Category — Technology

Wired News: Boycott Sony

I like Sony. I should after buying a PSP on launch day and planning on buying a second one soon, along with owning a PS2 and 2 PS1s, and planning on buying a PS3 whenever they launch. But, Sony did wrong in putting some nasty code on CD's, effectively opening PC's to attack and putting some spyware on Macs, which I think has also been mentioned. (Check, googles, yep they did install kernel extensions, by a different company, read article from Gizmodo, Sony Mac Rootkit,which makes it an equal oppotunity offender)

Wired is calling for a boycott of Sony. Does that include SCEA. or is it the Sony music label? Decisions, decisions. I don't like ANY company that installs crap on my computer be it Microsoft or Sony or hell even Apple. I don't like companies telling me what I can or can not do with the things I buy, emphasis on buy. I don't like licensing my software and I doubt I'll be buying any of Sony's CD's for a while.

The major media companues treat ordinary consumers like criminals whenever they buy digital media, be it games, CD's or movies. If Cd's were priced better and not loaded with crap like Sony pulled, maybe it just might make piracy less viable. Some people in this world can't afford to buy a new $15 CD just for a song they like or if they want to try an new group.

I've been beating (not literally) on this bloody computer. A lot of my problems could be classified as user error-lack of updated backups, not paying attention to what I'm doing, etc. Now I think of myself as intermediate in computers-I can do various things well but I'm not an expert by any means.
I think its my configuration-bought this PC from a system builder who used some seriously cheap parts with a lot built in-video, Ethernet, sound, modem. I have had issues with Ethernet-bought a new card when we had a series of errors caused by the combo of a SiS 900 ethernet card and a cable modem that didn't have a power off button with two days of intermittent power outages caused by a lovely thunderstorm. Next went the video-it was sharing 256MB and boy did it kill performance. So we bought a 64MB PCI NVIDIA MX-4000 video card. I found out that I can't uninstall the previous video card so I can only disable it. So any time I have to reinstall Windows which I had to do last weekend (Sept. 10-11), I have to be sure and check the Device manager and update drivers for the NVidia and disable the SiS software. The modem is always a bit of a problem. I always forget what kind it is, but I used my dad's PC and went online and found the drivers which are now on CD. I also found an IBM CRT monitor driver that works fine and made sure to get my sound drivers.
I've just now got around to getting music and video files put back into my files so I'm pretty much set. I've lost two video files and about 4-5 iTunes songs, which is a bit irritating but I can fix them.
I would be really happy if Comcast got off their hind end and upgraded the cable system in Vonore because they and DirecWay are the only ones who can do broadband in my area. I'm too far from the cetral office for DSL. DirecWay is too bloody expensive for the speed they offer-400Kbs versus the now 6meg Comcast has. I'm going to call them in a bit and ask when they would be upgrading the service, as I'm tired of the slow dialup and the feeling that I'm now a second class citizen on the net as I have dialup and want to play games online (NeverWinterNights), find AMV's and update my music collection by buying on iTunes or other places. Not to mention it takes forever to dl my Gmail POP mail, newsgroups and RSS feeds, and even general browsing.

I've been trying out Onfolio 2.0 for the past week or so and so far I really like it. I've been collecting files and webpages for afew years now on various things I'm interested in. So I've been copying files and links into Onfolio to have as a knowledge base/electronic brain. I especially like the fact that I'm not dependent on other program's file structure like how Firefox keeps the bookmarks in one folder and files in My documents with pictures, music and videos in the appropriate folders. For instance, I have a folder in My Documents labeled InuYasha, one of my favorite anime shows(how does one pluralize anime as in meaning one of many shows?). In it I have some archived fanfics I like and want to be able to read offline. In My Pictures I have two folders related to InuYasha images, one is Fanart which covers the small images from official and fanartists I like and another one is Wallpapers. In My Videos I have around 15-16 amv's (anime music videos-clips from a show or game set to music) In Firefox I have links to fanfics, fansites, the official site, links to AMV's I want to download, etc. In Onfolio I have have copies of the files and links all in one folder. I'm not dependent on desktop search to help me find all my things, although I'm going to keep using Copernic Desktop search as sometimes I'm not exactly sure where I saw something.
I'm also using Onfolio to read my feeds which is really nice. I can have nested folders and read a newspaper style view of all the feeds in a given subject area. I can also decide when to update and how long to keep things. All in all a very nicely done piece of software, one which I will definitely use for a while to come. I think it is useful in a GTD context as well, as it allows me to have electronic reference files to get reference stuff out of my head and where I can use it. I've been working on typing up my paper notes and filing them and will be adding them to Onfolio as I finish typing them. I plan on archiving the files on CD-R to save space on my HD and of course will keep Onfolio's collection file backed up in a safe place.
I got it as a promo version from O'Reilly and it was very nice. I had a problem with the capture of items though and Onfolio gave me great support and a fix for the problem in a matter of a day or so of emailing logs and detailing the problem.

del.icio.us Tags: GTD Onfolio

Tags: GTD Onfolio

USATODAY.com – Towns battle big companies to expand broadband

I'm rooting for the city. The cable and telephones companies think they got away with not opening their infrastructure to competitors, but technology and an effort by local government and citizens will change that.

