Les Jones

Megabytes vs. Mebibytes

Cybotix on Slashdot writes:

actually the correct term for 1,024 bytes is mebibyte, for 1,048,576 bytes is gibibyte. mega/giga are decimal prefixes, so 1 megabyte = 1000 bytes, and 1000 megabytes = 1 gigabyte. (google calculator is using the old convention)

Sure enough, he's right. See this NIST page.

Joel Knows Software

Years ago, Netscape and the Mozilla group decided to re-write Netscape from the ground up. 4.7 was out. They never shipped 5.0, even though it was almost ready. Instead, they waited two years and released 6.0. Meanwhile, Internet Explorer became the dominant Web browser.

Joel Sposky has said for years that re-writing the code from scratch without improving the existing code base was the worst mistake Netscape could have made. Netscape is now Mozilla (more or less). Scott Collins of the Mozilla project agrees: "Well, you can't put 50 pounds of [crap] in a ten pound bag, it took two years. And we didn't get out a 5.0, and that cost of us everything, it was the biggest mistake ever, and I put it all on the feet of this one individual, whom I will not name."

Sposky also criticized Netscape and Mozilla for using non-native interface controls. Collins backs him up there, too: "We should have used native controls as soon as it was possible, despite of the fact that they're harder to write, because we ended up going that way anyway."

Sposky called it right.

Word 5.1

Microsoft Word for Macintosh 5.1: the apex of word processing?

I remember lots of people hating it at the time. Too bloated and slow. I let those arguments convince me to buy WriteNow, the lean and fast word process that didn't do half of the stuff I wanted. I went back to Word 5.1 and stuck with it for ages. Looking back, Word 5.1, which came on half a dozen 800K floppies, was pretty darned close to perfect. Word 6.0 was abonimable. Since then I've done most of my writing in HTML, and mostly use Word for generating fax cover sheets.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee

World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee has been knighted. Talk about an invention that changed the world. Congrats, Tim.

LATER: Come to think of it, I owe my current livelihood to this guy. Without the Web, I'd be a poorly-paid field biologist living in a tent in the middle of nowhere (best-case scenario), or I'd be selling carpet at the family business (worst-case scenario).

Prius Review

Another positive review of the Toyota Prius.

I often slag alternative energy because it often doesn't make sense. Hybrid engines make sense. They use existing infrastructure so there's no chicken-and-egg problem, as with hydrogen. And their full potential isn't even close to being realized.

One way to increase efficiency would be to drop the transmission entirely and transmit electricity to motors mounted on the wheel or axle. If you mount a motor on each wheel, you get all-wheel drive as a bonus.

A variation on the same idea is to use small motors on the non-drive wheels. They can provide just enough extra traction to get going in ice and snow. One carmaker (BMW, I think - this was from an article in Car and Driver a while back) is going to use just that system to provide an economical alternative to traditional four-wheel drive systems, which add significantly more weight to the car.

Anyone Need a Gmail Account?

Chris Range gave me an invitation to Gmail, and now they've given me some invitations. I've got six to give away.

If you want one, post in comments, and include your email address in the email field. Put in any old Web site - like http://www.yahoo.com - to keep your email address from appearing on the site. I can still see your email address through the administration screen.

UPDATE: I've sent invites to everyone who posted an email address. Comments are now closed. If you want a Gmail invite, send email to les dot jones -at- gmail dot youknowwhat.

Concrete Language Award

Have you ever actually seen HDTV? It's not an incremental upgrade - it's as close to a paradigm shift as you can get without a scratch-n-sniff panel on the TV so you can smell the rotting corpses on CSI.
- charyou-tree, in this Slashdot thread on HDTV

Clay Shirky on Designing Social Software

His latest is Flaming and the Design of Social Software. The key idea:

We have grown quite adept at designing interfaces and interactions between computers and machines, but our social tools -- the software the users actually use most often -- remain badly misfit to their task. Social interactions are far more complex and unpredictable than human/computer interaction, and that unpredictability defeats classic user-centric design. As a result, tools used daily by tens of millions are either ignored as design challenges, or treated as if the only possible site of improvement is the user-to-tool interface. The design gap between computer-as-box and computer-as-door persists because of a diminished conception of the user. The user of a piece of social software is not just a collection of individuals, but a group. Individual users take on roles that only make sense in groups: leader, follower, peacemaker, process nazi, and so on. There are also behaviors that can only occur in groups, from consensus building to social climbing. And yet, despite these obvious differences between personal and social behaviors, we have very little design practice that treats the group as an entity to be designed for.

And the key example:

Flame wars are not surprising; they are one of the most reliable features of mailing list practice. If you assume a piece of software is for what it does, rather than what its designer's stated goals were, then mailing list software is, among other things, a tool for creating and sustaining heated argument. (This is true of other conversational software as well -- the WELL, usenet, Web BBSes, and so on.)

This tension in outlook, between 'flame war as unexpected side-effect' and 'flame war as historical inevitability,' has two main causes. The first is that although the environment in which a mailing list runs is computers, the environment in which a flame war runs is people. You couldn't go through the code of the Mailman mailing list tool, say, and find the comment that reads "The next subroutine ensures that misunderstandings between users will be amplified, leading to name-calling and vitriol." Yet the software, when adopted, will frequently produce just that outcome.

ATTN: Canon Digicam Owners

As with the last tip, I'm posting this in case I'm not the last person to realize it.

Here's the scenario. You take some pictures and download them to your computer. You forget to erase those pictures from the memory card, and take some more pictures.

