Breaking Windows

You may recall me telling you to called Verizon Wireless to have them block "Premium Text Messaging." Well now you should login to your Verizon Wireless account to opt out of them mining your personal data. For me, I was already opted in without even knowing it.

@brianking posted this link on RRW which references this blog post, which points you to this link to turning off Customer Proprietary Network Information Settings.

Unless of course you want Verizon to sell your personal information to anyone, which is what will happen if you do not opt out. Pretty shady, isn't it?

Since a lot of news sites are using Microblogging as another way to get their headlines out, I think Twitter needs to adapt to this change too.

I think it would be very beneficial to the overall design if you could create "sets" of people you follow. This is similar in design to how Facebook and now MySpace has introduced sets of users.

This would allow a Twitter user create a set of news sources, a set of close friends, a set of co-workers, etc. and be able to switch between them.

This would be mondo excellent for people who follow hundreds if not thousands of other twitter users.

Jason found this post on old computer ads. There is a comment of even more, too.

Planet Earth really looks great on Blu-ray. That is, of course, when the package actually comes with four Blu-ray discs. You know, when you pay $90 for something, you expect some level of quality assurance.

The fourth disc in the set is DVD. I researched this and I am not the only one with this problem. In fact, Planet Earth is not the only set with this issue. Planet Earth has been reported to have HD DVD and DVD versions inserted into the Blu-ray packages. This has happened to the Blade Runner set too.

Now I have to go back to Best Buy in Toledo. Just what I want to do this week.

Since I have not gotten around to re-creating my blogroll, here is my friend Greg's blog, FundaMental Disaster.

This isn't so much about the battery, but the utterly horrible customer service of the local Verizon Wireless store. It took them two weeks to order it, for some reason, and they ordered the regular battery for me.

I called their national number and had the correct battery ordered right away, it was even FedEx delivered to me.

The battery life in this u740 is my only gripe. The phone itself is the size of the LG 8600 or RAZR and you can tell they obviously had to cut the size of the battery for the form factor.

Unlike other extended batteries I have had for my cell phone, this one comes with a nice cover that extends the entire length of the phone, so you don't have the battery jutting out in the back.

Going from 800 mAh (the standard battery) to 1300 mAh is a huge improvement. I play games on my phone (big surprise there) and with the normal battery Vijay Golf would just kill my phone.

Now I do not have to charge my phone in the middle of the day. So what is the lesson here? Don't go to the local Verizon Wireless store. Just call the national number and you will avoid weeks of irritation.

Convert between bits/ bytes/ kilobits/ kilobytes/ megabits/ megabytes/ gigabits/ gigabytes. Now this is a nice calculator.

The university must have sold their email list again, because on 8/31 I got a spam about some new forum, DevNerds.com. I finally went to check it out. I am sad to say it looks like a "me too" site based on the very successful Were-Here.

They have a section for "Computer Talk" and have Windows and Linux, but nothing for Mac OS. So I don't think I will be spending much time there.

So, why am I giving these forums the time of day? Well, the more forums the better. So good luck to DevNerds.

Every year, the New Oxford American Dictionary people hand out an award for "Word of the Year." It's usually given to the word that has the most amount of hype attached to it, but it's a rite of great distinction for the word. This past year's Word of the Year is podcast. That's a given, right? "Sudoku," "bird flu" and "reggaeton" didn't stand a chance.

Yea, that is an odd opening to a technical article on creating your own podcast, but it is what it is.

Back in July 2005 I wrote about wanting the Optimus Keyboard. By the looks of things, it will be coming February 1, 2006. I can't wait.

This one is on my Birthday Wish List, hint, hint.

The free online resource Wikipedia is about as accurate on science as the Encyclopedia Britannica, a study shows.

The British journal Nature examined a range of scientific entries on both works of reference and found few differences in accuracy.

And people still ask me why I use Wikipedia!

"I am a whiz at email and browsing the web, I'm virtually an information systems technologist."

Those are the exact words. I feel really bad for UNO. This commercial is so bad, I can't believe someone green lighted it. It takes a bit more then being able to get your email and browse the web to be an IT professional. I know many people who can check their email, browse the web, but could not tell you the difference between an RJ-11 and RJ-45.

