Grand Theft Auto Lawsuit: It was bound to happen

Vent Visor Greatest low tech after market product for a car. These small Awning-like devices fit over a cars' window, allowing one to securely leave a windows open an inch while away from a car, allowing hot air to vent, so in the middle of the summer you car is 120 degrees inside when you return instead of 160 degrees. And with the awning effect, they keep out anything except hurricane rain.

Microsoft tries catch up. maps.google.com for a while now has been better than maps.yahoo.com, in part because of the excellent way Google has integrated Satellite imagery. Now Microsoft is getting into the act, blatantly copying the look and feel of Google. Then Microsoft accidently used 14 year old imagery for just that area of California covering where Apple's Headquarters is.

On my wish list: Motorola has been very successful with its Razr V3 cell phone, selling millions. To try to keep the buzz they introduced a Black model. No special features, just black. But hopefully later this year, a true successor, the V3x is due to appear. Seems like maybe V4 would make more sense, but regardless, I want one.

Followup. This Motorola puppy isn't so bad either.

a new Target store: I went to see a new Target store minutes after it first opened for the first time today (Meyerland, Houston, TX). I was underwhelmed. They took 6 months to remodel a former K-Mart location that had stood vacant for a year. They were still stocking shelves. They had done zero to announce the store. No ads in newspaper or weekly papers. No flyers or mail to neighborhood. No specials for the opening, no prizes for first 100 customers. Big surprize, the store was very empty, and will likely stay that way, as the upper middle class lily white neighborhood may not react well to a store where 90% of its staff is minority. Doesn't Jesse Jackson complain when a stores' diversity doesn't match the community it's located in?

Followup: 30 hours late, I receive a postcard announcing the opening of the new Target. I call their 800 number and after 5 minutes on hold am hung up on.

Where to buy Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas now? With major chains no longer carrying this item (see July 20 post), one can turn to eBay. This $49.99 PC game goes for over $70 on eBay.

Web sites that don't want to communicate with you: PC World writes about web sites that hide their "Contact us" link, making it hard to do so. What they fail to mention is all too often anymore, any answer you get is worthless boilerplate sent from India at 3 AM U.S. time.

I've had issues with Banks violating their own "privacy" rules and sending me junk snail mail, and then :

- There's no one to complain to
- The droids at their 800 number will hang up on you
- You won't even get an apology, let alone compensation

GTA rating changed: As I expected.

Followup: Target, Walmart and BestBuy have announced they're discontinuing sales of the game. The NY Times reports on it all, a day later.

More on GTA: See my July 12 post, this is a followup. Hillary Clinton has complained about the now revealed x-rated Game Play. There is a difference between adult content, and adult content that treats women as sex objects. Some, perhaps too willing to criticise our next President have wondered how genuine her criticism is. While a change in game rating from Mature (over 17) to Adults Only (over 18) shouldn't affect sales too much, in reality it would as many outlets refuse to sell Adults Only games. Others (July 16) worry about law suits that may now be generated. Me, I'm more concerned about the misleading statement released by the game publisher, Rockstar making like the sexual content wasn't there before. It's effectively disputed by the author of the patch that reveals the additional game elements in question, apparently by merely flipping the "censor" switch.

This week's report of MAJOR security flaws in Microsoft Windows. Still new avenues of attack against Windows are being identified ==and== used. The story is here. Seems everyone needs to be a patchmaster to safely use a PC.

Gmail (Google email) humor: At 6:30 AM CDT today the following was returned when I attempted to check my Gmail:

Server Error

Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

X-rated Easter Egg in the news: "Easter Eggs" have been in software just about since the first commercial software. An Easter Egg might require a non obvious game play, or some secret key press to activate a hidden message or aspect of the game. They were in computer game software 25 years ago. Now it turns out a "blocked" and/or "Easter Egg" feature of the game Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas is made available by a patch, readily available on the internet. The patch, labeled "Hot Coffee (adult) Mod", changes game play so that if you ask a girlfriend to have coffee with you, she will then be intimate with the character. This is apparently not the first X-rated Easter Egg. Check here.
If this part of the game, here to fore unavailable, is available, it should make the game itself x-rated, and a change in rating for the game as a whole is in fact being considered.
Revealing already extant x-rated software is different from a third party adding features to a
game to make it x-rated (and this also has been going on for at least 8 years, and with little in the way of complaints). Although the end result may equally upset the parents of a young teenager.

Broadband via your power lines? Certainly possible and now being tested in Houston, Texas; it was considered by Enron Broadband ($550 for details). Only one question. What speed? DirecWay currently sells 500 kbps as Broadband, as do cellular carriers. Dsl broadband over phone lines is about to be at 6000 kbps, 12+ times faster.

Microsft Windows machines still vulnerable: Despite efforts by Microsoft to close some security holes in their operating systems, Windows PCs are still vulnerable. Do you have antivirus software on your PC? Is it updated to July 2005 definitions??? As always never open email or an attachment you are not expecting. Here is the latest trick to get you.

Prius for immediate delivery! I stopped by a Toyota dealer today to compare more carefully the Toyota Matrix with the Pontiac Vibe I had just purchased. I decided the Vibe was better, what with better tires, and other more customer friendly features. Then I noticed 2 Prius cars sitting on the lot, available for sale. The notion of a 6 month waiting list is not valid any longer. Checking on the Internet at Toyota.com, one can enter their zip code, pick a dealer, and search inventory, and find many new 2005 (60 mpg City rated) Toyota Prius sitting on dealers lots.

The next thing: TiVo results in time shifting. Slingbox results in place shifting! Think of it as a personal broadcaster. Take your Cable box, DVR or TiVo output, and watch it on a PC anywhere via the Internet. Read the review. It's now hit the mainstream news here.

SBC stupidity : I was taught "Never blame on malice that which can be blamed on stupidity" So the fact SBC still hasn't (as promised) corrected my dsl bills from a month ago, nor issued any of the promised credits, I guess demonstrates what a stupid outfit they are, so I won't be buying any SBC stock, despite a high dividend.
At least the broadband (dsl) is working reliabily and fast, something I could NEVER say for Time Warner and their cable broadband.
FOLLOWUP: The numbers appear correct over at the SBC website, but zero itemization.
The SBC/Yahoo site has differing information. Next week they need to get organized so as to not confuse their customers and generate unnecessary support calls. STUPID.

