t 'n t luoma

Is there some sort of a bonus system at CNet for writers who can make inflammatory statements? Do they get paid extra based on the number of page views each article generates? Because if that’s true then we can understand that they are just taking a page out of the tool’s box of hackneyed journalism tips for generating ad revenue.

Here’s the latest round of lies, damned lies, and CNet “Reporting” (with apologies to actual reporters for lumping them in with this sort of crap).

Continue reading "CNet's Exaggerations May Kill Kittens" »

Posted by at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My recent complaint against the Nike+ Sport Armband (you know, the one that doesn’t let you see the screen?) led me to checkout other options.

Even worse, I actually used the thing and found it very uncomfortable. My biceps are not by any stretch of the imagination “huge” but the “One Size Fits All” Nike+ Sport Armband is decidedly too small to wear comfortably. It has a Velcro connector and I was constantly thinking it was going to come off. With about 1" more of fabric they could have made it much more human-being compatible.

My search led me to the Sports Sleeve for iPod nano by Belkin. Its description reads:

Now you can power and play your iPod nano on the go.

Which made it sound like the dock port was accessible even when the Nano was in the case. However, since this was my third armband, I wanted to be sure. I emailed their support, who said that yes indeed, it was.

So I ordered one.

Or at least I tried.

Continue reading "A Better Nike + iPod Armband" »

Posted by at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After reading the DaringFireball Linked List, specifically Multiplayer Game of the Year (more specifically Multiplayer Game of the Year (full post)) and thought to myself, “Ok, time to get off your duff and do something.”

This summer has been awful for exercise. It’s been horribly hot and I haven’t had any racquetball partners.

But the fall is fast approaching, so I finally broke down and bought the necessary add-ons: a Nike + iPod Sport Kit, and a Nike+ Sport Armband (Black/Red), and a Sportsuit Sensor+ for iPod nano so I could use the Sport Kit with any sneakers, not just the $100 pair that Nike wants to sell me.

I already regret buying the armband. It is incredibly poorly designed.

Why? Well look here at one of the main 3 pages for the iPod Nike: “Run”

What do you notice? How about the fact that the iPod Nano screen, when hooked to the Nike+iPod sensor, provides all sorts of visual (as in “see them with your own two eyes”) bits of information.

You might think that the armband designed by Nike, which is, you may notice, one of the two brand names mentioned in the name “Nike+iPod” would be savvy enough, perhaps, let you see that visual information?

You would be wrong with a capital W because the Nike armband completely covers the screen.

Well done there, design team. Why didn’t you just make this Nike+iPod kit for the iPod Shuffle if you’re NOT GOING TO LET ME SEE THE SCREEN. Argh.

That’s not all the G-in-Genius going on here.

On page 16 of the Nike + iPod User Guide (4.2MB PDF) (which is also printed with the kit) you will read: “Answers to frequently asked questions about Nike + iPod: Go to www.apple.com/ipod/nike/faq.html.”

Notice that I didn’t make that a hotlink? Yeah, you know why? Because the page doesn’t exist. Nice. You don’t get a 404 page, you get redirected to http://www.apple.com/ipod/nike/.

Where you would notice, again, the information from the Nike+iPod sensor shown on the iPod screen.

(And yeah, if you look closely you’ll also notice someone using the armband and you can’t see the screen, but I had just assumed it was dimmed.)

• Nike + iPod Frequently Asked Questions (Technical)
• iTunes Music Store: Nike Sport Music Frequently Asked Questions
• Apple - Support - Nike + iPod Sport Kit - Service - Service FAQ

So there ya go. Now I need to find a new armband that will work with the Nike + iPod senor and show me the diggity dang screen.

Posted by at 8:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So before we left to go over to my sister’s I had to hop online to check something. I don’t remember what, it’s really inconsequential.

