Symbiotic Design Article: The Truth

It's obvious that Microsoft has siphoned enough money off of the American and International communities (i.e.: the computing world) to become it's own little country. They also take pride in rewriting history and gobbling up the almighty dollar. But Microsoft has no God. Bill Gates would be a poor choice for a God in anyone's book. He couldn't even be like a God for real, as if it was a possibility after selling his soul by doing so many people so wrong and so much harm for so very long. Windows sucks, it always has. XP has huge backdoors to allow Microsoft to do anything they want to a Windows XP system without user knowledge. Hackers will have a handle on these gapping back doors in no time. The only semi secure Microsoft OS is Windows 2000, and it has flaws and the usual overbloat of bugs, as well. Microsoft lost it's own source code to this OS because they relied on it and it's security lacking IIs server to protect it.

Technology can't keep up with what is really needed right now. HDTVCD™ Systems. Symbiotic Design™ has released HDTVCD™ as an appropriate Freeware solution to provide a standard where none exists. The video industry is too busy selling the public the old tired DVD standard which looks like crap. By offering the HDTVCD™ standard as Freeware we hope that the video industry will support and proliferate the HDTV digital signal in forthcoming DVD players so that we can finally enjoy decent home entertainment. I know that this would make the US Government very happy.

The Freeware HDTVCD™ standard is so simple that it's easy to realize how much of a rip-off the corporate world has become. It's not that they haven't seen it, they have been hiding and burying this easy and simple technology fix for years now.

All that is required to follow the HDTVCD™ standard is to use DIVX compression technology on HDTV resolution movie videos recorded to a DVD disc. It's so simple that it's frightening. Since the DVD format won't support HDTV resolutions, and since there is no HDTV disc format, by using DIVX compression on HDTV resolution video recordings we already have a standard available to computer systems which utilize DVD drives and all that is necessary for current home DVD players to utilize this format is for the videoplayer industry to upgrade the DVD standard to include DIVX decompression technology. Then all modern DVD players can play HDTV resolution movies until a better system comes along. This way we promote the HDTV systems that aren't moving off the shelves near quick enough because of the lack of any other HDTV portable video disc standard.

It's obvious where technology is headed and why. Yet Microsoft is one of the very biggest reasons we don't have competitive business practices in the US. We think that since the technology exists to build these systems, someone should have done it long ago. Well, it's available, it's a simple solution, and we don't need Microsoft to provide it, just a little cooperation from the video disc player industry.

We are not touting the Symbiotic Design™ Freeware HDTVCD™ standard as an end solution, please understand. We expect something much better offering a high degree of human interactivity to come along. We expect to be playing HDTV games on HDTV consoles as soon as a new standard is available, and Symbiotic Design™ is also working on such a standard which will allow for great gameplay as well. We are even working on another project code named the CubeOS™, as well.

The whole point is that it CAN be done. The only reason we are pursuing this is because no one else is. We aren't out to hide the fact that technology sucks. Technology is a great thing, but when it is used purely for corporate gain in the face of raping a nation of more wealth for inferior products when we are capable of so much more, it sucks. Make no mistake, we are capable of much, much more. The CubeOS™ is merely a way of controlling computers with cubed displays (code name: cubed™). Think of it as an HDTV resolution screen which utilizes pixel cubes with a monitor depth of the HDTV resolution cubed. A 3D and scientific research powerhouse.

Or perhaps this will give you a better picture of the cubed™ computer system: if you layer the original 1920 x 1084 HDTV resolution on 1084 LCD screens aligned perfectly over each other, all these LCD screens without any backing and crystal clear when a pixel is not generating a color, utilizing perfect square pixels which not only have a front, but a top, two sides, and a bottom, each face of each pixel being able to be controlled independently... then you get the idea of what a cubed™ computer system really is.

I have updated this section of this article to reveal my cubed™ computer system vision to the world on January 6th, 2002, simply because it can be done right now and if I don't reveal it, someone is going to make it and I will never get any credit at all. However, since the CubeOS™ powering the cubed™ computer systems decidedly will NOT use of Microsoft's enormous wealth, power, ignorance or lack of vision, we do, as a small company, expect to get swept under the rug. Just know this is possible TODAY, RIGHT NOW, and no one is doing it or even thinking along these lines while this is a necessary and important technology that should have existed by now. Though the computing power to generate such a product is enormous, it is available right now provided the research and the solutions are simple ones. The ramifications if we don't invent this, or something larger and more grand, is that we will not move on and our computing power and technologies will only lag behind as it does today.