Your trade-in value may vary: Four trade-in stories.

One - I wanted to trade the Goodyear Eagle tires on my new car for Michelan MSV tires. $90 Goodyear tires would get me $20 each on trade.

Two - Car dealers don't want your 11 mpg Ford Epedition. You paid $40,000 three years ago,
good luck getting $8,000 in trade now.

Three - A 3 1/4 year old Nissan Xterra is worth 50% of what was paid for it when trading it for new car.

Four - A two year old Power Macintosh can fetch 45% of what was paid for it by selling it on eBay.

Something to do with law of supply and demand.

Low tech savings: My new Vibe lacks carpeting in the "luggage" area behind the back seat. One can go online to J.C. Whitney, and find a custom carpet piece for $129, or buy a OEM Pontiac carpet for even more, but I just went to Pep Boys, and bought a piece of carpet (3' x 6') for $9.99, and took a scissors and trimmed it to fit perfectly.

GM in distress: With General Motors having trouble selling cars, they are offering some good promotions currently, so I spring for a Pontiac Vibe (really a rebadged Toyota Matrix) for about $6325 off sticker when all is said and done, and then the Dealer effectively gave me 100% of Kelly Blue Book Trade in value, when in previous years it was a struggle to get a dealer close to such a figure.
The dealer also sells Hummer, and its not too big a stretch to think of the Vibe as a mini-Hummer. The Hummer is the H2 model, and they soon will have a newer slightly smaller Hummer model called the H3. So I'm putting an H5 logo on my Vibe.
The Vibe is rated 29 mpg city, so I will be contributing less in the future to Saudi sheiks.

Bush and Congress could so trivially solve our energy import woes. Just get Oil Shale production going in the U.S., (How does 60 trillion tons of reserves sound?) and it could cost zero to do that. Just have the government be a buyer of last resort for Oil; from Oil Shale. If you guaranteed a price of $44 / barrel, the industry would boom, and with Crude prices currently at $59 the government could just sit back and watch the Saudis squirm. Without a government guarantee, investors are not confident oil prices will stay at a high level, and will stand on the sidelines.

First word on an Intel based Macintosh: ThinkSecret.com has reports from developers receiving their $999 Developmental Intel based PowerMac, and its looking good.
Details here.

25th Anniversary of Pac-Man: Great computer game, first appeared in 1980. Atari (then owned by Warner Brothers) bought the home rights and proceeded to shoot themselves in the foot by too quickly bringing an inferior version (I called it "Flickerman" at the time) for the Atari 2600 game console to market in 1981. They produced 12 million copies, when only 10 million game consoles had been sold. They did even worse with their ET-Phone home game, 4 million of which ended up in a New Mexico landfill.

If Atari had first brought out the good version of Pacman that they later did for their 400/800 home computer, Atari could have captured that home computer market. There was a brief period where Atari outsold both Apple IIe and IBM PCs. You do know there was an Atari version of Visicalc?

Your Terablogger was President of Atari user groups in Houston and New Orleans during the 1980-85 time period, so may be somewhat biased about Atari.

ebay to the rescue: I have this tiny flat salt shaker that fits in my shirt pocket, and I use to carry my Sodium free salt with me. It's nice and tiny and portable (and easy to lose), and well made by Tupperware; but you can't buy the things, they're only party favors. A Tupperware kiosk in a mall had none, and regardless of price offered said they couldn't get them for me.
But I found them for sale on Ebay!

How to keep an organization secure: Sure there are infinite ways to steal data. But hire good people, treat them fairly, encourage them, allow them to grow professionally and reward them for doing so; and don't give them reasons to become disgruntled. One easy way: All salaries are posted. Stops an HR department from doing its usual good job of creating job security for itself by allienating employees and increasing turn over. i.e. "After all, you're exempt" or "this is an Employment at will State" or my favorite: "Let's save money, this year we'll give bonuses instead of raises". Sometimes I think HR departments main job is to look for excuses to not provide promised benefits. If an organization is relatively flat with few levels of management, less time is wasted forever redoing organization charts.

It's the email stupid. Don't distract yourself worrying about iPods. Outbound email is your corporations' biggest security hole. Read here. And with free email available at Google, Yahoo and Mail.com, etc., scanning your email server will miss most everything anyway, whether it be outgoing secure documents or incoming virii.

Pod Slurping : New term coined here, for the use of an iPod to surrepticiously suck data off a PC for nefarious purposes. The proposed methods of protection are not well thought out !

1. Ban iPods. All manner of USB devices with 1 Gig of memory are very small any more and are excellent for slurping. Right, ban them too?
Are you ready to quash productivity by banning PDAs which also can slurp data?

2. Turn off USB ports in BIOS. So your keyboard, mouse, scanner and printer won't work now? And your PDA can't synch the new meetings your secretary put on your calendar? And with CD-R and DVD-R devices in PCs, you have another convienent avenue for "slurping" gigabytes of data.

3. Enforce strong physical security. All too many (70% ?) security breaches are inside jobs,
which means numbers 3, 4 or 5 are no panacea.

4. Place data on a server rather than local workstation. Same problem as number 3 !

5. Encrypt data. See number 3 AGAIN !

=================

And then if a Computer has Bluetooth capability, one could "slurp" via their cell phone, as many new phones have megabytes of RAM on board. If the data theft is an inside job one doesn't need gigabytes of data, just the 8 Megs of the latest bid proposal, budget, patent application, proposed Partner selections, proposed new organizational chart or incriminating email. How about a Personnel Spreadsheet that could be used to prove the males are paid 20% more than the females in your organization?

===================
IMHO Biggest corporate security hole occurs when a hot new Job candidate comes in and is shown all the "new" stuff to impress him or her. They can go to work elsewhere, or remain at their current position, remembering what they were recently shown, or even given documentation on.

SBC/Yahoo violates their own Privacy Policy On day one of creating my sbcglobal.net email 5 weeks ago, I immediately went to "Marketing Preferences" and opted out of Everything. I just double checked and those settings remain intact. Despite that I received SPAM from SBC today for a pager to my SBC email address. Further that letter has no additional opt-out link within it. I am requesting compensation for this violation and will keep on their case over this.

Cingular sent me two copies of the same SPAM 3 days ago pushing some marketing promotion, and with them my account has been opted out of EVERYTHING for a full year. Cingular failed to include an opt-out link in their UCE. I have already requested compensation for that privacy violation.

Must be the time of year, with newly hired MBAs pushing marketing schemes, and not familiar with Privacy Law.

But then SBC is lax with privacy issues, as posted here.

Waiting on SBC billing correction. Allegedly I will receive a phone call from their "Executive Appeals" manager, so far that department has only been good at saying "Oh, I'm so sorry";
but apparently has zero authority or ability to fix their 20 year old billing system that once it makes a mistake, it lives on for months. One need only read the horror stories at dslreports.com

FOLLOWUP 4 PM : Gave up waiting for the "Executive Appeals" Manager to call me and finally got one of the folks to pass me through. Two plus hours on the phone to demonstrate chapter and verse how many times I was lied to by CSRs bent on meeting handle time limits, finally got personal assurance that an "order" is in process to correct my billing and issue the promised credits. She claimed no knowledge of residential 6.0 mbps dsl. Being the cynic I am, I have my doubts. I was particularly nonplussed when this manager who assured me she'd do what it took to solve my problem and promised to give me her phone number, wimped out and didn't give me her phone number. Hello Lily Tomlin.

SBC dsl Modem Info: Their dsl modem comes with zero documentation, and hardly any on the web on SBC/Yahoo sites. I quickly discovered it was so crippled as to be a nuisance and I went back to my Earthlink dsl modem. More recently I have found the sort of documentation and information for their modem that SBC should have provided. Typical of SBC's seemingly working to generate extra support calls. The good information is here. Nothing found there changes anything I figured out or decided to do by June 9.

SBC IS VERY PREDICTABLE: Note my June 7 post where I indicated a concern about billing. Despite my double checking with SBC on 6/8, and despite their records confirming what was told to me, I was instead charged:

1. For dsl service BEFORE my dsl was activated.
2. At a rate higher than was confirmed to me.

I called in today, and despite the web showing the incorrect billing, they claim to be unable to
issue the adjustment credits until the charges post to my bill, but claim credits will be issued. I insisted on an additional month's credit as partial compensation for the grief, and a supervisor agreed, we'll see how quickly they "discover" they can't do that.

Maybe I need to tell Ed Cholerton, chief executive officer of the SBC Media Solutions Group about how screwed up their dsl folks are.

Advice for those arrested: http://www.craigslist.com/about/best/sfo/70300494.html

Insecurity = Microsoft: Ten new security patches to be released today for Windows, likely
causing all manner of other problems, not the least of which is a computer restart will be required. Wasn't that a selling point of Windows XP, restarts wouldn't be required???

Pleasant SBC surprize: I got a phone call from the SBC "Customer Intervention Team" sort of a third tier customer support, relative to the Convergys survey I filled out. I've learned, rather than rate them 1 out of 10, I rate them 3, and a phone call is more likely generated. I gave them an earful.

1. SBC dsl is working great, is FAST as advertised, and reliable, and now - cheap.
2. Customer support can be a nitemare due to "handle time" restraints of reps,
which indirectly encourages false answers, guessed at answers, and lies.
Customer support reps have zero education on the dsl install process.
3. Documentation on the web is OK, but links may be non existant, or indexed
totally illogically. Google saves the day here. SBC/Yahoo has no
link I ever found to the free web hosting at Geocities.
4. Small steps SBC should take to drastically cut down on the number of support calls.
5. SBC's dsl modem is hard coded to the IP numbers it uses for your LAN,
so rather than reconfigure my whole Lan, I'm using my old Earthlink dsl modem,
the unconfigurable SBC modem also generates unneccessary support calls and grief.
(see June 16 posting)

SBC was kind enough to give me the "800" number back to
the "Customer Intervention Team" for future use (if necessary).

Faster Internet in the Home: I now nominally have 3.0 mbps speed connection to the internet at home thanks to SBC/Yahoo, Cable offers 5.0 mbps (but it comes with stereotypical Cable service). Now Bell South announces it will soon have 6.0 mbps download speeds for dsl available for its customers, and likely other telcos will follow suit. It doesn't show up yet on Bell South's web page.

Followup : SBC tells me they will soon offer "residential" 6.0 mbps dsl, currently available for business at $119.99/month. No word yet on date or pricing. SBC had promised PacBell residential users they'd have 6.0 in a few years back in 1999!

DSL Installation: June 7 is the "confirmed" date of my SBC dsl installation. So as of 8 AM, I'll be checking hourly: Concerns:
1. When will I be able to log onto dsl? before 11 AM
2. Will I be recapped at the 3 mbps I ordered, rather than the 1.5 mbps I have now? yes
3. Will all this get done TODAY? yes
4. Will SBC quash Earthlink's order to deprovision my phone line? apparently yes
5. Will SBC get the billing correct? Absolutely not.

FOLLOWUP 1 : 6 AM
Yesterday I got emailed a questionaire by Convergys regarding a support phone call of June 2. I hope Convergys doesn't manage CRM for SBC. If they do it would explain all its deficienies. Mandatory short handle times, tell the customer ==anything== to get them off the phone, don't identify yourself, and try to never escalate a call.
Tuesday June 7 proves I had been lied to at least twice by SBC personnel. As of 5 AM, I lost my dsl signal on my phone line. The green dsl light on the dsl modem went to blinking red, meaning the line had been deprovisioned. Well, SBC told me work started at 8 AM, and my dsl service was being switched over, not provisioned. Now both of those statements are proven lies, and they have generated an 8 AM support call.

FOLLOWUP 2: 10 AM
Apparently no one at Customer Service or Tech Support, level one or Tier Two knows anything about the install procedure, let alone the procedure for changing ISPs on a dsl line. In the midst of one call trying to check on the deprovisioned line, it became provisioned again (at about 9:30 AM), and at 3.008 mbps download instead of 1.548, and 512 kbps upload instead of 384. Those speeds are as advertised. Soon, I hope, they will configure their router so I can log in.

FOLLOWUP 3: 10:45 AM
It works! 2.341 mbps download, 417 Kbps upload speed it tested at dslreports.com/stest. Now to insert my Wireless Router.

