Monthly Archive for September, 2009


27
Sep
2009

The FCC supports net neutrality

Published in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , .
original article

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski outlined The Federal Communications Commission’s position on net neutrality in a landmark speech this past Monday.

The speech is remarkable, because it’s in almost complete opposition of the telco industry heavyweights’ position. None of the big telecommunications companies want net neutrality, and have been working against it in an orchestrated manner for a long time.

The speech is a manifesto for openness, transparency and promoting innovation. Everything Big Telco hates.

A vote on making the positions outlined in the speech into FCC rules is said to be taking place in October.

-TPP


27
Sep
2009

A Nation of we can’t

Published in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , .
original article

I’m not really fond of Bill Maher, because he almost always seems to articulate his ideas in the most inflammatory way, but I think he’s onto something with his recent article about how we (as in the US) can’t seem to manage to make anything happen any more.

Well, I hate to be a nudge, but why has America become a nation that can’t make anything bad end, like wars, farm subsidies, our oil addiction, the drug war, useless weapons programs – oh, and there’s still 60,000 troops in Germany – and can’t make anything good start, like health care reform, immigration reform, rebuilding infrastructure. Even when we address something, the plan can never start until years down the road. Congress’s climate change bill mandates a 17% cut in greenhouse gas emissions… by 2020!

We weren’t always like this. Inert. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law and 11 months later seniors were receiving benefits. During World War II, virtually overnight FDR had auto companies making tanks and planes only. In one eight year period, America went from JFK’s ridiculous dream of landing a man on the moon, to actually landing a man on the moon.

The last two paragraphs are typical Bill Maher, however, but the larger point about a population of sheep is completely valid. “Yes We Can” has been “Yes We Could, but The Bachelor is on!” for a long time.

-TPP


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-if-america-cant_b_299383.htmlWe weren’t always like this. Inert. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law and 11 months later seniors were receiving benefits. During World War II, virtually overnight FDR had auto companies making tanks and planes only. In one eight year period, America went from JFK’s ridiculous dream of landing a man on the moon, to actually landing a man on the moon.


24
Sep
2009

Direct Marketing Association – hackers’ delight

Published in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: .
original article

Everyone pretty much knows the Direct Marketing Association is a complete joke with regards to online privacy, but it gets far worse than that.

Apparently their opt-out lists are storing people’s passwords in cleartext, and non-administrators at DMA have access to the entire database, AND are sending emails with those passwords.

I would be willing to bet their website is not secure enough to withstand an attack from a hacker who knows what he’s doing. If that ever happens, that hacker has access to a relatively large database of privacy conscious users, including their passwords. Everyone knows most people use the same passwords on multiple online services, so once a hacker has that database he’s got keys to a LOT of other information, incl. most likely services like Paypal, online banking, etc.

But what else could you expect from an organization that’s been fighting people’s right to privacy for decades. I guess they’re practicing what they preach.

-TPP


06
Sep
2009

Fuck Vista

Published in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: .

One of our laptops broke down about a week ago. It was running XP just like every other computer we have.

However, it’s either impossible or expensive these days to buy new laptops with XP running on them. Dell seems to be charging over $100 extra to replace Vista with XP on their laptops. So I bought an Inspiron 1545 running Windows Vista Home Premium.

The laptop arrived last week and it is great, except for the fact that it’s running Vista.

I’m moving the files from the old laptop…it manages to run for about 45 minutes before BSOD…to the new laptop. I’m using my NAS drive to copy files from the old laptop, and eventually onto the new one. I already destroyed an USB drive when the old laptop BSODed during a file transfer. The NAS drive is running on a redundant file system, so if anything goes wrong I won’t lose any of the files.

Anyway, copying the files from the old laptop to the NAS drive was easy…with the frequent BSODs notwithstanding. It’s roughly 10GB of files.

I’m now slowly (you’ll see what I mean in a sec) transferring the files from the NAS onto the new laptop. Normally I’d already be done, but since the laptop is running Vista, this will take me all night, because Microsoft has managed to somehow completely fuck up how it copies files over a network connection.

I’m currently transferring about 65MB of digital photos. I have 42.5MBs left, and the estimated time of completion is 2 hours and 18 minutes. That’s at a speed of 6.95KB/s.

Yes, you read that right. 6.95KB/s. On a LAN.

I get better transfer speeds from a music pirate in Ukraine sharing his electronica collection.

The files are transferring at normal speeds on all the other computers, all of which are running on XP.

Seriously. WHAT THE FUCK!?

I’ve done everything suggested online to fix this issue. Every, single, fucking, thing. Well, except upgrading to XP.

This problem with slow network file operations was noticed two years ago. It hasn’t been fixed, and since it’s not fixed yet I’m assuming it will never be fixed. There are reports out there that suggest the problem exists in Windows 7 as well.

I wonder if Dell would replace Vista with XP, free of charge, if I called their support. I doubt it.

Instead, what I’ll probably do is setup a ftp server on the NAS (it’s running Linux, thank God) and transfer the files that way. It seems as if this “feature” of Vista only happens if you copy files using Windows Explorer. I will probably be able to set that up faster than what it’ll take to copy those remaining 42MB of files.

This is the same reason, btw, why I upgraded from Vista to XP at work over a year ago.

-TPP


05
Sep
2009

Cash4Gold == Pennies4Gold

Published in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , .
original article

Cash4Gold, famous for cheesy commercials and lowball offers, is sueing two ex-employees, Consumerist.com and ComplaintBoard.com, because it feels like telling the truth about their business practises is somehow not appropriate.

They are also trying to game Google search results, unsuccessfully, to hide the fact that they’re sleezy. There’s no chance in hell Cash4Gold will succeed.

-TPP