Disqus - Latest Comments for JaredB

Re: Work Release at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 18 Aug 2004 14:20:07 -0000

Site looks good. As for the politics, I say you should say whatever you want, and people should respect your right to your opinion. Just don't do it with unbridled arrogance like so many of the right-wing radio hosts these days.

P.S. - I put a link up on my blog to yours today, I just forgot about yours before - hadn't checked it out in a while. What made you decide to go with WordPress?

Re: I am coming out of the Closet at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 21 Aug 2004 02:20:38 -0000

I'm with you on that one; although I haven't made my mind up on who I will vote for, I sure know who I *won't* vote for.

In a perfect system, I would love to vote for Nader/Comejo(sp?), but at the same time I would not want to risk the worst case scenario (IMO), so I may vote for Kerry, even though he is not taking a strong enough stand on issues that I think are important.

In the last election, at the time I did not feel that either candidate was any better than the other, so I did not vote for either of them. After witnessing what I consider to be the tragic results, I really regretted that decision, even though I don't think I could have ever imagined that an administration from either party could get away with what we've seen in recent years.

But then I got to thinking of things like the electoral college system, which completely screw things up even more. For example, it would not have made any difference if I had voted for Gore, because he already won California. There could have been millions more votes in CA than there were and they would have essentially not mattered. This is why (even disregarding the Florida controversy) both sides acknowledge that Gore won the popular vote (meaning more people voted for him) but the electoral votes are what count, and that (in conjunction with what some believe to be a wrong court decision) is how he lost.

In the end, don't be afraid to speak your mind, though. Even those who disagree with each other can respect each others' opinions, as long as they are willing to listen and open to the possibility that they are wrong. Unfortunately those two traits are notably lacking in the ever-more-popular right-wing radio hosts these days, and even more unfortunately many "Christians" spend hours every day listening to these guys for some reason associate the terms "religious" and "right" (as in right-wing). An interesting contrast is found in Matthew 25, where in this case those on the "right" are the ones who feed the poor, clothe the naked, provide health care to the sick, and care for those in prison.

Not that the other side doesn't have their own outspoken representatives who also strongly believe that their opinions are correct, but I don't see guys like Michael Moore making the kind of childish insults to people who don't agree with him that guys like Limbaugh/Hanidy/Orielly, etc. often do (at least when I've heard them). I get the sense that you could actually talk to a guy like Moore and he would at least honestly listen to an opposing point of view and respectfully disagree.

Re: I am coming out of the Closet at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 21 Aug 2004 02:35:47 -0000

One other thing to remember when discussing issues of politics is to remember that while voting is an important responsibility, real change happens in society through people interacting with each other and with God. Christianity exploded on the earth after the death of Christ via the apostles living under a violently opposing government, and rather than lead a revolt against the "system" of the day (which some expected of a "messiah") he taught in the humble realm of personal action in day to day life, for the most part ignoring the "bigger" issues related to the government of that day.

A great example that I look to in this regard is Tender-life maternity home. Anyone can whine and complain about how abortion should be illegal, but few are willing to come along side people who are in a difficult situation and sacrifice, providing assistance rather than condemnation. In fact, I believe that even most "pro-choice" advocates would agree that it would be desirable to reduce the number of abortions that occur, so rather than polarizing against each other, couldn't try to find a way to work towards a common goal?

Re: New iMac G5 at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 19:51:24 -0000

Looks like a copy of this PC system released in '96:
http://www.monorailcomputer.org/

So much for Apple "innovation"

(just kidding)

Re: Anti-Spam - Fight Back Against Spammers at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 19:03:42 -0000

I think the only way to deal with spam is to ignore it. Having a list full of fake addresses does not dent them too much, since the cost of sending each message is so small - they couldn't care less how many bounce, and they usually don't send from addresses that they care about monitoring anyway.

I'm especially opposed to *any* kind of legislation targeted at spam, since it would both be completely useless since we could not enforce it outside the US and it would only serve to set a precedent of curtailing free speech on the internet. As annoying as it may be, the alternative (censorship) is much worse.

If/when it gets to be a real problem that filtering cannot solve, you can always move to opt-in systems where you only ever receive or see mail that comes from a white-list, but for right now I don't mind deleting some messages now and then.

Re: Anti-Spam - Fight Back Against Spammers at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 21:23:21 -0000

Re: other people's addresses, I think anyone that posts their address on a public site should consider it available to the public, whoever that may mean.

There are a few explanations for how your private address could get out, the easiest being a friend or family member forwarding your message, which includes your address in the From field, and somewhere along the line that copied message could be posted to some web-based system which then gets crawled. Also, many of the "free" e-mail services reserve the right to read your messages and use info in them, so unless you know that every address you've ever sent mail to is truly private and secured, then you have to assume that it could get out somewhere in the chain.

In the end, I just don't see spam as a big problem. Sure it's annoying, but it only takes seconds to deal with. It isn't exactly analogous to sales people calling you on the phone for a few reasons. One is that spam takes so much less time to deal with, and the other is that you would never see the kind of mass messaging equivalent in the phone world, since phone sales take so much more time and are therefore so much more expensive. That is why spammers use e-mail, because it is virtually free.

Re: Gmail Freedom at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 05 Sep 2004 18:12:22 -0000

I haven't checked yet, but do you have to provide your CC# when signing up for any of these things?

Re: Browsers at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 18:59:01 -0000

Me 2. Actually probably a lot of those are from yourself (Dan), unless you are filtering those our from the results.

Re: FreeiPods.com at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 13:29:55 -0000

Are there any options where you don't have to provide a credit card # to sign up? I've tried the "free trial" stuff before, and sometimes they end up billing your card even though you canceled, because they know it's too much of a hassle for you to fight it for only $20 (or whatever).

Re: Sky Captain & the Films of Tomorrow at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 13:35:55 -0000

Yes, you will soon have to consider the "go see it yourself after the kids are in bed" option. Now you know why I want to bring coffee in to the theatre.

Re: Google Sensed at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 13:40:26 -0000

What was up with that comment system this morning?

Re: Was that a Christ Like Men’s Retreat? at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 14:17:56 -0000

While I didn't witness any of this situation, I can say that I understand your frustration at the "joking" continuing even after you apparently made it clear that you didn't think it was funny. It actually sounds more like elementary school than high school, but given some of the other crap that went on I'm unfortunately not surprised.

I think the best thing you can do is to dismiss those things as immaturity / insecurity on the part of those involved and focus on the positive experiences of the weekend. And learn from both the positive and negative.

As for being Christ-like, I think in an odd way it kind of is, in that Christ lived among humans - people who all struggle with a fallen nature that often manifests itself in words and actions. For those who had not yet accepted his forgiveness he offered it freely. For those who had embraced it he strongly challenged them to allow their lives to be shaped to conform to his character. So I guess we just have to figure out how to do the same.

Re: My new Mac at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 06 Oct 2004 15:11:29 -0000

You should name the next one Apache or Gnu

Re: My new Mac at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 06 Oct 2004 18:16:48 -0000

Great, here we go...

Re: A little Poll. at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 07 Oct 2004 21:48:42 -0000

Well, based on the web site of the guy who made it, I'm guessing it's intended to be pro-Bush. But, if you think about what Osama was claiming about the US (that we intend to take control of the Mideast, without regard to the cost to the people there, etc.) then I'm not sure who he would vote for. Obviously Bush is proving Osama correct in every way, so would he vote against him to oppose him, or would he vote for him so that people would continue to move towards Osama's point of view in reaction to Bush's policies and actions? Good question, but unlike some politicians, I won't presume to put words in the mouths of terrorists, or make up my own stories behind their actions. There is only one person who I can definitely say will not be voting for Bush...

Re: Google Desktop Search Download at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 15 Oct 2004 12:20:48 -0000

Too bad it only searches the IE cache; if they add support for Mozilla/Firefox, I might use it.

Re: Its in my Grasp at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 02:25:53 -0000

Maybe that's from grasping it to hard.

Re: PowerBooked at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 18:08:46 -0000

Re: doing favors for friends family vs. cash - I decided the opposite. People are always asking me to do computer stuff for them, and they would usually offer to pay me if I said that I didn't really have the time. The problem was then I felt obligated to do it for them in a timely fashion, which is difficult, since (as I already told them) I don't have a lot of spare time. So, I ended up deciding that I would not take any money to do work for friends family. *If* I had time, I would do it for free because I'm a nice guy; if I don't have time I will tell them that, and they can either wait or figure out something else. The only semi-exception was that work I did with you a while back, which doesn't really count in this context since it was your company (rather than you personally) paying me.

Re: PowerBooked at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 18:17:06 -0000

Re: software you don't have - maybe if you contact the manufacturer they would send you a new CD if you lost your registered, legally purchased one.... haha. BTW, you may want to reconsider charging for some of those "favors" you mentioned previously on your blog which involved installing copies of Windows for people; the penalties are probably worse if you profit from it.

But seriously, have you tried looking for lower-cost and/or open source products? If there are no free alternatives that do what the products you're looking for do, there's probably a good reason: it is hard (both in terms of time and knowledge required) to write that kind of software, and therefore writing it requires paying someone to develop it...

Re: Public service announcement at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 13:54:34 -0000

Dan, this is awesome - you are the man. I think I will buy a phone recorder for this purpose in the future.

P.S. - There is a "spam" comment in the bridge blog, if you wouldn't mind deleting it.

Re: Public service announcement at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 14:12:43 -0000

Check these out too:
http://www.solicitorsnightmare.com/soundcli.htm
http://www.emailajoke.com/Calls2/

Re: Public service announcement at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 14:14:20 -0000

Check these out:
http://www.solicitorsnightmare.com/soundcli.htm
http://www.emailajoke.com/Calls2/

Re: Sick Dog at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 18:29:43 -0000

That exact thing happened to me before with AT also. I was using it as a modem for my laptop and not paying attention to how much data I was using. This is the reason why I switched to T-Mobile - they have unmetered data @ 19.99. AT is offering it now too (I think it's 24.99) but the catch is that it only covers data usage from your phone; paired devices (laptop or PDA via bluetooth or IR) are still billed per KB.

Re: Sick Dog at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 19:57:42 -0000

It's just too bad that spellcheck isn't idiot proof yet. It doesn't catch 3rd grade grammar mistakes like using "soar" instead of "sore". But don't worry, I'm sure everyone will still get the joke...

Re: Sick Dog at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 00:45:37 -0000

Not sure why you changed your name to "DAn" (if this is still the "Beaivs" commenter), but one reason you may not want to wait until after you post to proofread is that you can't edit your comments after you post them unless you were the admin (the real Dan). The comment still says "soar".

Re: Sick Dog at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 00:48:33 -0000

Regarding the cell phone carrier, I mentioned above that I use T-Mobile now; I was, however, always happy with AT, with the exception of the high price for data. The only thing about them that sucks in my opinion is that they weren't willing to compete with T-Mobile on their data rates.

Re: I see the light at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 00:48:49 -0000

The issue in this story isn't whether the votes that were collected tallied up to Bush or Gore winning, since the Supreme Court ridiculously ordered that the recount be stopped. The real problem that this story is talking about is the FACT (not opinion) that thousands of black voters were removed from the voter rolls, by their wrongful inclusion in a list of "ex-felons". Even Republicans acknowledge that this happened, the only question is whether it was a mistake or a deliberate attempt to block a particular group (based on race). My question is, does it really matter? That shouldn't happen whether it's an accident or not, and if it does, it should be corrected by allowing them to vote. If this had been done, the numbers were significant enough that it would have tipped the election.

Re: Exactly at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 19:26:27 -0000

To: "Right wing"
Re: having morals values, etc.
That depends on how you're measuring them. I'd probably agree with you on some measurements of "values" and disagree with others. For example, the "morality" of carpet bombing and invading a nation unjustly, or the "values" of putting people into prison camps without having to bother charging them with any crime or giving them any access to outside communication.

Re: Exactly at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 19:37:37 -0000

To: DaveZ
I'm not saying that we "caused" terrorism, I'm saying that our actions (past and present) "inspire" it. There is a big difference, in that "terrorism" is never justified, and they are at fault for taking lives. Yes, of course, it was a horrible thing to do, but that does not mean that we should refuse to look at the reasons why they felt they had to do it; terrorism is usually the acting out of hopelessness. It may come as a shock to most Americans, but people in the Mideast who oppose America don't do it because they "hate freedom" or any other propaganda crap like that. They have clearly expressed their problems with us, and they mostly have to do with our actions in their lands. If Americans would take the time to at least listen to these grievances to determine whether there is any grain of truth to them, it might do us some good. However, most Americans don't (or won't) understand this, because we like to live with our heads in the sand (or some other place), blissfully ignorant of the rest of the earth. They think that we don't need to care about what the rest of the world thinks of us and our actions since we are the most powerful. Well, 9/11 should have taught us otherwise, but apparently we didn't learn that lesson. Maybe after a few more years of loss of "American lives" (as our media likes to say - as opposed to other types of human life that aren't as meaningful) in the war, etc. we will catch on.

Re: Exactly at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 00:39:31 -0000

Dave,
Please re-read the text above; no one said the attacks were justified. Also, please don't go down the road of "do we wait until a nuke went off in (name your American city)" - it just doesn't fly.

Firstly, assuming there existed some sort of evidence that there was such a plan, do you think bombing some country in the mideast that the terrorist may or may not have ties to will deter them from their actions, or encourage them to go ahead and do it, and inspire many more to do the same?

Secondly, the ("do we wait until..") reason can often be equally applied to the other side. Should an Arab living in the mideast wait until we take over the whole region or drop a bomb on their country before they strike first?

It should be apparent now that trying to use a completely hypothetical example as a pretext to justify a very real life (and death) preemptive strike is absolutely ridiculous. What's even worse is that America just doesn't seem to have the balls to step up and admit we were wrong, even after it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Iraq was not a threat to us. The administration now, when confronted with the cold, hard facts, has taken another step back and said, "well, they had the *desire* to harm us, even if they didn't have the capability". Well, I have the desire to fly like Superman - doesn't mean I'll be doing it anytime soon though, since I don't have the ability.

I'm certainly not saying that war is always unjust, sometimes it may be the last possible resort. However, that WAS NOT the case in Iraq. It has now been proven overwhelmingly that Iraq was not a threat to the U.S. and there is still no evidence associating them with 9/11 in any way. Yet they continue to bring up 9/11 whenever they're questioned about Iraq. They are deliberately misleading the American people, and I'm glad Edwards called Cheney on it at the beginning of their debate. To bad the American people are still swallowing it hook line and sinker, since most still believe that Saddam had something to do with it.

Lastly, let me reiterate that understanding the motivations of terrorists is much different than justifying their actions. Understanding their reasoning is the first step in discovering how to stop bad behavior. Let's say someone punches me right between the legs: I could get mad at them for such a dirty move, but what if I took the time to realize that I had them pinned to the ground, standing on their chest and crushing them, and they had been yelling at me to get off for a long time. Notice how at first the punch seemed completely "unjustified", whereas with more detail about the context of the situation, you can understand why it happened.

If you think that simply continuing to bomb anyone who opposes us (or random countries of our choosing if we can't find the actual people who strike us) is a successful strategy for winning the "war on terror" then good luck. By the way, how's the "war on drugs" going? I hear next they're going to have a war on human nature itself; once we win that one there won't be any evil in the world at all (hey, we won't even need God anymore).

Perhaps we don't want to look at their motivations because we don't want to think that we could have contributed in any way to making them what they became. The fact is that the U.S. has been very involved both in the intelligence and arms supply in the mideast for a long time. I understand that it's difficult for Americans to see this, since the (so-called liberal) news they are spoon fed every day doesn't tell them about it, but it doesn't make it any less real.

Re: Torn at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 21:12:16 -0000

Surprise, surprise! For some reason, it doesn't come as an incredible shock to me that MS saw someone else's good design and copied it. I think this time around, they might not be able to take the business away from the competition for a few reasons:
1. Everyone already knows and loves Google.
2. They aren't offering any significant improvements (unless I missed something, I didn't look into it too closely)
3. Having met a lot of the MS developers and read a lot of Google developers blogs postings, I am pretty sure that the Google developers are much brighter.
4. As Dan mentioned above, MS will inevitably shuffle this in with all their other products, and I'm betting that the opposite will also be the case - they won't be able to resist starting to stick tidbits of their other products and services into their search product, and they will violate what makes Google so popular: simplicity and minimalism.

Re: Torn at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 21:22:00 -0000

(one more I just thought of)
5. Related to number four, MS developers like to tell people what they need, instead of letting people decide and ask for themselves. Case in point: MS Office - probably the most bloated piece of software around. Office apps like Word have tons of "cool" features that no one ever uses, and a lot of them are installed by default. Now that I mention it, so does the Windows OS itself. Extra features are great, but they should only be installed if you specifically ask for them, otherwise they are just security flaws waiting to happen. They started to get this right with the new Server 2003 OS, which doesn't install services like IIS by default like 2000 Server used to. When you have a bunch of services running on your box that you don't use (or even know about) you won't be as vigilant in patching them, so you will open yourself up to being attacked on services you don't even know are running. Contrast this to my personal favorite server OS (OpenBSD) where *nothing* that you don't specifically install is installed, and therefore you know exactly everything that is running on your server.

Re: Torn at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 01:23:24 -0000

See this one for a theory on the MS / Google battle:
http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/search...

Re: 911 at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 13 Nov 2004 18:08:37 -0000

Did I read that wrong, or you say that I was close minded?

Re: Petition this at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 14:32:20 -0000

Kind of cool, but I don't know if it's the best idea in the world to have a publicly available archive of signatures that anyone could download and do whatever they want with.

It kind of reminds me of something I had to do a long time ago when I lost my social security card and had to "improvise" when I needed a copy of my card when starting a new job.

Re: Styled again at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 18:08:23 -0000

Re: the picture swithing - How do you want it to work? Should the picture keep changing after the page loads, or do you just mean on every load of the page a random one is chosen? Either way, let me know if you want help.

Re: Styled again at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 18:19:10 -0000

Forgot to add my name last time, that was me

Re: Trumped at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 13:26:32 -0000

But thatâ€šÃ„Ã´s my point; in a real debate, there is a back and forth where you speak, then you respectfully allow the other person to respond. You donâ€šÃ„Ã´t interrupt and talk over someone who is trying to make a point. The big T should have never let it degrade into a unprofessional yelling match in the first place. Thatâ€šÃ„Ã´s not a debate, and therefore he wasnâ€šÃ„Ã´t â€šÃ„Ãºoutdebated". I didnâ€šÃ„Ã´t see the rest of the show before that, so maybe he did deserve to be fired for something else, but the reason Trump gave was that he was â€šÃ„Ãºoutdebated".

As for TV in general, I'm with you on the Mole, but not those others. (Please tell me you were kidding about the Desperate Housewives one) Even Amazing Race (I haven't watched the newest one) kind of got old for me just becasue there are so many points in the race where some scheduled event (usually the plane fights) always allows everyone to catch up and basically start fresh again. I didn't watch it religiously or anything, but I don't remember ever seeing a show where the last place team was more than 24 hours behind the first place team.

Re: Styled again at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 17:38:32 -0000

Anyway, as I was saying on the tagboard - I'd recommend doing the menu with a UL styled with CSS. Serveral advantages to this:
1. Your HTML is a lot cleaner
2. Changing the text color on mouseover will work with or without javascript turned on (lots of people turn it off these days)
3. If you are using your site on a browser or other device without CSS support (like a cell phone), you will get an easy to use regular bulleted list of links, instead of either a side-scrolling nightmare or nothing at all.
4. Related to 3, doing it this way is much better for users with disabilities who use screen reader software, etc. since "layout table" girds often screw up the order of what comes first on the page, etc.

Re: Styled again at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 17:43:43 -0000

As for the header image switching, the way I would do it would be to have a default one, and then use javascript to load the others and cycle through displaying them every X number of seconds. This way, you will start with the one you want to stay there the whole time (in case they don't have javascript enabled), and then only those users with javascript enabled would see the image being switched every so often.

If I have time later today I will post a page with examples of both of these techniques (CSS menu and javascript image replacement).

Re: Styled again at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 20:42:23 -0000

You've got the right idea on the nav menu - looks pretty good, although the list (and the containing div) should be in the body section instead of the head. In fact, I don't even know why it's working the way it is now, but oh well.

Ya, later tonight I will try to put something together for the image switching.

Re: Styled again at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 02:32:54 -0000

Looks good now. I slacked on that javascript thing; I'll see if I can put something together before bed.

Re: Styled again at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 03:33:31 -0000

Dan, sorry about the delay on that, here's a page I just threw together that should do what I think you want; you can copy/paste the code from it and make it work for you.

http://jaredbangs.org/dan/jsimageswitch.htm

Re: Styled again at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 03:34:55 -0000

P.S. - This will switch the image every 5 seconds, but you can change it to be whatever you want.

Re: Good, Bad and Ugly at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 18:49:22 -0000

The flash site looks good. You sure you want to publish your cell phone number though?

Re: Why is my url slow? at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 18:51:01 -0000

Working fine for me... maybe it's a DNS issue at your work (I'm assuming this is where you posted from). Try seeing if it does the same from home, or through a proxy server, etc.

Re: Good, Bad and Ugly at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 00:41:36 -0000

Yes, I just forgot to respond on that one.

I'm pretty sure you can't do a "dissolve" without some kind of (non-HTML/Javascript) animation such as Flash. There are ways that you can use just javascript HTML to do picture transitions such as a vertical or horizontal "wipe" effect, or "flyout" (top goes off to the side/top/bottom/diagonal), etc. where you essentially have one image "under" the other and you do something to move the top one out of the way, such as shrink it's borders, make it move off in a particular direction, or a combination of both, but I don't know of a way to "dissolve", since that would involve taking pixels out of the middle of the image.

The pure Javascript and HTML way of doing this would undoubtedly not look as good as a Flash based animation, plus it would take way more time to do, which probably isn't worth it just to produce a cheesy visual effect. Best bet would probably be to give them the Flash anim. object if they have the plugin, and a static image (or what you're doing now) if they don't.

Re: Good, Bad and Ugly at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 14:08:09 -0000

I stand corrected (kind of):

http://clagnut.com/sandbox/imagefades/

The reason I say "kind of" is because opacity attributes are currently non-standard (although they are a part of the proposed CSS3 spec), therefore this technique uses special code to accomodate the unique ways that a lot of the browsers support it now.

IE has had all kids of "special effects" like this for a while (since ver 5, I believe) but I don't use them, since they are for IE only.

The huge drawback to writing stuff that's non-standards compliant and/or requires separate code to accomodate specific browsers (or worse yet, specific versions of browsers) is that every time a new browser version (or even a minor update, such as IE's constant updates) is released, you will (at best) have to keep on top of all these releases and test your code against it, and (in the worst case, but probably common) have to add yet another patchwork piece of code to accomodate the quirks of the new release, while still maintaining compatablitiy with the ever-growing list of old versions.

In general, my philosophy is to stick to only using standards based code, with minor exceptions for things that "degrade gracefully" (meaning that it's still useable if the "cool feature" doesn't work). As for Flash, it's probably the way to go if you want a multi-media intensive site, but it does have some serious accesibility issues (Nathan mentioned the "real" text problem), which means that (unless you code and maintain a separate non-Flash version of your complete site) users who cannot use the Flash plugin for whatever reason are out of luck if they want to use your site.

Re: Good, Bad and Ugly at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 23:59:35 -0000

What I meant by the "real text" thing was the actual content of the site; if it's all in Flash (text and graphics), then non-Flash users don't see anything. The reason this is important is that there are users that can't use Flash for whatever reason. They may be blind, using software that reads the page to them, which can only understand text; or they may just have bad eyesight, and if the text is "real" text (styled using CSS), they can make it larger so they can read it. But I guess if you want to say "screw you" to handicapped people, it's all good. :) Just kidding!

Re: Aids Vaccine at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 05 Dec 2004 13:37:46 -0000

He's saying that Hitler will tell "us" off for criticizing his murders when our country has done the same thing.

I won't get into why this is not exactly a perfect analogy, seeing as how this post was about AIDS, not homosexuality, abortion, Nazis, or some imaginary kind of judgment day where the accused get to present some sort of an argument or defense.

On the subject of AIDS, we would probably do better to focus our efforts on how we can help those who are afflicted. When Jesus was healing people, I don't think he went around asking them how they got the disease, or whether they were morally worthy of his help or not.

Re: More Politics at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 06 Dec 2004 18:18:25 -0000

Wow, a lot to cover, so I'll take it in pieces.

Regarding the first good/bad section: These are classic "oh yeah, well he/she did this.." attempts at avoiding the issue. The error here is that I'm not saying (and I don't think anyone is) that all those items on the "good" list are good. When one of my kids punches the other one and I call them on it, they usually say something like "well, he/she called me a name...", and then I explain to them that the name caller was wrong, but that doesn't mean that it's OK to hit them.

I've had similar conversations with some of my many right-wing friends before, particularly leading up to the election. The way it usually goes down is you point out a negative aspect about some action the Bush administration has taken, and they'll say "oh yeah, well Kerry... blah blah blah"; to which I'll reply, "stop avoiding the issue. I'm not a fan of Kerry either, but you're trying to avoid discussing my point. Let's finish this subject, and then go on to the next one."

Just because I oppose policies of the Bush administration doesn't mean I'm pro-Clinton/Kerry/whoever. I'll be the first to say that I disagree with a lot of the actions listed above by the Clinton administration, but the point is I'd still like to hear a Bush supporter actually defend some of the items listed above, instead of resorting to name calling and changing the subject. For example, I'll be the first to admit that former pres. Clinton was wrong to lie about an affair that he had while in the White House (or even have it in the first place). Now let's hear a Bush supporter admit that he was wrong to lie to the American people to justify the war. We were told there was undeniable evidence both that Iraq had WMDs and that they were planning on attacking us. We were told they just couldn't share that evidence because they had to protect our sources close to Saddam. Well, now that we've toppled him, let's see that evidence! What? It doesn't exist, and never did?

Couple other points:

There is no way that only 39 people died in Iraq this January, unless you're looking at some kind of ridiculously deflated statistic like "American soldier" lives. Iraqi lives are just as human as ours, so please include them in your statistics.

"â€šÃ„Â¶liberated two countries" .... I don't even think I need to say anything here

"â€šÃ„Â¶It took less time to take Iraq than ..." - Ask any soldier serving in Iraq if they're finished "taking" it yet. Just because you have a ceremony and make a big banner that says "mission accomplished" doesn't mean it is.

"The Military moral is high!" - I'm assuming the author meant "morale", but I'd like to see some data to back that up. I come into contact with military people very frequently, and I can tell you that not many of them are real excited about the "back door draft" (forcing soldiers to serve for longer than they signed up for), or about the cuts that this administration has made to benefits for both active duty personnel and veterans alike.

Bottom line, this just shows how politically polarized this country has gotten. On both sides, whenever there is a negative issue raised, they quickly respond by trying to point a finger at the other side, usually on a separate subject. It's faulty logic to assume that just because one side does things that are wrong, the other side is somehow right. Both political parties in America are screwed up and have been for some time. Don't let that distract you from what's happening right here, right now. Speak out against injustice, regardless of which political party perpetrates it.

Re: Flash! at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 06 Dec 2004 18:28:37 -0000

I think I'll stick to obeying the traffic laws. Plus, if use of this "workaround" becomes widespread, there's a completely possible counter-scenario:
Step 1: A law is passed outlawing it
Step 2: Cops (or more likely just meter maids) drive around town with flashlights, testing plates and mailing out even more tickets.

Re: More Politics at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 22:48:21 -0000

I'm not sure what you mean by the article speaking for itself, unless you mean that it serves to show the poor logic that is behind it's own position. Also, where is the article from? I'd like to send my comments to the actual author to see what they have to say. It would be nice (as I mentioned in my comments) to hear someone give a reasonable answer to the questions I asked.

I'd also comment to the author that even if I agreed with their slanted position (which I obviously do not) I still don't think the article even serves their own cause. Besides the gross factual errors, the whole concept of contrasting similar Clinton and Bush actions doesn't even make sense if you don't admit that both sides are wrong. For example, the first comparison on no-bid contracts to Halliburton awarded by both presidents: is the author saying that it was OK for both of them to do this, or for neither? If the author is saying it as negative that Clinton gave the no-bid contract, then they are also admitting that Bush doing it was bad.

Like I said, it's the perfect example of partisan-ism that is infecting this country. Like many radio show hosts, this author (from the sound of it) believes and promotes any negative story regarding the "other side" and at the same time absolutely denies any possibility of wrongdoing by the people on "his side". It only serves to discount the credibility of both positions.

My position on the other hand, is much more logical (you might even say "fair and balanced") - I have no problem acknowledging both the good and bad decisions made by either side.

Re: Sick of it. at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 23:44:24 -0000

Did you rename the post file or just copy it? If you copied it to a file with a new name, did you delete the original one? If not, that would explain it.

Re: More Politics at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 01:08:56 -0000

Ya, I know what you mean; I am tired of politics, too. The percentage of "political" posts on my own blog has gone down recently, primarily because I don't know if I was making a point and getting people to think, or just putting people off. It seems (unfortunately) that on political issues (although I hesitate to put the invasion stuff in that category, since it is bigger than politics), most people have already made up their minds, and aren't interesting in hearing anything else. I'm not sure why, but it seems to be one of those subjects that a lot of people can't talk about without getting all emotionally involved and/or insulted, etc.

I am still curious where that article is from though...

Re: Sick of it. at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 22:08:08 -0000

Any luck today on the spam? I am thinking of posting another variation on this fix that will be more effective, if it's still a problem for you.

Re: Sick of it. at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 12:50:01 -0000

here for my new post.

However, this would not stop someone from doing it the old fashioned way, it's just hard for me to believe that someone would be that dedicated to manually doing it, since it would take so much time.

If you do suspect that they're doing it manually, you could verify by checking your web server logs for that IP address at the time the comment was made, and it should show you what browser ("USER AGENT") they were using, if it was a real browser. Of course, this can be faked also, but it's unlikely they would go through the trouble.

Even if there are people who actually take the time to spam manually, there can't be that many of them, so I would just block their IP address from posting comments.

The bottom line is that there may not be a good way to prevent a person posting spam the old fashioned way. Filters help, but if they automatically delete messages, you run the risk of losing false positives, whereas if they hold them for moderation, you still have to go in every once in a while and delete them. If this becomes too much of a chore, you could always just only allow comments from registered users. Sure it's a minor inconvenience for the users, but if you are getting flooded with spam, it might be worth it.

Re: WOW! at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 16:58:51 -0000

I haven't seen this show yet, but everything I hear says that it is good. When is it on, and what is it about? (Of course, I could go look this up for myself, but ...)

Re: Sick of it. at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 17:19:32 -0000

The thing that doesn't make sense to me about it being manual is that if that were the case, the person should be able to see that their comment is not being posted (not showing up on the site), so why would they keep wasting their time?

Anyway, if the plugin is working well for you, go with it. If you want to just throw stuff away directly (without it even going to the plugin filter and getting an e-mail), then you can add stuff to your post file similar to the section that's already in there called "Simple flood-protection", throwing stuff out based on anything in the post.

Re: More Politics at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 16:17:34 -0000

Well, you guys probably don't want to hear my opinion on immigration...

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about all those terrorist attacks that have been happening due to people crossing the borders illegally. Oh, wait, I still seem to be forgetting. Care to remind me? Here's a hint: the 9/11 terrorists entered using valid Visas, so you'll have to come up with some other example than that.

Re: O-12 at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 12 Dec 2004 00:49:44 -0000

Heat is definitely up there, for that genre. Ocean's 12 was pretty fun too. I don't remember a lot about the first one, but my short review of this one is that it's more of the same. If you really liked the first one, you may even like this one better, since they're not "limited" by the boundaries of a re-make like they were the first time.

Re: More Politics at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:11:14 -0000

Funny thing is, there's people in the US who believe that's what we should do too. As a matter of fact, there are even vigilante groups that patrol sections of the border waiting to shoot anyone that comes over.

See here for more info on how violent, racist organizations like "Ranch Rescue", "American Border Patrol", and "Civil Homeland Defense" condone murder in the name of protecting our borders from that imaginary threat of terrorism.

http://www.rtfcam.org/report/volume_23/No_1/art...

Again, the point I made in my last comment stands out in this article: one of the justifications they use is that "we have to stop all these terrorists from coming over the border" even though that's a total myth, and a fear-based propaganda tactic.

Re: More Politics at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:04:56 -0000

Looks like this post has come full circle: as I mentioned in my original comment on this post, *both* sides can be wrong and should be spoken out against. Just because Mexico is screwed up in the way they deal with it, doesn't mean that we're not.

I do think that we have more of an obligation to speak out about our own country though, since it's supposedly "of us, by us, and for us".

Re: More Politics at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 22:21:52 -0000

I wasn't implying that it was the same; in fact, you are right - most of the racist anti-immigration groups out there (like the ones I mentioned above) are not affiliated with the government, and I should have been more clear that it's those American people (as opposed to the government) who are to blame for not only beating but shooting and killing people.

I do, however, take offense at the comment that the left "hates America"; that is completely untrue.

First of all, I object to categorizing people as "left" or "right" in the first place, although our culture and media (especially radio) tends to encourage that kind of thinking and labeling. I'd rather have my own opinions of any given issue, whether they align politically with the "left" or the "right" doesn't really concern me.

Many of my views could be considered "left" by some, but I also have many opinions that would more closely align with the "right", so does that mean I only love/hate America half-heartedly? No, it just illustrates that the whole generalization is just plain wrong.

What's more, I have many friends (such as you, and most of my friends, actually) who would consider themselves much more "right wing" than I am. I don't think that any of them would believe I hate America, even though I'm probably the most "left wing" person they know.

Conversely, I wouldn't accuse them of "hating America" either, even though it's my view that the "right wing" has taken many actions to directly oppose the principles that this country was founded on (research "Free Speech Zones" - ever think you'd hear that phrase in America?)

