WriteLarge.com

Created this in about 30 minutes in iMovie HD. Viva la Flip. Music Source

Gaia likes my work computer because it doesn't have any "poop" in it. This is because I explained to her that my desktop at home -- my Ubuntu machine -- took a poop last week and won't work anymore. She's very disappointed at the lack of Tux Paint in her life.
So, we sat down at the "Pooputer" as we're calling it now, and managed to chisel 25 minutes of tux-paint out of it before the poop kicked in and pooped the pooputer to poopington. She was pleased and the results were, as always, tuxpaintriffic.
I like my work computer because it was paid for by someone other than me. I think, in the future, I'm going to try to negotiate a private laptop into all my employment arrangements.
Sure, the world is moving away from platform/hardware based document processing/storage, but that is exactly the justification for including a laptop in my work requirements. I don't need to be tied to just the office intranet anymore. I work everywhere. Even when I'm not at work.
The fact is, when I'm away from the office, I shouldn't use the computer that has poop in it. Everybody, but especially my office IS people, should appreciate that.

What I love about this photo taken by our friend John December is that it shows me using one of the most egregious security flaws in a modern software product to get Bucketworks' Ustream password out of Firefox.
If you let Firefox manage your passwords on a public computer you are exposing your passwords to anyone who comes along and knows to look.
Worse, there have been bugs that expose those passwords to the entire internet.

Use Firefox's master password feature to slap a small bandaid on this problem.

A follow up to the previous post: Netflix sent me a form letter telling me that I'm probably not going to get a response. Nice. I'm not going to bother to post it, because it's just a crappy canned form letter telling me to call their assy support service.

It suddenly occurred to me that I could try running IE as "Administrator" might give the netflix Drm component installer the ability to stick it's dcik in my PC and come up juicy. Bing Bang, boom. Vista's all sexed up and can play videos again. ANd might be pregnant. You never know.

DRM does nothing to prevent piracy and hassles the rest of us. I do believe that content creators deserve to be paid for their work, however, I don't think the front line consumer should have to pay for the brunt of it. This is a debate for another day. I'll just say this.

It was me, and not any sort of caring on the part of netflix, that has restored my ability to stream netflix movies on demand on my windows pc.

Thanks for nothin, Netflix.

Dear Friendly Folks at Netflix.

I'm having nothing but trouble with your view on demand services. I have a Windows Vista laptop with all the latest patches and service packs but it will not play your on demand videos. The system continually tells me there are problems with the DRM. I follow the instructions to reset the DRM, but I they never seem to clear up the problem.

Please consider abandoning the hostile DRM wrappers that make your service non-functional. Not only do they make it hard for legitimate, long-time customers such as myself to enjoy your service, they actively lock your product and service into a single delivery mechanism, which, I'm sure you understand, limits your firms abilities to respond to changing marketing conditions.

I understand that there are market pressures that prevent your firm from operating without DRM systems in place, but that doesn't mean your firm should only provide service to a single class of PC users. In that regard, I support expanding your streaming service to other set-top-boxes like the Playstation 3. I would consider even spending a small increase in my subscription fee for the ability to stream netflix movies to the PS3.

One thing, however, I do not support, is the addition of a premium charge for blue-ray disks. I will not pay an additional fee to include blue-ray disks in my netflix cue. Please do not enact one, as it will merely curtail my enjoyment of the blue-ray platform.

Thank you very much for your time, consideration, and timely response,

Gabe Wollenburg
Netflix consumer since March, 2004.

PS. Please note that a copy of this message has been posted on my blog at writelarge.com/openlettertonetflix

Warning: Here's a first-world gripe.
Come Monday Morning, the CenturyTel DSL we enjoy at our Lakehouse slowed down to become extra craptastic.

Here are the pings to Google:
PING google.com (72.14.207.99): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=0 ttl=242 time=2268.945 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=1 ttl=242 time=2238.784 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=2 ttl=242 time=2208.223 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=3 ttl=242 time=2177.891 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=4 ttl=242 time=2150.244 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=5 ttl=242 time=2120.107 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=6 ttl=242 time=2089.441 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=7 ttl=242 time=2059.193 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=8 ttl=242 time=2028.967 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.207.99: icmp_seq=9 ttl=242 time=1998.596 ms
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1998.596/2134.039/2268.945/86.041 ms

And, just to be sure it wasn't trouble between the lappy and the gateway, here's a ping to the gateway:

PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=2.338 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=2.426 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=2.486 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=22.380 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=1.488 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=38.085 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=1.358 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=2.404 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=5.696 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=2.264 ms
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.358/8.092/38.085/11.668 ms


I don't honestly expect any of you to find this interesting or even informational. I'm mostly posting this to keep track of for testing next time I'm up here. Sure, I could just put a text file on a thumbdrive, but I've got the internet to do my thinking for me, Darn it!

Here's a classic example of a misguided dialog box. It's too much information in a square box presented in a series of convoluted noun-phrases.

Granted, it's a "More details" dialog, so you have to cut it some slack for giving more details. However, instead of giving useful details, this dialog just spits out a bunch of stuff in a huge block of text that pretty much stupidly covers four probable scenarios without giving any meaningful insight.

I suggest, instead, the "details" option offer just that: more details. What this dialog offers isn't more details, it's more words.

I came across it using a Hardy Heron live cd checking on a what I believe is a hard-disk failure that took an otherwise serviceable WinXP laptop down. I wrote this post using the same liveCD. Nice work, Ubuntu guys. The Heron is a great little linux. Even on a borked Lappy.

My friend Ryanne from The Watertown Daily Times.

My employer bought me a MacBook, and I really like it. At first I felt weird using a work laptop as my primary machine. I'm over that now. Now I'm just annoyed that it doesn't make financial sense to invest in it. And that I can't in good conscious put one of them sweet, sweet Web 414 stickers on it.
But, I have to say, not that any of you care, but I have to say, I'm most happy with the MacBook. It's a fine, fine little laptop. I'm not sure why you'd buy anything else. Here's a Heathercoresque list of things I think about it.
1. I Love the chicklet keys. They feel good to type on.
2. I miss the reverse delete key. [Function] + [Delete] is just not the same.
3. I know the MagSafe adapter takes it's share of flack, but with a 2-year-old running around the tables, the magnetic adapter has paid off several times.
4. Get more memory. I did, but I didn't get enough. I should have got more.
5. 10.5 is better than 10.4. By 0.1, and a little bit more.
6. The way 10.5 handles WIFI is both satisfying and disturbing. I like it when I get access to a wifi that has the same password as one I already know. I don't like that my computer hands out passwords it knows to any ol' wifi thinger it comes across. Anybody know more about this?
7. I _hate_ the blue screen PC icon. I'm OSbidexterous.
8. I forgot what eight was for.
9. OSX should just come with Quicksilver. Quicksilver is necessary for OSX to actually work. If you disagree, you haven't tried it. If you still disagree, you haven't tried it -right-.
10. The multi-touch trackpad is more useful than you know. Two-finger tap as right click is addictive as hell, but Two-finger scroll beats the hell out of any other mouse gesture. However, the pinch-zoom is lame.