The Participatory Culture Foundation released Miro, a great TV/video app for Mac OSX. Free and open source, just the way we like it.

Everything on OSX seems to be taking on the iTunes UI to some degree - I guess it's the starting point for many an OSX user, and it seems to work pretty well for media browsing. A decent combination of intuitiveness, efficiency, and room for some customization (in certain bounded ways). Consistency, really, has been one of the strong points of using a
mac for so many years, even among shareware and freeware. The randomness of interaction design that can manifest itself in windows apps is one of that platform's bigger annoyances.

Posted by Chris at 05:47 PM in Computing, Moving Pictures | Comments (0)

I've been looking for a replacement to Quicken for a while, sort of. The program is annoying in many minor ways, but having used it for several years, I wasn't really sure if I could stop. What else could substitute for it? I've started seeing maturing finance programs for the Mac for a little while now, so I started looking, and saw this rather intelligent roundup.

Based on the post and many comments, and checking out the options, I've made the plunge with iBank 2, from Igg software. Seems pretty good so far. I haven't gotten all my info into it, but I've been able to export accounts from quicken into it, and finally use the downloaded info from my bank - HSBC.

Posted by Chris at 10:18 PM in Computing | Comments (0)

Who said they had to be driving directions (check step 23)?

You may otherwise want to look into that submersible car, 007-style.

Posted by Chris at 09:48 PM in Computing, Random, Transportation | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 06:10 PM in Computing, Security | Comments (0)

The trials and tribulations of electronic voting are not just an American problem. The Dutch Government apparently had their main supplier of e-voting systems essentially threaten them with blackmail if they didn't purchase his company after an independent watchdog group (great: The "We don't trust voting computers foundation") leader was poised to be put on a commission to investigate the voting computers.

This kind of problem isn't really specific to e-voting, but it does make a good argument for open-source e-voting systems. If the source is publicly owned and maintained by government programmers (doing releases and testing for elections) plus the open-source community, your blackmail and sole-source problems go away.

Posted by Chris at 07:32 PM in Computing, Politics | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 10:17 PM in Computing | Comments (0)

Sign The petition

To my Congressional representatives (and to Congress as a whole) --

As a fan of Internet radio, I was alarmed to learn that music royalty rates were recently determined by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) which, if enacted, would certainly silence most or all of my favorite online listening services. (For most webcasters, this new royalty rate represents more than 100% of their total revenues!)

The closure of these Internet radio stations would be a loss for not only independent business owners, but also for musical artists, for copyright owners, and for listeners like me who enjoy the wide variety of choices available via Internet radio.

I respectfully request that Congress look into this matter and initiate action to prevent it. As the CRB rate decision is retroactive to January 1, 2006, please understand that time is of the essence -- as the immediate impact of this decision could silence many or most free Internet radio stations forever.

Posted by Chris at 09:18 PM in Computing, Music, Politics | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 05:03 PM in Computing | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 08:33 PM in Computing, Music | Comments (0)

I mentioned Steve Jobs' open letter about DRM a week or so ago. Of course it's not quite that clear. Bruce Schneier with some thoughts on why software companies such as Apple or Microsoft might really want to use a proprietary DRM system:

This isn't even about Microsoft satisfying its Hollywood customers at the expense of those of us paying for the privilege of using Vista. This is about the overwhelming majority of honest users and who owns the distribution channels to them. And while it may have started as a partnership, in the end Microsoft is going to end up locking the movie companies into selling content in its proprietary formats.

We saw this trick before; Apple pulled it on the recording industry. First iTunes worked in partnership with the major record labels to distribute content, but soon Warner Music's CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. found that he wasn't able to dictate a pricing model to Steve Jobs. The same thing will happen here; after Vista is firmly entrenched in the marketplace, Sony's Howard Stringer won't be able to dictate pricing or terms to Bill Gates. This is a war for 21st-century movie distribution and, when the dust settles, Hollywood won't know what hit them.

Posted by Chris at 06:51 PM in Computing, Music | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 07:30 PM in Computing | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 06:21 PM in Computing | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 09:31 PM in Computing, Music | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 08:41 PM in Computing, Politics | Comments (0)

I have a Palm Tungsten E2 that I am trying to use to browse the Web through a Motorola SLVR (E7) via a bluetooth connection. I have not gotten it to work so far, the tungsten connects to the phone, but the phone gives an error when it tries to get a connection. The tungsten gets a "no carrier" error from the phone. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

Useful 1

Useful 2

Useful 3

Useful 4

1src Forums

Useful 5

Posted by Chris at 09:13 PM in Computing | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 08:38 PM in Computing, Politics, Security | Comments (0)

(I always forget to publish these scheduled articles...)
Although the article appears on the front page of the business section (An Obsession with Leaks and Plugs, PDF), it really ought to be a general op-ed. The current climate of secrecy, fear, and paranoia engendered by the administration already seem to be having ill effects on journalism, and as one could possibly even argued by the recent goings on at Hewlett-Packard, big business. The aptly titled "sunshine laws" that have been enacted in many places across the country passed because of the general feeling that democracy works best out in the open, in the brightly visible light of day. Exactly what about that is unclear to the current administration?