Just because someone opposes certain policies of the government in power, doesn't mean that they "hate" that nation. When the former president (Clinton) was in office, there was non-stop criticism of him by the "right"; does that mean they "hated" America?

The criticism I offer (on either side) is completely meant to be the constructive type, speaking out against injustice where I see it. The kind of criticism that just attacks and insults "the other side" (whoever that may be) is pointless.

This kind of negativity is prominent on both sides of the political spectrum. It's certainly not unusual to turn on the radio and hear talk show hosts name-calling the "libs", and if you look hard enough to find the stations, you will eventually come across some that speak similarly about the "neo-cons", etc.

Like I said before, I may not speak out quite as much about the actions of another country, but that doesn't mean that I think less of America, or that I think other countries that do things like this are not also in need of rebuke. The reason that I call attention to our own shortcomings is that I think it's our responsibility do take care of our own problems first, before we go around telling others what theirs are.

I have been given no voice to speak to the leaders of those other nations; but, in America, we have the freedom and the responsibility to let our leaders know what we think, what direction they should be going, etc. since they represent us. Exercising that freedom by living up to that responsibility is the most patriotic thing that an American could do.

If we stifle that dissenting opinion, or censor ourselves or others in the name of "patriotism", we are essentially dishonoring everything this country was founded on, and the sacrifices that were made to preserve it.

If it is considered wrong (and now even illegal, in some cases) to express our beliefs when they disagree with the actions of our leaders, then how is that different from the nations we condemn for their dictatorial regimes?

In speaking out on these issues, I attempt to defend America, not tear it down.

Re: More Politics at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 18:59:24 -0000

I don't think this is going anywhere, so I'll keep it short:

As for your last question, I explained that in my last comment - just because some minority of the "left" don't like America does not mean that you can collectively say that "the left" (whatever that means) as a group "hates America"; that is just plain wrong. It would be like me saying that since Nazi's are the extreme of the "right wing", that all "right wingers" are racist Nazis - it just doesn't make logical sense.

I don't remember hearing ABC, CBS, or NBC ever say "they live in orwellâ€šÃ„Ã´s 1984 armed camp with squelchers of thought running around like everyone is living in poverty misery oppressing the downbeat." Perhaps they're more "left wing" than you, that's fine. They are far more "right wing" than me, that's no reason to broad-brush label them as haters of America.

I do, however, remember them rallying around the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, and not doing their jobs in demanding justification for these actions. They essentially rolled over. A particularly interesting statistic on this is that in the two weeks leading up to the Iraqi invasion, the major networks had 400 interviews regarding the subject, and 396 of them were with very pro-war people (either administration or pentagon designees or paid retired generals) The remaining *4* who opposed the war were given very short appearances and cut off in the middle of making their points. If that's what you call "left-wing", anti-American media, I'd hate to see what a right-wing media would look like.

As to your third paragraph, when you asked "I dont see any stifling going on ,I am not sure where you are getting that from?", see my previous reference to Free Speech Zones, a concept introduced by the current President, in response to *unprecedented* amounts of protestors everywhere he went (in response primarily to his actions regarding Iraq). I say unprecedented because the protests (both here in the US and internationally) against the war have broken records; there has never, in history, been this much opposition to a war (that includes Vietnam).

If you don't think it's "stifling" to implement policies like "Free Speech Zones" which put anyone wishing to protest behind a chain link fence (with armed gaurds), blocks away from the event in question, with no chance of actually being heard, then I don't know what the definition of stifling is. If you're open minded about this issue, read here for more info on Free Speech Zones:
http://www.amconmag.com/12_15_03/feature.html

Re: More Politics at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 19:14:28 -0000

Well, so much for keeping it short!

Hoby, in response to your suggestion of a "live" debate, I think that this kind of forum (writing) is much better for this type of discussion. In my experience, if you try to have conversations like this with people, it usually escalates into people shouting and trying to cut each other off / talk over each other, etc.

The written forum allows us to take turns and take the time to provide a thoughtful response, rather than an emotional reaction. Also, you can more easily provide references (like I have), and it allows you to go back and get an overall look at what has been said, whether you have presented a good case, and whether anyone has presented anything that should compel you to reconsider your position.

That being said, I feel I've said all I want to in this thread. I think I've asked a couple of tough questions and haven't seen a lot of them answered, which either means that no one has a good answer for them, or I just type way too much and no one wants to read my whole entries. Either way, that's a good indication to me that this particular conversation is finished. (Unless we just want to increase Dan's record for most comments on a post).

Re: Bogged at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 01:13:14 -0000

My advice, don't sweat the work stuff too much; I'm sure that you put a lot into what you do, and do it to the best of your ability. Just keep doing that, and maybe document what you're doing (including the planning time, etc.) so that the people you're working for are made aware of it and can appreciate it. If they still don't, and it's bugging you, start looking for something else.

As for the non-work related stuff: don't work on it on your vacation (unless it is relaxing for you).

Gallery 2: what is different about the functionality? Does it have better administration (album management, etc.)? I'm using 1.4.4-pl2 on my blog, and I like it, but it's kind of a pain to name the albums and do general maintenance stuff.

Re: Death at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 00:38:30 -0000

Dan, I think you are right, in that as non-violent as a person can be, the survival instinct will kick in and most people will at least attempt to save themselves.

It kind of depends on the situation, since the question doesn't specify that it's an attacker, it could be a "last lifeboat" type scenario. Either way is interesting, since I think that in that situation also, people may say that they would not, but may be surprised at themselves if it actually happened in real life.

I don't think that this is the kind of thing you can be accurate about before it actually happens, since it's easy to give an answer to a question like this when you're not in danger.

Re: Finally at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 17:04:58 -0000

At least you don't come up in a search for hot chicks like this one:
http://www.crazysox.net/index.php?p=13#comment-139

"... i was lookin 4 da hot chicks online 1 day nd found dis..."

Re: cha-ching at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 22:37:18 -0000

Dan, I started a response to this, but it got really long, so I decided to make it a post on my own blog: http://jaredbangs.org/blog/index.php?p=231

Re: Morals lost in Politics at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 13:39:15 -0000

http://jaredbangs.org/blog/index.php?p=244

Re: Morals lost in Politics at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 23:34:52 -0000

"...given well over 25 million people freedom this last year..."

Ask those 25 million whether they think they're free right now. Sure you may get a couple of sound-bite interviews on the boob-tube from a select person or two who will tell the cameraman (who is standing next to the guy with the machine gun) that they love what the guys with the machine guns have done.

Thankfully, due to the miracle of the internet, we don't have to have our stories filtered in this manner by the media (whether it's "liberal" or "conservative", I don't need to get into that), we can get it straight from the people themselves, or at least those who have the "freedom" of electricity restored to their houses for a couple hours a day (through our "heroic" efforts) and can get online and let people know what's really going on - uncut and uncensored.

IF THIS WAS HAPPENING IN THE U.S., would you really say that you're "free"? If your streets were being patrolled by occupying army and your citizens were being indefinitely imprisoned without due process (and sometimes tortured)?

Re: It’s a… at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 19:30:25 -0000

No, you should probably start right now. Better yet, realize that it isn't possible, so just learn how to deal with that...

Re: Microsoft Spyware software Beta at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 00:42:36 -0000

I'm with you; spybot and/or AdAware (I use both). I have a legit Windows copy, but I don't think I want MS telling me what software they don't think I should be running on my PC.

Re: Standards of driving a big F-ing truck at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 00:51:29 -0000

That was pretty good, especially the one about the parking. I have always wanted to print up a bunch of insulting parking instructions on the stickiest paper I could find to make labels to keep with me.

This way, when I go somewhere with a crowded lot (the movie theater parking lot is the most common) and see these idiots taking up more than one space I could plaster some huge notes to them on their windows that will take hours to scrape off, letting them know what the purpose of those painted lines are.

As you said, if they *really* think they need that big of a car, they can be courteous and park it away from everyone else, especially when the lot is really full and the spaces are more valuable.

Re: Morals lost in Politics at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 17:11:47 -0000

What do you mean by "contributing as many lives"? I think they were trying to save lives by opposing the invasion, rather than "contributing" to the needless casualties on both sides.

Re: Standards of driving a big F-ing truck at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 23:15:53 -0000

Well, I did notice that his URL (area240.net) isn't an active site, so yeah kind of. As for the actual content of his comments, I wouldn't necessarily put it that strongly, but I don't necessarily disagree either....

Anyway, (steering clear of any political association with the type of car one chooses) I don't have a problem with people owning larger cars at all, except for when they take up too many parking spaces. And that is done by smaller cars as well (especially the pimp-my-ride style custom modified little cars), but it's more likely with the larger trucks and SUVs.

I've always seriously considered my sticker idea (above); anyone want to go in on the printing costs?

Re: Standards of driving a big F-ing truck at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 19:13:00 -0000

James: In my original comment (the first one, way up at the top) I was trying to say that if your vehicle has to take up two spaces (sometimes they paint them kind of small), at least park in a non-crowded part of the lot, so I applaud that effort. I know that there are considerate drivers like yourself that are often lumped in with the negative stereotypes of the few who are jerks.

Everyone: I never said that I had any kind of problem with larger cars, SUV's, etc. Furthermore, I also think I mentioned above that making any kind of association between the kind of cars people drive and their political points of view doesn't make any sense whatsoever, so I won't be commenting on that aspect.

Re. my sticker idea (*joke*): I said I'd been thinking about it for a long time, not that I'd actually do it. Just entertaining the thought for a time can be somewhat therapeutic, and I think it's at least a little more healthy to fantasize about doing something annoying like that than thinking about taking a baseball bat to their windows, etc.

Re: Update at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 19:20:22 -0000

Yahoo is pretty cool - definitely the best in the "portal" services out there right now (IMHO), and they've got some good people working there too, several of whom blog pretty frequently.

Re: enlarging text - regardless of OS version, if you use Firefox (or Mozilla) you can just do CTRL + to enlarge text (CTRL - to decrease) I don't know if there's a similar keyboard shortcut in IE, but you can go to View... Text Size...

Re: Update at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 04:09:41 -0000

XP is by far the best Microsoft desktop OS choice, although I do not like the new look, but you can still use the classic theme to get the 2000 look and feel. It's actually pretty darn stable, assuming you know some basics of configuring a stable system (including not installing every bug-ridden shareware and cracked "warez" on the www)

That being said, 98 isn't too bad if your hardware just can't handle XP, which some older hardware can't. It's certainly way better than it's immediate successor (Windows ME).

Re: Standards of driving a big F-ing truck at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 04:24:53 -0000

For those of you not familiar with the concept, I regret to introduce you to the internet slang term "troll".

Feel free to do a Google search for more details, but my personal basic definition is a creature that likes to post statements that may be only peripherally related to the original topic, but designed to spark a heated response, in an effort to inspire (or "troll for") people who will fall into playing the game (as I admittedly do from time to time). Notable characteristics include a strange imperviousness to logic, and the uncanny ability to somehow steer any conversation into their own pet peeve subject.

Most experts recommend the best antidote is to refrain from responding, but a really good troll knows how to get under your skin well enough that this can often prove difficult.

Examples above :)

Re: Update at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 00:48:03 -0000

Re: yahoo mail on the blackberry

I haven't used a Blackberry personally, but based on what I've seen from people who've had them, there are a couple options for accessing Yahoo Mail on that device, all of which depend on the model you use and the services you get from your provider.

1. Some of them might be able to access a POP3 mail server, for direct access to your e-mail account from the device. I'm pretty sure you have to pay extra on Yahoo for POP access, though.

2. If you have internet service and some kind of browser on the device, you can use the web interface, although this would be difficult as heck to use, and you may have to do some work in setting it up (ie: force your Yahoo account to use the "old" web interface, since I think the newer one has higher browser requirements).

3. One other option may be a custom service offered by your service provider. I know that when I was with AT, I could configure the mail services that I could access from my old phone (services running on their server) to access a Yahoo account, if you give them your yahoo username password.

Re: Update at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 01:09:22 -0000

Re: viruses

Dan is right, most modern viruses (at least most of the good ones - by good I mean well written) will work on either XP or 98.

When it comes to vulnerability, you are asking for trouble with 98, since efforts in patching security vulnerabilities will always go towards more current versions first, and 98 patches will eventually cease altogether (currently scheduled for June 30, 2006). You can still have a secure 98 system, it will just require more knowledge and effort on your part than it would with XP.

On the subject of viruses, and the mention of suing someone who writes or modifies them, I think that's lame. Virus writers do a huge service to the computer user community, by attempting to force the software developers to be more conscious of security concerns, and force system administrators and individual users to take a more proactive approach to securing their systems.

All of the big viruses over the last couple years that have caused the majority of the so-called damage to companies were completely preventable. In most cases, patches had already been issued by the manufacturer and people just didn't bother to implement them, so they have no one to blame but themselves.

If it weren't for the heroic virus writers out there forcing the issue by giving the problem a headline-grabbing larger scope, these bugs would still exist, but the companies would either be unaware of them or sweep them under the rug because not enough people would care about them.

Re: Virus Writers at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 22:58:47 -0000

Ya, the Lamo thing was a perfect example of how ridiculous these laws are. For one thing, he was accused of using around $300,000 of "services" from a search service (LexisNexis) that he accessed through the NYT. This inflation of value is very common in hacking cases, when the reality is that the NYT almost certainly has a flat-fee based account with NYT and the searches probably didn't amount to that much, and in any event it isn't actual money taken out of anyone's pocket.

Adding to this the insanity, some are pushing for (and have in some places) what they call "victim impact evidence", which further contributes to this injustice. The idea behind it is that the prosecution can introduce evidence (of how the victim was damaged) during the sentencing that wasn't presented in the trial, and is therefore not subject to the same kind of objections, and so they can present ridiculous, illogical claims like this which may result in a much heavier sentence and not be challenged on them because it isn't the same as trial evidence.

Re: Virus Writers at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 23:06:38 -0000

Another common claim is related to the amount of work involved on the companies part to close the security hole that the intruder exploited. Admittedly, this can amount to a lot of money, but it's something that was always their responsibility, they were just negligent and should have done it earlier. It's like if you have a giant hole in the wall of your house and someone wanders up and pokes their head in to ask/tell you about it, and you turn around and say that now he has to pay to fix it.

Re: Old news at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 00:28:34 -0000

Two words: political polarization

I've probably ranted about this subject more than enough, both on your blog and my own. People just don't see the hypocrisy of criticizing one side while defending the other when they're both doing similar things. (Of course, in this particular example, on side's lies had much more devastating consequences)

As for media outlets, I've found that generally the most reliable sources are those that aren't out to make a profit (in one way or another) by delivering the news. This is why I tend to listen to and give more credibility to sources like NPR, BBC, etc. (which I consider to be much more "centered" politically) as opposed to the big media conglomerates that clearly stand to gain financially by skewing political opinion in their favors.

The problem with this in the US is that extremely "right-wing" people like Bill O'Reilly have tried to stake a claim on "the center" (so-called no-spin zone, etc), and then, accepting that redefinition of the measuring stick, accuse anyone who's actually in the center (NPR for example) as being radically "left wing", because compared to people like him, the "center" is the "left".

Since I don't claim to be at the "center" of the imaginary political spectrum in the US, I also enjoy sources that even I would consider more "left-wing", such as Pacifica radio and Indy Media. That's not to say that I *agree* with everything that is presented in these outlets that heavily promote free speech, but in a way that is the point - if what you're listening to / watching doesn't offend you every now and then, it just feels kind of watered down.

On the (now very rare) occasions that I tune in a commercial radio station these days, I actually can't take it for very long, it just feels slimy. It's kind of like when you fast for a while or just get used to eating a healthy diet, the greasy fast food that you used to not mind actually makes you sick.

I think it's also interesting how the more independent, volunteer based organizations tend to have more "liberal" (or progressive) views on many issues, while the ones who are strictly in it for the money often reflect that in their presentations on the other side of the scale. The independent sources may not be as "polished" and have all the presentational glitter that the corporate media does, but I think motivation is more important than presentation.

Think about it in a personal situation; who are you more likely to believe regarding information about a particular model of car: a person who volunteers their own time without pay to research car info and make it available as a service to the community, or an auto salesperson? The answer is very clear; everything the salesperson says is immediately suspect, because you know that even if he's an honest guy, he has a vested interest in giving you a certain spin (even if it's on a subliminal level), whereas the other guy has nothing to gain either way.

As good of a face as the major TV and radio networks try to put on, in the end, they still need to be sure you come away feeling good about that car (or insert your other product or political point of view), because that's how they pay their bills.

Re: Old news at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 01:12:34 -0000

So far you've taken the time to make 3 "non-comments" (two on this one and one on the other post) Did you just want me to write more or something? I think I've said all I want to so far, but if something else comes up, I'll comment.

Re: Virus Writers at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 01:18:54 -0000

This post and the other one have both only been up for a few hours; just because the comments aren't flooding in doesn't mean the thread is dieing. Lots of regular readers may not have even seen it yet. Anyway, I think both these posts have already been entertaining, so I'm happy with them.

Re: Wordpress 1.5 at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 14:05:30 -0000

Re: Wordpress 1.5 at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 18:47:54 -0000

Re: Are RSS readers hurting the blog community? at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:12:46 -0000

RSS is the bomb. I sometimes go to the actual site, but usually only when I want to comment, or if only the partial text of an interesting article is available via RSS. It would be a lot harder to keep up on everything without it.

I don't mind at all if readers on my blog only read via RSS - it's all about the content for me. Sure I put some effort into trying to make creative styles, etc. (not that I'm much of an artist), but if people appreciate that, they can always load the page in their browser if they want to. If I ever have a major change to the style (or even just add some photos to the gallery), I'll usually post about it, so people will know to check it out if they want to see it.

I think I posted on my blog regarding RSS advertisements a while ago, but that is a definite possibility in the future. The big problem with this (and probably why it hasn't happened yet) is that since RSS is XML, it is very easy to parse and remove parts you don't want, so add filters for RSS readers would be easier than heck to make.

Re: Are RSS readers hurting the blog community? at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:25:09 -0000

Speaking of RSS, your comment RSS is not working still (all the links point to the most recent article)

Also, that Spamminator thing seems broken too - It isn't properly closing the first two HTML comment markers

Re: Sick again at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 01:18:04 -0000

That was great, Sara; you should comment on Dan's blog more often!

Re: Are RSS readers hurting the blog community? at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 01:28:20 -0000

I don't think I comment any less because of RSS; if anything I comment more because I get to see more articles that I may be interested in commenting on. I just don't see the connection between RSS and lack of comments.

Except, of course on this blog (ha ha, just kidding) since the links in the RSS aren't working. I was talking about the link back to the original article in the comments feed; they all point to post 352 (jib-jab) right now, where they should point to the article they go with.

Re: Are RSS readers hurting the blog community? at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 01:32:10 -0000

PS - I wish I got more blog comment spam so I could analyze it. So far the prevention measures I've put in place have kept me spam free (stuff doesn't even get into moderation, which is the second line of defense).

I think I'll have to add some logging capability to my spam prevention plugins so I can at least see how much it's stopping.

Re: Are RSS readers hurting the blog community? at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 13:59:35 -0000

Yes, it looks like it's working now. I have been working on Martha for a while; this morning she was even trying to register a domain name (although I already registered the one she was looking for), find a web hosting provider, and look for a book on HTML.

Re: Sick again at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 17:54:52 -0000

If they haven't sent the iWorks to you yet, can't you get a refund?

Re: CrazyShuffle at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 19:51:01 -0000

Have you tried OpenOffice?

Re: Are RSS readers hurting the blog community? at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 02:47:10 -0000

P.S. - I think the most commonly accepted terminology is that "geek" is positive, while "nerd" is negative, so you'd be more of a geek than a nerd.

Re: Are RSS readers hurting the blog community? at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 14:04:44 -0000

Hey, what are you trying to say.

Re: Weather at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 01:35:41 -0000

Was there something wrong with those videos that I didn't see?

Re: Bugs Bugs Bugs at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 01:39:44 -0000

It might be the time limit between comments (this is default for WordPress blogs); it is designed to stop spam, but also gets in the way of machine-gun commenters firing off a million comments (trying to raise their rank, perhaps?)

Re: A free software download from Google. at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 01:41:01 -0000

Dave,

that was a

pretty shameless attempt

at raising your comment count.

Re: Update at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 03:57:39 -0000

Dave, could you provide more info on your friend and the lawsuit? Dan mentioned above that it was a sobig variant, so I'm wondering where the $2500 comes in, since sobig was just a non-destructive e-mail worm (not to get caught up in semantics).

I know you mentioned lost business and repairs, but what exactly does that mean, since sobig would only be e-mailing itself to addresses it collects from the infected system, not destroying anything (unless there were modifications added)?

The only costs I could see would be (1) the time and/or money involved in properly configuring his system to defend against it (which was always his responsibility anyway, and if he would have done it sooner, he wouldn't have gotten hit), and (2) the potential loss of trust from customers if his computers are sending them the worm (which is justified - I wouldn't trust him with my data either if that happened to me). Neither of those two things are the fault of the "writer", so I don't think he's got a leg to stand on.

Re: Update at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 04:01:32 -0000

CCNA = Cisco Certified Network Associate

Dave, were you saying you have done this?

Re: Are RSS readers hurting the blog community? at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 04:22:33 -0000

can open all the blogs I visit with one click, and even see whether there's anything new on them since the last time I checked, so I don't have to bother even looking if nothing's changed.

Technically, RSS readers (when reading blogs at least) are still using the "web" in every sense of the word (retrieving "pages" of information, including hyperlinks, over HTTP) just like regular browsers, they just request and display the info slightly differently, with an emphasis on efficiency rather than visual style.

Re: Romania at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 14:21:38 -0000

Martha's parents lived in Romania for a while

Re: Are RSS readers hurting the blog community? at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 02:00:38 -0000

Dave, Blogger sites already have RSS feeds by default - check http://davezla.blogspot.com/atom.xml

If you have an RSS reader, you can add these URLs to it in order to manage and view them collectively.

Re: at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 00:32:00 -0000

Looks like you need to need to add some more filtering rules (no anonymous, "our site", "please visit", etc.). Maybe even only allow comments from registered users.

Re: How to Switch at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 12:45:54 -0000

After reading more about the mini, it actually seems like a pretty good idea for Apple, if they're trying to get competitive with the Windows market in terms of price. Since it doesn't include a display, I'm assuming you can hook up any regular monitor to it, possibly with an adapter of some kind?

The one big mistake I think they made though is they should have included *at least* 512MB of memory; good luck to anyone running OSX on 256.

Re: Best Apple sales reps at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 16:53:14 -0000

I agree, Macs are great for people who don't want to do anything interesting with their computers. (heh heh)

Just to clarify though, I don't think OSX is that much more stable or secure (by default) than Windows XP, especially now; they did quite a lot with SP2 to make it more secure by default.

Of course, there are more viruses, etc. that target the Windows platform, but that's only because they're more popular. The same problems that allow these viruses to take off are also present in the Mac, and will probably surface if it starts to gain more ground.

Specifically, if you are the equivalent of "root" or "Administrator" in the default account that is set up out of the box, you are asking for a problems. I know this at least used to be the case in the Mac OS; is it still? This is a recipe for disaster, since on a truly secure computer any regular user account (which even the "Administrator" should use for 99% of the time they are working on the computer) will not be able to screw up the system even if they tried, since the permissions would not be configured to allow them to install stuff or tweak the system in any way. This is possible to do on both platforms, but no one usually takes the time to do it.

The bottom line is that security and ease of use are conflicting interests by nature. In a truly secure system, it should be significantly hard (or impossible) to do certain things. That is the model that most Unix-ish operating systems (Linux, BSD) follow, and because of it they have the reputation of being difficult to use.

Re: Best Apple sales reps at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 19:39:58 -0000

I know, I know, I was just trying to get Dan riled up...

Although if you're into messing with the configuration, etc. (hardware and software) you will have a lot more opportunity on a PC. Most users aren't interested in that, so it's a mute point; other than to irritate Dan by insinuating that Macs are simple machines for simple people.

Re: Flash at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 00:11:19 -0000

What is the page that's not working?

Re: Flash at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 00:58:01 -0000

So far it's working fine for me (assuming it's the main page you're talking about).

Re: Warning!!!! at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 15:02:15 -0000

I like the concept, except at the same time, I also despise writing browser detection code for anything, maybe even this; so I don't know if I'll write a plugin for it.

Maybe you could copy that worm that was going around recently where it will play a song that tells the infected user "you are an idiot, ha haha ha ha ha", and have it play only for the IE users.

You may want to play up the security aspect of it more than the standards, since this is probably more important for most users. IMHO, the fact that *most* spyware sneaks in by ActiveX controls (or other vulnerabilities that only affect IE) is reason enough for people to switch to Firefox.

My general rule (as far as standards go) is to only write code and pages that comply with W3C standards. Then, make a note of that on the page, and then the user can try whatever browser they want. A properly written site will still be (at least minimally) functional in any browser, even if it doesn't support CSS, Javascript, etc. at all.

As far as standards support in IE, (specifically CSS) recent versions of IE (6.x) actually aren't that bad, in that they do support most of the current spec. (I believe that pseudo-element stuff like "li:before" that we were talking about previously is actually a CSS3 recommendation, not yet officially a standard, so they get an excuse for that).

However, the main *bad* thing that they do is try to ADD a bunch of stuff in addition to the standard, like all their IE special effects garbage, which is irritating because it dazzles the casual developer and they make sites that depend on these IE-only features, but don't work in other browsers. The casual developer will often not know that some of the code or css they are writing is using IE-specific functionality, because they aren't familiar with the specifications, and they don't bother to test it in other browsers. I think this is changing, though, as Firefox is rapidly gaining acceptance.

Re: Warning!!!! at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 19:15:02 -0000

should work on any browsers that support the standards, and should also "gracefully" fail on those that don't.

2. Generally browser detection is used for the opposite purpose you're going for: where some self-proclaimed web guru (probably using FrontPage or some other WYSIWYG HTML editor) will design their page using drag drop for dummies, and then realize that it only works on IE. Then, instead of taking the time to learn to do it right, they will just add some code that tells the user "This page requires IE version 5or6.x or greater", and sometimes not even allow non-IE users to load the page. This is the cardinal sin of web accessibility. (Just don't get me started on Flash.... :^)

3. In the old days (early-mid 90s), web developers were basically forced to write two versions of their code (especially Javascript), because at the time the NS vs. IE Browser Wars were raging and there wasn't a clear winner yet. Since it wasn't possible then to write code that worked on both, developers were forced to detect the browser and run the appropriate code.

There was a gigantic problem with this however, which is inherent in *any* browser detection scheme (even to this day), and that is that they quickly become obsolete. Every time a new browser version is released, you have to go back through all your code and update it, which is a maintenance nightmare.

For example, if you are using detection to restrict access to a particular javascript feature on your page, and the newly released version of the browser would now be able to run it, you either have to go update your browser detection with another branch that allows only this new version to run it, or just continue to deny that functionality to the users of that browser, even though their browser now could run it if your code didn't stop it.

Or, take a real longshot example, where Microsoft releases IE 7 and they make it just as secure and standards compliant as Firefox (unlikely, I know, but they have at least been taking steps in the right direction in terms of security). So, in the unlikely event that were to happen, then you'd look like an idiot, because your page would be telling them they're idiots for using IE, when it wouldn't be the case anymore.

Anyway, all that being said, I think there's probably a balance somewhere in which it may be good to use browser detection (for now) to more actively promote Firefox to current IE users, but hopefully without insulting them, since that will just turn them off.

Re: Warning!!!! at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 01:19:36 -0000

Ya, it does look a little better now. I didn't necessarily think it was offensive, but I think now it will probably be more effective at "encouraging" people to switch. My comments before had more to do with browser detection usually being a bad thing in general, not specifically this application of it, since I know you're doing it for a good cause :)

Re: Upgrade and Design at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 01:22:24 -0000

I like the Netflix thing; now I know what movies you have, so I can ask to borrow one if I see something I want to see but forgot to order.

Re: Archived at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 21:06:30 -0000

I like the archives thing - did you do it or is it a WP 1.5 thing?

Re: wp-mail.php at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 19:21:13 -0000

01 * * * * GET /home/.../wp-mail.php

Means that it will run the get command on the first minute of the hour (12:01, 1:01, etc.), and the asterisks mean "every", so it would run at X:01, every hour, every day, etc.

I think the only way to do every ten minutes would be with six lines:
00 * * * * GET .....
10 * * * * GET .....
20 * * * * GET .....
30 * * * * GET .....
40 * * * * GET .....
50 * * * * GET .....

Re: Archived at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 19:45:08 -0000

Maybe I should include myself on my recent comments list. What do you think?

Re: wp-mail.php at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 19:48:12 -0000

Yes, that would make it run every minute. The only downside of that would be the overhead of having it run so much when you probably don't need it that often. Also, your hosting provider may have rules about running scripts and/or scheduled processes this frequently that you may want to look at.

Re: =?UTF-8?Q?Test?= at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 00:19:57 -0000

Do you have data service with a browser on your phone? I've used that before and it seems like it would be easier. The WP admin pages still work well on a limited browser, but if you had to, you could also make a trimmed-down posting page that would be easier to use from the cell. That way you wouldn't have to worry about running a cron job to pull in the posts.

Re: =?UTF-8?Q?Test?= at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 00:22:14 -0000

P.S. - I am sooo tempted to mass e-mail your domains just to see if I could sneak a post in, but I wouldn't do that to you.

Re: Avery at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 12:33:05 -0000

Just don't post *those* pics

Re: A host of Problems at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 18:07:50 -0000

Remind me never to use 1and1, it seems like they go down quite a bit, based on your experience.

Re: My new telly at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 01:15:18 -0000

Just wait a few weeks for Dan to put his on eBay.

Re: Gloat at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 02:29:00 -0000

Dan, you blogging celebrity, you.

Your next mark of greatness to strive for will be to have Matt Mullenweg himself comment on your blog. :)

Re: Serve it up. at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 01:32:01 -0000

Since you're posting these here anyway, I might as well just respond here.

The root plan from 1and1 looks pretty good. Assuming you can live without Exchange (which is probably a good idea anyway) it sounds like that configuration could handle everything you want to do. This is assuming there are *no* restrictions on what you can install, which it didn't say explicitly. It does say you have root access, but they could still have policies preventing certain things, etc.

Also, Fedora shouldn't be a problem either, assuming RedHat 9 is OK, since Fedora is a branch off of RedHat anyway. Like they mentioned in the forums, you may just need to adjust manually for some of the differences.

You may also want to check the memory requirements for FCS; those base packages only start with 256MB - I'm guessing you'll need at least 512; maybe 1GB.

One other thing I forgot to mention last time; since you're talking about streaming media, you should also check on the bandwidth limits and costs. These 1and1 plans say they support 500GB per month, but depending on the scope of what you want to do with this, you need some more info. Primarily you will want to figure out (based on projected usage) how much bandwidth you will need, and also how much they can handle simultaneously. In other words, even if you will be within that 500GB, the traffic certainly won't be evenly distributed throughout those days; you will probably have peak times that fall within a few hours in the day, and you need to know (from them) how much concurrent traffic they can handle. Take how much bandwidth does streaming to one person cost, multiplied by how many people you need to support using it at the same time, and see if they can handle that.

Re: Twinsees at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:49:35 -0000

Go Sara! Once the cash starts flowing for your photography, make sure to rub Dan's nose in the fact that you're making more money off his blog than he is.

Re: How could they do this to me? at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 15:24:57 -0000

Dan, you will figure out a way around it, I'm sure. As long as there is even one port open to the outside (it can be anything: FTP, or even a non-standard high port; whatever) you can have access to the outside world due to the magic of SSH tunneling.

For example, you will notice that the IP address for this comment is my home IP, but I am sitting at my desk at work right now.

Re: CrazySox at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 15:27:09 -0000

It does look good now, but why didn't you just use the "classic" theme, and then just copy over her old style?

Re: How could they do this to me? at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 18:20:52 -0000

Although I do occasionally use proxy servers, that time I didn't. This will be a fun game - if you want to keep guessing.

Re: How could they do this to me? at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 01:41:06 -0000

Sorry, I just didn't have a chance to reply back again yet. Yes, I was using Lynx (in an SSH session) on a Linux server in Amsterdam.

Re: TiVo at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 01:50:26 -0000

Perhaps it's that I'm not *enough* of a TV addicted loser to pay for a device that allows me to maximize my TV viewing.

That being said, I actually probably will end up getting one (a DVR of some sort). The main criteria I have though is being able to export to a standard format (not proprietary) media file (like MPG or compressed AVI), preferably over an ethernet connection, although I would settle for USB.

My main goal (other than the obvious convenience and the fact that my current VCR's programming doesn't work anymore) is to complete my collection of Twilight Zone episodes, which I was previously recording directly on one of my computers, but the setup and programming for that was a hassle, so I stopped doing it.

Re: TiVo at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 13:06:50 -0000

Martha, is that you?

Re: I Hate…that Blue header at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 13:20:35 -0000

Re: trackbacks: I know, I know...

Steam is definitely preferable to the default Kubrick, for the reasons you mentioned above. I hate to say it, but the original Kubrick reminds me too much of an Apple-ish look feel.

I went with the same approach on mine: no images should be required to make the template what it is. I've recently gone back to sometimes including images in the posts themselves, but still not a part of the template itself.

Maybe if I ever get around to updating my styles to 1.5 (as you can tell, it's still under construction), I might enter it in the style competition, but I go back and forth on that for a couple reasons:
1. Then other people would be using my look, and I made it from scratch myself because I wanted it to be "unique" (this one's not a big deal really)
2. I would have to think up a cool name for it (suggestions, anyone?)
3. I'm still planning on putting the finishing touches on it, which include a lot of fancy Javascript stuff, especially for the side menu section. It will still be completely usable without JS, but it won't look as cool as it's going to. I'm not sure if they allow JS to be a part of the styles in the competition.

