For Kindle users, Calibre is the way to go

It is amazing just how good Calibre, a free, open source program, is. It will allow almost anything to be converted into the Kindle-viewable MOBI format and the books look great too! I used it on other kinds of ebooks, PDFs, and even an ebook published as a whole folder full of HTML and it converted them. The only thing it wouldn't turn into a .mobi ebook was a Word document, but that was easily fixed by exporting it as a PDF in OpenOffice and converting that. Awesome. It is available for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux.

Apparently Final Fantasy XIV sucks

At least according to almost all critics. Since I don't do MMOs, I haven't got it and never planned to. I thought trying to insert MMOs into the main Final Fantasy series was a horrible idea when FFXI came out, and think it's doubly so now.

I hope this won't be the deathknell of the Final Fantasy series. It certainly doesn't help after Final Fantasy XII and XIII were both radical departures from the tradition of the series in totally opposite directions (heck, Final Fantasy XIII even did away with even a vestigial airship for you to control). Don't get me wrong, I really liked XIII, and I loved XII. The series already feels like its losing cohesion.

If it were to end, then it's a pity they didn't stop with X. That would have been a perfect stopping point, considering both the overall feel of the game and the nice, round number. It also still is my favorite of the whole series. XII, and XIII too, should definitely have still been made, but should have been branded differently. Final Fantasy XII was heavily influenced by the Final Fantasy Tactics team anyway. It was awesome, but it was its own kind of awesome, not a specifically Final Fantasy kind of awesome. Final Fantasy X-2: nah. It's origin was the need to explicate Tidus' fate, and they did a horrible job even doing that. All you had to do was excise one solitary line of optional dialog from FFX which made you think the scene where he comes back might be a dream and it there'd have been no need anyway. Besides, I personally consider it to be a Compilation entry, like the movie Final Fantasy: Advent Children anyway, and not a real main Final Fantasy game.

If XV isn't torpedoed by Final Fantasy XIV, I think it needs to be like Final Fantasy IX: a return to tradition to bring the series as a whole back into focus. Getting Uematsu to do the entire soundtrack, as they did with Final Fantasy XIV (more's the pity!), would be awesome. I also feel like they not only need to have an airship, it should be a freely navigable airship like I-IX had. This need not mean bringing back the conventional overworld map. Seiken Densetsu II and III had an airship equivalent without an overworld map, as did Lost Odyssey for the XBox 360.

Jammie Thomas case shows how ludicrous copyright law is

$1.5 million for sharing $24 worth of songs? Really? Even the minimum statutory damage of $750, or $18,000 is still severe considering the crime. Going by the IFPI's figures, 40 billion files shared in 2008 (IFPI is the internation equivalent of the RIAA). If every person were to be made to pay the same amount as Jammie Thomas, the amount would be $2,500,000,000,000,000. That 2.5 quadrillion dollars, or 2,500 trillion dollars. It dwarfs the world GDP, which is only 57,843,376,000,000, i.e., 57 trillion dollars. It even dwarfs the entire net wealth of the planet. There is literally not enough money in the world for all the pirates to pay the RIAA at that level.

Obviously the sizes of the verdicts far beyond the minimum weren't based on the offense of sharing 24 songs, but rather on the supposed offense of fighting it in court rather than taking the RIAA's settlement. That is really screwed up too: to be punished for exercising your constitutional rights. The law needs to updated to take into account the individual non-commercial filesharers and have a much more reasonable damage award. $750 should be the top, or near the top, not the bottom, in such cases ($18,000 is a lot of money for normal people).

It's time for the filibuster to end

Matthew Yglesias is right: now is the right time to put the filibuster to rest. After this last congressional term it has finally matured from being something to use only in "extreme" circumstances to the default response to any bill you don't support, making 60 votes the new normal threshold for bills to pass. As such it is a critical threat to the proper functioning of our government.

As Yglesias says, now is the perfect time to get rid of it. With John Boehner becoming speaker, there is no chance that it will be "needed" to block the legislation of the Obama administration. Actually, getting rid of it is now as likely to bite Democrats on the ass as Republicans (which is why it won't get eliminated, more's the pity).

It's Amazing What Trash Makes it Into the International Press

I'm talking about the Christine O'Donnell almost-one-night-stand story. Now, I have little sympathy with O'Donnell as a candidate, as she has a Palinesque combination of religious rigidity and complete ignorance and incompetence, but this is horrible. Putting aside that this was, at least from the original Gawker story, a he-said, she-said (the pictures prove nothing other than she was likely drunk and wearing a ladybug costume), she didn't even actually do anything. I'm as partial to holier-than-thou polls being revealed to be fooling around secretly as much as the next guy, but this isn't even really one of those. In the story, she outright refused to have intercourse, and while it seems from the man's account she wanted to do... other things, they didn't even do that because apparently the man had watched too many adult movies and was turned off by women who didn't ape adult movie stars personal grooming habits.

