Rumor has it that Apple is developing what is probably the worst idea ever. Now, I quickly add that when Apple yanked 3.5 inch floppies1 from all of their computer designs, I thought that was the worst idea ever, and it turned out to be the best idea ever. But this one, I don’t know … a mouse with a keyboard on it is not a good thing.
Tag Archives: Technology
Technology Woes and Worries
Apple likes its hardware to be closed source. Very closed:
If you want to remove the outer casing on your iPhone 4 to replace the battery or a broken screen, it won’t be easy anymore. In the past, you could use a Phillip screwdriver to remove two tiny screws at the base of the phone and then simply slide off the back cover.
But Apple is replacing the outer screw with a mysterious tamper-resistant screw across its most popular product lines, …
Keep an eye in iFixit for a fix to this.
A little Linux Naval Gazing:
With the recent announcement from Apple that Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave … I began to wonder if people really think that the entire company is 100% dependent on Steve Jobs … So, does the Linux community have a similar problem when it comes to Linus Torvalds and the Linux kernel?
All I can say is that I am very disappointed that cloning has not been developed any more than jet packs. Very disappointed.
Tip: How to get desktop sharing working. It’s easy and potentially useful even if you’re just using a desktop and a laptop. Like if you share files on dropbox, and your using your laptop in one room while watching the baby, and you realized that you had opened a file on your desktop in the BlogCave and wanted to save and close it just in case, you can access your desktop’s desktop from your laptop’s desktop.
(We might need more words to express these concepts but I think you get the point.)
Command line unit conversion
The Linux command ‘units’ may or may not be installed on your system. If not, if you use synaptic or apt, type (at the prompt)
sudo apt-get install units
or equiviliant for other distributions. Then type in the word “units” and play around. Here are a few sample outputs:
The program is a little clunky. You have to know the specific codes for each type of measurement, though ‘units’ will figure out what you mean sometimes. To exit, type ctrl-D. There is a way to use this utility in a script. That and other details are found in the manual.
Interesting technology news items
Virgin Mobile’s “unlimited broadband” will be limited, as the communication company goes back on its deal with customers. “Here at Virgin Mobile, our mission is to deliver an outstanding customer experience. Sometimes that means making difficult choices…” I don’t see that as a difficult choice at all. Drop Virgin Mobile, or, if you don’t use it, don’t consider it. Details here.
The first computer that stored apps to run on itself, EDSAC, will be rebuilt at Bletchley Park. “The EDSAC was two metres high and its 3,000 vacuum tubes took up four metres of floor space. It could perform 650 instructions per second and all data input was via paper tape.” Details here.
Steve Chang, the Chairman of Trend Micro, is a moron. He makes the stupid old and disproved claim that Open Source is inherently insecure.
Don’t mess with Sarah Palin or you will be sent to prison. “A man who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail has been imprisoned – despite being told he might be spared jail… David Kernell, 23, was found guilty last year of illegally accessing Mrs Palin’s e-mail during the 2008 presidential campaign. At the time, a judge suggested he should serve his year-long sentence in a halfway house.” But he’s going to the big house anyway.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the political spectrum, the JFK library will release the largest on line digital presidential library ever. Details.
Annoying Computer Ads
There really aren’t that many computer ads. Lately, they suck.
Podcasts good and bad
Do you have a favorite podcast? A podcast that you tried and hated? An idea for a podcast that should exist but doesn’t? And, do you know of a rating system for podcasts (and should there be one)? As a thought experiment, I propose a Podcast Quality index, or set of indexes. To start, let me propose a set of criteria to evaluate the negatives of a multi-person podcast involving a primary host and a number of co-hosts or guests.
Technology news and information
Dropbox has reached version 1.0, which does not sound impressive, but is. Dropbox is a free or paid for file syncing service that totally kicks but. Try it out. The new version fixes various problems and significantly improves performance, but most importantly allows selective syncing, so you can have a subset of your files synced on a specific computer. (It was already true that you had a selective, as in file by file, syncing on mobile devices.) Seriously, of all the technologies out there, Dropbox is at the top of my list of software that made my life easier. Everything is always accessible on all computers (selectively, if I want, as of now) and backed up on the cloud. Whatever that is.
