Reinke Faces Life

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/02/2007-web-20-companies-i-couldnt-live-without/

Free 411
http://free411.com/

Cheap no-DRM music
http://amiestreet.com/welcome

Local maps
http://city.ask.com/city

Anohter bookmark sharing site
http://bluedot.us/

Social News Site
http://www.digg.com/

Pictures
http://www.flickr.com/

A “social” web browser
http://www.flock.com/

GMail

NetNewsWire (30$)

A personalized webpage
http://www.netvibes.com/

A music meme
http://www.pandora.com/

Skype

A tech meme
http://www.techmeme.com/

WordPress

YouTube

Took a required upgrade to AOL IM today. The folks at work use it a lot, otherwise I’d have tossed it.

Interesting it comes with an almost mandatory integration with Plaxo. But, it doesn’t presuppose that you might already be a plaxo user. Argh!

From: Mandriva Store [mailto:noreturn+store@mandriva.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2007 2:23 PM
To: reinkefj
Subject: Mandriva Flash information

(Version francaise plus bas)

Hi,

You recently bought a Mandriva Flash and perhaps you have not been delivered yet. First of all we would like to thank you for your order but also to apologize for the inconvenience if you have not received your product.

The Mandriva Flash has been launched on december the 7th and became immediatly a big success, thus our delivery platform ran out of stock.
New Mandriva Flash keys will be delivered by the first week of january and the orders will be processed in the meantime.

Finaly, if you want to purchase another Mandriva Flash do not forget you have only a few days more to get benefit from the special introductory price at 59 euros / USD 69 on http://store.mandriva.com

Thank you for your interest in our products and sorry again for this delay.

The Mandriva online team.
http://www.mandriva.com/en/company/contact/customercare

Arghhh!

I have complicated web form that I fill out often. So today, (DUH what took so long), I said “Hmm, wonder if roboform can do this. Even in part would be helpful.” Bingo! I created an extra identity. And, tested it. Seems to work right the first time. Sigh, what was I thinking all along?

Reinke,

Thank you for your mail,
We are updating the web site and it should answer most of your questions. our street price for one unit is € 280 without VAT, plus shipping, and lower by quantity. We will notify you for ordering, within 2 months

MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Best Regards,
Frederic Baille (Paris)
www.linutop.com

http://picasa.google.com/

Picasa

***Begin Quote***

Picasa is a free software download from Google that helps you:

* Locate and organize all the photos on your computer.
* Edit and add effects to your photos with a few simple clicks.
* Share your photos with others through email, prints, and on the web

***End Quote***

Well, I just found something I don’t like. It doesn’t bring the file name in with the picture. I collect pictures of my fellow Jaspers when I find them. I carefully put their name and class year as part of the filename. So why does Picasa make me title them after it sucks in my files. Arghh!

http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance100.html

They Won’t Be Home for Christmas
by Laurence M. Vance

*** begin quote ***

The war in Iraq is lost. Although the president won’t admit that we are losing, he did recently acknowledge: “We’re not winning.” But the war has been lost for some time now. Even many who supported the initial invasion would agree with those of us who opposed the war from the very beginning that the point has long since passed the place where the United States could claim “victory” in Iraq. That point can now be measured in years. Wasn’t it in 2003 that Bush made the claim, in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner, that “the United States and our allies have prevailed”? Although the death of every American soldier in Iraq has been a tragic waste of human life, every day that this senseless war continues makes the deaths of U.S. servicemen even more of a heartrending tragedy.

*** end quote ***

Get the boys and girls home now! It’s a mess. But, it’s now the Iraqis’ mess.

http://wikisummaries.org/Main_Page

WikiSummaries

***Begin Quote***

Free book summaries from WikiSummaries, that anyone can edit! WikiSummaries.org provides free summaries of books, plays and other written documents. This complements Wikipedia, which is already an excellent source of information on authors and brief book summaries. Where Wikipedia leaves off, WikiSummaries will continue with character profiles, detailed chapter summaries, study questions, important quotes, analysis of metaphor and symbolism, etc.

***End Quote***

Neat idea. Only 37 titles to start but … look at wikopedia!

http://www.legacy.com/TimesDispatch/GB/GuestbookEntry

http://www.legacy.com/

http://obit.edwardsanddowdle.com/

Hey morbid topic, but technology is where you find it!

I do my “alumni news”. Part of doing that is reporting obits.

(Side note: Some folks have accomplished great things. Some have pages written about them. Some sadly have nothing. Don’t you wonder what yours will be? That’s a ghoulish idea for a biz!?!)

In doing this duty, I usually put in a small note as a fellow alum. (many times it’s the only one!), and I notice that Legacy is the big player. By my eye and unstatistically, they have 80% of what I see. They’ve even figured some different ways to monetize the biz. Extra charge to post a photo. Extra charge to keep it up for a year. Extra charge to keep it up forever. I’ve wondered what they charge. Just out of curiosity.