“Hopping online” at our house is done through the Airport Extreme’s built-in 56K modem. That was the main reason that I bought this model. We have no other options out here in the boonies except for dialup, but I didn’t want to lose the convenience of WiFi.

Continue reading "Airport Extreme Connection" »

Posted by at 2:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

PalmAddicts recently invited me to be an Associate Writer (aka blogger :-) for their website. No pay, but occasionally a piece of software to review.

I need to start linking to some of my posts over there, because it’s very hard to search. This is my most recent article, and the one that I’m most pleased with so far:

Mac Users: Sync to Windows in Virtual PC using Bluetooth.

Posted by at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My Mac knows that when I press the Volume Up button while the computer is muted, it means that I want to !&*^*&!-ing UNMUTE the computer.

My PC, on the other hand, seems to think I’d like to spend several minutes checking the connection with the speakers, checking the Control Panel settings, the settings in Windows Media Player, the headset, etc.

In what world is it logical that when I’ve press Volume Up roughly 6,278 times should the computer think “Yeah, he wants the volume maxed out, but muted.”

The fact that it may be supercalifragilistically stupid of me not to press the Mute/Unmute button is utterly and completely beside the point. The computer is supposed to make my life easier. It should not require me to think about how it works, it ought to anticipate what I would want and how I would work.

Windows XP doesn’t do that. Mac OS X does.

Is it a little thing? Of course. But add it together with all the other little things and it makes a big difference.

Posted by at 3:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I provide tech support for nearly everyone I know (and 99% of the time I’m happy to do it).

I can’t count the number of people I’ve helped decide what computer to buy. I don’t have any idea how many people have asked me “just one question” about their computer. I worked at the computer labs in both college and seminary, and, not to be immodest, but I was good at it.

Continue reading "Technician, Heal Thyself" »

Posted by at 1:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here’s another little difference which makes Mac OS X better than Windows XP. Take a look at these two context menus. The first is what I get when I right click on my iPod d Shuffle (named, uncreatively, “Shuffle”) but it would be the same for every removable drive.

Continue reading "Removable Media Context Menus in Windows XP vs Mac OS X" »

Posted by at 12:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As usual, lots of good post-game analysis by DaringFireball regarding the 2005-10-12 announcements by SteveCo regarding new iPods, iMacs, and iTunes.

$1.99 for each TV show, in only 320×240 resolution, doesn’t seem like a good deal to me. I already get these shows with my cable TV; paying for them again in a crummy low-res format strikes me as a bad deal ’ like if you had to pay for songs you already own on CD. Of course, I think ringtones sound like a bad deal, too, but people buy billions of them.

“Good deal” is a relative term, of course. “Oh crap! The TiVo didn’t record Lost!!” leaves you with a few options:

1. Skip the episode and rely on next week’s “Previously on ‘Lost’” to catch you up on what was important. Cost: free. Time needed: 0. Satisfaction level: 0
2. Try and get the episode on some sort of file-sharing network. Yeah, hard to believe, but people actually do this. Cost: free. Time needed: Unknown. Satisfaction level: 0 (if you can’t find it) to 100 (if you can find it and have the time and bandwidth to download it) to 0 (if you find yourself at the business end of an investigation by the MPAA)
3. As of Wednesday, spend $2 to download a copy of it.

No one is going to buy a season of Lost at $2 an episode. They would have to be a High Priest of Stupid. Last season there were twenty-four episodes of Lost. That’s $48. You could buy Lost: Season 1 on DVD for $38. No one is going to cancel their cable/satelite subscription for this.

But to catch this week’s episode that you missed: $2 is a deal. Go to iTunes, click the show you want, “set it and forget it”

I’m totally with you on the ringtones thing. What are people thinking?!?!

On the other hand, I can see a lot of people buying music videos. After all, there’s nowhere to see those on television anymore. If only there were some sort of TV station that might be devoted to playing music videos. Now that might be something.