When it comes time to download, there's an easy way to get just the new pictures. In the Canon download utility, choose Select New from the Select button/menu. That selects only the new pictures.

Also, pictures that have already been downloaded have an arrow icon (circled in red in the screenshot below.

Wikipedia

Robert McHenry, a former editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia Brittanica questions the value of Wikipedia. I've always been skeptical of the whole Wiki concept. It has its uses. But as a definitive resource? No, thanks, for the reasons McHenry spells out:

Take the statements of faith in the efficacy of collaborative editing, replace the shibboleth "community" with the banal "committee," and the surprise dissolves before your eyes. Or, if you are of a statistical turn of mind, think a little about regression to the mean and the shape of the normal distribution curve. However closely a Wikipedia article may at some point in its life attain to reliability, it is forever open to the uninformed or semiliterate meddler.

He tests the idea by fact-checking an entry he knows will deal with a tricky subject. It turns out that an earlier version of the article had it right, but it was later "corrected" with bad information. It's the open source "many eyes" solution gone bad, since - unlike software - factual and historical information isn't self-evidently correct or incorrect by looking at it or compiling it.

Found via Slashdot. So McHenry notes a specific entry he checks for accuracy, only to find inconsistent, incomplete information. Some Slashdot users note that the strength of Wiki is that someone who notices the inconsistency can look up the facts in another source and correct the Wikipedia entry (ignoring the fact that in this case the Wiki process replaced good information with bad). Best response:

That begs the question: Does the Wikipedia exist to provide reference information for visitors ... or does it exist simply for people to edit it, giving writers some sort of vague satisfaction that their contribution has been accepted?

In other words, if you're already an authority on a subject, why are you looking it up on Wikipedia? And if you don't know anything about a subject and you have access to a better reference, why would you use Wikipedia? And in either case, how would the Wikipedia entry get corrected? If the best we can hope for from Wikipedia entries is a footnote saying "I looked this up in a real, honest-to-God encylopedia so I'm sure it's right" then Wikipedia is just Encyclopedia Cheapannica-but-Crummannica.

Domain Name Scam from ILSCORP.net (AKA Internet Listing Service Corp.)

(Home today taking care of Melissa.)

I just opened a letter from ILSCORP.net (AKA Internet Listing Service Corp.) for the lesjones.com domain, for domain service from December 15, 2004 to December 15, 2005.

That didn't sound right. I knew that my domain was paid up through May, and I have it listed with Network Solutions, not ILSCORP. I looked over the letter and noticed the words "This is not a bill. This is a solicitation. You are under no obligation to pay the amount stated above unless you accept this offer."

Scumbags. I wonder how many people who don't know any better wind up paying these people and switching their domain service to them?

Oldest .COM Domain Names

The 100 Oldest Currently Registered .COM Domains. Via Michael Silence.

So domain names used to be free for the asking. I remember when Network Solutions started charging $35. For a while there was a domain gold rush.

Once I realized what was happening around '96 I decided to fire up whois and register some domains. But what? I tried the obvious names that occur to most people - sex.com, lesbians.com, etc. - but they were all taken.

Except one - blowjob.com. Problem is, I was registering domains through my employer, and I didn't think registering blowjob.com would be too cool with management. If I knew then what I know now I would have looked up a domain host and registered with them. That little mistake probably cost me $50,000 or so. Ah, well. I registered backpages.com for a project I never started, and later sold it, and I did well operating and then selling 56K.COM, so I've got no complaints.

Google Suggest Beta

Try Google Suggest. As you type search words it uses an auto-complete feature to suggest search terms.

I realized last week that GMail has auto-complete when typing email addresses. That is some way cool WebUI wizardry.

Joel Sposky Interview

Salon has an interview with programming and user interface guru Joel Sposky. Excerpts:

Another problem is that everybody tries to learn about business from Google, Microsoft, eBay and Amazon -- and they're such wacky exceptions. They don't really apply to you. I say, Microsoft makes their own gravity -- they could ship a brown paper bag called Microsoft Brown Paper Bag 1.0 and hundreds of thousands of people would buy it. Or at least try it.

That's something I've said before: Amazon is not a good example for someone starting an e-commerce venture. What I mean by that is a small outfit just starting out can't operate exactly like Amazon. For instance, they can't lose a couple billion dollars before making their first quarterly profit. Some Amazon features - like user reviews - don't work on sites with large numbers of products and small numbers of customers. Study Amazon's interfaces for usability ideas, but don't assume your fledgling e-commerce site can model itself after the world's biggest online retail operation.

On how wi-fi has solved some software problems with massive amounts of hardware:

But the funny thing is, Bosworth has been talking about this same problem [making Web interfaces available offline] for a long time -- he's just obsessed with the person on the airplane. And, lo and behold, airplanes are actually getting Internet connections. And Wi-Fi is spreading like crazy. What's kind of surprising is that it has turned out to be easier to rewire the entire world for high-bandwidth Internet than it is to make a good replication architecture so you can work disconnected! It's actually far more likely that this problem will be solved that way, oddly enough.

MirrorDot

Or as I like to call it, the Greatest Web Site on the Entire Internet. MirrorDot mirrors all of those Slashdot'ed stories and Web sites.

Wired's Lame Vaporware Issue

Wired released ther annual vaporware report, tracking the most notoriously overdue technology products. Thing is, some of the products in their top 10 are barely late enough to warrant a harshly-worded interoffice memo at some companies.

Alienware's Video Array is a high-end bit of hardware and software that allows video cards to run in parallel, dramatically boosting performance. Or so the company says. Alienware promised the technology in Q4 2004. Needless to say, it's still off-planet.

