robertwrose.com

Why not tax oil imports?

2008-05-06T23:26:00.000-07:00

Clinton and McCain have proposed temporary gas tax relief for this summer. Obama is talking about a windfall tax on oil profits, which seems appropriate given Exxon's record profits this year. Somehow through all of this the candidates are saying these plans will 1) give some financial relief to driving Americans 2) reduce our dependence on foreign oil and 3) reduce our oil consumption.

How, exactly?

I fail to see how reducing the gas tax would accomplish any of these three goals. The market is clearly able to withstand $3.75/gal+ gas prices, as is demonstrated by only a 1.1% decline in gasoline consumption this last year. Until consumption drops another 1-2% I doubt demand will have any influence on price. A federal tax cut of $0.18/gal would likely go into the pockets of gasoline distributors, not consumers. Even if the savings were passed on to consumers, the benefits to the individual would be negligible, and would only further increase demand. Failure on goals 1 & 3. No progress on 2.

I completely fail to see how a windfall tax on oil profits would help anyone. The pocket-lining standards have been set at the oil companies this year, and they probably won't want to give that up, so they'll just end up passing the new expenses onto the consumer and their exploration budgets. They'll cut exploration which will dry up supply even more, bringing oil prices up yet again and, if we can stand $4.50/gal gas (which I believe we could) then they'll be right back to their Spring-2008 profit levels again.

I can think of a simple way we could accomplish all three goals: nationalize the oil companies. We have nationalized electricity generating facilities, why not oil?

Short of nationalizing oil companies, I can't see a quick solution for goal #1: providing financial relief for American drivers. The bar has been set with $3.75/gal gas. If we didn't want to pay that much for gas we shouldn't have bought it. Now that we have, it's too late, the hook has been set.

A long-term play for fixing #1 would be to substantially increase the value of the US Dollar relative to the OPEC member countries' currencies. However this isn't something the government has much control over anyways, and would only increase oil demand and consumption in the long run.

The simple solution for #3 is to throw #1 out of the window. If you want people to use less gas, make gas more expensive. When I think about what price gas would need to be before I would seriously consider not driving as much, it's probably in the $5-6/gal range. If gas were $6/gal today I would likely ride my bike everywhere, even in bad weather. But it's not, I live 7 miles from work, and the temp has been around 40 degrees in the morning lately.

I was thinking this evening about reducing our dependence on foreign oil while simultaneously reducing our oil consumption, and I started to wonder: what about an oil import tax? A google search for oil import tax returns surprisingly few results, the only relevant hit being an article about a 1987 Harvard study proposing a $5/barrel tax. Most other articles are from the 80's. So are we doing this currently, or was this an idea that was long since abandoned?

Hydrogen fuel cells generated from nuclear reactor power. Send nuclear waste up space elevator and rocket at sun. Problem solved. :-)

I'm disappointed in my MacBook Pro

2008-05-03T00:00:00.001-07:00

Preface: This entry was hard for me to write. I'm not an Apple die-hard, but I do recommend Macs all the time to family and friends. In the past, Apple hardware has been reason alone to buy a Mac. I don't believe that's the case anymore. Something happened to Apple, they lost their edge...

I got a new MacBook Pro about a month ago, and although I think I'd be even less happy with an equivalent PC laptop had I gotten one, there are a number of things about this laptop that either irritate me, frustrate me or disappoint me. Although it's bigger/faster in the ram/cpu department compared to my previous Mac laptop, a PowerBook G4 12", in many ways it feels like a huge downgrade.

* Irritation: The keyboard sucks. The keyboard on this thing is so bad I'm tempted to go "youtube" on it and make a video demonstrating how bad it is. There are places on some of the keys where you can press them down but it won't register a key press. I think the root cause is they replaced the mechanical lever/spring action of the previous keyboards with a cheap flexible rubber. The arrow keys still use the mechanical lever/spring configuration--they're the only decent keys on the whole keyboard. Because of the poor keyboard I find myself "punching" the keys and gritting my teeth unconsciously.. and then my wrists start to get sore.

* Frustration: The headphone output is simply unusable. There's no other way to put it folks; the headphone output is not usable, and I'm not the only one with this complaint. There's a ton of high-pitched noise that is impossible to ignore at lower volumes, it drives me crazy. Forget doing any audio work on the MacBook Pro. I was looking forward to getting intel versions of my favorite production tools, I guess that won't happen now.