Even if all that is true, it's still a very weak case for hypocrisy. True, what she apparently and allegedly wanted to do was against her ultra-strict anti-masturbation corner of Catholicism, and some of it was no-doubt against the rules even for married couples according to that viewpoint (I know because I used to be of that mindset, years ago; under that system, if the semen ends up somewhere where it can't even theoretically meet an egg, then its a sin--even if the woman is already pregnant or otherwise infertile). But still, even if it's true: she didn't actually do anything, she outright refused intercourse, and it was apparently an isolated incident. This doesn't even come close to being worthy of publication. Heck, even they had done it, I'd say it still doesn't; if she had a pattern of secretly screwing around or having a lengthy affair, then that would be a different matter entirely given the substantive hypocrisy that would reveal. An isolated incident while drunk doesn't qualify (nor does being drunk; I think drunkeness is listed as a sin in the Catechism, but it's not one ever, ever emphasized even in very strict, ultra-orthodox Catholic circles; Catholics are not baptists).

No SGU Review as of yet

Alas, Hulu stopped showing it in a timely fashion, even going so far as to make you wait 30 days to view new episodes. I'm not paying $1.99 a pop for SGU, either. I'll true to catch it on Comcast On Demand, but that is much less convenient for me than watching it on the computer.

While I can't comment, yet, on the content of the episode, SGU's ratings have sunk to a new franchise low with under a million viewers. No, I don't see a third season.

Some numbers just shouldn't be trumpeted

Point in case, Lulu.com's iBookstore numbers:

As of August 1st:

• Over 1,000 Lulu titles available on the iBookstore


• Over 5,000 Lulu eBooks have been purchased through the iBookstore


• Over $23,000 in Lulu author royalties paid from iBookstore sales

That's over a period of almost four months. They might as well say in that box: You'd make more money selling CDRs with PDFs of your book on the street corner, or publishing your book on Blogger with adsense.

My point is merely about the rather mystifying decision to publicize those pathetic numbers. Why the numbers are so low is another question entirely. Part of it is no doubt that Lulu.com is essentially a self-publishing platform and therefore is mainly, if not entirely, niche and amateur content. But another big factor is that the Apple iBookstore isn't selling much of anything to anyone. Moneyquote:

In August, author Joe Konrath revealed he was selling 200 books a day for the Kindle and only 100 per month on the iBookstore. This has now accumulated to 70,000 Amazon sales and just 400 sales via the iBookstore. [ed. note: emphasis added]

Stargate Universe: Awakening

The episode was good, but it could have been better. I loved that they introduced another alien species. Hopefully they will learn how to speak English and will become a major antagonist, or ally. Part of SGU's problem is that, lacking a major antagonist or inhabited planets with Stargates, there's nothing for our heroes to do except stay on that "boring old ship" as one commenter put it. Or worse, use those damned communications stones.

On the downside, they seem to be falling back into the daytime soap pacing that killed season 1.0 (evident in the pilot, which would have been too long if it were only a two-parter). C'mon, how long can Rush keep the damned bridge a secret? That really needs to be resolved in the next episode before it a) starts to piss us off and b) starts beggaring credulity that he doesn't get followed, or that someone doesn't try to enter on their own. And the sooner the how gets some real direction, the better, as it must when the whole crew knows about, and is manning, the bridge.

Lifehacker is awesome

Where else do you get a how-to on making secret compartments in books quickly and efficiently?

SGU: Aftermath I can't believe I didn't see it

The scene were Young strangles the Lucian Alliance dude almost to death is a direct ripoff of when Adama did the same thing to Athena (right after Boomer, another Number Eight, had shot him and he had to be operated on by Nurse Sharpspoon Nobedsidemanner because, oh never mind)  on Battlestar Galactica. Like most of SGU's multitudinous ripoffs of BSG, this one just doesn't come out right. Young just comes off looking, as Rush tells Angel Whoever, mentally unstable (even, and this is the important part, compared to everyone else).

I think the problem is that his rage, ostensibly at the loss of his near-term unborn child, was too diffused. From what I gathered from the episodes, no one intentionally shot TJ, she just got in the way when one of the marines decided to start a fire-fight. And the guy Young strangled was just some random dude, not even (as far as we know, or Young knows) one of the guys in the room at that time. Nor was he an identical copy of the guy who shot TJ.

MGM just went under

This can't be good news for Stargate Universe, with it's disappointing ratings. Or could it? It sounds like restructuring could free the company from limbo, so who knows?

XMarks Rescue/Buyout likely according to CEO

It's fun to speculate who it might be. Honestly, I hope it's not Google or Microsoft. It would be better if it were someone like Yahoo who doesn't make a browser themselves. That would make it most likely that the cross-browser syncing would survive, which is my favorite feature of XMarks. It makes using more than one browser really viable.

The Disappearing Bees Solved

Apparently Davros had nothing to do with it. Drat.