I understand that they want to encourage people to enroll in their IT classes, and it is good to see advertising for IT classes, but they should not be using false advertising.

Pathetic.

Redmond-based Microsoft just announced two products that will compete with offerings from Adobe, and Adobe is about to buy a company with products that challenge Microsoft's.

Microsoft does have a competitor to PDF. I just don't think it will topple Adobe. But then Microsoft only had 4% of the browser market at the beginning of the browser wars.

Did you know about this? My friend Eric mentioned this to me the other day. I had no idea. You could even be evil about it and set up a script to search the site, but I wouldn't do that. No, never.

"You know you subscribe to way too many mailing lists when 99% of your email on the 1st of every month is from mailman-owner@domain.com."

Or, for the uninitiated:

"You know you subscribe to way too many mailing lists when 99% of your email on the 1st of every month reads "mailing list memberships reminder."

The US will not cede control of the Domain Name System for the Internet. As a result, the "Internets" malapropism may become a reality.

On Thursday, Michael Gallagher, an Assistant Secretary of Commerce announced a stunning change in US policy regarding the Internet.

All your DNS are belong to US.

This sure was unexpected. I guess someone in the Bush Administration figured out that the "Internets" is a global tool and decided that the US needs to keep control of it. Of course ICANN will still perform day to day operations. They just won't control it.

After more than a year of touting Blu-ray as the best technology to replace DVD for storing high-definition video and winning proponents including Apple, a top executive at Sony Corp., one of Blu-ray's major backers, has opened the door to the possibility of unifying the format with its arch rival, HD-DVD.

These people play chess in mysterious ways. While I would really like to see on HD DVD format and not two separate ones, the Blu-ray spec sounded better to me.

Yes, it is worse then malware. But thats not the point.

If I have not gotten enough comments and traffic because of my post of this over at Blogcritics, today I was Slashdotted. And yes, all hell broke loose. The story is still on the front page of slashdot.org too, so the referral and visits numbers keep piling up.

All of my web sites (including paying customers) were down for an undetermined amount of time this afternoon. They are back up now thankfully. It must have went unnoticed because I have not received any irate emails.

Mail was down, more specificly web mail was down, and is still a little wonky. I can get POP3 mail though. Everything seems to be doing OK now. This afternoon things were not pretty though.

And let me just say this: thank god I did not turn on dynamic publishing months ago when Movable Type 3.0 came out. And thankfully I did not have any images attached to that blog post. Since I am using a static Movable Type install, it has done just fine.

Getting Slashdotted and getting hit by WIRED (for my G4TechTV/TSS interview on WIRED News) are two completely different animals. WIRED brought the visits, but not anything like Slashdot.

So thanks Slashdot. I survived. But please, it would be nice to keep this to one a month, or I will have a horrendous bandwidth bill to deal with. Luckily I have more bandwidth then I really need right now, or I would have been slammed with an overage bill today!

You might think news about AOL changing the Terms of Service for AIM products would be about AOL changing the Terms of Service for AIM products. Not even close. It all started with this guy, who asserted the Terms of Service (TOS) change allowed AOL to use AIM conversations for...whatever purposes deemed fit by AOL.

So this was over a whole lot of nothing? Great.

It took 18 days to get my Staples Easy Rebate check. Today I got a check for $18.00 which is exactly what I expected. Those sure were cheap packs of DVD-Rs! And it could not have been easier, or faster.

Updated: America Online quells public criticism of changes to its AIM terms of service, insisting the controversial privacy clause does not pertain to user-to-user instant messaging communication.

America Online Inc. on Sunday moved to quell public criticism of the terms of service for its AIM service, insisting the controversial privacy clause does not pertain to user-to-user instant messaging communication.

A few days I saw a post at slashdot and about crapped my pants. I am sure I was not the only one. It did not take AOL long to change its tune, or "clarify" everything for us. Thanks AOL. You have just alienated the entire IM using world and caused more damage than you will ever know. You just lost a bus load of customers. Good job! And no, your damage control did work on everyone.