Swept under the rug? Make no mistake that the Amiga was selling more games than any other platform until Doom. Amiga wanted the code and after a huge delay in getting the code, the Amiga wound up running it faster than the original system it was designed for (the x486) through it's optimized code. But by the time they got the code it was all over. That code was delayed big time. I wonder by who? And the Amiga has since been written out of history by Microsoft, even though the company is still around with a completely new solution for today's computing experience, the AmigaDE.

Microsoft has been embarrassed with it's systems and continues to be. They crash, are full of bugs and security holes, take forever to troubleshoot (and sometimes require it over and over again until it's disk based operating system's problems are found and addressed). The Mac is so slow to boot up it has to be a professional's, nobody else would ever turn one on, you really have to need it to have it. At least they finally found X, and it only runs on processors that are fast enough to handle it? My PPC and PC are both outdated, though not very old. What a shame.

There is a new age of Operating Systems coming, and they are definitely not disk based.

Personally, it's Bill Gates' and Steve Jobs' lack of vision for what we need that irritates me more than Commodore's failure (whom in turn contributed to Atari's failure in the hardware industry). And it does take a major corporate machine to put out the XBOX and follow it up with another (or upgrade) when technology switches to a new standard. Hell, that's why Microsoft is selling it as a game machine, that's all that it's capable of on the current technology standards available until the CubeOS™ powers cubed™ computer systems. Of course, I couldn't get enough money raised to support my invention, I'm still too busy designing and running my own business anyway. So don't wait for me. Do it yourself and blow the MS giant out of the water. Someone will, even if it has to be me.

You'd think that I would have better things to do than to rant and rave. But honestly, it's about time that I did. I haven't had the time because of complications due to computer operating system failures. Not just one, but both of our design computers failed in late October. I spent more than November trying to recover. It's infuriating what computer operating system companies get away with, robbing us blind and never ever delivering a final working version of the product.

This is justice? The government isn't even slapping Microsoft's hands even though they have been found guilty of criminal activity and price fixing on multiple counts, multiple times.

Apple is no saint, either. The Macintosh is still crashed until I can free enough capital to upgrade it or get a new one. And these things are still overpriced to beat all. They've been convicted of price fixing as well. Will it never end?

I am tired of the corporate vision that they are the world and we will conform, resistance is futile, end the struggle and assimilate. It's always been garbage and it always will be.

Don't get me wrong, I am not against the corporate world, I am all for it. But there are some nasty players out there that have never delivered on a single promise.

In late October the Macintosh started acting up. It took a week to get it running again in a reduced capacity. As soon as it was running minus a decent hard drive again the Windows 98 machine bit the ghost and wasn't coming back. I realized that after another week of trying to back up everything. Luckily, I ejected the last freshly burned CD-R backup disc just before the OS failed to ever load anything again.

With Windows xp out I was able to pickup an older copy of 2k pro. I installed Windows 2000 after making sure the machine was ready with a few upgrades and that took a whole week of prepping and installing the OS and all the other applications I use. It rocked for a week even though it was much slower than 98 simply because it didn't crash so often. Until I started trying to customize the OS to do what it was intended to do, make my life simpler, easier, more enjoyable. I spent the next week trying to figure out what went wrong. Even my Gateway senior tech fern and other techie ferns had no idea what could have happened, and these guys are good.

On to the Fisher-Price OS, Windows xp Pro. What a joke. I have never hated an OS as much. They have worked out not only how to completely tax your computer system, but reduce productivity to the max. Here I am with all the bells and whistles and snazzy junk and I just can't get anything done because of the absolute worst design in operating system history. Every time I turn on the computer I was insulted by over designed windows interfaces that take up a whole panel of "related" material that I never wanted to see. Microsoft has actually figured out how to sell more monitors because of this wild and reckless waste of windows space. The mediocre performance was astonishing. And soon I found out that it runs games great, but cannot run even the most essential system support programs such as Norton Systemworks or Roxio. In fact, one of these two applications brought that kid's toy to it's knees quickly.