(No, I’m kidding, I can’t imagine anyone buying music videos either, but then again I’m nearing the edge of marketing usefulness for such things. Sure, soon I’ll be able to run for president, but I also have to check that next age-group box...)

One thing I'm very curious about: How do you get your own video onto the iPod, and can you put better quality on there? I realize that the screen dimensions are set, but if I have a higher resolution video already on my computer, do I have to change it to match the specs of the iPod or can it “Just Work” somehow?

Posted by at 12:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SoftPerfect Network Scanner - 2.5 describes itself as a "free multithreaded IP/SNMP/NetBIOS scanner."

What that means is that it will look on your local network for computers, tell you their names (NetBIOS), their MAC address, their IP, and what (if anything) they are sharing (folders, printers, etc).

Free, Windows only.

Anyone know of a similar Mac program? I use WakeOnLAN to get some of this (name, IP, MAC) but it doesn't tell met about shared folders/printers.

Posted by at 2:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here’s a question for the technically minded in the audience: Why do so many electronics use red and green as a indicator colors?

Among adult males, there is a high level of red/green colorblindness, and yet I find a number of electronics (recently the iPod shuffle and Airport Extreme & Express) which use red and green to indicate various states.

Generally red indicates a problem and green indicates “all clear” which is all well and good... if you can tell them apart.

I very often can’t, or find myself guessing (red seems brighter than green, so if I have seen the indicator light in both stages, I can often “fake it”).

I’m assuming that there’s a reason why these colors have been chosen (it’s the optimist in me!) despite the problem of color-blindness.

So, to any who might know, why red/green rather than, say yellow/blue or some other color combination?

Posted by at 4:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

CNet is reporting on some new alarm clocks.

One of them measures how deeply asleep you are, and gives an appropriate alarm depending on the level of sleep (i.e. light sleep might equal a chirp, whereas a heavy sleep might require a fire engine).

As a chronic oversleeper who has been known to turn off alarm clocks without even waking up, this news interests me.

The second model is a clock with wheels that will roll away out of reach before you can hit the snooze button again. Far too easily thwarted by positioning it parallel to your bed, but a creative idea nonetheless.

Next thing you know they'll have the "Tim's Mom Alarm Clock" which will ring one of those amazingly piercing red counter-top bells (most often seen next to a sign "Ring bell for attendant"), with a backup plan of a Dixie cup full of cold water.

Hrm. I couldn't find a picture of the kind of bell I'm talking about. Searching for images online is still fairly limited.

Posted by at 3:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Amazing as it seems, almost a year after I moved to Mac, Windows XP is still giving me problems.

This time it was via VirtualPC. I wanted to tweak XP's performance in VirtualPC, which is something like saying "I wanted to pimp out my Pinto for the big car show" but nonetheless... my plan was to follow the "safe" suggestions and turn off all the services listed here. But when I tried, I received a very annoying alert:

Continue reading "Adventures in geekery chapter 7,821" »

Posted by at 1:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As you may recall, I've been trying to find a good way to have Act and Mac work together.

Unfortunately my testing has resulted in one conclusion:

There is no replacement for ACT! on the Mac. But I have found a new way to make this work better.

Continue reading "ACT Wireless HotSync" »

Posted by at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

have I mentioned that my birthday is in less than a month?

If anyone is looking for gift ideas, Dell has a suggestion.

Just in case anyone was having trouble deciding what to get me.

:-)

Posted by at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Print to an unsupported USB printer on Airport Extreme. This is basically a bookmark for me for the next time I need to find it.

This is one of the reasons it's so cool that Apple uses Unix as its base - by using other free tools available online, the Airport Extreme base unit goes from having a relatively small list of officially supported printers to having support even for my little crappy HP deskjet 632c.

Posted by at 1:27 PM | Permalink

Hundreds of security holes later, after dozens of worms that have come as close to crippling the Internet as any terrorist attack, not before hundreds of spyware programs invaded the home computers of most users, Microsoft has finally announced the release version of Service Patch 2 for Windows XP.

