platform is better than another- Windows vs Mac OS X, Android vs Windows Phone vs iOS even though for the majority of people it doesn't actually make a lot of difference.

Most of my files are stored in one cloud service or another, I use webmail, and I have Internet access almost anywhere I go.  I can pull out almost any device and start using it with all of my stuff at my fingertips.  I've used iPads, Kindles, borrowed computers, and I have an Android phone, Linux, Windows, and a Palm Pilot (yep, I'm old-school).  In all cases for gett...

Why the Hate for Windows 8?

At this point, the new interface for Windows 8 is old news, with two preview releases out and the screenshots all over the Internet.  To boil it down briefly, the iconic Start menu and button is gone, and has been replaced with the Metro Start Screen, which serves more or less the same purpose.  The Start Screen is more customizable and is the new place for everything installed on Windows 8, which can include apps from Microsoft's own store.  Additionally, the old "desktop" is now part of the tiles on the Start Screen since it is no longer intended to be the starting point, which takes a little getting used to.  Other things, such as settings, are moved around a little and take some searching to find, since panels like the Charms menu pop up when the cursor is in the corner of the screen.

For some reason, the new interface has been the subject of a lot of hate across the Internet.  The focus is generally on getting the start menu back, which isn't ...

Aaandd We're Back!

I was forced to take a brief hiatus from keeping the blog up to date once spring quarter hit at school due to the workload.  As I have mentioned in the past, school takes precedence over writing for The Philosophy of Nate as it should, so posting will be irregular.  Despite the blog's constipation lately, some work has been going on behind the scenes just as slowly to get everything in working order across the website, and plans are in order to actually get some things on it.

Now that spring quarter is over, posting will be much more regular, time permitting.  There are already some posts lined up for the near future, so stay tuned.  If you've stuck around to put up with the weird posting schedule of The Philosophy of Nate, you won't be disappointed; your usual stream of content will be coming your way.  If you're new, welcome! Stick around, it's worth it!