Stargate Universe: Aftermath

Another excellent episode. Of course Enterprise: Season 4 tells us that improved quality doesn't necessarily mean an escape from bad ratings and cancellation (which the numbers from last week's premiere seem to indicate will probably be SGU's fate), but it's still a treat for viewers while it's on.

Unlocking Destiny's controls is a breath of fresh air. As is the mention of the stones without actually having them in use onscreen. They were the bane of the season 1.0; I wished several times that they'd get airlocked, though I have to admit that they were put to good use in Sabotage and the Lucian Alliance arc. It looks like the show's getting it's footing.

Rush proves that he is NOT fit to take command, despite last week's Crowning Moments of Awesome. Unfortunately for the crew of Destiny, Colonel Young proves that he's even less fit than I thought before. It's bad enough to be criminally negligent, as his total refusal to defend the gate against the Lucian alliance was. Remember that a Stargate is a highly defensible location. If he wasn't prepared to evacuate the atmosphere, he damned-well should have had soldiers shooting whatever came through. Anyway, now he also proves that he's out of control be almost killing one of the Alliance rioters with his bare hands by chocking when doing so undermines quelling the riot rather than aided it (he could have been attacked, for example). Deciding to dump them all on the is defensible, but strangling a random dude is just crazy. As Rush points out to Angel Gloria (which is what I'll call her since Rush's establishment as a Scottish version of Gaius Baltar without the horny is almost complete). Or was it Angel Franklin?

Anyway, pity they didn't order debrainwashed Telford to take command immediately.

Update: More crappy ratings. They'd better start planning to bring some kind of closure with the Season 2 finale, because at this rate there won't be a third season.

Security Now has the Scoop on Two Troubling Bills

This is a very important Security Now to watch.



The first bill, COICA, which would allow the justice department to blacklist websites that infringe copyrights, mandating they be removed from DNS by ISPs, can be studied in more depth here. The other hasn't been proposed yet; it's expected to be proposed next year.

One URL Shortener to Rule Them All

I'm starting to think that goo.gl will be that. It has the tremendous advantage of being part of Google, which means that it will probably never go away, at least if people start using it en masse. There's all sorts of potential for integration with Chrome, which would be to their advantage. I'm using it from now on. I really don't see a purpose, or a real business model, for the bit.lys of the world. This isn't something that really needs to exist on its own.

A Quick Review of Stargate Universe: Intervention

Overall I thought it lived up to the much improved standards of Season 1.5. The resolutions to the cliffhangers were well-done, Rush's ultimate solution was awesome Good on him for having the guts to stare down the Lucian alliance; he's transitioned from a jerkass genius to someone who should be in charge. Young proved he wasn't up to the challenge when he failed to evacuate the oxygen in the gateroom, trading several lives and potentially the whole crew and the ship itself for Telford's (and, he thought, Rush's). He must have known that more than two of his people would certainly die, and everyone might die, if he didn't block their access to the ship at the point of entry.

I didn't like the parts back on the Faith planet, but then I didn't like the episode "Faith" at all. I object to the whole purpose, which was to write Alaina Huffman's pregnancy into the show. They should have found another way, even if it meant sidelining her for the duration of her pregnancy (especially since her getting pregnant by accident highlights just how absurd body-swapping sex is, especially for the women who might find themselves pregnant by someone they never met; but don't get me started on that). Failing that, they should have had the guts to have her unborn child die outright during the battle against the Alliance rather than to continue with this quasi-religious all-powerful aliens mythology and have the baby possibly have been spirited away to the Faith planet while still being dead on Destiny (what's up with that, anyway?). Bad things happen when bad guys invade and the commander is a colossal moron.

Oh, and I think Camille was a bit over-the-top emotionally. Unless something horrible was done to her by the alliance that we don't know about yet, but I doubt that given their inability to kill off TJ's baby. This isn't Battlestar Galactica no matter how much it wishes it were. I noticed she was a bit over the top in this regard back during the torture fake-out  a couple episodes back (and I was on her and Scott's side, BTW; Scott struck just the right tone). I hope they aren't making her into a wimp.

Xmarks may stay open if they can get enough interest in payment

PCWorld has the story. The pledge site is here.

The Twitter Name Crunch

You know that there's a problem when you're frustrated that all the good Twitter names you come up with are taken, you mash on the keyboard to create a new Twitter handle, check it, and find out that it's taken already. Yes, Virginia, there is an @dfsdfdsfs.

Used Computers a Casualty of the 9th Circuit Ruling

The ruling, noted below, that denies first sale doctrine to software could also potentially render older computers worthless, since the software that would run on them cannot be purchased new. Or would if Linux and Open Source weren't available. It would also appear that even the software already on a used computer would legally have to be deleted before sale if the EULA doesn't allow the transfer of the software.