Here I had the Professional version of Windows XP, the Corporate Edition, and they are still telling me that it's "My Computer" and there are "My Documents" as if I am an idiot, wasting precious windows space with stupid doodads for morons who have never sat at a computer before without any option to turn off the insult panel. And at 384 MB on a 450 MHz Pentium II with a new 40 GB 7200 rpm hard drive using two 17" monitors on an ATI Radeon dual head card and yet the hard drive won't quit spinning. I could have walked away from the damn thing for 15 minutes with the screensaver on when I return and the blasted piece of junk disk based operating system is still paging memory to the hard drive. I couldn't get anything done! I didn't even have the option of burning myself a decent MP3 CD from the CDs I legally own. What crap. Windows xp Pro is NOT a professional operating system, and Microsoft has gone out of it's way to get rid of the existence of such a product. The one and only thing that the OS did was to run Unreal Tournament well. It's just a kid's game machine and no good for anything else.

So after over 1 month and a half of formatting hard drives and reinstalling different Windows versions I am back on Windows 2000 Pro and Mom is using Windows xp Pro. Luckily, she is new to computers and needs a kid's computer user interface. And I must admit, it is great for kids, elderly and new home users. But xp is particularly insulting to a professional.

Is MacOS X any better? I don't know, I bought my Mac when the 604e was the best and fastest processor available and 2 short years later it wouldn't run the latest and greatest version of the MacOS. In fact, before my hard drive crash, most of my problems with the Mac always seemed to stem from the fact that Apple has never debugged MacOS 9.

I could run MacOS Systems 7.5.5 and 7.6.1 extremely reliably, but when version 8.1 came along the thing stopped acting like a sturdy workhorse that I could have used for an internet server, into a flaky blonde bombshell with good intentions but way too spacey. I attempted to work on those incompatibilities and tried like the dickens to stay at 8.1 for forever, but those nasty application programs I need to have just to keep my business going always require you to upgrade to the latest and greatest OS in order to use their product. When I finally got my hands on Adobe Photoshop 6 I had to make the jump to MacOS 9.

I thought I had MacOS 9 starting to work as it should if I rebooted every 4 hours when the fast hard drive gave up the ghost on me. I'm still not sure whether the hard drive is at fault or the SCSI card. I'm waiting to upgrade both before I ever turn that old thing on again.

Despite my recent computer troubles I have managed to salvage my art through the turmoil, though I was quite shocked when I uploaded an older version of the website to the Symbiotic Design servers when I was finally able to update it. I spent at least one week correcting mistakes from a "not ready for prime time" backup and am still stumbling into a few flaws once in a while. It would be a great help if someone actually emailed me any web site problems they stumble across, but the only email I ever get is from designers who want to work for me, and of course the usual 50 spam emails twice a day.

To top it all off, my wife and son are still stuck in Europe because the INS has never taken it's head out of it's ***hole. Today they have been away for a year. The year 2000 was the absolute best year of my life, I got married to the woman I love, she bore me a great and healthy baby, Symbiotic Design had the best year ever, I was with my wife a great deal. 2001 has sucked. The INS directed my legal wife to return to Poland and then revoked her visa on the basis that we are legally married. My son was nursing, so there was no argument that he had to go with her. I lost my usual part time night job after well over 2 years of employment because they eliminated my position (how do you eliminate a taxi driver position?) and I hadn't made the first payment on our new car. Then the computers went, hard drive trouble on one, OS trouble on the other, almost simultaneously. And I don't even want to talk about September 11, 2001. We have all been through hell last year.

Does anyone really understand what it's like to be without their wife and child for a year? He was just a baby when he left. I've missed his first tooth, his first step, his first words... the INS has completely robbed me of my life!

Anyway, it is for these reasons that I will once again be postponing my release of the dpArt CD-ROM. This time I won't even bother guessing when it might get done, only that I need my wife back to make sure that it's done right and they may be sending her new visa paperwork to Poland today or next week. Since I was told that she would be back this past summer, I can't believe a damn thing that the INS says and I cannot even guess when she might be allowed to return home. Senator Daschle's office has promised that they would be home by Spring, so maybe sometime spring I will be able to come up with a target date for final production and work on a release date. Until then, I am a one man artist and company struggling for work and trying hard to get by without her.

"It's just plain nuts when you try to do business with an online company and they fail to deliver EXACTLY what was ordered. Over a month ago I ordered an off-lease NEC XV17+ monitor through eBay which was "like new" and still have not received what was promised. Instead, I have received an NEC XP17 without any cables at all, no power cord, no manual, no drivers. This monitor is 2 years older than the earliest release date for monitor model I ordered.

