Tag Archive for 'technology'

Warning: this post has nothing to do with politics. I’m serious, take notice cause it won’t happen again for a while. Well except for the one I’m gonna write after this.. but tomorrow, business as usual!

I’d like to pose a question to my readers in the hopes they can shed some light on my confusion. I get about 40 spam comments every day to peacechicken.com but because I moderate all submissions, you lovely people never have to see them. However, 80% of them go something like this (an actual comment I received today):

Name: ambien without prescription
URI: http://ambienq.czytajto.pl/excerpt=news
IP: 64.202.165.132
Body: ambien without prescription…

My question is… if I were to approve this comment and someone were to stumble upon it, would they actually think “Hey check it out! I can buy prescription medication from some sketchy internet site that makes its business by spamming people!”

I just don’t get how spammers ever get anything out of all the effort they put into it. Whether it’s spam blog comments or spam emails. I get the logic of the phishing ones, the stock “tips”, and the whole “I’m a Prince from Guatemala and you won a $200,000,000 UK lottery but first you must send me $500” because unfortunately there are a lot of stupid people out there with no business touching a computer. But this whole comment spam thing and really just spam in general, I don’t get it!!! Who is falling for it and making the spammers enough money to keep going! I really thought by 2007 this junk would kill itself off but that doesn’t seem to be happening.

On that note, I’m off to find/install a new anti-spam WordPress plugin and afterwards try to find a cheap source of Xanax!

The new features include enhancements to the iTunes Store, specifically the addition of movie and TV video downloads. Is there an advantage to buying a movie through the iTunes Store? I have no idea, but I’m thinking that unless you have a video iPod, the answer is no. You can watch it on your computer and that’s it, unless you want to mess with the cables needed to hook up your computer to your TV. Since you can’t download the file to a playable DVD, what’s the point? I’m definitely far from sold on this concept.

There’s also a new viewing mode called “Cover Flow” which allows you to flip through the cover art of your library like you would flip through a book of CDs. The idea behind it is cool but pointless for me since 99% of my imported music comes from burned CDs and therefore have no associated cover art. Only about 3 out of 1,000 songs in my library had covers (see 2 of them below.) But perhaps I’m an exception and other people don’t have this problem?

The main thing I noticed is a change of interface appearance and grouping of sidebar items, but nothing drastic. It’s a little darker than before, more slate blue, less sky blue. I welcome the slight change of appearance since iTunes doesn’t have skins, it’s nice to look at something new. Which brings up a long-standing question, the Mac world touts customization right, so why not iTunes?

All in all, for me 7.0 doesn’t bring anything all that fabulous. What I’d really like to see is a customizable interface. Even if all that meant was a skin color palatte to choose from. And I’d REALLY love if CDs burned through iTunes actually had the song information burned with it. So many times I’ve brought a burned CD into work and had to type in all the song information again before importing it into my libary. Perhaps 8.0 will fulfill these remaining wishes…

Tracking the FON process:

• Tuesday, June 26th: Ordered FON Social Router for $5 (+$8 shipping) Since it looks like at least 8,000 people have registered just today, I’m not holding my breath for fast delivery. But we’ll see…
• Approx. 3 weeks later I got the router in the mail. Unfortunately I don’t remember the exact date. However I do know it was a little more than 3 weeks after I ordered it, so their estimate of a 3-5 week delivery time was right.
• I hooked it up to my cable modem and the laptop running Ubuntu immediately recognized the signal and connected (using a Linksys wireless card.) I was able to register the router and use the connection just fine. Too bad it would only get more difficult from then on.
• My PowerMac G4 would not configure the router. I had it plugged in to one of the 4 available wired ports and it just wouldn’t recognize it. I tried every one of the Network settings, reset the modem countless times, posted my problem on the FON message board, still nothing. To make matters worse, shortly after I upgraded my laptop from Ubuntu 5.10 to 6.6 the wireless card stopped working. So until that’s fixed I don’t even have a need for the router.
• I sent an email to FON Support ten days ago and have yet to hear back from anyone. Apparently Linksys has great tech support, but since the FON router has FON firmware on it I have to use FON’s support. So basically right now my FON router is a paperweight.
• My verdict: FON has the right idea, but unless you have a mainstream machine (PC running Windows XP), I’d be hesitant. Well, I guess if you’re a network technician and wouldn’t have to rely on FON Support you might be able to figure it out. But since I’m definitely not a network tech. and my situation involves Mac and Ubuntu machines, I’m completely out of luck. I knew I should wait before I got my hopes up :-/
• If anything, this adventure has served as yet another example of how far the tech world still has to come before it can claim to be user-friendly to people other than Windows PC users. If you have a Mac or Linux, good luck fending for yourself!