The rest of the world calls these "bug fixes".

Anyone want to guess how long it will take to find the next critical security hole (or find one that was overlooked)? I give it 2 weeks, 3 at the most.

Posted by at 2:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I don't know whether to laugh or cry, because as funny as this is, I can see it happening: ACLU Pizza (requires Flash).

Posted by at 9:18 AM | Permalink

Why Windows is a security nightmare. Good read. Note the part that after a clean install he didn't even have a chance to get his system patched before worms and messenger spam came in.

What I especially love about Windows Update is that it forces me to accept 'critical updates' for programs that I don't use and didn't want (i.e. Outlook Express) but the fact that they are installed by default means that I have no choice but to install them or Google for cryptic ways of uninstalling them.

I can't even imagine trying to use Windows Update on a clean install over a dialup modem. It's insane. And I have a CD with Windows XP SP1 on it, which means that I'm already saving a lot of download time.

Posted by at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Wireless broadband may get more spectrum (via Cnet), Wi-Fi on Steroids Heads for U.S. (via Wired).

Long story short: wireless broadband is being tested for remote areas.

We live in a remote area.

Satellite internet is awful. How bad? I cancelled DirecWay to go back to dialup. That bad.

Please hurry. I’m connecting at 21.6 kbps through my phone line... on good days.

Posted by at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

CNet reports that there is growing concern over browser security.

What is truly sad is to realize how many (not all but I would say 99%) of these exploits require Internet Explorer.

Tired of having your browser unlock the door to your computer? Have you considered Opera? Never heard of Opera? Try 30 Days to Becoming an Opera Lover.

Posted by at 2:49 PM | Permalink

CNet reports that Microsoft is considering an update of Windows XP called "XP Reloaded."

“All of a sudden we realized we had no way to suck more money out of your pockets for a couple of years,” said a made-up Microsoft spokesperson, speaking on condition of not being real. “And all of a sudden there was this look on everyone’s face. So we said, ‘Heck, we might as well try it and see if anyone is dumb enough to pay for it.’ It worked for Windows98.”

The news comes as a surprise to anyone who actually thought Microsoft wait until Longhorn comes out to try and stick it to users’ wallets. Longhorn is estimated to come out in late 2005 or 2006 according to estimates, but no one at Microsoft is apparently dumb enough to make any predictions.

“Two reasons,” said the same imaginary spokesperson, “the first is that none of us are dumb enough to try and set a deadline when we work for a company that consistenly fails to meet them. Second, Bill warned us that if anyone leaked the internal schedule he’d send [Microsoft CEO Steve] Ballmer into our bedrooms late at night.”

Good news for Microsoft is that they hope to release Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac sometime in the calendar year 2004. “Yeah we’re kinda surprised that Apple hasn’t died yet, but as long as we can keep folks to fork over more than $300 for Office, we’re happy to have them as crippled competition.”

When asked how Office 2004 for Mac could have so many cool features not available for Windows, our source replied, “Well, you know, we do have a few creative people here, and we’re sort of at a loss as to what to do with them, so we put them over on the Mac division and that seems to make them happy. Don’t worry, we’ll be sure to introduce some feature in the next release of Office for Windows that will be incompatible with Office for Mac. We’re just not sure what that will be yet.”

Posted by at 6:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

There are more than 80 operating systems out there (Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc) but there are 0 (none, zilch) dual-boot machines (that is, machines which can boot to Windows and one of those other operating systems).

Ever wonder why? Yes or no, you ought to read He Who Controls the Bootloader.

Posted by at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Microsoft UK’s chief security officer (who is apparently trying to get a spot in the management of Dilbert's company) says Internet Explorer is now just about the most secure browser available, says Microsoft - because so many security holes have been filled.

Now, let me ask you this:

Say that you live in a neighborhood with 3 houses.