I have seen the commercials, I am sure you have as well, but I didn't think much of it when I went to Staples recently. To my sunrise they had DVD-R 40 packs for a mere $5! This was after a $4 in store and $9 online rebate! I only went in to buy a flatbed scanner, HP Deskjet ink, and look at Palm PDAs but at that price, heck yea.

Staples has an Easy Rebates site where you put in two numbers, and your rebates are done. One number is a unique number per item, and the other is a ID number from that entire receipt. If you buy more then one of an item (DVD-R 40 pack, for example) you only have to input it once. Thats pretty nice.

The waiting is still the same, but you no longer have to slap a stamp on a letter and drop it in the mail. Online rebates are so cool. More stores should think about online rebates.

Lexmark International has suffered a setback in its bid to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to prevent other companies from making low-cost, refurbished toner cartridges for its printers.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has ruled against Lexmark's request that it reconsider an earlier decision that favored Lexmark's opponent in the case, Static Control Components (SCC), a maker of components used by third parties to make refurbished cartridges.

I like this story more for the fact that the DCMA got shot down in another court case. That law needs radical amendments (more information).

My brother told me a while ago about Dell printers (which are really Lexmark) not being able to use any cartridge because they modify the printer itself so it will not take 3rd party (cheaper) cartridges. I wonder if this is related.

If you want my opinion, and I know you do, I can not recommend any bubble jet from Lexmark. I have heard nothing but bad news about them. We got a "free" one with a Mac at work, and I threw it in the trash within a day. HP's $50 printer put this thing to shame. One problems is driver support, which is a rather major issue.

HP ink cartridges use a chip technology to sense when they are low on ink and advise the user to make a change. But the suit claims those chips also shut down the cartridges at a predetermined date regardless of whether they are empty.

So HP ink has a shelf life? It would be interesting to contact a number of retail locations and see what they say. I only buy HP printers, and I have never had a case like this.

At first glance, it appears that The SCO Group's case against IBM for Linux/Unix intellectual property right violations is all but over, after the judge said Tuesday that the court hasn't seen any hard evidence to support SCO's claims.

"It is astonishing that SCO has not offered any competent evidence to create a disputed fact regarding whether IBM has infringed SCO's alleged copyrights through IBM's Linux activities."

Those are pretty strong words from the judge.

Guest submission by Max Hostetler

You used to be able to check your Hotmail account via Entourage or Outlook. Well now to do the same thing, Microsoft is requiring you to have the Hotmail subscription which is $20 a year. It gives you increased e-mail storage and some other features along with remote checking, but I don’t want to pay that. Now I can’t even type e-mails and send them via Outlook, they’ve totally screwed me. WHAT THE CRAP? Now I have a hotmail account I’ll probably never use, who the hell uses webmail anyway?

Ken interjects:

I use webmail a lot. I use GMail and my own Meancode webmail when I am not sitting at my own computer. I know some people who live on webmail only, I could never do that myself.

I once had a Hotmail account too, a while ago. I didn't login to the account regularly enough, so they deleted it. Yahoo did the exact same thing. GMail has done the right thing in allowing you have access to their POP server for FREE. That 1 GB of storage doesn't hurt either.

I constantly hear about problems from people who use Hotmail. It usually goes like this "I can never receive emails from the (fill in blank) mailing list."

But I was not aware of not being able to check your email in Entourage or Outlook. I am sort of surprised too, since Microsoft is competing with so many businesses, not just Google.

By the way, if you need any more reasons, you should check out the Hotmail Sucks Web site.

Here is something for your valentine this year.

Thanks to Ian for the link.

Amazon.com on Wednesday launched a flat-fee shipping program, in a move to offer an alternative to its minimum purchase requirement for low-cost delivery.

You can read the introductory letter from Jeff Bezos himself.

So what is this Amazon Prime? Free 2 day shipping and $4 overnight shipping. You can share this benefit with up to 4 family members. I will admit that I order a lot from Amazon, but I am not in such a hurry that I cannot wait for the free shipping I already elect to use.