* Disappointment: The display doesn't tilt back far enough. I used to use my PowerBook G4 on the kitchen counter standing up--I'd tilt the screen way back so I could see it easily. I can't do that with this laptop, I have to either sit down or bend over.

There's more:

* The light detector they use to control the keyboard brightness doesn't work in pitch-black. If I try to use the back lit keyboard with the light out it doesn't work. It picks up it's own light and turns off. Then it thinks its dark again and turns on. It oscillates on/off endlessly until I just disable it. I put a video of the illumination problems online here.

* This is likely a software issue, but it has problems going to sleep. Let me rephrase that--it won't sleep unless I tell it too by closing the lid.

* When I first got it the wireless didn't work after I upgraded to 10.5.2.

What the hell happened Apple? I'm so disappointed. Did Steve lose his fanaticism?

Did I mention that I sent the laptop back for repair once already? The first keyboard I received was even worse than the one that's on it currently. The replacement is *slightly* better, but still no where near as good as the one on the PowerBook G4. Going back to type on the PowerBook G4 is like night and day. I did an informal survey at work asking people to decide which keyboard they liked better, and 8 out of 8 people prefered the PowerBook G4 keyboard to the MBP keyboard.

Fewer mechanics, better game

2008-04-17T14:41:00.000-07:00

Link

I've heard from many people that the ideal game is the one that has everything. It's a game where players are constrained by nothing. These people believe in a sandbox where their very imagination is the only boundary. They believe in game with no limits...

Current state of DirectX on Intel Macs

2008-03-22T10:33:00.000-07:00

I've been spending some time trying to get DirectX applications running within Mac OS 10.5 using VMWare Fusion, CrossOver and Darwine.

Darwine -- Darwine uses OpenGL for it's DX emulation, and there's apparently an issue with the OpenGL drivers in 10.5's X11 that's preventing wine from using OpenGL. The latest builds of Darwine you'll find around the net don't even include OpenGL support, and if you try to compile it yourself you'll run into problems. Apparently Apple is aware of the issue and is working on a fix, but there's no ETA.

CrossOver -- I did some DirectX tests with CrossOver and it looks like it does not include support for DirectX 9. It will initialize a HAL interface without error and return pixel shader model 1.4 support, but inspecting the video card properties returns an error, and trying to actually grab the video surface returns an error. I haven't tried DirectX 8 yet. (Which I don't really care about anyways)...

VMWare Fusion -- In Fusion I was only able to create a DirectX 9 surface if it was fullscreen; windowed surfaces would return an error. For shader support it returns 0.0 and 0.0 for ps/vs, so the second you try and use a shader it returns an error again.

We still have a ways to go before DirectX 9 is really usable on OS X in my opinion...

802.11 beacon interval confuses Mac OS 10.5.2

2008-03-21T23:25:00.000-07:00

I just got a new MacBook Pro laptop this week and the wireless networking stopped working no less than a day after I got it. The culprit? The 10.5.2 update.

Apparently this is a well known issue but Apple doesn't make any mention of it in their knowledge base.

I figured since the laptop is brand new I would call Apple tech support to see what they had to say. They walking me through the typical stuff: reboot, remake your network settings, reset the hardware, upgrade my wifi router firmware, etc. Nothing seemed to help. Their final suggestion was to downgrade to 10.5.0. Unacceptable!

After a lot of experimentation, I figured out that the culprit in my case was the beacon interval on my WRT54G v6 wifi router. I had set it a long time ago to 1000ms, and the moment I changed it to 100ms (the default) it started working again. Change it back to 1000ms and its broken again. So strange.

Quintessential boingboing post spotted

2008-02-25T01:28:00.000-08:00

If I were to boil the content of articles on boingboing.net down to just three things I would say they are:

1) Privacy rights advocacy (online and offline)
2) Intellectual property rights reform advocacy (fair use and remixing)
3) Cory Doctorow ego inflation (and self gratification)

It's not that often you see all three of these combine.

Link: Remixable German documentary about me [Cory Doctorow] and Internet freedom

OK, I'm done with ebay... this time for good

2008-02-19T22:30:00.000-08:00

I've had so many bad ebay experiences over the years I could write a book about them. I heard somewhere that "1 in 10" ebay transactions are fraudulent, but my ratio is closer to about 1 in 5. The last one I got hit with was a non paying bidder, one of these mysterious zero-feedback accounts that can never be contacted. I filed a "dispute" with ebay, but guess what? Since they couldn't contact the bidder their system sided in their favor and concluded I still had to pay the $2.64 in ebay fees.