But today, I found a Funeral Home that has essentially duplicated the function. SO it was cheaper for them to pay to do their own then to pay Legacy.

Interesting?

Was to me.

This is (imho) an excellent indictment of “public skools” and their “teams”.

When everyone is forced by threat of violence, and that’s what taxes are, people have to scrimp on things they would rather do. The fact that they get the short end of the stick doesn’t make it any less painful. Like Basat’s “broken glass” fallacy, where everyone can see the beneficial economic activity in repairing a broken window, few if any see the thing that were precluded.

High School Football also creates a peer pressure. Don’t dare gripe about having to pay for it because those who want it will dump on you.

The essence of a free marketplace is that two people can make an exchange because they each perceive that they are better off after the exchange.

In the example of High School Football, where I am forced to exchange my money for the “benefit” of the team, is of little comfort if I don’t have enough food for my children to eat. It doesn’t matter if it is pennies. Let the High School Football team “tin cup” around the community and beg for funds. The alternative is there are armed thugs (the tax collectors, as bad as in the movie Robin Hood) will rob you a gun point for them. Suppose that the High School Football tax is what I need to send my child to art class, pay my magazine subscription, or contribute to my favorite charity. It really does NOT matter what I choose to do with what I would pay in the High School Football tax, it’s MY choice. Not yours!

Here in NuJerzee, we are driving people out of the state with socialism and its taxes. I’m sure that when I become a senior citizen I’ll be leaving as well. And it won’t be the weather that drives me away, it’ll will be socialism, its taxes, and its rules.

read more | digg story

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/
TECHBIT_BLOG_DISCLOSURES?SITE=7219&SECTION=HOME
&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2006-12-20-19-54-08

http://tinyurl.com/yf6qd7

Dec 20, 7:54 PM EST
Bloggers Must Disclose Sponsored Posts
By ANICK JESDANUN
AP Internet Writer
Technology Video

***Begin Quote***

NEW YORK (AP) — A company that helps advertisers connect with bloggers willing to write about their products for payment will now require disclosures amid criticism and a regulatory threat.

***End Quote***

Oh thanks goodness, mommy government saved us from the big bad bloggers selling their souls and an unsuspecting public down the river.

Save me, save me, mommy government, from the big bad internet.

Yeah, like anyone should ever trust the net as the source of truth.

For the record, I haven’t found any one dumb enough to pay me for these rantings. And, when I do, you’ll be the first to know.

Could it be that the FTC saw the criticism moderating the blogosphere’s behavior and they ran up to the front of the parade to lead it? Nah, that would assume that they could do anything during the holiday season.

Sheesh!

I guess I should try to get me resume in here. The “computers in the pits” have been down all day. And, everyone has frayed tempers. They can do the table accounting, order chips for the tables, rate players, give comps, or whatever else they do. :-) Guess they skipped reliability in their specs. Entertaining! I think they run windoze.

… the fellow that made up their monthly torrent of their shows went MIA. They’ve asked me to help.

One problem: I don’t know squat about torrents.

By muddling around I made one torrent for demo purposes.

If you use torrents, please click on the link and let me know if you can get my torrent and play it.

Then, I’ll be a torrent guru having made one!!

http://www.inpursuitof.com/FTL2006-12-18.mp3.torrent

Try this a see if you can get their show.

Being an old bell shaped head, I am always fascinated with when the web can touch the PSTN (public service telephone network). Imagine being able to turn a ~4k laptop or desktop into a $9 phone. Great. Ever since Judge Green threw the snowball that started an avalanche! (He decided that the Bell “monopoly” would have to open up. We did have the best phone service in the world, universal service, a dedicated workforce, and Bell Labs. (That was a national treasure!) This was all for the sake of supposedly cheaper phone rates for business. Interesting that I don’t think we have seen the benefits of competition. It’s really not a free market. Now that would be great, if we had gone to a truly free market. Instead, we have a sort of regulated, sort of free, definitely regulated market.

So I’ve been playing with SKYPE. You can skype me at “reinkefj” (I know the name is a real surprise.) You can call me on 732 – 917 – 4816.

SKYPEIN isn’t working. For calls from a phone, it doesn’t “ring” on the laptop, but it will take a message. For calls from a pc, it does work correctly.

Yahoo Instant Messenger With Voice has a similar offering. Again, I’m “reinkefj”, or you can call from 609-489-5893.

Call me if you want to chat or just want to turn my notebook into a nine dollar phone.

Interesting! What the real future of the public telephone network will really be?

From: Admin, Topix [mailto:topixadmin@ex.topix.net]
Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 1:49 PM
Subject: RE: Feedback: BUG Sign up none

Hi there,

Thanks for letting us know. We are constantly working to improve our site, and I have forwarded your issue to our engineers. In the meantime, feel free to sign up using another email address. We will never share your email address, and it is not displayed publicly.