1 of those houses has been broken into 1574 times.

The other two have been broken into about 10 times, and 8 of those 10 times the first house was also broken into.

Whose house is most secure? Where would you leave your valuables overnight? Would you leave them with the guy who says, “Yeah, I’ve been broken into 574 times before, but now I have figured out all the ways that people can break in, and I have fixed them all.”

Would you trust him?

Or would you think, “Gee, for the past several years people have consistently found new ways to break in, and it seems unlikely that you have found them all... whereas these two groups over here have been pretty steady with regard to security, so I’m going to trust them.”

Oh, and let’s not forget that Microsoft fixed one security hole by removing functionality. This came after they had originally suggested that users should not click on links.

These people are jokes. I wonder if they realize how foolish they seem when they say these things.

Posted by at 2:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

You gotta hand it to Microsoft.... they are innovative when it comes to how you ought to protect yourself.

For example, in a recent Microsoft bulletin describing yet another security flaw in Internet Explorer, here is their first suggestion in the category “Things that you can do to help protect yourself from malicious hyperlinks:”

The most effective step that you can take to help protect yourself from malicious hyperlinks is not to click them. Rather, type the URL of your intended destination in the address bar yourself. By manually typing the URL in the address bar, you can verify the information that Internet Explorer uses to access the destination Web site. To do so, type the URL in the Address bar, and then press ENTER.

Why of course! That’s exactly what you ought to do! Nevermind those pesky hyperlinks, type everything in yourself! (Anyone else think that perhaps Microsoft ought to spend more time fixing bugs and less time writing inane security bulletins?)

Here’s an easier solution: Don’t use Microsoft Internet Explorer! It has more holes than a swiss cheese factory! I would suggest either Opera or even Firebird would be a better option than Internet Explorer.

(Hat tip to C|Net’s story on this bug.)

Posted by at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I don’t remember where I came across this, an announcement of a hard drive offering 1 terabyte capacity for the price of $1,199.00 USD. Expected shipping date is February 2004.

Continue reading "Longhorn/Whistler minimum hard drive space requirement" »

Posted by at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

A yes, the wonders of Microsoft’s integrated browser (Internet Explorer). You know, other than being able to shut out other browsers from your Operating System and being able to strong-arm computer makers such as Dell into putting your browser on the desktop and no one else, the other really nice advantage to building your browser right into the OS is that you can compromise the security of the entire system even if people choose not to use Internet Explorer..

That’s right folks, even Microsoft will tell you that the latest Microsoft bug announced puts you at risk even if you don’t use Internet Explorer. Here’s the exact quote:

A number of security issues have been identified in Microsoft Internet Explorer that could allow an attacker to compromise a Microsoft Windows-based system and then take a variety of actions. For example, an attacker could run programs on your computer when you are viewing a Web page. This vulnerability affects all computers that have Internet Explorer installed. (You do not have to be using Internet Explorer as your Web browser to be affected by this issue.) You should help protect your computer by installing this update from Microsoft.

Wow, how fun. So Microsoft forces you to have their browser installed (it is difficult if not impossible to remove it completely) and their browser compromises the security of your system! Great! Thanks again Microsoft!

Add to the mix that they are planning to integrate Internet Explorer and Windows even further in future releases of Windows, and the future just looks very rosy for Windows users.

(Personally, I hope to be Windows Free by the end of 2003 and onto FreeBSD.)

Posted by at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

At least, they want the world to be fair to them.... on their terms.

It was almost laughable to read the Wired.com article on Microsoft's reaction to Asia going Linux and hear someone who actually works at Microsoft say that the market should decide who comes out on top.

This would be the same Microsoft which was found guilty of anti-trust practices that directly prevented the "free market" from deciding what Operating System and software is/was the best.

Just when I think they can't astound me any more, they do... and it's never a positive experience.