FOLLOWUP 4: 11:30 AM Alls well that ends well. Now to see if the billing goes correctly.

Apple to use Pentium chips: Apple finally announces what had been rumored for weeks. It will give up trying to cajole IBM to keep up with Intel (in processor speed, and laptop processors), and start making all its Macintoshs with Intel inside. Apple's press release is here. Apple already has demo versions of it's OS X running on Intel chips, and has "kits" available for paid members of it's software devlopers to transition their software over. Apple confessed that it has had OS X running on Intel chips for 5 years (likely in case they wanted to have OS X for PCs). Then Apple in fine print lists all the cases where transitioning software will be far more than trivial.

• Applications built for Mac OS 8 or 9
• Code written specifically for AltiVec
• Code that inserts preferences in the System Preferences pane
• Applications that require a G4 or G5 processor
• Applications that depend on one or more kernel extensions
• Kernel extensions
• Bundled Java applications

That essentially means Apple will completely stop supporting OS 9 (effectively they have already) when the new Intel Macintoshs appear.

QUESTIONS:
Will this cause Apple as much grief as switching to Macintosh, or OS 7, or a 32 bit OS, or the switch to PowerPC 10 years ago, and then the switch to OS X? Apple never did get many developers to write software that fully used multiple processors or the 64 bit nature of the G5.
Apple wasn't able to produce a 3 GHz G5 by June of 2004 as Steve Jobs promised when he introduced G5 Macintosh computers. A year late 2.7 GHz is the fastest Macintosh and it requires a liquid cooling subsystem.

Will Intel based Macs be able to use AMD processors? If only as a threat to keep Intel cooperative.

Will the new Intel Macs be able to dual boot or be able to simultaneously run OS X and Windows?

Not so high tech: The horn on my 2002 Xterra stopped working today. The fuse I figured out its on also controls the 4 way flashers, and they still work, so I located the horn (behind the grill), saw no loose wires, and I unscrewed it (with a 14mm hex wrench), ran over to Auto Shack and for $15.95 (great on a Sunday at 7 PM) bought a new horn; wired it on, screwed it into the bracket, and Voila. I have a working horn. A point of interest. Horns all seem to be made in Italy.

dsl waiting game. My phone line is still "provisioned", that is it has a dsl signal on it, but for now Earthlink no longer allows me to connect, and SBC/Yahoo hasn't yet configured the router for me to log on at a better capped speed. I have my fingers crossed.

progress on dsl? Today, two days after the order, my dsl modem arrived, a Speedstream 5100.
I have to reconfigure my D-Link Wireless router because it was using the IP# hard coded into the Speedstream (192.168.0.1). It helps to live under 200 miles from the shipping depot, so UPS ground arrives in 1 day.

Apparently I still have to wait till the appointed "Service Activation Date" of June 7, 2005, and it will be activated sometime between 8 AM and 6 PM, coincidently the time of 800 phone support; and hope you get Amarillo which for unknown reasons (perhaps a less strictly enforced "handle time"?) seems to be the best place to get SBC/Yahoo support from, based on my empirical results.

More on dsl: Today SBC dropped its' prices on dsl. $14.95 for 1.5 mbps, and $24.99 for the
3.0 mbps download speed I had agreed to. So I called in, was told it was a 2 minute wait to speak to a representative of SBC, and 12 minutes later a representative answered the phone. But she had not been told about the price drop, and had to get a supervisors approval to give me the new lower price on my pending order. And then the rep. had to be chided to check on whether the dsl modem had shipped yet. SBC isn't set up to email one a tracking number. All in all makes one conclude Lily Tomlin is alive and well, although it's still better than dealing with Pradeep at an Indian call center. If an "Offshore" call center refuses to tell you where they are, just say "You're in Bangladesh !", to which they always will say with pride, "No, we're in India".

dsl saga, continued: Earthlink writes me (step 2 below):

> Please be informed that, once a DSL service is cancelled, it takes
> about 7 to 10 business days for the telephone line to be released
> from the DSL service.

Despite that, SBC took my order for dsl and now tells me they can
switch over an active dsl line, and transferred my call to a "Third Party Verification"
service in Arizona who had me agree that I wanted to switch.

SBC now says they're UPSing a DSL modem, and I should have service on
June 7. Possibly short cutting some of the steps I listed.

dsl provider switching, NOW THE FUN BEGINS : I love our capitalist system. Competition. If I get bad service, I vote with my feet! Since the FCC hasn't mandated anything, switching dsl providers is byzantine, while with a mandate switching Cell Carriers (and keeping the same phone number is supposed to take 3 hours - it took 3 days for me to leave SprintPCS however) is relatively quick and easy.
So I quit Earthlink 3 weeks ago. They must keep my account active till the end of the billing period they say. I signed up for SBC/Yahoo dialup cause I saw the coming grief, and my personal website is long since safely moved off Earthlink and parked at Geocities. Two days early Earthlink turns off my email. Right on time, I can no longer log into the dsl modem with PPOE. The switch will run like this:

1. Earthlink turns off my account.
2. Earthlink releases the dsl line.
3. Earthlink tells SBC it released the dsl line.
4. SBC/Yahoo updates its database so its knows my line doesn't have dsl on it.
5. I call SBC/Yahoo and request to upgrade my dial-in account to dsl.
6. SBC/Yahoo ships me a dsl modem.
7. SBC/Yahoo reprovisions my phone line for dsl.
8. I connect to dsl again. Hopefully at the faster speed I contract for.

cc: FCC

What should take minutes will take weeks. Three more weeks, best case, I guess.

Dell's Time Warp: Here it is on May 29, 2005 and I want to learn a little about the new Pentium-D, so I go to Dell.com, and configure a Dell 9100 with a 3 Ghz Pentium-D, 1 Gig of 533 Mhz Ram, a 250 Gig HD, only a 1 year warranty, an Audigy sound card, and no other bells and whistles. It prices out to under $1500, you'd save only $20 by taking no monitor instead of the 17" CRT monitor. Then to check on how backordered they are. The expected shipping date listed: May 27, 2005

Wireless Networking at tomorrow's Indianapolis 500: WiFi will be used to talk to the drivers while driving. Read about it here and here.

