Dilithium Crystalworks

FCC Considering Free Internet For USA

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Once again I’ve gotten behind on my Slashdot reading (that does tend to keep happening doesn’t it?

Anyway, in getting caught up I ran across an interesting bit that came from the Wall Street Journal. Apparently the FCC is
thinking about doing something right for once.

The article says that they are considering a plan to provide free wireless internet across the country. It also says that the plan would involve some level of filtering and while that won’t sit well with the younger folks, adults would probably (?!?) be allowed to opt out of the filtering. While I think that filtering the Internet is about as useful as putting a truckload of air o swiss humidifiers in the same tightly sealed room with an equal number of DE-humidifiers because determined people will find a way around the filters, I do have to admit that I like the idea of nationwide free wi-fi.

The trick is finding a way to make such a system work. Several cities have tried municipal wi-fi with little to no success because of the cost in maintaining it and paying for bandwidth.

I guess time will tell.

Technorati Tags: free wireless internet, free wi-fi, fcc, nationwide wi-fi

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Posted in Internet, Networking, News, Software, Tech, opinion | No Comments »

To Easter Egg Or Not To Easter Egg? That Is The Question

I was doing some catch-up reading in my slashdot emails and came across a item from reader asking whether or not it would be a good idea to include a little “Easter Egg” in a program they’re developing. This is with the person fully realizing that very few people will ever see, let alone comment on, said Easter Egg. The idea is that it’s something that, as the writer said, leaves an “I was here” kind of mark on the program.

As to whether you should do something like that or not, all I can say is that I don’t see that it hurts anything so long as it has no effect on the normal operation of the program. You’d also want to insure that it isn’t something that an unsuspecting user could run into by accident and think that the software they’d paid for was hosed.

The other factor depends on the development environment and the personality of the people in charge. This is where producing something for a small business opportunity in it’s early stages of growth has a definite advantage. People in those operations are usually a lot more easy going and likely to be interested in something that might be just a bit extravagent (or wasteful depending on how you look at it).

Honestly, I think a *good* Easter Egg in a program would be a good idea really. You release the program with the Easter Egg in it and don’t say anything to anybody about it. Then, after it’s been on the market for two or three months, arrange for a rumor to get started that there’s an Easter Egg in the program. A few months later, anonymously post the key to revealing it on a blog or three someplace in comments and wait for them to be indexed in the search engines. Meanwhile, shortly after planting the key to the Easter Egg, start again (on totally different sites, with a different IP address and ID) re-inforcing the rumors about there being an Easter Egg.

Then all you need to do is sit back and wait for people to “discover” it. Frankly, there’s a real potential in “Planned Easter Eggs” in software. You could have each new version of a program tell part of a story of some kind. In doing so, you end up creating a need (people’s desire to see the next version of the software so they can find the new Easter Egg).

Technorati Tags: definite advantage, development environment, small business Opportunity, personality, software, discovery, people, easter egg, easter, programming, extravagent, unsuspecting user

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Posted in Entertainment, Programming, Software, opinion | No Comments »

Home Security Is More Than A Firewall

When people see or hear the word “Security” these days most immediately bring to mind some of the international issues involving terrorism or something like the need to keep an anti virus program and Firewall utility on your home computer or using encryption to keep your email private. However, security also involves all of our homes in another way. Specifically, we want to be able to feel safe and secure at home.

The subject of home security is one that is more than just having an alarm go off if somebody tries to break into your house, it also involves the normal day to day safety of people living in the home. One of the things that’s getting to be a really big issue is the safety and security of older people.

Obviously, I’m not just talking about break-ins, fires or some natural disasters here. I’m talking about the fact that as the percentage of older people continues to rise, so will the level of concern for their safety from hazards restricted entirely to the interior of their homes.

Take for example the simple risk of falling, children and young people don’t usually think much of falls. They fall, they get up and go on. However as people get older falling becomes a lot more of an issue, one that isn’t so easy to shrug off, broken bones and worse are a lot more likely with older people and if an older person lives alone, that adds the risk that they could lay their in pain and unable to get to a phone and call for help.

That’s why services like ADT Companion Service are as popular as they are and are in fact becoming more popular all the time. It’s real simple. This service allows people to rest easy, knowing that their older loved ones are using such a service.

It means that in the event something should happen, all they need to do is press the button on a waterproof pendant or wristband and they’re connected to ADT’s monitoring service who can call for whatever help is needed.

The system also monitors the temperatures and will send an alert if the temp in the home falls to an unsafe level. This is a really important feature, every year there are horror stories in the news about people who have died because, for whatever reason, it just plain got too cold in their homes.

Another good thing is that AARP members get 50% off of installation and a $2.00 monthly discount on the monitoring service, something that has even more value given the state the economy has been allowed to fall into.

