RANTING: Opened sold as new

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Went to WalMart to get a smaller table and cheap printer.

Had some “excitement” with the old lady, but that’s another story.

Got the printer home! It was only 40$. (Yeah, I know they screw you on the ink.)

And, the printer doesn’t work.

It’s been used and repackaged.

I knew it when I opened the box. The plastic around it was not like a factory seal.

The contents aren’t right. Stuff is missing. And the cartridges are either gone or in the machine.

I’m pissed that this is another example of a return sold as new. I didn’t think WalMart did that. I know Officemax, Staples, and Office Depot do.

And it had a very complicated anti-theft device around it. So that means the Store has to have done it!

Back it goes today.

Very disappointing WalMart. I thought you were above that. At least Best Buy has an open box sale area and you know it’s not brand spanking new.

Argh!

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Posted by reinkefj

SOFTWARE: Trying Safari5 (It’s free!)

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

*** begin quote ***

Apple today released Safari 5, the latest version of the world’s fastest and most innovative web browser. This release features the new Safari Reader for reading articles on the web without distraction, a 30-percent performance increase over Safari 4, and the ability to choose Google, Yahoo!, or Bing as the search service powering Safari’s search field. Available for both Mac and Windows, Safari 5 includes improved developer tools and supports more than a dozen new HTML5 technologies that allow web developers to create rich, dynamic websites.

*** end quote ***

Downloaded and am trying it now. No science; just feel. Seems snappy. Have the Fox and Chrome. Who needs three browsers?

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Posted by reinkefj

SERVICE: Surprise GMAIL CONTACTS has quotas? Who knew!

Monday, June 7, 2010

*** begin quote ***

Over contacts quota

Because problems can occur when you have an extremely large number of contacts in your Google Account (note that this number includes the people you’re following on Google Buzz), we’ve implemented some quota restrictions. If you take an action that would put you beyond this limit, we’ll show you an error message.

One common reason for having a large number of contacts is having many duplicate entries. We recommend using the merge tools in your Contact Manager to consolidate your duplicates and make room for new additions.

You can also back up your existing contacts by exporting to a CSV file.

*** end quote ***

Argh!

Another reason “cloud computing” won’t work. Surprises!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECHNOLOGY: Forgery or just a riddle?

Sunday, June 6, 2010

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3892674,00.html

Israeli art detectives crack forgery riddle
Sotheby’s discovers Israel Museum owns exact same painting about to go on auction in Amsterdam
Associated Press
Published: 05.26.10, 14:26 / Israel Culture

*** begin quote ***

Then Elon checked the fabric. The recently discovered painting was painted on cotton. The museum’s was done on linen, a more expensive material far more likely to have been used by a wealthy painter in Europe than by someone working in a poor city like Jerusalem.

The museum’s painting was the real thing, Elon concluded. The new arrival was the fake.

*** end quote ***

Hot stuff! Literally.

You have to admire “technology’s” ability to gather “evidence”.

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Posted by reinkefj

HARDWARE: APPLE TIME CAPSULE died. Some backup!

Thursday, June 3, 2010

APPLE TIME CAPSULE died. Some backup!

According to the Apple website, it’s out of warranty.

I’ll take it into the Apple store and see what they say.

Argh!

I’d have expected it to outlive the MacBookAir that I bought at the same time.

Did I say “Argh!”?

I see a “NOTRECOMMENDED” coming up.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECHNOLOGY: When IT systems fail silently?

Friday, May 28, 2010

201005281516.jpg

Rofl?

Maybe they need an IT consultant?

May 28th, 2010 @ 1515 EDST

Argh!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECHNOLOGY: Diskless Booting; why not cdrom booting?

Monday, May 24, 2010

http://it.slashdot.org/story/10/05/08/0455244/Diskless-Booting-For-the-Modern-Age

Diskless Booting For the Modern Age on Saturday May 08, @05:08AM
Posted by timothy on Saturday May 08, @05:08AM
from the who-needs-moving-parts dept.

*** begin quote ***

An anonymous reader writes “Ever wonder what happened to PXE? Intel’s popular standard for diskless booting hasn’t been updated since 1999, and has missed out on such revolutions as wireless Ethernet, cloud computing, and iSCSI. An open source project called Etherboot has been trying to drag PXE into the 21st century. One of their programmers explains how to set up diskless booting for your cloud, using copy-on-write to save space.”

*** end quote ***

Having had to “clean” more than one machine — freinds, family, workmates, fellow alums, complete strangers (I love helping) — I have really never ever understood why we don’t boot from a CDROM.

Persistent virus infections, hiding in boot records, would be impossible.

Given that a reboot for desktops are relatively rare and for notebooks are infrequent, we could have true “change control”.

Never understood that?

Can you help me out and explain it?

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Posted by reinkefj

SERVICE: Why don’t ISPs validate all return addresses?

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Don’t the ISPs have the capability to do a domain look up?

We need to revise the email handling protocols. (imho)

ISPs should insist that peers do some validation.

For example, if say COMCAST and YAHOO are peers, then, at the very least, COMCAST should not accept any email with a Yahoo return address that doesn’t originate from Yahoo. Yahoo should validate every email it peers to COMCAST has having originated from a valid email address. If COMCAST Users mark it as spam, then that fact should be fed back to Yahoo for appropriate action.

And, visa versa.

(I laugh sarcastically when I get spam with a Yahoo bogus return address.)

ISPs like Comcast and EMail providers like Yahoo could “cut off” offenders.

It would seem to be in everyone’s best interest to truncate the flow of bogus email.

Seems easy to me?

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Posted by reinkefj

LINKEDIN: Another reason NOT to use your employer’s email adress on LinkedIn

Monday, May 17, 2010

http://www.portfolio.com/companies-executives/2010/03/31/non-solicit-suit-alleges-violations-on-linkedin#ixzz0nDJODrSE  

LinkedIn to a Lawsuit
by Jim Hammerand Mar 31 2010

*** begin quote ***

As case law develops, courts could decide whether the online connections employees make at work belong to the employee or employer. Courts, Cotter said, have “a lot of discretion” in deciding whether comparable customer lists and contacts are trade secrets and whether social-networking activity can be covered by competitive agreements.

*** end quote ***

Clearly, if you have a non-compete, then you’ve got a problem.

But, it can’t hurt to make sure that your LinkedIn account looks “personal”.

I’d go so far as to say you should NEVER use social networking from the company’s hardware, software, or network.

With 3G, 4G, and public wifis for networking. With iphone, ipad, netbooks, and cheap notebooks. With Open Source Software, as opposed to the corporate Microsoft suite. All demonstrate the difference.

imho.

Remember the sources of my education: I’m just a fat old white guy injineer with Law from watching Judge Judy, Medical from Doctor Phil, Building from Holmes on Homes, and Investing from Bernie Made-off.

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Posted by reinkefj

SERVICE: 750 WORDS site; make everyone a writer.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

http://emilychang.com/ehub/app/750-words

Blog | eHub | Stream | Tags | Photos Projects | About | News | Contact

750 Words
By Kim Lau
— May 12, 2010 at 10:02 am

*** begin quote ***

Motivate your writing by committing to 750 words a day. Log in with Facebook Connect, Google or Yahoo, and earn points and badges the more you write.

*** end quote ***

We’ll see if it helps.

RECOMMENDED!

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Posted by reinkefj

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