Re: I Hate…that Blue header at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 16:49:56 -0000

Dan, I think Alex King has a better theme switcher, so I will probably discontinue mine, since I don't really have the time to improve it as much as I should.

Re: I Hate…that Blue header at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 18:20:51 -0000

Images in the template aren't necessarily bad; it's just a personal preference of mine to not make them an integral part of the design. I know that a lot of people do, and I don't necessarily have a problem with it, I just like it to still look good if images are turned off (on slow connections, etc.)

Did your comment get moderated or something? I didn't see it when I posted my last one, even though yours came in first... probably because of all those taboo design elements you referred to.

Re: Striped at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 04 Mar 2005 19:27:23 -0000

At first glance, I would guess that it means no images, but after looking at it and seeing a bunch of images in the sidebar....

Just kidding; I like it! I vote for making it your default. As a frequent commenter, does my vote get more weight?

Re: Symbol Life at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 06 Mar 2005 13:35:00 -0000

Obviously someone who makes themselves feel better by criticizing other people's grammar and spelling. To bad (and kind of ironic) that he made an error of his own (not capitalizing "what"); not to mention choosing a lame fake name.

Re: What am I doing? part deux at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 00:42:46 -0000

I think the main thing for BBlogs is promoting it; letting people know it's there and that they can post (even if they do have to register first, which is probably a good idea)

Re: On the pot pondering at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 19:22:04 -0000

Dan, why don't you just allow unregistered users to make comments without moderation?

Re: R007 at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 19:23:24 -0000

NO, it's not at our house. I'll help out though if I can.

Re: AutoLink nonsense at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 19:33:43 -0000

As I mentioned on my site, I didn't post about this issue, which seems to be the hot topic in tech blogs the last few weeks, because I think it's way overblown. As the article above mentions, it is a user preference, which the user has to choose to enable. Sure, the site owners may not like the fact that links are being added to their page, but in the end, there's nothing they can do about it. I would wager a significant amount of money that Google will release an opt-out meta tag for site owners to use very soon, which would be perfectly acceptable as far as I'm concerned.

Re: On the pot pondering at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 22:22:04 -0000

I wouldn't try *just* my spam plugin; it's supposed to be a supplement to others. I know of at least one spammer (some phentermine seller) that gets around my technique (dynamically modifying the query string in the post URL).

As for registration, it's definitely easier (don't have to type your name, etc), and since it keeps you logged in via a cookie you don't have to log in every time either.

P.S. - This comment will probably get moderated because I mentioned that drug, but oh well.

Re: On the pot pondering at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 22:22:44 -0000

Guess not; you should definitely add "phentermine" to your spam words list.

Re: On the pot pondering at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 22:26:09 -0000

My bad; I didn't realize that it still shows you your own comments (if you're logged in) when they are pending moderation, so I thought those last two slipped by, but really only I can see them until they are approved. Pretty cool.

Re: and I thought I was rich… at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 11:47:56 -0000

The total net worth of the worldâ€šÃ„Ã´s 691 billionaires increased $300 billion to $2.2 trillion, according to Forbes.

If the total net worth of the 691 billionaires used to be $300 billion, then it would seem that a lot of them weren't billionaires.

This could be partially offset by:

The Forbes list contains 131 new billionaires.

but even then, that's 560 who were not new billionaires, which still doesn't seem to jive with the previous $300 billion figure.

Re: and I thought I was rich… at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 13 Mar 2005 15:18:29 -0000

What is up with you guys using each other's names lately?

Re: Busy - Follow-up at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 18:05:44 -0000

Now that you have your own server up and running, you can get around this pretty easily if you are worried about them watching you. PS - they could watch you even before you were going through the proxy server, it's just easier now.

Re: Busy - Follow-up at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 18:06:59 -0000

PPS - You're entering the theme competition too?

Re: GoogleX at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 11:50:16 -0000

Did Apple Whack Google?

Re: Busy - Follow-up at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 11:58:35 -0000

I'm thinking of writing an article on this, so maybe you can be the test case.

Re: Busy - Follow-up at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 14:59:44 -0000

Actually I think there are a lot of articles out there already on setting up proxy servers; I was going to write a small piece on how to create a configuration that allows you to create an external proxy that you can use to encrypt all your traffic and work around network restrictions. I think most proxies have some level of filtering capability; the only proxy server I've ever installed and used myself is squid, which there is a lot of documentation for online.

Re: GoogleX at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 19:30:50 -0000

When you say ripping off the code and using it for yourself, what do you mean? If you're talking about the image enlargement when you mouseover the images (like the mac launcher bar, or whatever it's called), all he's doing is replacing each small image with a big one onmouseover and putting it back onmouseout. It would probably be easier just to rewrite that, since his javascript is obfuscated to try to prevent you from just copying/pasting.

Re: GoogleX at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 00:55:40 -0000

Ah, didn't notice that before. Anyway, that part is pretty easy as well, you can adjust any style attribute (including width height) using javascript, so the function that runs onmouseover just does a quick for loop until the original one is the right size before it does the switch; no biggie. Maybe I will put together a JS file that you can just plug images into and have it work.

Re: GoogleX at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 00:56:33 -0000

Oh, wait - I don't like that thing on the Mac, why would I want to rewrite it?

Re: GoogleX at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 00:59:41 -0000

PS - If Apple did pressure them to take it down, it only confirms my opinion of Apple.

Re: Cingular at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 01:06:11 -0000

Hey, before you use it for your laptop (over bluetooth) be sure that the unlimited data covers ALL data, not just data used on the device (phone) itself. Sometimes they call this tethered/untethered devices. This is why I still moved to T-Mobile even after ATT started offering "unlimited" for $25; they specifically say that that is only data on the phone; paired devices still pay extra per KB. I only bring it up since I know Cingular merged with ATT, so you may want to check that policy before you get another surprise on your bill.

Re: In it to win at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 12:11:36 -0000

Oops, in case you couldn't tell; that last one was from me. I cleared the cookies on my browser and forgot to log back in on your blog.

Re: In it to win at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 18:32:58 -0000

After doing more research, everything I have read says that you do need iTunes to transfer music to the iPods, unless you download special (hack) drivers or "unofficial" plugins for Winamp, etc. You can't just copy the files directly over USB without a special driver that is not made (or supported) by Apple.

As far as I'm concerned, this is a *gigantic* negative in my book, regardless of how good iTunes is. You would never let Microsoft slide on doing something like this. Imagine that they create the next big thing (an imaginary product: "mMovie" portable movie player); if they designed it to only be usable from Windows you would call them evil, and perhaps rightly so. If someone came back with "Well, why don't you just use Windows?" that would not fly.

What I'm saying is Apple is basically doing the same thing; iTunes is only made for Windows or Mac. What if you want to use Linux or some other alternative OS, or you just don't want to use iTunes for whatever reason? According to Apple you cannot do that; of course there are unsupported hacks that let you get around it, but no thanks to Apple.

I'm not bagging on iTunes, it definitely has the best organization features I have seen, but if it weren't for that I would use Winamp for everything since it is so much faster and takes up less memory than iTunes. Even now I will often just use Winamp because iTunes is rather slow compared to it.

Re: In it to win at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 18:40:40 -0000

PS - I should qualify that; from what I read you can drag any files you want onto the disk, but that's only for storage. If you want to play music files, they have to go through iTunes or one of the hacked drivers available. It's just ridiculous that they would go out of their way to add this restriction to the device.

Re: In it to win at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 21:45:54 -0000

Until I hear otherwise (ie: a quote/link from Apple's site) that says you can just do a straight file copy over USB and play the mp3 on the iPod, I still doubt it, for a couple reasons:

1. Everything on Apple's site (that I've seen) says that you need iTunes to load music onto the iPod to play.

2. The fact that there are "unofficial" third party plugins and hacked drivers for copying files onto the iPod to play leads me to believe that the restriction was put there by Apple. Otherwise, why would these tools exist, if the problem they are working around does not exist?

Re: What am I doing at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 03:45:29 -0000

Yes! There were already answers to this question before I even saw the post!

What distro is this again? (I know you mentioned FCS above, but I don't remember if that was on your side, or on the host server too) Depending on the distro, they may have binary packages available (rpm, etc) that don't require you to recompile the source at all; just a thought - I'm sure you already looked for this.

Re: What am I doing at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 12:02:09 -0000

I still recommend trying a binary distribution, such as the RPMs at ftp://ftp.squid-cache.org/pub/contrib/RPM-v1.1/

No use in recompiling it unless you need to. I'm assuming that since Fedora descends from RedHat that it handles RPMs OK, although I could be wrong.

Re: What am I doing at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 18:22:38 -0000

You probably only need the i386 one, unless you need to recompile in the future. Once you've got the .rpm on your system, you just do something like:

rpm -i whatever.rpm

Although you may want to check the documentation for the rpm command (man rpm), since I don't use that very much.

Re: What am I doing at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 21:53:51 -0000

Yes, the secret is finally out - Nate is a rocket scientist. I love those JPL jokes...

Re: I did it at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 16:47:25 -0000

Good luck!

Re: What am I doing at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 01:58:31 -0000

That page seems like a good start; now that it's installed all you really need to do is get familiar with the config file, which (I think) is pretty well commented, you might even be able to figure it out just by reading through the config file itself.

One extremely important point I would make is that you do *not* want to allow that port to be open on the firewall. Of course, the docs you read probably tell you that you do, because the idea (usually) is you set the browser on your workstation (lets call it "W") to point to the address of the server ("S"), and the appropriate port (3128 by default, but you can change this).

Actually, let me take one more step back and say that the first thing you need to do (and maybe you already have) is become *very* familiar with the firewall (iptables probably) configuration on the machine, and make *sure* that everything is closed except for ssh access. You can open up other ports (web, mail, etc) later, once you are more confident that you are doing it securely.

OK, back to the squid configuration. There are certainly ways that you can configure it to be accessible from the outside world (the W to S scenario described above) and restrict it to make sure it's only you that is using it (passwords, ip restrictions, etc.) but this is tricky, because if you slip up and misconfigure it, it will be an open proxy that other people can use/abuse since it's on a public server.

The way I do it on my server is that the port that squid is running on is not accessible from outside of that box, so neither I nor anyone else can set my browser to use my proxy server (directly). Rather, I will SSH into the server, and forward my local port 3128 to 127.0.0.1:3128 on the server. Then I set my browser's proxy to localhost:3128. To the browser, it appears that it is using a proxy server running on my laptop, when in reality, the SSH tunnel is forwarding that through to the port on the server it is connected to. So, from squid's point of view, I am using the proxy server from the local box, so both sides act as if everything is local, and the best thing is that the traffic between the two boxes is all encrypted through the SSH tunnel.

Confused yet?

Re: What am I doing at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 14:33:33 -0000

Re: the security of the tunnel, etc. -
That's the great thing about the ssh tunnel; it doesn't matter what's between your computer and the ssh server, because all the packets that leave your pc are encrypted before they leave your pc, and only decrypted on your ssh server. Whether they have a proxy setup or not, they could log any and all the traffic you make anyway, the difference now is that if they did decide to do that all they would be capturing is the encrypted ssh traffic, so it would be useless to them.

The only thing to watch out for is that if you are tunneling everything (even non-private stuff) the admins might notice that your machine has an unusually high amount of traffic on port 22 (SSH) always going to the same server, and they could probably figure out what you're doing, or at least be suspicious even if they didn't know what you were doing. They still couldn't read your traffic, but they could try things like blocking that port (which is no problem since you can use any port, and it's unlikely they will block all ports). It's actually more likely that they would restrict you in a non-technical manner; ie: have your boss tell you to knock it off or you'll get fired. All that being said, a lot of admins do not monitor logs like they should, so they may not notice, and if they do, they might be cool and have no problem with it.

I will try to check out my squid configuration file later and pull out the relevant pieces that you need to watch out for. (It's been a while since I set it up). I could look at the firewall config too, if you want to call me on my cell phone or just give me the info next time I see you in person.

Re: Wha Wha? at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 15:00:20 -0000

What did you call your theme for the competition? Is it "striped" or something else?

Re: wohhhh is me at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 18:15:47 -0000

I wouldn't feel too bad; he is swamped with submissions for both new themes and updates to existing ones since the contest deadline was yesterday. I'm sure he'll get around to it.

I think I'm in a worse boat, since mine is up but now I am waiting for my update to be published, and since I forgot about the list of themes being so stinking long on the sample site, mine is up there looking goofy for all to see (until the update I sent is posted), which I think is worse than not being up at all.

Re: PSP web browsing through Wipeout Pure at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 01:09:01 -0000

Yes, there are several ways you could do it. If you can set the PSP to use your proxy server for web requests, then you can just do the above (editing the hosts file) on the proxy server, and it should work, since DNS lookups should be done on the proxy server.

Re: I waited all day for this… at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 23:07:49 -0000

I love it when Sara uses your computer/login. This one is especially good.

Re: I waited all day for this… at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 01:41:01 -0000

P.S. - Thanks for the vote of confidence above. I said the same thing about the download issue; it would be nice to be able to tell how many people are downloading and using it. I should have included some stuff in the theme that will trackback to me; maybe I need to submit one more update...

Re: Gaim at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 01:45:16 -0000

I have only tried Trillian and Gaim, and I find that Gaim seems to be superior (in my opinion), especially for use with proxies. That being said, I IM clients never seem to stay on my system for longer than a week before I remember why I don't like them.

Re: Hell yeah at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 12:13:55 -0000

April fools; not even Apple would be that cheesy.

Re: My first Flickr post at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 10 Apr 2005 02:53:02 -0000

I have heard nothing but good things about Flickr, I just haven't checked it out myself yet. I wonder if this will be integrated into Yahoo 360, if Yahoo bought them out - I know it has a photo sharing system, but I haven't checked that part out yet.

Re: My first Flickr post at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 10 Apr 2005 02:55:39 -0000

this interesting Yahoo anecdote related to Flickr a while back, makes it sound pretty good.

Re: My first Flickr post at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 00:46:47 -0000

Ya, I just wanted to check out 360 because there was so much hype about it, but I'd agree that it's not a replacement for WordPress (or even Blogger). As for the integration with other Yahoo features, I think that would be it's strong point, I don't really see it as a downside. It can be a lot, but as long as they don't add it in by default and it's presented in a way that is easy to filter through what's available.

Re: This time you can guess who this is. at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 00:47:52 -0000

Be careful, I think that the person hosting the file is in more trouble than the downloader.

Re: LAX Scissors at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 00:50:53 -0000

And it's all thanks to the Ministry (oops, I mean Department) of Homeland Security!

Re: LAX Scissors at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 13:40:50 -0000

click here

Re: FlyakiteOSX - Modify . Simplify . Aquafy at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 18:03:42 -0000

The music player is flash, the rest of it (at least everything else I looked at) is just javascript.

Re: FlyakiteOSX - Modify . Simplify . Aquafy at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 02:39:11 -0000

script actually; even though the names and the syntax are similar, they are very different. Javascript is a scripting language (in plain text) that the browser interprets and runs, whereas Java is semi-compiled into byte-code files (packaged into Applets for web stuff like this) and requires a JVM (virtual machine) running as a plugin within the browser to execute the code. I didn't look through everything, but most of what I did see (draging stuff around, the dock bar, opening new "windows" etc.) is all javascript.

It's what they call "DHTML" (for Dynamic html). You can do quite a lot with it. I once did a full help desk chat application (with all the fancy stuff like queuing, etc. - a lot like Liveperson.com if you've ever seen it), with all the client-side pieces in Javascript. That included the messaging to/from the server (using the same technique that Google uses now for Maps and Suggest), as well as a completely dynamic UI, including dragging things around as well as a "tabbed interface" (that you guys seem to like so much) for switching within the browser window between chat sessions, and the other portions of the system (knowledge base, etc.), all without doing any page refreshes or new page requests. It actually worked pretty well, although I did eventually move the messaging piece and most of the logic into a Java applet, in order to take advantage of multithreading for the messages, which you can't do with Javascript alone.

All the DHTML stuff got pretty popular during the dot com era, but unfortunately the browsers weren't as standards compliant as they are today, so it was a real pain sometimes, which is probably why most "fancy UI" sites moved to Flash. DHTML is making a comeback recently, though, as evidenced by Google and others.

Re: FlyakiteOSX - Modify . Simplify . Aquafy at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 03:20:20 -0000

Here's some screen captures, just to prove that I'm not all talk...

Re: LAX Scissors at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 11:48:56 -0000

Better yet, call the TSA and report that someone is selling weapons past the security point, and see if they can figure out what you mean.

Re: LAX Scissors at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 01:18:40 -0000

You could always call from a payphone (not that I'd condone that kind of terrorist-like tactic of anonymity).

But now that you say that, I can see that there would be a definite downside; which would be that someone (either the shop owner or a random innocent person) might "disappear" (get shipped down to Guantanamo).

The really sad part is that even though that was a joke, it's completely plausible. Oh well, at least we don't live under an evil regime like Saddam's was, so even though he/she would be imprisoned without trial or even a chance to let their family know what happened, we could at least rest assured that they wouldn't be tortured. Oh, wait...

Re: Internet Explorer Sucks at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 12:34:54 -0000

I'm with you on the tabbed browsing (as anyone who frequents this site probably knows already). But, as for the point of the post, IE does still suck, and people should still move to Firefox for other reasons. As much as I like the better standards compliance and far better extensions/tools etc. of Firefox, the primary benefit that I think affects the most "average users" is avoiding adware/spyware, which almost always sneaks in via ActiveX.

Re: Flickr at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 12:18:21 -0000

Yes I think I would use it. I'm using Gallery right now, but I think almost all the admin features of that suck, and I've heard Flickr is better.

What is the tight race, between who get the Flickr account? I say you go by the top commenters list. Speaking of that, could you update the comments table to change all the 'JB' comments to have 'JaredB' as the author, so my numbers are pumped up even more?

But seriously, if Nathan wants it too, you should give it to him; it's not that big of a deal for me.

Re: Flickr at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 15:16:06 -0000

UPDATE `wp_comments` SET `comment_author` = 'JaredB' WHERE `comment_author` = 'JB'

Same for the URLs, except you just use the 'comment_author_url' field.

Yes, I like the setup, especially the post header sections. They only suggestion I would have would be something to signify the end of one post (other than the beginning of the next one. Maybe you could move the link to the comments back down and do something cool with that.

Re: Flickr at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 17:55:23 -0000

UPDATE `wp_comments` SET `comment_author_url` = 'http://freepressblog.org' WHERE 'comment_author` = 'JaredB'

Re: F’ that at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 12:51:47 -0000

I think to me the statement actually means kind of what you're saying; God didn't "take" him (as in it being His will for Tim to go now), but he just "received" him, as a result of something that happened that was against God's will.

I agree with your frustration that sometimes people want to squeeze everything that happens into being covered under God's will somehow, even when it doesn't necessarily make sense. While I'm the first to recognize that there are certainly things that are in God's will that will never make sense to us in this part of life, I don't think that means that everything that happens is somehow in God's will otherwise if wouldn't have happened - that is BS.

Also, another common quote is how God takes things that were meant for evil and brings good out of them. This is true as well, but it certainly doesn't mean that the original evil thing was necessarily in God's will just because there were positive things that came out of it.

The philosophy that anything that happens is automatically in God's will because he allowed it to happen is not only logically flawed, but scripture also plainly refutes it. The bible clearly states that it is "God's will that none will perish, but that all would come to repentance", but also acknowledges that this road is "narrow, and few will find it". So it is clear that God's will is good, but not everything that happens is "approved" by His will. There are all sorts of theories about explaining that, usually related to the fact that God has given everyone free will, etc.

Re: F’ that at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 18:32:31 -0000

I always believed that our place with God is always ready, or at least is not dependent on our earthly measurements of time.

I don't think there's a housekeeping department up in heaven that has a list of rooms to prepare and as soon as a "room" is "ready" that our time is up on earth.

I think that what Jesus meant by the whole "room being ready" thing is just to let us know that there is more to life than what we perceive right now, and to not be to preoccupied with temporal things (accumulation of wealth, etc.). It serves both to comfort those who feel that they will be missing something by leaving the earth (by assuring them that their true home is with God), as well as giving hope to those living in difficult situations (such as the majority of the world, relative to us) that we will only have to deal with the difficulties of this world for a brief moment (relative to eternity).

Re: F’ that at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 03 May 2005 02:28:04 -0000

I remember having a similar conversation not too long ago with someone on this subject. I think it's certainly possible for God to be "in control" of/over everything, without always necessarily "controlling" individual events.

I also don't think that just because something happens that it was automatically therefore in God's will, otherwise it wouldn't of happened. That would seem to be true, since God is obviously able to prevent anything from happening that might go against his will, but the Bible is too full of examples of people going against his will, and God explicitly acknowledging that they have done so.

Re: F’ that at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 03 May 2005 02:57:18 -0000

I think your pretty much on track, although of course I could be wrong. I can identify a couple times in my life where (in retrospect) I believe that God probably engineered circumstances in such a way that I was forced to make important decisions (between a limited number of choices), but I don't think that I've ever been "forced" by God to do something. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, either, just that I don't think it's in His nature to do.

The closest example in scripture (that I can think of) would be where it talks about God "hardening" the pharoh of Egypt's heart against his will, but even then, I see that as God repeatedly offering him so many opportunities to come into line with his will that eventually the pharoh had to decide either to give in and obey or oppose God just on the principle of not giving in, and his pride had been pushed to the point that he could not lay it down, even if/when he knew he was on the losing side of the fight.

Re: F’ that at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 04 May 2005 02:02:57 -0000

Yeah, what's up with that? Now it's only a matter of time before someone figures out that our "community" is a "church". Great...

Re: Binary Bonsai email probs at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 04 May 2005 14:30:00 -0000

Just get ready for a flood of MS bashing responses from all the Mac lovers out there.

Re: Use System-Wide Proxy Settings for 2000 or XP at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 05 May 2005 11:39:49 -0000

When you say "system-wide" do you mean all users on a given computer, or all computers on the network? You can do it at the network level through AD, but if you have few computers and the proxy doesn't change much it would probably be easier to set it at the computer. Assuming the users don't have admin permissions on the computers, you could set it and apply the registry setting you mentioned above (forcing all users of that computer to share the setting) and then not allow non-admins to change it.

The only downside is that the Windows proxy settings will only affect IE and other applications that know to look there. Other apps may not have the option to check your system settings and may have to be configured independently.

If you want to really make sure that people are only surfing through the proxy, then you will also want to disable all other outbound traffic at the gateway/router, only allowing these machines to get to the specific proxy server on its specific port.

Re: More Cowbell at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 05 May 2005 11:42:59 -0000

New Mexico: cleaner than regular Mexico

Re: Communism and Starbucks Went to work at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 10 May 2005 19:13:51 -0000

Working at home gets more difficult as the kids get a little older (and you get more of them), but enjoy it if/while you can. I still do it sometimes, but I don't end up getting as much work done. Eventually you have to switch to working from Starbucks or somewhere else with 802.11.

Re: True personality at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 10 May 2005 22:13:24 -0000

You should experiment with the elevator phone; see if it's on the hospital's PBX or a real telco line. If it's a real line, you could really have some fun with some of those people who aren't following the "rules".

Re: True personality at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 10 May 2005 22:17:26 -0000

Also, try facing the back of the elevator instead of facing forward.

Re: Communism and Starbucks Went to work at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 12 May 2005 16:33:52 -0000

Ya, I agree. Although Dave, if you're talking about SB on Victoria Ralston, I know what you mean, they do get a little over-"bubbly" sometimes. I don't think any of them would be spiteful about it though; hopefully you were referring to the Coffee Bean when you talked about the grounds though, since their coffee isn't that great anyway. It was most likely just a mistake, though; did you say anything?

It is pretty cool of them to take the effort to remember your custom order drink so that you don't have to explain it every time; that will usually earn extra tips from me. I just know how hard that would be for me to do, considering the volume of people coming in there every day. I appreciate that kind of effort, even if it is motivated and/or mandated from the top.

Re: Communism and Starbucks Went to work at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 13 May 2005 02:06:44 -0000

Oh yeah, I forgot that I was going to comment on tipping at Starbucks. I go back and forth on this, and currently I have swayed back towards only dropping in the coin part of the change most of the time. I realize that some of the people that work there do need that extra money to get by, and I do appreciate (as I've stated above) the good service that I usually receive at Starbucks.

But the real hesitation I have is that I'm already paying a F'ing fortune on the drink itself. Sure that profit may not be trickling down to the worker who would collect the tips, but my point is that it should. If your products are that overpriced, you should be spreading the wealth to your workers. Of course, not tipping probably doesn't really get that message through very well either, but oh well.

I guess I'm saying that in a more ideal society, a company that is doing well will compensate their employees well enough so that they don't have to depend on tips for a living. Since that kind of socialist thinking isn't acceptable in America, we are stuck with the corporate execs hogging it all for themselves. This is what really cracks me up about people who say that tax breaks for the rich are eventually good for the poor, because the rich are then able to pay the poor more, etc. (trickle down theory). NEWS FLASH - people are greedy! The exec who gets a huge tax bonus is not (in most cases) going to generously pass that on down to his employees.

Re: Communism and Starbucks Went to work at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 13 May 2005 18:16:57 -0000

Dave, Cuba is not a model socialist state; don't choose it for an example just because it is a mess. As Nathan pointed out, there were many contributing factors to the state that Cuba is currently in, including US foreign policy.

Off-track side note: am I the only one who sees the ironic similarities of the Cuban missile crisis (where we threatened to start a nuclear war because they were having weapons/bases too close to the US) and the current outrage in the middle east over the continuing (and expanding) U.S. military presence in their part of the world, prompting (in part) the 9/11 attacks?

As for giving and taking care of the poor, I would agree that it would be the responsibility of Christians to do so, but we have failed to do so. My point about the tax breaks for the rich was that the theory proponents of that strategy often purport in its defense (that it will eventually trickle down to help the lower classes) is a complete load of BS. The Al Gore thing is a perfect example of my point that this type of thing doesn't work. I'm no fan of Gore either, but thanks for using him to illustrate that my statement that the rich generally do not help the poor (of their own free will) is true.

Capitalists love to say that the rich should be able to keep as much of their money as they can, and they will responsibly use it to help the less fortunate. The FACT is they don't (as a whole - there are exceptions of course). This is exactly why you cannot leave the disbursement of wealth in the hands of the wealthy, because for the most part they don't really give a crap about those less fortunate than themselves. I'm glad you agree with me about corporate greed being bad, just don't let your party hear you say that, they might kick you out.

Sure, in a perfect world, you wouldn't have to tax the rich to help the poor, they would do so of their own free will. But since that is not (and never will be, due to human nature) the case, the only alternatives are to either let the poor go without help and become more oppressed by the rich, or to have the government "force" the rich to provide the help via taxation.

History proves that a healthy middle class is vital to maintaining a true democracy, and that unfettered individual/corporate growth and accumulation of wealth always leads to the reduction/elimination of the middle class, eventually leading to a state where the wealthy (or corporations) continue to build on their power base by further exploitation of the poor.

Back to the original point of the post, I'm not sure why I thought that Starbucks people didn't make good money. I do remember hearing that they get good benefits, but it's good to hear that they also pay well, and that they oppose the war.

Re: SErved crap at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 16 May 2005 18:26:36 -0000

Congratulations!

Additional lessons:
Plesk sucks - do manual backups (and updates, for that matter)

I have a lot of thoughts that this brought up, but I will probably blog on them later.

Re: Avery’s new CD at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 17 May 2005 00:52:52 -0000

That was cool; you should redo that with different audio next time you hear a popular song that you don't like, throw it in there and then post it. That sounds the kind of thing people would endlessly forward to their friends and family via e-mail. Be sure to put your Google ads back up though first.

Re: Communism and Starbucks Went to work at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 17 May 2005 13:44:38 -0000

Dave, learn more about communism / socialism if you want to talk about it. Cuba is certainly not a "pure" model of either; maybe that's why you don't like socialism / communism so much, because you are looking at a flawed model.

I'm not saying that it's completely the fault of the US that Cuba is as screwed up as it is, but it is definitely a contributing factor. Saying that it's all the Cuban government's fault is the same kind of BS as telling the families of the tens of thousands of dead Iraqis that their loved ones are dead only because of Saddam, not the U.S. decision to illegally invade and take over their country. Sure Saddam was bad, and definitely contributed to the poor quality of their lives, but that doesn't abdicate the US of responsibility for their deaths.

Re: Communism and Starbucks Went to work at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 17 May 2005 18:15:29 -0000

While I don't claim to be an expert on Cuba (or communism for that matter), I do know something about it, and I also gather information from non-US sources, which is important in a matter like this where there has been a long history of anti-communism propaganda on the part of our government.

You may not know this, but Cuba was in dire economic trouble well before Castro and communism. This was in large part due to the fact that their economy was not diversified; they relied mainly on the sugar industry, which was only active for a portion of each year. In fact, things like health care, education, and general poverty actually took a turn for the better after the communist govt. came to power, and then started a continuing downward spiral right around the time when the US embargo started.

I'm not saying that the embargo was completely to blame, but since it was in place it's difficult to pin the blame on the problems of their society on an economic model, since no economy could survive under those kind of restrictions imposed on it, communist or not.

What's more, the whole embargo thing was a completely failed policy by the US. Just like with our sanctions in Iraq, the leaders (Saddam, Castro) continue to live like kings while the people are the only ones feeling the effects of our policies.

I really do not see why you insist on holding Cuba up as the picture of what Socialism / Communism is, in its "purest" sense, as you say. Cuba has a corrupt regime in which the elite few horde the wealth and exploit the lower class masses - this is the exact opposite of socialist / communist principles, so I guess they aren't much of a model, are they?

The fact is that Castro is a corrupt leader, and that is an inherent weakness in the system. You would probably argue that it is inevitable that in a communist system you will eventually end up with corrupt leaders like this. It may surprise you that I would agree with you on this, but I would, because I know that human nature is what it is. However, I would also quickly point out that unrestricted free-market capitalism will fail for the same reasons: people are too corrupt and their greed will inevitably consume them, to the neglect of those less fortunate.

I'll close by saying that I can certainly understand how any American who has lived through the cold war will have a very biased view against anything remotely resembling communism. I felt this way too when I was younger, since the American story was the only one I was told. But eventually I took it upon myself to learn and investigate things on my own, and not just take one side of the story. If you aren't reading / hearing things from non-US sources, you will inevitably have a very unbalanced view of the world. And what's even worse is people that think they know what both sides say because they listen to side A's point of view and then listen to side A tell them what side B believes - that's the essence of propaganda.

Speaking of Cuba and propaganda, and in case you take offense at my accusations that our government has participated in this, do some research on Operation Northwoods, a very in depth anti-communism propaganda plan that the US concocted which included not only "soft" (education and media manipulation) style propaganda, but also fake terrorist attacks, specifically planning to sink a US ship and blame it on communists. This is public record stuff, which is freely admitted to (now that so many years have passed) by our government. The scary thing is what are they NOT telling us now?

Re: SErved crap at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 17 May 2005 18:26:01 -0000

Are your trackbacks not working? I tried to trackback to this (http://dancameron.org/archives/544/served-crap/...) from my Plesk post where I talked about this on my blog, but I don't see anything here...

Re: Avery’s new CD at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 17 May 2005 18:31:23 -0000

That was perfect.

I don't think there's enough people doing home digital video for a video-Flikr to take off yet; maybe in a couple years. I could be wrong though.

Re: FlickrBlog at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 17 May 2005 18:32:35 -0000

My applause to them for making the right move. Down with Flash!

Re: SErved crap at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 17 May 2005 22:56:07 -0000

It was a problem with my spam plugin, it was kicking out all the pingbacks and trackbacks

Re: SErved crap at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 17 May 2005 22:58:21 -0000

P.S. - my last comment (about the spam plugin) was referring to my blog not receiving trackbacks/pingbacks a while ago. I'm not sure what could be causing yours not to be working, unless you're using my spam plugin (or another one with the same error)

Re: SErved crap at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 18 May 2005 14:54:14 -0000

Ya, I'm not using it until I get a chance to fix it.

Re: Spelling Checker plugin at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 19 May 2005 16:20:03 -0000

You sound smarter already!

Re: Communism and Starbucks Went to work at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 20 May 2005 13:11:48 -0000

I generally prefer writing as a form of communication. You can (or should at least) take more time to think about what you're going to say and how to say it, and then, once you've said it, (and spell-checked it to avoid diminishing the strength of your statement with obvious spelling / grammar errors) you can let it stand for what it is.

The beauty of this is that you don't have to keep going back over the same points as often happens in a verbal exchange; if no one says anything new that you need (or want) to respond to, you can just allow your previous post to stand on its own merit. If no one honestly answers your questions but instead changes the subject every time you challenge them, or makes it very clear that they are completely unwilling to consider an alternative point of view to their own, then you can just determine that the conversation is no longer fruitful and end it by not responding any more.

In a verbal or person-to-person conversation, sometimes this kind of detachment is not possible, and emotions get involved and cloud the issue. I think it's usually much easier to have a rational discussion in writing, because people can pause and reread the statements again, instead of responding "in the heat of the moment". A great example of this is that on the many occasions when I see DaveZ, we don't usually talk about this kind of stuff. He knows that I like him and vice-versa, and that our differing opinions don't have to come between that.

Re: Communism and Starbucks Went to work at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 20 May 2005 13:14:16 -0000

Looking back at the original start of this post, I have to confess (or take credit for, depending on your point of view) derailing this conversation not only once (to Starbucks) but twice (to communism). Sorry about that!

Re: Google Personalized Pages at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 20 May 2005 13:21:16 -0000

Looks like they're taking the lead of Yahoo, who's had this kind of thing for a while. They also do quite a lot of RSS stuff, which you may want to look into if you're interested.