Admin @ Topix

—–Original Message—–
Sent: Sun 12/17/2006 8:20 AM
To: feedback2@ex.topix.net
Subject: Feedback: BUG Sign up none

Can’t use a gmail plus for an email. It’s a way of preventing spam. https://reinkefj.wordpress.com/2006/12/16/productivity-use-two-gmail-accounts-to-protect-an-isp-email-account/

Sorry can use your site until you support gmail plus signs.

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

Just trust us. We’d never spam you. Or, make a mistake.

Yeahhhhhh

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/12/13/mccain-war-on-blogs/

John McCain’s War On Blogs

***Begin Quote***

John McCain has made clear that he doesn’t like the blogosphere.

***End Quote***

Just to be clear, this blogger doesn’t like John McCain.

As a POW, he took parole and broke faith with his fellow POWs. As a member of the Keating Five, he demonstrated his “honesty” credentials. As part of the McCain – Feingold team, he demonstrated his thoughts on the First Amendment.

The people of Arizona should be embarrassed to have him as their senator.

Time to repeal the direct election of senators anyway. The dead old white guys had it right!

You don’t? TOO BAD!

This morning 14 December at 0645 est on Route 1 by the Stop’n’Shop  … …

… … a white state police suv  SPA145A … …

… … raced by the standing traffic at the light on the right hand lane … …

… … No red/blue lights. It didn’t look like it was even equipped with them. What kinda of SP was this?

… … (I admire that the person timed the light perfectly. Anyone running the light, right turning on red, or late in the opposite direction would have been killed! But it was timed perfectly.) … …

… … down route 1 at a between zero and what seemed to be over a hundred (Your serf speed limit is 55)

… … of course the statist road system, with myriad lights to slow the serfs down, allowed us a better look at the state car when we caught up.

… … All that serf traffic just meant that it was tailgating the poor peon in his way all the way down.

… … It did observe the unwritten rule of the powerful “never leave the left lane”!

… … (Do you teach them to do that, or is that a qualification for working for the state of nujerzee!?)

… … And once freed of the serf, when last we saw it, it was flying down route 1, hurrying to get to I assume trenton to protect and serve me.

Arghhh!

[For those not familiar with the NJ roads. State “workers” proceed straight down route 1 to the golden dome of corruption. If you come later in the morning, then it’s not unusual to see “lots” of state cards commuting to the state jobs by the state ’employees”. It particularly ticks me off to know that I am paying for the road, the traffic jam, and the bad driving of my “servants”. Arghhh! That’s one reason I like to commute early; I can’t afford to have a stroke because I couldn’t afford the death taxes.]

Arghhhhhhh!

P.S.: Dear reader, I don’t write these every day. Just when I ARRIVE early for work, particularly agitated aggravated and have to wait for my employer workstation to get online.

Today after resuming, the box is running like sludge. Perhaps a reboot will recover.

—–Original Message—–
From: Alison O’Brien @ Cabonite
Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2006 1:36 PM
To: ReinkeFJ
Subject: Carbonite

Hello and thank you for your email –

Sorry you had trouble with your restore. We ask for serial numbers when passwords have been

forgotten as a security measure. If you can tell me the some other information to help verify you, I can reset your

password for you. If you can provide the name of the PC you installed Carbonite on and the date (roughly) that you installed it,

I can go ahead and reset your password for you.

Thank You,
Alison O’Brien
Carbonite Customer Support

—- My Response —

No need; I just wrote it off.

You may want to think how your offering will be used. When the source machine “burns”, it will be unlikely that the user will have access to any old stuff. Serial number, email, and passwords may all be gone.

And, when I gave it the serial number, that I carefully copied from the live screen, it still wouldn’t reset the password.

So, I gave up on a restore.

Luckily, this was just a test. I was planning to sign up but when the process failed. And rescue was complicated by a need to go to you. I decided it wasn’t for me.

Good luck.

Well, I tried the restore again. I went back to the primary desktop, which if this was a real test would not be there to go back to, and got the serial number. However, on the restoring pc, I could not get past the pc password reset. In a real disaster, when you have nothing working, it will be unlikely that you’ll be able to get your files back from the cloud without heroic effort imho. Hence, it’s not for me and I wouldn’t recommend it. Guess I’ll look for another solution.

OK, prior to becoming a pay for customer, I decided to test a restore.

Assume that my pc is wiped out, (I actually left it home today), let’s see if I could restore a key file to my work notebook without anything.

Stumbling block one was the carbonite password. No problem I’ll ask for reset.

Stumbling block two was the email. I set this up on a non-trivial email id. But I was able to find that in my gmail message store.

Stumbling block three carbonite asks for a serial number in password reset. Huh? Who knows that.

Restore failed. I’ll try again tomorrow!