To dispute $2.64 with ebay they require you to take a test of perseverance. You can not contact ebay on the phone, only through their chat system. To do this you must wait. And you must wait some more. And finally, you must communicate with a person over chat who obvious speaks English as a second language and types at a rate of about 3 words per minute. What follows is the complete log of my experiences. Pay attention to the time stamps.

SystemSystem
Initial Question/Comment: eBay Seller Account Fees
8:59:39 PM SystemSystem
Thank you for contacting eBay Billing Support! Your feedback is important to us. Please take time at the end of this chat to fill out a brief survey letting us know how we did today.
8:59:39 PM SystemSystem
You are successfully connected to eBay Billing Support. Please hold for the next available Billing Agent
9:00:35 PM SystemSystem
We appreciate your patience. You will be able to type in your question as soon as you are connected with a Billing Support Agent. Please continue to hold for the next available representative.
9:01:35 PM SystemSystem
We apologize for the wait and thank you for your continued patience. Please continue to hold to keep your place in line. You should be connected to the next available agent shortly.
9:02:35 PM SystemSystem
We are sorry for the delayed connection. Your question is important to us and one of our representatives will be with you soon.
9:20:43 PM SystemSystem
Stanley J. has joined this session!
9:20:43 PM SystemSystem
Connected with Stanley J.
9:20:48 PM AgentStanley J.
Hello, thank you for waiting and welcome to eBay Billing Live Help! My name is Stanley. If you�re a registered member, may I please start by having you confirm your User ID and first name?
9:20:49 PM Customergfm1212
hello, xxxxxx Robert Rose
9:21:00 PM Customergfm1212
I have a FVF issue
9:21:01 PM Customergfm1212
"Normally, Insertion Fees are non-refundable. However, if your listing ends without a winning buyer or ends with an Unpaid Item (UPI), you may qualify for a credit by relisting the item. If the item sells the second time, eBay will refund the Insertion Fee for relisting."
9:21:09 PM Customergfm1212
I have not been given the option to relist my item
9:21:47 PM Customergfm1212
am i speaking to human being?
9:21:48 PM AgentStanley J.
I will be glad to check this for you.
9:21:53 PM AgentStanley J.
To proceed, may I have the item number please?
9:22:02 PM Customergfm1212
you can't look that up?
9:22:23 PM AgentStanley J.
Yes, you are speaking to Stanley J.
9:23:03 PM Customergfm1212
the item number is xxxxxxxxxxx
9:23:24 PM Customergfm1212
what is the capital of washington?
9:24:03 PM Customergfm1212
are you there?
9:24:53 PM Customergfm1212
i never got a FVF credit for my item
9:24:55 PM AgentStanley J.
Olympia, is the capital of Washington.
9:25:14 PM AgentStanley J.
Don't worry, I will help you with same.
9:25:17 PM AgentStanley J.
While I am pulling up your account, could you please verify your full name, address & telephone number and your email address that is registered to the account?
9:25:18 PM Customergfm1212
ok you passed the voit-kamph test
9:25:40 PM Customergfm1212
Robert Rose xxxxxx xxxx@xxxx
9:27:42 PM Customergfm1212
i think the phone number i gave to ebay is xxx-xxx-xxxx
9:28:24 PM Customergfm1212
i was not able to contact the bidder
9:28:30 PM Customergfm1212
i filed a dispute, nothing happened
9:28:34 PM Customergfm1212
now my account is blocked
9:28:39 PM AgentStanley J.
Oh I see...
9:28:54 PM AgentStanley J.
Give me a minute.
9:31:29 PM AgentStanley J.
Robert, the contact information, you have provided does not match with our database.
9:31:59 PM AgentStanley J.
The email address xxxx@xxxxx is correct.
9:32:24 PM AgentStanley J.
The phone number is correct.
9:32:37 PM Customergfm1212
oh you guys have a different address for me..
9:32:54 PM Customergfm1212
Robert Rose
xxxx
xxxxxx
United States
9:33:14 PM AgentStanley J.
Okay.
9:33:40 PM AgentStanley J.
Thanks for the information.
9:35:25 PM AgentStanley J.
Let me bring a smile on your face..
9:37:04 PM AgentStanley J.
I will credit you the Final Value Fees (FVF).
9:38:23 PM Customergfm1212
ok
9:39:10 PM AgentStanley J.
Please give me 2-3 minutes while I process the credit for you.
9:43:01 PM AgentStanley J.
I have credited you the Final Value Fees (FVF) and I would like to inform you that.....
9:43:53 PM Customergfm1212
i still get this error "Your account has been placed on hold due to non-payment. Please make a one-time payment for US $2.65 today to prevent your account from being further restricted."
9:44:01 PM AgentStanley J.
as the Unpaid Item Dispute (UPI) was not closed even after 45 days, the Final Value Fees (FVF) was not credited.
9:44:31 PM AgentStanley J.
Dont't worry, I will remove the hold on your account.
9:46:32 PM AgentStanley J.
Give me a minute more.
9:50:01 PM Customergfm1212
it now shows i owe $0.49
9:50:42 PM AgentStanley J.
Yes, I have credited you the fees, that is the reason why it shows $0.49.
9:50:52 PM Customergfm1212
why do i owe $0.49
9:51:55 PM Customergfm1212
i should owe $0.00
9:52:23 PM AgentStanley J.
It is Buy It Now Listing Fee $0.25 and insertion fee of $0.20 for the item xxxx.
9:52:41 PM Customergfm1212
the FVF was $2.61 not $2.16
9:53:04 PM Customergfm1212
Last Invoice: (Jan 15) $2.61
9:53:20 PM Customergfm1212
then i got charged $.04 in interest
9:54:03 PM AgentStanley J.
The FVF which shows on your account is $2.16.
9:54:14 PM Customergfm1212
where did the $.49 come from
9:54:16 PM AgentStanley J.
I have already credited you that.
9:55:22 PM Customergfm1212
please remove the other $.49
9:57:03 PM Customergfm1212
the only invoice i got in the last 6 months was for $2.61, not $2.16
9:57:08 PM AgentStanley J.
Okay, I will arrange to remove the $.49 charge on your account.
9:57:24 PM Customergfm1212
then i got a $.04 charge for something else.. interest? it doesnt say
9:57:36 PM Customergfm1212
please do, thank you
9:57:38 PM Customergfm1212
can i go now?
9:58:18 PM AgentStanley J.
Please wait for a minute or two.
10:00:03 PM AgentStanley J.
I am crediting the fees for you.
10:00:13 PM Customergfm1212
thank you
10:01:00 PM Customergfm1212
are we done then?
10:01:49 PM AgentStanley J.
Yes, I have credited you the listing fees.
10:02:21 PM Customergfm1212
it still shows that I owe $.49
10:03:48 PM AgentStanley J.
It will take some time to get updated on your account.
10:04:06 PM Customergfm1212
now it shows i owe $.04
10:04:17 PM Customergfm1212
what is the deal stanley j?
10:05:03 PM AgentStanley J.
Oh, I see.
10:05:18 PM AgentStanley J.
Don't worry, it will be $0.00.
10:05:33 PM AgentStanley J.
It will take some time.
10:05:53 PM AgentStanley J.
I will get that rectified.