Re: Spelling Checker plugin at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 20 May 2005 13:54:27 -0000

P.S. - I installed a spell checker WordPress plugin a while ago, but I ended up taking it back out. I actually prefer the Spellbound Firefox plugin, because you can use your adjusted custom dictionary across any web page, not just a particular blog. Having one on the blog is good too though, for those people who for whatever reason can't (or don't know how to) set up their own spell checking browser plugin.

Re: Damn Hicks at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 26 May 2005 09:28:47 -0000

I caught a part of that finale last night too, only enough to see a couple people sing, and I wasn't too impressed, especially with her song after she won, although I think she seemed a little choked up, and it looked like it was affecting her singing, unless she's always that bad.

Re: Damn Hicks at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 26 May 2005 09:33:35 -0000

P.S. - As for rednecks, I think that's why Clay beat Ruben that one time too.

Also, are you saying that you watched Idol instead of Lost last night? I caught a bit of Lost too (part of the middle and then the very end), and it looks like it's still interesting, but I haven't seen anything but the first 3 or so episodes. My guess is that they are all actually dead and the island is some kind of afterlife thing. The end of the show got me interested again, so I'm thinking of downloading all the episodes and watching them this weekend while Martha is gone.

Re: Damn Hicks at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 26 May 2005 20:59:58 -0000

Three shows in one time slot? That is sick / sad.

Re: Damn Hicks at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 26 May 2005 21:05:38 -0000

P.S. - I already started them downloading them via bit torrent earlier today, so I will have them all soon. Let me now if you want a copy. I was just looking for a shortcut so I wouldn't have to wait for the downloads.

I remember liking the show when I saw the first two episodes (when they reran them later) but I never really got into it, since I'm not that obsessed and we didn't have a DVR at the time.

Re: Outsourcing for 12$ at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 27 May 2005 01:00:51 -0000

Here is a sample installer (and you don't even have to outsource to me!) Just the basics, allows the user to change the default install path, creates shortcuts on the desktop and in the Start Menu, etc. You can add more custom text too.

http://www.pacific22.com/SoftCEDemo.msi

That runtime error is a problem, though - you definitely need to get that fixed before it's ready for prime time (or even demoing for that matter).

Re: Outsourcing for 12$ at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 27 May 2005 10:52:08 -0000

I only tried it on XP, and I do have Access on it. I'll try other configurations and let you know. The MDAC thing is a good guess, do you know if it references an explicit version of MDAC? If so, that could be the issue.

I just did the installer with Visual Studio Enterprise Edition (or whatever the top of the line edition is called), but there are other products out there (possibly free ones too) that will do the same thing, and might be easier to use.

Re: Popularity Contest Plugin at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 27 May 2005 21:24:46 -0000

Even though this isn't *really* the most popular thread, it's definitely my favorite. :)

That was pretty cool actually. Dan, why don't you just go into the database (or wherever it stores the records) and delete those records?

I guess Alex will have to add some checking in the code to prevent this sort of thing. (Views per minute limit from same IP, etc.) Of course, you could still get around it, but it would make it more effort than it would be worth for a simple prank.

Re: More Apple Propaganda at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 27 May 2005 21:26:40 -0000

That comment should come with a trackback to the wikipedia entry for "troll".

Re: A prequel to The Phantom Menace? at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 28 May 2005 00:44:32 -0000

That would be sweet; it would be great if George would write the story but not the script, and not direct either.

There are a lot of books out there that cover all different eras in the Star Wars universe (mostly after ROTJ, but some early history too, although well before this suggested time period I believe), so there is always the possibility for adaptations of those.

That being said, at this point I'm definitely not looking forward to the rumored TV series or the the supposed re-release of the trilogies in 3D. Talk about jumping the shark!

Re: Outsourcing for 12$ at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 28 May 2005 20:32:56 -0000

Yes, blogger does stick in that regard. This is why Wordpress has RSS for comments as well as posts. My recommendation: www.blogsome.com

Re: Outsourcing for 12$ at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 28 May 2005 20:34:55 -0000

I meant *stink*, unless "stick" has some other negative meaning that I don't know about.

Re: Memorial day at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 30 May 2005 09:23:56 -0000

This always happens/happened to me too, especially on the holidays that don't really mean anything like Labor Day and presidential birthdays, Columbus day, etc. The only difference is that I would err on the side of not going in. But Martha would always ask, "Do you have Monday/Friday off?", and I'd always say, "I don't know, what's Monday/Friday"?

Re: freeiPods at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 12:59:05 -0000

You guys should go with a more established pyramid / MLM thing like Amway or something.

Seriously, though, your iPod will not be free. You may eventually get one as a reward for signing up (or getting other people to sign up) for enough things that cost enough money to eventually make it worthwhile, but somewhere along the line that iPod has to be paid for, and they wouldn't offer it if that wasn't happening.

Re: Enough already at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 13:03:10 -0000

Just to be annoying, you could say:

Q: What kind of computer do you have?
A: Depends on what you mean by computer; the average American family probably has at more than 5 computers in their household.

Re: Enough already at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 11:39:43 -0000

Wordpress filters out a lot of HTML tags from the comments. To be more specific, I think it only allows certain ones, so if HR is not in that list, it will be removed.

If you really wanted to take the time to allow them, you could go modify the source code for the part that strips those out. I would look into where exactly that part is in the source, but that would take too much time.

Re: Go Flyakite at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 11:49:27 -0000

I think you should just blog on whatever you feel like blogging about. It doesn't have to necessarily please anyone (unless that's your goal). Your blog should just be what you make it.

Also, (a pet peeve of mine) it doesn't have to be a complete picture or representation of who you are, either. Mine for example is probably a little unbalanced in that I also mostly talk about tech stuff and political issues, which isn't necessarily consistent with the rest of my life. The fact is there is tons of stuff in my life that I don't blog about; granted some is because I can't (unless I want to find out what happens to people that divulge classified military information), but some of it I just don't feel like talking about on a blog, for any number of reasons.

The bottom line is that you know you will always have some of us as readers. If you want to cater to more specific audiences, I would recommend (because I've thought about doing this too) just categorizing your posts better, maybe even using categories like "tags" (from Flickr) and then making the category links more prominent (at the top of the page, etc). That way people could look at just your "tech"entries or just your personal stuff, they wouldn't have to see them both if they didn't want too.

Re: Apple switch at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 09:48:35 -0000

Couple things:

Regarding the copy protection, I actually see this as a good thing, since it might push people towards a more "free" OS (both in terms of cost and now privacy) like Linux or BSD.

As for me buying one, it's still not likely, unless they suddenly become more reasonable with their pricing. I would never buy something because of whether it's "mainstream" or not, though.

The whole 64 bit thing: I'm glad you corrected yourself at the end there, by admitting that Tiger isn't the only 64bit OS out there, I thought I was going to have to school you on that one. SuSe (and others as well, I believe) had 64bit distros out in 2003, long before Tiger.

I don't think they'd take a whole lot of the Windows market just because of the 64 bit issue. The main draw would be if it was priced similarly to windows, and available on any x86 box (32 or 64 bit). Even then, I'm not sure if it would really make that much of an impact.

If they did open source it (which I agree that they won't), they would probably put a significant dent in the Windows market, but they won't do this, since the would lose a lot in hardware sales, because then no one would be dumb enough to pay for their overpriced boxes. This is also why I doubt that they will even release a commercial x86 version of OSX anytime soon, regardless of Intel.

Re: freeiPods at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 10:06:48 -0000

I'm not saying that they don't give you whatever prize that they promise you, I'm just saying that it really isn't "free" in the end. Not only are you putting in however many hours essentially doing sales work for them (or the people that pay them for the referrals), but the only reason that they get money for those referrals is that the people (your friends and family, etc) are spending enough money to not only pay gratis for the referrals, but also make a profit off the top.

So, as I said before, the iPod *is* being paid for, by the people you convince to sign up for stuff. In addition to that, you are putting in your time convincing people you know to sign up for stuff that they probably don't need.

The idea that they can just sign up for stuff and never get charged is incorrect, for the simple reason that they have to collect money in order to pay for the referrals, which in turn pay for the iPods. If there were cancellation loopholes that would allow you to eventually get a free iPod without anyone ever paying any money, they would be quickly closed.

Re: Enough already at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 10:08:55 -0000

Dan, you can fix this in your CSS by specifying overflow: hidden on the fixed width element that the text is going over the edge of.

Re: Help! as always. at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 15:08:39 -0000

I still got the same error. The hyper threading make sense though, since my laptop processor does hyper threading, and I've seen it have problems in other applications. I don't remember what those apps were, but they usually had a setting to disable hyper threading and when I did that they worked fine.

I will give it another try later with hyper threading turned off in the BIOS, and let you know. I also tried it in a Virtual PC session on my laptop that I use to install "testing" software on (or other stuff that might potentially screw up my real machine, like online poker software), but that is Windows 98, and it gave me an error that it can't run in Win 9x.

Re: Enough already at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 15:12:34 -0000

overflow: hidden;

That way that extra bar space will be cut off, instead of hanging over the edge.

Re: Enough already at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 22:17:28 -0000

Yes, but then you have those unsightly scroll bars added to the div. Horizontal scrolling is usually a no-no. Links should be wrapped in actual link tags anyway, and only display descriptive text (with spaces, which will wrap), not the whole stinkin URL.

Re: Help! as always. at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 22:29:18 -0000

It might just be because 98 doesn't have the built-in capability to deal with MSI files that XP (and 2000 I believe) does. When you build the MSI, most programs will give you the option of including a small EXE that goes with it to handle those cases.

Re: not upgrading - I just keep a 98 installation in a Virtual PC session on my laptop (running XP), so that way I can test stuff like this, but actually it's mostly just a "junk" install, like I said before, for playing poker, etc. so I don't have to worry about any spyware infecting my system, etc. since the Virtual PC only has access inside it's own virtual machine, not the rest of your system. The reason I chose 98 for this particular purpose was that it is a smaller install (currently only about 600 megs).

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Virtual PC is actually pretty cool. I have fully functional installations of Win 98, 2000 Server, Open BSD, and several Linux distros that I can run whenever I need to. This is much better than dual booting, because I can keep everything else I'm working in open (in XP), and just have the other system(s) loaded in windows of their own.

Re: Enough already at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 09:20:23 -0000

I think people who don't know how to make proper links deserve to have them cut off, rather than screwing up the look of your page.

Re: Mp3 player phones at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 10:24:07 -0000

It would be pretty easy for any of the major phone manufacturers to add a flash memory based MP3 player (like the iPod Shuffle) to one of their small/midrange phones, which would probably be the best bet for them. They could probably beat Apple to the punch too, either that or partner with Apple.

I would say that it would be best to do it on their own, so that they could support WMA in addition to MP3 and whatever other formats. This would allow the user to use iTunes as well as cheaper alternatives like the new Yahoo one ($5 a month unlimited), which uses WMAs.

Re: Exchange server - the support for a device syncing with a specific data source should be handled at the level of the sync software, so you could theoretically add support for any device to sync with Exchange, since the exchange sync APIs are available for anyone to use. I've written custom Palm OS sync conduits before myself (several years ago), and I can only imagine it's gotten easier since then.

Re: Help! as always. at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 10:37:07 -0000

That latest EXE you emailed me is working fine now - I don't get that error anymore.

I do get another one, which may not be a big deal for you, but it's related to permissions. When I exit the app, I get an error when it's trying to create (or modify) the INI file, which is in the program's installation directory. This is because I always run everything as a restricted permission user, so that account does not have permission to write a file in that directory.

Like I said, this may not be a big deal for you, since most people don't run their systems in a secure configuration like I do, so they probably won't see this error. If you did want to fix it, you could have it store the INI file in the user's Application Data directory or the registry.

Re: Help! as always. at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 22:15:26 -0000

No problem; I opened it and closed it a couple times, I wouldn't say it was a lot, though.

PS - I'm not a sysadmin though, so don't make me name drop my real title on here to distance myself from those guys...

Re: Mp3 player phones at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 22:28:08 -0000

I knew what you meant with the syncing thing, but since you mentioned exchange in business use, I was referring to that scenario. Most large companies do not make their exchange servers available enough to the public internet to allow syncing over a cell phone data connection.

If they did, (which isn't a very good idea), you could still easily write an app that would sync them (without an intermediate computer). I could do this on either Palm OS or Pocket PC, which are the two main OS's that you would be dealing with.

I also realize that (I think) you said that the Treo was the only one to do it out of the box, but that's probably more due to lack of demand rather than the capability of the device itself. The current sync model that most people are comfortable with is going from the personal mobile device to a personal computer, rather than direct to a server system like exchange, and there are several good reasons for using the computer-in-the-middle model. I can elaborate if you want.

Re: Mp3 player phones at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 18:29:10 -0000

If you did more creative stuff with your treo, you would find more uses to have a consolidated syncing platform. :)

Re: Mp3 player phones at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 09:12:05 -0000

I'm mostly just giving you a hard time. I prefer syncing with my PC because there are other things that I sync onto my PDA (like articles downloaded using iSilo, PDF eBooks, MP3s, etc.)

There will always be much more stuff that syncs with a PC in the middle (rather than direct from the device), simply due to the much easier development of a sync conduit that runs on the PC rather than one that runs just on the device itself. I've done both, and the former is a lot easier to deal with.

Also, as I think I mentioned before, I wouldn't want my Exchange server to be that available to the public internet, I think that's asking for trouble given MS's track record on security. Is that what you were talking about when you mentioned SSH? If so, that would be wise - SSH into your internal network and access the Exchange server over the tunnel - not sure if the sync software running on the Treo allows that though.

Re: It’s Official at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 09:16:11 -0000

Greedy bastards, like I said before - this basically confirms my previous suspicion that they will avoid making a dent in the Windows market because they're afraid of losing their hardware sales.

Re: Mp3 player phones at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 09:43:54 -0000

The difference is the exchange servers doing the "pushing", rather than having an intermediate server do it. With Blackberry (if it's really "push") they would have to have their servers log into your POP accounts, get the stuff, then push it (from their servers) to your Blackberry.

If you wanted to allow this (the Blackberry "push") for your company's Exchange servers, you would have to open them up for access from the public internet, which isn't generally a good idea (most companies have internal-network-only access to the Exchange servers, and then either a VPN or a web UI for checking mail, etc. outside of the network).

With the Exchange servers doing the "pushing", you could keep your Exchange server behind the firewall and not accessible to outside internet access, but still get your messages delivered to your PDA.

Re: Mp3 player phones at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 12:04:58 -0000

There may be some confusion here: Outlook is the client, Exchange is the server application. You may be using Outlook to connect to any other type of POP mail server(non-Exchange), or perhaps it is an Exchange server that is configured to allow POP mail access to the outside, which I'm sure is possible. The insecurity would be if the full Exchange server was made available directly (non-POP access), which you would need in order to do a full sync - calendar, notes, task lists, etc.

Re: How to backup Plesk at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 10:28:15 -0000

Looks good - well thought out. Of course, I still don't like (and don't recommend using) Plesk, so I may not be the best person to review this.

Re: Batman Begins at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 13:11:11 -0000

What time?

Re: Batman Begins at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 13:36:55 -0000

Yes. Are you getting them on Fandango?

Re: Batman Begins at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 14:07:12 -0000

Do you mean go and stand in line at 5:30? I think it would be easier just to get them online. I can do it right now if you want.

Nathan, let Lisa go to a movie earlier, then you can go to the late show tonight; that's my strategy.

Re: Batman Begins at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 15:23:07 -0000

OK, got my ticket

Re: Batman Begins at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 18:48:25 -0000

Isn't this opening night? I will get there at 10:00 and save seats unless someone else is already there.

Re: Themes at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 19:18:43 -0000

I like it

Re: Batman Begins at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 20:06:41 -0000

In that case, I'll get there last minute. Just kidding. But even on opening weekend I don't imagine the 10:30 show being too packed if they opened it on Wednesday. All the die-hards should have already seen it by now, so we'll probably be OK.

Re: Begins at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 13:27:49 -0000

Sounds good to me; FF next month.

Re: Livesearch at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 19 Jun 2005 14:34:35 -0000

Does it search comments too?

Re: Scattered Search Plugin .01 Alpha at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 22:42:08 -0000

Congratulations!

Re: So Busy at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 21:11:19 -0000

1. As for Batman, why don't you download it (for research purposes of course, or as a backup to your DVD that you lost)? What were the things that you were thinking of?

3. What kind of lock is it? I have heard of the phone ones which lock you into a particular provider (Cingular,TMobile, etc), which suck by the way, but what does that have to do with Mac/PC?

5. Don't get fired for blogging about it; you never know how they may interpret "crazy".

6. I do know what you mean

Re: AOhell at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 14:02:16 -0000

AOL might make it easier for some people, but in some ways it fails at this too.

Having everything together (web, e-mail, etc. in one app) with simple, obvious icons, etc. is a good idea for that kind of user, but AOL (these days at least - or last time I saw it) clutters it up with too many ads and other junk (especially proprietary AOL content) that it's still too confusing for a lot of people.

IMHO, the ideal would be two simple interfaces in the app (with big buttons on the side or something to switch between them) - simple web browser email.

I'd like to say that the time for this has come and gone, and everyone should just be able to understand the concept of "the internet", and separate "connection" from applications, etc. but I know that's not the case, and that's fine.

Re: Wordpress Tags at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 19:10:34 -0000

I might try this on mine

Re: Wordpress Tags at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 20:01:45 -0000

Actually, I will probably do my own. I would rather use the built-in categories that WP already has (including nested categories), and just write a UI part that does the link cloud, etc.

Re: Ghost Rider at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 20:06:16 -0000

Another comic movie! Our schedule is filling up...

Re: Wordpress Tags at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 02:47:05 -0000

Dan: you are probably right when you say I'll never get around to it. :)

When you said "subtags" at first, I thought you were talking about a hierarchy.

Re: your last comment (displaying your tag list on the post page) - that's why I think it would make sense just to use the existing WP categories - they're already there, and there's already an admin UI to manage them. You could easily add on the "related tag" functionality on top of that, rather than doing the whole thing from scratch.

I don't see why you wouldn't want to base a tag system on top of what WP already has (categories) rather than build from the ground up.

Christine, please don't take any of my comments as criticism of your plugin in any way, since I haven't even tried it myself. I just like to give Dan a hard time every now and then, and pretend that I'm an expert on a lot of subjects.

Re: Lost Spoiler at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 21:00:19 -0000

I will have to catch up with you guys so I can start reading these. But then again, I wouldn't read spoilers even if I was caught up anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Re: OS X Leopard at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 00:14:24 -0000

They already have emulation products (like Virtual PC) that allow you to run windows apps on the Mac (within the VM of course). Running them natively is not simply a matter of changing the processor, as most apps include underlying API calls to the operating system, etc. - not a lot of direct hardware access.

The best they could do would be similar to WINE on Linux, which is cool, but not anywhere near compatible with most apps, and it's still emulation.

In order to provide the ability to truly run windows apps natively, they would have to reproduce the complete Windows API in the Mac OS, and to do so, they would have get MS to agree to license that design to them. Whether they would do this, and how much they would charge Apple (which would get passed on to the consumer) is open for debate.

Re: Treo 650 unleashed at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 12:50:10 -0000

But can you still go the other way (use your Treo's connection from your laptop over bluetooth)?

Re: Treo 650 unleashed at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 15:28:14 -0000

No, I just think I read that wrong. You might want to go the other way (using your laptop's network connection from the Treo) since the Treo doesn't have 802.11. When I am at home, I use 802.11 on my PDA; I only use Blueooth to my phone if I'm not around a 802.11 AP.

I can't beleive they would disable that, especially since you don't have an unlimited data plan - they would be raking in the dough from you. (unless you switched to unmetered - maybe you did and I forgot)

I know that ATT didn't disable this (at least on my phone) and Cingular didn't either.

Re: OS X Leopard at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 15:38:38 -0000

non-emulated running of PC apps on the Mac, ie: running a windows app directly in the Mac OS, as opposed to inside a VPC session. This is what I was talking about when I said that simply changing to an x86 processor does not allow, because very few applications these days work directly with the hardware exclusively, most use the API of the OS, so an app written for windows would not just work on the Mac OS no matter what the processor was.

The processor change may allow them to make apps like VPC run *better* (like they do in Windows), but you would still have to do the same thing you have to do today to run a windows app "on a Mac".

Re: Wordpress Tags at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 15:53:52 -0000

Did you modify your comment post page (wp-comments-post.php) or the comment section of your template?

It is failing to redirect after the comment is posted. The post processing page tries to do a redirect (302) after it saves the comment, to either a location you specify in your comment form ('redirect_to') or the referring page if you have not specified, so you usually get redirected back to the page you were submitting the comment from.

For whatever reason, your comments-post page is not sending this redirect header after it saves the comment. Hope this helps.

Re: Treo 650 unleashed at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 16:01:11 -0000

Since you have an unlimited plan, it actually does make more sense (still a sucky thing for them to do, but oh well). The idea is that if you aren't going to use up that much bandwidth if you can only use it directly from their device, because of the form factor, etc. - whereas if you were just using their data service as a modem for your laptop, you could more easily/comfortably use a lot more of their bandwidth.

ATT also tried a similar tactic, when they introduced their "unlimited" data plan (shortly before I switched) - you could use unlimited data *from your device (phone)*, but tethered devices they would still charge you per KB for (probably for the same reasons I described above). Sounds like Cingular tries to take a different approach by just not allowing you to do it at all, but you may want to check on that (I'm sure you already have) to make sure that they aren't charging you extra since you found a way to do tethered access.

Re: OS X Leopard at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 16:07:36 -0000

The days of dual booting are over for me. I used to always set up my laptops to dual boot Linux and Windows, but with apps like VMWare and VPC, it makes much more sense since you can use both simultaneously, rather than rebooting if you want to switch over.

Re: PearPC - if they got to the point where you could do reasonably fast emulation of OSX on a Windows/Linux machine, then no one would have any reason to buy an Apple. :)

Re: Ever dance with the devil by the pale moon light? at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 02:00:02 -0000

I didn't say that it definitely wasn't the Joker in the '89 movie, just that I didn't remember it as that - probably because the comics don't do it that way. So I wouldn't say Batman Begins contains the discrepancy, but rather the '89 one does, since BB is true to the original story (in this regard) and the '89 movie contains the discrepancy.

But as for the rest of your speculations regarding the current series:

#1 - As we discussed that night, the double homicide referred to was not Bruce's parents, since that was at least 20 years prior to that night.

#2 - It already showed the Wayne's killer in court, and he was shot (and apparently died). While they could say that he somehow was not killed, they won't, because that guy seemed like a pretty third-string actor, and there is no way they would cast him as the Joker in any upcoming film.

#3 - There is no reason for them to follow any of the ideas laid out in any of the previous movies; and I really hope they don't. So far, the creative team behind this new series has shown a desire to more closely align with the comic book plotlines (of course there are minor differences), and I hope the continue in that vein.

If you really want that double homicide to be significant, you could hope for it to be the parents of Dick Greyson (the future Robin), although that would be completely out of left field (since they died in a circus accident), not to mention even more lame than the Joker being the Wayne's killer, but if you're going for corny...

Re: Brilliant Button Maker at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 18:59:30 -0000

Buttons are for losers. (Just being "controversial")

Re: Video Casting at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 01:52:37 -0000

I can make an app that will do all that for you, and it will run on windows/mac/*nix/whatever - who needs Automater?

Re: the sound thing - the first step will be to get all the sound guys to remember to record. I usually do it, but I've gone back and looked later, and a lot are missing from other weeks.

Re: AJAX at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 14:16:32 -0000

talked before about a chat application I did using this technology several years ago (before the term AJAX was around).

Re: Video Casting at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 14:26:41 -0000

It's no problem. I would try explain, but I'd rather go with Authur C. Clarke and say that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

Re: Video Casting at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 14:30:33 -0000

Re: the "Jesus fix" - if all that the gatherings were about were the things that could be recorded, then I guess that would be true (and probably for some people it may be), but fortunately that's not the case.

It would be nice for people who are geographically distant to be able to enjoy a piece of the gatherings though, even in this non-participatory fashion.

Speaking of that, there are definite plans for our Sunday gatherings to involve interactive elements with geographically dispersed people from the community; I'm guessing this is what Dan is referring to.

Re: AJAX at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 18:56:47 -0000

In the AJAX model, the javascript code is essentially loading a page (or, more commonly, posting a form and getting the reply), so it is making a request to the web server. It usually gets back XML data instead of HTML, so it isn't technically "loading a page", but the concept is similar.

If it helps, you could think of it as loading the other data in a hidden frame (or tab), while the original page remains the way it is, and then using the results of the server request from the "hidden" frame/tab/etc. to modify the page the user is looking at, without that page itself making the new request/submission.

Now think of that hidden frame/tab as being just a javascript object (which is what it is) that can do all the same things. That's what I mean by "behind the scenes", since it's not actually posting from a browser page.

The one downside to this (that's not a concern for most people's stuff) is that you can't do multithreading in javascript, so for the high-performance chat application I mentioned earlier, I ended up having to rewrite the AJAX-like code that was originally in javascript into a Java applet, so that it could do true multiple asynchronous message processing.

Re: Video Casting at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 19:58:00 -0000

But why not have a smarter application that can check and see if it is done rendering, upload it to the server, and do the WordPress post too, all automatically?

I wouldn't mind writing this - it wouldn't take very long.

Re: AJAX at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:00:19 -0000

It's using DHTML to draw the results. I haven't looked at the code behind it, but it's probably using AJAX (or similar) to do the lookup from the server.

Re: Video Casting at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 22:32:26 -0000

Probably can - what format/encoding is it in originally? (before h.264)

Re: Tagging vs. Cat’s at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 23:45:37 -0000

Why did you trackback this post to itself?

See my response on my blog.

Re: Tagging vs. Cat’s at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 02:52:29 -0000

It's mostly for searching (as Dan said) and aggregation in external systems (like Technorati, etc.)

Re: Tagging vs. Cat’s at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 21:01:10 -0000

Good point. I still have my gallery up for this reason, even though I moved everything into Flickr and am using that going forward - I don't want to go back and change all my old posts, so I'll just leave the gallery up.

Re: Tagging vs. Cat’s at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 02:19:55 -0000

So why wait?

Re: Tagging vs. Cat’s at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 05:14:18 -0000

Why not? I thought he was using your system to do comments; what does it store them in? (database, xml, etc.) I guarantee that you could write a script/program to transition them to wordpress.

Re: Tagging vs. Cat’s at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 12:46:48 -0000

Are the really old ones you're referring to Blogger comments or Haloscan?

Re: MS= 7,944, OS X = 0 at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 16:35:04 -0000

I guess I'm going to have to start writing some Mac viruses to dispel the misconception that statistics like this can create. The Mac OS (out of the box) suffers from most of the same security design flaws that Windows does, it just isn't as big a target, so people don't waste their time writing for it if their goal is to hit as many computers as they can.

Re: MS= 7,944, OS X = 0 at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 18:08:10 -0000

properly configured Windows or Mac computer will not be vulnerable to infection when it is connected to the network, whereas the "average" setup of either operating system is vulnerable to attacks on a number of levels. The Mac default is certainly better than the Windows one, but it's not perfect, and given more interest by the people writing these kinds of applications would probably be just as infected.

Anyway, Dan here's a link to a good security guide for OSX, from the NSA. They have similar ones for the Windows operating systems as well; they're pretty interesting reading if you're into that sort of thing.

Re: MS= 7,944, OS X = 0 at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 23:11:56 -0000

No, Apple's implementation does.

Re: Post Title in RSS comment feed plugin at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 19:38:19 -0000

Cool

Re: Post Title in RSS comment feed plugin at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 21:35:41 -0000

mine. I'm suing you for copyright violation.

As for echo vs. return, it is kind of a matter of preference - the WP code itself uses both, kind of randomly. The difference is yours will always output when the code is run, whereas mine returns the string to the calling function, which in this case is the filter method for 'comment_author_rss', which is programed to add anything your filter method returns. Yours will work because even though it's not returning everything, it is echoing (outputting to the browser) as it processes.

The advantage to doing return instead of echo is that if you want to use that method for something else (just to get the value, not write it) you could just reuse that method without making a new one.

Re: Video Casting at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 01:23:00 -0000

What about open source or free apps? I have used Virtual Dub to make h.264 files from avis, and it seemed to work fine, although I don't know whether it has a command line interface, etc. I think Apple has brainwashed you into thinking that you have to pay for anything that's good. :)

Re: Video Casting problems at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 17:54:39 -0000

Can you send me a small cut out (like a minute or two) of the MPEG-2 file?

Re: Some political humor at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 21:10:28 -0000

Pot ... Kettle

Re: Video Casting problems at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 21:12:34 -0000

Why can't you capture to avi and then render the mpeg2 and the h.264 separately from that?

Re: Video Casting problems at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 11:37:41 -0000

needs a DVD burned that quickly (as in before they leave for that night), but that is up to you.

But, anyway, to test that program from #1, you should run through some already recorded sessions as a trial run. If it works, we could start right now posting older sessions.

Re: Video Casting problems at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 13:29:00 -0000

want them that fast, but I continue to maintain that no one needs them within an hour or even that same night. It's all about setting expectations and boundaries. Sure, you can get people DVDs that quickly, and if you continue to do that then that is what people will expect of you (and get pissed if you don't do it). But if you (for good reason) tell them that they will have to wait a day or two, then they should accept that, and in fact they'll have to since they have no other alternative. Sounds kind of cold, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

Just think of Scotty of the original enterprise; he always told the captain that whatever he asked was impossible, that way, when he came through he was a hero, and if he didn't, no skin off his back, because it was an unreasonable request.

Re: Video Casting problems at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 14:54:03 -0000

Re: the kiosk computers - Ya, James was telling me about that last night. I don't know who they are, but I applaud them for their efforts. I will see if I can swing by and pick up the computers sometime this week and set them up properly, like I wanted to do from the beginning but just never got around to. I am pretty sure they will not be able to get around anything once I do that. It will be a fun little game we'll play. Of course, I'd rather they didn't unplug/replug them while they were running, but they will soon stop that once it won't work for them anymore. One thing we may need though is locks on the doors of the kiosk stand, because James was also saying they were opening it up and poking around inside there.

Re: the avi, I was just thinking that because if it's uncompressed AVI, then you would only be doing one level of compression going to h.264, rather than compressing to mpeg2 then recompressing to h.264 - I would think there would be quality issues there. If that's how you did the 7/3 video, it doesn't look to good, but I will check out the 7/10 one later to see if that's any different. I was thinking that you would still do the mpeg2 capture for the DVDs and then have a separate capture to avi on the mini, just for the h.264 encoding.

Re: Video Casting problems at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 19:30:25 -0000

I still think you should at least do a test between uncompressed AVI to h264 and mpeg2 to h264. The test wouldn't be that hard to do, and I think you would end up with a better quality. Especially if you are doing multipass, the better quality the original the better it will turn out I'm pretty sure.

Even though the mpeg2 is still "better" quality than the h264, it's still a lossy compression method, and already contains compression artifacts before you start putting it through to do the h264. If it turns out I'm wrong (after the test) then oh well.

Re: Video Casting problems at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 19:31:19 -0000

As for the size, I would just look at other video casts out there (are there any in iTunes now)?

Re: Video Casting problems at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 03:23:14 -0000

I don't think AVI is related to Microsoft (they have their own funky video formats). Also, be sure not to confuse "DivX" (the video codec) with "DIVX" (the evil early attempt at DVD DRM).

Re: H’ B’ to me. at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 19:55:20 -0000

Photos?

Re: New Tagboard at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 01:10:31 -0000

Yep, that's a good one. It makes me wish I had more time to spend on doing WordPress dev.

Your link in this post is broken though, you may want to fix that.

Re: H’ B’ to me. at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 01:13:44 -0000

Ah, I get it now.

Re: Podcasts at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 17:05:38 -0000

Engadget
Science at NASA
2600
Democracy Now
The Linux User Show
The Mobiles Show (about cell phone tech)
Software As She's Developed (This is from an Australian java developer - that's where the "she's" comes from, so don't worry, Dan, there's no girls on this one)

I listen to a whole bunch of other software developer ones and some other miscellaneous ones too, but you may not be interested in those.

Re: Podcasts at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 17:06:16 -0000

Ha, my comment is in moderation, probably because of all the links.

Re: Live Archives at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 20:32:51 -0000

I thinking now that plugins should always be separate from themes. I know back in the contest I included some of my javascript menu stuff in mine, but in retrospect that was a bad idea. From now on, my theme will be totally separate from any additional functionality. It may contain additional styles that work with plugin output, but it should also just be able to stand on its own. That way people can get the theme if they want the "look and feel" and the plugins if they want the functionality, but they don't have to do one to get the other.

Re: Live Archives at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 23:41:34 -0000

theme (like if I offer my Oasis theme for downloading) should only have the look and feel stuff, no plugins built in (by default).

Of course, the user can choose to *add* plugins to it, which would require them putting the function calls into their theme or whatever, but they shouldn't have to go in and remove stuff that they don't want.

For example, my packaged theme that I'm making available shouldn't have any plugin-type extra functionality built in. That's all I meant.

Re: Burger King and 911 at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 16 Jul 2005 03:16:24 -0000

I didn't actually listen to it, since I'm assuming it's the one I've heard before (the lady asking the cops to come down to Burger King to settle her dispute with the manager?) Let me know if it's not that one; my time is to precious to check for myself.

Re: Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka… at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 15:52:47 -0000

Ya, I've heard lot's of people talk smack about Depp being in this role, but it seems to me like he'd be great for it; he's a pretty good actor all around, and the Wonka role is supposed to be a little creepy - it was that way in the original too, you're supposed to never know (at least until the end) whether he was cool or a psychopath.

Re: Liger - Wikipedia at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 20:00:20 -0000

If you disagree with anything on Wikipedia, you can submit a correction. That's what the "wiki" in wikipedia is all about.

Re: Podcasts at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 18:48:43 -0000

Did you hear this week's TWIT show, where they were talking about how lame the iTunes RSS system is?