Golly, and here it is January 7, 2005 in the Wired offices. Welcome to the futuristic year 2005, when a major magazine publishes an article about a tech product being a quarter late.

At the #9 spot is Intel. They were supposed to push their Pentium 4 to 4.0 GHz this year, but - get this, fellas! - they only reached - gentleman, prepare to guffaw! - 3.8 GHz! Flavin!

Wired's knock on TiVo is equally lame. TiVo actually released the Tivo ToGo service just before Wired went to press with their vaporware report, but Wired is too uptight to admit it, and resorts to using exclamation points to get in their zingers.

TiVo announced the service at CES in January 2004, and released it Jan. 3, 2005. That was cutting it very close, TiVo! And the product still doesn't support the Mac or DVD burning!

Look, tracking vaporware used to be good nerdy fun. I say that as a past reader of the pre-Web era Murph's Vaporware. But if Wired can't dis anybody better than this they need to drop the feature or change their name to Tired.

Free Anti-Virus

Via Mad "no permalinks" Ogre I found out about AVG, a free anti-virus scanner. I use Norton Internet Security and the included Norton AV, but I noticed my system ran a little slower after I installed it. Melissa tried it, but didn't like the slowdown (we have matching laptops) and uninstalled it. She's going to give AVG a try. It's free for private use, and is ICSA-certified, which is pretty impressive for free software.

Multi-user Access to the Hollywood Sign

From Bruce Schneieir's latest Cryptogram:

In Los Angeles, the "HOLLYWOOD" sign is protected by a fence and a locked gate. Because several different agencies need access to the sign for various purposes, the chain locking the gate is formed by several locks linked together. Each of the agencies has the key to its own lock, and not the key to any of the others. Of course, anyone who can open one of the locks can open the gate.

This is a nice example of a multiple-user access-control system. It's simple, and it works. You can also make it as complicated as you want, with different locks in parallel and in series.

Cryptogram is good stuff if you're in the network security world (and, increasingly, if you're in the physical security world, since he's started thinking about that). If you're not on the mailing list, try his new blog.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Robotic Servants

Chris Anderson asks What is it with the Japanese and robots? Interesting stuff if you're a Japanophile.

This reminds me of something I keep meaning to do. Why call a dishwasher a dishwashing machine? I want to call mine a dishwashing robot. That's more or less what it is, since it does something analogous to what I'd have to do with my arms in order to wash the dishes. I also own a closewashing robot and a clothesdrying robot (though I admit the analogy isn't quite as strong for those two appliances, especially the dryer).

How Google Maps Work

as simple as possible, but no simpler explains the DHTML behind Google Maps. Those jumpy, bumpy Google Maps. Those happy, snappy Google Maps. Via jwz.

Do You Know When Teflon Was Invented?

Chris Range sent this link about Hubble being de-orbited. Reading the comments, I found out when Teflon was invented. It was a lot earlier than I thought. Answer here.

Headlines From 2020: Electric Cars - the Silent Killers

"Headlines from the year 2020: Oat bran - the silent killer."
  - Brad Hall-era Saturday Night Live Sketch

REM's Michael Stipe was almost hit by an electric car, so now he wants them to play music when they're in motion to warn pedestrians. Via Tim Blair.

MAME Arcade Cabinet

Chris Range is home-brewing an arcade cabinet for playing games with MAME.

Computer-Generated Article Accepted at Conference

Via Sploid. MIT students pull prank on conference:

The trio submitted two of the randomly assembled papers to the World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), scheduled to be held July 10-13 in Orlando, Florida.

To their surprise, one of the papers -- "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy" -- was accepted for presentation.[...]

"Rooter" features such mind-bending gems as: "the model for our heuristic consists of four independent components: simulated annealing, active networks, flexible modalities, and the study of reinforcement learning" and "We implemented our scatter/gather I/O server in Simula-67, augmented with opportunistically pipelined extensions."

More Google Maps Satellite Images

Found via trackback to this earlier post, Ewan Mackinnon has links to Google satellite images of famous landmarks, organized by state.

Oh, and here's Neyland Stadium from outerspace. The stair-stepped building on the left is the UT library. Hit the down arrow to see the Thompson-Boling Arena and basebal field. Scroll to the left of that for the track and outdoor swimming pool.

You can also drag and scroll to move around the image, use the cursor keys on your keyboard, and use page up, page down, home, and end.

Something else fun: start at any point on the Tennessee River (it's to the right of Neyland Stadium). Zoom in. Now follow the river up- or down- stream.

Google Maps rules.

ILSCorp.net Domain Scammers Offline

I blogged about ILSCorp's domain renewal scam back in December. Lots of people posted comments to that thread recounting their bad experiences with the company and their efforts to shut them down.

A commentor on that thread posted this morning saying the ILSCorp domain has changed. Instead of offering renewal services it's now shilling for search engine optimization. That sounds about right - in my experience search engine optimization is one of the scammier businesses out there. But maybe now their domain renewal scam has been nixed.

Testing Wikipedia

Ace decided to see if he could slip something into the Wikipedia entry for the Battle of Hastings without being noticed. Kudos to Wikipedia for catching it in no time flat. And kudos to Ace for this fine piece of writing:

It should also be noted that Indiana Jones took part in the action, riding in an armored canoe pulled by two dragons with wheels for feet; the battle ended when he sliced off the head of Cobra Commander with a garlic press. He later celebrated by swabbing his wang in honey and finding an anthill.

