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Prof Larry is one of those folks I consider a “internet conscience”. When he speaks, I listen. He’s usually right; usually thought provoking.Besides what else do you have to ddo on a dreary Sunday morning?
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TECHNOLOGY : Lawrence Lessig on the Google Book Search Settlement – “Settlements: Static goods, dynamic bads”
Sunday, August 9, 2009
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Posted by reinkefj
TECHNOLOGY: Stories from the Enola Gay
Saturday, August 8, 2009http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/23208
Dropping the Bomb: Stories from the Enola Gay
from mental_floss Blog by Ransom Riggs
*** begin quote ***
Ms. Akiko Takakura, who was less than 1,000 feet from Ground Zero in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped
Many people on the street were killed almost instantly. The fingertips of those dead bodies caught fire and the fire gradually spread over their entire bodies from their fingers. A light gray liquid dripped down their hands, scorching their fingers. I, I was so shocked to know that fingers and bodies could be burned and deformed like that. I just couldn’t believe it. It was horrible. And looking at it, it was more than painful for me to think how the fingers were burned, hands and fingers that would hold babies or turn pages, they just, they just burned away.
For a few years after the A-bomb was dropped, I was terribly afraid of fire. I wasn’t even able to get close to fire because all my senses remembered how fearful and horrible the fire was, how hot the blaze was, and how hard it was to breathe the hot air. It was really hard to breathe. Maybe because the fire burned all the oxygen, I don’t know. I could not open my eyes enough because of the smoke, which was everywhere. Not only me but everyone felt the same. And my parts were covered with holes.
*** end quote ***
It is hard to imagine one human could do this to another. It takes a gooferment to be so heartless.
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Posted by reinkefj
TECHNOLOGY: MSFT patents?
Thursday, August 6, 2009Your Rights Online: Microsoft Patents XML Word Processing Documents on Thursday August 06, @07:37PM
Posted by timothy on Thursday August 06, @07:37PM
from the no-problems-there-nothing-to-worry-about dept.
*** begin quote ***
On Tuesday, Microsoft was granted U.S. Patent No.7,571,169 for its ‘invention’ of the Word-processing document stored in a single XML …
*** and ***
the biggest question raised by this patent is: How in the world was it granted in light of the 40-year history of document markup languages?
*** end quote ***
What kind of “barbara streisand” is this?
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Leave a Comment » | Technology | Tagged: FRAUD, INNOVATION | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
SERVICE: Voice out from text
Thursday, August 6, 2009http://tts.imtranslator.net/566L
Free Text to Speech software online for English
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Entertaining?
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Leave a Comment » | SERVICE | Tagged: INNOVATION | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
TECHNOLOGY: Cloud Computing; who controls what?
Saturday, August 1, 2009http://abcnews.go.com/International/Story?id=8181453&page=2
Big Brother Is Watching Your Blackberry
With Every High-Tech Gadget We Buy, We Give up a Little More of our Privacy
By CHRISTIAN STOCKER
July 27, 2009
*** begin quote ***
A dramatic example of Zittrain’s thesis occurred recently in the United Arab Emirates. Wired magazine and The Register reported how the local Internet provider, Etisalat, sent out a software update to around 145,000 of their Blackberry customers. However, thanks to a software glitch that caused the battery power in all the affected Blackberrys to be drained, it was discovered that the software update also included surveillance software.
The spying part of the software was switched off — but all it needed was a command from the Internet server and the Blackberrys would send e-mail and text messages in an encrypted form to an unknown recipient. IT experts believe the intended recipient was local security forces. To date, Etisalat has not made a statement in response to the allegations. The company’s sole response has been a curt press release stating that the reason for the update was simply “to improve the service quality.”
*** end quote ***
Clearly, we must be very circumspect about “cloud computing”. We don’t control the applications, the data, and in some case not even the local hardware.
No, no thanks, when I buy my copy of George Orwell, you don’t get to take it away from me.
Argh!
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Leave a Comment » | Technology | Tagged: freedom | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
SERVICE: Warranty Elephant; sounds like a good idea
Monday, July 27, 2009https://www.warrantyelephant.com/html/howitworks.aspx
Welcome to Warranty Elephant .com, a unique website designed to organize your warranty information on all purchased goods. Your warranty information will be stored for free on our secure server and will be listed by date of warranty expiration. An easy click on the item will allow you to obtain all valid warranty information on that product, including handy telephone numbers and your product’s serial number.
In addition, you can even upload a copy of your warranty itself and your invoice, so that you don’t have to search through stacks of paper to try and find the documents needed to exercise your warranty rights.
We will send you reminder emails at 3 months, 1 month and 1 week before your warranty expires. This will remind you to check your item and ensure it is in good working order. If it is not, you will have all the information needed, right in front you, to arrange for warranty service. You will never again spend money to purchase a warranty on an item only to have it break down and not be able to remember whether the warranty has expired or if you had even purchased the warranty in the first place.
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Seems like a good idea to me.
Warranties, especially extended ones, seem worthless.
Maybe an organized approach would change that opinion.
I view stuff I buy as a “used car”. Caveat emptor.
Maybe saving this information might make it easier to return stuff.
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Leave a Comment » | RECOMMENDED, SERVICE | Tagged: RECOMMENDED | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
TECHNOLOGY: You have to expect failure
Saturday, July 25, 2009http://scofieldi.livejournal.com/91075.html
*** begin quote ***
Your session ID for this incident is 29038665.