Posted by Chris at 10:23 AM in Computing, Politics, Security | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 08:15 PM in Computing, Politics | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 08:50 PM in Computing, Environment, Sustainability | Comments (0)

you may be right, but if a very large, well-funded entity brings a lawsuit against you -- being right and being able to win in a court of law usually takes a lot of money. Well it looks like the MPAA finally picked on someone who has the money to defend himself. Hopefully Mr. Hogan is able to decisively showed them the error of their ham-fisted legalistic ways.

Posted by Chris at 07:37 PM in Computing, Music, Politics, Security | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 05:51 PM in Computing, Security | Comments (0)

Wired had (forgot to post this, whoops!) an article on the best Flickr mashups. Very creative stuff. I particularly liked spelling with Flickr and Flickrball.

Posted by Chris at 09:31 AM in Computing, Random | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 08:50 PM in Computing, Environment, Science | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 09:53 PM in Art, Computing | Comments (0)

I was working for Sun Microsystems in 1999 when Scott McNealy famously said "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." I did not really want to believe him then, but I knew if we did not do something about it we would end up exactly in that spot.

On his blog, Bruce Schneier has posted one of his best all encompassing privacy essays to date, The Future Of Privacy. One of the good and bad things about wholesale surveillance is that it is so un-specific. We may no longer be anonymous with all this data about us stored in who knows how many databases, but just because it passes through a filter does not mean we are being watched in the same way it did thirty years ago. The problem lies in the filtering then, when a combination of things that we do raises a flag in some computer somewhere - and we become yet another example of an unduly harassed false positive. The numbers are so great at this point - the amount of data so large - that it does not seem to work out in our favor (the innocents) or that of law enforcement. And the amount of data seems like it will just keep pace with computing power and algorithm development.

Posted by Chris at 06:26 PM in Computing, Politics, Security | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 06:25 PM in Computing, Politics, Security | Comments (0)

The data lines that carry our internet traffic makeup part of the infrastructure of this country just like the concrete of the sewers and highways, and infrastructure is an area - an inefficient market - that requires government regulation and funding to be both competitive for its (usually) small number of companies and fair for the public that needs access to it.

Larry Lessig has a good post about how the United States is falling behind the rest of the developed world in internet infrastructure development because of a lack of intelligent regulation in the broadband access market.

Posted by Chris at 12:25 PM in Computing, Infrastructure, Politics | Comments (0)

Posted by Chris at 08:53 PM in Computing | Comments (0)

My sister sent me this interesting article on the man behind Ask Jeeves and the world of search engine algorithms.

Posted by Chris at 11:41 AM in Computing | Comments (0)

Some changes around here:

• switched to a new host (much better features, cheaper, and the owner of my old hosting company was somewhat of a crackpot)
• upgraded to the latest version of movabletype
• new layout (mainly because of the upgrade)
• Implemented tagbacks in addition to trackbacks. At some point in the future I might get rid of trackbacks.

Posted by Chris at 04:15 PM in Computing | Comments (0)

Apple is moving to Intel chips for its new machines, will it also start using the Trusted Computing architecture? (From boingboing)

Posted by Chris at 12:55 PM in Computing, Security | Comments (0)

ourmedia has a trailer for an interesting looking documentary called Alternative Freedom, about digital media rights.

Posted by Chris at 12:33 PM in Art, Computing, Politics | Comments (0)

An awesome application that visually shows songs and groups that sample old hip-hop, soul and funk, and those same songs and groups along a timeline. Interactive. Definitely check it out.

Posted by Chris at 11:04 PM in Computing, Music | Comments (0)

My sleep cycle runs about an hour and 35 minutes. Now there's a watch that can monitor it and wake me up when I'm at the end of one, when I'm most awake.

Posted by Chris at 04:11 PM in Computing, Science | Comments (0)

You can spend all you want on fancy technologies to secure data (or buildings, or airports, etc.), but if a person can still just walk in or make a phone call and convince the right person that they belong there, they can just walk out with your data. Or do what ever else they like, and the technology means little.

Posted by Chris at 12:16 PM in Computing, Security | Comments (0)

Public Knowledge won a big case today against the the FCC, blocking them from putting a broadcast flag in the digital television stream. Now we will have to see if the digital TV lobby convinces someone in Congress to support a bill to do the same thing.