I couldn't take it any longer. At this point I just left the chat window open and left my computer.

UPDATE 2/20/08: ebay just sent me a notice that they have put my account back on hold... "Your account has been put on hold because the US $0.04 balance on your eBay account hasn't been paid."

UPDATE 2/23/08: After (I'm not joking) 8 emails back and forth with ebay they finally removed the $.04 from my account balance. What a pain. In the future I think I would recommend people use email exclusively to contact ebay. After the 4th message I sent something must have clicked in their system because I finally got a reply that sounded like a human being reviewed what I was writing and not a form-automated response letter.

Telecom Immunity

2008-02-18T15:43:00.000-08:00

What would you say if the NSA came to you and said, "We want you to spy on your neighbors for us. Send us a transcript of everything they say." You say, "isn't that illegal?" They say, "congress is working on a bill that will make it legal in 2-3 years. Don't worry about it, we'll grant you retroactive immunity for spying on your neighbors."

What would you say if the NSA said your neighbor was a terrorist, and that they need you to assassinate him. "If we killed him it would be too high-profile. We need you to do it for us." You say, "isn't that illegal?" They say, "congress is working on a bill that will make it legal in 2-3 years. Don't worry about it, we'll grant you retroactive immunity for assassinating terrorists."

Is that too much of a stretch?

Just because the government asks you to do something doesn't make it right, or even legal.

Take Action!

Netflix opts for Blu-ray high-def DVDs

2008-02-11T09:45:00.000-08:00

That's the title from an Associated Press article published today. So wait, did they opt for Blu-ray or High-Definition DVD? I can't tell!?!