Tenth graders with history papers due, start your copying. "But it said so in the encyclopedia!"

Adobe, Macromedia Merge

Holy crap. I totally missed this, but Chris Range points to the merger. Wow. The two giants have come together. Hard to believe. This is like an Apple/Microsoft merger.

FCC Mandates VoIP Carriers Provide E911

In response to incidents in which 911 emergency service wasn't available to Voice over IP users, the FCC voted unanimously to require VoIP providers to enact 911 service within six months.

BOZOs

Discovered this while reading about Apple's move to Intel chips (which I think is a good, though belated, move).

This gets to the crux of Apple's problems. Some of the people associated with Apple make it unattractive. This can include anyone from top Apple management all the way down to the user base. This unattractive group, let's call it the Bitter Obstinate Zealot Order (BOZO5 for short), whines, avoids reality, drinks too much Kool-Aid, self affirms, condescends, and annoys.

However, the admitted failings also will make the platform's weaknesses more readily apparent. That is actually a good thing. It's not only good for those that are hooked on Kool-Aid within the platform, but it's also good when those outside the platform see the weaknesses as well. When a weakness becomes so highlighted that it cannot be ignored, it has a greater chance of being addressed. Conversely, when BOZOs constantly defend weaknesses in their platform, there is a greater chance that the weakness will not be fixed. Ergo, the platform's weaknesses receive less attention than they ought, which results in platform stagnation.

Make your own comparisons to fringe elements of any political party.

Interview with Network Security Expert Marcus Ranum

From SecurityFocus via email from a colleague. Marcus Ranum is a big dude in the infosec arena. Among other things, he wrote the Gauntlet firewall and founded Network Flight Recorder. Interesting stuff if you're interested in network security.

Among the highlights, he has sensible responses to the people who way "Forget perimeter security. Just encrypt everything" (data loss isn't the only problem) or "Forget perimeter security. Just secure every computer to the Nth degree" (you wind up with man-in-the-middle attacks, and if you can't secure the perimeter, you have no hope of securing all the hosts). He also has thoughts on how the Internet RFC process works today, in 2005, as opposed to yesterday, in 1990.

Clay Shirky's Latest

Ontology is Overrated -- Categories, Links, and Tags. Among other things, it explains why Google's search trounced Yahoo!'s directory. The first time I heard someone say that Yahoo! was becoming worthless because their directory wasn't keeping up with new sites was around 1997.

Computer Sounds

Genesis of some famous sounds via email from Chris Range. I didn't know Brian Eno did the Windows 95 sound. Er, 'course, I didn't know any of those guys did any of those sounds, but I know who Brian Eno is. Funny how that works.

Windows Startup Sound: Brian Eno (1995)

The thing from the agency said, 'We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,' this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said 'and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long'.

Hybrid Cars - the Silent Killers

"Headlines from the year 2020: Oat bran - the silent killer."
 -- Brad Hall-era Saturday Night Live sketch

From The Safest Cars: a Holistic Approach, in the (San Francisco) Bayosphere:

This article is not about gas mileage, but about safety, and since I already scolded SUVs for their psychopathic tendency to kill humans, it’s only fair that I point out the danger of almost silent cars, which hybrids are at slow speeds. Ever see a “Deaf Child in Neighborhood” sign? Hybrids make us all, in effect, deaf. Drivers of hybrids are noting that silence is not golden; they're running over unwary animals and it could get worse.

Submitted to the Beltway Traffic Jam.

See also:
 - Electric Cars - the Silent Killers

New Daylights Savings Time May Cause Glitches

The changes to daylight savings time in 2007 could cause problems for computer equipment in a micro-Y2K scenario. If I had to guess, I'd say that semi-smart equipment that's hard-wired to compensate for daylight savings time will be most affected. Anything that has automatic upgrades - from TiVo to Windows XP - will be fixed well in advance.

Word of the Day - Butt-Dialing

Butt-dialing - phoning someone inadvertently, such as by sitting on your cell phone.

I got butt-dialed today by Jay. It went to voicemail, and when I checked voicemail I heard him and his brother Judd riding around in Jay's Jeep Cherokee yucking it up about Warner Brothers cartoons. That went on until the voicemail timed out. I told him about it at dinner tonight and he thought it was hilarious, and he and Judd kept on yucking it up about the cartoons.

While Judd was here I brought out the pics from '86 when I drove to Memphis, visited with the Gregorys, and then me and Jay drove to New Orleans. Judd was three or four years old back then. He's about to graduate college now.

Das Keyboard

Josh at work sends this link to Das Keyboard, the uber-keyboard for H4xx0r whose 5k1llz are so L33+ they don't need labels on their keys. I poke fun, but who knows? If I couldn't cheat by looking at the keys I might really become a better typist. I think Reed was saying he had a keyboard from this company and really liked it.

$599 Thinkpads Through September 7

$599 Thinkpads direct from IBM. Celeron processors, WiFi, 40 MB GB HD, and 512 MB RAM. The only slightly cheap thing is that it has a plain CD instead of a CD-RW/DVD. Can't complain too much for that price. Via Phil Greenspun.

I'm a firm believer in cheap laptops. It's too easy to lose a laptop to theft or gravity to invest in an expensive model. Our Compaq laptops were $1100 before rebates, and supposedly $650 afterwards, though one of the rebates didn't come through, so they wound up being $725 each. Almost two years later they're still going strong.

How to Turn off "Manner Mode" on Verizon Wireless Cell Phones

Somehow my cell phone got on "manner mode" and wouldn't ring no matter how the ring volume was set. I found these instructions for resetting the phone to normal operation.