Re: Feed Burner at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 18:53:53 -0000

Why did you copy the FeedBurner logo to your Flickr account?

Re: 1and1 Dedicated servers are… at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 17:08:35 -0000

Hello,
I am looking for virtual private server hosting plans, and several people have recommended the 1and1 root server plans. I was looking on the web site and it looks like a great deal.

I just had one question that I didn't see explicitly on the web site: some other hosting providers use the term "virtual private server" to describe their plans that give you root access to the Linux installation
running in a virtual machine. Is this what the Root Server plan at 1and1 also offers, and if not, what are the differences?

I am interested in choosing a plan very soon, so I would appreciate any information you could provide as soon as you can.

Thanks,

Their reply (copy pasted from their web site):

Thank you for contacting 11

A Root Server is a pre-configured server granting you "root" access. "Root" is the user on a Linux system with access permissions who can change the entire system at his or her own discretion. Root Servers come pre-installed with Fedora Core 2 Linux and Plesk 7.5 control panel software. Root Servers are recommended for technically proficient people who are seeking the advantages of space, power and total control. Users can install applications, perform configuration, run gameservers, etc.

If you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact us.

--
Sincerely,
Emmanuel Surban
Technical Support
11 Internet Inc

I highly doubt that they give people their own physical machine for $70 a month. With a VPS, they can say things like you have your own server with full control, etc, etc., which is why they constantly use those terms. I think that some of the reps may have slipped up in your responses by saying that you actually get your own hardware solely for use by you.

Also, if that was the case (personal "real" server dedicated to you) I would think that they would make that *very* clear on their site, since that is an excellent deal, and it would be a huge selling point. Instead, they are very careful NOT to ever say that anywhere on their site (and I scoured it pretty thoroughly looking for it last night).

Re: E-Mail Icon Generator at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 20:48:43 -0000

Yep, and it doesn't get much lamer than email buttons.

Re: 1and1 Dedicated servers are… at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 21:00:02 -0000

Well, I guess that's as clear an answer as they're going to give. Assuming they aren't lying, then I guess you may actually be getting your own machine.

I'm not sure what you meant by selecting what system you run on; lots of VPS plans let you pick the OS.

Re: E-Mail Icon Generator at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 02:02:25 -0000

In this case (the "hiding from the bots" scenario), I don't like images that convey information that can only be understood by human eyes.

The fatal flaw in that line of thinking is that not all humans have eyes that function well, and some don't function at all. This is exactly why standards compliant designers build sites that allow the user's browser-of-choice to resize the text at will, or even read the site to them if they can't see at all.

Of course, you could accommodate the screen readers by including alt text for the image with the actual address, but that would defeat the initial goal of not having a text version of your address on the page.

If you're really paranoid about spam (which I'm not, as I've said before) you could use a creative text description of your email address that would be difficult for bots to decipher but easy for *any* humans to understand.

Re: 1and1 Dedicated servers are… at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 02:05:44 -0000

Those options would be easy to configure in a VPS environment. They could host the VPSs on boxes with different processors, and RAM and HD space allocation is configurable when you set up virtual machines.

Re: 1and1 Dedicated servers are… at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 02:09:33 -0000

Spry.

Re: 1and1 Dedicated servers are… at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 12:44:30 -0000

No, I concede that as far as we know, they are their own boxes. I still think it's weird that they were reluctant to answer the questions more technically, but that could just be incompetence rather than deception.

I don't recall agreeing to the bet, you kind of just suggested it, and I brushed it off because I was so sure that I was right.

If you really want me to, I guess I could find a way to make use of your server, but there are a couple reasons why I'd still prefer to have my own as well. The primary one is that I would want to run without all that extra crap on the box (namely Plesk), and also if I were to screw something up (or vice versa) I wouldn't want it to take down a whole bunch of other sites at the same time.

As for why I would go with a VPS (like Spry offers) over 1and1, there are lots of reasons. One is the cost (the select 200 plan is almost half of the cheapest 1and1 root server), the others are unlimited domains (11 only offers 100), unmetered bandwidth (11 offers 1GB), multiple OS choices, NO SETUP FEES, multiple IPs, the list goes on and on. The only areas in which the Spry200 plan is inferior to the 1and1 $69 plan is HD space (10 GB vs. 40 GB) which I don't plan on using anywhere near 10GB, and guaranteed RAM (512 vs. 256 guaranteed with 512 usually available if needed). Both of these are a non-issue for me.

Re: 1and1 Dedicated servers are… at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 14:38:44 -0000

For podcasting (especially with video), you could easily start approaching 1,000 GB - unmetered is much better.

As for domains, depending on what I'm doing, yes, I may want to go over 100 eventually, and I'd rather not worry about it. It's unlikely, but at least the option is there.

As for IPs, how many are included in the package you have now at no additional cost? Spry starts at 2 and then you pay extra after that.

You talk about the VPS as if it were a negative, I think in most cases it is very positive.

The hardware itself (although it's shared) is so much
better than the 1and1 that it would make up for (or exceed) it in terms of performance and reliability: dual Xeons, SCSI RAID disks, etc.

Especially once you start talking about VPSing on your server, you would end up with about the same thing you would get from Spry, for the same price, and probably worse performance, plus the headache (and cost) of maintaining the VPS system yourself instead of having them do it for you.

Re: Guide to Lock Picking at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 23:44:41 -0000

That's a pretty good guide, if I remember correctly (I read it a long time ago) - it's helped me open many locks. At a previous employer, there was this one good projector that belonged to my boss (who was often out of town) and his assistant kept it locked in a cabinet or in a desk with a locking drawer. Whenever I would have to do presentations and she wasn't available to get it out for me I would pick the lock, use it for the presentation, and lock it back up afterwards.

Re: Podcast development post at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 23:45:54 -0000

Weekend night or during the week?

Re: Podcast development post at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 12:11:44 -0000

Any night during the week is probably OK with me too, except for Tuesdays (Dan, I don't think you can do Tuesdays either).

It's not like Nathan's house is that far from you; even assuming you left at 8:30 you would be there by 8:45, start the PC at 9:00. At first we could start with a 30 minute format and see how it goes from there, so you could easily be home by 10. If that's too much driving around for you, we could always skype you in from your house, or just record it at your house (don't know how portable the recording equipment is).

I do think that good sounding recordings would be nice. We will need to think about mics and such, and a mixer if we are all (or most of us) going to be in the same room.

As for content, my suggestion would be that we put together a show notes wiki (or similar) that everyone participating can go to throughout the week and throw in some summaries of stuff to talk about. The notes would then evolve throughout the week and when it came time to do the show that would serve as our outline.

In terms of topics, I think it could be anything. Given our interests, I'm sure it will mostly be about tech stuff, but we could certainly include other issues if they're interesting. (Although I'd prefer to steer clear of political stuff for the most part). I think it would be cool to throw in a free (non-commercial) song every now and then, or do occasional music / movie / other media reviews etc. Basically anything that doesn't involve Nathan's afore mentioned activities during the next six weeks.

Re: Firefox: Mac PPC Optimized Builds at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 18:36:31 -0000

never.

Re: Guide to Lock Picking at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 18:55:58 -0000

If you're looking for good picks, watch the gutters. The bristles from the street sweepers are perfect material for the pick piece. For the tension wrench, small flathead screwdrivers are usually fine.

Re: Firefox: Mac PPC Optimized Builds at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 19:00:26 -0000

Not to give you a lecture on custom builds, but anyone can make their own custom build of Firefox that's "optimized" for any processor they want. I'm sure if you dig through that list, you will find plenty of processor optimized builds of Firefox for any of the popular processor types.

Your link above is pointing to straight Firefox source code (no mods that I can see) that has been compiled for optimized running on specific processors. Anyone can download the code and do that, it's just compiler settings.

Re: TyTHyL at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:12:37 -0000

You should have heard some of the other ideas for names, then this one wouldn't sound so bad.

Re: Fan Mail at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 17:46:08 -0000

That was interesting, but I really don't think you should be posting stuff like that, for ethical reasons.

Re: Ultimate Tag Plugin for Wordpress at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 22:20:16 -0000

It isn't; I haven't had time to work on it at all lately.

Re: 3s Company at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 22:36:57 -0000

Every major business is in it for the money, that's no surprise, whether it be Google, MS or Apple.

My point with Apple is that if it had been them that got the break that MS got at the time, they would be in the same place, using the same tactics to keep their market share that everyone criticizes MS for.

If Apple were really so interested in promoting its "superior" OS and doing the best thing for their users, they would release it on other platforms. The fact that they have said they aren't going to do this when they have the perfect opportunity (the Intel switch) just goes to show that their primary interest is in maximizing profits, not enhancing the "Apple culture" that so many fans seem to be entranced by and devoted to.

As for Google, I don't think they can be easily compared in the same category as MS and Apple, since their business model is completely different. Although Apple could probably take a note from them in the areas of delayed gratification.

Re: Guide to Springfield at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 01:00:55 -0000

Please tell me you didn't do those notes yourself; that is insane.

I remember seeing a different one of these maps one time before; actually I think it was from you.

Re: 3s Company at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 01:49:06 -0000

Palladium type plans, if you're into being locked down to a particular hardware platform, let's lock down what apps you can run too - won't it be great! Sure, this buys you some additional stability, but it's at the expense of flexibility. Sure the software OS in my DVD player has never crashed, and it's probably because it's tailored specifically for that hardware - that doesn't mean that I think more highly of that software or the company that makes it.

Re: comparisons with Microsoft - the break I was referring to was the deal they struck with IBM in the 80s, that allowed their OS to spread like wildfire and consume the market, leaving Apple (who could have been the leader up until that point) in the dust.

Comparisons between MS and Apple are very natural, since they are both in the same business: selling commercial software (specifically operating systems) to customers. Google is a completely different type of company, whose business model is totally different.

As for tactics, some of the biggest complaints against MS involved their trying to force the hardware manufacturers to offer Windows exclusively. This is the kind of thing that I'm saying Apple would do if they were in the same position, since they essentially do this already by not licensing to any other hardware vendors.

Also, as for MS offering nothing - I don't think that's the case either. There's nothing I can think of that you can do on a Mac that you couldn't also do on a Windows system, probably for significantly less money.

The delayed gratification thing I was talking about had to do with Google's choice to let people use all of their best products for free (initially) to build up their market penetration (which worked extremely well). Apple on the other hand goes to the opposite extreme, pinching pennies keeping everything (software and hardware sales) they possibly can, and that's what they end up with in terms of market penetration - pennies. I guess this works for them, so more power to them, but it's just not for me.

Re: 3s Company at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 15:34:01 -0000

current lack of spyware / viruses, etc. and the fact that it's difficult to teach this kind of user how to operate a computer securely. That being said, if the Mac were to become as popular as the PC, it would have just as many spyware / virus concerns.

As for outsourcing tech support, I have no problem at all with that practice, provided they pay fair wages and operate according to high standards of ethics, etc. People bag on India, etc. all the time, but there are a lot of smart people (tech support, software devs, etc.) there as well as other places. Just because they live somewhere else and don't speak 100% fluently in their second language is no reason to put them down.

Most of the people I hear complaining about non-US tech support are usually complaining about the person's accent, etc. - which I immediately write off as racism (however subtle). I've dealt with (and even been a part of) plenty of tech support orgs here in the US where the first level reps don't know jack; that doesn't have anything to do with what country you're in. The way the tech support business works is that you have to have a first level line of (lower paid) people who answer the phones and read the solutions from the knowledge base (FAQs) that address common questions - which make up a large part of the call volume, then have higher levels for real troubleshooting. I know of very few US-based companies that don't operate this way (one notable exception being SpeakEasy DSL).

Re: 3s Company at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 04:21:45 -0000

Like I said, I'm with you on Apple being a very good choice for the "dummies" market - although I'm not sure that's a compliment I'd be too happy with receiving. It works for them, and I'm happy for them.

As for tightly integrating apps with the OS: Oh yeah, I forgot what a tremendously great idea that was. If only MS had thought of that years ago, they could have tried it with some of their products, like their web browser, for example. Oops, I forgot - they did - and they ended up getting sued for it and flamed by all the M$ bashers.

As for Vista ripping off Tiger, I think you may need to rethink that one, since almost *everything* that's included in the "new" release of windows I personally saw them demoing 2 years ago (2003) in developer conferences, so unless they had a crystal ball I don't think they did much "copying" from Apple's 2005 product.

As for recompiling the kernel, etc., I wasn't saying that a lot of people would want to do that, I was just debunking your claim about OSX being capable of doing 99% of what the 'nix OS's can do, which was related to this kind of "power user". Once you get more experience with Linux, you realize that this sort of thing is *extremely* powerful. By literally disabling whole chunks of the OS that you don't want/need, you can lock down your machine to be as secure as possible as well as much more efficient.

Re: 3s Company at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 04:23:49 -0000

Oops, that asterisk I put in front of "nix" above kind of screwed up the bolding in that last paragraph.

Re: 3s Company at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 20:34:01 -0000

you made above about the average person not being able to understand open source, or implying that OSX is the only OS they can use without calling someone for help all the time. (the last part I wasn't agreeing with)

I was just talking about IE being tied to the OS, and yes, they did get sued for that. As for giving developers the ability to tie things together and integrate with Windows, they do that as well - just as much as Apple does. I would suspect probably more so, but I haven't done much development specifically for the Apple platform so I can't say that for sure. Let me know if there's something you think Apple offers to developers that Windows doesn't, and I'll let you know if that's valid.

There are several reasons why it has taken so long for them to put out this version of Windows. I'm not saying that all of them are good, nor am I sticking up for Microsoft. I'm just saying that none of the features you see in it today (or two years ago) were copied from a product that was only released 4 or 5 months ago. And yes, the "smart folders" concept (although they didn't call it that) was one of the many things that I saw demoed in 2003.

Re: Headlines at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 15:17:28 -0000

Yes, now all the bridgeblog visitors can join the "where oh where could my semen be" quest.

Not bagging on the post, it's just funny to imagine the reaction of the people visiting the bridgeblogs site who aren't familiar with us.

Re: Headlines at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 17:37:11 -0000

Just to clarify, I wasn't complaining; just thought it was funny.

Re: Auto Hyperlink from HTML Header at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 13:45:38 -0000

If the middle content is actually part of the same document (not a frame), you can do it with javascript, just navigating through the document (assuming it's well formed) and replacing any given text with a specific link.

If it's a frame to another site (which I suspect based on your description) then you won't be able to modify it's contents from a different frame that you do have control over - unless perhaps they are both coming from the same domain.

I think what you're thinking of is the functionality of the Google toolbar, which can add links to addresses and other keywords. You could use that (or make your own app that does the same thing), but the problem with that is you can't rely on that as part of your design, since it requires the client to have it installed when they visit your site. Unless, of course, it's an internal application where you do have this kind of control over the client browsers.

Re: Auto Hyperlink from HTML Header at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 13:51:54 -0000

If you do have control of the client browsers and want to do something like this, I would look into GreaseMonkey, which is a framework for adding user defined javascript to any (or all) pages that are loaded into Firefox. You could definitely do what you want with this, assuming you can make them use Firefox and install your scripts in their browsers before they go to your site.

Re: OS X PROVEN hacked and running on an ordinary PC at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 13:55:44 -0000

That's pretty creative and commendable. I don't think I'll try it though, just because that's a lot of work to go through for something I don't really even want necessarily.

Re: OS X PROVEN hacked and running on an ordinary PC at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 14:56:07 -0000

I would certainly be interested in trying out that VMWare image described in the solution though, if it will actually run in VMWare. I don't want to waste (or should I say dedicate) a whole machine to running OSX natively, but I wouldn't mind running it in a virtual machine every now and then.

Re: OS X PROVEN hacked and running on an ordinary PC at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 14 Aug 2005 01:02:46 -0000

I was going to download it, but I really don't want to waste 6GB on a slow running copy of something I'm not all that interested in anyway, Not to mention it being illegal.

Re: OS X PROVEN hacked and running on an ordinary PC at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 14 Aug 2005 21:22:04 -0000

Yeah, I've got more than an extra gigs, but I already have several other VMWare sessions on there with other OS's, including several variations of Linux. I can't think of a single reason why I would want OSX on there, especially if all the hip, cool "i" apps don't work.

Plus the fact (as I mentioned before) that it's illegal. Even if you own a valid license (extra - in addition to the license for your mac), the license probably explicitly says you're only allowed to run it on a Mac.

Considering that there are lot's of more interesting operating systems available for free, I don't need to steal one that will probably run slower with limited features.

Re: Thanks JasonB at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 12:33:29 -0000

Yes, that was pretty hillarious. There were parts the went by too fast, but I don't have time to go back and watch it frame by frame, but it was still funny. Someone put a lot of time into that.

Re: NPR Podcasts at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 01:05:10 -0000

Dang, I was going to post on this earlier today, but then I forgot. I hope they start offering This American Life; right now the TAL web site only offers Real Audio downloads.

Re: iBook sale erupts in chaos, stampede at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 00:03:17 -0000

Well, I guess that picture (and story) kind of prooves that I was right in saying that a Mac is the perfect computer for an absolute idiot.

Re: Bush administration objects to .xxx domains at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 00:06:41 -0000

Ya, this just goes to show the lack of comprehension about tech stuff that lawmakers generally have. It's not like there will be any less porn on the internet if they don't approve this. If anything, the .xxx domains will make it slightly easier to avoid porn than before.

Re: Bush administration objects to .xxx domains at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 01:16:57 -0000

icannwatch.org for an "ICANN needs to be fixed" type view, which is more moderate than my "ICANN needs to be replaced" view.

Re: Bush administration objects to .xxx domains at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 12:31:18 -0000

If people want to filter their own connections that's fine by me. The computer that our kids use goes through a filtered connection, and I wouldn't want it any other way. However, that's MY decision to make and my responsibility, not some government or organization's.

As for specific domains like .edu, .gov, the .twolettercountrycodes, etc. those are fine with me because they are not saying that if you have a certain type of content, you MUST use this type of domain, but rather the other way around (like you said). I even think it's OK to say that in order to get one of those domains (edu, gov, etc.), your site has to qualify. What I don't like is ANY sort of content restrictions WHATSOEVER on .org's and probably .com's as well.

Re: gVisit at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 22:31:55 -0000

I'll have to start visiting your blog "from" more exotic locations from now on.

Re: %*#@ing Windows at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 19:39:16 -0000

If you're looking for increased reliability, I certainly wouldn't recommend going with an unsupported installation of OSX, not only because it will probably be just as unstable but you'll probably also have to never allow it to update, since they will certainly release patches that will disable the current method.

May I recommend Linux? :)

Re: %*#@ing Windows at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 00:10:09 -0000

Ya, you could do all those things. You could also do professional video editing, audio production, and every single other thing you can do on a Mac or Windows.

Re: OS X on AMD64 at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 00:12:47 -0000

My diagnosis is that it has something to do with running the OS on hardware it wasn't designed for. Too bad it's not open source; that way you (or someone else) could make it work with a variety of hardware.

:)

Re: %*#@ing Windows at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 02:27:03 -0000

Ha! You can't run OSX on an AMD or Intel machine either - legally.

"all the real innovations are being sold" - I don't think so. There are all kinds of examples of innovative software that is not "being sold", and more to come every day. Just look at the realm of blogging - the commercial products pretty much suck in comparison to the free ones.

There are many, many other examples of open source apps that are as good or better than their commercial counterparts, but I also never said that Linux has the best software in every category - only that you can still do everything that you can do on a Mac (or a windows box), provided you are willing to put the time into learning it, and live without some of the fluffy-frilly UI stuff that some people put so much value in.

Re: Digital makeup at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 00:08:36 -0000

He definitely needs to work on his technique on eyes.

Re: %*#@ing Windows at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 00:29:07 -0000

surf the internet, check email, and ummmÃ¢â‚¬Â¦program applications no one will use.

Re: Scattered at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 11:50:27 -0000

Looks good. I need to work on mine.

Re: %*#@ing Windows at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 11:53:03 -0000

You don't get spam?

Re: Caricature at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 19:06:28 -0000

That was awesome - when did you do those?

BTW, Dan, you may need to fix that link; it looks like the closing paragraph tag got made part of the link.

Re: Caricature at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 00:22:11 -0000

Nathan's. Looks like you got it.

Re: Gates praising Apple at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 00:37:19 -0000

machine, not necessarily the OS. My guess is that at the time he probably still had hopes of making a deal to take over the OS dev for Apple, who he viewed as primarily a hardware company.

Unfortunately for him (well, actually it hasn't hurt him that bad), that was never going to happen. But on the other hand, much more unfortunately for Apple, they still insist on operating primarily as a hardware company (as Gates perceived them), in that they are unwilling to really get into an OS competition with Windows by releasing their software on other hardware platforms.

Re: Server outage at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 20:24:23 -0000

You could probably do a quick monitoring script pretty easily. If you want, I could even run it on my reliable server. :)

But seriously, I would look through the logs, as you suggested. Plesk might give you some GUI interface for doing this, otherwise you can always go through the /var/log directory

Re: Poker Purse at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 20:28:07 -0000

Save some for this month!

Re: New Orleans at Binary Bonsai at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 15:32:14 -0000

I have been thinking of the same issues, although I neglected to post on them because it's usually more trouble than it's worth and I don't want to get into more arguments right now.

I've also been listening to a lot of coverage on how much this issue was documented beforehand and how little pre-hurricane help was provided. Both long-term (building up the defenses) and short term (evacuating in the days between when the warning was given and the hurricane hit) much more could have been done but wasn't. The really sad thing is that most of the victims were the poorer ones who had no means of leaving the city on short notice. Public transportation was virtually non-existent, and the national guard that usually steps in and provides much needed assistance in such efforts is off dying for a mistake.

Re: Best Buy’s Secret to Screw You! at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 15:38:05 -0000

Wow, I've never seen them go that far. I always just say no and they usually accept that. If they try to push it, I just ask them why I would spend an extra 25% of the cost of my product to get a couple extra months of coverage that I'm very unlikely to need? If the unit itself is bad, it will be obvious within the first few weeks, at which point I'll take it back to the store - I don't need an "extended coverage plan" for that. In the one occasion in which they still didn't get that I wasn't buying it, I had to explain to them that it was an obvious rip off; they wouldn't be pushing it so much if (like other forms of insurance) it was almost never used, because otherwise it wouldn't be profitable for them.

Re: Police looters at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 15:49:17 -0000

If I remember correctly, I think that these people are taking the permission thing out of context. The initial remark the authorities made about not wanting to go after looters was partially because they were too busy trying to save people's lives to worry about some store getting stuff taken from it, and secondly because there is going to be some justified taking of food, water, etc. if it is unavailable anywhere else. That's not what the people in this video were doing, but you can't exactly have a "zero-tolerance" stance on stuff like this if people have no access to clean water and food.

Re: NOLA mayor interview at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 15:55:51 -0000

That was excellent.

Re: Mayhem in our beloved country at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 03 Sep 2005 14:11:56 -0000

I know, I heard that there was some Louisiana official who was telling people to shoot looters on sight. Last time I checked, stealing a VCR wasn't a capital offense.

Re: Server outage at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 16:07:17 -0000

That would be a good idea, unless (as you said) the whole box froze, which I was assuming.

Did you ever figure out what the problem was? If not, you still may want to, since it could happen again at any time.

Having the script let you know (or restart the services if it's running on the box, as Nate suggests) is a good idea, but you also have to treat the disease as well as the symptoms.

Re: Server outage at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 22:48:45 -0000

If you're talking about the code tag, I think all that does is format the text using a fixed width font, but it doesn't actually escape all the characters for HTML display, etc. WP does some of this by itself, but not always.

It would actually be possible to script the reboot as well, since you've got that 1and1 web based control panel. (For those that don't know, 1and1 offers some functions that you can perform online, even if your server is inaccessible directly, such as rebooting and also terminal access through ssh to another server which will then get a serial console on the actual box). Especially if you can do the reboot completely web based, you can do it automatically by writing a program that simulates the browser activity.

My recommendations are still to uncover the root of the problem, and if that is too difficult (or can be assumed to be too time consuming since it could be any of a number of problems which you may or may not know are possible, much less how to fix them), then reimage and restore your critical files from a known-good backup.

Basically the same approach that I would take for general workstations; I think it applies to servers as well. Whether it's a virus / spyware on a workstation or a screwed up Plesk script on your server, you may never know the full extent of bad stuff that whatever went wrong did to your system, and it's much more time efficient to just restore from a backup rather than chasing your tail trying to fix the specific problem, especially because there's no guarantee that you'll find everything that's wrong.

Of course, there's always the off chance that this was a one time event, either based on something that happened at the hosting company or even a DOS attack, etc. but I'd definitely say that if it happens again, it's time to fix it.

Re: Server outage at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 11:46:12 -0000

Markdown) that Wordpress and other CMS systems use so that people don't have to know HTML, and I think it's active by default. It's designed to fix common issues (like a lot of character escaping) automatically, and I guess it could make it easier for some people, but they would still have to learn that syntax, so why don't they just learn the real HTML? This is why I disabled it on my blog.

Re: Why do I want this? at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 12:20:15 -0000

Because you're a sucker.

Re: Crash at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 21:41:33 -0000

I agree on Crash - great movie. We saw it in the theater and didn't really know anything about it beforehand - it was excellent.

Re: Mac Takes Honors as Best Unix Desktop at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 13:35:14 -0000

Interesting perspective; I think he has some OK points, but I don't know if one guy's opinion equates to the Mac "taking honors" as the best unix desktop, any more than if I claim to "take the honors of best software developer ever" based on an article I publish on my own blog.

In any event, this is a pretty subjective matter, and it really depends on what you value. If, as the author states, usability for the "average user" is pretty much the only important criteria then yes, the Mac desktop is probably at the head of the pack in *nix desktops. However, that is only one aspect to be evaluated, and all the various aspects have different levels of importance to different people. For example, if you value software freedom (not talking about only the monetary sense, but all senses), then the Mac is one of the worst in this category. (I'll post on my blog later more about "software freedom" so you understand what I'm saying here)

And finally, a lot of the best uses for Unix boxes don't require them to have GUIs at all, so that large portion of the field is not being discussed in this article.

Re: What the !@#% is Microsoft doing with Vista? at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 13:56:04 -0000

preferences. To say that Windows is "not a good UI" and anything else is categorically a "better" UI, you have to assign weightings to all the different categories of evaluation (of which there are many) and then assign values in each of those categories. Since any one person's evaluations as well as the weightings of the categories is variable depending on their preferences, you can't really say that one is "better" than another, other than just personal preferences.

It's kind of like art, some people think certain things are crap that others really like. Of course, there are things that almost everyone agrees are crap, but I really don't think the Windows UI falls into that category. It's more like saying that Coke is "better" than Pepsi; it doesn't carry much weight beyond your own opinion.

Re: I hate it when… at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 18:19:32 -0000

The link in your original post (somesuch.weblogs.us) does credit you; unless he changed it after you contacted him. He's got a link to you in the footer and in his links section.

You should probably pick some sort of license (and make it obvious) if you want to require people to be required to link back to you. Even then, they still don't have to, I guess, but they may not have realized that you would want them too at first.

Since it was corrected so quickly, I'd assume that it was just an oversight.

Re: I hate it when… at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 23:11:20 -0000

Actually, you should be thankful then; if he had you linked originally you might just be getting even more support requests for configuring your theme... ha

Re: iPod Nano at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 11:34:22 -0000

As for listening to podcasts while working, I find that it depends on the type of work you're doing. For a while there I was listening to a lot when I was in research / design mode, but right now I'm just writing a lot of code, and I do find that speaking can be distracting when you're concentrating and working on a complex concept, so I listen to music more currently and am getting a little behind on podcasts.

As for the free nanos, all I can say is NOT THIS AGAIN! When will people learn about these MLM-style schemes?

Re: Hardening Windows XP at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 21:03:18 -0000

NSA guide for XP as a more thorough reference. I think I posted a link the their OSX guide before sometime.

Re: iPod Nano at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 21:11:47 -0000

Similar to the old free ipod "deal" and other MLM programs like Amway, the only way you will ever get anything is by nagging all your friends and family to sign up for / buy things that they don't need, and you'll have to do a heck of a lot of that for them to be able to make enough money to give you a free ipod. Sure, some people may get them, but most will not be willing to become hated by their friends for convincing them to sign up for services and get charged for them (even when they try to cancel early).

Re: What is Google up to? at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 21:13:58 -0000

Maybe I'm missing something, but is there something negative about this?

Re: iPod Nano at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 10:16:04 -0000

To be clear, I never said it was a "scam", I said it was a "scheme", as in pyramid scheme. It's just like Amway and all the other MLM based businesses - it gets you to put a lot of work in to selling their products for relatively little reward, as Nathan pointed out.

For the few people who actually put enough work into it for them to make enough money to get you an ipod, then it is a steal for them, since your time/labor is worth more to them then whatever they pay for the ipod. For everyone else who tries it but gives up after they realize how much they have to continually nag their friends and family just to break even, they just got you to do a whole buch of work for them without getting paid at all.

The second part of Nathan's comment is kind of what I was trying to say. I don't consider the ipod truly "free" if in order to get it you have to get a ton of your friends to sign up for things they don't need.

On the old free ipod deal, I remember there being a lot of talk about how (for the services that were paid), you could just tell your friends to cancel after a certain period of time, so hey, it's "free". The reality is that it doesn't work like that. A lot of those types of agreements will indicate that the "free month" (or whatever the trial period is) is only free if you decide to stick with the service, otherwise you may be billed for it. Even if they don't state this in the contract, a lot of companies (even established ones - namely AOL) have policies of making it very difficult to unsubscribe from the service, so your friends and family will end up getting billed for at least one month's worth of the service. This is even more common with the smaller companies, since they know that it isn't worth it for you to fight them in court over an amount less than $100.

Re: OSs for your hand at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 10:33:17 -0000

UI usability for the "average" person: My opinion on this is similar to my opinion on the Mac OS being "easier" than the Windows desktop OS; the usability differences are greatly exaggerated. I would say this is even more so the case when you're talking about PalmOS vs. Windows Mobile. Both operating systems are so extremely simple to grasp that I think this is a non-issue for the "average" person, and any "below average" person who can't understand one probably won't understand the other either.

More apps: This is an interesting one coming from a Mac OS advocate, but as for the PDA market there is no doubt that the sheer quantity of applications is greater (at the moment) for the Palm OS. However, in my experience, the number of good applications for either platform is pretty much equal. In any event, the quantity of available applications is nowhere near as significant a measure (to me) as whether there is an application available (preferably free) that does the particular task I want done well, and I think that for any PDA task I can imagine, the answer is yes on both platforms. In addition, I can say that in most cases, (having used both) I prefer the apps I have for my current PDA over the ones I used for the same purposes on my Palm devices.

Better devices / smart phones: This is again a matter of preference for you. Sure, some people may not want to carry two devices, but I know a lot of people who don't want to buy Treos just because they don't always want to carry around that big of a device just to have a phone.

Personally, the tradeoff for me is well worth it. I have a phone which I can carry on it's own and surf the web, check e-mail etc. without my PDA, for the times when I really want to go with just one device. For the other times when I don't mind carrying them both, (which is most of the time), I enjoy the advantages of a much larger screen, much faster access (if near 802.11) etc. etc. Also, I can use "wifi" (without cell phone) OR bluetooth through my cell to go online from my PDA, which opens up many more options than just a phone device has available to it (unless you buy a "wifi" add-on for the Treo, if etc.)

"PDAs are useless if you have to carry a phone as well to connect to the internet wherever you are" - I'm not sure if you really thought this through before you said it, but if you really think your PDA is useless without an internet connection then I think you are really working off a very limited view of what you can use your PDA for.

Document sync: Working with Word and Excel documents is pretty easy with both platforms, the only difference is that the capability comes out of the box with the Windows models, whereas you only get reading capability in the free "Viewer Edition" of Documents to go; if you want to edit you have to fork up more cash for the "Premium Edition"

Multitasking is a pretty big pro. For some reason, I thought that newer Palm-based PDAs could do this as well. If not, then they really blow hard. As for using the memory manager, there are plenty of readily available add ins that will allow you to close (rather than minimize) the applications when you click the X, so that's not a problem.

Cost You got me on that one; the price of the PDA I've got now is pretty high, although for the functionality, it's much better dollar for dollar than any of the comparably priced Palm-based systems. Also, the entry level Dell Axims blow away any other PDAs (IMHO) when it comes to the most bang for your buck.

Re: OSs for your hand at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 21:20:00 -0000

"non-intuitive" to not be able to have your computer manage more than one app open at a time.

As for internet connectivity, there is a broad range of uses for PDAs that don't involve an internet connection. As a matter of fact, PDAs have been around long before they developed internet connectivity for them. I'd say easily more than half the stuff I use my PDA for does not require internet access. Of course, I think it's a great feature (and one that my PPC does *way* better than the treo by the way), it's certainly not the only thing that makes it more than a simple day planner.

As for the opinion issue that Nathan mentioned, I'm not saying that everything has to be logically validated, only that there are many factors that go into how any given user perceives something, and sometimes (as in this case) there are not clear cut advantages that the majority of the public would recognize. That's not to say that the majority doesn't favor the PalmOS design over PocketPC - they very well may; I just don't see how since they are so similar.

Ya, I guess I do occasionally overestimate the sophistication of the average user, but I still think in this case they are both equally easy to use. I maintain that the general use features (especially the simple day planner type functions plus email and web browsing) are equally brain-dead simple on both platforms; in fact the PocketPC probably has the edge in the web browsing and email departments, because the interface is much more similar to what they already have on their desktops.

In any event, usability for the "average" user was only a small part of my comments above. When I'm evaluating a PDA for my own personal use, this factor doesn't even come into the equation, so I personally don't put any value in it in that case. If I were responsible for buying (and supporting) them for other people, then I would take other things into consideration, but my opinions above are primarily based on the perspective of those of us reading this blog, who are all more than capable of understanding how to operate any PDA that's on the market.