Opera has reached version 11 and apparently includes all sorts of bells and whistles including tab stacking. I’m not sure what that is, but I want it. I don’t use Opera, but Opera fans are almost as loyal as Oprah fans, so there must be some merit to it. Some details here.
As you know, Homeland security is dropping the color-coded Threat Assessment Alert thingie. This is a terrible disappointment, as it was the only way we could always feel part of the paranoia on a grand scale. Never mind that it was stuck on one color since it started. Well, a DIY geek has adapted the Biegert&Funk Qlocktwo design (which itself is interesting) to make a DHS tribute threat level indicator. Fire up your soldering irons!
This is not exactly, or at least overtly, technology, but you might like it. Cablegate is now a game, and you can play!
Read Gawker? Gizmodo? Lifehacker? You’ve been pwnd.
Registered users of Gawker.com media sites have had their names, email addresses, reading histories, and passwords stolen. But that’s OK, because just yesterday I heard you say that any information hackers steal from secret computer databases should be public. (Or did I hear you wrong?)
Continue reading Read Gawker? Gizmodo? Lifehacker? You’ve been pwnd.
I’m totally selling my horses and oxen and getting one of these sno machines!
How come we don’t all have one of these? I suppose one possible down side would be that if you fell off it would drag you into the vortex and crush you. But still … well, have a look:
Continue reading I’m totally selling my horses and oxen and getting one of these sno machines!
The great thing about Apple is that all the hardware and software are designed to work together …
… like clockwork. Orange that is.
Continue reading The great thing about Apple is that all the hardware and software are designed to work together …
Facebook Launches Google Wave!!!!
No, wait … not exactly. Well, sort of.
We all thought Facebook would be announcing Facebook.com, the email server to end all googles. But instead it launched something else. It is called a “Modern Messaging System” and it combines email, instant messages, and SMS.
Hold on, I’ll be right back.
You can email me at gregladen@facebook.com
Maybe.
Just the other day I was thinking that I’d love pop mail access to my facebook “email” account. Facebook “email” is annoying and broken as an email service, but then again, it is not supposed to be an email service, is it?
Untill it is. Facebook will probably, according to rumors on the intertubes, roll out a revamp of its “inbox” which will make facebook email work with something like yourusername@facebook.com and generally behave like a mail server. Then, I will be able to access my facebook mail with alpine! Monday. It’s all going to happen on Monday.
Hacking a Google Calendar CLI Tool
I wrote earlier of the very useful command line utility called gcalcli (short for GoogleCALendarCommandLineInterface). Click here to read that post. One of the options is called “agenda” which spits out, by default, the next five days of calendar entries. If you would prefer a different range of time than five days, then you can specify two dates and the utility will give you that set of entries.
But I find that to be a bit of a pain, typing in the dates to start and end the list, when I generally want a quick and dirty “next several days.” That, I suppose, is why there is a default of five days. But five days is not a good default. If it is Wednesday, I want to see what I’ve got on my calendar for the rest of the current week, as well as what is on my calendar for ALL of next week. For me, a better default would be 14 days. With 14 days, you always get a full look at the present week and the next week, plus, sometimes, a bit after that.
One can imagine writing a bash script that figures out what day it is, and then adds enough days that you get an agenda for the remainder of the present week plus all of the next week, but no more days than that. Such a script could make use of bash’s ability to manage and manipulate dates as they occur in our periodic system, with 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, work days being a subset of five of those days, etc. etc.
One could also imagine writing a bash script to poke one’s eyes out with hot soldering irons.
A simpler solution is this:
Continue reading Hacking a Google Calendar CLI Tool
How to restore the gnome panels to their default state after you mucked them up
Not that you would ever muck them up, but just in case:
Get a terminal somehow (alt+F2 if you must). Type this in:
gconftool-2 –shutdown
or
gconftool –recursive-unset /apps/panel
(or, both if you like)
Then,
rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/panel
pkill gnome-panel
that sounds like a lot of violence and killing and stuff, but it should work. Both of your panels will reappear like magic. If not, go here and complain because this is where I learned it!
Whither the weather? Linux CLI solutions
The command line is a great place to get weather information. Here, I discuss one cli-app for current conditions and forecasts, in the larger context of why you would ever want to use the command line anyway.
Continue reading Whither the weather? Linux CLI solutions