RANT: Certain behaviors are rude!

Saturday, August 26, 2006

http://www.gadgetspage.com/pda-phone/six-gadget-ettiquette-tips.html

Six Gadget Ettiquette Tips
PDAs and Phones
***Begin Quote***

Gadgets go with us everywhere now. Our cell phones are cameras, gaming devices and even Internet portals. Some of us have a utility belt full of gadgets and they can interfere with our life in ways that ettiquette gurus would have never thought of twenty years ago. Here are six gadget ettiquette tips to keep you from making common mistakes:

1. Only have cell phone conversations in private.

When you are talking on your cell phone, you are not in a phone booth. The conversation can be so involving that you may not realize that there are other people around you, but I assure you, they are. If you are in a public place, the best option is to find a private place to have a conversation. If that is not possible, make sure you keep your voice low and cut the conversation off as quickly as possible (”Look, I’m on a bus and I can’t talk right now. Let me call you back.”).

***End Quote***
Almost as annoying as drivers talking on the cell, is being in a meeting when everyone is playing with the berry, or being on a conference call; hearing the keyboard tapping away, or on that same conference call, when someone’s participation is needed, and the moderator calls out the name, only to hear “sorry what was that i was multitasking”.

It’s all rude!

Comments Off on RANT: Certain behaviors are rude! | Ranting | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

LIBERT: A “ceasefire” ain’t a good solution.

Saturday, August 26, 2006

I commented at:

http://channel-surfing.blogspot.com/2006/08/israel-lebanon-and-south-brunswick.html#comments

Specifically to the cease fire concept.

As with most hard questions, the truth is somewhere hard to find. A cease fire, while laudible in saving lives, settles nothing. A pause allows BOTH side time to regroup, reorg, and resupply. There is something to be said for knock down drag out fight that ends when one says “uncle”. At least something gets settled.

Perhaps, as the Egypt Israeli Six Day showed the way, it can lead to “peace”. As we see from WW1, the “armistice” (a glorified cease fire), setup WW2 and it’s abuses. Whereas McArthur’s unconditional surrender, led to Japan being our “buddy”.

For my own policy, I say the US policy should be MYOB. Stay out of other people’s fights. A lot of the problems there are due in a large part to America’s almost-random interventionist policy. First we like Sadam, then we topple him. Taliban good to oppose the USSR, bad when we don’t need them.

Free trade with everyone; troops stay at the water’s edge.

And, it’s “your paper” run it as you see fit. Anyone who doesn’t like it should set up a competing effor and see how easy it is. In this country, we seem to have a lot of Monday Morning Quarterbacks. To them I say “quit griping and do something about it”! When I have had enough, I won’t subscribe any more. That’s the American way. The free marketplace. Where everyone gets to vote with their pocketbook!

P.S. I still have a gripe with the use of the word “democracy” as anb ideal. Democracy is two wolves and lamb voting on what’s for dinner. A republic means that everyone has INALIENABLE RIGHTS! Let’s be worthy of what those dead old white guys created for us. “A repulic if you can keep it!” We haven’t done so well since 1860. And it’s really gone down hill since 1913. And lately, it been dropping like rock in a well.

Leave a Comment » | LIBERTY | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: NIKON COOLPIC P2 … don’t buy it for the wireless feature

Saturday, August 26, 2006

http://www.nikon.ca/products/coolpixp2/

I have come to the conclusion after wasting a lot of time on the “time saving” wireless network connection of the camera that: playing with it, depending upon it, or even buying the camera for it (which I did) was dumb. I bought it thru Amazon (and got screwed on the Amazon Credit Card discount, but that’s another story!) because of the positive user ratings. Now I wonder if I was scammed. The camera works, but the wireless hasn’t worked for a long time. I continue to play with it stupidly believing that as an injineer, I can make anything work. The software feels like a beta version written by amateurs. The camera sits there trying to connect and doesn’t. I’m now installing version 1.1.1 of the utilities. I think I’ll tell everyone I know about my non-wireless wireless camera. Arghhh! PS the canadian site is easier to use and faster than the us one. go figure? Double Argh!

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

PROD: OUTLOOK is pia to setup the way I want to work

Friday, August 25, 2006

It should be easy to put email handling rules in place. Outlook, or as I love to call it, LOOKOUT doesn’t make this easy. I guess it all comes down to what you want out of email. For certain people, represented by one or more email addresses, I want to collect their mail in one foolder and get alerted. You have to do this one by one by one. Arghhh!

Leave a Comment » | Productivity | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: AMAZON the grid and storage computing vendor. They’ve executed IBM’s concept?

Friday, August 25, 2006

http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/08/24.html#a1513

This will turn the “world” upside down.

From a strategic planning perspective, internal large IT organizations — could / might / possibly / actually — run “stuff” (i.e., testing, labs, prototyping, trials) in this “rental” space probably cheaper and faster than building our own.

We, as an “insider”, need to be better, faster, cheaper, six sigma than this “outside competition” lest our own business people do it without us.

Wow, the world just got harder!