Posted by at 10:14 PM | Permalink

Here is another reason why I will never use Passport for any valuable information, and another reason why you ought to fight Microsoft's attempts to further integrate it into Windows.

Privacy vs. Convenience: It's Up to You

Posted by at 7:46 PM | Permalink

South River Technologies released version 5.2 of WebDrive.

WebDrive is awesome. It lets you setup an FTP site (or WebDAV or HTTP Servers supporting Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions) as a drive letter on your computer. For example, I can edit/copy/paste/delete files to and from TnTLuoma.com as if they were on my local computer.

This means that I can use whatever editor I want (such as TopStyle and CSE HTMLValidator) to work on my web site without that tool having integrated FTP support.

This works best with a high speed internet connection (well, duh, of course). TopStyle also uses temp files in the same directory, so that can mean a lot of excess traffic (I wish TopStyle would let me use c:\temp)

Anyway, the WebDrive folks were extremely helpful with me trying to diagnose some problems I was having. After a fresh reinstall, it is working flawlessly.

Posted by at 5:31 PM | Permalink

Microsoft thinks open source could harm them!

Oh no! Whatever shall we do! Microsoft, long the schoolyard bully, able to charge what it wanted because it was the only game in town, is now afraid that competition from open source (and generally free) might threaten its bottom line!

This is rich with irony. Microsoft has bought out or stomped out most of its competitors in the past. Most often they killed off their competition by offering free versions of whatever software was winning marketshare. They "bundled" these together, so they were installed by default. You might recall an anti-trust verdict about this practice.

But out of one small corner of the Internet came Linux. First they tried to ignore it, then they tried to undermine it, and now they say it will hurt their bottom line. The reality? They can't buy open souce, because it's free. They can't undercut open source, because it's free.

So Microsoft, which has put many businesses out of business by offering free alternatives to their software, is now saying that a competitor offering a free alternative to their software/operating system might hurt them financially! WOW! What insight they possess!

Posted by at 10:02 PM | Permalink

Fortune magazine reports Toronto, Montreal, and Kingston are turning pay phones into Wi Fi Internet Connections

I've thought to myself on several occasions that the usage of pay phones must have dramatically decreased as cell phones became nearly as ubituitous as body piercings on a street in any major city in California.

Kudos to these folks for a very cool solution to this new reality.

Posted by at 11:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

An article at Wired.com tells an interesting tale. Excerpts below.

Mulder said the firm's HR team was using Microsoft's FrontPage Web publishing software to post job listings, and the program embedded "unwanted code, creating that loophole."

What loophole is that, you ask? Oh, just the administrative password protecting internal documents, including customer databases owned by two of the company's biggest clients, Porsche and American Standard.

Carmichael Lynch spokeswoman Sara Mulder said the company has no evidence that unauthorized visitors took advantage of the security lapse. Yeah... and these guys clearly know what they are talking about when it comes to security since the loophole may have existed undetected for more than six months.

Hrm... Microsoft software and security breaches.... where have I heard that before?

Posted by at 8:01 PM | Permalink

MS Outlook is a virus-spreader waiting to happen. I don't use it myself anymore, however there are many people who do, either because they don't know any better or they need it for work or whatever. There are a lot of tools out there which only work for Outlook (Palm mail sync for one) which may lead you to decide to use it.

One of the biggest problems with Outlook is the extremely broken way that it formats replies. I came across a freeware program called Outlook Quotefix which will automatically fix Outlook's broken quoting.

(Personally I love Opera's M2 mail program far too much to ever use anything else. M2 can import mail from Outlook Express... for Outlook you have to first import into something like Mozilla mail and then import it from Mozilla into M2... hopefully this will be fixed in a later release.)