"This company has been promising me a replacement monitor with monitor cable and power cord for over a month now. What gives?

"To further complicate matters, I had to reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows 2000 Professional over the weekend because it's been a month since the last reinstall and Windows 2000 just won't last any longer, reliably. So now I have to dig out the backup of my email just to grab my last communiqué with these guys so that I can light a fire under their butts.

"But I don't understand this, since they have a shinning review record on eBay. Well, I am about to blemish that record! So much for fair and reasonable business practices from Wontek (New Jersey).

"Business is business, and they have crippled mine for the past month by not delivering the sale item contracted for. The Mac has been down because of it as I await the monitor that I researched. Unfortunately, I think I have just plain been ripped off and sent an old monitor that probably won't work. I don't really know because I even have to go out and buy a cable for it just to check it out. The replacement NEC XV17+ monitor coming from New Jersey should have been here by last Friday if they sent it via a slow wagon train.

It's actually quite funny how things work out sometimes. Surprisingly, Wontek's stellar reputation is well deserved.

Even though we had trouble getting this whole mess sorted out, Wontek worked hard at providing great customer satisfaction well beyond the 30 day eBay complaint period and did deliver above and beyond what was promised. Certainly, it wasn't the original deal, and there were extraordinary delays, but I wound up quite happy in the long term.

What happened was that even though Wontek originally sent me the wrong monitor (an NEC XP17 instead of the original NEC XV17+ ordered), they corrected this by sending me an NEC XV17. However, it arrived damaged. The front plastic frame around the cathode ray tube face had been smashed in the upper left corner. This monitor came with the video cord attached as part of the unit. But still, there was no power cord.

I immediately contacted Wontek and informed them of the problem. Additionally, the hole in the plastic front case piece looked like it had been dropped prior to packing, not during shipping. Again, they were ready to send me another monitor, and in fact, offered me a deal on a larger monitor. However, I just wanted to get back to business and put this monitor situation behind me. So instead, I told them that I just wanted to settle for the older monitor and be done with this.

Wontek sent the monitor cord and power cable to make the XP17 that I originally received a complete and functioning unit within days. I also expected a UPS call slip for the damaged NEC 17XV monitor, but never received it. Apparently, the damaged XV17 monitor I received would have cost to much too return, and insurance would not have covered the damage anyway since it was not a result of shipping. So I never did receive the call slip for the damaged unit.

Though this is not the original deal made, I am quite happy with the outcome. Wontek worked admirably to rectify the situation and the end result is that I can always put some duct tape over the hole in the face plate of the NEC 17XV I received and use it as a second monitor on another computer.

In the end, I am quite satisfied, even though this bargain took much longer and a few phone calls longer than expected. Now I just have to get another dual monitor 3D/video card and I will be all set!

If you have paid any attention to the Symbiotic Design™ News at all, you are probably quite aware of my family's illegal separation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and our struggle to overcome the INS's pure idiocy. Thanks to the efforts of the office of Senator Tom Daschle, Maria finally received her permanent US residency visa on April 4, 2002. We are forever in Senator Daschle's debt for reuniting us, as we know that the INS had "misfiled" our visa application and nothing would have ever come of it if it weren't for the efforts of his staff.

My wife, Maria, is a very talented professional violin, viola and music teacher to the very young at the Music School in Olešnica, Poland. Because so many young children depended on her for her support and direction, Maria did not return home to America until after her semester was over. This proved to be a good decision as Maria Peters and her talented pupil Stas, age 11, each brought home a national award for excellence in violin performance. This competition only takes place once every two years and is a terrific honor for everyone involved as well as a source of great pride for their small town of Olešnica, Poland.

Shortly after completing the semester, Maria and my son, Maximilian arrived in Omaha at Eppley Airfield on June 28th, 2002. We were finally together again and arrived back in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, at 2:00 am on Saturday, June 29th, 2002. After a couple of weeks of readjusting to the 7 hour time difference between Olešnica and Sioux Falls and language challenges, I am happy to report that my wife and son are doing well.

So our long ordeal of misdirection and outright lies from the INS is over, temporarily. Unfortunately, the long and lonely undeserved separation of our family (one week short of one and a half years, total) has affected Maximilian Peters significantly. He has been spoiled by the lack of an authoritative father figure and a bit overprotected by his mother.