Court Rules that EULAs Trump First Sale Doctrine

The AP and Slashdot have the story. From the AP story:

There are also fears that book publishers, music labels and movie studios will try to come up with their own licensing agreements to restrict the rental or resale of their copyrighted material.

That's what's terrifying about this ruling. It is easy to see how knowledge and art could be lost to the public through this kind of extreme copyright system. If the company holding the rights doesn't feel like making it available anymore, and you're not allowed to sell used copies, that work is essentially banned as effectively as if the government had censored it.

Now, I don't see this as likely applying to books, movies, or music in the too-near-term. What I'm more concerned about is video games, which are just another kind of software after all. Masterpieces could simply be lost. This will also fuel the fires of piracy.

And yes, people resorting to piracy is worse for software and other media vendors than buying used. The copyright holder might not get any more money from the sale of a used program or game than a P2P download, but that person buying a used program or game is far more likely to buy more new items than the pirate. He's playing by the rules, don't rob him of the that avenue.

Using it more, I've warmed up to Google Instant

It is of limited utility to me, though, since most of my searches are done from the browser address bar.

I'm afraid I don't like Google Instant

The search suggestions drop-down was quite sufficient. I don't want the contents of the whole page swimming around me while I'm trying to type my query. Even if the result I want appears before I'm done typing, I doubt I'll notice it as my concentration at the moment is on typing, not browsing (and yes, I do look at the screen while I type, not the keyboard). Thankfully you can turn it off.

So, is Google Instant to search what Microsoft Active Desktop was to Desktop Operating Systems?

Update: Okay, okay, I'll use it for a day before I pan it completely.

United States behind ACTA secrecy

I'm not a bit surprised. This is one issue where there really is zero difference between the two parties. Both are on the side of maximum profit for the copyright and other IP holders even if it is to the detriment of the honest consumer. Hence the DMCA being approved by Unanimous Consent in the Senate and a voice vote (i.e., so overwhelming it need not be recorded) in the House (source).

Stanford's Cathedral to Wikipedia's Bazaar

At least as far as the field of Philosophy goes. As the story submitter points out, their idea of what belongs in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is broad enough to include an article on Quantum Computing.

Chrome has the oddest gaps in its feature set

There is no simple image properties. Yes, you can inspect element, which gives you a massive amount of information about the styles attributed to the image, and if you dig deep enough even the natural height and width of the image, but I'd still very much like to cut through that cacaphony with a simple Image Properties dialog that tells me the size, the file size, and the url of the image. Like in other browsers, and image viewing programs for that matter.

Another peeve I ran into today is Chrome's lack of facilities for handling RSS and Atom feeds. Not only does it not help you subscribe, like Firefox, it doesn't even display the RSS feed in a readable way. It's just a jumble of text. I can live with it, but it's annoying.

On the bright side, I just discovered Chrome's tab-pinning feature and I love it. There are four or five sites I use constantly and being able to make them take up less space, and make them harder to close, is fantastic. I've found myself using the same windows all day rather than constantly opening, closing, and reopening them.

I assume Google's wacky new Mousaphobic logo...

is a gimmick to get people to pay attention to their event tomorrow. Reading through the linked article, I see that I was right.

Possible Sighting of FaceTime in the Wild

I was going to a walk yesterday and saw a woman holding her cellphone out in front of her while speaking audibly. She certainly wasn't talking to me, and there was no one else around, so I assume she was video-chatting over face-time.

I have to admit: I don't get it

I was browsing ThinkGeek last night and ran into the Moleskine notebooks. Apparently a little outfit in Italy has decided to turn out notebooks in a style common in Paris near the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century and which were allegedly used by the likes of Van Gogh, Wilde, Hemmingway, etc. Naturally they cost a fortune, at least for notebooks (go find the equivalent mini-notebooks at your local Target to the $6.99 ones listed at Thinkgeek and you'll see what I mean). Here's a good treatment of the whole phenomenon.

Personally, I'll stick to my college ruled Mead composition books for under $2 a pop and various generic storebought cheap booklets and notepads for writing on the go. When I'm not writing on a computer, as now, of course.

I'm back on Chrome

Firefox's big annoyance, on my Lucid Lynx system at least, outweighs Chrome's annoyances: Firefox will periodically start opening the dropdown menu on the Awesome Bar behind the browser window so I can't see it. I have to switch between programs to fix it. Very annoying.

Firefox, Chrome, and Me

I have to say that while I'm very impressed with Chrome, I'm back on Firefox again. The two main reasons are, I really like being able to drag-n-drop bookmarks into specific locations within folders on my bookmarks toolbar (rather than have them go automatically to the bottom) and I like having a mouse gestures extension that doesn't screw up context menus for me (the premier Chrome gestures extension makes you double-right-click to open a context menu). History is also handled much better.

Oh, and just to vent a little frustration at Firefox while singing their praises: I'm on the latest stable version because every frakking major new version breaks all the extensions. Naturally most extension writers haven't caught up with 4.0 Beta yet.