"If you have an LG6000 hold the star button. Silent Mode Activated will be displayed then wait and hold the star button again."

Do You Have an ICE Number on Your Cell Phone?

I forget where I heard about it, but the idea is to add an address book entry in your cell phone labeled ICE (for In Case of Emergency). If you're found unconscious rescue personnel can call that number to get your next of kin or other emergency contact. That instantly struck me as a grand idea, so I put Melissa's cell phone number in my ICE entry.

PS Snopes says there's an urban legend floating around that an ICE number somehow makes your phone susceptible to viruses. It's not true.

Emergency Communications Over Two-Way Radio

One of the disaster scenarios that played out with Katrina was the widespread loss of communications. Land lines and cellular links went down, leaving large areas incommunicado. That's caused me to think about my family's plans for communications in case of an emergency.

Ham Radio

One option is ham radio. An event last year in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park illustrated its usefulness. During a Knoxville school's class trip to Abrams Falls a student was pulled underwater. His classmate Jordan Webb (call sign KI4AVG) had packed his ham radio that day and sent out a distress call. Jim Bond (call sign K6SPY) in Knoxville heard Webb's call and alerted rescue personnel by telephone.

Unfortunately it was too late to save the student from drowning, but Webb's call got emergency personnel to the scene hours faster. It's not hard to imagine a scenario in which Webb's ations could have meant the difference between life and death.

Hams can reach great distances. If phone lines in your area are down, it's possible to radio a distant ham operator in an area where phone lines are working. In turn, he can make a call on your behalf or even patch you directly into a phone line. The ham radio community has a reputation for being helpful and for forming emergency networks to ferry information in a crisis.

Cost for a dual-band, battery-powered, hand-held ham radio is as little as $200. Single-band models are about half that.

A license is required to operate a ham radio. The good news is that Morse code requirements have been relaxed. For the beginning license level (Technician), there's no Morse code requirement at all.

FRS and GMRS Radio

For people who don't want to learn how to use a ham radio, Mike Spenis recommends short range family radios like the popular Motorola Talkabouts. The FRS models don't require licensing, and they're simple enough for children to use.

You can find these at Radio Shack, Home Depot, or practically anywhere electronics are sold. Cost ranges from as little as $29 per pair up to around $100 per pair. More expensive models have more power and support all 14 FRS channels for maximum compatibility with other units, and may also support GMRS. The downside of these systems is their range, which is limited to a few miles and line of sight communications. They're generally sold in pairs because they're intended for person to person communications. Because of the multiple channels and codes in use, there's no one like Jim Bond monitoring these radios for emergencies.

Some of those personal radios are GMRS units, which extend the range a few more miles. By law, you need a license to operate GMRS. That seems to be largely unenforced, and most people who buy them probably never realize they're supposed to have a license. To operate within the law, however, you should fill out FCC Form 605 and pay the $80 licensing fee, renewable every five years.

There are also dual FRS/GMRS radios. If a radio has 22 channels that means it supports all 14 FRS channels and all 8 GMRS channels. This GMRS and FRS FAQ is very informative.

CB Radio

Glenn Reynolds suggests good old citizens band radio for emergencies. It's easy to use and you don't need a license. If you send out distress calls on each channel there's a good chance a trucker or someone with a scanner will hear your call if you're within range. CB can reach beyond line of sight, and works pretty well in mountainous areas, but overall range is limited to four or five miles.

Glenn uses this dual-use Cobra model. It's a handheld, battery-powered unit with its own antenna. When used in the car, it connects to an external, magnetic-mount antenna to eliminate interference from the car body, and runs off the car's cigarette lighter. Besides the CB channels, it receives 10 NOAA channels for weather information. Cost is $89. Radio Shack has a CB Radio FAQ.

Packet Radio

Another wireless medium is packet radio. If ham radio is analagous to a phone line, then packet radio is like using a modem for digital communications over that phone line. Like any digital medium, it can carry a variety of media, but its low bandwidth results in it being used for text rather than voice. Packet radio has been useful in some situations - including Hurricane Katrina - for organizing emergency information. You can find more information at Introduction to Packet Radio.

Ham Radio Links

• Amatuer Radio Relay League
• Welcome to Amateur Radio (also sells video training tapes)
• Beginner's Guide to Ham Radio
• Study for Your First Ham Radio License
• Sample Ham Radio Test Questions
• Ham Radio License Test Sites in Tennessee
• Ham Radio License in a Day

That last link isn't an exaggeration, at least for some people. Back when I worked for U.S. Internet one of the founders, Tom Badgett, was a ham enthusiast and amateur pilot. Tom and our CTO, Niels Jonker, went to a convention where ham radio tests were being administered. Niels looked through the study material, realized he already knew the electronics part, spent a few minutes reading the regulatory part, then took the test on the spot and passed.

UPDATE 9/10: Computerworld has an article on the role of ham radio operators in the Katrina recovery, and Information Week looks at the communications failures that aggravated the disaster. Southgate Radio Club is covering donations of ham equipment for use in Katrina recovery. Also, this blog post has been extensively updated and expanded with new information.

Update 9/10: Added CB radio information.

Iridium is Still Going

Someone in a comment to this post mentioned that the Iridium satellite phone network was still a going concern. That was news to me. I used to keep up with those guys back in my 56k.com days, but lost track of them after they went bankrupt. Current phone prices are $1,000 plus and airtime is $1 per minute plus. Hurricane Katrina has Iridium in the news again.