I wonder if this program will work. It will be interesting to see how many people buy into it.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A top FBI official said Thursday the bureau may have to scrap a computer program that so far has cost $170 million and was intended to be an important tool in fighting terrorism.

Bureau officials told a news briefing that they expect to find that after four years in development their much-touted Virtual Case File system does not work. But they said a suitable replacement is commercially available.

You just know this 3rd party software is gonna come in costing somewhere in the range of $170 million.

Guest submission by Rob Griffiths (Webmaster of Mac OS X Hints, and author of Mac OS X Power Hound). He sent me a rough draft of this last night, and it is too funny, and too true! Feel free to copy, as long as author attribution and site link remain intact. Posted with permission by the author.

Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking about Mac OS X (one of my favorite subjects) at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco (thanks to everyone who came to my sessions!). Since I live in Portland, Oregon, I had to pack for a plane trip to the 'big city.' That's when the fun began...

Traveling has become a much more complex endeavor than it used to be. A decade ago, packing for a three-day business trip would require nothing more than insuring that you had sufficient clothes in your bag, the required personal care items, and perhaps your address book and maybe even a calculator. But that was about it.

Packing today, especially if you're giving a presentation, is a whole different ballgame...

If you have a Staples close, get there soon! They have a deal on a 100 pack of HP CD-R (52x) for $14.95, and a even better deal on Sony 8x 50 pack DVD-/+R for $19.95. You can get a 25 pack of Tenon 8x DVD-/+R for $14.95, but heck, get double that for a mere $5 more!

These deals are good January 9 - 15, 2005.

Thanks to Stephanie for the heads up on the deals.

Just see how close you can get at no loss in detail! Tons of stuff to find too!

While chatting with Neil yesterday, he pointed me to this Creative Commies T-Shirt web page. I just had to buy a shirt, its PayPal'able to boot. Not only are they cool, but they’re a bargain too - $5 ($6 if you need 2XL or 3XL), plus $5 for shipping anywhere in the world.

If you’ve been reading BoingBoing lately, you’ll know what it’s about, but basically Bill Gates, in an interview with CNet News.com (great Apple quotes in this interview, btw), described people who are against intellectual property and over-strict copyright legislation as ‘communists’ (Dan Gillmor has some good analysis of this). So, naturally, there are various desktop wallpapers and buttons for us ‘creative commies’, and now, t-shirts.

I don't think calling ourselves "commies" is a good thing for the open source movement, but you gotta admit that it is a good play on the Creative Commons name. I do love the copyleft logo, and now have that as my desktop wallpaper.

Thanks to Neil for sharing this bit of geekery.

The biggest mistake you can make as a developer is to not listen to what your customers want.

However, the second biggest mistake you can make is to give your customers everything they ask for.

Thanks to my bro Max for sending this link.

I am sure you have heard of Hot or Not, or Rate My Implants, or Rate My Pets, or even Rate My Poo, but what about Rate My Network Diagram? Now this is total geekery.

When Adobe speaks about camera raw problems, people listen. And the software giant spoke loudly on Monday when it released an update to the free Camera Raw plug-in for Photoshop CS. The plug-in update adds support for a new Adobe-proposed file format for digital negatives—a clever marketing name the company wants to use to replace the less-friendly camera raw.

Source MacJournals.com

From what I have read, this is great. But why, may I ask, was camera raw released when there is some technology out there (DNF) that surpasses it. I know camera raw came first and DNF is a big improvement, but these technologies don't just sprout over night. My guess is DNF has been in the works for some time now.

All I have to say is this: I hope this does not become another splintered "standard" (which has already happened) that only part of the market adopts. I hope DNG takes off like wildfire, or Firewire, for that matter.

On a related note, MDJ is a great publication that you might want to check out.

Researchers investigating how people would react to not having Internet access got off to a rough start. "It was incredibly difficult to recruit participants as people weren't willing to be without the Internet for two weeks," said Wenda Harris Millard, chief sales officer of Yahoo, and a sponsor of the study. Half of the participants said they could not go without the Internet for more than two weeks, while others found it more difficult than expected, and in some cases impossible, the researchers reported.