The Abomination that is IE 6 is Dying

Thank goodness. This is why, even if I were using Windows on my main machine, and even if IE were the best browser, I'd still want to use something else: when Microsoft has no competition, they produce garbage like IE 6. And it stays around forever.

I was right about one thing, though

The iPod Classic lives, though without a rev, just as I said. I expect it to die as soon as a 128GB iPod Touch is available, which will probably be a year from now.

Color me surprised about the Apple TV

It's HD and $99, making it the second piece of cheap merchandise, after the iPod Shuffle, that Apple's ever peddled. Like the Shuffle's missing screen, it has the oddest limitations: it is HDMI+Optical only (with no converter on sale at launch), but it will only do 720p video. So if you want to watch Netflix or purchased video on an SDTV, or in full HD (after the forthcoming 1080p update), you'll still want to get a Roku.

At least some of the content is apparently going to be protected by HDCP, which indicates that any converter, third party or not, would not work, at least for all content.

The only way that $99 Apple TV is real...

is if it is stripped not only of its hard drive, as everyone says, but also of its HD capabilities. I just can't see the new Apple TV being on the same price level as the newly price-cut Roku. That would be totally out of character for Apple. But a Roku SD level device for $99--a 66% markup--would be absolutely believable.

Roku Drops Prices - Awesome!

Since I got my Roku, I've been firmly of the opinion that it is the perfect companion to every TV. Now it is even more affordable than it was before, with prices ranging from $59 to $99. Now let's see what Apple really comes out with, if it is really as cheap as they say, and if it can do everything the Roku can do and more.

I suspect that it's abilities really will be as stated, but the price. That's something I have trouble with. Apple does not sell cheap merchandise, ever. Their lowest end Mac was never less than $499 (back before the switch to Intel) and is now $699.

Wikipedia people irritated by Wikileaks confusion

I can imagine that this would be a bit hard on them. Beyond being upbraided by family members who a) don't know you have nothing to do with WikiLeaks and b) don't have a positive view of WikiLeaks service to the global public, there's always the possibility of a bunch of yahoos going vandal on Wikipedia thinking they're the same. And of course given government incompetence, there's probably the fear in the back of their mind that some ninja will show up and kill or disappear them by mistake.

Gmail to Get Automatic Inbox Prioritization

This isn't a feature that I really need, but it is nice to see it added.

Nintendo Makes Meager Price Drop on DSi

What they need to do is not to cut the price to $149, but rather to cut it to $129 and replace the DS Lite (actually, that should have been the case when it came out). It just isn't enough of an upgrade to justify a price premium, especially considering that it takes away backwards compatibility. Hmm, I guess a $20 premium might make it a bit more attractive than it was when the premium was $40, though.

Using Thunderbird to Back Up IMAP Email

The main problem with keeping all your email in the cloud is the possibility that it will be lost. Yes, generally Google and others are reliable, but things do happen, and accounts get wrongly deleted, so having a backup is always handy. Unfortunately Gmail doesn't come with easy to use Import/Export features that let you upload and download zip files containing your entire tree, nor do others. The good news is that with IMAP, it isn't too intolerably difficult to use IMAP to backup your mail and restore it using the free Thunderbird Mail client.

First, I recommend that you start a new profile entitled "Backup" (or whatever) using the Thunderbird Profile Manager (thunderbird -ProfileManager). Now that your in your new Backup Profile in Thunderbird 3.x, do this:

1. Set up your IMAP account. Thunderbird makes this as painless as possible (including by prompting you to do it when you start a new profile), unless you're using something like Google Apps, in which case you'll have to do it manually.

 

2. Turn off indexing and smart folders. Not absolutely necessary, but helpful, since we don't need it and it will get in the way. Uncheck Edit->Preferences->Advanced ->General->Enable Global Search and Indexer. As for Smart Folders, hit View->Folders->All.

 

3. Go offline and say yes when it asks you to sync. Standard procedure in Thunderbird 3 is to set new accounts to download everything by default, so it should proceed to download everything. File->Offline->Work Offline.

 

4. Create a folder under Local Folders entitled Backup.

 

5. Select all folders in the account you want to backup (except the [Gmail] folder and its subfolders if you're using Gmail) and drag-n-drop them in the folder you just created. They will be copied.
   
   
   
   1. If you are using Gmail, and you followed my instructions, go ahead and copy [Gmail] over now. If you didn't, you'll probably notice that the copy stopped after [Gmail]. Why? I have no idea. But it does, which is why I told you not to copy it with the rest.
   
    
   
    

 

6. Right click on Local Folders and select Settings. Click Browse (next to the path where Local Folders is stored on your computer). Zip up all files and directories named "Backup".

 

7. Delete the Backup folder in Thunderbird.

 

8. Launch the Thunderbird Profile Manager again, delete the Backup profile if you want to (or save it for next time if you're not worried about disk space), and start your normal profile.