To paraphrase John Dvorak, there are probably international backpackers who thought that Iridium was a great idea, but did that justify launching 66 satellites?

Verizon Wireless Improves Voicemail

I switched from Sprint PCS to Verizon last year, and I've been happy with everything except the voicemail interface. It had way too many steps. This week Verizon transitioned the interface and it's now as polished as Sprint's ever was.

On the flip side, Melissa is still with Sprint and is probably going to renew her contract to take advantage of their new plan with free incoming minutes.

Power Inverters

One of the things on my emergency supplies list is a power inverter. Here's a little info I've found in a first pass online.

• Don Rowe's Power Inverter FAQs
• Using an Inverter for Emergency Home Backup Power
• How to Choose a Power Inverter for your RV or RoadTrip Vehicle

Quick summary:

• Inverters that plug into a cigarette lighter are good up to about 300 watts.
• For any device that draws more than about 300 watts you'll need an inverter that connects directly to the battery.
• Don Rowe recommends 1750 watts as a good size for powering household appliances. Price is around $200.

Archie Gates and Some New Flashlights

"That's what makes Special Forces so bad-ass. We've got the best flashlights."
 -- Archie Gates (George Clooney), Three Kings

Speaking of flashlights, I bought some StreamLight TwinTask 3AA and 3C flashlights last week to give as gifts. They're equipped with dual LED/Xenon heads so you can go from long-life LED to high-intensity Xenon at the click of a button. The Xenon output rivals my SureFire E2D. The difference is that the StreamLights runs twice as long on the Xenon bulbs and 80-160 times as long on the LEDs.They're good flashlights for $30.

I haven't tried the Lithium models, but I promised Melissa one for her birthday later this month. She's becoming a flashlight geek just like me. She mentioned the other day that she hates our Mag-Lite 5D after using the Lithium-powered SureFire. I love the SureFire, except for the fact that it snuffs a set of batteries in the time it takes to watch 60 Minutes. I'd like to get a SureFire Aviator which also swings both ways with LED and Xenon. Thing is, it's 160 smackers and while my desires are infinite my resources aren't. If the $30 StreamLight is good I'll probably buy it for myself and pocket the 130 clams. Then the E2D would go on the Mossberg shotgun. That was my plan before I got my hands on the E2D and found out how great it was as a pocket flashlight.

A Solution for Symantec's Norton Internet Security and Gmail's "Arrgh! The page has been corrupted. If you are running security or firewall software, you may have to disable it" Error

(Apologies for the obnoxiously long title. I'm trying to make this post friendly to search engine users who are searching for a solution to this problem.)

I've occasionally gotten the following error in Gmail: "Arrgh! The page has been corrupted. If you are running security or firewall software, you may have to disable it." That error prevents me from seeing all or part of the email message.

The error includes a link to a suggestion to contact Symantec, the company that makes Norton Internet Security, which I use on my home laptop. Symantec's support area didn't have any information about the problem, so I experimented on my own. It turns out that Norton Internet Security's ad blocking feature was the cause of the problem. If it's turned on I get the error. If it's turned off I don't.

To fix the problem:

1. Go to Start -> Programs -> Norton Internet Security -> Norton Internet Security.
2. Select "Ad Blocking."
3. Click the yellow Configure button.
4. Uncheck "Turn on Ad Blocking."
5. Click OK to save changes.

Spellbound Spelling Checker Plug-in for Mozilla and Firefox

SayUncle just downloaded Firefox and asked for a replacement for IEspell. I've been using Spellbound for Mozilla and Firefox ever since Brittney mentioned it. It ain't perfect (it tries to spell check inside HTML tags, fer instance), but it's pretty good.

Kudos for Symantec

Someone from Symantec contacted me today about the problem I described between Norton Internet Security and Gmail. So far Symantec has been unable to reproduce the error. I sent them one of the emails that had the problem and they couldn't see what would be causing it (it's possible something got lost in the forwarding). I also sent them my browser version in case it's browser-specific. Glad to see that Symantec is Googling and talking to customers.

Switched to Firefox Today for the RSS

I finally switched from Mozilla to Firefox today. The RSS feed support in Firefox 1.5 won me over.

If you haven't used it, click on the orange button to add the current site's RSS feed to your bookmarks folder or personal toolbar. Either option gives you a submenu of current posts at the site - what Firefox calls a live bookmark. Wicked.

One question: is there some way to click on one of those live bookmarks and go to the main page of that site? I hope I don't have to keep a regular bookmark around, too.

One reason I hung onto Mozilla was because I liked being able to hit F9 and get to the What's Related Alexa information and site rank. I checked just now, and sure enough there's a Firefox extension that does the same thing.

RSS Development Tools

So I got the RSS working on the Web site I maintain for work. This RSS tutorial had useful information and links. It's where I found this RSS feed validator.

I tried half a dozen Windows-based RSS generators before settling on FeedForAll. It generated a working, valid RSS feed (two of the others didn't), offered an HTML output option that I needed, and was the only one that allowed me to customize the output of the HTML file. Besides that, it's a nicely put-together piece of software that has a sexy, polished interface. The other RSS tools I tried were free. FeedForAll is $39.95 and it's worth it for business use.

Web Sites Censored by Google China

This page compares search results for "falun gong" for Google US vs. Google China. The Chinese search results look what you'd expect the Chinese government would want people to see - propaganda, disinformation, and negative stories. Via Digg, the newfangled Web thing that all the kids are crazy about these days.