Posted by at 6:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This just in.... my comments in [ ] below... excerpts only from source: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-978786.html

A U.S. district court judge on Monday ordered Microsoft to include Sun Microsystems’ version of Java with the Windows operating system, citing the software giant’s history of undermining the platform-neutral programming language. [Not to mention Netscape, WordPerfect, and a host of others.... Not to mention sacrificing MP3 for its own WMA]

“I find it an absolute certainty that unless a preliminary injunction is entered, Sun will have lost forever its right to compete, and the opportunity to prevail, in a market undistorted by its competitor’s antitrust violations,” Motz wrote in the 42-page ruling.

“Unless Sun is given a fair opportunity to compete in a market untainted by the effects of Microsoft’s past antitrust violations [Remember that they were found guilty of that, it was the remedy that was up for debate], there is a serious risk that in the near future the market will tip in favor of .Net, that it is impossible to ascertain when such tipping might occur in time to prevent it from happening, and that if the market does tip in favor of .Net, Sun could not be adequately compensated in damages.”

“While...deliberately fragmenting the Java platform to make it less attractive for developers and users, Microsoft also successfully embarked upon a campaign to destroy Sun’s channels of distribution,” Motz wrote. “Microsoft has succeeded, through its antitrust violations, in creating an environment in which the distribution of PCs is chaotic and the Java runtimes on PCs are incompatible.”

In the decision, the judge cited Sun’s request that Microsoft “set up Sun’s most current Java runtime environment to be installed by default on any product containing .Net, including Windows XP...and Internet Explorer.” [seems clear enough]

The ruling can hardly be a surprise to Microsoft. Motz gave some clue to his thinking earlier this month when he compared Microsoft’s treatment of Sun to figure skater Tonya Harding’s 1994 attack on competitor Nancy Kerrigan in advance of the Olympic Games. [Ouch...]

But industry trade group the Association for Competitive Technology [I think it is a safe bet to assume that these folks are probably funded by Microsoft... at least they didn’t call it “innovative”] took a dim view of the injunction, calling it anticompetitive.

This is good news for those truly interested in competition.

Posted by at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

CNet articles on the resistance to Open Source

‡

Posted by at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Calling all web junkies! You now have a new toy to desire...

Continue reading "The first refrigerator of the Internet Age" »

Posted by at 7:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So I’m in exile from my cable modem for awhile, and using MSN dialup access instead.

How hard can it be, right?

Continue reading "Yet Another Microsoft Employee Doesn't Get It" »

Posted by at 6:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

A Microsoft representative explained that Office 11 will only run on Windows XP or 2000. In a memo entitled Is Anyone Buying This Lame Excuse? the rep went on to say that the decision relates heavily to the push to improve security in our products. Windows 9x is inherently insecure... We understand that this decision won't be popular among all of our customers [but our shareholders love it!!!], but it allows us to create a better and more stable product. (um... so you built an insecure product, forced fed it down our throats, and have built several more insecure versions since then, and now want us to upgrade to your newest OS so we can have a better and more stable version of your product? So are you saying that even you can't make a stable product for Windows?)

Another statement might have said, Please don't think that this decision was in no way shaped by the fact that Microsoft's illegal monopoly gives them the power to do pretty much whatever the hell they want, because, after all, what are your choices? By the way, the new software will cost $8,000 unless you buy a new computer, at which point we'll only take on $400 to the asking price, or $600 if you don't want Internet Explorer installed on your desktop. And you'll need that new computer, because Word now takes 2.3gb of diskspace, Outlook takes 4.5gb, Excel takes 7.4gb, and the various security patches will take another 1-2gb. You'll also want that new Pentium processor because this thing is going to be dog slow on anything less than 1.4GHz. Awww, who are we fooling, it's going to be dog-slow on a Dual Xeon! New features planned include .Net integration for reasons no one can explain other than we are desperate for .Net to take off and we figure the more times we say .Net the more times people will start to think it's a good idea. Also, if you put your credit card information into your computer, we will sign you up for a free 2 month trial of our new Application Subscription Support program ($49.99 per month after the trial period ends, and cancelling your subscription will be about as easy as deleting Windows Messenger from XP.)