 

Restoration involves simply dropping the saved files into Local Folders again (while Thunderbird isn't running).

You could have just copied the files out of the IMAPMail directory, but I find that that has issues associated with it (some messages don't come through right, read data is lost). This method avoids those. And it also doesn't require the use of any extensions.

Note: If you have a lot of mail on the server, expect this to take a long time. Also it will take a lot of space, especially if you're using Gmail. Each message will have to be downloaded multiple times: once for each label it has and another for All Mail, which means you can expect to have it download and store every message at least twice (unless you archive everything and avoid labels like the plague).

Full-body Scans on the Street Outrageous

What's next? Google Full-body Streetview?

This has got to be against the fourth amendment. Making people submit to a full-body scan to get on an airplane and randomly scanning people on the street are two very, very different things (and I'm not saying the former is right to begin with). In the one case you are voluntarily trying to board an airplane (i.e., if you chose to go by car, train, or boat you could avoid it), in the other you're being virtually strip-searched at random on the public street with no reason to suspect you've done anything wrong at all.

Netflix Streaming Far Cheaper than Mailed DVDs

I recently ran across a very old story, that it costs Netflix about one-tenth as much to stream a movie as to mail one, but it got me thinking. If that's so, it isn't automatically to Netflix's benefit to stream rather than mail, though it seems like it would be. After all, you can watch far more movies streaming than you can via DVD, at least on most plans. If one has the minimal plans, one or two discs, one could easily watch ten times or more streaming than one could get with those one or two discs.

My guess is that most people have more than the minimum, so it is a net profit if people with four or five discs spend more time streaming.

Ever Wonder Why Playstation went with Symbols

PC World has an interview with the guy behind that unique design decision.

TiVo Makes Remote with Slider QWERTY Keyboard

Wired has the story.

I don't have a TiVo, but I know the pain of trying to enter text on my Roku box (particularly when I search for YouTube Videos). I'd love to have a remote like this, if it weren't $90 at least.

Oh, well. At least with my Xbox, I can plug in a usb keyboard if I really need one.

PC World Gives Its Candidates for Apple Retirements

Read about it here. I've heard the rumor about the iPod Classic elsewhere. If Apple comes out with a 128 GB iPod Touch (the current high end one is 64 GB with an MSRP of $399). That way they'll only be sortof screwing the people that want to take their whole music library with them wherever they go (i.e., by making them pay $399 instead of $249).

Whether that will happen is another matter entirely. My gut tells me it won't, based on flash prices and the amount of flash in all their other products (you still can't get 128 GB in an iPad, and the iPhone 4 tops out at 32 GB). Going to $499 would also be a real stretch. So my guess is that the iPod Classic will hold on for another cycle until a flash player gets close to the 160 GB threshold. I just don't expect it to get revved again.

Even Google Sources without RSS...

really have RSS since there's a feed option for Google Alerts. I just stumbled upon it by accident when I was looking for a way to get a feed for Google's Real Time Search.

Migration Assistant in Thunderbird 3

I just found it. I feel silly now for my initial hatred of TB3. The Migration Assistant lets you conveniently turn off all the new features in one place (while explaining what they do).

Technology may be killing characters in China/Japan

Apparently, many youth are so used to using alternatives on computers and phones--Roman pinyin in China, the kana scripts in Japan--that many can't remember how to write in characters. It's a pity that such a beautiful element of culture should be lost, but still, it is probably inevitable.

Are Gmail Phone Calls meant to compete with Facebook?

I thought the idea was crazy when I first came across this Wired story in Google Reader. After reading it, I am not so sure. I do appreciate that adding the ability to make and receive phone calls will make you keep a Gmail tab opened all the time, which will be very useful when Google launches their rumored social networking service. It is important to them that they be the nexus of the users' Internet experience and not Facebook.

Sony Predicts at least another 10 years of discs

Ars Technica has the story. When game discs finally go, assuming the DRM dragon hasn't been slain, it will create a world in which content will easily cease to exist. When a company ceases to support a game or a platform, it would disappear, at least as far as the law is concerned. What would our society be like if the Greeks and Romans had built self-destruct codes into their books?

The ethical hacker could easily be a hero in that new future, saving works of art from DRM-induced oblivion.

Business Insider is apparently VERY bullish

about the new Gmail calling.

OpenOffice.org to be Oracle's next target?

Oracle, which recently acquired Sun, is shaping up to be the SCO of the 2010s (only worse, since they are a real, powerful company, instead of just a sock-puppet for the competitors of open source), declaring an all-out war on Free and Open Source Software. This PC World article suggests that their next step, after killing OpenSolaris and suing Google over Android, may be to kill off OpenOffice.org. Naturally "kill" here means forcing it to fork. Really trying to kill it would entail suing over potential patent issues, and any intelligent fork would be based in Europe or somewhere else with more liberal software patent laws than the US.