How to Stop Print Jobs Under Windows XP

I had a runaway print job the other day - nothing but hearts and flowers coming out the printer, one line per page. I brought up the print queue from the Start bar and tried to cancel, but no dice. Our network admin showed me this next trick for stopping any print jobs under Windows XP.

Go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel.

Doubleclick Administrative Tools.

Doubleclick Services.

Scroll down the list of services and select Print Spooler.

Click the Restart link. Worked for me.

Dear Gmail, Please Stop Showing Me This Ad

Is Your Period Late? - www.MyMonthlyCycles.com - Free period calculator and tracking calendar. Plus reminders.

Ajax Web Development Tools

Slashdot story with lots of links to Ajax tools.

World's Lamest Credit Card Phishing Email

This email showed up with this professionally-crafted subject line.w

Attention! Several VISA Credit Card bases have been LOST!

Right. I'm sure if VISA got hacked their PR department would notify their customers in an email with ALL CAPITAL WORDS and exclamation points. I expected the first words of the email to be "OMG! We've been pwn3d! WTF?"

Spot all of the errors in the body of the email.

Good afternoon, unfortunately some processings have been cracked by hackers, so a new secure code to protect your data has been introduced by Visa. You should check your card balance and in case of suspicious transactions immediately contact your card issuing bank. If you don't see any suspicious transactions, it doesn't mean that the card is not lost and cannot be used. Probably, your card issuers have not updated information yet. That is why we strongly recommend you to visit our website and update your profile, otherwise we cannot guarantee stolen money repayment. Thank you for your attention. Click here and update your profile.

Good TiVo Idea

Katherine Coble - If I Ran TiVo:

But you know what I'd do if I ran TiVo? Aside from making all of my TiVo'd shows available to watch on my iPod, that is.

I would have an inboard link to the Internet Movie Database. It's a no-brainer. I think I've said this before, but it bears repeating. The math geniuses at MIT, Cornell and CERN will come up with an exact expression of Pi one day. It will have fewer digits than the number of times I've watched a TiVo'd program and said "what else have I seen that guy in?!" My number one form of exercise right now consists of Googlates--the act of going up and down two flights of stairs to check the credits for obscure character acters in "Law and Order" and really long WWII movies. It's a sad state of affairs that could be so easily rectified.

That's a swell idea. We look up actors all the time using our laptops and wi-fi, but integrating it with TiVo and your cable modem/DSL connection is good integration.

Here's another feature I keep wishing for - TiVoing shows without recording them. For some shows I'd like to have TiVo offer to change the channel, but not record the show. For example, if Seinfeld or Simpson reruns are on, that's cool and I might want to watch them right then, but I honestly never go back and watched TiVo'ed episodes of those shows.

Have You Tried Windows XP ClearType?

The other week I enabled ClearType on my work computer, and now I'm hooked. I'm sort of shocked at how good it makes onscreen text look. Here's how to enable it, and here's a Microsoft tool for fine-tuning the settings for your monitor.

Send Email From a Different Address With Gmail

Just discovered this. You can change the from address on outbound mails, and pick from multiple addresses when composing mail.

1. Click the Settings link (top right corner).
2. Click the Accounts tab.
3. Click the "Add Another Email Address" link and follow the instructions.

Gmail sends a confirmation email to any address you enter to confirm that you own the address.

Gmail for Your Domain

Slashdot points to a review of GMail for your domain.

FWIW, all lesjones.com email goes to my Gmail account. It's by far the best Web mail interface I've used, including one that I paid money for. Heck, Gmail is the best Web application I've used period.

One thing I have to disagree with in the review. Gmail's spam filters are much less than 100% effective. I still get spam, though it's not too bad.

As always, if the Slashdot links don't work, try MirrorDot.

See also:
- Send Email From a Different Address With Gmail
- A Solution for Symantec's Norton Internet Security and Gmail's "Arrgh! The page has been corrupted. If you are running security or firewall software, you may have to disable it" Error

Check for McAfee or Norton Firewall on New Dells

Melissa went through a rough couple of days setting up a new computer at her dad's business. Even after a lot of troubleshooting and multiple calls to Dell the old computers couldn't see the new computer on the network. She emailed one of her professors and he suggested it was a firewall problem.

She had already disabled Windows firewall. The next time she talked to Dell she mentioned it, and he asked her to check the McAfee firewall. She knew it had McAfee anti-viirus, but not McAfee firewall. At least some new Dells come with McAfee or Norton firewall installed and activated. Sure enough, it had McAfee firewall. As soon as she disabled it everything worked.

I hawk big ticket firewalls for a living and like the guys I work with say, every firewall breaks the network into two parts. It's good that Dell is conscious enough of network security to ship firewall software with their PCs, but firewalls can definitely cause unforeseen problems.

Report Questions Hybrid Car Efficiency

A new report on crade-to-grave energy consumption finds that hybrids use more energy than most conventional cars.

For example, the Honda Accord Hybrid has an Energy Cost per Mile of $3.29 while the conventional Honda Accord is $2.18. Put simply, over the "Dust to Dust" lifetime of the Accord Hybrid, it will require about 50 percent more energy than the non-hybrid version.

One of the reasons hybrids cost more than non-hybrids is the manufacture, replacement and disposal of such items as batteries, electric motors (in addition to the conventional engine), lighter weight materials and complexity of the power package.

And while many consumers and environmentalists have targeted sport utility vehicles because of their lower fuel economy and/or perceived inefficiency as a means of transportation, the energy cost per mile shows at least some of that disdain is misplaced.