Technorati Tags: broadband,

Evernote updated their beta program today and I like it. Icons for categories, the ability to export my data and even back it up plus a bunch of bug fixes. It even lets me create new categories on the fly and add multiple categories (which they had in the previous version but less usable). Very nice indeed. I'm using it to collect clippings like recipes, pertinent paragraphs, essay, etc. I get a lot of email and sometimes I only need a paragraph and I don't want to wade through a large email with lots of replies to find the specific thing I want. I can copy and paste into Evernote and use its search feature to find it. It is one of my top tools. I could have used it a few years ago.

Technorati Tags: Evernote GTD tools

I've been busy trying to get myself better organized. I've started work on my control journal and card file. I've also been messing around on my computer, getting it the way I want. Le sigh. I recently had trouble in Media Player-it would play songs, but no sound. Royally sucked. I installed a bunch of codecs, uninstalled iTunes, etc. I have no idea what I did, but it started working again. I had burned all my itunes music to CD and ripped them in Media Player as MP3s @ 320Kbps which makes them sound really nice. I also listed CDs we own so I can replace them as a lot of them are scratched up.

I've been reading a lot of blogs lately and I'm planning out some things I can do with this blog in particular, which ties into my organizational push-I want my basics in a routine so I can concentrate on my novel writing, my self-education, my daughter and my husband without worrying about the state of my house.

(control journal-see FlyLady)
(card file- see Cardfile Central)

[Listening to: Creep - TLC - CrazySexyCool (04:26)]

I had to reinstall Windows XP Pro over the weekend when a bad driver which worked fine up till Friday decided to nuke my system. The only way to boot was to do it in Safe Mode which bites. It was my onboard Ethernet a SiS 900 on a ECS M810S board or what they call a KVSEM. The driver was trying to go past its allocated memory space. What had started it was a power outage, one second, and that's when it died. I've had the driver corrupted twice already and thought that was the issue. Spent most of Friday and Saturday trying to fix it. We eventually bought a replacement NIC which works great so I have my cable internet back. Cheap system builder. Anyways I've been wading through Casssandra Claire's trilogy Draco Dormiens, Draco Sinister and Draco Veritas. Beautiful stuff. Draco Veritas in Word set in Garamond 12 is 800 pages long and 300k words. I would hate to print that mess out. And she's not finished! I was very relieved that I had put almost all my settings and documents on a separate partition which meant I didn't lose my stuff. I do have to reinstall everything and get my settings back which sucks but much better than losing stuff from my last back up till now.

[Listening to: Nookie - Limp Bizkit - Significant Other (04:50)]

Friday night, my husband's aunt gave him three laptops, a IBM ThinkPad 700(from 1992!), a Dell Latitude XPi CD P150ST(Win95!) and a Dell Latitude CP M233ST. The IBM is too old to use with a 120MB hard drive,and the XPi is running well, after I fixed the errors about the network driver and the video driver. The CP needs a new screen, but it'll we very usable when it is fixed. Now I'll be networking them together. Two PCs, a PS2 and two laptops. Whee. The desktops and the PS2 will be wired and the laptops will be wireless. I had the pleasure of moving my Office XP Outlook file to Outlook 97. Note to self, check to see if readonly is checked on the attributes. Now all I have to do is finish putting my statements into Money, which now resides on the Win95 machine, which will be for managing my life with my calendar and Money files. That and my fanfic collection. LOL. I would like to be able to read my collection when I'm say waiting on something in the oven to bake and the main PC (which I'm typing on right now) is being used. So I spent Friday and Saturday fixing the Win95 machine and general futzing around. I got w.bloggar Saturday and I LOVE it. Sunday, I went to go see the new Harry Potter movie and I liked it but they messed up a few things like when Harry got his broom and stuff like that. I had a completely different picture of Professor Lupin though
I logged into Blogger today and lo and behold GMail accounts were being offered Of course I signed up for one. I wonder if they are going to offer POP access?