The fake represenative went on to add, As for actual innovation.... err... um... well, Word will now suggest better font-sizes for accessibility purposes, Outlook will still send winmail.dat files but they will now be in XML, and Excel will have even more obscure features that no one needs or uses. Oh, and the file format is changing again, meaning that Office:Mac files are not compatible and will have to upgrade. Have a nice day.

PC World: Office 11 Limited to Windows XP, 2000, C|Net: Microsoft to limit access to Office 11, all of which may encourage more people to visit OpenOffice.org

Posted by at 7:40 PM | Permalink

C|Net is reporting that New York City has ordered Microsoft to remove butterfly decals which were part of Microsoft's promotion of its MSN 8 launch Thursday. Here's a quote from the letter sent to Microsoft

Inasmuch as your organization is noted on the illegal markings, we intend to hold your firm directly responsible for this illegal, irresponsible and dangerous defacing of public property," the letter said.

Well at least they are in the new for something other than a security problem... I guess that's a step up for them. (By the way Pivx reports currently 32 unpatched security holes in IE which is up from 19 about a month ago.)

Posted by at 7:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

While Opera is in the news for true innovation Microsoft is in the news for more lies and deceit. Microsoft has pulled a phony Mac-to-PC "switch" ad after the switcher was uncovered as a Microsoft PR rep.

How dumb is this? The 'switch' ads by Apple are nice, but I hardly see folks flocking to Macs. This PR firm was pretty dumb, since they managed to cause bad PR to respond to a non-threat of major Mac migration.

What's awesome about this from the irony standpoint is that the deception was found out, in part, because the Microsoft Word document that was used contained the information about the author (see Slashdot).

So not only did they lie, but they got caught because of the lack of security of one of their products.

The irony is dripping.

Related:
DaringFireball on why this was so dumb
Wired.com (link to MS fake ad story)
Salon.com (link to MS fake ad story)

‡

Posted by at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If first learned how to use computers on a NeXT machine.

99% of you probably don't even know what a NeXT is, but it was a great computer well ahead of its time that unfortunately cost 8-gazillion dollars, so no one ever bought any.... except Allegheny College (www.alleg.edu)

Anyway, I loved that old computer, and I even had one of my own thanks to a friend who I met on the 'net and who ended up giving me his when it was a couple years old.

NeXT was eventually bought by Apple (www.apple.com) basically so they could get the love-him-or-hate-him-or-float-back-and-forth-between-the-two-extremes Steve Jobs who has brought Apple back from the margins of obscurity to the padding of obscurity (that's a little CSS joke there).

That was around 1998 or 1999. When Y2K rolled around, Apple did the cool thing and released free patches to fix NeXT computers, even though NeXT had been a dead parrot for several years.

Since I was using NeXT at the time and also helping to maintain the PEAK archives of NeXT software, I did two things: 1) I created a web page that showed folks how to find the patches which were buried 84 levels deep in Apple's FTP site and 2) I put a copy of the patches on PEAK.

Well #2 was none too well received by the folks at Apple, and PEAK received a fax from Apple's legal department telling them to take them down (I never saw the fax but would have loved to have it for my scrapbook). So I removed the patches from PEAK and updated my web page. Someone from Apple emailed me to say that they were concerned that I wouldn't keep up with the new patches as they were released, and people coming to my site would be getting outdated information

The site, which hasn't been substantively updated in about 2-3 years, still gets a lot (relatively) of traffic from folks looking for the patches, and today I received an email from someone telling me that they had called Apple looking for the patches and Apple had directed them to my site.

Once again: irony rules my life.

I went to Google and plugged in 'nextstep y2k patches' and found that my little site is the #1 entry, and there's nothing you can find from Apple.

Link to my site for NeXTSTEP y2k information

Other good stuff:
haiku contest for Eric Meyer's new book

Posted by at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)