For example, while the industry average of all vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2005 was $2.28 cents per mile, the Hummer H3 (among most SUVs) was only $1.949 cents per mile. That figure is also lower than all currently offered hybrids and Honda Civic at $2.42 per mile.

Assuming the study's correct, I'm still hopeful that hybrids will offer improvements in fuel efficiency. Improvements in battery technology would help. One possibility that's been discussed is getting rid of the transmission and sending the electrical output to electric motors connected directly to the wheels.

New Leatherman Knives

Tactical folders make a ton of sense. Lockback design, able to be opened with one hand. I have a couple of nice ones, but what I mostly carry is a Victorinox One Hand Trekker. It's a tactical folder with all of the usual Swiss army knife tools. The blade is sort of spindly, the scales are a little slippery, and it's not the friendliest to open with one hand, but because of the tools it's the closest I've found to my ideal pocket knife.

Now Leatherman is introducing a line of tool-equipped tactical folders that emphasize a better blade and scales and fewer tools. More details in the PDF.

I'm spoony for this one:

Anti-spam Captchas Work Great

The captcha program I installed has worked a miracle. I've only gotten a handful of spam comments since then, and presumably those were hand-written one at a time. The captchas have eliminated all of the robo-spam posted by automated software.

I hope the captcha isn't too much of an inconvenience, because it works so well there's no way I'm ever going back.

Spellbound Spelling Checker for Firefox 1.5

Oh glorious day.

Hey, YouTube. The '90s Called. They Want Their Business Plan Back

Video of a sheep being fleeced - is this a metaphor for YouTube investors?

I've been posting some digicam videos to the site thanks to the magic of YouTube. I love YouTube. You upload videos from your hard drive to their Web site. Then you email a link to your friends, or copy a block of HTML code and paste it into your Web page. You can even control whether the video is public or private.

Now I can post videos with wild abandon, knowing they won't count against my disk space or bandwidth quotas. YouTube also solves the potential nightmare of posting a video and getting linked by Slashdot, Digg, Fark, or some other hugely popular site and suddenly owing a fortune in excess bandwidth charges. It happened to a guy I worked with at U.S. Internet who posted a demo for The Hot New Video Game. The deluge of downloads resulted in several thousand dollars in excess bandwidth charges.

So free video hosting is what's in it for me. What's in it for YouTube? They seem to be on the Underpants Gnome business model.

1. Give away disk space and bandwidth for free video hosting.
2. ???????
3. Profit!

So I don't understand how YouTube will make money, but I'm sure enjoying it while it lasts.

See also:
- Friday Bird Blogging - Pileated Woodpeckers
- Katie Day 627 - Dancing to the Backyardigans

P.S.I was scouring my hard drive for videos to upload to YouTube. When I found the video of a sheep being fleeced this post pretty much wrote itself.

LATER: Countertop emails a link to a Wall Street Journal article on YouTube. It's behind the subscription wall, so I can't read it, but maybe you can.

LATER STILL: And this Washington Post article, which is free to read, on YouTube deals with NBC and Warner Bros.

New Federal Guidelines on Laptop Security

Washington Post:

The Bush administration is giving federal civilian agencies 45 days to implement new measures to protect the security of personal information that agencies hold on millions of employees and citizens.

The new security guidelines, issued Friday by the White House Office of Management and Budget, cap a month marked by data thefts or disclosures at five different agencies that compromised Social Security numbers and other private data on millions of people.

To comply with the new policy, agencies will have to encrypt all data on laptop or handheld computers unless the data are classified as "non-sensitive" by an agency's deputy director. Agency employees also would need two-factor authentication -- a password plus a physical device such as a key card -- to reach a work database through a remote connection, which must be automatically severed after 30 minutes of inactivity.

The article goes on to quote several people who question how effective the order - which has no funding attached because it occurs inside the budget cycle - will be in the short term.

Tim Hunkin on Safes

Illegal engineering.

See also:
- Interesting People File: Tim Hunkin

Microsoft Excel - Forcing Numbers to be Treated as Numbers instead of Text

I ran into a problem with a spreadsheet I use heavily at work. Actually, I had a bunch of weird problems none of which made any sense. Eventually I realized that Excel was formatting some of the number cells as Text or General rather than Number. That causes all sorts of odd problems in functions that expect to see numbers and won't recognize them if they're in a cell that isn't formatted for Number.

I tried the super-obvious solution of selecting the cells and setting Format to Number. Didn't work even after a zillion repetitions. I eventually Googled until I found this solution.

1. Enter the value 1 in an empty cell. 2. Select the cell and press Ctrl+C. The value is now in the Clipboard. 3. Select the range of cells you want to convert to numbers. 4. Choose Paste Special from the Edit menu. Excel displays the Paste Special dialog box. 5. Make sure the Multiply radio button is selected. 6. Click on OK.

This works because Excel multiples each cell in the range (step 3) by the value in the Clipboard and then again stores the value in the cell. Since any number multiplied by one is that same number, you effectively force Excel to replace the contents of the cell with the numerical equivalent of the text that was previously there.

Best Business Cartoon Evah

Over at Chris's. Anyone who has dealt with consultants, Web designers, or programmers will appreciate it.

Gizmondo's Wreck

Earlier this year a man destroyed a million dollar Ferrari Enzo in a 199 mph wreck. That wreck marked the end of the car and the end of a company called Gizmondo that had burned through hundreds of millions of dollars in investments. It would soon lead to the capture of the car's driver, a Swedish criminal named Stefan Eriksson. Randall Sullivan has the bizarre story in Wired.

The Enzo