Hehe.. OK, so I know what they meant by the headline, but come'on...

Oblivion and the problem with "save anywhere"

2008-01-16T00:32:00.000-08:00

I finally got Oblivion last weekend so I could see what all the fuss was about.

The game lasted about 12 hours for me (over two days) and then I just got up and turned it off. In 12 hours it hard-locked the PS3 twice and had four non-recoverable bugs (player stuck or frozen NPCs). I have never before seen such an unstable game on the PS3. I'm *very* surprised it got through Format QA.

But that's not why I quit playing.

I quit playing when I realized that all I had done for the last 12 hours was be an errand boy. I went to point A to talk to some dude. He sent me on a quest to point B to retrieve some item. I got the item and brought it back, only to discover it actually had to be delivered to point C. Setup. A catch. Conclusion. The first 12 hours was nothing but variations on this same theme.

A lot of RPGs use the "errand boy" mechanic but Oblivion is crazy-realistic in it's recreation: in all those 12 hours I probably ran only 6-7 errands. Most games will have you doing 6-7 every couple of hours. Good games will weave the errands together in some meaningful fashion so you have to build a mental-map of how they fit together. In Oblivion there didn't appear to be much benefit to parallelizing the errands, as they seemed to be designed to be done completely independent of each other.

Maybe I picked the "wrong" character at the beginning -- a thief. Not much in terms of action with the thief. The little action I did see as the thief I didn't particularly care for anyways. The combat made little sense to me--is it really only just button mashing with occasional timing?

The problem with "save anywhere"

There were a couple other things that irritated me about the game, and I don't think these problems are unique to Oblivion, I think it's the whole "rich RPG" genre that irritates me. These games can make you do things that just are simply not fun in my opinion.

Since you can "save anywhere" rather than at carefully chosen points, the game designer takes license to put the player into bad situations where there's no way to get out of them. "If you don't like the direction the game is heading, restart from your last save." This works as long as you save often. When you forget to save, you're screwed. This happen to me more than once; the first time it cost me about 2 hours of gameplay.

Starting over in these types of games is rarely fun. When you end up having to repeat something that wasn't particularly challenging in the first place it's especially not fun.

Because starting over sucks so bad you end up taking even more advantage of the "save anywhere" than you probably should. At any time when you think there's even the slightest potential for the game to sink you into a hole you create a new save. As you progress, your threshold for what constitutes a "hole" diminishes. What you end up doing is you make things even less fun for yourself because you just eliminated the risk from the game.

You start out saying: Oh! Before I attack this mob I should probably save in case I die. I'm glad I remembered!

And by the end you're thinking: Should I use 30 lockpicks to discover what treasure is in this chest? Who cares, if it's not worth 30 lockpicks I'll just revert to my last save file.

In the 12 hours I played the game I created over 70 save files. Something isn't right when a player feels they need to take out that many insurance policies. With no risk you diminish the fun. But you can't have the flip side either: making the player redo 2 hours of game play isn't right either. (That is, unless repeating what you did previously is the game)..

Advanced Spy Fighting Techniques

2008-01-11T15:41:00.001-08:00

This is hilarious

I especially like the episode where he blows up the car..

The Avenger to the rescue

2008-01-09T22:23:00.000-08:00

I got some nasty malware on my computer this week; I've had it shut off until I had the energy to investigate what was going on. AVG Free was reporting I had four viruses on it at various times:

Trojan dropper.agent.git
Trojan dropper.agent.dbo
Backdoor.agent.PDA
Virus Win32.lop (an adware virus)

However, no amount of quarantining was getting rid of the viruses, something was actively installing them. The damn thing was also continuing to infect other programs on my system..

Looking in my Windows\System32 folder I found several recently modified files:

ctfmon.exe
sstqp.dll
ddccaxv.dll
ptqss.ini
sstqp.exe
vturq.exe
qrutv.ini

I'm sure most of these file names were randomly generated... I was able to delete all of them except the dll's. sstqp.exe kept reappearing, but I managed to nullify it by deleting it and then replacing it with a 0k read-only file.

Searching the registry, sure enough, I found a dozen spots where these files were referenced. Some in pretty clever places: Did you know you can specify an executable to run whenever winlogon is run? Did you know you can specify an executable to run whenever the windows authentication service is run? **Seriously** -- what the hell Microsoft? You can't even boot in command prompt mode to get rid of this crap.

Deleting their references in the registry didn't work, something was just adding them right back. I needed to delete the dll's to prevent them from loading, but how?

