I would hope not, but in fact there seems to be no effective mechanism in place to keep in check a not insignificant number of Google engineers who have full access to everyone’s gMail contents and other private information. And, there is always David Barksdale.

Continue reading Has a Google engineer been reading your teenager’s email? →

I’ve been using Dropbox for several months now, and I still like it. I have it installed on two computers, a desktop and a laptop. I recently wiped the desktop’s hard drive and installed an entirety new drive and system, then I installed Dropbox, and all my files (which were stored on Dropbox) mysteriously appeared on the new installation. Not really quickly but not a lot slower than if I had used some kind of backup system, and with zero effort.

Continue reading Dropbox is still good →

Microsoft says Teh Gay is “inappropriate.” The corporate computer giant and evile empire banned a kid from having an X-box account because he listed the name of his home town in his profile, and happens to live in Fort Gay. The people of Fort Gay are not putting up with this. When challenged, Microsoft made up some fake story about how this happened, said they were sorry, and agreed to reinstate the child’s account. As long as he not list his home town as Fort Gay. Which part of “you are a bunch of bumbling morans” do they not understand? And these are the people who are in charge of all the software? Source and more details.

Speaking of Microsoft, have you considered trying Linux? If so, consider the “Mint” version of Linux. It may be the most friendly version for new users, and a brand new edition has just come out.

“No, wait,” you say, “always wait until the new version has been out for a while so they can work out all the bugs!”

If you thought that, you are obviously not a Linux user yet! For some computer operating systems, the new versions are marketing events full of bugs, later to be fixed by the service release. In Linux, the new version is the thing that fixes whatever bugs may have emerged since the last version, and for the main operating system itself, new versions come out very frequently, so the number of new bugs is low and the number of bug fixes is high.

So click here and find out more about Mint.

This is interesting: Drupal has released a new code of conduct for their community. It has five points:

* Be considerate
* Be respectful
* When we disagree, we consult others
* When we are unsure, we ask for help
* Step down considerately

The fucker stole the whole thing from Ubuntu, as it turns out. How dare they!!!!111eleventy!!!

Gmail just got like skype, sort of.

Five days after the announcement of Voice and Video Chat service in Gmail for Debian-based Linux distributions, Google unveiled a Gmail phone call service for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Rather than having both parties tied to their computers and logged into their Gmail accounts, one user can now call anyone in the US and Canada with telephone service. Google states that rates will remain free for the rest of the year and very low for international calls.

source

Aircraft Flight Recorder technology is hardly ever upgraded, and thus, will always be stagnant. Why is that? Why are the designers of something so important so conservative? Maybe they should be.

But really, there is no reason that when an airplane crashes, all the flight data has not already been downloaded as part of a continuous process using high speed networks and satellites. That would have been nice for Flight 447, oui?

Anyway, here’s a story about black box upgrades.

I don’t use OpenOffice unless I have to, but sometimes I have to and it’s nice to know that a PDF importing extension is available. But there are some tricks to using it, which are nicely addressed here.
Continue reading Technobabble →

Oh sure. Like I’m going to click on THAT!
Continue reading The Wonderful Wacky World of Windows →

On Thursday, Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President of Operations, blogged on the official Google Blog (which, funnily enough, is just some blogspot blog, but whatever) that Google would no longer be developing Google Wave. Key elements of the technology are OpenSource so they may continue to be used and developed but Google itself is phasing out the project.

Continue reading Google Waves Goodbye to Wave →

There is a new blog you should check out: OpenSourcePhotography.org. It deals with, believe it or not, OpenSource stuff and Photography stuff. There is some real potential there, I hope it develops.

There is apparently a big fight among OpenSource community members about whether or not Ubuntu (pronounced Ubuntu) gives back to the community. In my view, not knowing much about the debate, the fact that the vast majority of desktops and laptops that run Linux these days do so because Ubuntu did what it did should be plenty, but apparently there is more to it than that. The fight, really, is about code. Read about is here: Ubuntu Empire Strikes Back

Which Kindle should you buy (or beg the relatives to give you for your birthday)??? The Regular 6 inch Kindle or the fancier Kindle DX?

It is said that the two extant technologies …. Kindle-like low power ePaper displays vs “real tablet computers” will merge.

I’m sure this is true. It is just as sure as the fact that almost every computer monitor sold to the average customer is the shiny hard to read kind instead of the more functional non-shiny kind. And when the technologies merge, the marketing departments will grin and the users will squint.

Does any of this matter to you now? Yes. Because there are predictions that there will be a major change in technology in less than two years which might make the choices you make now seem silly.

Like this:

So, the answer? If you need a Kindle now, get the cheap one. Then, save your pennies and upgrade later.

These data were scraped by security consultant Ron Bowles, using code that scans Facebook profiles and collects all data not hidden by privacy settings. Which, as some but not all of you know, are probably not set the way you think they are set for your account.

You can have the data if you want. Click here to download it.

I’m a little unconcerned about these data being spread around. I was already available to anyone who simply went on (after joining) facebook.

Bowles did this in order to highlight the fact that stuff you put on Facebook is pretty much like stuff you leave around on the seat of your car or on a table near an unurtained window. Not invisible.

Bowle’s data set is incomplete, as there are about a half billion Facebook users.

Now, I wonder. What language was the script written in? Please tell me it was in bash using wget and sed! That would be so cool!

The story is all over, but here is one source.

“You’re holding it wrong,” is apparently the latest ‘advice’ from Apple’s Steve Jobs. When the iPhone 4 first came out, people noticed a lot of signal drops. To me, that would not be surprising because the iPhone requires the AT&T service, which, in Minnesota, totally sucks. There are vast areas of my own personal geography where AT&T has zero signal, and most of the rest of it ranges from acceptable to sucky.

But it turns out that the iPhone had low-bars to an extent beyond that expected. In early July, Apple explained this as a software problem. The signal was fine, but the software that set the bars was wrong making you think you had a bad signal when you really didn’t

That, dear reader, is absolutely remarkable because if true, it would be one of the most astounding examples of the Placebo Effect. You see, people were not only seeing low signal bars, but they were also losing the signal itself. So, according to Apple’s explanation, people’s phone calls were being cut off because they saw that the signal had low strength as indicated. This, then, caused the signal to actually become low, and sometimes the call to drop.

That is one incredibly strong Placebo Effect. If only we could come up with a form of sugar pill that would do that to cure cancer!!!11!!

In the mean time, iPhone users figured out that if you touched a certain part of the iPhone with your finger, the signal would reduce significantly. There’s a little gappy thing near one corner of the phone, and if you touch that you get a drop in signal strength. Sort of like if you take a sugar pill as a placebo but it is accidentally attached to some effective medicine. That could seriously boost the Placebo Effect!

But then, it turns out that when independent studies were done by Consumer Reports, it was true that the the iPhone’s signal problem is not a Placebo Effect at all. It’s a case, rather, of THIB. (The Hardware is Broken.)

It was about that time, according to some guy on the TV, that Steve Jobs suggested that the real problem was that iPhone users were holding the phone wrong. Which reminds me of a story

Continue reading Apple screws pooch with iPhone 4. But there is a fix. →