Source: CBS MarketWatch via MacMinute

I don't think I would have a mail server left or a host that would like me if I went two weeks without checking my spam-mail!

I think I would go insane with no Net access. Would you?

Open-source browsers Mozilla and Firefox have won over a significant number of defectors from Microsoft's Internet Explorer in the past nine months, Web site metrics suggest...

Source: C|Net News.com

Firefox rules and Internet Explorer drools!

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I am sure the statistics that are taken more accurately reflect the Windows using world (as I am pretty sure Safari outweighs that of Moz based browsers on the Mac). And quite frankly I am pleased with those percentages (read the linked article). I really hope more people start using Firefox over Internet Exploder.

I have converted WinIE using people to Firefox, and you can too! Fight the good fight people, yea, or something like that.

The number of broadband Internet subscribers in the U.S. has tripled since 2001, according to a new report from the Federal Communications Commission. Cable is the preferred broadband medium, with 75 percent of the market, compared to DSL with 15 percent...

Source: News Factor

You know what this means don't you? Now even more people can marvel and curse at your poor excuse for Flash programming skills as they fall asleep watching that pre-loader animation loop and loop and loop...

This is very wonderful news for Web Monkeys everywhere. Having to create sites that are at least usable on a dial-up connection is no fun.

The makers of TiVo and ReplayTV digital video recorders have agreed to limit how long consumers can keep pay-for-view movies stored on future versions of the VCR-like devices.

The new technology also will allow Hollywood movie studios and broadcasters to regulate how often movies purchased through pay-for-view services can be watched. Digital video recorders that recognize these new copy restrictions will begin appearing in the spring of 2005. But it could be years before entertainment companies begin to take advantage of the technology, according to ReplayTV President Bernie Sepaniak...

Source MercuryNews.com Via: /.

Is this fair, or erosion of more fair-use rights?

The creators of the latest versions of the MyDoom email worm have embedded a secret message inside their code, asking for a job in the anti-virus industry, researchers at Sophos have discovered...

Source: Sophos.com

Times must be getting tough for computer virus writers, heh.

Looking for a recipe for dissension? Comcast has it. Take two cable networks designed for technology enthusiasts with very different bents -- newbie G4 for young gamers and veteran TechTV for computer geeks of all ages -- and merge them. Fire the staff of TechTV, the network you bought, and be sure to drop the show that has some of the most fervent fans and a host with a cult following. For good measure, take the network's widely linked archives offline for weeks... Ken Edwards, a 26-year-old database specialist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, has been watching since ZDTV launched. He claims to own every current game console but only watched one show on the old G4. He tracks some of the backlash to the cancellation of Call for Help and the uncertainty over Laporte's future. Edwards and others are bemused but pleased that Laporte's show has been picked up by G4techTV Canada and may eventually reach the United States through syndication...

And yet another entry in the Annals of Greed... Paul Graham wrote his "Plan for Spam" advocating the use of Bayesian filters in August, 2002. In December, 2002, Network Associates applied for a broad-based patent on anti-spam technologies including, what a coincidence, Bayesian filters. The pathetic USPTO just approved that patent. No word yet on how NAI will apply their patent, but it could impact every spam program out there including numerous free open source programs like SpamBayes and Spam Assassin. Symantec and Postini also have patents on anti-spam techniques. Read the discussion on Slashdot.

At the core of Adobe's Creative Suite strategy is the unity, integration, and simultaneous release of its major design applications. Photoshop CS (version 8) is a broad and deep upgrade to the company's anchor image editor. Despite its low-key presentation -- its interface is almost the same as version 7's -- it has amazing new tools for Photoshop's traditional users. New features, subtly sprinkled throughout the program, dramatically enhance those users' capabilities and control over their images. Photographers, artists, graphic designers, Web designers, and video specialists will see significant improvements in their images and in the imaging process, but there's no burdensome learning curve....

Photoshop CS is an awesome upgrade for every type of Photoshop user. Its slick, user-friendly new features make a huge difference in both productivity and image quality. This version is too good to pass up.