This stumped me for a good hour. I tried a bunch of different things to get rid of the dll's (without pulling the drive and putting it into another NTFS compatible system) but nothing seemed to work. Running Unlocker on them hard-locked the system. Move on Boot was worthless.

Finally, while searching for references to "dropper.agent.git" I stumbled upon a hacky little tool called The Avenger that did the trick. With this tool you have to write a script that specifies the file(s) to delete and it will delete them the next time your computer starts up, presumably before Windows has a chance to execute them. IT WORKED.

Thank you, Avenger!

Photoshop lags opening files when your default printer is a network printer

2007-12-24T13:38:00.000-08:00

At home and at work I've had this problem where Photoshop freezes for about 60 seconds whenever I go to open a file (7 at home; CS2 at work--both versions do it). Even a tiny 32x32 pixel file will lag opening. After my tenth productivity hang today I finally decided to track the problem down, and it's not at all what I would have suspected: network printers. If your default printer is a network printer Photoshop will take longer to open files. And if your PC can't connect to the printer for whatever reason it takes even longer. I frequently turn my network printer off at home, and at work I've got a ton of network printer profiles I don't even use anymore, the default one being invalid. The workaround for me is to make my default printer at home a FILE: printer. Lame.

I don't entirely blame Photoshop on this... even the Printer Control Panel can't figure out if a printer is connected or not until you go to access it. But couldn't they push whatever this printer thing is doing into a thread, so at least you can keep working?

This week in petroleum

2007-12-19T21:41:00.000-08:00

Woke up to a shock this morning--we use propane to heat the living room in our house, and the propane bill showed we were being charged a whopping $2.75/gallon... at least a $0.60/gallon increase from the last bill I remember looking at. To find out if this was a reasonable price I did some searching and came across the Energy Information Administration's This week in Petroleum website that tracks propane prices across the country. I guess things could be worse, the website shows for the week ending 12/17/07 the average price of propane in New England was $2.93/gallon.

But propane prices aren't that interesting to blog about. [no offense] What jumped out at me on the site was this little graph that compared petroleum exploration investment to actual increases in petroleum reserves. Basically, there appears to be no correlation:

We've been spending more on petroleum exploration every year since 2000 but we haven't seen anything come of it. Granted, the website says there may be reason for this: "It sometimes takes years from the start of exploration before oil is discovered and then designated as 'proved' reserves. Also, higher costs for raw materials and drilling rigs mean that some of the additional spending went into just maintaining what companies were already doing."

Pay no attention to that last sentence about petroleum exploration dollars going towards maintaining existing systems... Instead, take this information with the recent energy bill that passed congress, where: "nearly half of House Republicans condemned the legislation as a 'No Energy Bill' because it lacked expanded access to new oil and gas exploration".

But according to the EIA website the results of new gas exploration has gained traction "only two of the previous 17 years." One would conclude that the money we're putting into new gas exploration isn't bearing fruit! So why then would House Republicans push for putting more money into exploration?

Sacramento police agree to be advertising schlocks for local businesses

2007-12-18T12:17:00.000-08:00

According to the Associated Press, police in Sacramento rounded up gift certificates from local businesses and are pulling people over while driving to hand them out. Apparently this is to "promote the holiday spirit and enhance goodwill between the traffic unit and the motoring public," and to, erm, avoid doing real police work perhaps?

I wonder what the hourly cost of a patrol car is, and how much it really costs to pull someone over. I doubt it's cheap. For every silly little $5 Starbucks gift card they're handing out they're probably burning $50-250 taxpayer dollars. (and then there's the lost opportunity cost of catching someone during that time who was actually breaking the law...)

Microsoft quietly changes terms of Windows Feedback Program

2007-12-11T14:49:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, many websites reported that Microsoft was going to be offering a free copy of Windows Vista to users who signed up for the Windows Feedback Program and participated for 3 months. I went to check it out myself today but found no trace of anything "free" on their website.

A quick search for site:microsoft.com found the original wording that appearing on their site yesterday. They must have removed it after they hit their target numbers:

What about the free product?
If you are a Windows Vista or Windows XP user and decide to join and participate in both programs, we will send you a free Microsoft product when you participate in the program. Limit one gift per person. This offer is non-transferable. This offer expires on 12/31/07, while supplies last, and is not redeemable for cash. Taxes, if any, are your sole responsibility.

It would be nice to at least say, "free gift no longer available". But this is the Internet! Who cares!?