Technorati Tags: falls, safety and security, broken bones, companion service, home security, home security, monitoring service, medical monitoring, natural disasters, adt, security, safety, temperature monitoring, accidents

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Posted in Business, Misc | No Comments »

Antimatter Research Should Be Restricted To Off-Planet Labs

I just read a news release from Lawrance Livermore Labs about how they’re all exited about being able to create “billions” of Anti-Matter particles in a laboratory environment.

In terms of anti-matter research and moving our understanding of physics and the universe forward, this is pretty cool. In terms of how much sense it makes, it’s one of the dumber things anyone’s ever done.

I know, hordes of people are going to say, it’s only a few billion positrons, they’re no threat to anything. They may even be right. However the point is that because of the nature of the stuff, it only makes sense that experimentation that involves the production of actual anti-matter or even just anti-particles should be conducted far away from planets that people live on.

Technorati Tags: anti matter particles, anti matter, positrons, news release, livermore labs, , anti matter research, laboratory environment, physics

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Posted in Misc, Science, Space, Tech, opinion | No Comments »

Windows Declines Again In Favor of Linux

Yesterday I announced that I had had enough of Windows and the fact that in my effort to re-install a seriously hosed copy, it managed to nuke the partition table on my 250GB hard drive, taking all of the contents with it.

I had an install of Debian a couple years back but ended up moving back to Windoze because at the time, there was still software that I needd to run that couldn’t be made to function in Linux. However things have sure changed. For one thing, Linux now supports a wider range of video cards, motherboards and other hardware. There’s also much better support for running Windows apps natively in Linux thanks to Wine. Those things that can’t be made to work in Wine can be dealt with in a virtual machine.

So, It’s time for Wine, VM’s to handle Windoze apps and Ubuntu Linux for everything else. The only Windows install this machine will ever see again is in a VM.

Ubuntu 8.1 is an almost painfully easy (if that makes any sense, it does to me.) to install and the Synaptic package manager makes it very easy to locate and install a great many software packages automatically. For those that Synaptic doesn’t recognize, it’s not a whole lot more involved to compile software from source and install it from the command line.

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, migrate to linux, crash, windows, linux, windows in vm

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Posted in Computers, Linux, Misc, Software, opinion | No Comments »

Toyota Apparently Doesn’t Want Free Advertising

Over the years Toyota has become a pretty big player in the automotive world. However there is now solid evidence that they have finally grown so much that they’re just too big for their britches.

Desktop Nexus, a popular desktop wallpaper site, has been hit by Toyota’s willingness to abuse the DMCA (not that DMCA is worth anything, but site owners can’t help that.)

They (Toyota) sent Desktop Nexus a blanket request demanding that all wallpapers uploaded by members that featured a Toyota, Lexus or Scion be removed immediately. As a (thin) justification for this insane demand, the brain trust at Toyota cited copyright violation. Never mind whether Toyota actually holds copyright for any of the images created and uploaded by members.

The owner of Desktop Nexus asked Toyota to specify exactly which images were copyrighted by Toyota, the idiots said that in order for them to get specific (and thus file a proper DMCA Takedown notice), that they would invoice Desktop Nexus for their labor involved.

Ok, hold the phone a minute! The big bad (foriegn!) company is going to come along and order a website to take down everything that shows one of their cars and then when asked to show which images they own, they’re going to make the site pay?!?!?

There’s something genuinely wrong about that and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Users on Desktop Nexus have been expressing their opinions of Toyota and it’s tactics in their own unique manner. One of my favorites is this desktop wallpaper entitled “Toyota Compilation” that I think does a good job of predicting the future of the Toyota corporation if they continue with stupid business practices like this that annoy the heck out of large numbers of people.

Maybe if Toyota doesn’t want free advertising, we citizens of the net should help them out and never again link to anything Toyota in a positive light. Then when they wonder what happened, we can tell ‘em we gave ‘em what they wanted.

Technorati Tags: desktop nexus, toyota, toyota pictures, dmca takedown, dmca, dmca abuse, computer wallpaper

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Posted in Business, Freeware, Internet, Misc, News, Websites, opinion | Comments Off

Inviting Home: More than just a decor supplier

Most people don’t really give a lot of thought to their home’s decor. In many cases people have the feeling that there isn’t much they can to improve the look and feel of their home because they have the idea that this means an overall redesign that might even involve rebuilding it from scratch.

This is an idea that’s gotten even more momentum because of certain television programs that feature destroying old homes to create a new ones. A tour of the Inviting Home website will show you that this misconception isn’t true. You can indeed do a lot with almost any home without having to destroy it first.

Inviting Home’s website, invitinghome.com, approaches home decor with the idea that there is an unlimited potential in the design of any home, all that’s needed is some thought, a bit of the right advise and a wide inventory of everything from hand carved Corbels to all the touches needed to make an ordinary fireplace the focal point of a room.

While the structure and exterior of a home is often (sometimes literally) carved in stone, there’s a lot that can be done with the interior. Sometimes all you need is to add a detail here and there to add a touch of depth to what may have originally been a flat, featureless wall. Things like a carved crown molding, corbels and wood brackets will add a touch of elegance and refinement to a room without the need for major structural changes.

I think that when first faced with such a project, most people can be kinda overwhelmed but by taking things one bit at a time it’s easier to see how just the right changes can accomplish a lot.

Something that I appreciate about Inviting Home’s site is that rather than just slam product in your face until you buy, they’re also about being informative and helpful. Their “Decorating Ideas” section is loaded with page after page after page of inspiring material covering everything from “ceiling decor” to “Green Design”. There is another invaluable resource in their Home Improvement Blog with timely articles about every aspect of home decor.

Technorati Tags: decor tips, decor ideas, home decor, website review, decor advice, decor help, website

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Posted in Business, Misc, Website Review, opinion | Comments Off

Did Jon Henshaw Really Accuse Matt Cutts of Ruining ‘Link Buying’ PubCon Session?

You could subtitle this: If Matt Cutts is going to attend, would you even bother making las vegas hotel reservations to attend PubCon?

[insert classic Bronx raspberry here]

My answer: Absolutely not!

To me that’s kind of a “Duh Moment”. Matt Cutts may be a decent enough guy (I honestly don’t know one way or the other) but let’s face it, because of his position at Google, when it comes to things like web promotion and topics like link buying being discussed among proponents.. he’s pretty much the enemy.

Even though Jon Henshaw’s post was pretty much intended as humorous, it’s still very much on point. Somebody like Matt Cutts showing up at PubCon is definitely going to be like throwing a cold soggy dishrag on the main course at a state dinner. Nobody with any sense at all is going to have anything valuable to say about the business of link buying while they know he’s in the room.

I realize that it wouldn’t exactly be difficult for Mr. Cutts to find out what was said at the event. He is, after all, in the business of staying informed about such things in his quest to nuke linking practices that he and Google have declared wrong.

Technorati Tags: jon henshaw, link buying, accusation, pubcon, link buying talk, pubcon link buying, matt cutts

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Posted in Blogging, Blogs, Business, Freedom of speech, Internet, Misc, Websites, opinion | Comments Off

Washington State Suing SEO Firm

The state of Washington is doing something that I think is long overdue. They’re going after an SEO outfit for bogus business practices. The state’s Attorney General says:

these entities have ripped off their mostly mom-and-pop clientele through a pattern of unfulfilled performance promises and financial shenanigans.

By the way, for some reason I find it really cool and somewhat funny that he actually used the word “shenanigans”. Aside from that, I’m surprised that people running firms like the one being sued haven’t been spending a lot of money at Washington DC dentist offices (or dental offices wherever they are… ) getting their teeth fixed because of dissatisfied customers deciding that they’re tired of getting ripped off and rearranging somebody’s jawline over it.

In a nutshell, the state’s Attorney General has leveled six basic charges against them, the top one on the list being:

Misrepresenting the ability to significantly increase traffic to customer Web sites by achieving top search-engine rankings and failing to deliver other promised services.

This one has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time and it’s about time (past time even) that somebody’s doing something about it. NO SEO company (or anybody else) can make any real guarantee that they can achieve top search engine rankings for a site. The very best they can do is all of the usual SEO tasks, optimize on-page factors, build links from as many relevant sites as possible and probably start some kind of pay per click advertising campaign.

Hopefully SEO firms will see this as a signal to stop trying to blow smoke in customer’s faces and be more honest about what they can and cannot achieve.

Technorati Tags: attorney general, washington state, lawsuit, seo, seo company, false claims

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Posted in Business, Financial, Internet, Websites, opinion | Comments Off

Tired Of Classmates.com Emails? You’re Not Alone

How often do you get emails from classmates.com saying that x number of people (former classmates to be specific) have been trying to get in touch with you and that all you need to do in order to find out who they are is pay for a membership at classmates.com so that you can use their site to identify these people from your past who are trying to reach you?

My wife’s gotten bunches of them for years. I get similar emails from reunion.com almost every day. This isn’t just spamvertising various legitimate and otherwise retail franchises, they’re after one thing. The want you to sign up for a long term, automatically renewed membership in their site.

Well, she tried that out for a while and decided to set the renewal to “manual” so that she wouldn’t get automatically charged when her membership ran out, having decided to go back to the ‘free’ level of membership. Weren’t we surprised to find out that in spite of having that set to manual, that she was automatically charge anyway.

Now come to find out, we’re a long way from being alone in this, seems that classmates.com has been a royal PITA for over a decade and that they’re notorious for stuff like this. So I’ll join the writer at PC World and say that I too hope that classmates.com (and reunion.com for that matter) get sued into oblivion..

Technorati Tags: reuinion.com, spam, lawsuit, deceptive business practices, deception, classmates.com

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Posted in Business, Misc, Websites, opinion | Comments Off