More Bad Tiger News I had earlier posted how I'm underwhelmed by Apple's new release of its OS X 10.4 Tiger. Safari now crashes twice a day. Seems that by adding file attributes so its "Spotlight" Search function will work, Apple has broken every extant AntiVirus program, and upgrades are non existent or not working. Apple didn't do its homework working with software publishers. Apple has stopped carrying Virex on its .Mac web site, as Virex 7.5 won't work with Tiger. An orphan web page is left behind here. Symantec's AntiVirus 9 for Macintosh doesn't work with Tiger, and they have now come out with a version 10. Heaven forfend they provide a low cost upgrade or patch for 9. And now I read reports of grief installing version 10 of the Symantec product. If you wanted to buy Norton AntiVirus for Macintosh 10.0 is 2 weeks backordered at Amazon. Seems like its time to go back to 10.3.9

Maybe it's time to ask for a refund on 10.4

cc:sjobs@pixar.com

Followup: So I'm chatting online with a teacher from North Louisiana (exact location witheld to protect the guilty), and am told "We're installing 16 new eMacs next week", and I enquired if they had 10.4 on them cause of the grief it causes for antivirus software, and was told it didn't matter because they didnt buy antivirus software for their Macs.

Lack of Network Security: I've been seeing this for three years. Why is our Government only now discovering it has WiFi Networks all over Washington D.C. that are not secure, and in some cases, wide open? Read one story about it here:

David Pogue may regain some credibility in my eyes. Anything new, software, hardware, whatever from Apple, Pogue is there with a lauditory review. Got so I started to think of him as a shill. Now he interveiews a new phone from SprintPCS. And he doesn't exactly love it.

There are 10 types of people that can understand Binary. Those who can, and those who can't.

50 Million Firefox downloads!: Don't get me wrong, I love Firefox, it's my browser of choice. But the boast that they have past 50 million downloads must be taken in context. I personally was responsible for at least 12. Three platforms each for version 1.0, 1.01, 1.02, 1.03.

And today we have version 1.04

Switching dsl providers : I've turned in my CANCELation notice to Earthlink, and already signed up for SBC/Yahoo dialup service (free the first month). When Earthlink ever gets around to disconnecting my dsl line, I can then upgrade to SBC/Yahoo dsl. Why the change -? cheaper, faster, better about covers it.

Followup 5/12 : I'm good to go now. I have my News Readers set for SBC News Server(s), and my web site now redirects to GeoCities (provided free as part of SBC/Yahoo), and with Firefox treating the advertising as popups, it doesn't show up, took just a few minutes using the GeoCities FileManager tool, only mildly more difficult than using ftp, which is only allowed on the paid version. A polite goodbye was left behind on the Earthlink webpage.

REVIEW OS X - Tiger - I've been using OS X 10.4 for almost a week now, and frankly, I'm underwhelmed. I don't see where it's so different from 10.3; I do see my Firefox and Safari crashing about once a day now. Dashboard is very nice, but hardly rates a new version number for the OS. Spotlight again is also a nice add-on. Maybe from now on, I need to just buy every 2nd or 3rd update to OS X.

I came across a Web Site with some important Life Lessons. And for those who are more visually oriented, this lesson.

Combine Websites?: Should I combine billf.net with this Blog, and only have one website to mess with? It might look like this: click here

Google vs Yahoo: Google has long since become my favorite for web searches, and with Yahoo's change in it's news page, I now greatly prefer news.google.com to Yahoo's new news page. Google's news page has no ads, and links you to the web source rather than a Yahoo page that will expire in 30 days, and so is not suitable as a link in a blog.

Even worse is Yahoo's new "My Yahoo" promotion for browsers. It's an abomination, with it's large ugly animated ads at the top of the page. Then Yahoo hides the uninstaller. Took me all of 5 minutes to decide I didnt need animated ads giving me headaches.

New Coke : Today is the 20th Anniversary of New Coke. Doesn't everyone remember where they were on April 23, 1985?

2005 Version of "Let them (not) eat cake": So the Government (Dept of Agriculture) has a new food pyramid. Too bad nearly no one can see it today (April 19,2005), the web site
mypyramid.gov is overloaded, and no one can get on. Our Government can secretly give commentators $200,000 but they can'y pay Akamai to give them enough bandwidth. The Agriculture Department's regular website has multimegabytes of PDFs separately available for download. Hours of downloads if you have dialup. Let them use Broadband.

FOLLOWUP: At 4 PM I can get to the new web page, but if I try to enter my data to see which of the 12 new pyramids it pulls up as appropriate for me, it pulls up a page with only a header; regardless which of 4 browsers I use. Seems like PPP to me.

Firefox is great, but: Firefox is a great Browser, that I recommend to everyone. Due to getting the bugs out, and removing security holes, they're already at their fourth version, 1.03 (as of April 18, 2005), and there is no inline updating procedure. One needs to find out there's been a new version released, go to their website, download the new version, quit Firefox, and install (same for all platforms). Luckily the Install cleanly installs version over version, leaving shortcuts and bookmarks in place.

AOL is not safe for your child: News this weekend of an AOL monitor person being caught trying to lure a 15 year old girl for sex. Guaranteed something like that is not an isolated occurance. No more than a problem priest pedophile is an isolated occurance.

Service Level Agreements - Cheating is common: Read this and this. Why put the fox in charge of the henhouse?

Followup April 15: Suppose you've got an SLA to fix the water treatment facilities in an office park within 5 hours of any breakdown 90% of the time. How do you game your system for tracking that, while cutting corners with parts on hand and techs available, so you can underbid competition and still be profittable? Many easy ways. We won't even discuss claiming to use only certified technicians, when maybe only one of four is. Just keep shuffling technician assignments so you can fudge the paperwork. Tricks used to keep solution time within specs include:

1. Train clients to call technician rather than Help Desk, so trouble tickets don't get entered and the clock doesn't start until after problem is solved, even if it's 2 days later. System shows problem solved in 1 hour, rather than actual 2 days. This is done by dumbing down Help Desk, and providing cell numbers of technicians, so clients think they are being smart to call techs directly.

2. Technicians call clients at 12:20 or 4:30 PM, ensuring they'll be out to lunch or gone already, so "clock can be stopped, as "client not reachable" meanwhile tech orders parts for next day delivery. System shows problem solved in 3 hours, rather than the actual 26 hours.