Fully VOIP Phone Calls in Gmail

I wonder whether this is a feature that will ever be used. I mean, phone calls and Gmail aren't two things I naturally think of together. Chat, fine. Video and voice chat, yeah, maybe. But POTS calls? We'll see.

Update: PCMag is bullish.

PowerPC Mac users are in trouble

Firefox to stop development (probably) for the PowerPC Mac platform.

My first thought when I saw this was, "There are still people using PowerPC Macs?" Which, of course, is a stupid question, especially since the computer I'm on at the moment is as old as a PowerPC Mac (and running Lucid Lynx just fine).

Changes at Daedaleus.com

As my readers have already no doubt noticed, or would have if they existed yet, my blog has undergone a change. That's because I moved from the free DreamHostApps account I was using to a paid webhosting account at WebFaction. I chose a new theme after running into some trouble tracking down the old one (which wasn't that great anyway). I plan to tweak this one heavily in the coming months, so bear with me.

As always, feel free to leave comments. The blogrolls should be recreated soon also.

Amazing! Google Docs now has tabs!

You have no idea how much it irked me that I couldn't do something as utterly basic as use tabs in Google docs without it being a kludge (i.e., instead of inserting a real tab, it just did four or five spaces). No more! Google Docs now has tabs, just like Notepad.

I don't actually use Google Audio/Video Chat

But it's good to see support come to Linux.

Americans generally assume all advertisement is deceptive

See Engadget today: Sharpie Liquid Pencil, the aftermath: it's 'permanent,' not permanent.

As for the pencil itself, while "liquid graphite" sounds cool, it is essentially just an erasable pen. Those were all the rage in the third grade at my school, but soon fell out of favor because they are poor substitutes for either real pencils or real pens. From the abysmal Amazon.com Reviews, these are no different.

Mac's Favored by College Freshmen

Slashdot reports that Macintosh's share of the Freshmen market, so to speak, at the University of Virginia has steadily risen and is threatening to break 50%. Not surprising. Macs are cool, pretty, have Unix at their core but unlike Linux can run Office and Adobe Creative Suite. And if you're already spending a gazillion dollars on tuition, why the heck not?

Not Everyone Loves Google Apps

They are great tools for consumers, well, except maybe for Google Docs (I want my tabs, dammit, so all web-based word processors suck for me), but are not yet up to the challenge of meeting business needs. At least according to some.

New Google Reader Feature Needed

There needs to be a way to unstar articles en masse. It is a pain in the you-know-what to unstar a whole bunch of articles one-by-one, as I currently do. I use stars to choose candidates for blogging and I prefer to keep my starred folder clean rather than pick an arbitrary date not to look beyond.

Apple getting exclusive deal with Liquidmetal

Well, the Sandisk Titanium is way over anyway, so this won't be a problem. Assuming flash drives even count under the agreement as consumer electronics (as opposed to, say, computer peripherals).

Guide to the Last Gmail Rev

Gmail Revamped: A Hands-On Look

The improvement to the Contacts was much-welcome, though the other UI tweaks took a tiny bit of getting used to.

Thunderbird Annoyance Solved

While we're on the subject of Thunderbird, I'd like to point out this extension to my readers. It allows you to change the order of your email accounts in Thunderbird, something that is otherwise impossible without a) deleting and readding accounts or b) editing a config file by hand. See this MozillaZine article for further reference.

Revisiting Firefox 3

I decided to give Firefox 3 another chance and found that, with a fair amount of tweaking, it can be made to behave well. After I turned off the tabbed interface, turned off Global Search and Indexing, switched from the Smart Folders view to the All Folders view, and (most annoyingly) turned off "Keep messages for this account on this computer" for each IMAP account individually, it worked almost the same as Thunderbird 2. The new superior Gmail integration paired with promise of regular security updates provided me with enough motivation to upgrade. I still abhor their choice of defaults, but at least it's configurable so I can get rid of their annoying interface choices (the KDE folks desperately need to take a page from that playbook; drag n drop popup menu, I'm looking at you).

For further reference see Thunderbird 3 for Users.

The New Yorker on WikiLeaks, Napster, and Overclassification

Chasing WikiLeaks

The part about overclassification seems right on to me, but I'm not sure the Napster comparison rings true. Sure, there'll be copycat sites, but will they be able to attract the same community of leakers that WikiLeaks does? Will they be able to filter out misinformation deliberately leaked by the government to poison the well? Remember that Napster provided a medium to share music that was already mass media. Getting the stuff to begin with was never a problem. With classified material, it is getting the stuff to share that's the hard part.

URL Expanders

URL shorteners, like Bit.ly, have become ubiquitous with the meteoric rise of Twitter. The problem with them is that they cause people to click links without really having any idea where they go. To get around that problem, there are several browser addons that will expand the links for you so that you can see where your going and make some sort of informed decision as to whether you want to go there.