Combat Ops snags IGN PSP Game of the Month

2007-12-03T10:36:00.000-08:00

Combat Ops is a fantastic example of a game that does multiplayer and does it well... You can pick up a copy of Combat Ops for $10 on the Playstation Store.

Did I mention Logans Shadow was their game of the month pick for October? Not like I'm bragging or anything. :-)

Source control bindings in VS.NET

2007-11-16T16:23:00.000-08:00

I spent well over an hour last night trying to get source control bindings working between VS.NET 2003 and Perforce. (Yes, I'm still on 2003, I actually prefer it over 2005--long story). I had no problem binding the sln, vcproj and a couple of files to Perforce, but the majority of the files in the project would lose their source control status a few seconds after the project loads. I tried recreating the bindings, recreating the project, "opening project from source control" and a number of other things a dozen times and VS just wouldn't recognize these files as being part of source control.

Finally when I went to add a new file to source control I discovered that the difference between the files that worked and the files that didn't was their location. Files in the same directory (or underneath the same directory) as the vcproj were recognized; files outside weren't. When I attempted to add a file outside the directory I actually got a meaningful error: "Some of the files you are adding to your project are located outside of the project's binding root. These files cannot be source controlled unless they are moved."

Aha.. I opened up the vcproj in notepad and whaddyaknow, there's an entry called "SccLocalPath". I changed that from "." to ".." and it all magically started working. It would have been nice to have gotten that error when I bound the project originally. Go Visual Studio... :-/

GAO confirms airport security is a joke

2007-11-15T12:04:00.000-08:00

The Government Accountability Office recently released a report confirming what many of us already know: airport security -- specifically the practices put into place by the TSA -- are totally worthless when it comes to stopping real terror threats.

The GAO managed to sneak bomb making materials into 19 airports totally undetected, even when the TSA apparently notified itself that the government agency was going to be conducting these tests: "Release of the GAO report follows a hearing Wednesday in which Hawley vehemently denied that screeners had been tipped off about covert security tests, even as lawmakers brandished an e-mail from TSA headquarters that not only warned employees of testing, but described the methods and appearance of those conducting the probes."

Begin brain dump...

For several years I've been carrying a small knife on my key chain. Many times when I travel I forget that I have it on me and it ends up in my backpack with the rest of my keys and electronics when I go through the scanning process. Not once have I ever been questioned about it. The state of knives on planes is a little vague: According to the TSA's website, knives are still banned, however a sign at SFO I saw last week said that knives were permitted as long as the blade was under 4". Either way: the fact that I can bring a knife onto a plane time after time (legitimately or accidentally) just makes the whole system seem like a joke. You can't bring a box cutter onto a plane, but you can bring a knife on board no problem?

The current airport security process is a waste of time, energy and money. It's costing the economy billions, $94B by some estimates. Not to mention we're only protecting planes, not the airport terminals themselves. Every time I fly I think of a dozen ways someone could terrorize the airport without even having to go through the security.

My current favorite terrorist plot involves the security screening itself. Everyone has to take their shoes off, (which in itself startles me that people don't find this disgusting--I personally don't, but in this germaphobe society you would think more people would refuse), so why not attack there? There are lots of chemical and/or biological agents you could quietly release at that time.. ringworm, e-coli, ticks, parasitic fungi (athlete's foot), etc. Could you imagine if someone broke open a canister of African ticks in the security line? Oh, the (project) mayhem.

I don't claim to be smart enough to know what the solution is to the airport security problem, but I know that the way the TSA is going about it is definitely not the answer. More security is not the answer either. I think it boils down to fear mediation: The TSA needs to find a new way to calm the publics fears of terrorism without actually inconveniencing anyone. They could hang posters with statistics of air travel safety: "Relax! Your odds of being involved in a terrorist plot today are 1 in 5,351,000,000 -- You have better odds of dying due to motion sickness." (And you could have dimenhydrinate manufacturers pay for the posters!)

Aggravated libel gets a man deported

2007-11-06T11:01:00.000-08:00

What's shocking about this news story to me is that it's not shocking at all. These are the times we live in.

Man angry with son-in-law fingers him as terrorist to FBI

"...father-in-law wrote an email to the FBI saying the son-in-law had links to al-Qaeda in Sweden and that he was travelling to the US to meet his contacts. The son-in-law was arrested upon landing in Florida. He was placed in handcuffs, interrogated and placed in a cell for 11 hours before being put on a flight back to Europe..."

You can sue your local police department for wrongful arrest. Can you sue the US Government? Can you sue the US Government as a foreign citizen?