Original Post:

This afternoon I was directed via a BBC article to FON’s website. What is FON?

FON is a Global Community of people who share WiFi. Join FON, share excess bandwidth at home and roam the world for free.

Believers in open-source technology (like myself) love the idea, others wouldn’t even think of sharing the connection they pay so much for. To each their own, if you don’t like sharing, stay away from this.

How does it work?

There are of course more details, but here are the basics:

• You pay $5 for their “Social Router” which is just a Linksys wireless router with FON firmware installed
• Register it on their network so you get added to the hotspot map
• Share your access with other FON members
• In exchange you have access to the whole FON network

So in theory you could wander around the globe with your laptop (or any wireless device, like a Blackberry ::drool::) and be connected everywhere there’s an FON hotspot. This could be really cool, assuming the worldwide wi-fi network is actually built.

Okay so I’ll be honest, it wasn’t the idealistic goal of worldwide wi-fi that caught my attention. It was the $5 Linksys wireless router. I mean I was eventually going to buy one anyway, why not try this one? And if I’d help build a worldwide wi-fi network at the same time, good deal.

I’m all about expanding technology access to the general public, especially the people who can’t really afford a $40/mo. broadband subscription. Which is basically most people who don’t live in the suburbs. Now you may be thinking, is broadband really necessary to survive? No, of course not. But try and think of everything you use it for on a daily basis and how that connection could enhance the quality of life and opportunities for a lower-income household (job search, continuing education, etc.) Okay I’m getting off topic, this is a new post in itself…

There are lots of questions and criticisms people have about FON’s endeavor, including the legality of sharing your ISP service, the safety of opening up your connection, etc. Most questions and concerns are addressed on the FON website and various online forums so I’m not going to go into that.

The documentarian that I am, I’ve decided to track this whole process, to see if the dream really pans out in the real world. The BBC article says that the project is backed by Google and Skype, so it would seem the odds are good.

Okay so I jinxed myself with that last post, the command line prompt quickly crept up on me. I’m just trying to install Limewire and it’s driving me crazy.

First I downloaded the .rpm package, which required installing Alien to convert it to a .deb package. I was able to handle that using Synaptic Package Manager. Then I installed the .deb package using the terminal (alien -i LimeWireLinux.rpm) and it appeared to install, it’s showing up on my Applications list under Internet programs. But when I click on it, absolutely nothing happens.

I also tried to download the .zip version that’s available, but then I wasn’t sure what to do with that once I had the regular folder extracted. I found a READ ME file that had me messing with Java, it said my JRE was too old so I went to java.com to get the latest one. I thought I had that installed properly but it’s still not working. Aggh! So annoyed right now. I just want LimeWire!

This is where the whole “Linux for human beings” line fails. I thought the whole idea behind Ubuntu was to make it as usable as Windows, but right now it’s far from it (for me.) And I just know if I were to go to one of the Ubuntu Support sites and ask about how to do this I would get some complicated answer that would just make me feel stupid. I’m not a programmer, I don’t think like one, and none of the Linux support geeks can ever seem to grasp that.

Maybe I should just be happy that I got Ubuntu installed this weekend and leave it at that. I have managed to finally understand what GNOME and Debian all mean in the context of Ubuntu. The terms had me confused at first, it’s hard going from an OS like Windows where the name Windows includes the OS, kernal, GUI, etc. to an open source collaboration like Ubuntu where each component of the OS has its own name and background groups. And all the familiar terms have new names, like recognizing “package” instead of “software”, or .tar and .deb instead of .zip. I’m learning a new language, and it sucks. But that’s what I signed up for when I wiped out my HD and said goodbye to Microsoft, so I’ll just have to deal with it and learn!