Time Details
07/22/2009 11:35:33AM System: “Thanks for choosing chat for your technical support needs. A chat agent will be with you shortly. Just so you know, you can also visit our website at support.dell.com to get technical help.”
{Extraneous Deleted}
07/22/2009 12:44:21PM Agent (Sup_Karanpreet_116303): “That is fine. In case you get any issues again you can call at 1-800-624-9896 and can leave a voice mail on my extension 5880012 and we will get back to you in maximum 24 hours.”
If you require further assistance, please visit us at support.dell.com
Like, in what universe does that make sense? What makes it a good idea to let me, an unqualified 20 year old girl, take apart my computer and replace the hard drive?? wtf. No.
I lost my summer log too :( everything that had happened, all my reactions and thoughts and feelings…gone. I’m pretty distraught. Luckily, I saved my story because I sent it to Shannon!! Thank heavens for small favors…
*** end quote ***
Support, warranties, extended warranties, and implied promises … all worthless!
Hopefully, my fellow alum will muddle through.
Carbonite, Apple Time Machine, usb drives.
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Hello fellow alum:
Sorry to hear of your problems. It’s happened to me; then I got “religion” about backups. If you’re like me, the budget for “fixing” is zero. (There are expensive recovery services. I actually used one for a corporate desktop. Cost 650$ and took 3 days — door to door.)
I have some suggestions.
Regardless of your technical expertise, and your location, I think you might be able to do your own investigation and possibly recovery.
Before you wig out. My other suggestion is to find some personal help from your local nerd herd. Geeks always love to help beautiful women. :-)
If you can get your hands on a Linux “Live CD” (I can certainly send you one), you can try to boot from it. If it boots, you have a window of opportunity to save your data. The Live CD will allow you to actually copy the files to a USB thumb drive.
If the hard disk is truly crashed, there will be nothing you can do. But, it is worth taking a look.
Going forward, now that you’ve been inducted into the “Church of Always Backing Up”, you need to have some backup. Worst thing is to have it happen again.
Carbonite, (Not Mozy), will give you a small free online backup without anythought. Apple’s Time Machine is the gold standard for unattended unthinking backup. Many of the USB drives for Windoze have the same capability.
Hope this helps,
fjohn68
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Posted by reinkefj
TECHNOLOGY: Data Portability
Tuesday, July 21, 2009http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/09/powercom-countersues-facebook-over-data-portability/
Power.com Countersues Facebook Over Data Portability
by Jason Kincaid on July 9, 2009
*** begin quote ***
The Data Portability wars just got a little more interesting. Power.com, the service that lets users aggregate their social networks into a single hub, is countersuing Facebook for restricting users’ ability to export and move their own data. The company is claiming that Facebook is unlawfully withholding the data that users own (as stated in Facebook’s own ToS), and is stifling competition by refusing to allow third party services like Power.com to access the data, among other things. This should be fun.
*** and ***
It’s an analogy that has been drawn since the data portability movement began, and while it may make sense, there’s no guarantee the courts will view phone numbers and a user’s social network data in the same light.
*** and ***
The idea that users aren’t allowed to input their username and passwords into other services is particularly hypocritical, as that’s exactly what Facebook invites you to do to import contacts from services like Gmail and Yahoo Mail.
Facebook can point to its efforts with Facebook Connect, which lets you log in with your Facebook username at third party sites and import some select data from your profile, as evidence of its openness. But this isn’t true data portability, it’s just a new walled garden — third parties are generally only allowed to cache your data, which means that you’re still tethered to Facebook.
*** end quote ***
Data portability is the issue.
Argh!
It’s MY data.
Argh!
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Leave a Comment » | Technology | Tagged: freedom | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
TECHNOLOGY: Kindle and its ilk too pricy for me
Sunday, July 19, 2009http://www.macworld.com/article/141620/2009/07/kindle2_pricecut.html?lsrc=rss_main
Kindle 2 price plunge signals e-book reader competition
by Melissa J. Perenson, PC World
*** begin quote ***
Amazon quietly lowered the price on its Kindle 2 e-book reader Wednesday. That didn’t take long: The Kindle 2 became available only about five months ago. And the price cut is a significant one: Amazon cropped $60 off the top price of its second-generation e-book reader, which now carries a more reasonable price tag of $299.
*** end quote ***
I’d suspect that before I leap on any bandwagon it has to be under 100$. (Minimize my buyer’s remorse.) And, I don’t like wht I’ve been reading about the price fixing on Kindle Books. (That is that despite near zero cost, everything is 10$.) Add to that DRM and you have to rebuy if you need to redownload too many times. (Not my idea of a good user experience!) Argh! So, I’m not in the ebook market yet.
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Posted by reinkefj
TECHNOLOGY: OFFICE2000 and version control
Friday, July 17, 2009*** begin quote ***
Support for Office 2000 at an end
Speaking of Microsoft Office, if you’re still using Office 2000, you might want to consider upgrading. Microsoft ended extended support for the ten year old productivity suite earlier this week. There have been a great many improvements to the Office programs since that version, so it’s probably time for a change anyway.
http://www.vistanews.com/YEZ166/090716-End-of-Office-2000
*** end quote ***
There’s something humorous calling Office2000 “ten years old”. It’s had more patches, fixes, and disasters; I felt on any given day I was dealing with a new monster. And, I never NEVER ever turn on auto updating.
No, Google Apps, isn’t much better.
I don’t have a good solution other than text files and printed copies.
Maybe the Luddite is rubbing off on me.
Argh!
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Leave a Comment » | Technology | Tagged: Microsoft | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
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