Category: Hi-Tech

A punitive puppeteer?

The Evil Empire Strikes Back? Xcot pointed out an Slashdot article which further pointed to the InfoWorld article cited above. In it, they report the FrontPage 2002 EULA includes the text:

You may not use the Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, or their products or services …

Heh. Was I just defending my use of FrontPage to Doyce?

*Shrug* Let’s see them enforce it.

It was a crummy game, anyway

British retailers have stopped carrying Micro$oft Flight Simulator, claiming that terrorists could have honed their flying skills (and building-crashing skills) using the game.

And they probably use Half-Life to practice their commando raids. Right.

Another game in which people are rescued from a burning building is also being pulled, for reasons which escape me.

Micro$oft has said that it will remove the WTC from future versions of Flight Simulator. Which sounds touching, but is also, sadly, a matter of accuracy.

Thanks for the reference from Adam.

For a number of years now, I’ve subscribed to an e-mail version of comp.risks, RISKS-L. This list/Usenet site details “risks to the public in computers and related systems.” While that doesn’t sound like much fun, it’s a fascinating (moderated) collection of information and posts about security, privacy, and unintended consequences of the computerized systems we come to depend upon. It’s organized by the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) Committee on Computers and Public Policy. Fascinating reading every time one of the digests comes out. At a minimum, anyone in the IT field should read this.

To subscribe, send an e-mail to this address with a body text of “subscribe”.

To review a recent issue (in case you want to check it out), try this link.

This is good stuff. Alternately hilarious, horrifying, and thought-provoking.

Well, the happy Sprint guy came today to see if we can get Sprint Broadband (wireless broadband).

In so many words: no.

The installation survey result was “Technically Unsuccessful” because of “obstruction – trees blocking!” Yup. Those huge cottonwoods on the north side of the lot line. But they sound neat in the wind, and they block the neighbors’ sight lines. So there.

That is, for the time being, the end of my broadband adventure. Clearly, after the recent Qwest adventure, DSL is not in our immediate future. AT&T Broadband determinedly gives back a cheerful, “Sorry, our service is not yet available in your area,” and advises me to leave my e-mail address with them (given that the company is on the auction block, I’m not holding my breath anytime soon). And now Sprint is a washout (though they were fast, cheerful, efficient, and accurate, if unsuccessful. Which puts them a leg up on their competitors).

So here I sit, stuck with (wait for it) 49,333bps narrowband. It could be worse, I suppose.

Microsoft Assimilates the Borg

The Register is one of the best damned IT publications out there. They also have a wicked sense of humor (and cute English accents). Who could ask for more?

I’ve nearly decided to give up on the Blackberry. It’s a half-unconscious conclusion … I’m just finding that I’m not using the darned thing. I walk around with it, sometimes, but I also leave it sitting in the dock. If I’m not using it — why use it, if you know what I mean.

The consensus with a couple of other folks I’ve talked with is what I’ve decided: It’s a great wireless e-mail solution coupled with a mediocre PDA. And since the PDA functionality is at least as important as the e-mail side of things for me ….

I did a little digging on-line today. Love to replace my Palm Vx with a Palm m505, except that it doesn’t have a wireless modem option yet, and it would be keen to be able to maintain some level of e-mail connectivity. I’m going to check out a few of the PocketPC iPAQs from Compaq … but everything I read still indicates they’re a horrible battery hog (like, recharging daily or more in normal use, as opposed to both my Palm and the RIM which will run for a week without charging).

Anyway, we’ll see. Just thought I’d update on this particular “project.”

Well, I spent the long vacationy weekend with the Blackberry.

What it does well (receive and send company e-mail via wireless modem and our own Exchange server) it does very well. I was able to fritter away a good chunk of Monday morning reading and responding to mail. Wow.

And the battery life has been great, on a par with the Palm.

Everything else, though, is feeling like a step backward, like going from the Win9X interface to the Win3X interface. Ugly and crude.

I like the keyboard. And the scroll-click button (and escape button)_work well for that modality. But, frankly, it’s like a full-screen DOS ap. Scroll up, scroll down, scroll cursor, scroll page. Hit Enter.

The Palm’s stylus allows faster, easier menu selections, instant jumping from one part of the page to another, etc. The Palm’s (limited) font/typeface support makes things look better. And the incredible wealth of Palm aps lets you tune the thing to what you want.

I plan on continuing to eval this unit through at least this week (maybe for the rest of the month, at which point we’ll have a departmental budget). But I’m also going to start looking at wireless handheld units (primarily in the Palm family, but I might look at some PocketPC units, if the battery life is reasonable). The e-mail interface will probably not be so tightly bound, but at least I’ll feel like I’m in the 21st Century.

