Geek Stuff category archive

Debian and Fluxbox.

Todd at Geek New Central shows off his studios.

His home studio is here. His travel podcasting rig is here.

Wow.

Microsoft pushes an add-on to Firefox without asking permission.

Susabelle describes it.

Any Firefox user receiving a Microsoft update to either XP or Vista (and possibly Windows 7 but I cannot confirm this) in the last two weeks will have gotten this forced push, right into Firefox, and wouldn’t even have known it. If you go to Tools > Add ons, you should see an entry for Microsoft .net Framework Assistant 1.0. You will notice that you can disable it, but that the “uninstall” option is grayed out, meaning it is stuck there unless you do some fancy footwork to remove it.

This particular add-on is not something you want to have installed, in my opinion. Upon installation, it provides a ClickOnce capability that pretty much lets Microsoft do what it wants when it comes to your browser, as well as opening you up to all kinds of other nasties out there, since we all know the .net Framework is riddled with bugs that are not always fixed as quickly as they should be. The biggest security flaw with the ClickOnce install is that it allows easy installation of malicious software from websites, without your permission and knowledge.

Follow the link for more information and to find out how to remove this thing.

Aside: If regular readers wonder why I contemn Microsoft so much, this pretty much illustrates why.

Meet the GIMP, like Clarissa, explains it all.

By the way, the GIMP is cross-platform. You can get it for Window$ also, as well as for other platforms.

Thanks to the Outlaws for introducing me to it.

El Reg:

Speaking to Radio 4’s Front Row programme, (Hugh ) Laurie described himself as “bothered by the social cost of every tweet”, explaining: “As I look around my friends’ tweets I see banality on all sides. I don’t understand the purpose of it.

He added: “I think if people were able to take these 140 characters and develop a poetic Western form – a haiku of our own in which all human existence could be compressed into those 140 characters – that would be a satisfying thing, but that’s not what I see when I read them.”

Geekazine elucidates.

Over at the Coyote’s Byte.

My folder for the alt.html newsgroup currently has 404 unread posts.

Cooled by mineral oil:

Glorioso, a senior at North Carroll High School, is already playing games on his custom computer, which he built entirely out of spare parts he had lying around the house. The only cost he incurred was $94 for a 4.5-gallon bottle of mineral oil to fill the tank.

The oil, which circulates through the system, is a critical component, Glorioso said. The 17-year-old Westminster resident said he came up with the idea when trying to find a way to keep a computer from overheating, which happened frequently when he and his friends played PC games.

Well, maybe not so much. On the Media reports:

When 10,000 Moldovans filled the streets in protest last week, it was characterized as the ‘Twitter revolution.’ But now that the dust has cleared, what role did Twitter really play? And was it a revolution? Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, tells the tale of the tweets.

Follow the link to read the transcript or listen here:

The winning entry in the “We’re Linux” video contest:

Read more »

Scientific Blogging explains botnets. If you have a computer–and I suspect that, if you are reading this, you probably do, this is worth a read. A nugget:

Skippy lays it out.

Jeffrey lays it out. Complain. Now.

Most people buy computers one at a time, but Google thinks on a very different scale. Jimmy Clidaras revealed that the core of the company’s data centers are composed of standard 1AAA shipping containers packed with 1,160 servers each, with many containers in each data center.

Read about them at CNet.

I just got off the phone with Dell Technical Support, with satisfactory results.

The times I call Tech Support are few, since I can almost always fix software problems and, with desktop computers not under warranty, hardware problems, but this was a netbook hardware problem.

I had already concluded that the AC adapter for the netbook had gone west (probably to Colorado, but that’s another story). I had metered it and it didn’t. Adapt, that is.

Hey, stuff breaks. That’s reality.

The Tech Support guy, of course, had to verify my diagnosis. He had me make sure that the computer was not in “airplane mode” and reboot. (What that had to do with AC power I don’t know, but Dell was paying for the phone call, and it did allow him to verify that the computer did, indeed, compute.)

He then had me plug in the adapter and check whether the power icon reported “AC power.” It didn’t.

Next, he had me shut down the box, remove the battery, and attempt to restart the box using the AC adapter. It did a convincing imitation of a paperweight.

The result: Dell well be sending me a new adapter. When I get it and test it, I’m to send the old adapter back to them at their expense. He also gave me a direct number to his department in case the new battery arrives damaged or not at all.

Conclusion: He did good. He did exactly what I would have done had I been wearing his headset.

By the way, he was in India. I thought he was from his accent, but the guy who runs Claymont Liquors a mile and a half up the road has a similar accent. So I asked.

[EDITORIAL MODE ON]

I am sick and tired of Americans criticizing techs simply because the techs speak with foreign accents. A good tech is a good tech is a good tech. It’s called “globalization” and it’s not a policy. It’s an irreversible force.

[EDITORIAL MODE OFF]

Addendum:

They sent it overnight express. It works.

Andrew Sullivan weighs in.

Earlier tonight, I made my first PC to Phone call using Ekiga, calling a phone number in another state.

Read more »

And you are still using Windows why?

Learn how to install Debian here: Step One, Step Two, and Step Three.

Not just me.

Judging from the error messages that their POP3 server has been throwing, they’ve suffered a major hardware failure and their IT gnomes are trying to pick up the pieces.

It is a good day not work in Comcast IT. I’m sure the adrenaline level is out the roof.

Slightly later:

It appears to working again.