Knowing how this illegal separation would affect my family so dramatically before it even ever happened, I would have easily turned countless armies into battlefields of corpses in order to keep my family together back in medieval times. Unfortunately, we live in a modern 'civilized' age where we live under the thumb of incomplete rules, regulations and beuracracy which although are intended to protect us, can and are misinterpreted by idiotic the morons.

Realizing that we have been dealt a grave injustice by our U.S. government and a few of it's either evil or stupid employees (I prefer to think of them as idiots), I know that I could sue for undue harassment, suffering and damages. I am sure that I would win an ungodly settlement, had I the resources. But even if I had the money, I will not allow my government to steal even one more moment of my time with my wife and son. I will simply go on record as stating that what we were put through was nothing short of criminal. Details may come at a later date, but I still get too furious and outraged by just thinking about it. Now it's time to celebrate!

Maximilian Eliasz Peters is 21 months old. He stands just over 3 feet high. He talks and he sings, but the few words we understand are usually in Polish. He learns things quickly and has already learned to shake hands, high five and wave good-bye.

In the two weeks he has been back home he has picked up on the English words "Bye!" and "Whazup?!". He knows how to work all the TVs/remotes in the house, too. He also enjoys playing with his PlayStation or our computers. Luckily, he also loves playing with his toy trucks, cars, and motorcycle. He loves to play catch and go wading in his pool, as well. Of course, the simplest things will entertain him, such as light switches, on and off switches, buttons and shoe boxes.

We are especially worried about him since he does not like either milk or ice cream, for now. ;-)

Though we have been bonding, it will be a long time before Max actually starts considering me his father, again. But the course is steady, slow and sure.

The INS is such a complete disgrace to this great nation that something really has to be done, and soon. Despite the fact that I have good reason to lobby for straightening this poor excuse of a government tyranny out, my son Max and my beautiful wife Maria deserve my full attentions now. Still, something does need to be done about it's terrible behaviour and the injustice it wields.

Thank you, Senator Tom Daschle, you will never know how much this has meant to all of us.

As time marches I look at the above articles and realize how old they seem as well as think about a few mistakes I made in designing this log. The latest entries should have appeared at the top of the page and I think I will change the format around a bit.

Maria, Max and I are very happy now that we are all together again. The past week was a bit hectic with state sales tax filings due, and I had been busy designing logos and directing development for the AAHMreg.org website.

We had hoped to have the AAHMreg.org web site finished by now, but we are currently awaiting the final required changes to the AAHM (American Association for the History of Medicine) Boston 2003 Conference registration form. Once we have that we will finish development of the online registration form, add the correct logo upon their decision, finalize testing, add an SSL web server security certificate, and then we will be able make it live.

Jason from JND Technologies has been handling the development side of things, and has been doing a great job. I am extremely happy that he was on board for this project.

Helena has been our liason from the AAHM LAC-2003 and she has been a true pleasure to work with. Though I am anxious to see the project end so that I can collect on the work, I couldn't ask for a nicer person to work with. I am also pleased to report that she is very happy with our work and holds us in high regard. Perhaps I will ask her to write a testomonial.

The past year has been very busy for us. I didn't even have time to decorate the web site as I usually do. And it's even been quite some time since I added to this journal. Some of that time has been spent just cherishing my family again, now that we are all back together again. However, I do plan to keep the Symbiotic design web site updating more often, now.

Today our new Domain Name Registration and Services web site went live at: http://www.SymbioticDesign.US/ and we are offering great prices for Domain Name registrations and transfers.

We have also added support for ColdFusion in the past year and most recently we have started supporting JSP in all of our web hosting packages as value added options. We are thankful to the server development team for their efforts. They are currently testing out new server side antispamming software.

We have dropped our HDTV production services in the past year. It is just exremely expensive to support this equipment in this small midwestern area. Our cubed computer systems and CubeOS are on hold indefinitely, but not dead. We are now concentrating on our Domain registration, web hosting, web design, logo design, graphic design, typography, animation, illustration and web development strengths.

As soon as I find a new system for this journal I will put it online. This page will be available as an archive from that whatever forum winds up replacing this page.

A creative new media design studio since 1997
2108 S Duluth Ave, Sioux Falls, SD, 57105 USA

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