Re: OSs for your hand at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 12:52:36 -0000

can use the start menu as well, but you don't have to. You can add as many shortcuts as you want to the main screen, or you can even easily set it to use an interface ("Home" view) that is pretty much exactly like the Palm that you guys seem to like (with all program icons available from the main screen). So I guess maybe my suspicion that you guys haven't used PocketPCs enough to evaluate them is probably correct.

As for multitasking, I use it on a regular basis. Besides listening to music while doing something else; if I am using a "wifi hotspot" to access the internet [not to rub in the fact that the treo can't :) ], I don't want to check my email or surf the web "in the clear", so I will SSH into my server and then tunnel all my other traffic through that. This is one of the *many* advantages of multitasking.

Regarding separating myself from evaluating products, I made it clear above that I do think the issue of not closing the apps when you click the X is a design flaw. I also made it clear that it may be a problem for normal users, but I also said that I'm speaking from my own point of view in relation to using a PDA. Since the close-on-X thing is a *complete* non-issue for me (since it is easily changed to close-on-X if that's what you want), I was just saying that it isn't a drawback for me.

I think it's perfectly valid for different people to evaluate products for their own personal use based on different criteria. I'm not going to consider things that don't matter to me when I'm buying a PDA for myself, that would be ridiculous. I already said above that if I was evaluating it for someone else, it would be a different story.

If I were to dismiss things for my own use that aren't brain-dead easy to use, just on the principle of supporting intuitiveness, then I guess I would have to give up using Linux / BSD operating systems, which would of course be ridiculous, since they provide many things that other "closed" OSs do not and never will. There are a lot of things that may be more complicated than the alternatives, but that doesn't make them bad. (Not that I'm saying that the Pocket PC is more complicated... but you get my point).

Re: OSs for your hand at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 18:52:08 -0000

way faster access in some places.

On the subject of proxies, I wasn't saying it's for everyone, just for people who want their traffic encrypted. BTW, a proxy (on its own) does nothing to encrypt the traffic, so if you want it to be encrypted you still will have to tunnel it. I do use a proxy server, I just use it through an encrypted tunnel; the purposes are totally different. Of course, there are proxies that provide encryption as well, but I personally prefer the SSH approach.

Is Tythyl on tonight, or are we postponing?

Re: OSs for your hand at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 20:01:25 -0000

Did I mention that the term "wifi" really bugs me?

Re: OSs for your hand at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 10:31:18 -0000

more flexible setup that allows me to do more stuff (faster and on a better screen, etc.) then I could with a single device.

Re: OSs for your hand at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 11:44:06 -0000

But if the IT guy is going to set up the Exchange sync, why not also have him set up the close-on-X as well as the Bluetooth pairing, and anything else that is initially complicated but once it's set up is a piece of cake? The IT guy could also set it the OS to run by default in the view that is exactly like the Palm OS, so there you go.

As for POP or IMAP, I agree that it's "easy", but you said yourself that *anything* that doesn't come ready to go out of the box is not "intuitive" enough for the average user; if they have to look up how to set their email settings (not only what the settings should be, but how to change them to begin with), then I would say that they can look up anything else they need as well.

I'll have to post on encryption when I get a chance. If there weren't so many "average users" out there, and everyone understood how to use PGP, then all of my emails would be encrypted for the reason I stated above.

Re: Some recent Mint stats at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 10:11:31 -0000

#1 - What happened to you tagboard? I would have posted this there, but....

#2 - Do you have a feedburner feed for your comments too, or just the main feed? The WordPress feed for your comments for some reason does not indicate that there are new comments in the Sage reader.

Re: iPod Video at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 15:19:16 -0000

I heard that this was still just in the rumor/hoax stages... is it official (this time)?

Re: Letter to Steve Jobs at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 15:32:11 -0000

I don't get the impression that Jobs is really into constructive criticism or even suggestions, but it's a good try. (Although the media center thing is kind of funny, "Hey, MS copied you, why don't you copy them?")

I'm with you on the OS thing, even though I doubt it will ever happen. If they really honestly felt their hardware was so great, then certainly it would still be the best choice to run an open/free version of OSX on, especially one that they continue to develop, right? Hmm, I wonder why they don't want to do this... (that was sarcasm in case it didn't come through).

I would just worry that if you ever were to get a job with Apple you might get fired for associating with me...

Re: The worst Google app ever at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 22:26:52 -0000

I'll have to try it out more to see what I think of the UI, but in the few seconds I checked it out today it was OK for me. Probably as long as it works, it's ok with me.

The speed is a big thing for me, so I'm happy to hear that it's faster than feedlounge. The podcast support is pretty cool too, since it makes it easier to catch a quick cast from a different location if you don't have access to your normal feeds (like Odeo, but without having to manage another account, since most people already have GMail). I probably won't use this one too much either, but it's a cool feature to have just in case.

Re: Letter to Steve Jobs at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 22:33:23 -0000

Why would you think that open source would be worse rather than better? It could still be managed and developed primarily by Apple, just open for review and addition by other good writers. Apple wouldn't have to incorporate any external changes into their "official" build unless they wanted to, in which case they would be FREE to, so I don't see how it could get anything but better.

My main point (that I was trying to make in a sarcastic manner) was that I seriously doubt that the overpriced Mac desktop hardware could survive if people could run OSX without it.

Re: Letter to Steve Jobs at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 22:14:57 -0000

The last part about the Palm stuff kind of re-enforces my point, although I think it applies even more to Apple. If they released OSX to run on non-Apple hardware, their hardware sales would tank.

All of the high-end users would go to faster Intel based machines, if they could still run Final Cut, Pro Tools, etc. Since I don't use Macs for this purpose and you do, I won't claim to know better on the subject, but I've heard a lot of Mac advocates say similar things.

Even Leo Laporte (who is a pretty big Mac advocate) says that Apple notebooks are not a good value compared to similarly priced PCs (unless I guess you put a high weighting on the sleek design issues you mentioned). He also said that he does all his video editing on PCs rather than Macs because it's faster.

Re: The worst Google app ever at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 16:18:59 -0000

Are your trackbacks not working? I just tried, and I also saw Alex's post that linked to this article, but I don't see any track/pingbacks...

PS - I think aggregator is spelled wrong in your tag

Re: The worst Google app ever at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 20:11:24 -0000

ya, I did those trackbacks too; I'll have to go back and resubmit them sometime.

I like SK2 more every day. On mine, there was a lot with WPBlacklist that was slipping through, whereas now there is none. It does have a lot of options, but for the most part you can keep the out of the box settings and they work pretty well.

Re: Adsense at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 21:34:54 -0000

Good luck on the appeal, but I will bet you a good amount of money that they won't change their minds, and they won't tell you exactly what they observed as being "invalid clicks".

If you didn't (accidentally or on purpose) actually violate the TOS in this way, it could easily have been someone doing an adSense DOS on you. I haven't actually heard of this happening, but if I really wanted to screw with someone who used Google ads, I would set up a script to just keep generating clicks until their account gets suspended.

Re: Adsense at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 21:39:28 -0000

One other thought - how many different sites to you run on your server, and do they all share the same IP?

Re: Slate at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 22:20:22 -0000

Bring on the support requests!

Re: Fry’s at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 22:32:01 -0000

You forgot to mention the book section; their selection of computer books is *so much* better than the local Borders and BN put together that it's ridiculous.

I went there on opening night; it was a madhouse. It's definitely a dangerous store to have in this area, for those who are tempted by such things.

Re: Fry’s at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 22:32:43 -0000

PS - why hate the staff?

Re: Financial plan at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 22:34:11 -0000

We're renting out our previous one (over by Buena) in case anyone's interested...

Re: Financial plan at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 02:37:43 -0000

I've never really been too interested in houses. For me, there are way more important factors in choosing the city that you want to live in, like the people that you're near, and yes, even the weather. I really couldn't imagine moving to another state just because of the housing prices. The situation has come up for me before, and I didn't even consider it for a second.

As for the investment side of it, I don't know much about the real estate market, so I'll leave that discussion to those of you who sound like you know what you're talking about. I do think that eventually (next couple decades) there will be a lot more houses being put up in Ventura County, just because there is still so much prime undeveloped land that is currently being used for farming, etc. I think there's just too much money to be made for the owners of that kind of land to hold out for too much longer.

Re: Test Post from Flock at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 02:39:06 -0000

What is the deal with Flock? We should talk about this on Tythyl, since I'm too lazy to check it out for myself.

Re: Financial plan at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 17:23:53 -0000

Dan: actually, I have had to think about it quite a bit, just not recently. We haven't always had the housing situation we have now, and I haven't been making the money I'm making now for that long. Over the last 8 years I've averaged making about 10K more per year than the year before, which means that only 8 years ago I was making

Re: Financial plan at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 17:25:42 -0000

Oops, looks like it messed up my symbol and cut off the rest of my comment.

Re: Financial plan at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 17:36:26 -0000

PS - I'm not saying that my criteria are any better or worse than anyone else's either, in case it comes across that way. If you value those things then that's certainly fine for you. Dan, it sounds like you're staying for the same reasons that I wouldn't really want to leave either.

Re: Financial plan at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 00:58:32 -0000

Dan: my first reference

The situation has come up for me before, and I didn't even consider it for a second.

was to a specific instance, a few years ago, in which I was offered to be moved and turned it down.

The second one,

I have had to think about it quite a bit

was just responding to your comment about me "never having to" consider the alternatives. I was just saying that at points in the not too distant past, I have had to deal with thinking about that stuff.

I was mostly just saying that I don't put too much value in monetary stuff in general, and owning a house is no exception. Not bagging on it, just saying that it's not the most important thing in life.

Re: Financial plan at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 01:01:07 -0000

What did you mean when you said that I "could have said nothing"?

Re: Financial plan at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 01:29:54 -0000

Sorry, I didn't mean for that comment to be uncomfortable; I think it might have made a little more sense if the rest hadn't gotten cut off, but now I don't remember what else I said. I wouldn't normally ever bring up how much I earn, but I was actually just responding to you bringing it up.

Re: How Much Is your Blog Worth?

JaredB — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 02:26:41 -0000

!!! GOOGLE POLICE !!!

trench, that comment was a violation of your TOS. Be careful, or they'll cut you off!

Re: Scattered Theme at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 22:35:32 -0000

3 columns are evil.

Re: Google set to release Video Blog service?

JaredB — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 00:19:07 -0000

While I think IP TV is a good idea, I think it needs time to mature before it's ready for most people.

For me at least, when I want to watch (as opposed to listen to) something, I usually want to do it on my TV. If I am on my computer, I'm going to want to be doing stuff, not just staring at the screen, and it's too distracting to have it playing up in the corner or something, so I don't know if I'd ever have time to watch it.

Similar to the popular acceptance of MP3 players being a critical success factor to podcasting, I think if the homebrew PC-based PVRs are (or I should say could be) the same thing for video. If these things can really take off and become a accessible living room appliance, replacing the more strictly locked down commercial products like TIVO, I think that is the doorway for internet video to make it's move.

I'd really love for IP TV to do what podcasting has done for the availability of quality shows (in terms of content, not necessarily flashy production). With podcasting, I pretty much never listen to the radio anymore. I think it could be similar for TV, although not completely, since there will still be the market for the big shows that individuals can't do themselves.

What I think may happen instead is that it will be pushed by corporations. The TV industry will continue to pressure TIVO and similar companies to integrate DRM features for them, as well as preventing you from doing things like skipping commercials. As soon as that is in place they will finally begin to abandon the old schedule-based model for a more podcasting-like subscription approach.

I hope this prediction is wrong, but that's the way I see it playing out right now. I'm not sure how Google Video may play into that, other than possibly providing a publishing infrastructure for people to upload and describe their content in, but I think the consumer watching the product will mostly still want to do it on a living room appliance, or *maybe* a portable device like the video iPod.

I still have my doubts about the whole iPod video thing though; I think that MP3 players are so successful because you can use them while doing something else: driving, walking, working, etc. This isn't the case for video, so it will be interesting to see whether it progresses into a mainstream personal appliance like MP3 players.

Re: Scattered Theme at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 00:24:29 -0000

Ha, I was mostly just kidding about them being evil... but seriously, good luck to you.

Re: Scattered look

JaredB — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 11:42:58 -0000

I like the new look just because it's different, and kind of a new twist on things. It does seem to present a lot more content on the "home" page without it seeming so crowded. The only thing I don't like too much is not seeing multiple posts on the main page, but that doesn't matter too much to me, since I rarely load any of the pages in the site directly at all, except when commenting. I just read the posts in RSS, and check for new comments in the comments feed also, so I only actually load the page directly if I'm going to submit a comment.

As for Ajax commenting, my take on it right now is that it's one of the *many* current implementations of Ajax that is just done for the sake of using Ajax, as opposed to actually solving a real problem. Admittedly it looks kid of cool, but it doesn't really do anything useful. The only "useful" (in my opinion) application for ajax in blog commenting would be for it to be running in the background, pulling down and displaying any new comments that have come in since the user loaded the page, so that they can see if they're typing a long comment (like I'm known to do) and someone has submitted a comment before they finish typing. As for posting the comments themselves, I don't see a need for Ajax, especially if it would interfere with (or even complicate) your spam prevention plugin.

Re: Google set to release Video Blog service?

JaredB — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 12:08:07 -0000

No one else has any opinions on this?

Re: Scattered look

JaredB — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 00:39:29 -0000

The more I look at it, the more it reminds me of a CMS or portal type site, like Nuke, PostNuke, etc.

Re: Google set to release Video Blog service?

JaredB — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 15:32:04 -0000

I guess I just can't picture myself watching video blogs, since there are already too many text ones to keep up on; it just seems like watching that much video would just take so much longer. I don't doubt that it will happen, I just doubt that it will be successful (on the same scale as blogs are now, at least).

Same thing with the video on the iPod; I don't necessarily think it's bad, just that there are so many fewer times that you could actually use it, compared to when you can listen to stuff. I can watch video and listen to MP3s on my PDA, and I pretty much never watch video, even though I've been wanting to catch up on Lost for a while, and I've got some eps on there.

It's just a matter of having to dedicate time to watching video, versus being able to do other things (drive, walk, work, etc.) while listening to audio.

Re: Google set to release Video Blog service?

JaredB — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 17:32:29 -0000

I attribute those number to two groups of people: One that didn't know that you can (or didn't know how to) download TV shows on bittorent. The other group is probably just for the novelty factor, I would be surprised if the sales continue to increase after a few months. Of course, everyone buying the video iPods has to have something to put on them, so they will go here first, but I'm wondering whether they will eventually taper off after they realize that they don't end up watching much video on their iPods after all.

Re: OS X and Win running together in harmony

JaredB — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 00:18:09 -0000

I'm not sure what you've got against Dells, they're the best laptops around as far as I'm concerned. I guess I should say the best "PC" laptops, since I don't want to get into that argument right now.

Re: OS X and Win running together in harmony

JaredB — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 14:19:13 -0000

So you don't have anything against Dells specifically, just all non-Apple laptops? I still don't get it.

Re: Apple notebooks vs. “PC” laptops

JaredB — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 17:28:13 -0000

I have to admit that the hardware design of the Apple laptops is pretty good, and the price isn't bad either. The only downside for me would be not running Windows, so if the Intel ones will be able to do that, I would probably consider one. If I got an Apple laptop right now, I would probably want to run Linux on it; I know there are distros for Macs, but I don't know what kind of hardware support they have for the laptops. In case you can't tell, I'd rather avoid running OSX, but if that's not an issue for you, then I think that buying an Apple laptop is a great idea.

Re: OS X and Win running together in harmony

JaredB — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 17:30:18 -0000

In any event, what I was trying to get across is that assuming you're going to get a PC, Dell laptops are the way to go (as opposed to others).

Re: OS X and Win running together in harmony

JaredB — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 18:47:35 -0000

I haven't heard anything bad about the laptops; I've heard complaints about the service when they outsourced to India, but IMO that is mostly from racist people who can't deal with talking with people who have accents because english isn't their first language.

As for the laptops themselves, I've had six of them and never had any problems, whereas other companies (like Gateway in particular) are nothing but trouble. Of course, this is just going from my own personal experience, so it may not be accurate, but the stats for me indicate that Dell is more reliable.

Re: Up too late with this BS

JaredB — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 13:01:46 -0000

The general rule is that it can take up to 72 hours for the DNS changes to propogate through the internet.

What this usually means is that when someone tries to go to your site, their computer contacts the DNS server (of their ISP) which will then look up the address for the site they asked for, AND store (cache) that result for about three days (although this is configurable by whoever is running the DNS server). Therefore, the next time that user asks their ISP's DNS server for the IP address for your site, it will gived them the cached result of the last query, as long as it isn't expired. This can cause a problem if you are moving from one IP to another, since those other DNS servers won't ask your server for the new address again until their current result passed that expiration period, so they won't pick up any DNS changes you make on your server until then.

One way you can test to make sure everything is working correctly is to hit the pages from your server itself (assuming it is running its own DNS); just SSH in and use Lynx or something. If that is all OK, then it will just be a matter of time before everyone else's servers get updated.

The only workaround to this that I know of would be to maintain the site on both IP addresses, until you wait a reasonable amount of time for the changes to have taken affect, then pull down the old one. For your wordpress sites, you can point two instances of the web files to the same database, and you should be fine.

Re: Up too late with this BS

JaredB — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 19:22:09 -0000

Are you talking about the ones in Amsterdam, etc. that you can just use?

The only downside to using some random proxy site off some list you can find on the net is that you don't really know who is running that server. One problem would be that there's no guarantee when it will be up and how much bandwidth will be available to you, since these things could be running on a server dedicated to this purpose, but they could just as easily be running as a trojan on somebody's compromised desktop PC without them even knowing about it, and then you'll loose your connection whenever they reboot their box.

The only real advantage to using one of these public anonymous proxies (rather than going through your own) is if you want to be anonymous. Some of the sites claim to keep no logs of who you are and where you connect from, so *if* that is true, then you are really anonymous by proxying though them. However, they could just as easily be logging all your traffic and trying to pull out passwords or some other useful data for all you know.

So, bottom line: if you're just looking for a proxy to use so that you can have more control over your network connection (ie: getting to blocked ports from behind a firewall, etc) you'd be much better off running a server at home and having any proxy traffic go through that.

Also, if you're just (or primarily) looking to proxy/redirect web traffic, you don't even necessarily need to run squid, you can use dynamic port forwarding over SSH to basically simulate a SOCKS proxy using the encrypted connection.

Hope this helps.

Re: Moving on

JaredB — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 19:26:22 -0000

When you say Jared are you talking about Jared W? I didn't know he had an active blog right now; what's the URL?

Re: Moving on

JaredB — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 01:44:06 -0000

Hey, if your new host allows another open port, you may want to set up the databases on the new server, and then have the web files on both hosts point to the database on the new host, this way people will get the same content while the DNS updates.

The only downside would be that the people hitting the old site will get pretty slow responses compared to the people hitting the one where the db is on the same box, but that will only last until their name servers update.

Re: Comment Quicktags + 1.101 at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 13:41:32 -0000

BUSTED!!! - PS, how come you have to be logged in to comment on this? Is it because it's an old post?

Re: Get your Xbox 360 Ã¢â‚¬Å“goldenÃ¢â‚¬? launch ticket

JaredB — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 20:27:41 -0000

When was the last time that all the stores in town sold out of a new system on the first day? I have a feeling you could save a lot of time and just walk in anytime after the store opens the next day and pick one up.

Re: Get your Xbox 360 Ã¢â‚¬Å“goldenÃ¢â‚¬? launch ticket

JaredB — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 20:09:43 -0000

Good luck! I'm trying to think if there is anything I would go stay overnight outside a store to buy just so that I could have it on the first day it came out; haven't thought of anything yet.

Re: Get your Xbox 360 Ã¢â‚¬Å“goldenÃ¢â‚¬? launch ticket

JaredB — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:32:47 -0000

I think your link is messed up, but I'm assuming you're referring to me seeing the midnight showing of Star Wars. This is completely different, since I only waited in line for a couple hours, saw the movie and went home to go to sleep at a decent hour. That doesn't qualify as "staying overnight", sorry.

As for the Xboxes, while I could imagine them selling out on the first day, I highly doubt that anyone that doesn't get one that day will have to wait till February.

Re: Comment Quicktags + 1.101 at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 01:14:37 -0000

Each comment has an anchor (A tag) that you reference to jump down to that particular part of the page when it loads (this is the # part on the end of the URL). This is the traditional way to load a page and scroll it to a given position. This should work fine in both Firefox and IE (and all other browsers for that matter).

Since it sounds like you might know this already, I'm assuming that you're either saying that you're trying one of these links (with an anchor) and the page is not scrolling, or you're trying a link without an anchor and expecting the page to scroll in some other way.

Hitting "Refresh" will basically just reload the URL that's in your address bar, so if it's got the # in it, it should work fine. If not, it will (and should) just load the page and not scroll you down, unless there is some other scripting at work, which would seem kind of pointless since there's a non-script way to scroll people to a certain point in the document.

Perhaps it's that the links do reference the anchors, but the anchors are not being drawn on the page, because of a change to the template of the blog, etc.? I don't think that's the case here, but it could explain other instances.

Re: Scatter3d

JaredB — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 16:42:42 -0000

Hey, why does that Seinfeld post you did (#870) show up in your feed, but not on the main site?

Re: DRM For Future PS3 Disks

JaredB — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 01:15:52 -0000

Actually, I think it's very likely that we would see an implementation of very effective (even uncrackable in practical terms) piracy protection in video game systems much sooner than in other formats (like video DVDs, etc).

Part of the difficulty in implementing a very strong protection system in the more common media types (CDs, DVDs) is because they are so common, you can't introduce a completely new system that would require everyone to buy new hardware and media (discs) in order to use it. The advantage of the gaming systems is that this is commonplace: if you want the latest games, you will have to buy new systems every few years, which will be designed to run completely new media. This is the perfect ground for implementing a system that would actually work.

I know we've talked about this before, and you may not agree, but if you control the hardware AND the software, you can build a DRM system that is pretty much unbreakable.

Re: DRM For Future PS3 Disks

JaredB — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:40:38 -0000

And that is the only reason they haven't done it yet. Even renting you could do, and it wouldn't even be that much more difficult, assuming you require that everyone has a live internet connection hooked up in order to authorize and play the games for a given amount of time, etc.

The other thing that games don't have that movies and cds do is the "analog hole", which means that since they are passive (non-interactive) media, a lower quality copy can always still be made. This is another issue that video games don't have to deal with.

Re: What are asides (uh-sides) anyways?

JaredB — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:09:30 -0000

Personally, I always read all feeds in RSS, and I'm glad that the "aside" posts are presented right along with everything else. I can filter out what I don't want to read on my own, and if there is a good post, I will still see it, since I'm seeing all of them.

Re: MPEG-2 Conversion

JaredB — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:14:00 -0000

Why don't you do batch MPEG-2 to AVI, then batch AVI to MPEG-4?

Sure, it would take a ton of HD space, but you could actually do it on two computers simultaneously, so that you don't have to keep around all the AVIs. Set up one to do the MPEG-2 to AVI batch, saving the AVIs over the network to another computer, then have a batch running on that computer that will pick up any new AVIs (after they're finished) and encode them to MPEG-4, then delete the old AVIs (to save space).

Re: MPEG-2 Conversion

JaredB — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:18:28 -0000

Dang, I didn't see Nate's comment before I posted. ffmpeg is a good tool, and I think it will do MPEG-2 straight to MPEG-4 (without the in between AVI step). It doesn't have a batch processing system itself, but it's a command line app with a lot of documentation, so you could just write your own script to do the batch.

Re: MPEG-2 Conversion

JaredB — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 02:27:59 -0000

ffmpeg has command line versions on all the major platforms (windows, mac, *nix). It also has well documented command line options, so all you'd need to do is write a script (like Nate illustrated above) to go through all the files in a given directory. You can do this in windows pretty easily, and I'm pretty confident that you could figure it out and have it working successfully much faster than any other solution to this problem.

Give it a shot; but just in case, I will write a script sometime between now and Sunday so that if you haven't already got it by then, you can get started.

Re: Scatter3d

JaredB — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 13:28:49 -0000

If time is the issue preventing you from trying out feed aggregators like Rojo, I would just encourage you that it only takes a few minutes to set up, but saves you a TON of time from that point forward.

I've been reading all the blogs that I read via RSS for almost a year, usually only going to the site directly if I want to submit a comment. Getting them in a consolidated view will save you so much time that it will easily make up for any additional time spent configuring it.

Re: Funny video

JaredB — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:58:52 -0000

That was hillarious

Re: Google analytics vs. mint

JaredB — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 19:13:57 -0000

Did you have trouble getting it to recognize at first? I added the script on my page, but when I check status it tells me that it doesn't detect the tracking code.

Re: Christmas Lights Gone Wild! - Engadget

JaredB — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:33:53 -0000

Dang, I forgot that since you moved your host I'll have to re-hack into all your sites now.

Re: XBox Launch lines

JaredB — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 13:49:51 -0000

I guess if you're really going to do it, you've got to do it all the way; it sounds like you probably would have had to be within the first 10 to guarantee that there wouldn't be any cutting.

Did they have any signs posted saying that people couldn't save places for anyone else?

Re: Mediatemple service

JaredB — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 13:56:02 -0000

That's pretty cool, the first link is a pretty good overview of the process too.

For what we were talking about the other day (dynamic port forwarding), there is a link on that page that explains that as well. This will allow you to do what you were doing before with the proxy server you previously had with 1and1, but now it will just be tunneled through the SSH connection, so it will be a little more secure since no one on your local network will be able to decipher the traffic.

Re: Cingular to be branded as AT&T

JaredB — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 14:00:52 -0000

No, I think it's a quote of an old Bugs Bunny catchphrase.

Re: Cingular to be branded as AT&T

JaredB — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 14:04:15 -0000

Hey, it blocked my link! OK, here it is:
http://tinyurl.com/cautk

Re: Cingular to be branded as AT&T

JaredB — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 14:05:56 -0000

Dan, your comments are jacked up. For the #3 comment, I put in a correct link tag, and it removed the href attribute. For the #4 comment, I didn't add a link tag (just plain text) and it tried to add one automatically, but it included the closing paragraph tag.

Re: Cingular to be branded as AT&T

JaredB — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 14:10:28 -0000

Dang, as a joke i was going to use hugeurl.com to make a big URL, but it looks like it's down right now.

Re: Christmas Lights Gone Wild! - Engadget

JaredB — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 14:25:23 -0000

Yes, it does: http://pacific22.com/lynx.gif - hopefully this link works with your screwy comment system.

Re: XBox Launch lines

JaredB — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 14:31:19 -0000

They probably didn't really care; the way they see it, they're going to sell every single 360 they've got anyway, so who cares about whether it's you or some idiot who cut in line. Considering Best Buy's other anti-for-the-good-of-the-customer policies, this shouldn't be too big of a shock.

It seems like preorder would have been the best way to go on these. If I owned a store, I would just have numbered tickets that people can buy (tied to their IDs in my computer or something) for weeks in advance, so that way there's no having to deal with unruly lines like this.

Re: XBox Launch lines

JaredB — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 14:33:00 -0000

But then secretly I would hold out a few and put them on the shelves so that the ruomrs would fly that I'm not really sold out and everyone would still flock to my store the day of the release.

Re: Cingular to be branded as AT&T

JaredB — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 02:32:46 -0000

Or using it for something that doesn't need ajax at all, like submitting blog comments.

Re: XBox Launch lines

JaredB — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 02:39:12 -0000

I've never waited for more than a few hours to see a movie, and that was for Star Wars, which I would argue is more of a significant cultural event than the release of the latest video game console.

Also, while waiting in said line, I didn't wuss out and let a bunch of people cut in front of me.

Re: XBox Launch lines

JaredB — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 02:39:58 -0000

I forgot to put a smiley face on that last comment, but hopefully everyone could tell that I was joking.

Re: XBox Launch lines

JaredB — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 20:03:14 -0000

I did buy the tickets online, but for a sold out movie, you have to get there early for a good seat unless you want a neck cramp the next day.

I may have cut, but at least I didn't let anyone cut in front of me. It's better to be the cutter than the cutee, I always say, especially when there's no "rules" disallowing it.

I didn't check it out before, but $400 does seem a bit steep.

Re: I hate myspace but…

JaredB — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 22:29:44 -0000

Come one Dan, if you were their age you'd probably be doing the same thing if you found somewhere with free access.

If you wanted to really have fun you should redirect the myspace queries to your own pages, and from there there's all kinds of fun things you could do. Or sniff their traffic and then start publishing on their myspace accounts; that's the only way they'll really learn their lesson about using a network that's not under their control.

Re: $99 Nintendo DS

JaredB — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 12:34:12 -0000

It seems like you would have to bring in the Target URLs, not just the printed web pages, because what if someone just edits the web page and prints out $50 ads?

Re: XBox Launch lines

JaredB — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 12:54:18 -0000

I wasn't really joking about the cutting thing, if you were asking me.

Of course, I don't endorse blatant insertion into the line at some random point and trying to get away with it, but people saving places in line for their friends is completely different, and as long as there aren't any rules posted to not allow it, should be perfectly fine.

Even people letting other people into the line in front of them that they weren't originally saving a place for is OK, again unless there is a policy of the establishment that forbids it. Now if one guy was standing at the front and letting in like 50 people before him, that would be a little crazy, but it doesn't sound like that's what happened here.

Re: $99 Nintendo DS

JaredB — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 12:56:04 -0000

PS - nice sellout to BestBuy less than a week after they dissed you on the XBOX thing; you really taught them a lesson there. (at least it's not Walmart though)

Re: Cutting etiquette

JaredB — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 23:31:09 -0000

I know, I was just joking about you being a wuss and letting people cut; there's not much you could have done.

As for the rest of my position you outlined above, I stand by it.

Your point about no one losing a seat is exactly why it was OK for people (who all already had guaranteed tickets) waiting in line for a movie to allow others in, for the reason you specified.

What's more, this goes towards proving my point, because the people waiting in line for the movie would not lose anything, whereas you standing in line at Best Buy didn't "lose" anything, since you didn't ever have anything to lose (other than your place in line, or at least the place you perceived was yours).

Now, etiquette would say that you *shouldn't* do this (allow saving places), of course, and in your situation I don't think I would have, just because there were so many disparate people who would have been shut out, but I still don't think it's "wrong".

It all goes back to the policy of Best Buy, and since they allowed it (implicitly - both by not clarifying any of the "rules" you were assuming were in place, and confirming it by not correcting those who were obviously doing it). Actually the movie thing is a perfect example of a better way of handling this; having people stand in line to buy something is dumb, why couldn't they just have sold tickets online and avoided the whole issue?

In your hypothetical example of the one person at the front maneuvering it to shut out everyone else by bringing in others (or selling, etc.), if the store allows them to do that, then I say your gripe is with the store. Sure the person is a jerk, but the store enabled them to do that.

Also, I suspect that if you had made it on time, and were within the first ten, you may have considered letting JM in if he showed up when he did. Or, if he was up there and offered the place to you, I think you may have considered taking it, after seeing so many others doing so.

My main point is don't get too down on the people, because I think the blame for this situation lies with Best Buy.

Re: Cutting etiquette

JaredB — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 13:28:56 -0000

I know; I'm saying what they did goes against etiquette, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's "wrong".

The fact that they were aware that people were getting in line / saving places (and they definitely were, since you told them about it) proves that Best Buy condoned the practice of space saving / letting friends in.

So, yes, if Best Buy does not make it clear (by posting or verbally telling people) that this is not allowed (and they not only didn't do that, but also didn't take action after it was brought to their attention), then the people participating in the poor etiquette were not breaking any "rules/law", because Best Buy established that they allowed that. It's their store and they make the rules in such matters.

This is why I'm saying that if you don't like it (and I wouldn't either), that it's Best Buy's fault, not the people who are taking advantage of something that Best Buy is willing to allow. Of course, those people are jerks too, but only because BB is allowing them to be so.

Re: Cutting etiquette

JaredB — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 15:50:25 -0000

Ya, I get your point, but I'm just saying they didn't "steal" anything because you never had anything for them to steal. You believe that your position in the BB line was stolen, but in fact since BB lets people save places, etc, your place in line never meant anything anyway, so "stealing" that from you is not so significant. It originally sounded like you were saying that the cutters were actually "stealing" XBoxes from the people farther back in line, and I was just trying to make it clear that the people farther back in line (because of BB's policies) were NEVER guaranteed jack.

Re: eBay Listing Marathon

JaredB — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 17:22:58 -0000

Did you get in trouble for that?

Re: eBay Listing Marathon

JaredB — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 23:48:44 -0000

Ya, they probably have automated filters for "roms". You probably could have just said "games", or better yet, delete them before you sell it, just in case.

Re: Nintendo is our only future

JaredB — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 13:06:50 -0000

Ya, I've always thought that the games were the Nintendo's strength, and who cares about the hardware specs as long as the machine plays the games you want to play? They have a ton of their own licensed characters (all the Mario stuff, Zelda, etc.), and make really good games with them which helps with this aspect a lot, so much so that they can make whole other games (Smash Bros. Melee - which is probably worth the price of the Gamecube by itself) which are full of their own characters, so no one else can ever release it.

I'm sure that they constantly get lucrative offers to license these games to other platforms, but they don't do it (even though it may make them a lot of money in the short term), because it basically guarantees their console sales for the future; if you want to play Zelda or Mario games, you will have to buy a Nintendo system.

Hey, now that I think about it, they're kind of similar to Apple... no wonder you like them so much!

Re: Nintendo is our only future

JaredB — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 02:11:34 -0000

Eugene, you forgot to add punctuation after your opening exclamation: "Oh my sweet word". I'm no grammar expert either, but I think at least a comma may have been in order.

Oh yeah, and you may have also forgotten that posting a comment on a blog just to correct grammatical errors (and not participating in the discussion) only serves to illustrate to the world how insecure you must be.

Oops!

Same goes for WilliamX, but at least you didn't actually make grammatical errors in your critique. As you can see from the stats regarding this page (illustrated in a separate post), I don't think this blog is getting "left in the dust", despite your apparent opinion of what makes a blog "popular". BTW, who ever said that the author was trying to compete in any way with the "THOUSANDS" of other blogs on the net?

Re: Grammar

JaredB — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 02:21:23 -0000

My best advice would be to read a lot. That, and the combination of being an over-achiever and having a really good grammar teacher in middle school helps too.

Re: Nintendo is our only future

JaredB — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 10:43:09 -0000

Well, I do normally care about grammar, etc. - even on blogs - because I do think there are significant (and obvious) reasons to make sure that any of your writings that are publicly available reflect that you do know how to write well.

However, I don't get on people's cases about it; and what really bugs me is people that do - for no other reason than to put someone else down.

Re: Xbox 360 Availability

JaredB — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 17:10:09 -0000

That was cool.

Re: Xbox 360 Availability

JaredB — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:23:16 -0000

My favorite part was the BB guy trying to sell them that extended service plan; that was classic.

Re: Cutting etiquette

JaredB — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:24:54 -0000

Maybe, but then again, I would have been wrong to assume that no one in line in front of me was saving places for other people, since it was clearly allowed.

Re: Cutting etiquette

JaredB — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 23:40:38 -0000

Actually, I wasn't saying that people should rebel against the rules established by the man (in this case BB); but rather that it was the fact that there were no rules established by "the man" that was the problem in this case.

I think I made it clear above that I don't think what the place-savers did was "good" or "cool", I would just stop short of saying that it was "wrong".

Re: XBox Launch lines

JaredB — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19:18:02 -0000

Although that was Jason, not me, the problem lies somewhere in your comment handling code. If you include the link as the last part of the comment, it will include the closing paragraph tag in the link for some reason. If you put the link inside other (non-link) text, it seems to be OK.

You should get that checked out...

Re: JCPenney selling Xbox360

JaredB — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 13:22:53 -0000

Looking at that link, this looks like one of those shared catalog quirks, like the one going around a while ago with Target's site, which was linked into Amazon's database, so that it appeared that target was "selling" marijuana, sex, etc. I wonder if this is the same kind of thing. Doesn't explain the high price, but I didn't think JC Penney was in the business of selling video game consoles.

Re: Yahoo! Publisher Network

JaredB — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 21:17:15 -0000

Yes, the ads show up in the feeds as well. It's no big deal, in terms of being annoying. Do you get money whether or not anyone clicks on them?

The thing I don't get about these ad things is who clicks on ad links anymore?

Re: Modify Firefox 1.5 to work with all extensions

JaredB — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 21:19:21 -0000

Of course, this will prevent you from using any new plugins that only work on 1.5, but I guess for right now that makes sense.

Hey, whatever happened to Flock? I thought you were using that now.

Re: Movies

JaredB — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 17:41:56 -0000

I don't think it could be considered a comic adaptation, even though there were probably comics made about it after the fact.

As for King Kong in general, I'm not too interested in the original or the new one. This one is a rental (if anything) for me.

Narnia is coming up though; I'm definitely thinking of an opening day showing for that one.

Re: Street Fight in Flash

JaredB — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 17:49:56 -0000

Since the flash version is also technically violating the copyright, I would recommend going all the way and downloading a CPS1 emulator and playing the actual original SF2 arcade ROMs, which work perfectly and in full speed on any decent computer.

Re: Street Fight in Flash

JaredB — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 17:53:08 -0000

I think some of the CPS emulators may also support the Kaillera network, which will allow you to play multiplayer online.

I'm not too interested in playing SF2-type games on a computer, but if we're ever in an arcade with one, remind me to challenge you at it.

Re: Fly through the clouds in your browser - MUST SEE!!

JaredB — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 18:06:24 -0000

Maybe, I'm missing something, but I didn't think this was that great. Is there some part other than the flying through the clouds?

What was really great were the sarcastic comments on the digg post... "Needs more guns", and the twin towers ones were pretty funny.

Re: Movies

JaredB — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 05:14:53 -0000

I don't not want to see KK because of it being "sacred", nor because I think it will somehow spoil or shame the original implementation. I just plain don't think King Kong is that interesting, and I never have.

I'm sure this movie will be visually impressive, but the recent Godzilla one probably was too, and from what I hear it still sucked. At least that one had some hope of being cool, just based on the fact that Godzilla is so much cooler than KK, but I'm pretty sure it was a flop too.

Re: Movies

JaredB — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 12:27:48 -0000

I do enjoy some monster movies, just not King Kong.

I didn't know about the Transformers movie, but I would definitely be up for seeing that. You could maybe qualify that one as a comic based movie, since the comic and the TV show both came out at the same time (although the toys were first, but in the same year - 1984). I still have the original comics, up to issue #40 or something I think, plus other miscellaneous related issues.

Re: Movies

JaredB — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 03:38:16 -0000

Please tell me that link did not say that this is a "live action" movie.

Re: Movies

JaredB — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 01:10:15 -0000

Oh, man; that really lowers my expectations on this one. I'll still see it anyway, but all I can picture in my mind right now is Power Rangers in boxier costumes.

I'll keep my mind open, and hope to be surprised. I will say that I'd much rather have a well told story regardless of how it looks, but I just can't imagine how this could be good.

Re: Logitech Harmony 520

JaredB — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 21:11:34 -0000

Does your Treo have an IR port? If so, you can get software and do it all from your Treo too.

I wish I had done this before the remote on our DVD/VCR combo broke, because there's a few buttons it had that the other all-in-ones don't seem to reproduce out of the box. If the remote was still working, I could have copied all the signals into a new one or my PDA (or both, for backup), but I didn't think of that before it broke. Sometime I'll have to go into a store with a similar model and copy them to my PDA.

Re: Odeo

JaredB — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 00:49:35 -0000

I wouldn't see the advantage anyway; even without the time limit, this seems like it's more for people who aren't set up to do their own recordings.

We're already recording the MP3s anyway, so there's not much of a point to this for the b.

Re: Logitech Harmony 520

JaredB — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 00:57:36 -0000

Dan, I already explained the reason for doing this in my comment above. In case you didn't read it, or it wasn't clear, you can copy all the settings from any IR remote into the software on your PDA, which you can then use to create a backup file that you can use later if you ever lose or break the original remote.

As I explained, you can then get a universal remote, with the "learning" feature and make it be able to do everything that your original remote could originally, rather than the limited subset of codes that is usually present in "universal" remotes.

So, ya, if you think having a software backup of all your remotes (which you can later use to reprogram a new hardware remote) is a bad idea, then I guess it's a dumb suggestion.

Re: Almost an end

JaredB — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 03:18:46 -0000

You were putting whole rows together then trying to connect them?

Re: Logitech Harmony 520

JaredB — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 10:09:49 -0000

Ya, hopefully their DB is good. All the universal remotes I've ever used always cover 85-90% of the buttons on the original, but they usually don't have the codes for the non-standard buttons. Maybe they've gotten better since then though; it's been a while since I looked into it.

Re: Almost an end

JaredB — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 10:14:59 -0000

On the phone, I thought you were talking about putting together two rows at a time like they show on the package (if you say the rows are A&B - A1, A2, then B1, A3, B2, A4, etc.), which is harder to make work, I think.

It sounds like you were trying to do A1-Ax, then B1-Bx, then put A and B together, is that right?

What I meant was to do all of the first row (A1-Ax), then attach the next row to A one piece at a time, as you go. I found that doing it that way was the easiest; because you just snap the side piece on as close to the one below it as you can, and then use the tapping block to snap it together to the piece below it.

Re: Open Mint

JaredB — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 20:12:15 -0000

What was up with that Sears test post you did?

Re: Google Book Search

JaredB — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 20:15:19 -0000

I can't see this lasting for very long.

Re: Revolution will not have HD

JaredB — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 20:19:37 -0000

I agree; HD graphics do not make a bad game good, and they don't even add too much to games which are already good. I could see that it would be nice for some types of games, but not worth an extra hundred bucks. But, then again, I rarely ever play video games so I'm probably not the best one to comment.

Re: Almost an end

JaredB — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 20:23:30 -0000

I don't really remember exaclty how long it took; cutting was really the only thing that took any time, with measuring and going back and forth outside to do the cutting and coming back in.

Re: Almost an end

JaredB — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 22:03:19 -0000

Ya, that's the way to go.

It must have been a pain trying to put those long rows together, though.

Re: Google Book Search

JaredB — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 22:06:21 -0000

What I meant was because of that, I don't think that keeping the scanned books online for very long will last. If O'Reilly (or some other publisher) takes them to court on it they will probably lose, and then be forced to take them down, at least if the publisher requests it. And I can't imagine every publisher letting this go unchallenged, especially ones like O'Reilly who already have a paid online service offering for their books.

Re: Revolution will not have HD

JaredB — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 00:58:15 -0000

I think that a good strategy for buying game consoles might be to wait until the next gen ones come out. Then you can get the consoles for dirt cheap, and there is already a full suite of games available (now at a discount), which you can probably read reviews on and see which ones were actually good before you buy them.

Re: Feel like…

JaredB — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 22:35:14 -0000

Ya, the only thing you can really do is just be more healthy yourself, so that your immune system will work better; the germs will be there no matter what.

If it satisfies your need for revenge at all, you could think about how when your body is feeling bad it's actually because it's spending more or your energy annihilating the stuff that's actually making you sick, so on a microscopic level, you really are taking out your frustration on the thing that actually caused you to get sick. It still sucks, but at least you get the satisfaction of knowing that thousands of small organisms will be killed because they messed with you.

Re: Feel like…

JaredB — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 01:28:21 -0000

Ya, since we are men, it almost goes without saying; there aren't many times when we don't feel like makin' love.

Re: y.ah.oo!

JaredB — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 01:20:31 -0000

Yahoo has always been a cool company with good services, I think they just don't have as good of a design / UI team as Google does.

Do you ever read Jeremy Zawondy's blog? He's a Yahoo guy who's been blogging forever, and it seems (from his posts and others) that it's a pretty cool company. A lot of the Yahoo and Google guys are friends too, since they're pretty much neighbors.

Their main page design does suck, but their personalized portals ("MyYahoo") are pretty good, and let you build your own home page basically with a whole bunch of different content sources (including feeds), kind of like that google.com/ig thing, which is one example of Google "copying" from Yahoo.

As for the copying, when you reference Gmail, are you referring to the extra space they give now? Yahoo was doing web mail a long time before Google (much less Gmail) was even around, so I don't know if just upping the size is enough to say they're copying them on that point.

Re: Open Mint

JaredB — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 01:31:06 -0000

OK, I checked it out. It is pretty cool, just not cool enough for me to pay for.

I do like the window width thing; although it just goes to show that I don't load your actual page that much, since my screen dimensions are 1440x900.

Re: Wicks

JaredB — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 01:31:58 -0000

What are they going to do instead?

Re: OG Blog page?

JaredB — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 02:37:46 -0000

Well, since I read it via RSS it doesn't matter too much to me, but I would guess that most reader would prefer this kind of view. I don't think it's just because that's the standard for blogs either (although that's part of it); I think it just makes more sense than having to click through to read several stories (if there is more than one new one).

So, if you ask me, I think that this kind of view should be the main one, rather than the "alternate" option. I do like how you tried something different, and it definitely looks good, but I just think the classic style (multiple posts in descending order on the home page) works best for blogs.

Re: y.ah.oo!

JaredB — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 13:06:28 -0000

Using AJAX doesn't necessarily mean that they're copying GMail, since Ajax has been around longer than GMail.

Re: y.ah.oo!

JaredB — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 13:07:19 -0000

Just got an error when I posted that comment:

Warning: mkdir(): SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. The script whose uid is 579 is not allowed to access /home/211/domains/scatteredmedia.com/html/dancameron.org/wp-content/teb-super-archive-cache owned by uid 48 in /home/211/domains/scatteredmedia.com/html/dancameron.org/wp-content/plugins/teb-super-archive/teb-super-archive.php on line 193

Re: Scatt3rd Blog

JaredB — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:07:03 -0000

This seems like the kind of thing that theme switching was built for, so I'd suggest that, since it's a logical fit.

Re: y.ah.oo!

JaredB — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:26:03 -0000

I'll have to disagree with you on all 3 (mp3 players, search engines, and ajax). The MP3 player thing is probably closest to being true, but even then, there were plenty of players out before the iPod - it just took a while for it to catch on to the public and Apple capitalized on that timing.

You are showing your age with the Google comment; Google didn't start until '98, WAY after people had been using search engines for a long time.

Just because Google was the first to use AJAX in e-mail doesn't mean Yahoo is copying them when they do it, because it's a web development technique that Google definitely did not invent. That's like saying that any site that uses Javascript, CSS, etc, etc, is just copying the first site that did so.

Re: Scatt3rd Blog

JaredB — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 01:51:14 -0000

Ya, Dan definitely has a good strategy going. It kind of makes me want to start using Yahoo ads too, and then submit all my tech posts to digg.

Re: Yahoo! and Tivo

JaredB — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 18:13:02 -0000

Would it be pointing out the obvious to say that MythTV will do all of the things you mentioned?

Re: y.ah.oo!

JaredB — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 18:15:49 -0000

Yahoo had maps long before Google too, so you could say that Google was "copying" Yahoo in almost everything they do (web mail, search, maps, etc.) if you want to look at it that way.

Re: Scatt3rd Blog

JaredB — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 18:20:47 -0000

Oops, I forgot the smiley face.

Re: Yahoo! and Tivo

JaredB — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 23:32:38 -0000

The things I was referring to are things that you said above that Tivo didn't do: videocasts, HD, streaming from any computer, etc. If MythTV does them and Tivo does not, then I don't think that you can say that Tivo does it better - it doesn't do them at all.

I'm assuming you're talking about Tivo doing the stuff it does do (a subset of what Myth offers) better than Myth. I'm not sure, that may be true, but it's probably more an issue of UI preference, which you can change in MythTV. In fact, since it is open source, anyone can change the UI, so I'm sure there are people working to make one very similar to Tivo to nullify that advantage if it exists. If/when that happens, there will be no technical advantage whatsoever to Tivo, just a less complicated setup, which for people like us who like messing with that kind of thing isn't a problem.

Then you add in the numerous advantages that MythTV will always have over Tivo; primarily: NO DRM, no other silly rules about how / where you can watch the content, and an endless possibility for new features, which can duplicate anything Tivo comes up with, and I think MythTV has a clear advantage.

Re: Yahoo! and Tivo

JaredB — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 23:33:11 -0000

Oops, I didn't close that em tag...

Re: y.ah.oo!

JaredB — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 23:41:18 -0000

I know what you're saying, I'm just pointing out that a lot of this stuff is just the cycle of evolving technology, not one company "copying" another to become successful. My point was that these things were being done by Yahoo before Google did them, so to say that Yahoo is copying Google is kind of silly.

And about the use of AJAX in the implementation, just because Google did it before Yahoo doesn't mean that Yahoo is copying Google, since neither of them invented that idea. That's like saying that Google is a total rip off of Yahoo because they use HTML, javascript, css, etc. on their pages, since Yahoo "implemented" their site using those techniques long before Google.

PS - This may just be my own personal preference, but I think Yahoo maps are better than Google's, in terms of driving directions.

Re: Scatt3rd Blog

JaredB — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 23:42:55 -0000

Why, you know I was only joking with you right?

Re: Yahoo! and Tivo

JaredB — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 13:07:34 -0000

Which reminds me of another great thing about MythTV: the box doesn't need to be in your living room.

Re: Scatt3rd Blog

JaredB — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 13:09:12 -0000

I actually am thinking of signing up with Yahoo ads, before I release my next batch of plugins and other OS projects; I think I'll donate the profits to the EFF.

Re: Yahoo! and Tivo

JaredB — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 18:50:21 -0000

Nope, you could use regular cable for watching on TV (and control it via a web browser), or watch from any computer in your house.

Of course, for most people it would be more practical to have it near your TV, but the freedom (that Tivo will never have) and additional features make it more than worth it, for me.

Re: Caring

JaredB — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 20:08:06 -0000

I think I've made it pretty clear that I'm always against the death penalty, year round, and in *every* case; don't know if you were referring to me or not.

I went into some more detail on Nathan's blog about this specific case, because there are some interesting arguments for why the execution should have been at least delayed, even if you do agree with the death penalty.

Re: Caring

JaredB — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 02:12:55 -0000

Just because you're not conversing about it every single day of your life doesn't mean that you don't think it's an important issue. I do feel strongly about it, but I'm not going to post about it every single day on my blog.

Re: Caring

JaredB — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 13:03:46 -0000

I didn't think you were talking to me; I was just using myself as an example, to illustrate that there are probably a lot of people like me who have talked about this issue before (extensively) and will in the future, so I was just saying that I don't think it's necessarily accurate to say that they haven't talked about it and won't in the future. That may be true for some, but probably not most.

Also, even if someone hasn't spoken up about it before now, I don't really think that disqualifies them from talking about it now; but I got the impression that's what you were saying; perhaps I read it wrong.

Re: Kong

JaredB — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 13:24:53 -0000

OK, after seeing the commercial it does look pretty cool, so I would go see it. Let me know when you're going to go.

Unfortunately I can't do Friday night, since it is the staff/advisor Christmas party.

Re: 1and1 scams

JaredB — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 17:46:04 -0000

I think you hit the nail on the head in that last sentence; they do it because they know a lot of people won't bother to go through the trouble of refusing to pay them, canceling cards, etc.

Re: Digg.com’s problem and page ranking for Search

JaredB — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 17:53:14 -0000

It may be OK for Digg (although I'm not a big Digg fan) implementing ranking (by any anonymous user) would seriously screw up the search algorithms used by Google and Yahoo. If they ever do try this, it would have to be limited to registered users, and I'd still want the ability / option to have user-submitted rankings not used in evaluating the search results, because I think it's just too easy to collect bad data that way.

In case you think that most people wouldn't submit funky rankings or totally screw the system up (from some people's perspective), just think of the incredibly lame emails that are chain-forwarded by everyone and their grandma.

Re: Hack my open server

JaredB — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 15:22:35 -0000

Ya, I really would advise you to change your passwords now (assuming someone else hasn't already).

Re: Hack my open server

JaredB — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 15:45:26 -0000

At least this will be an interesting case to see whether Dan will go to jail over what someone else does with his server.

What makes this even worse is that you're not just giving access to post stuff on your web server, it's a full root access to a dedicated server, so they can pretty much do anything they want anonymously.

Re: Hack my open server

JaredB — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 15:57:21 -0000

For an idea of what "could" happen, check out the case of Sherman Austin, who went through a heck of a lot just because of something someone else authored and posted on his site.

http://www.raisethefist.com/news.cgi?artical=wi...

and

http://www.la.indymedia.org/news/2005/07/132174...

Of course, this is an extreme example, and the government was totally wrong to do it, but it goes to show that sometimes that doesn't matter, and you'll get screwed anyway.

Re: Hack my open server

JaredB — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 15:59:19 -0000

Can you still reimage if the root password has already been changed?

Re: Aging computers hobble Homeland Security

JaredB — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 01:47:58 -0000

Thankfully it isn't. However, it is sometimes difficult not being able to talk about certain things that I see, but suffice it to say that this story doesn't surprise me at all.

Re: Lost Spoiler alert.

JaredB — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 01:56:31 -0000

I don't have much of an opinion about this as it is my general policy that spoilers suck.

Lost is a very well written show, in my opinion (the best serial story on television by far, I'd say), and it would seriously dilute it if I already knew a bunch of stuff that was going to happen before it had been revealed in the context of the story; just like if I sat down to read any good fiction story, I'm not going to skip ahead and read the last few chapters then go back and read the beginning.

I'm not complaining about this post necessarily, since I don't think you revealed too much, just explaining why I won't go to the link, or any other sites that could contain spoilers for the show, since I think the show is much more enjoyable without them.

That being said, going strictly off of what you said, I would suspect that it's one of the people who was taken by "the others", since a lot of the characters on the show at least probably assumed those victims to be dead.

Re: Damn Hicks at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 02:02:14 -0000

Ya, that was a good one.

Re: Lost Spoiler alert.

JaredB — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 13:55:12 -0000

Ya, I am with you on that; and knowing that we will find out why he's in a wheel chair isn't really a spoiler. Knowing that someone "thought to be dead" is coming back might be, except that it could mean almost anything, so it's not too bad.

Re: southpark me

JaredB — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 17:33:19 -0000

Re: southpark me

JaredB — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:21:03 -0000

I think you can edit my comment and put it in as an image tag instead; I just didn't do it because WP doesn't allow image tags in user submitted comments.

Re: FeedFlare

JaredB — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 14:06:23 -0000

That's pretty cool; I might even consider using Feedburner for that.

Re: Remember, I…?

JaredB — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 23:06:24 -0000

Yes! Good comeback: the fake apology, followed with an explanation of why the "Don't you remember" person is actually in the wrong; that's perfect.

Re: Google Reader

JaredB — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 19:29:00 -0000

Has it changed recently? I thought you didn't like it too much at first.

Re: XBox Launch lines

JaredB — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 19:44:42 -0000

Trolls

Re: XBox Launch lines

JaredB — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 21:46:46 -0000

I think Nathan may have been referring to the first "You know who" comment on this thread, which is directly below the one that looks more like a troll comment but is actually spam, probably designed to post a comment like this on any xbox post it finds.

Re: Safari

JaredB — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 01:22:06 -0000

Maybe the firefox guys don't like Apple?

Re: Trip to Boise

JaredB — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 13:41:08 -0000

Depending on the time of day, I often take the PCH to the 10 to Lincoln; a lot of the time it's faster.

Re: Funny Apple Support Calls

JaredB — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 01:15:38 -0000

Yes, those were good. My favorites were the "Sawed off the back of computer" and "Support for non-Apple software".

Thankfully I didn't have to deal with customers when I did tech support at Kinko's, just internal people from the various branches, so I was free to let them know when they were being unreasonable, and I didn't have to sugar coat it.

Re: Funny Apple Support Calls

JaredB — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 01:17:22 -0000

I'm thinking that would be a killer podcast idea - someone recording their calls and posting the funny ones, editing out names and identifying info.

Re: Funny Apple Support Calls

JaredB — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 01:55:51 -0000

I don't know, I just feel like I should be doing it.

BTW, did you ever listen to any of the PLA stuff? Some of these are hilarious because they reroute the numbers of local retail establishments to their own lines and then pretend to be the places (movie theaters, auto parts stores, etc.) to the customers, who obviously aren't expecting the kind of conversations they get into.

Re: Big winner

JaredB — Mon, 26 Dec 2005 02:14:13 -0000

Congratulations, despite how I feel about games with wild cards... :)

Re: Big winner

JaredB — Mon, 26 Dec 2005 15:22:16 -0000

Yep, I did - sorry about that. I realized this morning - "I wonder if he said four fives?"

Re: Big winner

JaredB — Mon, 26 Dec 2005 15:24:27 -0000

I think I was thrown off after playing Yatzee last night.

Re: Google Reader API

JaredB — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 23:03:54 -0000

This is pretty cool of them to do, but I think it's probably too limiting in most cases for people designing their own aggregators. If they didn't do stuff like strip out everything they don't use and convert all feeds to Atom (???) then it might be more useful, although a big benefit to running your own aggregator system is controlling the back end - specifically the frequency of updates and limiting the size to only the feeds you're interested in.

And, yes, when I finally release mine it will be free, you money grubbing capitalist pig. :) Although I will accept donations and possibly advertising...

Re: Google Reader API

JaredB — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 23:06:13 -0000

PS - why is this post not in Rojo, after almost half a day?

Re: Wordpress 2.0

JaredB — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 23:10:37 -0000

This is breaking your feed now too; /feed doesn't work anymore. I can still use /wp-rss2.php, but I'm guessing that doesn't go through your Feedburner setup then.

Re: Big winner

JaredB — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 23:12:28 -0000

Ya, it was my first time playing Yahtzee, so sorry for the spelling mistake. I was sitting there analyzing the odds on everything and shooting my mouth off about what everyone else should do. I'm pretty sure I got last place both games.

Re: Safari

JaredB — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 23:15:15 -0000

This just crossed my mind - I'm suspecting that this is either caused by an underlying Mac problem, or at least made very difficult to fix because of the underlying OS.

My reasoning for this: #1 - why else would it take so long to fix and #2 - Firefox is open source, so if it was easy to fix someone would have done it by now.

Re: Wordpress 2.0

JaredB — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 23:25:30 -0000

/wp-commentsrss2.php will work for the comment feed too, in case anyone is wondering.

Man, I hate having to go to the actual sites to read blogs & comments. I think I'll work on an comment feed addon for blogger users too.

Re: Wordpress 2.0

JaredB — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 16:57:03 -0000

/comments/feed wasn't working; that's why I suggested /wp-commentsrss2.php above, which was working.

Re: Google Reader API

JaredB — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 17:06:17 -0000

Ya, I realized the feed issues after I posted this comment first. That's all it was for yours. I'm pretty sure that they rank the sites according to visits, so some seem to be updated more often than others, which is the annoying part. They were also having serious issues last week trying to get that new functionality in, but it looks like they've got it ironed out now, so now it's back to being OK for the moment, until I make my other thing.

When you say they don't allow feed parsers is that a policy decision that they just say or is it enforced technically? I could see them not wanting to install 3rd party apps, but do they actually disable the XML support in PHP (which they would need to do in order to really prevent you from putting up your own)? Or maybe they block outbound web requests from their servers so your PHP page running on their server can't get out to other sites to retrieve stuff.

Either way, I've built into the plan for my feed aggregator that will work around any such restrictions.

Re: Google Reader API

JaredB — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 17:08:11 -0000

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the ajaxy-comment posting thing is a little messed up too. When I posted that comment it just sat there on "Loading..." until I refreshed the page.

Re: Google Reader API

JaredB — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 17:09:07 -0000

Actually, that one did it too, but the "Loading..." text goes away (like it's supposed to) after the comment is posted, but the new one doesn't show up until I refresh.

Re: Audiobooks

JaredB — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 03:52:09 -0000

Yes, she has a Nano, that's what she's listening to them on.

And as for listening rather than reading, I really wish that every book would start having an audio counterpart, it would make things a lot easier. Especially now with MP3 players, it's just much more convenient. Sure, you may be able to read them just as fast, but like Dan said there are a lot of times when you can't read but you can listen.

Same reason why I think the iPod video thing isn't such a hot idea (at least nowhere near as big as audio), but that's another topic. I will admit that they were pretty smart to include the capability to hook up to a regular TV for playback as well, since I think that might save the concept from being nearly useless.

Re: 13 things that do not make sense

JaredB — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 13:55:59 -0000

What does this have to do with Digg, other than I'm guessing you found the link there? I never said that you'll never find a good link on digg, just that a lot of the rankings are done by people who are no more qualified than Google's page rank algorithm in determining which pages are "better".

I do like this particular article, though.

Re: 13 things that do not make sense

JaredB — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 17:28:16 -0000

If I want to find info on something, I'm going to search using Google, not digg. This is understandable since digg is not designed to be a search engine; it doesn't cover enough material, and the ranking isn't really designed for that. As an example of this, I went to the post I referenced, and copied/pasted the title of that article into their search box at the top of the page, and it came back with no results found.

The reason I mentioned PageRank is that I was making the point that having users submit ratings is much more biased and arbitrary than Google's process. The article I pointed to was a perfect example of real people still promoting "false" links to the front page in the digg model, despite your opinion that this is more difficult in the digg model.

In general, I would disagree with your assessment of PageRank. It does have safeguards to prevent false stats, and comment spam is pretty much ineffective. If you do a Google search for a lot of the stuff that comment spam promotes (like "poker online") you will find legit sites at the top of the results list, despite all the comment spam, etc.

Like I said, I like some of the articles that get posted on digg, I was just stating that there are a lot of crap articles that the legions of diggers still naively digg, and you have to wade through those to get to the good ones.

Re: The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years

JaredB — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:41:07 -0000

Nathan, somehow I find it hard to believe that you've never owned a walkman.

Unless this is just referring to the exact models listed, in which case the only ones I've owned are #27 (Commodore 64, my first computer!) and #36 (Zip drive)

Re: Happy New Years

JaredB — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:43:54 -0000

Looks good.

One thing that I did just notice is that the boxes for name, email and url still appear over the comment boxes, even when you're logged in (like I am now), whereas most themes will hide these for logged in users. It still works fine if I don't fill them in, but it does look kind of odd to see them there.

Re: Audiobooks

JaredB — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:46:33 -0000

Babe, I'll have to get you one of those FM transmitter things that I use.

This reminds me of something I was going to post a while ago but forgot. Trackback coming soon...

Re: The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years

JaredB — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 00:26:17 -0000

That's what I figured. I wonder how they ranked some of these things, because a lot of them don't make sense to me.

Re: Theme Competition

JaredB — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 10:14:43 -0000

What do you mean by presetting everything in the functions.php? I thought that page was part of the core package and not the theme (maybe it's different in 2.0, but it doesn't seem like it should be). If these are custom functions that not everyone would have, then you could include them in your own functions file (as opposed to the existing functions.php) and include that file in your theme dir, and reference it there. I think that would be the kosher way to do it.

Re: Macs can see better in the dark

JaredB — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 10:20:25 -0000

The difference is due to the different gamma correction values on the two platforms (approx. 1.8 for Mac vs. ~2.5 for PC), so you see darker colors better on the mac and lighter colors better on the PC. Most designers choose to average between the two, slightly favoring the PC since it's so much more common.

Re: Theme Competition

JaredB — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 14:42:03 -0000

Got it; I figured the functions thing was a 2.0 change.

Yes, I agree that browsers really need to get on board with transparent PNGs; they've been around forever, and there's really no excuse for not supporting them.

Re: DVD prices

JaredB — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 14:11:31 -0000

First, on the issue of the < symbol, I think you actually have to escape it to get it to show up properly. This is because WP will try to strip out all but a few selected HTML tags from any comments submitted, and I'm guessing that's why your < symbol (and everything after it, since there was no > closing it) got removed.

As for the actual topic, I have heard the selling DVDs in the theater concept before from a few different people, and I'm not sure how it would work out.

On the one had, I think you would get a heck of a lot of impulse buyers to pick up the DVD immediately after seeing the movie, because seeing a good movie in the theater will usually leave a pretty good impression in your mind at least long enough to prompt you to buy it if it were available then and there.

On the other hand, there are a lot of movies that do not require the theater experience to fully enjoy, so you have to think about how many people would still spend the $10 to go to the theater and watch the movie when they could get the DVD for $20 at the same time (and it would be cheaper if more than 2 people will be watching the DVD), or even better "borrow" the DVD from their "friends" who bought it (assuming they only sell them at the theaters initially).

As much as I hate to say it, this would probably only happen once they get the DRM tech in place to sell you a DVD that only you can watch (and not copy), and they may use something like this model to entice people into buying players that would support such restrictive DRM measures.

Re: My Love:

JaredB — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 16:08:51 -0000

Happy Anniversary!

Re: Palm Treo 700W - “w” stands for worse

JaredB — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 00:29:48 -0000

I think we've covered this one before. Mossberg's review was (as to be expected) slanted from the beginning. He probably didn't bother exploring the features in the OS that make it just as easy for one-handed use as the Palm.

I really think the first 3 comments in the engadget post that you linked to say it well enough that I don't need to make this a long reply.

Re: Palm Treo 700W - “w” stands for worse

JaredB — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 12:26:51 -0000

Somehow I have a feeling you're not going to like it, much like Mossberg...

Whether a UI is "easy" is in the eye of the beholder. For a lot of people the Palm OS isn't "easy", and for a lot of people (especially for those who already use it on their desktops) the Windows one is. So all you can really say is that you personally prefer one or the other.

In addition, (as I've mentioned before) the windows mobile devices can be configured to use a UI that is basically a copy of the Palm's, if that's "easier" for them. This is an extremely easy thing to do, and before you say it's to hard for the "average" user to figure out, remember that so is most of the stuff they would want to do on either device, so either someone will have to set it up for them, or they will figure it out themselves.

Re: Right or Left

JaredB — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 15:50:13 -0000

I think that if the "asides" are supposed to be secondary to the main posts, then the main posts should be on the left, because they eye flows to them more easily there.

I'm not a big fan of the whole asides concept anyway, but if they really are asides, I'd put them on the right.

Of course, you should do whatever you think looks better, or whatever you believe will be better for most of your users, depending on what matters more to you.

Re: Right or Left

JaredB — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 17:01:23 -0000

That explaination is the main reason I'm not a fan of the asides concept.

Re: Right or Left

JaredB — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 17:06:50 -0000

If you really want to visually separate your "less important" posts from the others, it seems like the best way to do it would be incline (like you mentioned) just because that would be a lot easier for most people to look at, since it is familiar.

If you really like the visual presentation of the "asides on the side" look, then by all means, go for it. It just sounds like it's a lot of trouble to make it work, and even when it does some people still miss the posts. I guess it's just a trade off between artistic style and usability.

Re: Re-Introducing the Real Windows Vista

JaredB — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 00:06:41 -0000

For some reason I'm only seeing the link in your feed, not on this page.

Anyway, this was pretty entertaining, but as we've discussed before, some of the new features in Vista that some are claiming were "copied" from recent Apple releases (especially Tiger) I personally saw demoed at the Microsoft developer's conference (PDC) in October 2003, so unless they had a time machine they didn't copy them from Tiger or even Panther.

Sure, it's taken longer for MS to release the OS for various reasons (some good ones and some not good ones), but you can't just go by release dates when you're determining who did something first in the world of software dev.