— The calendar application does not have a “snooze” on its alarms.

– The docking cradle seems to be very sensitive — it’s easy to have it seem to be in place just fine, and then notice that it’s still on “battery.”

+++ Mail is working. The mail filter software (defining rules as to which items should be forwarded) is sophisticated — indeed, it may be slicker than what Outlook itself uses.

— Reading formatted stuff is sucky. There’s no such thing as large text, bold text, underlined, text, etc. This may be a serious drawback.

++ The scroll-dial/click-to-enter control is neat (so is the escape button).

— Having to scroll horizontally and vertically to get the pointer to where I want is annoying compared to just pointing with a stylus.

More to come …

Blackberry seems to be up and running, and I’m getting mail to it from the office. The next few days should be interesting, as I “tune” what level of mail forwarding I want with the thing, and as I (hopefully) get involved in how well it handles doing memos, etc. My first impression is that the interface is a bit cruder than the Palm’s, and the relative lack of alternative software to the basic aps is probably going to be annoying. On the other hand, it gets really good signal at both the house and the office (certainly better than my cell phone).

We shall see.

I got my Blackberry this afternoon. Now I just have to figure out how the damned thing ties in with my mail.

Unfortunately, the other fellow in the office who has one is trying to get our network problems resolved. Which means my consultation with him will be, of necessity, limited.

We’ll see. I’d love to have it working for the weekend.

Insanity has been defined as trying the same thing over, expecting the results to be different.

It occurs to me that this speaks directly to IT, since our primary diagnostic methods involve trying the same thing over and over again. “Let’s try rebooting again. Well, let me try unplugging and plugging it in again. Let’s power it off and power it back on again. Let’s try rebooting again.”

The damnable thing is, the reason it’s our primary diagnostic method is that it works.

Either we’re insane, or we operate in an insane world. Or both. Live with the ambiguity.

Internet ads are a bane to my existence. I hate ’em. They are annoying. They are intentionally eye-catching, and advertisers are in an ever-increasing frenzy to get eye-time from surfers like me because — well, that’s why they’re paying for the damned things, right?

The worst I’ve seen (lately) was a pop-under for Orbitz, the new “Hey, we’re the airlines, so we’ll start a travel site, and you can move all your ticket purchases here, putting those other travel sites out of business, but, hell, we won’t ever take advantage of such a monopoly, trust us, we’re the airlines” site. This thing is like 5×8″, and flashes on and off with such a frequency I’m surprised there aren’t folks having epileptic fits triggered by it. You can’t look at it for more than 5 seconds without getting a headache but, more importantly, you can’t not look at it. Every lizard-brain part of your mind says, “Bright flashing lights! Something I must see, or else dinosaur will eat me!”

It is annoying as all hell.

And it’s how the Internet stays relatively free.

Yup. Most content providers out there make use of advertising to at least defray the costs of providing the content. Aside from folks like me who do this sort of thing as a hobby — and I’ve already said I’m a cheapskate. I’m a cheapskate with some concern for my viewers — which is why I bailed from Geocities (and it’s Ad Window of Doom), but also why I won’t purchase more expensive hosting services. At least, not yet.

So, yes, I hate ads, but I also acknowledge that they are a vital part of keeping the Internet from turning into a bunch of fanboy pages and subscription services. Which I suspect will happen in the next ten years, given current trends. But for now, that’s the case.

But while I have accepted the ethical “tragedy of the commons” sort of need for Internet advertising, I’ve decided to draw the line. That line is pop-ups and pop-unders. Not only are they an Abomination Before the Lord, but they raise the annoyance stakes to new levels. Plus, by opeing up new windows, they chew up additional system resources, clutter the screen, etc. They are Evil, Pure Evil from the Eighth Dimension.

So I took the step of downloading PopUp Killer. There are others, but this came recommended, and seems to do the job. PopUp Killer just sits out there and watches each browser window when it opens. If it has a name/domain that is on the PopUp Killer black list (which you can download), then it zaps the window with a little crash of thunder. Very satisfying. It also as a limited AI function to guess (with user-defined sensitivity) what might be a pop-up/under ad, and zaps that, too (this latter function can be set to simply prompt you, which I find to be a better alternative, since it sometimes guesses things wrong).

The Black List is a bit overzealous in places — it wildcards all the Tripod sites, for example — but you can also easily set up an exemption list.

I will not install software (available) that strips out ads from within pages — TANSTAAFL — but I will do this. And do.

Take back the Web. Solidarity Forever. Up the People! Right On, Man!