Bit.ly itself makes a Firefox add-on, and one for Chrome too, which serves this purpose not only for its own site but for others as well. On the downside, it has been reported to relay every non-https URL you visit to the servers. At least one commenter claims that it has serious performance issues if there are a lot of shortened URLs on a given page. While the "hang" on such pages wasn't too bad when I tried it, it was noticeable. It also makes you create an account.

Another very popular one is Long URL Please, which is currently the one I use. This one changes the URL in the document itself before displaying, and the link contents and the title depending on what options are selected. It avoids the performance issues by apparently skipping links if they take too long, which means you may have unconverted links here and there that can only be filled in by refreshing.

A little-known expander is Xpnd.it!. Like Bit.ly Preview it does the tooltip thing, but it also has the same performance issues that extension too. I'm also a bit wary of it due to  being such an unknown product (i.e., not enough people hammering on it to see if there's anything seriously wrong there).

Note: Use these at your own risk. I certainly can't guarantee that any of them are safe, nor that the other two don't have the same privacy concerns as Bit.ly Preview.

The Power of RSS and Google Reader

Google's goal in life is to organize the world's information. It is ironic, then, that Google Reader, which is one of their most powerful tools for doing that, receives so little attention. I can hardly imagine a day without spending a great amount of time looking at my Google Reader account. With it, information from all over the world, from the New York Times to the Mainichi Daily News out of Tokyo, from the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph in the UK to Le Monde in France (conveniently translated into English by Google Reader) flow into my account all the time. Not to mention a dozen tech news sites and blogs and a ton of Twitter feeds (the sort that I want to follow, but I don't want clogging up my own Twitter feed).

Unfortunately there are drawbacks. The interface can be a bit clunky. While it does give you the glorious ability to search feeds, it can be inconvenient to actually select the feed you want to search. And yes, you can type into the drop-down box, but that only searches for what you type in the beginning of the name of the feed. What I want is for the search box to default to whatever feed or folder you're looking at, which is exactly what Gmail has done for ages.

New Study Says No Water on Moon

Wired has the story.

The Radical New Interface of Thunderbird 3...

isn't the only thing that sucks about it. Apparently it's a massive resource hog as well.

Okay, okay: It's only fair to mention that I'm only a light user of Thunderbird, doing the lion's share of my email on the web. Maybe if I used it religiously I would grow to love the new interface. Who knows? As it is though, I'm a happy user of Thunderbird 2 and this new story makes me even happier.

Academic Cheating and Internet File Sharing

This New York Times article describes widespread copying off the web without attribution in colleges across the country. It also makes a link between that and rampant piracy, which Matthew Yglesias takes issue with.

I think that the relationship between the two is highly exaggerated. As one of Yglesias' commenters pointed out, "It’s perfectly legal to submit “Paradise Lost” for your MFA thesis, but that wouldn’t get you anywhere with your committee chair." And it's perfectly legal to buy the copyright to a paper from someone else and submit it as your own, but it's still plagiarism in the academic sense.

I do think that nebulous authorship does have a lot to do with it, though. If the college does not adequately drill in to student's heads that they have to attribute everything, even things written collectively and especially even Wikipedia, it is easy to see yourself as a part of the collective and regard it as unnecessary to attribute. Besides, you might reasonably have some trouble figuring out how to attribute something like Wikipedia if your handbook isn't really good about websites.

Finally, I find this quote from the NYT article to be astonishingly stupid:

She contends that undergraduates are less interested in cultivating a unique and authentic identity — as their 1960s counterparts were — than in trying on many different personas, which the Web enables with social networking.

“If you are not so worried about presenting yourself as absolutely unique, then it’s O.K. if you say other people’s words, it’s O.K. if you say things you don’t believe, it’s O.K. if you write papers you couldn’t care less about because they accomplish the task, which is turning something in and getting a grade,” Ms. Blum said, voicing student attitudes. “And it’s O.K. if you put words out there without getting any credit.”

College itself requires you to put on personas and say things you don't believe. Tell me you've gone to college and never gotten a writing assignment that said, "Take a strong position on x and back it up with facts and arguments." where you still had to do it even if you didn't have a strong position on the chosen topic. Heck, we had to do that in my grade school where we were all split up into two teams to debate whether smoking should be illegal or not.

Oh, and social networking and Internet personas have nothing to do with "writ[ing] papers you couldn't care less about because they accomplish the task, which is turning something in and getting a grade". That also is an essential part of college. Not every assignment is going to be one that you care about for anything other than the grade it gives. That was just as true 100 years ago as it is today.

As for anonymity being a consequence of the alleged lack of uniqueness the Internet age engenders, I think the reason for it is actually tied to uniqueness of identity now as much as back in the era of Publius and the Federalist Papers: you write anonymously because you want to protect your unique identity, i.e., your reputation, and still speak in an unfettered manner.