Re: The Biggest Loser Ventura Edition

JaredB — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 00:08:53 -0000

It's a good thing (for you guys) that we're going by percentage of body weight lost, because otherwise I would probably have an unfair advantage. I'm still going to win, of course, but at least this way it will be more fair. :)

Re: Re-Introducing the Real Windows Vista

JaredB — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 17:33:25 -0000

Some of the flashy UI stuff that Vista contains certainly could have been released in XP, but it would have been pretty slow without all the underlying architectural changes that support that functionality. There is actually quite a bit of interesting (non-GUI) stuff in Vista (which the author of the post even briefly comments on in the comments).

Since the original link *was* about Vista supposedly copying Tiger, so (even though it was a joke) it was about who thought of it first. I was just clarifying since I know there will be some people out there who actually believe that they copied that stuff from Apple.

While I agree that they could have released Vista sooner, there are some good reasons they didn't. One of the main ones was totally revamping their focus on security (at the developer level), which they've actually gotten quite good at now. I've talked to several MS devs who were forced to put their projects on hold for a year or more to go back and reanalyze their stuff for security. There are other reasons for the delay as well (both business and technical); some I agree with and some I don't.

In fact, with all the good stuff (underlying structural changes, not UI fluff) that they've cut from Vista at this point, I'd almost rather see them delay even longer and do it right rather than release the current version of Vista as it has now become, for two reasons.

One is that there is not enough of a substantial technology improvement from XP to justify the move for some people. There will always be the ones that want to go out and get the latest stuff and those that will want the cool looking new UI. Businesses will not be motivated by this though.

The other is that the reality of their market dominance will allow them to wait another year before launching a new OS and probably not lose any significant customers. Most people are satisfied with XP, and would probably be happier with a better (in terms of functionality and stability) upgrade choice, even if they had to wait longer for it.

Re: The Biggest Loser Ventura Edition

JaredB — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 02:38:05 -0000

Yeah, just be sure it's diet DP and you're all good.

Re: M$ stagnation

JaredB — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 03:02:20 -0000

Looks like it lost your link again (to the previous post, I'm assuming).

Well, I guess since this is a follow up to my previous comment there, I would obviously disagree with you.

I didn't see the recent CES video, so I'm not entirely sure which features you're talking about, so maybe you can provide more details there.

If you're saying that you disagree in regards to the delay being partially due to the increased focus on the underlying security design of their software (all of it, not just windows) then I can tell you with confidence that I've talked to several (trustworthy) people personally, face to face who are involved in developing it (not marketing or PR types) and they confirmed that this was a major factor in the delayed release of Vista. (not the only factor, but a large one)

I for one applaud them for there recent progress on the security front. It was a big (meaning expensive) decision for them to delay several of their major projects when they decided to make this company-wide priority shift happen.

Should security have *always* been a primary focus? Of course, but that's no reason to bag on them for doing it now that they are. (Don't forget that pre-OSX the Mac OS wasn't a whole lot better in this regard, just less exploited). Of course, MS also pretty much had to make this shift given the abundance of spyware, etc. nowadays, but either way it is getting done.

When I say that most people are satisfied with XP, I meant that most people who are using XP now will probably stay with it until Vista ships, rather than "jumping ship" to the Mac, for several reasons:

#1 - Most people (especially those who aren't making music or movies, which is the vast majority) the Apple doesn't offer a whole lot of compelling things that they can't do (easily) on Windows, yet it does lack support for all their quirky little apps (games, small apps, etc) that they use every day on their PCs.

#2 - (Probably more importantly) The simple reason that "the switch" would require not only a new investment in software but also hardware. Here's where OSX for *any* x86 (rather than sticking with proprietary Apple hardware) could make a huge play, but Jobs will not let that happen. Since it won't, I will predict that Apple will continue to NOT take a significant market share away from Microsoft.

Instead (or maybe even because of this) most will stay with Windows and it will eventually offer them everything that other commercial operating systems may currently hold the advantage (or perceived advantage at least) in.

There will also probably always be cute UI tricks and cool, easy to use apps that OSX will offer that will probably be ahead of the curve in relation to Windows, but they've had those advantages for years and it hasn't helped them swing to many users over to their side yet, so I don't imagine it changing anytime soon.

Re: M$ stagnation

JaredB — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 12:59:19 -0000

Service packs (SP3,4, etc.) are not the place to release new functionality of this nature (UI enhancements, etc.). SP2 was an excellent release that fixed (or "serviced") problems with the existing release (Windows XP), which is what service packs should do.

Raw sockets isn't the big problem that dorks like Steve Gibson make it out to be. I will give you that ActiveX is a problem, but it has more to do with the fact that it's completely unnecessary and poorly secured.

#1 - Exactly, which is why they will either keep their current version of Windows or eventually upgrade to a newer version of Windows, and not consider switching to the mac.

#2 - Maybe you've heard rumors that I haven't, but everything I've heard is that it will be a cold day in hell before Steve Jobs sells (or otherwise releases) OSX to run on non-Apple hardware.

If this policy changes, then I do think they have a chance at gaining some quick momentum and beating MS to the punch, by delivering it before Vista, and *possibly* then compelling people to switch, but as long as users have to buy brand new hardware to go along with their new OS, most of them won't make the switch. That's all I was saying.

Re: Apple - iLife

JaredB — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 18:47:17 -0000

We could still do it

Re: M$ stagnation

JaredB — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 18:54:46 -0000

No, like I said before, they shouldn't release new features like UI enhancements or brand new (non-security-related) functionality in service packs or add-ons for numerous reasons:

#1 - No one actually "needs" these new features
#2 - It is expensive to rollout new products
#3 - Very few people will stop using Windows even if Microsoft makes them wait a little longer for the next OS
#4 - It's better for them to wait until things are tested and stable rather than try to rush something non-critical out the door just for the heck of it. It's not like they're desperate for money.

Re: raw sockets - I don't know who's been filling your head with evil stories about raw sockets, but I'd be interested to hear why you think they're so bad (or even bad at all).

Re: M$ stagnation

JaredB — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 20:00:30 -0000

I said no one "needs" them, not no one "wants" them. Also, there's nothing wrong with third parties writing apps to provide functionality that the OS doesn't; in fact I see that as a good thing, because the control is then decentralized from the big corporation. The examples like Google Desktop just serve to illustrate that the users "need" MS to do it even less, because someone else already is. They still will, but I maintain that NO ONE "needs" these extra features; they just might want them.

It is expensive to roll out new products for large companies like Apple & Microsoft. I didn't say it wasn't profitable, but I believe they will maximize their profitability doing it this way.

It is not worth it for them to wait and release a better (more complete) product for the reasons I mentioned above: primarily that the numbers of people who would leave them because of the delay is insignificant, and that the better the final product is the better it will be for their rap.

They are fixing their image in regards to security, which is a critical thing for them to do to survive in the long run, even if it means missing out on short term sales opportunities.

Steve Gibson's ridiculous hype over raw sockets in XP is a running joke among people who know anything about computer / network security. He embarrassed himself when he went off ranting about a NON-problem, and people still joke about it to this day.

I sometimes even have a hard time listening to SN and TWIT when he is on because of this, but he does say *some* good things, you just have to take it with a grain of salt and uncover the real truth from people who actually know it.

Almost every OS offers raw sockets, including every *NIX variant (yes, even THAT one). Raw sockets being in XP is a feature not a bug.

Any machine that can be compromised can do some bad things with this capability, but this is totally regardless of the OS. Any operating system that doesn't natively support raw sockets can even be made to use them via additional software.

The issue with XP was that (particularly Home Edition) had a poor default security configuration that resulted in uninformed users inadvertently running all sorts of things they shouldn't have. Note that this has NOTHING to do with raw sockets, but rather the poor *default* security model in XP.

Steve's "sky-is-falling" predictions of the internet coming crumbling down because of script kiddies wielding the terrible power that Microsoft bestowed on them in giving them the dreaded raw sockets capability have not happened, years after he first posted his concerns about them on his site.

Anyone with the malicious intent to use raw sockets to launch better DOS attacks and such can already easily do so with any operating system they choose.

http://lists.jammed.com/ISN/2001/06/0045.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/07/13/ms_secu...
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=...

Re: M$ stagnation

JaredB — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 20:03:41 -0000

Correction: third paragraph should start with "It is worth it..."

Re: MacBook Pro problems already

JaredB — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 21:05:28 -0000

Please tell me this isn't the thing that you already bought...

Re: M$ stagnation

JaredB — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 21:12:46 -0000

Just substitute "raw socket" with "not-needlessly-crippled-for-no-reason socket" and you'll have the idea. The basic summary is that raw sockets allows the modification of packet headers, which people like Steve Gibson believe will lead to rampant evil being unleashed and ruining the internet.

Re: Slashdot | Microsoft vs. Computer Security

JaredB — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 02:24:43 -0000

Surprisingly, the slashdot users come through. The first several comments there (especially #3) give a well spoken rebuttal to this post.

Re: MacBook Pro problems already

JaredB — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 02:26:10 -0000

ouch. Lesson: don't buy a computer within hours of hearing about it.

Re: M$ stagnation

JaredB — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 02:50:12 -0000

I read Steve's posts on this subject back when he first posted them. At first they concerned me, but then I took the time to learn more about the subject and realized that his fears were completely misguided and uninformed.

Furthermore, he made predictions at the time that this would make the internet virtually unusable over the next few years. Having now lived through those years (2001 till now), we can confidently say that he was wrong.

As I've outlined pretty clearly (I hope) above (along with many others have over the last several years), raw sockets support in XP has posed ABSOLUTELY NO additional risks to the internet.

If you read my comment carefully above, you will see that any peripherally related issues that Gibson may attribute to XP having raw sockets are NOT due to the raw sockets issue at all. As I stated, they are due to the poor default security model in XP (doesn't sound like drinking the koolaid to me).

If Steve would have taken the time to do the proper research (rather than headline grabbing via fear mongering), he would have realized that because of this poor default security model, it makes absolutely NO difference whether XP supports raw sockets or not, since if the user is running as an administrator (which is the REAL problem - NOT raw sockets), then any malware can install a driver such as winpcap to provide raw sockets functionality if Windows did not support it, and then proceed to use raw sockets functionality, as it could in ANY OS (including Unix, Mac, etc.)

Hopefully that was clear enough. Bottom line: the raw sockets scare is bogus.

I'm by no means an unquestioning defender of Microsoft; I've criticized them on multiple occasions (including this thread). But it does kind of bug me whenever there are people who just criticize them for the heck of it. For years, people (justifiably) criticized their poor security practices. Now that they are taking all the right steps to remedy that practice, people are criticizing them for that, and it's just annoying.

Re: M$ stagnation

JaredB — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 14:04:58 -0000

So are you acknowledging that the raw sockets thing is a joke? Fully implementing the TCP/IP protocol is not a mistake; if anything, going out of your way to limit it by default is. If you think that any company that provides raw sockets capability in their OS has made a mistake, then you are criticizing Apple, since they do as well.

I would certainly agree with the statement that MS has screwed up on many things; but I think it's also important to acknowledge that they've made a lot of progress in getting better over the last several years.

At this point, I don't see anything (in terms of business practices or security design) that MS is doing that's any worse than Apple.

Neither is ever going to get the top marks on security (and many other considerations) that an open source OS can, and I'll probably never think as highly of either of them because of that, but I would say that XP(SP2) is a pretty decent commercial operating system, provided it is set up the right way. Same goes for OSX.

Re: Next phone

JaredB — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 14:08:12 -0000

T-Mobile has unlimited data for $20 per month too, but I think (maybe) what Jason was saying was a $20-30 per month total cost per month, because right now the data charges are on top of your regular phone plan cost.

Re: Next phone

JaredB — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 17:26:22 -0000

Re: the smart phone comment - no matter what model of phone you have, you still have to pay extra for data (GPRS) service on it, as far as I know. Do you have any links that say otherwise?

Re: Next phone

JaredB — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 23:34:41 -0000

Are you talking to me or Jason?

I don't know how Cingular/ATT does it, but on T-Mobile, your GPRS data does not go against your phone minutes.

I pay $20 for unlimited data and about $30 for my phone plan, so $70 seems a bit pricey to me.

Re: Next phone

JaredB — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 23:35:18 -0000

OK, I think I just realized that you were talking to Dave. Nevermind...

Re: Fixed Comment forms

JaredB — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 02:22:05 -0000

This is getting funny.

Re: Have a happy Friday the 13th

JaredB — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 19:25:53 -0000

I really don't want to read this right now, considering I'm getting snipped tomorrow.

Re: This site…

JaredB — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 19:29:51 -0000

I wonder if they get a lot of "lamer" jokes...

But seriously, there are definitely a lot of bad sites out there like this, but I wouldn't plan on making a living doing them, because it's pretty likely that whoever this company is, they aren't willing to spend much money on web design. Of course, there will always be some though, so you never know.

Re: M$ stagnation

JaredB — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 20:10:19 -0000

OK, so if you do still think that enabling raw sockets in an operating system is a bad idea, please explain why. I'd be interested to hear it.

Re: Don’t forget…

JaredB — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 21:07:21 -0000

Yep, it was good. This show is great at showing you new stuff without revealing too much, and keeping you guessing at whether things are sc-fi, tech, magic, etc. Just have to stay away from "spoiler Dan"'s site if it's a Lost related post...

Re: M$ stagnation

JaredB — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 23:34:50 -0000

So basically you will always hate Microsoft for what they did in the past, no matter what they do going forward?

Like I mentioned above, I can hardly be accused of "drinking the MS tang", since I've always outlined the negative about MS as well as the positive.

I would propose that the opinion that nothing good can ever come from them just because of certain poor choices in the past is the much more close-minded viewpoint.

Re: WMF Back hole

JaredB — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:45:11 -0000

It certainly wasn't a mistake, but I highly doubt it was an intentional "back door" (which implies that it was put there for the purpose of later exploiting it to get into the user's system).

The code itself was intentional, and was designed to handle certain conditions that could arise when printing WMFs.

It was a huge flaw in security design, to be sure, but to say that it was intended to be used as a back door by MS is only speculation, unless someone comes forward and confirms such motives.

Re: Next phone

JaredB — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 22:35:05 -0000

The downside to unlocked phones would be that then you won't get support if something isn't working, or if it breaks you can't take it back anywhere.

Re: Next phone

JaredB — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 00:12:46 -0000

Yes, but there are situations which are not completely solvable by the user, no matter what they know.

A lot of data connection plans rely on things being correctly configured at both ends, and if there's something that the provider will need to change on their end in order for things to work then you are screwed.

Also, if your phone is defective (or if the unlocker didn't follow the process correctly) or whatever else may cause it to crash prematurely, it will not be under warranty.

Re: Next phone

JaredB — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 01:46:47 -0000

OK, when you were saying "unlocked" I was thinking you were talking about buying a used phone which was previously locked and had been *unlocked* via one of the hacks that are out there, etc., as opposed to a fresh phone from the manufacturer that had never been locked.

The providers have to configure your account on their networks for your data service to work correctly. They don't have to have (or do anything to) your phone physically, but they will know what phone should be associated with your account, and if it's their policy to only allow their phones on the system, then you will be out of luck if you ask them to change the settings for your account if they think you are using a phone that cannot make use of those features. This probably wouldn't come up much, but it's certainly possible.

Re: Next phone

JaredB — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 20:33:04 -0000

Ya, you're probably right.

Re: Next phone

JaredB — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 00:18:52 -0000

Don't press your luck.

Re: AJAX FeedReader - Feedlounge will be having it’s beta release today

JaredB — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 15:37:13 -0000

Is it a public beta? If not, can you hook me up?

Re: AJAX FeedReader - Feedlounge will be having it’s beta release today

JaredB — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 20:17:55 -0000

Ya, I won't do it if it costs money. There are enough free feed reading options out there that I don't think many people would want to pay for one, unless it's really great, or has some significant advantages.

Re: Google Video

JaredB — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 23:42:32 -0000

Well, the kids definitely liked the video.

Re: Sca4ered

JaredB — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 13:30:55 -0000

Notice what?

Re: Godbit Project

JaredB — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 13:38:49 -0000

That' a cool idea.

Re: Godbit Project

JaredB — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 13:40:18 -0000

Oops, forgot the s.

Your comment box is locked after you post a comment. I think you were talking about this before, but I thought it was only on Safari...

Re: Might be time to get a Mac…

JaredB — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 14:00:17 -0000

I've got to agree, that's a great deal. The thing I don't get though is why would anyone (especially Apple) sell a box with less than 512MB RAM these days? It seems like they would just be setting people up to be disappointed.

Re: Sca4ered

JaredB — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 17:02:55 -0000

Ah, I see now. Much better than before.

Re: Godbit Project

JaredB — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 17:08:29 -0000

Oh, OK. I didn't read that one all the way.

The no spam thing is a pretty dumb idea though, if you ask me.

Spammers do not manually go to sites and submit spam comments - that would completely miss the whole point of spamming - it would take too much time.

In addition, if they really wanted to do that for some reason, they could always just disable javascript and post away to their heart's content.

Re: Godbit Project

JaredB — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 17:08:44 -0000

Like this....

Re: Godbit Project

JaredB — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 17:10:32 -0000

Since I think I've proven my point by submitting these comments with Javascript disabled (which any potential spammer could do), I would suggest commenting out those lines in the plugin.

Re: iTunes 6.02: Now with VIDEO sharing

JaredB — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 22:04:42 -0000

Don't forget the enhanced DRM too, to prevent you from playing your music & video (which you paid for) on non-Apple approved software & devices. iTunes is the greatest!!!

Re: Godbit Project

JaredB — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 22:10:01 -0000

WordPress already has code to detect duplicate comments, and it will alert you if you try to post the exact same comment twice in a row. It says something like "looks like you've already posted that".

At least that reason is more "reasonable" than the spam one though (although I wouldn't call accidental duplicate comments spam).

I think the best way to handle it would be to disable the submit button after it's clicked the first time, then (once the comment comes through), clear out the text box and re-enable the submit button.

Re: Godbit Project

JaredB — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 01:30:14 -0000

No, I read it, I thought you were saying maybe that's what it does now as opposed to maybe it should do ...

No big deal, I just don't know why it would be disabled at all in the first place.

Re: iTunes 6.02: Now with VIDEO sharing

JaredB — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 01:50:27 -0000

I never said that iTunes was the only place that puts DRM on music.

What they do in addition to what the others do however, is what I was referring to. Their DRM is designed to try to force you into playing the stuff you buy from them on the hardware that you buy from them.

I think most people who know what they're doing have figured out the burn to CD workaround, but it's a pointless extra step that they introduce. I know that this part is common to all online music stores, but I criticize all DRM inclusively.

Furthermore, something really sleazy that they do is reserve the right at any time to change what you can do with songs you've bought in the past. This means that they are within their rights to go through your files and completely disable you from burning them onto CDs at all, if they choose to in the future.

Re: Mental

JaredB — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 17:10:28 -0000

I agree. You are qualified for a lot of stuff, so just keep looking around and you will probably eventually find something. Until then, just try to make the best of what you've got now and not let things get to you too much. Find ways to enjoy the things you like and either avoid (or at least find the quickest way to deal with) the things you don't.

I think the things that cause stress are common in life, and we will never escape them completely; we will only find new ones. So, my advice is to work on changing how you deal with these things / situations, so that you don't let them make you get stressed so much.

Re: Elephant’s Splinter

JaredB — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 01:43:22 -0000

Dang, I hate stuff like that.

Your story reminds me of the last time I ate clams. It was when we lived in Hawaii, and apparently I got some bad ones because that day & night my whole body was itching like crazy. I tried everything, scratching like crazy until I thought I would do some permanent damage. I tired showering hot and cold and nothing would stop it. Eventually I just had to force myself to sit outside and meditate to calm myself down until it was over (and it lasted a long time), because I really thought I was going to lose it (you can ask Martha, I was freaking out).

I hate stuff like that when it seems like there's nothing you can do to make it stop.

Re: SoftCE.net

JaredB — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:00:51 -0000

I'm not sure why, but I tried to submit a comment on this like 3 times and kept getting moderated. I just went and logged in, so hopefully this one will get through....

If it's $15 per user, it's probably too much, but I'm guessing you're talking per company / organization. If that's the case, then I think it's too low. Most organizations that could make use of this product would pay several times that per month if it met their needs. I would recommend a tiered pricing structure based on the size of the organization (number of users, etc.) but probably never lower than $30-40 per month even for small ones. If you go too low, they might not respect you as a serious service provider.

Re: HD-DVD not HD for me

JaredB — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:05:32 -0000

Or maybe it's time to not cave in to this crap by buying a whole new TV just so they can restrict you.

Don't forget the lessons learned from DIVX (not DivX) in the late 90's... if enough people "just say no" and don't support this kind of thing (by refusing to buy the hardware) it will eventually flop.

Re: Fixed Comment forms

JaredB — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 19:42:13 -0000

Why would someone want an e-mail subscription when they could just use RSS?

Speaking of RSS, you should up the limit on the number of comments in your feed, because right now it's at 10, and you often get a lot more comments than that per day.

Re: Fixed Comment forms

JaredB — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 21:32:06 -0000

No, it just uses the same number as the number of posts per feed, which you can just set in the admin pages interface. You would only have to do something custom if you wanted the count to be different (between comments vs. regular post feeds).

Re: Akismet

JaredB — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 00:59:53 -0000

Nope.

First of all, it's partially a matter of opinion, but I would prefer SK2 for many reasons I've already previously outlined.

You don't need to "roll up your sleeves" at all to get SK2 to work, that's just not true. Out of the box it works perfectly fine.

In addition, if you *do* want to tweak any of the many available parts of the config, you can do so, which I don't think you can with Akismet (could be wrong on this, since I've never used it).

As for my comment about fixing your moderated comment, I was referring to the fact that I could simply alter the setting that caused the initial false positive, so that it doesn't happen again. Can you do that with Akismet?

What's more, if you discover something about the way it works that you can't change via whatever configuration options may be available, can you open up the source code and modify it however you like? Of course, you cannot. With SK2, you can.

Finally, if someone is using my blog to try to comment, that means my server is up, and since there are no external dependencies on outside services, people can submit comments as long as my blog is operational. With Akismet, however, your server may be in perfect running order, but if the Akismet servers are down, what happens to your users who want to comment? Either your spam prevention is completely missing (best case), or users can't comment at all on your blog (worst case).

Wonder how long it will be before there are DDOSes being launched against the Akismet servers on a regular basis?

Re: Akismet

JaredB — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 01:44:28 -0000

Every one of the points I made above continues to hold up. I won't reiterate them all here, just comment on the ones you just mentioned...

I didn't have to do any "training" of SK2. The only false positive I've ever seen was that one that caught yours that one time. Since yours did the same, I'd say we're even there, as far as "training" goes.

Also, I forgot to mention this above, but the fact that Akismet processes a lot more spam than my local copy of SK2 (and therefore theoretically has more of an opportunity to "learn") is also a bogus point, because SK2 also makes use of multiple public blacklists, so I also get the benefit of that kind of wider learning.

From what I've read, your comment does not go through when their servers are down. As I said before, the only things it can do are either fail to process any comments at all, or allow everything including spam. I guess the best thing it could do is hold it in some kind of queue locally and keep trying to check later, but I seriously doubt that it does that. If so, kudos to them, but even so, it's a deficiency.

The API certainly does *not* mean that you can do anything you want with it. In fact the API at the link you posted does nothing more than allow you to post a comment to Akismet and have it tell you whether it's spam or not, just like what's in WP now. (OK, it does a couple other things, like key checking, but this is NOT an API that allows you to modify anything about how it works, which was exactly my point.)

Re: Sidebars

JaredB — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 21:56:24 -0000

Yeah, either that or if you're into making usability a priority.

Re: Google Pages

JaredB — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 21:58:30 -0000

Interesting design: not one, but TWO sidebars... :)

Re: Sidebars

JaredB — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 23:28:27 -0000

Dan, maybe you should read some books / articles on usability.

Re: Sidebars

JaredB — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 00:33:29 -0000

Actually usability is not a personal preference, it's doing what makes sense to most users, completely independent of what you (the designer) personally thinks.

I'm not trying to say that it should be your only goal, or even that it should be more important than any other goal, such as artistic creativity, which (IMHO) you tend to favor with you design. Having the collapsing sections with the Activity and whatever the other one is (on just the main page and not the post pages) is a cool idea, and it looks neat. But my point is made by Nathan's earlier comment in this very post, who expressed some confusion about these things (which you called dropdowns) being there, or what they were for, initially. If a smart guy like Nathan who does this kind of thing for a living finds it a little odd, then I guarantee it's flying over the heads of most "average" users.

The fact is that most blogs have sidebars, and most users expect to see certain common things in them. When they are not there, it can be a bit confusing. I'm not saying that yours is "bad" or anything, I was just pointing out that sidebars are where users expect to see some things in a blog.

A similar analogy would be if you decided to have a more aesthetically appealing comment form. That Submit button is just hanging off to the bottom right down there by itself. It would probably look better if you kept it right-aligned but moved it up over the top of the big comment box, to keep things more balanced. (Even if you disagree on that, just go with me for a sec., for the sake of the example) The point is that even if you thought that looked better you still would (or should) not do it, because people expect to have submit buttons under the form, not over it.

Basically. when users are confused, that is a usability issue. To avoid this, you either have to have a brain-dead simple UI (like Google search), or at least be totally conformist and make your site look and work as much like every other similar site out there.

I'm not really suggesting you should do this, but that is the extreme, and I think that you should aim to land somewhere in the middle of that and having the coolest looking, most innovative site ever but one that no one knows intuitively how to use. Where along that path you decide to fall is where personal preference comes in, and since it's your blog it's totally your prerogative. I would just suggest that it's best to err on the side of usability, or at least try to find good looking designs that still maximize it.

Of course, you know I'm not jealous or even really trying to give you a hard time about it. Just trying to join in on the topic of conversation (sidebars) and why I think they're usually a good thing for blogs, at least in terms of usability.

Re: “Former View” of Blogs

JaredB — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 01:16:37 -0000

Dan, don't take it too seriously. I was mostly just responding to your remark about sidebars being for people stuck in the 90's with an equally smart-assed comment of my own. Of course, there was some degree of truth behind it, in that I do think sidebars on blogs are (for the most part) a usability enhancement, and that you do have some usability issues as NS and I described above.

Feel free to disagree; I'm certainly not claiming to be some kind of usability guru, or anything. The main point of my last comment/rant on usability was just to debunk your statement in the comment immediately preceding it in which you said that usability was a matter (to some degree) of your own personal preference / opinion. I was just correcting that, since usability is (by definition) all about the user's perceptions, and nothing to do with your own as the designer.

Re: Akismet

JaredB — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 01:25:19 -0000

No, that's not a contradiction. I'm pretty sure that recent versions come installed with references to RBLs, which it will check against without you manually importing them. I could be wrong on that, but even if I am, I don't consider adding one-time references to RBL's "training".

When I was referring to comments being held, I was talking about the case where Akismet's servers are down, not when my comment got moderated.

Why the heck would you want to write your own plugin to do everything SK2 already does, and then have it do a spam-check against Akismet? I guess you could make it an addition to all the other filters in SK2, which might be cool, but I don't think there's a big need for that right now, since SK2 works just fine without it.

There's nothing difficult about setting up SK2, though and anyone who sets up their own blog (on their own server as opposed to a service like wordpress.com) could easily handle it.

The bottom line for me is that for totally non-technical people who would not be comfortable with or able to set up SK2, Akismet is certainly a great, easy to use alternative. You just have to willing to pay the price losing comment functionality whenever some script kiddie (or spammer trying to discredit them) decides to take down Akismet's servers.

Re: Google Pages

JaredB — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 19:00:23 -0000

Yeah, doesn't seem like too big of a deal. What did you mean by the stalkers thing?

Re: Google Pages

JaredB — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 22:38:04 -0000

That whole issue is pretty lame, in my opinion, especially what's going on with that myspace story.

If your kids aren't mature enough to be talk to other people without your supervision, either don't let them or at least teach them how to be safe about it. It has NOTHING to do with computers or the Internet.

Also, in that myspace case, the girls (if I heard correctly) were 15 and 17, so they should have known what was going on. I'm certainly no myspace fan, and I'll happily bag on them for any valid reasons, this just isn't one of them.

Re: “Former View” of Blogs

JaredB — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 22:45:05 -0000

I agree with you, of course, that a blog is primarily a tool of self expression, and it should certainly be completely up to the owner how they choose to present things.

If usability (for your users) is important to you, then that's good, and if not, that's fine too. I just disagree with trying to redefine what usability means, especially when the new definition is pretty much the opposite of it's original meaning. I've said it enough times on here, but usability has everything to do with the user's perception of your site, and nothing to do with your personal preferences. I think this horse is officially dead now, so that's all say about that.

By the way, I agree also with the sentiment about not really caring too much about sidebars either.

Re: Google Pages

JaredB — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 02:27:55 -0000

Well, what exactly would you propose Google or myspace do? If you feel that they are to blame, what could they have done to prevent it?

I guess we could demand that myspace should be shut down because some pervert used it to pick up kids, but I guess we'd also have to demand that they shut down all kinds of other places like parks, etc. too. We'll have to ban telephones as well, because the criminals could always call up the kids and try to talk them into meeting them somewhere.

The point is that this kind of stuff happening has NOTHING to do with how the criminal gets into contact with the victim. To focus on the internet and pretend that it's evil is to ignore the fact that sick people like this have being doing this kind of thing long before the internet was around, and no restrictions that you could possibly place on the internet will deter them.

I do apologize for my comments about them being old enough to know that they shouldn't trust strangers, because that was insensitive to two people who have obviously been through a great tragedy, and I am a total jerk for mentioning it that way.

Re: Ventura Star story

JaredB — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 10:31:48 -0000

Looks like it's up now.

It will be interesting to see how many new visitors you get from the link.

Re: Google Pages

JaredB — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 23:25:58 -0000

MySpace isn't making billions, but even if they were this is not their problem.

Sure, Google *could* offer you the ability to use a different name for the web pages, but to fulfill what you are asking, they would have to actually *prevent* the use of the email address for that purpose. It makes sense to use the email address, because that is already a unique identifier of that person within their system. Anyway, what's to stop the kids from just including their email address on the page themselves?

If Google and myspace already have a policy that says you have to be 18 to sign up and use their services, then the kids that are using it now are already disregarding their rules. I don't think you can (or should) ask them to do any more. You claim that the county is not responsible for people in the parks, but that web site owners are responsible for the people who visit their sites; I don't think so.

I agree that their should be some education of the parents, but you can't expect (or force) web site owners to pay for it.

Like I said before, the problem is NOT the avenue of communication that these people use to get in contact with kids; the problem is the sick people doing this and the lack of responsibility of the parents to supervise them. I'll say again that it has NOTHING to do with the internet.

What are you going to do then about telephones, since criminals could easily call them and talk to them without their parents' permission (if the parents allow it)? That is only one of a million ways people could make contact with kids, so there is no use in trying to fix the problem by putting a band aid in the wrong place.

Hey, for that matter, your blog is a place where anyone can come and engage in a conversation. So I guess you're OK with taking the blame for any actions of anyone who makes contact with someone else through your blog? As the owner of the site, is it your responsibility to card everyone and verify that they're old enough to talk to someone else?

Re: Google Pages

JaredB — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 02:18:52 -0000

1. I don't think my analogies are overboard. They do address your point, if your point is that Google and/or myspace should be responsible for this kind of thing. If that wasn't your point, then I guess I am off track.

2. But that's exactly my point; you're singling out certain "tools" that are used. There are many such "tools" that I've referenced in my supposedly irrelevant analogies. My point is to pick and choose (and blame) only those tools that are somehow related to the internet is flawed logic.

3. If you think that the naming convention for Google pages is in any way going to contribute to the likelihood of this sort of thing, due to the fact that they could get contacted via email, then you should be arguing that it should be illegal for kids to have email addresses at all, not a side issue like Google pages' naming convention.

Re: Ventura Star story

JaredB — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 02:21:17 -0000

They can be for normal people also...

Re: Ventura Star story

JaredB — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 21:18:19 -0000

That's an interesting backstory. Maybe you should try a variation of it where you take Nate's suggestions (all caps) for God-type words, and use regular capitalization for everything else.

Re: Google Pages

JaredB — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 21:48:14 -0000

OK, fair enough. "Looking at" problems and trying to find reasonable solutions is fine; I just don't like it when people start proposing draconian solutions, which is usually what happens when people start associating the internet (or any other technology) with a pretty much unrelated problem.

Re: Ventura Star story

JaredB — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 00:58:01 -0000

Yeah, I don't think any of us will look down on you because of it, whether we know the story behind it or not. Others will, but as long as you don't care about that, then go for it.

Re: Microsoft Panther?

JaredB — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 20:11:22 -0000

This is a troll and possibly a fake as well.

Re: Hard out here for a Pimp

JaredB — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 20:15:31 -0000

The really funny thing is how you can pretty much say anything you want as long as you don't use arbitrary, specific words. It seems like if you want to get offended by something, get offended by the message (or lack thereof) of some of the songs, not the vocabulary that they use to convey it.

Cutting out words that everyone already knows (or could easily guess based on the context, even if they've never heard the song before) is just silly and only illustrates the illogical thought processes of the censors themselves.

Re: Academy Awards 2006

JaredB — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 20:19:04 -0000

I didn't watch the awards, and I only actually saw two of the best picture nominees (Crash and Good Night, Good Luck). I really liked both of them; personally I actually preferred GNGL, but I can see how it would be difficult for that one to win.

Re: Microsoft Panther?

JaredB — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 01:29:01 -0000

I think we've been over this before, but in case you forgot, MS had (and I personally saw and used) working demos of a lot of the stuff in Vista (both UI and under the hood features) that is supposedly "copied from Panther" before Panther was released in October 2003.

Re: Microsoft Panther?

JaredB — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 15:06:50 -0000

That's doubtful; Apple is usually keeps a pretty good lid on things like that, especially when it comes to OS design and their biggest competitor. I'm not saying it's not possible, but I doubt they would have gotten an early enough look at it to produce working demos of their next system before Apple even released it.

In any event, the main point is that just because there may be some similarities does not mean there was any copying going on.