Posted by Chris at 06:57 PM in Computing, Politics | Comments (0)

I want one of these cool mixing devices!

Posted by Chris at 10:34 AM in Computing, Music | Comments (0)

Those inventive folks at Google have come up with another cool application: Google SMS. Query something (pizza 10013) from your cell phone and it returns short appropriate text answers.

They recently came out with Google Scholar and have Google Groups also. I wonder what they will come up with next.

Posted by Chris at 11:22 AM in Computing | Comments (0)

The Register reports on a new European study that having computers at home and at school do not necessarily contribute to kids learning abilities or achievement:

"... Bivariate analyses show a positive correlation between student achievement and the availability of computers both at home and at schools. However, once we control extensively for family background and school characteristics, the relationship gets negative for home computers and insignificant for school computers. Thus, the mere availability of computers at home seems to distract students from effective learning. But measures of computer use for education and communication at home show a positive conditional relationship with student achievement..."

Lesson: Computers are just tools, and really like anything else they can assist or detract from a proper education.

Posted by Chris at 08:27 PM in Computing | Comments (0)

From USA today:
Unprotected PCs can be hijacked in minutes: Simply connecting to the Internet — and doing nothing else — exposes your PC to non-stop, automated break-in attempts by intruders looking to take control of your machine surreptitiously.

There is always the Macintosh...

Posted by Chris at 11:15 AM in Computing, Security | Comments (0)

Want to get your digital photos printed (professionally) but not sure where to upload them to? Here is a basic comparison of what looks to be all of the online photo printing sites. There are 92 of them listed currently.

I have only used shutterfly.com, and the prints were pretty good.

Posted by Chris at 11:16 AM in Computing | Comments (0)

If you have not stopped using Internet Explorer already and started using Firefox, you definitely should. Sometimes even a young kid can help build something that causes Microsoft a bit of pain.

Posted by Chris at 01:15 PM in Computing | Comments (0)

There is a new book out on spam: Spam Kings: The Real Story behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements

More than sixty percent of today's email traffic is spam, according to email filtering firm Brightmail. This year alone, five trillion spam messages will clog Internet users in-boxes, costing society an estimated USD10-billion in lost productivity, filtering software, and other expenses. Spam Kings:The Real Story behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and Penis Enlargements is the first book to expose the shadowy world of the people responsible for the junk email problem.

Posted by Chris at 12:56 PM in Computing, Security | Comments (0)

Former US poet laureate Robert Pinsky celebrates the pixel's 50th birthday with an ode to the digitization of our visual experience.

Posted by Chris at 05:06 PM in Art, Computing | Comments (1)

The Ninth Circuit Court finally injected a little sense into the file sharing/copyright debate with their ruling that the file sharing companies do not materially gain from what happens on their networks and so they do not have to specifically block any activity, and more importantly the courts should not be legislating the business world. As has happened in the past new business models will arise to take advantage of the current situation. Basically, the record and movie companies should get their fat lazy asses out of court and get with the program.

Posted by Chris at 12:07 PM in Computing | Comments (0)

Are Mac users smarter than PC users? Some fun geek/intellectual nonsense.

Posted by Chris at 04:41 PM in Computing | Comments (0)

An eWeek article talks about all the security problems in Internet Explorer, and how the Computer Emergency Response Team recommends using an alternative browser.

Posted by Chris at 05:28 PM in Computing, Security | Comments (0)

If you are at all interested in security topics, especially where national security and electronic security issues intersect, than I highly recommend the once-monthly Crypto-Gram newsletter written by Bruce Schneier, the CTO of Counter Pane Internet Security. Even if you are not so much into the computer and technology side of security, his views on the larger picture of National Security are quite interesting.
An opinion piece on news.com last month on how we are all security consumers is a good example of his views.

Posted by Chris at 08:32 PM in Computing, Security | Comments (0)

Senator Hatch and the recording companies have gone further off the deep end with this latest anti-copyright bill. The name is an acronym so ridiculous I'm not even going to spell it out here. From the article:
"At a minimum (the Induce Act) invites a re-examination of Betamax," said Jeff Joseph, vice president for communications at the Consumer Electronics Association. "It's designed to have this fuzzy feel around protecting children from pornography, but it's pretty clearly a backdoor way to eliminate and make illegal peer-to-peer services. Our concern is that you're attacking the technology."

Posted by Chris at 02:09 PM in Computing | Comments (0)

The recording industry has Congress so bent over the table that it has managed to fast track a bill (The Pirate Act) that would get the government to do its dirty work of suing filesharers for it. Instead of prosecuting terrorists, Mr. Ashcroft and company would now get to wiretap and file civil suits against teenagers downloading music. And the RIAA would still get to sue them again after that...

Posted by Chris at 01:04 PM in Computing | Comments (0)