3. If a problem is solved, can it be made into more than 1 ticket, so the duplicate tickets are all solved "in one hour"?

4. The technician creates tickets for trivial matters (that no one called in) that also get solved "in one hour": Preventive Maintainence, Firmware upgrades, etc; further skewing statistics.

Of course these methods are easily transferable to any area of endeavor that may have an SLA for service. This could be NASA or a Refinery or your Plumbing or Internet Connection. In the 21st century American Corporations mistakenly think they are saving by outsourcing such work, not knowing how they are being used, and how the contractors have zero loyalty to them. And then we have shuttle disasters, refinery explosions, network outages, email gone astray or other grief.

Did I mention the contractor saving by providing two technicians/engineers for installing new filtration system, when manufacturer specifies system is so heavy and bulky that four are needed for safe installation? Then there's the old standard of repairing things with refurbished parts or third party parts rather than the new OEM parts the SLA may specify. Or better yet, just dusting things off and charging (T&M) for a out of spec nonwarranty repair when none was made. Any good auto mechanic can charge for at least 10 hours of work in an 8 hour day.

TIGER ! - AKA OS X 10.4 is officially released by Apple on April 29 at 6 PM. My son ordered me a copy as a birthday present. Thank you ! Will report back after install.

Hurray for Philadelphia: Philadelphia is establishing free wireless internet connectivity (wifi) Citywide. If you live elsewhere, check here!

Whither SONY : Sony has not been doing as well as it should the last few years. About to lose its Playstation lead to Xbox, never sold PCs or laptops in numbers it would like to, and totally lost out to Apple's iPod.

I thought I had a good deal with a (relatively) low priced Sony 19" LCD monitor, the SDM-S94, but inside of a month it wierded out, and the dealer offered a full refund, and return shipping at the dealer's expense. They agreed so quickly that I concluded it must be a common problem, under a secret recall. Sony tech support was even quicker agreeing to providing an advance replacement, but said it would take 10 days, and didn't/wouldn't specify if the replacement was new or refurbished. So back for a refund the SDM-S94 goes.

Followup 4/9: A 100% credit was quickly issued by ClubMac.

It's so good. This has zero to do with computers, maybe a lot to do with high tech stuff. This product has to be a miracle of modern chemistry, it contains Dioctyl Sodium Sulfosuccinate. There I was in the Supermarket today, and I saw a new item. Sugar Free Hawaiian Punch "Fruit Juicy Red" drink mix, next to the zillion varieties of Kool Aid and Crystal Light. Add a pouch of the powder to 2 quarts of water, and (to me) it's 100% as good as the Hawaiian Punch of my teen age years.
YUMMY !

Followup: Turns out it's not made by Hawaiian Punch, it's made by "Jel Sert", the folks who make Wylers drinks, which I always found inferior to other brands. Very Strange: Jel Sert makes this stuff for Mott's, which like Dr Pepper and Hawaiian Punch are all owned by Cadbury-Schweppes. Hawaiian Punch previously being owned by Del Monte and later, Proctor and Gamble.

With computers it should be instantaneous : I keep being amazed at all the things that thanks to computers should be automatic and instantaneous, but are not: Shall I enumerate?:

1. Changing dsl providers. One has to apply to disconnect from first, sign up with second,
wait for installation. Can take over a week.
2. Changing Cellular Carriers. FCC said it should take 3 hours max. Often
it takes days.
3. Changing Registrars for an Internet Domain. Should be instantaneous, but at both ends
there are delays, then further delays for email forwarding and domain forwarding.

Hybrid Cars: With gasoline rushing past $2.00 a gallon it makes sense to have a car that is a miserly as possible with gasoline. That would be a Hybrid car! Each of my two sons owns and loves their Toyota Prius, the best selling hybrid car currently available.
I have been considering such a car, and also the long promised Ford Escape Hybrid. For three years it was six months off, then announced as available in August, 2004, but I never found a dealer that had received one. Can you say "vaporware"? This week, I finally got a phone call from the Ford dealer I had purchased a 2001 Escape at, and I stopped off at last September when the 2005 Ford Escape Hybrid was announced.

"We got one in" he said. "ONE ???", I responded quizically. "We're calling everyone who expressed interest" he said. "Trying to generate demand so you can charge over sticker" I asked. "It'll likely be $3 to $5000 over sticker. I haven't seen the paperwork, but it's likely to be a $30,000 sticker". "Naturally, Detroit sticks it to early adopters by selling gussied up pricey models", I responded. Then I reminded him that 4 years ago when we bought our Ford Escape, the same dealer was charging $3000 over sticker for Chrysler PT cruisers, essentially a Neon station wagon, which was the "in-demand" car at the time. "And they sell for what now?", I asked. "Probabally right at Invoice" was the answer. "I'll wait at least until you have 5 or 6 Hybrid Escapes on your lot, I prefer not to pay OVER MSRP" I finished with.

Tipping point for Blu-ray ? Two competing standards for the next generation of DVD have emerged. hd-dvd, and Blu-ray. With Dell and Apple now on board for Blu-ray, Blu-ray is starting to look like the winner before day one. The hd-dvd web site still says "...coming soon", as of March 11, 2005 anyway. And there is both a .org and a .com Blu-ray site, but no .org hd-dvd site.

Harvard redefines "Hacker": Harvard, caught with web software so poorly written that anyone can navigate to find things Harvard doesn't want one to find, redefines what here to fore would be known as web surfing as "hacking" in a failed attempt at CYA. All the details are here.

Better than Shredco: When Enron declared bankruptcy it was soon found out they they and their Accountants, the late Arthur Andersen had had many important documents illegally shredded by sending off to a commercial shredding service: Shredco. But don't just shred the documents, why not shred your shredder or your Xerox machine? Now that's possible.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY YAHOO: I remember going to a Mactivity Meeting in 1995, and being told by the presenter about this great new thing: Yahoo. Yahoo is now celebrating it's 10th Birthday.

More in the iPod economy: With more than 10 million iPods out there and the new iPod Shuffle now selling faster than Apple can manufacture them, the latest add-on is ipod skins. A business called "decalgirl" has 23 to choose from for the iPod shuffle, 36 for a new model regular size iPod or 20 for an iPod mini, in case one of the five colors Apple provides is not satisfactory.

Beat the iPod Shuffle shortage: Apple's new low priced iPod is in high demand, and backorderd. But if you want one today, and you live in Huntington, Long Island (or be able to use their Public Library), the Public Library will provide one for you. Presumably one could offload the Audio Book, and then fill the iPod with music, and return it to being an audio book before returning to the Library. Or one could "lose" it, and pay the library the cost of the iPod.

At least one lawyer needs to learn how to use Google?: In the news on Feb. 22 was a story how a lady was suing Hewlett-Packard as her ink jet's ink cartridges stopped working due to (the suit says) a secret expiration date encoded into the cartridge. Problem is Hewlett-Packard freely admits on their web site that they do this, so how can it be a secret? Their rational is the quality of the ink in the cartridge deteriorates with time, and so they assign (like your can of tomatoes or your container of milk) an expiration date.

See what outsourcing can cause: With all the reports of security breaches, I like to regularly check on my credit cards, which over the web I can do, at least until today. Citibank's webpage "Citicards", today gives one:

.

500 Internal Server Error

 /us/cards/index.jsp:  java.lang.NullPointerException  at allaire........

Don't let X-Box burn your house down: Microsoft has issued a recall for powercords for X-Box machines made before October 23, 2003. Sign up here for your new cord, if they ever get the web site working. This morning (2/17/2005) entry of a serial number does nothing.
.
FOLLOWUP: at 9:00 AM CST the web site is now taking orders.

Technology catching up to fiction: In one of my favorite TV Series (The Prisoner), a semi-autonomous Ball: Rover: would chase after attempted escapees. Now a robotic device very similar in form and function has been designed: here.

How cold is it? or put it another way "Do I need a jacket to go outdoors"? To find the answer if your mother is not available to tell you yes, go to this web site.

Honoring Arthur Miller: It has nothing to do with technology, but Arthur Miller was America's greatest playright of the 20th century, and I am saddened by his passing today. I remember the 1999 event of his getting a "Tony Award" for Special Lifetime Achievement. When a reporter asked if he had a secret for longevity, being so spry at 84, Arthur answered: "Yes, I don't eat vegetables". Others feel the same way that what is taught in Universities of "Public Health" about nutrition is solely based upon tradition. Read here: about "Vegetable Free Living".

Back from Vacation? On February 8, 2005, Microsoft released 12 Security patches for Windows XP (MS05-05 through MS05-15). Great that they're addressing security concerns but TWELVE? in one Day? Only makes sense if some anal-retentive manager refuses to release security updates until he personally approves, and he finally got back from vacation and approved updates that had been piling up on his desk.

What happens to your Blog if you die?: A Marine Corps. reservist wrote a widely read blog about his stay in Iraq. With his passing, his parents would like access to his computer files. The Marine's ISP is refusing, citing privacy concerns. Seems ours laws haven't caught up to our technology.

AOL to drop USENET: USENET, the discussion groups that were an important part of the Ineternet Experience before Blogs will no longer be carried by AOL. AOL claims only 1000 users regularly use their USENET section. This is probably more a commentary on the poor job AOL did of maintaining its USENET service and its lame job of censorship than a lack of interest. Luckily Google provides USENET access for free. And actually the more targeted, moderated discussion boards (like those of PHP-NUKE) remove the noise, scams, spam and chain letters of USENET. One such Php-Nuke board is here (on cellular phones).

Even more scoops here: Apple has sued a web site for releasing information it would rather have kept secret. I see more secrets (Apple's and others) revealed on engadget. How about the secret on how to hack TiVo's new TiVoToGo's encryption? It's just hard to keep secrets in a free society.

Better late than Never: Microsoft, literally three years late, has come up with an answer to the problem of Spyware attacking Windows Systems. This has been a major problem for three years now, with systems being ground to a running stop by nasty Spyware (Kazaa, Comet Cursor, Gator, etc and other programs installing myriad program secretly that mess up ones computer).

Microsoft has made available for Free, a download of a "beta" of its Spyware detection and removal software, and based upon preliminary testing, it's EXCELLENT.

I highly recommend every Windows System user download it, install it, and run it. I like it because it will automatically update, automatically run, and proactively catch spyware.

FOLLOWUP 1/23/05 - The Spyware checker is so good, it catches Microsoft's spyware, so far its' found them in MS Money, and MS Media Player 10 installer.

THUNDERBIRD - I finally got around to using Thunderbird, the new FREE email client from mozilla.org; and I like it. Good thing too, as I was just about forced to use it after my MAIL program from Apple OSX decided it wouldn't pop email from Earthlink anymore. Dont know if I had too many messages in it (3500), or its a glitch with OS 10.3.7; or just my copy got corrupted, but now I don't need to find out.

Go to Jail for exercizing free speech in France: Turns out in France, a software security researcher published his findings about a buggy antivirus program. As a result he's been sued and threatened with jail. Am I liable to go to jail in France now for reporting on the report?
The French Court will issue a final ruling on March 4, 2005.

Vanity can cost you - Literally - CNN reports that if one goes to Google and searches on "Ken Lay", former head of Enron, a paid hit for his personal page (telling Ken's spin on things ("kenlayinfo")) is produced, and if one clicks through, Ken Lay is charged by Google. So now his oponents in Houston are going to Google.

Engineering for prosperity Many manufacturing firms (whether it be automobiles or computers) only support a new model for 3 or 5 years (answer questions from users), and parts availability has a defined lifetime also. See one such notice from IBM here. This is done to encourage customers to buy the newests models to assure continued sales and profitability. After all Earth Shoe stores went out of business when they didn't get enough repeat customers because their product lasted too long. And 53 years ago there was a great movie about a product that would last forever and what the consequences could be. So it's no great suprize the the folks runing "The TUBE" in London are trying to find the pieces/parts they need for 20 year old computer equipment on ebay as a last resort.

Managerial coverup : In Great Britain a major crash of the computer system controlling one major banks' Cash Machines that left them unavailable for 24 hours, has been labeled as due to a "Glitch". More likely a system upgrade performed at the wrong time, without fall back procedures in place with a shrunken staff due to "right-sizing".

New Computer aided Border Security: The newspapers are full of Homeland Security's next new thing. Computer database matching of entrants to the United States.

Seems I remember Switzerland having that in 1985 when I flew into Zurich for a scientific conference.