WD external drive suddenly bonks on my Mac

2007-11-04T17:34:00.000-08:00

Whenever I connect my WD1600XMS (a 160gb 2.5" USB-powered external drive) to my Mac, it now takes 10+ minutes for it to mount, and even then it only mounts after some prodding. I initially formatted the drive using my Mac (FAT32), but have since used it many times back-and-forth between my Mac and PC. After only a week of owning the thing the drive has become unusable from my Mac, but is fine on my PC.

Immediately after connecting the drive I see the following error on the console:

Nov 4 14:43:47 WeeMonkie diskarbitrationd[40]: unable to mount /dev/disk1s1 (status code 0x00000047).

The drive light then flashes for about 5 minutes, and then the drive's status information appears in Apple System Profiler:

USB High-Speed Bus:

Host Controller Location: Built In USB
Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBEHCI
PCI Device ID: 0x00e0
PCI Revision ID: 0x0004
PCI Vendor ID: 0x1033
Bus Number: 0x5b

External HDD:

Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: Yes
BSD Name: disk1
Version: 1.04
Bus Power (mA): 500
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Western Digital
OS9 Drivers: No
Product ID: 0x0702
Serial Number: xxx
Vendor ID: 0x1058

If I then refresh Apple System Profiler, the drive lights flash for another 5 minutes and then the drive finally appears on the desktop.

There's only about 20gb of data on the drive, but there are a ton of files... Does MacOS suck at handling FAT32? Is it trying to cache the entire file table before it mounts the disc?

When good PR goes bad!

2007-10-01T17:35:00.000-07:00

Nokia bashes Apple for "locking" their phones:

The ad says: "Phones should be open to anything" and "The best devices have no limits"

OK, Nokia! You talk the talk, but can you walk the walk? Where's your $200 price drop? The N95 phone is $795 retail!

Apple product lock-in: cry me a river

2007-09-24T18:02:00.000-07:00

Man! So many people are complaining about how the iPhone is locked to AT&T, and how Apple won't let third-parties develop software for iPods, and wah-wah-wah... I'm tired of hearing about it.

If you don't like it, don't buy it.

I love my iPod. It's a great music player. I bought it for the purpose of listening to music. I didn't buy it to run 3rd-party applications or write software for it. I would love to write software for the iPod, but Apple won't let me. That's fine. Again, I bought it for the purpose of listening to music on it!

The iPhone is a closed system (unless you mod it of course). If you don't like that no one is twisting your arm forcing you to buy one. And if you bought one and then decided you didn't like the closed system then that's your fault for not doing the research up front. What does the iPhone do that no other smartphone doesn't do? Nothing. It just looks freakin' sweet, that's it. If you want an open system go pick up a Symbian UIQ/S60 or Windows Mobile phone.

Better yet: Buy an iPhone, hack it, download the community SDK and stop your whining.

Don't tase me bro!

2007-09-19T15:40:00.000-07:00

Monday's incident where a UF student was tasered and arrested for asking Senator Kerry some direct questions about the 2004 election has highlighted some serious issues we have in this society regarding how we deal with people that wish to speak their mind and provoke debate. Especially those who want to rant on a microphone in a public forum with a US Senator.

A lot of what I've read on the internets points out how poorly the police handled the situation--by trying to forcefully eject the poor guy, and then pinning him to the ground and tasering him. After watching videos of the incident I agree the police completely mishandled the situation. I think UF did the right thing suspending the officers.

I like Senator Kerry's politics, but I think this incident speaks more to Kerry's poor abilities as a public speaker than it does to police officer's poor handling of the situation. A good orator knows how to redirect and/or silence people that try to hi-jack the debate. In a public forum like this you need to be ready to cut off someone that's trying to escalate the situation and gracefully steer the conversation back to a comfortable level. Andrew Meyer was clearly trying to rile things up. Kerry should have stepped in and calmed the situation down. I can think of several ways Kerry could have joked with Meyer, bounced Meyer's accusations right back at him, or even better, like a great politician: answer the question he wished he'd been asked.

Sad.

Shameless website rip-off

2007-09-07T18:08:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine who's a web designer did the Corvallis Fall Festival website a few years back, and just discovered today the city of Liberty, Missouri shamelessly ripped off her design for the Liberty Fall Festival website. The sign up page even redirects you to the Corvallis Fall Festival website!

At least they were thorough enough to change the metadata, which claims "HI-Tech-KC" as the author.