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: PRINTERANYWHERE feedback given on another site

Thursday, August 24, 2006

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2006/08/24/printeranywhere-enough-said/

I’ve been playing with it.

https://reinkefj.wordpress.com/2006/08/24/tech-printeranywhere-shaping-up-nicely/

https://reinkefj.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/tech-printeranywhere-looks-like-it-could-be-useful/

There’s some key issues:

(1) Who do you trust? Non-private stuff.

(2) Some cosmetic issues that they are working on (laptop resume undoes the share)

(3) And, it has some specific uses (fax elimination)
and some non-uses (if you’re on a lan already you don’t need it).

(4) Please one hting that needsfixing (I forgot to tell them) that they should show email addresses.

All in all a good things especially iof you need it.

I’m in no way connected to the offering, other than it came in handy in a pinch, so I used it. This is my way of saying thanks.

(I’d be a raving fan if it was open source!)
****

One comment says there’s no way to protect from printing junk. I think you can require your OK to use it.

***

Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

LIBERTY: Free to … … elect who “they” say you can!

Thursday, August 24, 2006

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1099030

Congressional redistricting
How to rig an election
Apr 25th 2002 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition

***Begin Quote***

In a normal democracy, voters choose their representatives. In America, it is rapidly becoming the other way around

***End Quote***

The article says don’t look at the voting machines for fraud. Look at gerrymandering.

I think we have to look at both.

imho we have to become more like a republic and less like an oligarchy.

I think we need to only vote for our local politicians and hold them accountable to everyone else. So in NJ, the municipality should elect the county, the county should elect the state. If you’re interested in proportions, then just throw the census number in for weighting. The State Assembly can be elected by the municipalities on a one for one basis and the State Senate can be elected by the counties.

Then we would only have to gripe at our local politicians.

So to for taxing. Only the local municipality can tax. And, only fees. No taxes.

Gubamint would be forced to offer competitive services that people would want. What a novel idea!

Leave a Comment » | LIBERTY | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: PRINTERANYWHERE shaping up nicely

Thursday, August 24, 2006

This utility allows you to “share” someone else’s printer.

Doesn’t make sense (to me) if you’re on a lan with a printer. That is, if I am home and want to print on my home office’s printer from my laptop in the living room, then I can share without this utility.

BUT if I want to print on that home office printer when I am at work say so my wife can read something, then this fills the niche.

It would also seem to eliminate the dreaded fax machine. I can print on my friend’s printer in North Carolina if he wasn’t such a Luddite. Rather than try to fax something to him.

That’s not to say this isn’t without drawbacks.

Clearly, it routes thru a server outside of my control, so I wouldn’t use it for anything I wouldn’t want to see int he newspaper. But, then that describes email and the internet as well. It would seem easy to have the two stubs at each end negotiate a public private key pair allowing the architecture to stay the same but the security to be bullet proof. Then when I “fax” my order for dinner tonight, I wouldn’t have to be concerned that anyone will know what I was having.

That pki implementation would also prevent eavesdropping, and serve as a model for peer to peer encryption.

1 Comment | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: MEEBO, and the MEEBOME widget,

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

http://www.meebo.com

This is an IM aggregator. It makes it possible to watch several IMs at the same time. That didn’t know my socks off.

Now they have a widget that you put on your web page and it allows a visitor to IM you. Hey now that’s interesting.

I put it on my personal webpage and let’s see if anyone uses it.

1 Comment | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

TECH: 1AND1 blog option shoots me in the foot

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

This critique is obsolete. See comments below.

When the 1AND1 hosting provider offered free blogs, I tried it.

I was singularly unimpressed when it turned out to be nothing more than a free WordPess blog like this one. Why was I fooled into thinking that there be something substantive behind it? No big deal. No harm. Nothing but some wasted time and effort.

Today, blundering about with MEEBO, I realized that my web page was down.

And, know one told me. Show’s you how popular I am! Arghh!!

I used FIlezilla to ensure that all my files were in tact there. Phew, that could have made me depend on my LUGGABLE to get them all back in place. OR, my backups. But, now need to pull the fire alarm … yet.

It appears that 1AND1 redirected the webpage to the blog unbeknowst to me. Double Arghhh!

I deleted the test blog, and eventually … … after ten anxious minutes … … it refreshed everything to where it should be.

Lessons Learned: Watch for the unintended consequences.

Updated 2007-04-07

1and1 has a new blog destination from it administration page. It now gives you a blog that appears to be a hosted version of WORDPRESS. It know longer throws you to the free WORDPRESS DOT COM site. That’s both bad and good. Good in that you can use javascript if you can figure out how. Bad in that the free WORDPRESS site has lots of assumptions that you can use without knowing too much. I pinged 1and1 support and they have no doc, no faq, and no real support for what they have deployed. (Dangerous?) They said it would be out RSN (Real Soon Now)! You, and so will Christmas. Any way this critique is no longer applicable. But I’d suggest caution in proceeding with the offering.THe reward MAY be worth the risk.

1 Comment | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »