Practical Technology

for practical people.

July 12, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

Have Online Communities become Havens for the Terminally Angry?

Blizzard Entertainment, makers of the wildly popular World of Warcraft online game recently started an online forum tempest when they decided to start showing users’ online account names when they posted messages to their game forums. Blizzard explained they were making this change to their online forums because their “forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild.”

No? Really?

It’s not just Blizzard’s forums though. Almost every forum I know that allows anonymous comments is filled to overflowing with abusive nonsense. Whether it’s GoComics (http://www.gocomics.com/); local newspaper online forums; social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit; developer mailing lists, or, alas, my own blogs and Web sites, all too often instead of intelligent conversation about the subject du jour I find non-stop ranting, sweating, and insults. Oh, and the occasional bit of spam.

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July 8, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Dumb and Dumber PC problems

So, there I was, trying to get an e-mail client, Evolution, set up on my faithful old ThinkPad R61 laptop and I was going nowhere fast. I’d decided to use Mint 9, the latest version of an Ubuntu Linux-based distribution and that had all gone perfectly well. So, why was a simple e-mail set up giving me fits? After hours of tinkering with it, and more swearing than I usually do in a month, I sat back, had a drink, and … remembered that I had reset that particular e-mail account’s password back in June.

I was such an idiot.

When it comes to computers we can all be dummies sometimes. I don’t mean the kind of basic computer stupidity such as a naïve Windows user who doesn’t install an anti-virus program on their PC. What I’m talking about is when people who really do know better make a dumb mistake.

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July 8, 2010
by sjvn01
2 Comments

Once around the Web with Firefox 4 Beta 1

I want, I really want Firefox to become a top-of-the-line Web browser again. It was Firefox, after all, that broke IE’s (Internet Explorer) strangle-hold on Web browsers. Even Microsoft owes Firefox some gratitude. If Firefox hadn’t pushed Microsoft into making IE into a decent Web browser, many of us might still be stuck with crapware like IE 6. Unfortunately, I’m not sure Firefox 4 is going to get Firefox back into competition with IE 8, much less, what I see as today’s leading Web browser, Google’s Chrome 5.

You see, Firefox has been getting a little long in the tooth. Like other software programs that haven’t aged well, Firefox has accumulated more features, which has led to bloated, slow performance. So the good Firefox developers at Mozilla have decided to give Firefox a facelift.

Firefox’s new interface, which is now only available on Windows 7 or Vista, consists of a single large orange button that gives you access to the rest of the browser’s controls. I’ve used it on one of my test Windows 7 boxes — a Dell Inspiron 530S, with a 2.2-GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor, an 800-MHz front-side bus, 4GBs of RAM, a 500GB SATA (Serial ATA) drive, and an Integrated Intel 3100 GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) chip set. It ran quite well on this system. Its speed was comparable to the latest shipping version of Firefox 3.6, and that’s no small feat for beta software. Still, when all was said and done, the interface left me cold.

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July 5, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

How dumb is the government when it comes to technology?

Back when I was a younger man, I was a Beltway Bandit. What that means is that I worked as a technical contractor for the federal government. In my case, I worked for several years for NASA and NAVSEA (Naval Sea Systems Command). Then, I worked with numerous bright developers, network engineers and system administrators. Unfortunately, we often worked with federal staffers who were often, ah, clueless. Since then, things have only gotten worse. Much worse.

Then, we usually only had to contend with managers who didn’t understand the technology, but were capable of giving us realistic goals. For example, one NASA executive knew that the agency wanted a way to keep track of the current status of all telecom and datacom links to the STS (Space Transportation System, or space shuttle to you), but he didn’t know how we would do it — a combination of C and Datatrieve running on VAX/VMS and AT&T Unix systems, as it turned out — and as long as we delivered the goods, he was happy.

That was when things worked well. Am I glad I’m out of the consultant/contractor game these days.

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July 2, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Will Hulu and Apple kill old-style TV?

My wife has been asking me for some time now to dump cable in favor of Internet-based TV. Even though I’ve been using media extenders like the Apple TV to watch my own server-based video library and Internet-based TV for years, I’ve been reluctant to make the move. Why? Because, even now it’s a pain sometimes to get the setup to work right and some of the shows I want to watch weren’t available in formats I could easily watch on my television. Things are changing now fast.

First, technically speaking, it’s getting much easier to set up connections between the Internet and your TV. In my own case, the Sony BDP-S570 Blu-ray Disc Player, which also includes Internet streaming support for Amazon Video on Demand, Netflix, and many other Internet video services, has made watching movies off the Internet dead simple. For my BBC TV fix — I’ve been a big Doctor Who fan since Jon Pertwee played the Doctor — I usually rely on my Apple TV to stream videos from my servers.

But what’s been missing from all this is a cheap and easy way to watch the current TV shows that I like such as Burn Notice, Community, and House. Yes, of course, I could watch these and other shows on one of my computers. But, when I want to watch television, I don’t want to be watching it on a laptop or in my office. I’d much rather be watching it on a big-screen HDTV with my wife and friends.

That’s why I found the news that Hulu was going to start an ‘all-you-can-watch’ TV service very, very interesting. Once this service is rolled out, I’ll be able to watch almost all shows I like, when I want to watch them, even if I’ve forgotten to TiVo them. And, I’ll be able to do this with my existing hardware-Sony DVD and TV support will be coming later in the year-for $9.99 a month. With my cable service I have to pay $89.99 a month, which includes such ‘winners’ as Jewelry Television, GSN (game shows), and the Home Shopping Network.

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June 29, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

iPhone vs. Android: Five points of difference

Wow, the way people are arguing about iPhones vs. Android phones I’m having flash-backs to the grand old tech. flame wars of Macs vs. PCs; OS/2 vs. Windows; or vi vs. EMACS. Now, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I’ve used both iPhones and Android phones, specifically the HTC EVO and Motorola Droid, and there are things I like, and dislike, about both smartphone families

Before jumping into that though, I think everyone should keep in mind that when you’re talking Apple iPhones vs. Android phones, you’re really arguing… ah… apples vs. an orange grove. All iPhones 4 are identical to each other, there’s quite a variety of Android Linux-powered phones. So, there’s really no fair way for end-users to compare the two platforms. You can only really compare specific phones when it comes to making an informed buying decision.

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