Today is the day cellphone number portability goes into effect. You can take your current cellphone number with you if you transfer to a new service provider. You may even be able to add your traditional landline phone number to a wireless plan. Before you make the switch, there are a few things you need to do first. Watch today's show to learn all about cellphone number portability. Most carriers will not charge you to switch your number to their service. However, some carriers will charge a nominal monthly fee to cover the costs of enabling number portability, whether you switch your number or not.

Measure would outlaw most unsolicited e-mail; Senate approval is expected. The House voted overwhelmingly Saturday for a bill to outlaw most Internet spam and create a "do not spam" registry for those who do not wish to receive unsolicited junk e-mail. Online marketers who flood e-mail in boxes with pornography and get-rich-quick schemes would face multimillion dollar fines and jail time under the measure. It passed by a vote of 392-5 at dawn Saturday, following an all-night session of the House that was largely devoted to a separate Medicare bill. The Senate unanimously passed a similar anti-spam bill last month, but it must assent to the House changes before the measure can become law. The Senate is expected to do so in the coming days. Anti-spam bills have died in Congress for six years while unsolicited commercial e-mail has grown from a nuisance to a plague that threatens to derail the Internet's most popular means of communication. .... It would outlaw spammers' attempts to cover their tracks by requiring marketers to identify themselves clearly and avoid misleading subject lines or return addresses. Pornographic messages would have to be clearly labeled as such to allow users to more easily filter them out. Violators would face millions of dollars in fines and up to five years in jail. The bill would not allow individuals to sue spammers.

The agency that oversees Internet domain names has asked VeriSign to voluntarily suspend a new service that redirects Web surfers to its own site when they seek to access unassigned Web addresses, rather than return an error message.

As the latest Microsoft Windows infection spread across the Internet last week, knocking out thousands of PCs in homes and businesses, Macintosh users did what they usually do during a computer virus outbreak -- they continued working.

But more than two years after its introduction, not a single Mac OS X-specific virus has yet appeared.

While Windows also has a built-in firewall, by default it has been turned off. In the wake of the Blaster worm, Microsoft said last week that new versions of Windows XP will ship with the firewall active by default.

Take the Blaster worm, for example. Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., learned of the hole on June 27 and issued a patch to fix it on July 17. Millions of Windows systems were vulnerable on Aug. 12 only because their owners failed to download and install the patch. Though Microsoft frequently is berated for releasing vulnerable software, the reality is that 95 percent of malware attacks take place after a corrective patch becomes available.

Rob Enderle, president of the Enderle Group, a Silicon Valley technology research firm, said the new Mac OS -- based on Unix -- is tougher for malicious hackers to get into because the code is not as generic as the Windows code. And it's probably not worth the hacker's time and energy, given the smaller number of computer users who use a Mac.

I have for 2 or so years now used Tera-Byte for my web hosting. And I am very pleased with them. Their service is much more than I expected from a web hosting company. The price for the features is unbelievable. I get their 4U plan because I can pay monthly, but mainly because I get shell access. There are not many hosting companies that give shell access. It sure is nice when I want to ssh into the server do so something. Sometimes I want to edit a .htaccess or create a .htpasswd file. Or open up and edit a document on the server. This proves to be very handy indeed. So why am I looking for a new web host?

we always want more than we currently have. With MT you can use a perl module called Image::Magick which will resize files and make thumbnails for you. Tera-Byte tells me that I would have to upgrade my account to a dedicated server as this takes too much processing power to do. I would also like subdomains and Tera-Byte does not provide this. I am having a hell of a time finding a hosting company that can beat the price and features I have from Tera-Byte though.

So if you have a suggestion, please post it. If you have used the service before tell me why you like it. The only one I have found so far that I would consider switching to is Feature Price. I could host both my domains (both of them, and still host 2 more) there for $17 a month. They have the perl modules I want to use, and they support subdomains. They have no shell access though. Has anyone used Feature Price? my friend Brian uses Feature Price and he is fairly satisfied with it. I just got off the phone with Feature Price and they are going to offer shell access soon, although he could not give me a price. Well any other suggestions?