911 Lines get tied up on Christmas - The California Highway Patrol reports that their 911 lines get tied up with nonemergency calls every Christmas.

My hypothesis is that it is because more new cell phones are unwrapped that day than any other, but the carriers are closed and aren't available to activate phones. So folks (often teenagers) call 911 to verify their shiny new Nokia is working. They can't call a friend as Verizon recommends because the phone wont complete any call not to 911 until it is activated.

AT&T Wirelsss used to sell phones on the web that were activated before you received them, with the nasty side effect of AT&T Wireless starting billing the day they activated the phone, 2, 3, 4 or more days before you received the phone. At Christmas time, that could be weeks one would be paying for service never used.

Thunderbird - Another success for Mozilla. First Firefox, now Thunderbird. Firefox was the new better than Microsoft Internet Explorer Browser, now Thunderbird is a better than Microsoft Outlook email client. Rave reviews are pouring in. Like this one.

Sizzle without substance: So I read this "news" story today about TV on your cell phone, and it's a perfect example of marketing hype gone bezerk. Tiny screens with not enough pixels showing programming when there's not enough bandwidth, even with so-called 3-G networks, and they are hardly ubiquitous. Current attempts at TV on cell phones give 2 frames per second, as compared to home TV at 30 frames a second.
I think I am the one to coin the term for this. "Squintavision".

TiVo : Like most TiVo owners, I love mine and have a hard time remembering life before TiVo, and am happy to sing its praises. Judging by the armpit high stacks of TiVos at my local BestBuys and other stores, TiVo should sell double this year what it sold last year. Whether that means you should buy TiVo stock is a decision you'll have to make on your own.

However if you, like David Letterman use "tivo" as a verb, the company may get upset at you, as often folks "tivo" a show, but in fact are just recording it in some fashion, maybe still using videotape, or some other (inferior) type of Digital Video Recorder (DVR). Thus TiVo has started writing to TV Networks warning them not use use "tivo" as a verb.

Help Niagara Falls: Go to this site, where each click helps plant trees around Niagara Falls, even if it's the Canadian side. It sounds like a typical Internet Hoax, but isn't. If you get email (especially if it's a dire warning and been forwarded from a nonauthoritative source, like your aunt on WebTV) always check here to check whether its real or not.

Nov. 21 - ABANDONWARE - Software from companies that have gone out of business may end up in the public domain. One such game is "Solitaire's Journey" perhaps the best solitaire game ever made for a PC. It's Windows version is available for free!
at : http://www.freeoldies.com/download.php3?game=Solitaires%20journey
I apologize for the attached pop-up ads.
The program being from 1992 wants to be installed from a floppy disk, but installs fine if one extracts it to (or moves the extracted files to) a folder named Disk1.


UPDATE 12/8 for unknown reasons the freeoldies site no longer has a link to:
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?name=Solitaire's+Journey
or to
http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/abandonware/pc/strategy_games/games_so_sy/solitaire_s_journey.html

IBM leaving the PC business ? Not at all, too many mainstream news agencies seem to have the story wrong. In fact IBM sold it's "manufacturing business" which consists of part ownerships and contracts with many Taiwan and Chinese companies. This deal is mainly a way for one Chinese manufacturer (Lenova) to buy another Chinese manufacturer (Great Wall). IBM laptops will continue to exist for the forseeable future and with the IBM name on them. IBM's press release says : "IBM will continue to provide our clients with outstanding IBM- and Think-branded PCs through our alliance." The biggest difference may be for the 2,300 IBM employees in the U.S. who will become Lenova employees.

Why are SCSI Hard Drives still so expensive? IDE hard drives have gotten bigger, better and faster over the years such that performance difference is just about zero now. Some background. Indeed IDE drives can be put into Raid arrays for use with Servers that require reliability and performance. Oracle tested Hard Drive Raid arrays and discovered that the low price Apple XServe Raid was the best and have proceeded to buy many.

Make Love Not Spam (MLNS) lives?: The Lycos screen saver (MLNS) that attacked Lycos identified spammers web sites is now not functional. Its no longer downloadable from Lycos (but available elsewhere on the Internet), and is no longer attacking "spammers" as Lycos has shut down its feed of "bad guys" to the screen saver.

While Lycos had a change of heart, relative to ethical concerns or fear of lawsuits, others may not, and likely a "modified" version of MLNS, or a Patch program to provide new life to MLNS is likely to appear from other sources before the week is out.

Lycos pulls the plug on its "antispam" Screensaver - Others have reported
as I have that one can no longer download the screen saver that bombards spam advertisers web sites. What they omit is that already deployed screensavers are now deactivated. They required access to a Lycos database of "badguys", and that's been turned off.

Help stop SPAM, be a vigilante: Lycos in Europe has developed a FREE pretty screen saver, which also sends traffic to spammers' web sites, and with thousand of folks running it, it may over whelm a SPAMers web site. Lycos claimed 66,000 downloads. They have Windows, Macintosh (both OS X and Mac OS 9) and Linux versions available. You'd have to say you were in England to download it, but if you're on the edge of legality being part of a DDOS what's mistating your country of origin? Download it here at your own risk. And for added effect the Windows version could be run minimized to be hitting SPAMers 24/7.
I don't advocate any of this, I'm just reporting it.

UPDATE: The screensaver is not available currently at the Lycos website of:
http://makelovenotspam.com/intl/mlns.html?lang=en&region=en

I expect a quick Google of MLNS.exe or use of Kazaa could still find it. Another view of all this is here:

Networking a DirecTv Tivo : DirecTv doesn't support that functionality, even though stand alone TiVo units can be networked. Luckily TiVo is a Linux system, so by adding some extra Linux software and Ethernet drivers to ones' system, Networking is possible. And enough folks have done it already that full instructions and Install CDs are available on the web. Instructions are here. And all the software to Install; scripted to just semi automatically do it all for one is here. I'm about to attempt all this "programming", and will report back.

FOLLOWUP - I couldnt get it all working with 3.1.1e (the current DirecTiVo OS), but with 3.1.0 OS software (leftover from a replaced OEM hard drive), it all worked. http://tivo.lightn.org/ has the details on the TiVoWeb program, that allows controlling ones DirecTv TiVo from a Browser.
Next is to try the tytools.